Updated on 17th May 2014
Complete up to chapter 15
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Hi, TLT fans! As horizon has mentioned, there is currently a guide to Hard Reset 2: Reset Harder in progress, created by RampantArcana. It's version-controlled using Git, because horizon is so awesome that his stories require a distributed version-control system usually intended for massive software development projects.

RampantArcana's Hard Reset 2 Helper

RampantArcana has kindly allowed me to publish my own Hard Reset 2 timeline as part of that project. This timeline is an attempts to fill in the gaps in the story that occur as a result of events that happen outside of Twilight's timeloop. Because Twilight never experiences these events, we must infer them to the best of our ability using logic and evidence provided in the story.

Because of the amount of unknowns that have to be inferred, all of the inferred events (in purple) are of unknown veracity and open to change. If you see anything that you think is wrong, let me know! Comments and input are welcome.

Legend
C - Confirmed. This event is known to have occurred, and was witnessed and remembered by Twilight. It was either shown in the story, or is recounted to us from Twilight's memory.
I - Inferred. This event was not shown in the story. Either Twilight doesn't remember it, or she does, but didn't tell us what happened. In either case, we can infer that it happened based on how we know Twilight begins the loop, and what other timeloopers said. The inference may not be correct and could change as we gain more information.
S - Personal speculation about an event.
N - Useful notes and information.
Q - Questions and unknowns about an event.
A - Confirmation about an event from the author, horizon.

C: Twilight casts the spell that initiates her timeloop, beginning the events of Eakin's Hard Reset.
C: Twilight experiences several hundred loops during this time, in which she discovers the changeling invasion and the imminent destruction of Equestria by the Elements of Harmony, and attempts to stop them.
C: Twilight attempts to defuse the Elements of Harmony by taking them out of Canterlot on a train. She doesn't tell us the result, but we can assume that it failed and the elements still exploded as normal, killing her.

I: Twilight respawns, and takes an unknown action, the result of which is that another timelooper's loop resets. We don't know how, but the other timelooper's reset point is more than one thousand years ago.
Q: Who is the other timelooper, and why is their reset point so far in the past?
S: One possibility is that the other timelooper is a 'sealed' enemy, one who has been locked away for hundreds of years. Discord and Sombra both fit this bill. That would explain why they never updated their anchor (they haven't been able to) and it's not unlikely that an enemy would use a timeloop power to increase their chances of victory.
S: Star Swirl has been another popular suggestion. As the father of time magic, he's more than capable of setting up a timeloop, and his appearance in Twilight's time could be the result of time travel.
I: The new timelooper respawns more than one thousand years ago, and changes something something in the past.
I: In this changed past, Celestia casts her own timeloop spell shortly after Luna is banished one thousand years ago, so that she won't ever be able to make such a mistake again.
I: Celestia lives the next 1000 years, using her timeloop ability to prevent disasters (and the occasional personal embarrassment). We know that her anchor point can be updated, and that she does this periodically - perhaps every day, so that she can always return to the beginning of a day if it goes wrong.
Q: It's implied from what she later says to Twilight, that Twilight is not the first pony with whom she's been in a timeloop situation. Who else could she have timelooped with in the past?
S: Perhaps she had a student during this time who also had the ability to timeloop.
I: At some point during this 1000 years, Celestia comes up with a plan to handle the unlikely situation that she ever encounters another timelooper she needs to work with. She buries a safeword in her memories, and sets up an unlikely phrase - 'Preengaged blackout deharmonizes antihunting dissertation' - which will trigger both the release of that safeword, and a paralysis spell that paralyses and nullifies the magic of anypony in her vicinity. Nopony should ever be able to discover that phrase unless they either manipulate her mind (in which case, they won't have the safeword, and Celestia will know they are a threat) or were told it personally by herself in a timeloop that she doesn't remember (in which case, Celestia can kill them safe in the knowledge that they will simply reset).
A: horizon has confirmed the above, as he didn't intend for it to be anything more than a simple timeloop verification.
I: Twilight is born, and apparently lives her life in much the same way as she did before the timeline was changed. She becomes Celestia's student, restores the Elements of Harmony, cures Princess Luna, moves to Ponyville, and even learns most of the same lessons. The changeling invasion occurs as before, only this time, something delays it to a few hours later.
Q: How has history remained so similar if the timeline was changed more than one thousand years ago?
S: This might simply be because Equestria doesn't work the same way as our universe: in Equestria, chaos and destiny are forces that can be understood and controlled, so the usual laws of chaos theory may not apply.
I: Twilight casts the timeloop ritual, creating her reset point, and her timelooped self respawns. She notices immediately that Spike's wording is slightly different, and realises something has changed. She also finds out the changeling invasion has been delayed.
I: She takes advantage of the opportunity to see Celestia immediately, teleporting directly to outside her chambers. She tells the guards that this is an emergency and jokingly tells them not to disturb her and Celestia unless there's a fire.
I: Presumably, one of these guards is Chrysalis in disguise. We know this because Chrysalis hears about the joke and decides to actually start some fires herself.
I: Chrysalis resets so that she can put the plan into action.
I: Chrysalis respawns. We don't know where or when, but we know it's earlier than Twilight's reset point. She arranges for her changelings to start several fires.
C: Twilight respawns during Chrysalis' loop. Hard Reset 2: Reset Harder begins here. Because Chrysalis was the last to reset, she doesn't remember the previous loop, and goes directly to Celestia once more.
C: Twilight tells Celestia about being stuck in a timeloop. Although she has told Celestia this many times in past loops, it's different now. This is not the Celestia Twilight knew - this is a Celestia who has spent her whole life timelooping, and knows exactly what Twilight means.
C: Celestia casts a spell to deactivate the trigger phrase that she set up on herself, so that she can safely tell it to Twilight. She tells Twilight that, if things don't work on this pass, that Twilight should recite the phrase to her in the next loop.
A: horizon has confirmed the purpose of the spell, as it isn't intended to be anything more than just a deactivation of the trigger as we see.
C: Chrysalis enters the chambers disguised as a royal guard battlecaster, pretending to be reporting on the fires to Twilight. Unfortunately, Twilight knows something is wrong, because she sees that a squadron she ordered to guard the corridor hasn't received the order.
C: Chrysalis realises she's been rumbled, and breaks Twilight's neck, killing her.

C: Twilight respawns. The loop is still altered as it was previously, with Spike's new phrase and with the changeling invasion delayed.
C: Twilight goes to Celestia and recites the phrase 'Preengaged blackout deharmonizes antihunting dissertation' as Celestia requested. The phrase triggers the spell, which reveals the safeword to Celestia and paralyses Twilight.
C: Celestia reveals the safeword - 'coruscating' - which Twilight did not give. As such, although Twilight has claimed to be in a timeloop, Celestia has to treat her as a threat to Equestria. She tells Twilight the safeword, knowing that if Twilight truly is in a timeloop, she will be able to give it next time.
C: Celestia telekinetically breaks Twilight's neck, killing her.

I: Twilight respawns.
I: Twilight goes to Celestia, and this time, says the safeword before the phrase. The phrase activates Celestia's spell, paralysing Twilight as before, but with the addition of the safeword, Celestia knows that Twilight truly must have been through a timeloop, and can be trusted.
I: The only option for Celestia at this point is to reset herself. With Twilight paralysed, there's nothing more that Celestia can get out of her; in addition, the paralysis is painful and possibly deadly, and Celestia doesn't want Twilight to suffer or die. Celestia casts a spell to kill herself and reset her loop.
I: Celestia respawns back several hours at the beginning of the morning, and waits out the day. During this time, she learns the circumstances under which Twilight cast the timeloop spell, and also discovers the changeling invasion.
I: Celestia spends several more loops learning everything she can about the changeling invasion. She discovers that Chrysalis is also a timelooper, and apparently Chrysalis also learns this about Celestia as well (or already knew). Celestia has made several attempts using her timeloop to defeat the invasion, but with Chrysalis having the same power, the best she can achieve is a stalemate. Everything she has tried so far has simply been countered by a change in tactics from Chrysalis, all of which have resulted in Celestia's forces being worse off.
Q: There's a lot that Celestia doesn't tell us here. What happened during those loops? How do Celestia and Chrysalis both know that each other is a timelooper? How did Celestia force Chrysalis to 'irrevocably commit' to the invasion?
Q: When did Chrysalis become a timelooper? How old is she?
Q: When and where is Chrysalis' reset point?
S: Given that she's an alicorn-level threat, Chrysalis could easily be hundreds of years old, and so could have been timelooping for hundreds of years - but it seems unlikely, as someone as power hungry as Chrysalis would have surely used that power to make a move long before now if she had had it. It's more likely that her acquisition of the timeloop power is recent.
S: Chrysalis's reset point must be before Twilight's, as she can make changes that occur before Twilight respawns. Is it before or after Celestia's? It's difficult to say, but it seems to be around the same time.
I: After enough loops of fighting Chrysalis to a stalemate, Celestia decides to deal with Twilight again. She appears in the library just as Twilight casts the timeloop ritual and respawns.
I: Twilight is surprised to see her and a little shocked from the last loop she remembers, in which Celestia broke her neck. However, remembering that Celestia told her to say the phrase with the safeword, she does so. Celestia isn't quick enough to stop her, and Twilight is paralysed again. Celestia is forced to give up on this loop and reset.
I: Celestia respawns, and once more, waits out the morning, then goes to see Twilight in the library when Twilight's loop starts. This time, she is quick enough to stop Twilight from saying the phrase.
S: Twilight asks two questions. We don't know what these questions are, because we only hear Twilight ask them in a later loop (and Celestia gives the answers before Twilight can finish the questions, having already heard Twilight ask them previously). However, we can infer that the conversation went as follows:

Twilight: "You're in a time loop too?!"
Celestia: "Yes."
Twilight: "Did I somehow bring you into my time loop?"
Celestia: "No, this is my own loop, independent from yours."
Twilight: "When did your loop start?"
Celestia: "My reset point was first thing this morning, though I cast the original spell right after I was forced to banish Luna. I promised myself I wouldn't ever let those I loved go through such pain again."

I: Twilight realises that Celestia has, by inaction, deliberately kept her in the time loop, and may in fact have done so many times already. After everything she's been through, she is devastated and furious with Celestia for allowing her to face such torture.
I: Celestia is upset, but understands Twilight's anger and allows her to calm down. She tells Twilight about Chrysalis's timelooping ability, and explains that she needs Twilight to break the stalemate.
I: Twilight asks for some time to consider this. Since they're in a timeloop, Celestia has no problem with Twilight taking all the time she needs. To make things easier, she gives Twilight a suicide spell - Euthanatos - which allows a caster to kill themselves quickly and painlessly.
I: Celestia also suggests to Twilight that they use a counting system to count how many loops each of them has experienced, so that they can keep track of each other. She begins it at C-0, T-0.
I: Twilight leaves Canterlot to mull things over. Unfortunately, she forgets that this puts her further away from the Elements than Celestia. The Elements explode in Canterlot, killing Celestia and resetting her loop.
I: Celestia respawns, realising that Twilight must have left mistakenly left Canterlot.
C: Celestia re-enacts the events of the previous loop, this time telling Twilight not to leave Canterlot. The loop count remains at C-0, T-0, as Twilight doesn't remember the introduction of the loop counter from the previous loop.
C: Twilight stays in Canterlot to mull things over, still angry with Celestia. She realises that because she's the only one who remembers events in her own timeloop, she can lie to Celestia and pretend that she has spent 34 horrid, miserable loops in Celestia's company, failing to make any progress because of Celestia's behaviour.
C: Twilight casts the Euthanatos spell and kills herself, resetting her loop. This ends loop C-0, T-0.

C-0, T-1
I: Twilight respawns.
I: Twilight goes ahead with her plan to lie to Celestia. She pretends to be deeply upset, insisting to Celestia that the loop counter is now at C-0, T-34, that they have failed to make any progress together in 34 loops, and that she can't carry on like this.
I: Celestia believes Twilight's lie and apologises. She then immediately casts her Euthanatos spell, resetting to earlier that morning.
I: Celestia makes a promise to herself that she will keep Twilight out of the loop and attempt to handle the invasion herself, and she will do this ten times for every loop that she and Twilight (supposedly) could not work together (ie. 340 loops).
I: Celestia spends 340 loops fighting the changeling invasion. In each of these loops, she goes to Twilight first thing in the morning, before she can cast the timeloop ritual, and sends her to study in the high-security arcane vault, keeping her safe from and unaware of the changeling invasion. Because Twilight never casts the timeloop ritual, her timelooped self does not respawn in any of these loops.

C-340, T-1
I: After 340 loops of being repeatedly killed, and seeing her friends and family die, Celestia cannot take any more. She respawns and goes to the library, this time allowing Twilight to cast the timeloop spell so that her timelooped self rejoins the loop again. This is loop C-340 T-34. (Technically, it's actually C-340, T-1, because Twilight lied about her 34 loops, but Celestia insists on using the numbers given to her by Twilight).
I: Celestia breaks down and starts crying, recounting the 340 terrible loops she has just experienced. Twilight realises that the lie she was going to tell must have caused this, and is horrified at what she has put Celestia through. She eventually breaks down in tears and admits that she lied to Celestia.
I: Twilight desperately tries to come up with a way to make it up to Celestia. She comes up with the following idea: Celestia should arrange an exercise, to show her the dire consequences of lying in a timeloop. This is the 'teachable moment'. To do so, Twilight suggests that Celestia leads Chrysalis to the library at the exact moment of Twilight's reset. Celestia would fight Chrysalis in the library, protecting Twilight from harm and proving that she cares enough about Twilight to risk injury and death for her. Twilight would use her timeloop to figure out how to drive Chrysalis off and save her teacher. Celestia would then reset so that the attack never happened, and explain to Twilight (who still will have memories of the battle) that it was a lesson.
S: If our inference is correct, that seems like an bad plan. It involves Celestia having to manipulate and lie to Twilight, then admit the lie afterward. Given that Twilight is already furious with Celestia because she believes she's being manipulated, it's difficult to see how this won't just make everything worse. Celestia says she thought it was a bad idea, but it's difficult to see why she would go along with it. It's possible we have misunderstood what the teachable moment was.
I: Celestia respawns, and spends 36 loops figuring out how to lure Chrysalis to the library at the moment of Twilight's reset. Presumably Celestia dies or resets herself several times during this - Chrysalis is a fearsome opponent in personal combat, and with her timelooping ability, can replay loops over and over again to improve her chances.

C-376, T-1
I: Celestia respawns, and makes another attempt to get Chrysalis to the library.
C: Chrysalis attacks and blows a hole in the library just as Twilight's loop begins, seriously injuring Celestia. The result is that Twilight begins her loop to find the library in ruins, Celestia injured, and Chrysalis attacking.
C: Chrysalis battles Celestia as Twilight watches in horror.
S: Presumably, Celestia has had this battle a few times already, but hasn't yet figured out how to do it without blowing up the library and getting herself injured. From the looks of the battle, both Celestia and Chrysalis are looping to figure out how to counter each other's attacks, as they make several improbable but effective moves. We know that Chrysalis spends about fifty loops attacking the library.
C: Chrysalis disables Celestia by shooting her in the neck.
C: Chrysalis prepares to kill Twilight. Twilight is prepared to die because she knows it will reset the loop and give her a chance to stop Chrysalis next time. Unfortunately, this suspicious acceptance of death causes Chrysalis to realise that Twilight is also a timelooper. Before Chrysalis can do anything, however, Twilight hits her with Home Run, knocking her unconscious.
Q: How did Home Run end up in the library? In Eakin's Hard Reset, Twilight stole it from a Canterlot store.
S: Possibly Twilight asked Celestia to have it brought to the library as part of the planning for the teachable moment, although we would love to have seen her try to justify that. Then again, as Twilight said in Eakin's A Stitch in Time, it does have a proven track record against changelings.
S: Personally, we're just assuming that Home Run's presence is due to the Rule of Cool rather than having a more complicated explanation. We're certainly not complaining. How can you have a Hard Reset story without Home Run?
N: Chrysalis's exclamation 'noy jitat' comes from the 1990s animated show The Pirates of Dark Water. It's a curse word meaning something like 'damn'. YouTube has an example here.
C: Twilight goes to help the injured Celestia, but Celestia catches her out with a question: "How many loops did that take you?" For Twilight, of course, the answer is one, and she says so.
C: Celestia is utterly dismayed at this, because Twilight has managed to solve the teachable moment in a single loop, while it has taken Celestia 36 loops to set this up. She immediately believes Twilight is lying again, but it quickly becomes obvious that Twilight really did get lucky on her first try. This means the plan for the teachable moment will no longer work - Twilight won't remember anything about it if Celestia resets now, and Celestia is in so much pain from her injuries that she can't bear to spend any longer in this loop explaining the lesson. Nor does she want to try again to set up the teachable moment cleanly, it's too painful for her. She asks Twilight to reset and immediately say 'Darjeeling', to end the teachable moment. Twilight hesitates, wanting to know why, and Celestia admits that that this was a set up, intended to be the 'teachable moment'. Because she hasn't had time to explain it, Twilight loses her temper. She's sick of being manipulated like this, and refuses to reset, until Celestia calms her down. After she's calmed down, Twilight casts Euthanatos and kills herself.

C-376, T-2 - the Darjeeling loop
I: Twilight respawns back at the moment of Chrysalis' attack on the library. She immediately says 'Darjeeling!'. It is technically C-376, T-2, but Celestia has counted it as C-376, T-35 because she is still using Twilight's numbers.
S: 'Darjeeling' appears to be a codeword that Celestia has set up in advance, to indicate to herself that she should reset the loop immediately. We don't know when she did this, but possibly it was part of the planning for the teachable moment.
I: Celestia resets her loop immediately, before Chrysalis can disable her.

C-377, T-2
I: Celestia respawns at the beginning of the day. This time, she doesn't attempt to lure Chrysalis to the library, so Chrysalis doesn't appear in this loop. She goes to the library to meet Twilight at her reset point.
Q: Why wouldn't Chrysalis still try to attack the library anyway? Even though Celestia has reset, Chrysalis will still have her memories of the fifty loops she spent trying to disable Celestia so that she could murder Twilight.
S: Possibly, Celestia did something in the morning to focus Chrysalis' attention away from the library. Chrysalis doesn't have much support within the palace at the time of Twilight's reset point - her changeling army is still some way away at that time, which means that all she has is herself and a few infiltrators. This is why she can't just go to Twilight and murder her hours earlier - it would expose her and ruin the element of surprise. Presumably as part of the teachable moment, Celestia somehow made killing Twilight a more attractive proposition.
I: Twilight respawns as Celestia explains to her that this is loop C-377, and that they've just had the Darjeeling loop. She finds that Twilight is still angry, and realises that the teachable moment didn't work. She is shocked to find that Twilight is on T-35, as it means she only spent one loop learning the teachable moment.
I: Celestia tries to explain what happened to Twilight, but Twilight is still angry. Twilight gets a sudden stupid idea, and says Celestia's trigger phrase before Celestia can stop her. This activates Celestia's spell and paralyses Twilight, stopping their discussion. As before, Celestia hates seeing Twilight in pain like this, so she resets.

C-378, T-2
C: Celestia repeats the events of the last loop, this time informing Twilight that this is loop C-378. She suggests that they reset the counter to zero, to wipe the slate clean. This time, she knows that Twilight is going to try to say her phrase again, and stops her before she can. She eventually is able to calm Twilight down and explain everything to her. Twilight finally understands why it's so difficult to maintain trust in these conditions, and decides to try a little experiment of her own. She casts Euthanatos and resets herself.

C-378, T-3
C: Twilight respawns as Celestia is explaining to her that this is loop C-378. Twilight wants to be absolutely sure that Celestia isn't manipulating her, so she pretends that this is the first time she has experienced this loop. Celestia behaves exactly as she did before, confirming to Twilight that Celestia hasn't done anything to manipulate her since she reset. Twilight finally trusts Celestia, and resets the loop.

C-378, T-4
C: Twilight respawns, and immediately agrees to reset the loop counter to zero and start anew, now that they trust each other. She resets her loop.

C-378, T-5
I: Twilight respawns, and tells Celestia that she's set her loop counter to zero, and that Celestia should now do the same and reset. Celestia does so.

C-0, T-0
C: The final loop count stands at C-379 for Celestia, T-5 for Twilight, but they have both agreed that from this point, the counter is at C-0, T-0, and they will be completely truthful about how many loops they have experienced. This ends chapter 3.
S: Twilight doesn't give us a full account of her own experiences in chapter 4. This is because most of her loops are the same with a slight alteration. From this point on, you can assume that all loops begin with Twilight retrying the events of the previous loop, and all loops end with her resetting, unless we report otherwise.
C: Chapter 4 begins. Twilight explains Operation Roach Motel, a plan to defeat Chrysalis. Her plan is to blast Chrysalis with the Elements of Harmony, knocking Chrysalis out of her timeloop entirely. Chrysalis won't be able to reset, which nullifies her biggest advantage. Celestia and Twilight should then easily be able to use their timelooping abilities to defeat the invasion. Celestia confirms that the Elements are indeed capable of this, and have done so before.
Q: When were the Elements previously used to knock someone out of a timeloop?
S: If the Elements can do this, they must be truly godlike. Knocking someone out of a timeloop requires the ability to manipulate time itself - otherwise, when Celestia or Twilight reset, it would just undo whatever the Elements of Harmony did. This ability goes against all the laws of time and timeloops that we know. We can consider the Elements a special case, as they are probably the most powerful artifacts in Equestria.
N: For non-American readers, a Roach Motel is a trap used to catch cockroaches. In this case, it of course refers to a trap that they intend to spring on Chrysalis. I'm British, I had to look it up. :)
C: The plan hinges on Twilight being able to get to the train that is carrying the other five bearers of Harmony - Applejack, Fluttershy, Pinkie Pie, Rainbow Dash, and Rarity - and getting them off the train and safely back to the palace, where Celestia will be waiting with the Elements. It can't be done any other way because of the instability of the Elements - moving them has always set them off in previous loops and made them explode early. Celestia must stay at the palace to keep them stable so that they can be used when all six bearers arrive.

T-2, C-1 (note: Twilight's numbering puts her count first, but it's still the same counter)
I: Twilight and Celestia hurry to a phaeton depot.
N: A phaeton is a pegasus-pulled chariot. Phaetons are typically lightweight, fast, and open-topped.
C: Twilight and Celestia take out some known changeling infiltrators, leaving only trusted pegasi guards there. Twilight needs the phaetons and pegasi to fly and catch up to the train carrying the bearers of Harmony, and also so that she can escape the train when she's rescued her friends.
I: Twilight leaves on a phaeton. Celestia stays behind to handle the fighting at the palace.
I: Twilight runs into some fierce fighting over the south barracks that Celestia forgot to mention, and is killed.

T-4, C-2
C: Twilight changes the phaeton flightplan so that she can avoid the fighting over the south barracks. She catches up to the incoming train this time, but a squadron of changelings - a reinforcement wing - has just beaten them to it, which means that she's going to have to fight changelings the moment she gets on the train. She tells the phaetons to go ahead of the train and wait for her to come out with her friends.
C: Twilight casts a soft-landing charm and leaps off the phaeton onto the train. Unfortunately, she picks a carriage with a curved and slippery roof, and falls off the train to her death.

T-5, C-2
C: Twilight chooses a safer carriage roof to land on, and encounters a rather unconvincing changeling disguised as Bon Bon. Twilight is comfortable with taking on ordinary changelings in hoof-to-hoof combat, so she attacks it, although she realises too late that she has forgotten her weapon. The changeling kills her.

T-6, C-2
C: Twilight repeats the events of the previous loop to face the Bon Bon changeling again, this time armed with Home Run.
I: Twilight's attack fails again.
S: We later learn that this changeling happens to be trained in martial arts, so it's likely that it performed some move to parry, deflect or disarm her.

T-7, C-2
C: Twilight tries again with the Bon Bon changeling, this time waiting to see what the changeling does first. Whatever it is, it kills her.

S: There's a missing loop here which Twilight doesn't mention. Note that missing loops don't necessarily mean that Twilight is trying the same thing again - they could also be loops in which Twilight and Celestia are exchanging information. Celestia's loop count goes up by one here, which could be a loop in which Twilight told her about the problem she's having with the Bon Bon changeling.
S: Twilight may also have just spent the missing loop reading up on martial arts, so that she can figure out how the changeling is defeating her in combat.

T-9, C-3
C: Twilight tries again with the Bon Bon changeling, this time figuring out that the changeling is using a dragon martial art. It turns out the changeling is an underqueen, far more dangerous than an average changeling. The underqueen kills her.

T-10, C-3
I: The underqueen kills Twilight again.

T-11, C-3
C: Twilight goes to fight the underqueen again, but this time uses a spell to capture the kinetic energy generated from her landing on the train carriage, and release it at the underqueen, blasting her through the roof of the carriage.
C: Twilight tries to open the door to the next carriage, but finds it locked, and can't open it before the squadron of changelings catches up with the train and kills her.

T-12, C-3
C: Twilight repeats her defeat of the underqueen, and this time teleports past the locked door, directly into a group of changelings, who kill her the moment they see her.

T-13, C-3
C: Twilight repeats the previous loop, but this time, is prepared and defeats the changelings in combat, as they're just regular grunts. She finds out that her friends are being held in the next carriage, and goes to rescue them, but it turns out that they're all changelings in disguise. Despite Twilight's best efforts, they manage to overwhelm and kill her.

T-14, C-3
C: Twilight repeats the previous loop. This time, she uses the element of surprise to disable the fake bearers immediately.
C: Twilight tries to interrogate the Fluttershy changeling, but it refuses to talk.
C: Changeling infiltrators sabotage the train engine, causing it to explode and derail the train, killing Twilight.

T-15, C-3
C: Twilight repeats the previous loop, this time choosing to interrogate the Applejack changeling. This also fails.
C: The train derails as before, killing Twilight.

T-16, C-3
C: Twilight tries again with the Rarity changeling, this time almost getting some information out of her, but Twilight realises that with the imminent derailing of the train, she needs more time to do this.

I: Eight loops occur, during which Twilight makes several attempts at a plan to try to get to the changelings quicker, so that she can interrogate them and find out where her real friends are.
S: Celestia resets once during these eight loops. This is probably another information exchange between Twilight and Celestia, with Twilight telling her about the problems she's having on the train. It's possible Celestia even helped her with the details of the plan.

T-24, C-4
C: Twilight manages to pull off her plan, which gets her to the changelings much more quickly, allowing her to get the information from the Rarity changeling. She finds out where her friends are on the train, and goes to rescue them, but forgets about the imminent derailing of the train, which kills her.

I: Twilight spends 22 loops trying to rescue her friends. She's run into a problem - no matter what she tries, either the train derails, killing her friends, or the phaetons are destroyed, leaving her stuck on the train and a sitting duck for the changelings.

T-46, C-15
C: Twilight discusses the problem with Celestia, but they can't figure out a way to solve it. However, Spike innocently manages to come up with a perfect answer to their problem.
Q: During this discussion, Twilight mentions the Want-it, Need-it disaster of "Lesson Zero", but Celestia's reaction implies that the disaster was actually much worse in this timeline. (Remember, the entire timeline has been changed - it's only Twilight who doesn't remember these changes, as she's been stuck in her timeloop). What happened, and why is it different to how Twilight remembered it?

T-47, C-16
C: Celestia introduces Twilight to Sweet Voice, an almost perfect body double for Twilight. The plan that Spike inspired is this: they will carry out the phaeton approach as they have before, but this time, they will bring Sweet Voice, who will be pretending to be Twilight. Twilight will be there, but hidden under an invisibility cloak. Sweet Voice will pretend to retreat to lure the changeling squadron away, allowing Twilight to jump onto the train without meeting any resistance, and then ride it all the way into Canterlot, where Celestia will be waiting with the Elements of Harmony. She will then release her friends, dispatch the few changeling infiltrators on the train, and use the Elements to blast Chrysalis.
C: Twilight asks why Celestia has a body double for her, and Celestia accidentally makes an embarrassing faux-pas. This puts Celestia in an awkward position - she badly wants to reset the loop, because she hates to be embarrassed like this - but she has made a promise to Twilight that she will never manipulate loops to her advantage. Twilight understands, and even gives permission for Celestia to reset to wipe her memory of this, but Celestia swallows her pride and allows it to remain on the record. She asks Twilight to reset instead, so that Twilight retains the information instead of her.
C: Twilight casts Euthanatos and resets.

T-48, C-16
I: We don't know what happens in this loop. Twilight knows it happened because Celestia's loop count goes up by one, but Celestia doesn't volunteer any information, and Twilight doesn't ask.
Q: What happened?
S: There are many possibilities here and we'll probably never know for sure, but our guess is that Twilight gifted Celestia with a personal secret of her own, as a return gesture of trust, and allowed Celestia to reset to retain that information. It's not likely that Celestia has any sinister reason for withholding information from Twilight, as we've just seen how dedicated she is to maintaining trust with her fellow timeloopers.
I: Celestia resets.

T-48, C-17
C: Once more, Celestia introduces Twilight to Sweet Voice, and they set off for the phaetons, with Twilight hidden under an invisibility cloak.
S: Probably not important, but the second time Twilight asks about Celestia having a body double for her, Celestia's answer is different and more confident. Did Twilight say something to her in the last loop to change that?
C: Twilight and Sweet Voice take a phaeton and, as in previous loops, fly to catch up with the train. Unfortunately their timing is a little off, and the reinforcement wing attacks them in mid-air before they can board the train, killing them.

I: Twilight spends 5 loops tweaking their approach so that they can get there earlier. They have to be able to get close enough to the train to get Twilight on, but far enough from the reinforcement wing so that Sweet Voice can retreat and lure the changelings away.

T-53, C-17
C: Twilight manages to time her arrival so that Sweet Voice only encounters the handful of fast changeling scouts at the front of the reinforcement wing, which are easily taken out. Twilight is able to jump onto the train and allow Sweet Voice to retreat, pursued by the reinforcement wing.
C: With no reinforcements on the train, and nopony able to see Twilight under her invisibility cloak, Twilight easily sneaks in to the carriage where her friends are being held. She can't release them yet, as the changeling infiltrators on the train would notice, so she has to wait until the train pulls into Canterlot. Twilight gives us a useful time here: it's about 6 pm when the train arrives in Canterlot. Twilight's reset point is at 3pm, which means this whole plan takes about 3 hours to play out.
C: The train arrives safely in Canterlot. Twilight doesn't go ahead with the actual blasting-with-the-elements yet however, because she doesn't yet know if Celestia is ready with them (and revealing the bearers now could lose them the element of surprise if Chrysalis is watching.) She casts Euthanatos and resets.

T-54, C-17
I: Twilight informs Celestia that her half of the plan succeeded. Celestia begins working on her own half of the plan. Celestia's half involves delaying Chrysalis's invasion for the 3 hours that it takes to get the bearers back to Canterlot.
I: Celestia spends 45 loops trying to do this. It's incredibly difficult because Celestia is having to prevent her troops from attacking directly (which would likely cause the invasion to escalate out of control) while keeping them as safe as possible, and made even worse by the fact that they're fighting a military force of changelings, who can easily ambush them. It's also likely that Chrysalis is using her timeloop to adapt her own tactics during this time.
I: Although it's not mentioned, Twilight obviously goes off with Sweet Voice to perform her half of the plan, otherwise she's not going to be at the train station when Celestia finally succeeds at hers.

T-54, C-62
C: Twilight is shocked to discover how many deaths Celestia has just gone through (presumably, she's been getting increasingly more shocked with each of Celestia's resets, but we never see those). However, Celestia is hopeful that she has figured it out this time, by enlisting Luna's help to get the Elements to the train station.
S: Note - Luna is not a timelooper. Just in case you thought that was about to get confusing. She is, however, probably the next-most-powerful pony after Celestia herself, which means that Chrysalis will have enormous trouble stopping both of them.
C: Twilight goes off with Sweet Voice to catch the train again.
I: Chrysalis realises that Celestia's actions are delaying tactics, and realises that the plan to stop her has two prongs - Celestia at the train station and Twilight on the train. She presumably knows about the Elements of Harmony by this time, and realises that Twilight is trying to bring her friends back to use the Elements against her. As she's having no luck stopping Celestia and Luna, she decides to turn her attention to the train instead. If she can kill Twilight's friends before they reach Canterlot, then she's safe.
Q: How much does Chrysalis know about the Elements of Harmony? Does she know how they work, how many bearers are needed to operate them, and what they do?
S: They've never been used against her, so it's possible she doesn't, and is only guessing.
I: Chrysalis sneaks on board the train and tries to kill the bearers, but is met by an invisible Twilight Sparkle, who kills her.
I: Chrysalis spends several loops trying to get past Twilight. She finally gets the idea to lure Twilight out of her safe spot by scratching on the wall of the carriage from outside.
I: Twilight recognises a pattern to the scratches and puts her ear to the carriage wall to listen, not realising that she's been duped. Chrysalis bursts through the wall and manages to destroy Twilight's invisibility cloak.
I: Twilight battles Chrysalis and, despite not having her cloak, still kills her.
I: Chrysalis resets and replays the loop again, to figure out how to evade Twilight's blows. She does this several times, as apparently Twilight is more than a match for her.
S: Twilight is pretty frustrated by Chrysalis showing up. It's not surprising that she's giving Chrysalis a walloping.
C: Chrysalis finally defeats Twilight and strangles her to death.

I: Twilight respawns at her reset point screaming, strangulation being the last thing she remembers. Celestia comforts her and finds out what happened. Celestia realises that Chrysalis must have figured out their plan, but encourages Twilight to keep trying at it.
I: Celestia spends a few more loops perfecting her half of the plan.

T-55, C-74
I: Twilight respawns screaming again and is immediately comforted by Celestia. She is utterly distraught, believing that the fight will never end because Chrysalis will simply keep switching tactics to prevent one or the other of them from succeeding. Celestia encourages Twilight to keep trying, pointing out that Chrysalis is panicking and desperate because of how close they are to defeating her, and that they only need one success to defeat her once and for all.
I: Twilight realises that Chrysalis hasn't yet figured out she's a timelooper, and begins to feel confident about her chances of victory.
I: Twilight retries her plan again, flying to the train with Sweet Voice and sneaking on with her invisibility cloak. This time, she is prepared for Chrysalis, and waits for her to try her scratching trick again.
I: What happens next is unknown, but Twilight almost certainly confronts Chrysalis again. Whatever happens must either kill Chrysalis, or cause her to reset.
Q: This is a pretty big missing moment, as Chrysalis clearly has a monumental change of heart here. Did Twilight taunt Chrysalis too far? Has Chrysalis finally realised that Twilight is a timelooper? Did Twilight accidentally reveal something to Chrysalis?
S: On that note, does Chrysalis possess the mind-control venom seen in Eakin's Hard Reset? It seems like that would be a perfect way to get Twilight to spill everything, assuming Chrysalis can subdue her enough to deliver it.
S: It's also possible that Chrysalis spent many, many loops trying to defeat Twilight, and eventually got fed up enough to try something else.
I: Chrysalis realises that there's a much easier solution to this problem: destroy the train before Twilight can get to it. She resets and arranges for the train to be sabotaged earlier in the day, before Twilight can arrive. The train derails and plummets to the bottom of the mountain, killing everypony on board.
C: Twilight respawns, still on the post-strangulation T-55 loop. As before, Celestia comforts her, and she flies with Sweet Voice to retry her plan again.
C: Twilight gets there to find the train has been destroyed, and all her friends dead. This ends chapter 4.
I: Twilight kills herself.

I: Twilight respawns, utterly depressed at the death of her friends - which, since it occurs before she has time to get there (possibly even before her reset point), she has no chance of preventing. She believes her friends are dead for good.
I: Twilight spends several loops simply laying there, doing nothing, and waiting for the Elements to kill her (or perhaps killing herself with her Euthanatos). Celestia has several talks with her during this time that fail to pull her out of her depression, and even spends a few loops of her own trying to find a way to bring Twilight out of it.
S: Twilight doesn't directly report any of these depression loops. We only see one. However, we know they happened, because Twilight mentions going through this conversation several times.
I: A saddened Celestia decides to do something drastic. She resets, and spends the morning causing utter havoc - ordering the assassinations of world leaders, unleashing horrors from the arcane vaults, and using the moon to destabilise the planet. Because of the astonishing amount of disharmony she has created, she has to keep the Elements with her in a couple of saddlebags, so that she can spend all her power to keep them from exploding due to the overwhelming chaos.
S: Celestia may have spent a loop going through the doomsday with Twilight here. We don't know yet. We'll explain why this possibility exists later.
C: Chapter 5 begins. Twilight respawns, still in her depression. Celestia comes as usual to talk her out of it, and this time, manages to convince Twilight to get up to see the doomsday she has created. They both wear invisibility cloaks, so that they can watch the horror without being killed.
Q: What's Chrysalis making of all this?
S: Chrysalis must know that Celestia would never willingly destroy her own world so horrifically, so presumably she would see this as a scare tactic on Celestia's part. It's unlikely to have any effect on her.
C: Celestia and Twilight have a long heart-to-heart talk. Celestia reveals that Twilight's friends aren't necessarily beyond rescue - they're always alive at the time when Celestia respawns, so it's possible for them to be saved if Celestia can act early enough.
C: Twilight decides, on the spur of the moment, to act on long-held feelings she's had for Celestia, and kisses her.
I: The Elements of Harmony explode, killing Twilight in mid-kiss. This ends chapter 5.
S: Possibly Twilight's kiss distracted Celestia enough that she lost control of the spell she was using to stabilise the Elements.
N: Twilight says that telekinesis can only move a whole object, not part of it. This is actually different to the show, where we've seen unicorns do this plenty of times.
S: Celestia and Twilight are directly next to each other when the Elements explode, which leaves some ambiguity as to who died first. Logically, it has to be Twilight, as Twilight remembers dying.

I: Twilight respawns, furious that the previous loop ended without her getting to complete her kiss. We don't know what happens after this, but we know that Twilight has at least one loop here which we don't see, and which is reset by Celestia. This is the loop that Twilight later gets paranoid about having done something stupid in.
S: It's possible Twilight may have spent this loop going through the doomsday with Celestia again. We'll explain why this possibility exists later.
I: Celestia respawns, and this time, doesn't create a doomsday. She instead waits in her chambers for Twilight to come to her.
I: Twilight respawns, furious that the previous loop ended without her getting to complete her kiss, but her anger quickly turns to embarrassment as she realises the stupidity of having acted on her feelings at such an inappropriate time.
I: Twilight realises that this loop has begun differently to the last one, in which Celestia was present at the moment of her respawn. This time, Celestia isn't here, and Twilight realises that a loop has occurred since her last reset.
I: Twilight goes to see Celestia in her chambers. Celestia remembers going through the doomsday as well. Twilight assumes that she must have willingly put herself through the doomsday a second time with Celestia.
S: Twilight's assumption is not necessarily true. There are two possibilities: either Twilight died from the explosion of the Elements, and chose to go through the doomsday a second time, or Celestia died first, and chose to take Twilight through the doomsday a second time. We mentioned these possible missing loops earlier.
S: The evidence seems to be equally against both. The doomsday was equally uncomfortable for both of them - Celestia practically begged Twilight to let her end it, so why would she willingly go through it a second time (and make the same plea again)?
I: Celestia says that the previous loop had some awkward moments. Twilight is terrified that she revealed the kiss to Celestia, but Celestia's answers seem to imply that nothing like that happened. Celestia doesn't seem to know what's bothering Twilight, but gently suggests that she try to get over it.
I: Twilight is relieved that her secret is safe, and is ready to come up with a plan to save her friends. As another symbolic gesture of wiping the slate clean and putting their mistakes behind them, she suggests that they reset the counter to T-0, C-0 again.
I: Celestia agrees, and asks Twilight if she can reset her loop so that she has some time to come back to Twilight with a plan. Twilight agrees, and Celestia casts Euthanatos to reset herself.
I: Celestia respawns at the beginning of the morning, and spends several hours coming up with the beginnings of the plan. She visits the library where Twilight's reset point is, and leaves some notes about the plan there for her.
C: Twilight respawns. Chapter 6 begins here. As before, the last thing she remembers is being blown up by the Elements in the middle of kissing Celestia. She goes to Celestia's chambers as before.
C: Celestia replays the conversation as she did last loop, up to the point where Twilight suggests resetting the loop count to T-0, C-0 again.
C: Celestia informs Twilight about the loop she just had coming up with the new plan, and tells Twilight about the notes she left in the library. She tells Twilight to reset, spend a few loops studying to come up with a plan, then come back and say the codeword 'Genmaicha' to her.
C: Twilight agrees, casts Euthanatos, and resets.
N: As Twilight later notes, Genmaicha is a kind of tea, as was Darjeeling. For the record, Darjeeling is Indian tea and Genmaicha is Japanese green tea.

C: Twilight respawns, ready to start planning, but after considering the discussion she just had with Celestia, she believes Celestia may have been misleading her about the things Twilight did or said during the doomsday loop. Twilight believes Celestia knows about the kiss, but is pretending not to.
S: We suspect Twilight is wrong about that. Twilight's already shown that she's extremely paranoid, especially about timeloops, and also tends to jump to incorrect conclusions about them. Celestia hasn't shown anything but exemplary care and restraint in these timeloops, so it seems unlikely she would hide anything from Twilight now.
C: Twilight decides to forget about it for now and get on with the plan. As she does so, she realises that she doesn't actually know what Celestia's tea-based codewords mean, but realises that they're a great way to communicate information from loops that she otherwise wouldn't remember. She decides to set up a few for herself.
N: For completeness, we'll list them:
Clover: Twilight should trust the message that follows this codeword.
Platinum: Twilight suspected something was wrong with the last loop.
Starswirl: Whatever Twilight was planning to do, it didn't work, and she shouldn't try it again.
Cookie: Nothing special happened in the last loop except for Twilight saying one of Celestia's tea-based codewords.
Puddinghead: Something unexpected happened in the last loop.
N: Twilight's codewords are based on legendary Equestrian historical figures, as mentioned in the show episode "Hearth's Warming Eve".
C: Twilight spends some time studying Celestia's notes and working on her plan. Possibly she spends multiple loops doing this.
C: Twilight casts Euthanatos and resets.

I: Twilight respawns, goes to Celestia, and says 'Genmaicha'. Celestia casts Euthanatos and resets.
I: Celestia respawns, and goes to Twilight in the afternoon.
I: Twilight respawns to find Celestia waiting there for her. Twilight spends some time discussing her plan with her.
I: What happens next is unknown. We don't know what happens, or how many loops it takes. We do know, however, that at some point, Twilight asks Celestia to say her codeword 'cookie' to her in the next loop.

Delta-two, T-0, C-0
C: Twilight respawns into a loop in which several things are different. Most notably, her reset point has changed, both in time and place. It is now in a room in the arcane storage vault, and several hours earlier, at breakfast time. The evocation circle used to perform the timeloop ritual is different. Spike, Luna, and Celestia are all present, as are the Elements of Harmony regalia.
Q: How has Twilight's reset point changed?
S: The answer to this is probably quite simple: Celestia just arranged to have Twilight perform the timeloop ritual earlier, and on a more well constructed evocation circle. Celestia has said previously that timeloopers only get one anchor; by having Twilight cast the spell earlier, her timelooped self is now pulled to that earlier anchor instead when she resets.
S: We don't know when breakfast time is, but presumably it's around 9 am. This puts Twilight's reset point about six hours earlier.
A: horizon confirmed the location as the arcane storage vault in a comment, and makes this explicit in chapter 8.
C: Celestia gives a new loop count. It is 'delta-two, T-0, C-0'.
N: The delta count is the number of times that the loop counter has been reset to zero. This has happened twice so far - once in chapter 3 by Celestia, and once by Twilight in this chapter, so we are currently at delta-two. We didn't see the loop in which Celestia introduced this counter.
A: FanOfMostEverything correctly guessed the meaning of the delta count, and this was confirmed by horizon in a comment.
N: In mathematics, delta (∆) is commonly used to represent a change in a quantity (for example, delta v = change in velocity = acceleration).
C: Celestia says Twilight's codeword 'cookie'. This indicates to Twilight that nothing special happened except for Twilight delivering Celestia's codeword as asked.
S: This seems to imply that Twilight herself wasn't involved in setting up the move to the new reset point, as surely Twilight would consider that something 'unexpected', and use the codeword 'Puddinghead' instead.
C: Twilight casts Euthanatos and resets.

Delta-two, T-1, C-0
S: It appears that Twilight skips a little of her description here, as the loop begins with Celestia giving the loop count, but we know that Luna and Spike both speak before Celestia does. We'll assume that it happened but that Twilight simply didn't report it.
C: Twilight informs Celestia that she received the 'cookie' codeword, and that the loop count is now delta-two, T-1, C-0.
C: Celestia is pleased that everything has gone to plan, and prepares to explain the new plan, Operation Hornet's Nest. This ends chapter 6.
I: Operation Hornet's Nest is, as the name suggests, a plan to infiltrate Chrysalis's hive. The plan is for Twilight and Spike to track down the location of the hive, wearing invisibility cloaks to avoid detection, and find something there to use as leverage against Chrysalis. Celestia has found a way to disable the Elements of Harmony to prevent them from exploding as they usually do, which gives Twilight as much time as she needs to do this.
N: 'Hornet's Nest' is also part of the idiom 'to stir up a hornet's nest', which means 'to create trouble' or 'to provoke a dangerous situation'.
A: horizon confirmed that Celestia disabled the Elements in a comment. He meant to make this clearer in the story, but forgot.
S: We saw earlier that Celestia used the arcane vaults to keep Twilight safe from the changeling invasion, so presumably it has anti-changeling wards that Chrysalis will have difficulty penetrating.
N: You can follow Twilight and Spike's journey using the official map of Equestria.
I: Twilight and Spike leave Canterlot, using their invisibility cloaks to avoid detection. By watching the traffic into and out of Canterlot, Twilight is able to roughly determine the direction of the hive, which requires them to travel through the Everfree Forest.
I: As before, the train carrying Twilight's friends is sabotaged, killing them.
I: Chrysalis's army successfully invades and takes over Canterlot.
I: Twilight and Spike enter the Everfree Forest, and begin travelling toward the changeling hive.
I: Twilight runs into a changeling patrol near the Ancient Castle of the Royal Pony Sisters, and is forced to reset.

I: Twilight repeats the previous loop (perhaps more than once), taking a wide detour out to Rambling Rock Ridge to avoid the changeling patrols near the Ancient Castle of the Royal Pony Sisters. This time, she is successful, and is able to travel on for several hours until night time.
I: Twilight finds a hidden clearing where they can spend the night.
I: Twilight is attacked by a shadowcat - a wild creature of the Everfree - and is either killed or injured badly enough to reset.

I: Twilight repeats the previous loop, this time able to avoid the shadowcat and defend herself with Home Run, causing it to flee.
N: The shadowcat is 6 cubits long. This is 108 inches, or 3.27 Home Runs.
I: Twilight and Spike go to sleep until the next morning.
I: Twilight wakes, and sets off with Spike again, travelling further into the forest.
I: Twilight and Spike encounter a group of about twenty ponies. Twilight knows immediately that they're changelings, because five of them have taken the forms of the bearers of Harmony, who she knows died on the train. The underqueen from the train, in the form of Bon Bon, is also there. Despite this, Spike takes them to be real, believing that Twilight is mistaken.
S: It's not clear how they were discovered at this point, given that they should be hidden by their invisibility cloaks. Perhaps they were heard, or maybe Spike blew their cover by mistaking the changelings for real ponies.
I: Twilight tries to fight them, but is killed.

I: Twilight replays the previous loop, and tries to fight the changelings again. In total she spends between two to four loops trying to fight the changelings in hoof to hoof combat.
S: We can deduce the number of loops as follows: Twilight experiences seven loops in the Everfree Forest between chapters 6 and 7. One is ended by the shadowcat. She mentions two more which we'll cover in a moment. This leaves four loops in which she could have been fighting. She later mentions two of these: in one she was killed by the underqueen, in the other she was overwhelmed by the twenty other changelings. She implies there were more than this, so it's reasonable to assume there were three or four.
S: As Spike points out later, Twilight doesn't have to fight these changelings. Now that she knows where they are, she can avoid them. We also later find out that Twilight had no intention of obtaining information from them, so why is she going out of her way to fight them? The answer is probably revenge - these are the changelings who likely murdered her friends, after all.

I: Twilight repeats the previous loop. This time, she allows Spike to go on ahead, to unwittingly distract the changelings, as she knows that Spike's reaction to them will be absolutely sincere. She stays back to listen in on the conversation between Spike and the changelings, to figure out the best time to strike.
I: Twilight resets her loop.

I: Twilight repeats the previous loop, allowing Spike to go on ahead as before, this time timing the exact moment that she needs to spring her ambush.
I: Twilight resets her loop.

∆-2, T-8, C-2 (the ∆-2 is 'delta-two', rendered more compactly.)
I: Twilight respawns.
I: Twilight quickly goes to the castle alchemy lab to pick up some supplies to create an improvised fragmentation grenade.
I: Twilight and Spike leave Canterlot under invisibility cloaks as before, and travel to the Everfree Forest again, reaching the hidden clearing.
S: Presumably Twilight constructs the grenade here, while they're camping.
C: Chapter 7 begins. Twilight avoids and drives off the shadowcat as before.
S: Twilight witnesses a shooting star. Is it actually a meteor, or something else?
C: Twilight goes to sleep.
C: Twilight wakes, and sets off with Spike again, travelling further into the forest. As they near the group of changelings, Twilight begins preparations to face them. Knowing that she cannot match the underqueen in combat, she magically charges up Home Run with stored kinetic energy to allow it to act as a projectile weapon, which will be able to kill the underqueen in a single blow.
C: Twilight approaches the point just before the changelings and allows Spike to go on ahead as before, pretending that she's sending him to safety while she sets up an ambush.
C: Spike encounters the changelings and falls for their disguises, believing them to be his friends. They pretend to comfort him, although they're surprised to find him so deep in the Everfree. Spike tells them that Twilight is nearby and preparing an ambush for changelings, which immediately alerts the whole group to the imminent danger.
C: Twilight springs her ambush. She kills the underqueen with Home Run, encases Spike in a magic shield, then detonates the fragmentation grenade to kill everyone else.
C: One changeling - the Rarity changeling - survives by being inside the magic shield with Spike when the grenade goes off. Twilight plans to kill her, but she realises that she can make her mission easier by forcing the changeling to take them to the hive and help them sneak in. After some persuasion, the changeling agrees.
C: The Rarity-changeling reveals several interesting things. Chrysalis has managed to conquer Canterlot in a week, a feat believed near-impossible by most changelings. Her hive still isn't at full strength after her previous defeat (seen in the show episode "A Canterlot Wedding"). She is mostly ruling her army by fear - many changelings appear to disagree with some of her more barbaric acts, such as the sabotage of a civilian passenger train, but are afraid to speak against her. She isn't keeping her timelooping ability well hidden, as the Rarity-changeling (at least) suspects her of being able to manipulate time to achieve her victories.
C: Twilight, Spike, and the Rarity-changeling travel onward until nightfall, and make camp again. The Rarity-changeling has figured out by this point that Twilight also has the same time-manipulation power that Chrysalis does. Twilight explains the timelooping ability to her properly.
C: Twilight gets angry after the changeling compares her to Chrysalis, and is about to kill her, but manages to stops herself in time. She's distraught to find that her current psychological state is so unstable. Chapter 7 ends here.
C: Chapter 8 begins, continuing directly from chapter 7. The Rarity-changeling reveals more information about Chrysalis' recent actions. Chrysalis has been using her timeloop power for the past week to brutally quash all rebellion and resistance in her hive, declaring herself to be a goddess.
N: The notion that gods might be timeloopers is brought up in the most famous of all timeloop works: the movie Groundhog Day. It's easy to see why Chrysalis would declare herself a goddess: with her power, she cannot be killed, cannot (in theory) be bested at anything by anyone, and can know everything someone will do before they do it.
Q: Has Chrysalis managed to convince any of her subjects of her godhood?
C: Twilight begins to accept that the changeling committed atrocities out of fear more than anything else, and lets her leave.
C: Spike returns, having collected some berries for Twilight as a peace offering. Unfortunately, they turn out to be poisonous, and Twilight dies.

∆-2, T-9, C-2
C: Twilight respawns back on her evocation circle in the arcane storage vault.
C: Twilight goes to the library to research the berries that poisoned her, so she can inform Spike of his mistake next time.
N: Twilight's mention of '581 point 9' is a reference to the Dewey decimal system of library book categorisation (or Dewy Grass system, as it's called in Equestria). 581.9 is the number for books about plants of specific regions, so she's obviously looking for a book on plants of the Everfree Forest.
I: Twilight presumably doesn't bother going to the Everfree Forest in this loop, but resets instead after she's got the information she wanted.

∆-2, T-10, C-2
C: Twilight replays the previous journey to the Everfree, up to the point where Spike offers her the berries. This time, she refuses, and explains to him what they are.
N: From Twilight's description, they sound like the Everfree equivalent of winterberries, which are indeed toxic to ponies.
C: Twilight and Spike sleep for the night.
C: Twilight wakes to find the Rarity-changeling has returned. She sees Twilight as the only hope of saving her hive, and is thus willing to assist her in any way she can, despite Twilight's mistrust of her. Twilight reluctantly accepts.
C: The three spend four more days travelling through the Everfree Forest and the desert on the other side, eventually reaching a cliff. However, the changeling is too weak from starvation to go any further, having denied itself sustenance at Twilight's insistence.
C: Spike finally makes Twilight see that her timelooping power has had a terrible effect on her, making her distant from the feelings and needs of non-loopers, including her loved ones. Twilight is horrified to see how far she has fallen.
I: Twilight resets.

∆-2, T-11, C-2
C: Twilight respawns in the arcane storage vault, in tears at the realisation she made in the previous loop. She is determined to learn from the experience, and has Spike take a friendship letter, and deliver it using dragonfire. With Celestia already present however, all this does is incinerate the parchment. Nonetheless, the lesson has been learned.
I: Twilight resets.

∆-2, T-12, C-2
I: This loop is missing (it's Celestia's), but presumably it's just Twilight updating Celestia on everything that has happened, including the lesson she just learned.
I: Celestia resets.

∆-2, T-12, C-3
C: Twilight replays her journey to the Everfree Forest, up to the point where they first make camp in the hidden clearing (before the shadowcat attack). This time, Twilight has set up harmless traps to tranquilise the shadowcat instead of attacking it. This ends chapter 8.

I: Twilight and Spike go to sleep.
S: It isn't clear whether chapter 9 follows directly from chapter 8. It's possible Twilight had more loops between these chapters, to prepare her new plan.
I: Twilight and Spike wake in the morning. Twilight brings the tranquilised shadowcat, which she has named Snugglepuss, with her.
Q: How did Twilight transport an unconscious nine-foot-long animal all that way?
I: Twilight and Spike carry on their journey, along the same path they have used before. This time, before reaching the group of changelings, Twilight sends Spike off to a safe, isolated spot to collect some berries. She gives him a field guide so that he can select some that are safe to eat.
C: Chapter 9 begins. Twilight reaches the group of changelings and hides behind a tree, hidden by her invisibility cloak. She then wakes Snugglepuss, and lures him into the midst of the group of changelings by using a baseball enchanted with a Want-it, Need-it spell. In the resulting chaos, Twilight is able to capture and tranquilise the Rarity-changeling without being seen.
S: None of the changelings are affected by the Want-it, Need-it spell. Was Twilight able to target it specifically at Snugglepuss, or does the spell not work on changelings? It seems likely that it can be targeted, given that it doesn't affect the caster.
C: Twilight returns to Spike, carrying the unconscious Rarity-changeling on her back.
N: The changeling's disguise remains even while she's unconscious.
C: The changeling wakes. Twilight explains that she's a timelooper and tries to get the changeling to trust her, but her softer approach doesn't seem to work. Instead, she decides simply to talk with the changeling, to understand her better so that she can convince her next time.

I: Twilight spends two loops learning all she can about the Rarity-changeling. During this time, she learns the changeling's true name - Crooked Fang - and also that her previous guise before impersonating Rarity was as a Ponyville flower seller named Azalea.
N: Crooked Fang - or at least, the original timeline version of her - previously appeared in Eakin's A Stitch in Time, going by the name Azalea. In those events, she had adopted Azalea's name and life after having been forcibly and permanently transformed into a copy of the original Azalea by the Elements of Harmony. The original Azalea is deceased in that timeline.
A: Although the changes to the timeline mean that this isn't necessarily the same changeling who became Azalea in The Time Loop Trilogy, horizon has confirmed that she is. Many fans correctly guessed this in advance.

∆-2, T-15, C-3
C: Twilight tries again to get Crooked Fang to trust her, using the personal information she gained in previous loops to try to show that she knows things that only a timelooper could know. However, Crooked Fang is still afraid to trust her, sure that Chrysalis is somehow behind this.
S: Being a changeling, Crooked Fang knows perfectly well that personal information can be easily obtained in a variety of different ways, none of which involve time manipulation.
I: Twilight resets.

I: Twilight has five more loops in which she carefully constructs a conversation with Crooked Fang, by cumulatively adding knowledge from previous loops to her responses. The end result is that Twilight can now open the conversation in reversed causality, giving her answers before Crooked Fang's. This is something only a timelooper should be able to do, so Twilight hopes that it will be a convincing demonstration of her power.
S: It takes five loops because Twilight can only add one response at a time. Every new 'prediction' that Twilight gives changes what Crooked Fang will say next, so she has to keep repeating the loop and adding one more until she knows everything that Crooked Fang will say in response to her.
N: We previously saw Celestia do something like this in Chapter 2, when she responds to Twilight's questions before she can ask them. One-sided conversations are somewhat normal for timeloopers.

∆-2, T-21, C-4
C: Twilight begins her conversation with Crooked Fang again, this time using the information she learned in the last several loops to respond to everything Crooked Fang says before she can say it, proving that she really is a timelooper with the same powers as Chrysalis.
N: Twilight's demonstration is somewhat reminiscent of this Two Ronnies sketch.
C: Crooked Fang believes her this time, but still won't help her because she believes the cause is hopeless. This puzzles Twilight, as Twilight has already witnessed the changeling literally walk herself to death for that same cause.
C: Crooked Fang asks how Twilight managed to convince her previously. Twilight realises, to her dismay, that this would involve telling her about the various morally questionable acts she committed in those loops.
I: Twilight resets.

∆-2, T-22, C-4
I: Twilight respawns in the arcane storage vault.
I: Twilight asks Celestia the following question: "Are there some good outcomes which are only achievable through evil acts?"
I: Celestia's answer is yes. This enrages Luna, who is also present and is absolutely in disagreement with Celestia on this matter. Although Celestia tries to explain, Luna gets increasingly upset, her actions eventually forcing Celestia to reset the loop.
S: All Celestia says is that the loop was 'awkward', but given Luna's fiery temper and how vehemently she disagrees with Celestia on this, it's likely that Luna's reaction went way beyond mere awkwardness. At the very least it's likely Luna said some very harsh things to Celestia. We see in the next loop that Luna holds Celestia's timelooping in some contempt.

∆-2, T-22, C-5
I: Celestia respawns, and sets up Twilight's anchor in the arcane storage vault again, this time prepared for Twilight's question.
C: Twilight respawns. Celestia informs her about the previous 'awkward' loop, and asks her to repeat the question.
S: We see again that Celestia is absolutely dedicated to maintaining trust, going so far as to do so even with non-loopers who won't remember it. There's actually no reason she had to ask Twilight to repeat the question at all; she and Twilight both know it, having shared that secret in a previous loop. Even if Celestia wanted to discuss the question with Twilight further, she could still have taken Twilight away to do it out of Luna's earshot. However, Celestia has instead deliberately chosen to allow Luna to participate in the discussion, even though she won't remember it. It's likely that Celestia has adopted the same principle Twilight learned in chapter 8: that every loop, and what you do in every loop, matters to you even if it will be forgotten by others.
C: Twilight repeats the question, and Celestia answers in the affirmative, but this time making her position absolutely clear to Luna.
N: Celestia's answer has three parts:
1 - that there are outcomes which can only be achieved through evil,
2 - that performing such evil must be done in secret and only by a very few,
3 - that the one who commits such evil must never allow themself to believe that it was necessary.
S: Celestia appears to be saying that there do exist some problems which only have evil solutions, but that you can never know for sure if the evil solution is the only solution. The pain of living with that uncertainty is the cost of performing the evil act.
C: Luna gives Twilight an opposing, and somewhat simpler position: that evil acts are never justified even if they are necessary.
Q: Luna says: "Once upon a time, I convinced myself that something very, very wrong was necessary. I was correct... and it remains the greatest regret of my life." What is she referring to here? Although the obvious answer is that she's talking about the event for which Celestia banished her to the moon, we don't actually know this.
C: Having heard both sides of the argument, Twilight resets.

∆-2, T-23, C-6
C: Twilight replays the conversation with Crooked Fang again. This time, she admits to the evil acts she committed in past loops, in which she killed Crooked Fang's fellow changelings. This is what convinced Crooked Fang the first time - that Twilight had the will to go to such extremes for her cause. However, she's still not convinced enough to throw away her life on what could be a futile mission, so she gives Twilight a challenge - to save the pony resistance which is on the brink of being wiped out by the changeling forces.
N: Twilight briefly mentioned the pony resistance in chapter 8, in particular that they're using the Ancient Castle of the Royal Pony Sisters as a base of operations.
C: Twilight resets.

∆-2, T-24, C-7

I: Twilight replays the first day of the previous loop, this time taking Spike up onto Rambling Rock Ridge, which overlooks the Ancient Castle of the Royal Pony Sisters. (You can see this on the map.) This is around the time where they would have encountered the shadowcat prevously, but Twilight appears to be taking a different route. Twilight is not going to save the pony resistance - she has decided to give up on Crooked Fang for now, as the mission to find Chrysalis's hive is more important.
I: Twilight and Spike walk along Rambling Rock Ridge all night. They're travelling by night to avoid detection, as the route is underneath a changeling flightpath and even their invisibility cloaks might not be enough to prevent them from being detected.
Q: How could changelings detect them if they're invisible? We already know that Chrysalis, a queen, can't penetrate these cloaks, so it seems unlikely that any other changeling could.
S: Possibly Twilight is leaving hoofprints as she goes.
I: They eventually make it to Skyrend Mountain, the location of Chrysalis' hive.
I: Twilight and Spike camp in a gorge and send Celestia a letter to tell her that they have reached the hive. Twilight also uses her codeword 'Clover', to tell herself that this information can be trusted if it comes up in a future loop.
I: Twilight and Spike spend the next three days performing reconnaissance, creating detailed maps and notes about the hive fortress, sending them back to Celestia using Spike's dragonfire. Twilight requests that Celestia reset, so that she doesn't have to repeat the long, tiring journey to Skyrend Mountain again.
I: Celestia resets.

∆-2, T-24, C-8
I: Celestia respawns, and sets up Twilight's anchor in the arcane vault as before.
I: Twilight respawns.
I: Twilight and Celestia exchange loop counts. Twilight realises Celestia is one loop ahead, and asked what happened in the previous loop, but Celestia only gives her a vague answer about having performed some research. Although Celestia does want to discuss Twilight's findings about Skyrend Mountain, she realises that this will take so long that Twilight's departure will be delayed, and she doesn't want to risk altering what turned out to be a very efficient trip to the hive. She simply urges Twilight to leave instead, and plans to send Twilight the information once they have reached Skyrend Mountain.
I: Twilight and Spike leave, and make the trip to Rambling Rock Ridge again.
C: Chapter 9 ends as Twilight passes the Ancient Castle of the Royal Pony Sisters.

C: Twilight and Spike walk along Rambling Rock Ridge all night. Chapter 10 begins here. After two more days of travel, they eventually reach Skyrend Mountain.
C: Twilight and Spike camp in a gorge and prepare to send Celestia a letter to tell her that they have reached the hive. However, Spike receives a letter from Celestia first, followed by scrolls containing the information that Twilight gathered in the previous loop.
S: Note that Celestia had to wait the full three days of the journey to do this. Any earlier would have risked altering their efficient route. The reason Celestia's letter arrives at such a perfect moment is because Celestia knows exactly when she received their letter in the previous loop.
C: Twilight studies and memorises all the information about the changeling hive fortress.
C: Twilight prepares to enter the hive to perform some internal reconnaisance. While she is doing so, she reveals their plan to Spike. They intend to instigate a changeling rebellion against Chrysalis. Twilight learned from Crooked Fang that many changelings dislike Chrysalis and are in fear of her timelooping power. With two good timeloopers on their side, she hopes that she can convince the changelings to rebel, which would cripple Chrysalis' invasion.
C: Twilight enters a drainage tunnel, a back way into the hive.
S: Some readers wondered why the fortress has such an obvious way in - one that would be no problem for a pegasus or even a unicorn or earth pony with climbing gear. This may be an allusion to the exposed exhaust on the Death Star in Star Wars. Spike was quoting Star Horse (the Equestrian version of Star Wars) earlier in this chapter.
C: Twilight gets distracted for a moment thinking about the Crystal Empire and how she defeated Sombra there. She mentions it to Spike, but it becomes apparent that in this changed timeline, Spike's memories of the event are different to hers. Although she did go to the Crystal Empire and defeat Sombra, the differences between her version of events and Spike's are big enough that she becomes worried about how much she can trust her memories.
S: Twilight's worry appears to be that the timeloop spell has effectively wiped out the personality of the Twilight that existed prior to her casting the timeloop spell.
Q: Spike says "The eight of us went through all that together", in reference to the mission to the Crystal Empire. Which eight? In "The Crystal Empire" two-parter, nine individuals were involved: the six bearers of the Elements of Harmony, Spike, Shining Armor, and Princess Cadance. Every one of them was integral to defeating Sombra, so it seems unlikely that Spike would leave anyone out. Who is missing?
C: Twilight decides to reset her loop immediately instead of continuing with the reconnaissance.

∆-2, T-25, C-8
I: This loop is missing, and little is known about what exactly happened. We know the following things:
- Twilight discussed her mismatching memories of the Crystal Empire with Celestia and Luna.
- There is more to this problem than simply the mismatching memories.
- Celestia became suspicious of Twilight.
- Celestia resets this loop.

∆-2, T-25, C-9
I: Celestia respawns, and sets up the evocation circle again. Before she allows Twilight to cast the timeloop spell, however, she has a talk with her. It's important to note that this is pre-loop Twilight - the one native to this timeline, who has the 'correct' memories of the Crystal Empire as far as Celestia is concerned. At some point, Celestia asks Twilight to sing the national anthem of the Crystal Empire.
I: Pre-loop Twilight allows Celestia to cast a containment ward around the evocation circle to prevent her from leaving it. She chooses the passphrase to unlock it - three words relating to the pony that was most important to her growing up.
I: With the ward in place, Twilight casts the timeloop spell.
C: Twilight respawns. The memories of pre-loop Twilight are replaced by those of timelooping Twilight, as normal.
C: Twilight gives the loop count.
C: Celestia asks Twilight to leave the circle, but Twilight finds herself blocked by the containment ward.
S: We think Celestia is being quite clever here. She currently does not trust Twilight, which therefore means she cannot trust the loop count Twilight gives, and cannot be sure if Twilight has experienced any loops since her last one. By tricking Twilight into walking into the ward (which is painful), she can be confident that Twilight hasn't looped since she last did - if she had, she'd hesitate before walking into the ward.
C: Celestia asks Twilight to sing the national anthem of the Crystal Empire again. Twilight does so. Although Celestia doesn't say that it's wrong, she informs Twilight that her memories of history greatly differ from the timeline's actual history.
C: Celestia tells Twilight that the passphrase is three words relating to the pony most important to her growing up. Twilight's answer is 'sunshine ladybug dance'. This turns out to be incorrect - or at least, it does not match pre-loop Twilight's answer.
Q: 'Sunshine ladybug dance' refers, of course, to the special dance she shares with Princess Cadance (seen in "A Canterlot Wedding"). Is Princess Cadance really the most important pony in her childhood? It seems more likely that it would be Shining Armor, or Princess Celestia herself.
C: Celestia and Luna are shocked by Twilight's inability to give the correct answers to their questions.
C: Celestia believes that Twilight has been lying to her ever since her first claim to be a timelooper, and that she is not who she claims to be - specifically, that she is some malign force in control of Twilight's body.
S: We already know that Celestia takes no chances when it comes to timeloops - in fact, her very first action upon discovering Twilight to be a timelooper was to arrange a situation which would kill her, to verify her timelooping ability. However, all that does is verifies that the pony in question can timeloop, not whether they are necessarily the pony that you believe them to be.
C: Celestia removes Spike from the room.
C: Luna uses powerful dark artifact to infiltrate Twilight's mind and discover the identity of this malign force. This ends Chapter 10.
C: Chapter 11 begins. Chapter 11 takes place entirely within Twilight's mind, which is being torn apart by Luna in her bid to discover the malign force inside her.
N: Chapter 11 is titled "Aegri Somnia Vana", which is Latin that translates to "a sick man's hallucination", or fever dream.
S: We cannot necessarily trust anything we learn in this chapter - nothing that happens within a mind is necessarily true, and even if it is, Twilight's mind is damaged and her memories are not reliable. However, we can pick out a couple of interesting pieces:
- Luna hints that she might still be an active timelooper.
- Luna claims that the discrepancies in Twilight's memories cannot be the result of time loop alterations.
C: Luna's torture drives Twilight to such insanity that she claims to be the Nightmare (the force which drove Luna to become Nightmare Moon). Unfortunately, Luna believes the claim, and unleashes an unfathomably powerful spell, obliterating her. This ends Chapter 11.

C: Chapter 12 begins. Twilight awakens in some kind of void that exists outside of all reality. Like Chapter 11, we cannot necessarily trust anything that Twilight experiences here. However, for the moment, we will assume that this is happening, and that Twilight's interpretation of the situation is correct.
C: Twilight communicates with something that appears to be the manifestation of Harmony - the universal force that maintains order and prevents chaos.
S: Harmony appears to be an emergent entity - that is, it exists only as Twilight's interpretation of her experience, rather than a sentient being in itself. This would explain why Harmony, with all its infinite power, can't fix this problem directly; it can only act through agents such as Twilight, and is therefore limited by what those agents can do.
C: Twilight is able to see the whole of reality, and therefore understands what has happened to her. Luna's spell was so powerful that it destroyed her throughout her entire timestream, with the result that the timeloop is now trying to respawn an entity that no longer exists, throwing the timeline into an inescapable infinite loop. Effectively, the entire timeline has crashed.
C: Twilight is able to visualise the many timelines that exist as a result of her (and others) timelooping. Most of them end in the explosion of the Elements of Harmony, but some, in which the Elements were disabled, continue forever.
N: The title of the chapter - "Halting Problem" alludes to this. The Halting Problem is a decision problem in computing which states that it is impossible to construct an algorithm to answer the question of whether a given computer program will halt, or continue forever. In the case of timelines in Twilight's universe, Harmony answers that question decisively - it terminates failed timelines - but the various activities of Celestia and other timeloopers are preventing it from doing so.
C: Harmony tells Twilight that her timeline is a failed one - one that needs to be terminated - but the timeloops are preventing that from happening, as every timeloop is effectively a new copy of that timeline. Until all loopers stop timelooping, the failed timeline will simply keep copying itself.
C: Harmony instills in Twilight the exact knowledge and actions that she needs to take in order to end the timeloops of every looper. It involves Twilight sabotaging both Celestia and Chrysalis's plans, then providing a third alternative which will benefit everyone, provided they all end their timeloops at the same time. After this is done and nobody can loop any longer, Twilight will use the power of Harmony to destroy the universe and end the timeline for good. Twilight refers to this plan as The One Loop.
S: It seems likely from the outset that this plan - The One Loop - cannot work. Firstly, from a purely narrative standpoint, it violates the Unspoken Plan Guarantee. Secondly, unless Twilight has omitted to fill us in on some details, this plan does not account for all timeloopers. Celestia, Twilight, and Chrysalis are only the loopers we know about. What about the fourth, unknown looper? Thirdly, the plan seems to be a very specific set of instructions - but in a situation with multiple timeloopers, the circumstances can change at any moment. What happens when Celestia and Chrysalis change the timeline again? Does The One Loop account for that?
Q: If Twilight is able to see the whole of reality, does she now know who the fourth, unknown looper is?
C: Harmony reinserts Twilight into her timestream again, resolving the time crash.

?-2, T-26, C-9
I: Twilight respawns back inside the containment ward before the interrogation, having been killed by Luna's attack. The Elements of Harmony explode, apparently as a result of this, but it is a small explosion rather than the world-destroying one.
S: We're going to assume that the explosion is the result of the Elements restoring Twilight to the timestream.
I: Celestia, Luna, and Spike immediately notice that Twilight has suffered severe mental damage. Luna begins to make repairs.
I: Luna discovers, in the process of repairing Twilight's mind, that she caused the damage. Not only that, but because she can sense Twilight's false Nightmare guise in those memories, she believes that she lost control, became Nightmare Moon, and killed Twilight.
C: Twilight awakens several hours later.
S: Twilight clearly doesn't remember respawning, most likely because the damage to her mind is affecting her memory.
C: Celestia asks Twilight how she died last loop, but Twilight is so impaired that she is unable to communicate properly.
N: Twilight, in her damaged state, says "Fargeløse grønne ideer sove rasende" when asked how she died. This is Norwegian for "colourless green ideas sleep furiously", which is a classic textbook example of a grammatically correct but semantically meaningless sentence (an entity cannot be colourless and green, an idea cannot have colour, an idea cannot sleep, and sleep cannot be performed in a furious manner).
C: Luna continues her repairs to Twilight's mind.
I: Twilight dies, presumably from her mental damage.

?-2, T-27, C-11
S: Twilight's loop number is uncertain at this point, because we do not know how many times she has died while Luna has been repairing her mind. (It's possible Twilight doesn't know herself - her memory is clearly impaired). We know that Celestia is on C-11, as she gives her own loop count in this loop. This means that Celestia has had two loops since Twilight returned from her experience with Harmony. We don't know why.
C: Twilight respawns. Because mental state is preserved from one loop to the next, Luna's repairs to her mind carry into this loop. Although she is still greatly impaired, she is able to communicate again.
C: As before, she is surrounded by the containment ward. However, this time, she uses the knowledge given to her by Harmony to give the password: 'Look ever upward'. This turns out to be correct, and disables the ward.
S: The fact that Twilight is in possession of this knowledge shows that her experience with the manifestation of Harmony was real; she now possesses knowledge that she cannot possibly have obtained any other way.
S: Celestia says "I see you're feeling better". We believe that this is in reference to the two missing loops, as it shows that Celestia has been able to watch Twilight's mental state improve.
C: Twilight also gives a new codeword - whitetail. Again, this is knowledge given to her by Harmony. Celestia is surprised, and apologises to Twilight immediately.
N: The meaning of this codeword is revealed later.
S: Twilight appears to have been given knowledge, but not the meaning of that knowledge. She has, to use her own metaphor, been given a script; she doesn't know why she has to follow it or what it means, but she knows that doing so will result in the correct outcome. Essentially, Harmony is tackling the typical timelooping problem of the 'perfect run' in reverse; Harmony has already deduced the correct sequence of events, now it remains for Twilight to achieve it.
N: Whitetail is, notably, not a tea. It is possibly named after Whitetail Woods, the forest through which the Running of the Leaves takes place in "Fall Weather Friends".
C: Twilight tries to perform the task Harmony has given her, but is still hampered by her damaged mind, which is preventing her from thinking and communicating clearly. She eventually suffers a haemorrhage and dies.

?-2, T-28, C-11
C: Twilight respawns. It's clear to her that she cannot continue her mission while her mind is so damaged, so she makes a brief attempt to explain the situation to Celestia and Luna. Unfortunately, she forgets about the containment ward, and colliding with it causes her to haemorrhage and die again.
S: It's not clear if Twilight died from this haemorrhage, but we'll suppose she did.
S: We're assuming that Celestia hasn't looped again, but we've had no loop counts since C-11 to confirm this.

?-2, T-29, C-11
C: Twilight awakens in a dreamscape within her own mind. Luna is present, having fixed the mental damage. From Twilight's memories, Luna has discovered that she was the cause of the damage, and furthermore, believes that she must have become the Nightmare while inside Twilight's mind.
C: Luna asks a favour of Twilight: that Twilight allows her to reserve a portion of Twilight's memory for her own use. Because Twilight's memory carries through from one loop to the next, this effectively allows Luna to also retain a small amount of information between Twilight's loops.
C: Twilight is faced with a difficult decision; whether to allow Luna to continue to believe her false assumption about the Nightmare, or to tell the truth and risk being tortured again, which would ruin her plan for The One Loop. She decides to tell the truth, as Honesty is one of the virtues of Harmony.
C: Luna explains the reason for Celestia's mistrust, and the ensuing torture. In this timeline, the Crystal Empire was destroyed, and with it was buried an ancient secret. If that secret is ever unearthed, it would result in the end of the world.
Q: The big question is obvious: what is the secret? Luna doesn't seem to be describing a villain (the usual world-ending threat), but rather, a piece of information.
S: Given how serious the Crystal Empire problem is, it's possible that Celestia herself was the eighth participant in the Crystal Empire mission in this timeline. In Twilight's timeline, the return of Sombra (and the Crystal Empire) was a threat so minor that Celestia essentially sent Twilight there as part of her education. Here, it seems more likely that she would want to oversee that herself (with the bearers of the Elements present to handle Sombra).
C: Luna accepts that this Twilight Sparkle, although not the same one she knows, is genuine, and a trusted agent of Harmony. She reconciles with Twilight. Chapter 12 ends here.
C: Chapter 13 begins. Luna casts her spell enabling her to store selected memories in Twilight's mind for later retrieval. This is the memory cache spell.
C: Luna awakens Twilight from the dreamscape, bringing her back to consciousness in the arcane vault.
C: Luna secretly gives Twilight a keyphrase - 'six persimmons' - which will instruct her, in future loops, to retrieve her memories from the memory cache.
S: We're not sure why Luna gives Twilight the phrase in secret, seeing as she pretty much admits it to Celestia later anyway - additionally, Luna knows that Twilight will have to reset this loop, which means Celestia isn't going to remember this.
N: 'Six Persimmons' is a famous thirteenth century Chinese painting.
N: Luna mentions a 'Qilinese' nation, Equestria's version of China, which we later find is called Qilin. A qilin or kirin is a mythical Chinese creature.
C: Twilight finds that she is wearing an amulet - specifically, an amulet that is a phylactery, or soul container. In order to stabilise Twilight's damaged mind, Luna has bound Twilight's soul to the amulet.
N: Phylacteries are typically used by liches - sorcerors who separate their souls from their bodies so that they can survive the death of their physical form. Since the soul still has to reside somewhere, a phylactery - usually an amulet or other artifact - is used to contain it. Once the soul is bound to the phylactery, the lich can then use necromancy to animate their own corpse, becoming a kind of self-controlled zombie with effective immortality for as long as the phylactery is not destroyed.
S: For Twilight, the situation is slightly different. Twilight's body is not dead - it's perfectly alive and healthy - but her mind has been so shattered by recent events that her consciousness (or soul) cannot reside there without her experiencing mental damage and insanity. To solve this, Luna has separated her consciousness out and placed it into the amulet - essentially, Twilight is no longer using the physical brain contained within her body, but is rather controlling it from outside while her consciousness resides in the amulet.
S: Celestia later describes the soul-binding as 'a loop-independent altering of Twilight's underlying consciousness'. Loop-independent means that this change will persist even if any of them reset, which is an exceptional condition that we haven't yet seen.
C: Luna explains that there is a suppressed second consciousness inside Twilight's mind, which is how Luna has been able to use the phylactery on a living pony without killing them.
Q: Who is the second consciousness? The obvious answer would seem to be 'pre-loop Twilight', but later events may rule this out.
C: Luna tells Twilight that she removed the knowledge of The One Loop from Twilight's mind, as it was too much for her to contain without suffering mental damage.
C: Because of the removal of The One Loop, it is now necessary for Twilight to reset this loop. The introduction of a loop-independent element - the phylactery containing Twilight's soul - means that the timeline is now at risk of temporal paradox. If Twilight doesn't reset the loop herself, she'll respawn with The One Loop still inside her mind, and that combined with the displacement of her soul could cause a paradox which would damage the timeline.
C: Celestia agrees to allow Twilight to reset, even though this will cause a small problem in that Celestia won't remember that Twilight is innocent and trustworthy when the loop restarts. To make things easier for Twilight, she gives her the password to deactivate the ward, and also a new codeword - 'Fillydelphia'.
Q: What does Fillydelphia mean?
Q: If Celestia still had Twilight in the ward at the beginning of the loop, and doesn't trust her, and presumably knew nothing about the torture, the mental damage and Luna's repairs - how was Twilight wearing the phylactery amulet at the start of the loop? Does it magically materialise on her when she respawns? It is 'loop-independent', so it seems like this would be the case - but then, wouldn't Celestia immediately ask where it came from?
C: Twilight is reluctant to reset without knowing how a death spell will affect her, now that her soul is no longer contained in her body. Celestia and Luna agree to research the matter, but get into an argument about whether Celestia truly trusts Twilight.
C: Luna reveals that the Princess Cadance of this timeline turned evil, and was responsible for Luna's corruption into Nightmare Moon.
Q: Where is Mi Amore Cadenza (the Cadance of this timeline) now? Did Celestia kill her, or is she sealed away somewhere?
S: This may explain the absence of the ninth member of the party in the Crystal Empire mission mentioned earlier - obviously, Cadance couldn't have been there.
C: Celestia eventually admits that, even with Luna vouching for Twilight, she still does not trust her. This admission devastates Twilight, who no longer feels she can work with Celestia - dooming their chances of working together to defeat Chrysalis. This ends Chapter 13.
Q: Luna ends by saying: 'it was not Equestria I intervened to save.' What is Luna trying to save?
C: Chapter 14 begins. Celestia and Luna leave the room to quickly discuss their positions on the situation, as it is clear they both disagree about each other's approach to it.
C: Twilight realises that her situation is hopeless. Either Chrysalis will win and destroy her home and everyone she cares about, or Celestia will win and then dispose of Twilight for being a threat to Equestria. However, she realises that there may be one way out of this - to reproduce an event similar to the one that got her into this new timeline in the first place. If this worked as before, it would alter the timeline again and, if she's lucky, improve her situation. Since she doesn't know how she did this originally, she needs to get Celestia to trust her enough to let her leave the vault and search for an answer.
C: Celestia and Luna return to talk with Twilight. Although Celestia is sorry for what she did to Twilight, she still believes it to be a misdeed conducted out of necessity.
S: This refers back to the conversation all three had in chapter 9, in which Celestia explained that she will commit evil acts for the greater good if there appears to be no alternative.
S: Luna reveals that Celestia caught her by surprise with the Elements of Harmony one thousand years ago when she had been Nightmare Moon, and furthermore, that she had been a timelooper at the time. This answers the earlier question of which timelooper the Elements had previously been used on.
C: Celestia gives a few more details on the secret buried in the remains of the Crystal Empire. It was originally discovered over one thousand years ago by Starswirl the Bearded, who devised a spell to see the future and witnessed the destruction of the world. To prevent it, he eradicated the records of the Crystal Empire and erased the memories of its inhabitants. Shortly after this, he went insane and tried to attack Celestia and Luna using the secret knowledge.
S: We have encountered a secret like this already: The One Loop, a detailed piece of knowledge which drives its bearer insane, but, if enacted correctly, will destroy the universe.
S: Celestia notes that Starswirl wasn't just a prodigy in the field of time magic, but also in mind magic. This ties in with what we know of the way timeloops work - essentially, a timeloop is a powerful combination of both of these.
C: Celestia goes on to add that Cadance ruled the Crystal Empire in this timeline, more than one thousand years ago, and was also insane, implying that she too knew the secret. This is a major discontinuity between this timeline and Twilight's original - in Twilight's original timeline, Cadance is only a decade older than Twilight.
C: Celestia, Luna, and Twilight begin to discuss the theoretical principles of timelooping, to determine how to resolve one of the biggest mysteries so far - Twilight's inexplicable presence in this timeline. The reason Twilight's presence is so troublesome is because it violates a key principle of timelooping; that timeloops can only add memories to a timelooper's mind. The timelooper still remains the same person, just with additional knowledge from a timeline that is no longer relevant. Because Twilight's memories differ from pre-loop Twilight's, this means that her presence here cannot have been the result of her timeloop spell.
N: Celestia jokingly suggests that the version of herself from Twilight's timeline let Twilight read too many philosophy books without supervision - the same joke made by Celestia in Hard Reset.
C: Twilight suggests one possible answer to the problem; that she is actually from a parallel universe, something which Celestia dismisses as impossible under the laws of magic discovered by Starswirl. Twilight, however, knows those laws differently, because in her timeline, Starswirl's laws which don't exclude interdimensional travel. Therefore, although Twilight's presence is inexplicable under the laws of magic that Celestia knows, it is not impossible under the laws of magic that Twilight knows. She prepares to demonstrate this to Celestia and Luna. This ends Chapter 14.

C: Chapter 15 begins. Celestia and Luna are working through Starswirl's mathematical laws of magic, attempting to derive Twilight's law. Luna eventually does so, and realises that Starswirl's laws are more complicated than they need to be, and that Twilight's law is in fact the correct one.
N: To clarify: as far as Celestia and Luna are concerned, the laws of magic are the same in all universes. Therefore, Twilight reasons, if that is true, then her universe's version of Starswirl's law must be identical to this universe's version. This means that that a part of the law in this universe is redundant. That's what Luna was checking and eventually confirmed, and that's why Twilight described it as 'a testable impossible'.
N: Luna mentions T squared, the 'thaumological constant'. This seems to be a magical equivalent of the real life cosmological constant Λ, which describes the energy density of empty space.
N: The idea that Starswirl introduced T squared as an unnecessary constant is reminiscent of the way Einstein introduced Λ as a fudge to make his results fit the contemporary understanding of the universe (static rather than expanding). The Starswirl/Einstein comparison seems quite apt.
N: 'Thaumological', or 'thaumic', is a scientific way of saying 'magical'.
N: Celestia defines T as the base energy potential of the background thaumic field, and gives it a value of 2.718 thaums per bushel per second. 2.718 is very close to Euler's number, e, a fundamental mathematical constant.
N: A bushel is a measure of volume equating to eight gallons, or 36.4 litres.
N: Luna mentions 'Foaler's Identity'. This is probably the Equestrian equivalent of Euler's Identity, a famous mathematical equation that relates several fundamental constants and numbers of mathematics, including Euler's number e.
C: Celestia suspects that Starswirl introduced the complexity to his laws on purpose, to make ponies believe that parallel dimensions were inaccessible.
C: Celestia tries to compromise with Twilight over their trust issue by giving her the means to deceive her in the next loop, but Twilight realises that lies will only make the trust issue worse. Instead, Twilight decides to come clean about The One Loop and her mission to destroy the world. She then asks Luna to teach Celestia her memory cache spell, so that both Luna AND Celestia can store memories in Twilight's mind. This will give Celestia a means of passing information to herself even if Twilight resets, which will make it easier for her to trust Twilight.
N: Celestia reveals here that the 'whitetail' codeword means that Luna's investigation found Twilight to be innocent.
C: Twilight also reveals her motivation for this: now that she has regained her sanity, she believes that Harmony asked her to commit an evil act - something that goes against the principles of Harmony. She believes that the Elements may be fundamentally broken, which could be a bigger threat to them than anything else at the moment.
C: All three agree, and Luna teaches Celestia the memory cache spell. Luna also confirms that it is safe for Twilight to reset.
C: Celestia stores some memories in Twilight's mind using the memory cache spell, and gives Twilight the trigger to release those memories to her.
S: We don't know what the trigger phrase is yet.
C: Twilight resets.

∆-2, T-30, C-11

I: Twilight respawns inside the ward circle, before her interrogation and torture, and once again encounters an angry and suspicious Celestia. Twilight gives the ward deactivation phrase - 'look ever upward' - and then the codeword 'whitetail', which tells Celestia that Twilight is innocent.
I: Twilight tells Celestia and Luna about the memory caches, and gives both the triggers which allow Celestia and Luna to retrieve the memories they stored in the previous loop (which neither of them remember).
S: Given the number of bombshells dropped last loop, this is probably a fabulously awkward moment.
I: Celestia gives the loop count - ∆-2, T-25, C-11 - and asks Twilight hers, but after the torture, mental damage and necromancy, she isn't sure what hers is any more. Celestia sits down with her for five minutes to figure it out; it turns out to be ∆-2, T-30, C-11.
I: Celestia and Luna now understand the problem of Twilight's presence in their timeline, in particular the flaws in their magical theory, and begin working on a means to solve it.
I: To make coordination easier, Luna teaches Twilight the memory cache spell, and Celestia allows Twilight to store a cache in her mind. Twilight chooses the passphrase 'Starswirl's Ninth' as her trigger to retrieve the cache.
N: Starswirl's Ninth Law was revealed earlier as a metric for calculating the difference between two timelines.
I: Twilight stores the details of their plan in the memory cache in Celestia's mind.
I: Celestia resets.

∆-2, T-30, C-12

I: We believe this is a missing loop - C-12 is not accounted for. (We don't think that Celestia has reset since C-11 because of her suspicion at the beginning of the loop).
S: Possibly this was an extra day spent coming up with the plan.
I: Celestia resets.

∆-2, T-30, C-13

I: Celestia respawns. Now that she trusts Twilight, she does not bother to set up the ward to contain Twilight, but instead allows her to respawn as normal.
C: Celestia gives the loop count - ∆-2, T-30, C-13.
C: Celestia tells Twilight about the memory cache in her mind, and gives Twilight the password to retrieve it, but Twilight chooses not to, instead wanting to be surprised by whatever Celestia has planned.
C: Twilight resets.

C: Twilight respawns, but some magical effect occurs during her respawn and her senses are overloaded, leaving her dazed for a moment. When she regains her senses, she finds another Twilight there with her. This ends chapter 15.
S: We believe this new Twilight is pre-loop Twilight. After all, timelooping Twilight is a foreigner to this timeline; there doesn't seem to be any reason why there can't be two of them.
S: The new Twilight says "Well, that sure didn't work", a phrase previously (and repeatedly) said by Spike. Assuming it is pre-loop Twilight, she shouldn't have any memory of Spike ever saying this (or any timeloops at all) because she's never actually had any experience of her own after Twilight respawns. However, it's not unlikely that she'd say the same thing by coincidence, as she and Spike are close enough that they probably pick up speech habits off each other.

Space reserved for future timeline updates

...my head

Oooo. Fun Fun fun.

2814662
The delta value appears to be how many times the loop count has been reset.

2816350

I didn't think of that, that simple explanation actually makes the most sense. :)

2814663
> Space reserved for future timeline updates

Smart!

Celestia says: "Well, you know how it is. I did something monstrous and you called me a monster." It didn't happen that way in the loop we saw: Twilight never actually called Celestia a monster, but rather Celestia referred to herself in that manner.

Ah, dammit. They were meant to match. Thank you for the catch.

In a story where memory is such a crucial issue, I don't want to introduce incorrect implications. I don't know if I actually want to put the word "monster" in Twilight's mouth, though; I'll probably have to fix Celestia's statement to something like "I did something monstrous and you called me on it", which sounds lamer but is not wrong.

2821941

No problem! I've removed it from the timeline. :)

2822864
> N: The shadowcat is 6 cubits long. This is 108 inches, or 3.27 Home Runs.

Added chapter 8.

2901392
I appreciate the extra effort, as always! Just a suggestion: You might want to put in chapter headings in large bold text, in order to make it easier when scrolling through to stay oriented at a glance.

You also might want to put in links to your comment breaks at the very top to help people navigate quickly; you won't be able to link straight to the internal chapter headings within a post, but each new comment gives you a jump point, i.e. this goes straight to the start of Chapter 5.

While you've still got reserved space left to spare, you also might want to consider dropping the newest chapter in its own comment to "spotlight" it a bit — then you can copy and paste it back into the main sequence after you update again.

Chapter 8:
> C: Twilight begins to accept that the changeling committed atrocities out of fear more than anything else, and lets her leave.

To me, that seems like an awfully charitable interpretation of Twilight's behavior:

… She's lying. She has to be. I saw how she kept scooting closer to me, and how she drooled. She made it all up to make me feel for her, and then I called her on it and she took off into the night like the lie-filled lying liar she is. In the morning, she'll be halfway to the hive. I'll have no choice but to reset and kill her, like I should have in the first place.

"Oh, come on! You had the perfect opportunity to run. I chased you away."

… but character interpretations are fiddly and I shouldn't be author-opinionating at you.

2907159

Thanks, that means a lot to me! ^.^ I hope it's helping people. Even in spite of trying to be as general with my assumptions as I can, I still find myself making unwarranted leaps and having to revise with each new chapter (as well as adding things I missed - it never occurred to me on the first read that Home Run shouldn't be in the library at all :) ).

You might want to put in chapter headings in large bold text, in order to make it easier when scrolling through to stay oriented at a glance.

I've been considering how to do this. Originally I wasn't going to indicate chapters at all, as this is supposed to be a chronology, not a chapter by chapter analysis - however, I found it was useful to know which points in the timeline map to which points in the story.

One problem is that I'm finding it difficult to break chapters 1-3 apart, as they're quite seamless.

To me, that seems like an awfully charitable interpretation of Twilight's behavior:

I kept trying to think of how to word this, as it's still rather clunky. The way I saw it at this point is that Twilight is in denial, so her actions aren't necessarily matching her true feelings.

Added chapter 9.

Added chapters 10, 11, and 12.

3166310

Awesome! A few small things:

- When Celestia asks Twilight to sing the Anthem, it's less a question of her getting it wrong than it is the fact she knows it at all. In this timeline, the way that Twilight would have learned the song (the library) was destroyed, and per canon all of the citizens lost their memory. Celestia and Luna know it, because they were alive when the Crystal Empire existed, but based on what Luna says they're not going to be telling anyone.

Why is Celestia so surprised? Celestia already knows that the timeline has changed, and evens know that the change occurred more than a thousand years ago. The fact of Twilight's mismatching memories should not be a surprise to her at all.

What was it about the end of Chapter 10 that made it seem like Celestia was surprised during the interrogation? She reset during the previous loop with knowledge of Twilight's mismatching memories, and asked exactly the questions to expose the knowledge gaps with laser precision; I thought I'd pretty well implied that she was putting on a demonstration for Luna.

- Re Twilight and knowledge of the fourth mystery looper while she is outside of space and time: Harmony says something pretty revealing when they are having the "Stop looping" conversation. I will also return to that point within a chapter or two.

- Re the second ∆-2, T-25, C-9:
Note two things: that the numbering we get is not cross-validated, it's a direct quote from Celestia. Note also that she feels the need to offer her loop number once Twilight awakens. Combine that with the contradiction with Spike you mention, and Celestia's question, and there should only be one explanation which fits.

Also, have you read the comments on chapters 10-12 in HR2 itself? The comments section has exploded recently. Kaitou42, Doppler Effect, CCC and others have been throwing around some amazing ideas that might give you some new things to think about.

3169262

- When Celestia asks Twilight to sing the Anthem, it's less a question of her getting it wrong than it is the fact she knows it at all.

I figured as much :) I didn't expect that pre-loop Twilight knew the anthem - only that Celestia asked her to sing it, and would later ask the same of timelooping Twilight.

What was it about the end of Chapter 10 that made it seem like Celestia was surprised during the interrogation? She reset during the previous loop with knowledge of Twilight's mismatching memories, and asked exactly the questions to expose the knowledge gaps with laser precision; I thought I'd pretty well implied that she was putting on a demonstration for Luna.

It's not that she's surprised during the interrogation, but rather that these mismatching memories seem to be something she hadn't anticipated. That doesn't seem to match up with what she knows about the situation.

- Celestia knows that, from Twilight's perspective, at one time she was not a timelooper.
- She knows (or at least guesses) that Twilight did something to reset the loop of another timelooper, more than one thousand years ago.
- She knows that changed Twilight's entire timeline, so that she is now looping.

She should know that this is a Twilight Sparkle from a timeline one thousand years apart from hers.

- Re the second ∆-2, T-25, C-9:
Note two things: that the numbering we get is not cross-validated, it's a direct quote from Celestia. Note also that she feels the need to offer her loop number once Twilight awakens. Combine that with the contradiction with Spike you mention, and Celestia's question, and there should only be one explanation which fits.

I've tried several times to figure out the sequence of events with no luck. Clearly something has happened - perhaps a loop - that I haven't accounted for. This is how I see it:

- Celestia removes Spike from the room.
- Luna begins mentally probing Twilight.
- Luna obliterates Twilight from the timestream.
- Twilight is returned to the timestream by the Elements of Harmony.
- Luna attempts to repair Twilight's damage.
- Twilight dies.

As far as I can see, this is all part of the same loop. However if that's the case, then what happens with Spike doesn't make sense, because he can't then be in the room to see the Elements explode. So this must be wrong.

Originally I thought that Twilight had died from Luna's attack, and reset back to before the interrogation. That way, Spike witnesses Twilight respawning, in a damaged state. But this doesn't seem to fit with what Spike said (he says 'the Elements saved her'), and Luna shouldn't be so upset (unless she's discovered from her repairs that she caused the damage). That's the only other way I can see, and it doesn't make sense either.

Also, have you read the comments on chapters 10-12 in HR2 itself? The comments section has exploded recently. Kaitou42, Doppler Effect, CCC and others have been throwing around some amazing ideas that might give you some new things to think about.

I'll see if I can dip in without my head catching fire. :)

3169417

It's not that she's surprised during the interrogation, but rather that these mismatching memories seem to be something she hadn't anticipated. That doesn't seem to match up with what she knows about the situation.

There, I'll just say that's explicitly addressed within an upcoming chapter.

Originally I thought that Twilight had died from Luna's attack, and reset back to before the interrogation. That way, Spike witnesses Twilight respawning, in a damaged state. But this doesn't seem to fit with what Spike said (he says 'the Elements saved her'), and Luna shouldn't be so upset (unless she's discovered from her repairs that she caused the damage). That's the only other way I can see, and it doesn't make sense either.

Story quote:

"The Elements of Harmony sort of exploded," Spike interjects. The room is dark with smoke, and the shelf where they had been sitting is little more than a charred mess. "You got glowy and screamed and then they went all bzzow and saved you."

"Luna's been repairing your mental damage for the past several hours, and she's convinced she … well." Celestia puts a hoof on my shoulder. "I want to hear your side of the story. How did you die last loop?"

Spike's "they saved you" should (I hope!) make perfect sense in the context of him observing something going dramatically and visibly wrong in front of his eyes, and Celestia is implying (along with Luna's statement a few loops later that she was able to dredge information out of Twilight's memories) that Luna's had ample opportunity within the past several hours to discover what upset her. So, yes, I was leading exactly toward the conclusion you made originally, of her resetting to before the interrogation and something going very wrong at the time of loop casting that pre-empted the interrogation that loop. If there's something about it that still doesn't make sense I'll see if I can edit accordingly.

3172054

There, I'll just say that's explicitly addressed within an upcoming chapter.

Gah, I knew I questioned it too soon. ^^ I've been avoiding this issue for some time because I figured it would be explained eventually :)

I guess it's Spike's line 'the Elements saved you' that confused me. Saved from what? Twilight would still be severely damaged even after the Elements exploded, so the Elements haven't really done much saving at all. If I was Spike, I might suppose that the Elements actually caused the damage.

I've updated the timeline with a corrected explanation.

3172931
Oh, don't get me wrong, it's totally a legitimate question; otherwise I wouldn't have dropped the hints that I did. I'm just trying to say that it's something I plan to shine additional light on sooner rather than later.

Finally updated! These last few chapters were incredibly difficult, as I had to cover a whole lot of stuff without making the timeline difficult to read.

3283560 Considering the amount of mindscrew that has occurred in the last few chapter, I was wondering whether you had decided to flip the table.

One issue I found though is

C: Twilight retrieves the memories she stored in Celestia's mind. She now knows what the plan is, although she doesn't tell us. The plan apparently requires Twilight to reset.

As far as I remember reading, unless there has been an edit I'm unaware of, we have never seen Twilight retrieve the memory cache. It's heavily implied and most likely what happened, but then that would go under "I:" no?

3285369

Considering the amount of mindscrew that has occurred in the last few chapter, I was wondering whether you had decided to flip the table.

Admittedly, after every single chapter I go "oh god!" because inevitably something happens that will make my job harder. I nearly passed out when Spike said he wanted to be a timelooper too. XD

we have never seen Twilight retrieve the memory cache

I just re-read and it does seem like you may be correct! Twilight specifically says

"You know what, I think catching up on the details can wait for a bit. I'd like to bask in the glow of a pleasant surprise for once."

This implies that Twilight chose not to retrieve her cache, because she wanted to be surprised - and indeed, she is surprised when she finds Twilight there in the next loop. She obviously didn't know the plan and that means she didn't retrieve her cache.

The only point of confusion I have is that Twilight immediately reset the loop after that without consulting with Celestia. How did she know it was okay to reset? That's why I believed she had retrieved the cache and was aware of the plan.

In any case, your interpretation makes more sense, so I shall amend the timeline accordingly.

3283560
Hurrah!

… though I really hate to be the bearer of bad news, but chapters 13 and 14 appear to be missing; it jumps straight from the end of chapter 12 to the start of chapter 15. Here's to hoping it didn't get overwritten — or if it did, that you write it elsewhere, and copy/paste it in …

3295288 - whoops! Thanks for spotting, I don't know how I missed that! Fixed.

3295366
Awesome.

You have a couple of questions about how the phylactery got on Twilight's neck, and a later missing loop of Celestia's. I'll just note that the loop you label ∆-2, T-29, C-11 is actually ∆-2, T-29, C-12, which should make a lot of those pieces fall into place.

(Twilight doesn't get to properly compare loop numbers with Celestia until well afterward.)

> Q: Luna ends by saying: 'it was not Equestria I intervened to save.' What is Luna trying to save?

Not what, but who. Somepony who has done some very wrong things, and who Luna cares about very much.

Hwate8 said:
Newcomer here. I seem to be having some trouble posting to the forum, so I thought I'd just send a letter.
T-46, C-15
C: Twilight discusses the problem with Celestia, but they can't figure out a way to solve it. However, Spike innocently manages to come up with a perfect answer to their problem.
Q: During this discussion, Twilight mentions the Want-it, Need-it disaster of "Lesson Zero", but Celestia's reaction implies that the disaster was actually much worse in this timeline. (Remember, the entire timeline has been changed - it's only Twilight who doesn't remember these changes, as she's been stuck in her timeloop). What happened, and why is it different to how Twilight remembered it?
It could also be possible, while the disaster was much worse in this timeline, and assuming Celestia was slowly looping forward and changing her anchor point as time went on (and I seriously doubt she would've missed the fact that Ponyville was affected by the Want-It-Need-It spell), that Celestia changed the event multiple times in her earlier looping days in an effort to find the best solution (showing up too early might have given Twilight a breakdown, showing up too late might have dragged her into the spell, etc) and stumbled upon a possibility in the process that ended in an extremely bad scenario. She could have eventually succeeded, which would keep the timeline mostly the same (assuming it still follows The Stations Of The Canon, like you noted in an S. about the only [apparently] major and mentioned difference between the first two timelines being the extra few hours before the changeling attack) but this would also explain her reaction, while keeping her in character. Should the question also mention this likelihood, or is this a bit too unlikely to consider?
Also, would you mind replying to this the next time you make a comment? I STILL can't figure out why I can't post this as one myself...

hawthornbunny said:
Hey there! The reason you can't post is possibly because you're not a member of the group. You need to join the group first.
Thanks for your suggestion! The idea that Celestia was looping through those events was something I hadn't considered - but it was as bad as her reaction suggests, then it's not unreasonable to suppose that she would spend loops on it to fix the problem. Although, it does imply that Celestia didn't actually manage to get a decent solution to the problem, as she's still sore about it (and there's no point in being disapproving with a Twilight who can't remember how bad it was, so clearly it still didn't have a good ending).
I still need to make some amends to the timeline, but I've been putting it off for a while as I can't figure it out, even with horizon's hints :)

Thanks for pointing that out, hawthornbunny. Also, I've read a little further now and I see that this is obviously playing out in an AU (what with the whole Cadance thing), so I'll leave that alone unless Word Of God says otherwise.
Something else I thought about was that, seeing as apparently both of them remember the Apocalypse loop, and I don't know if Celestia would be able to deal with replaying the kiss over, an alternative is that, since they were so close to the Elements of Harmony when they exploded, they could have died at the exact same time and just not realized they both somehow remember it (or Celestia has reset and played it out again, assuming Twilight was the one who reset the first time, but ended up doing something impulsive and had to explain before Celestia reset herself in the next loop).
Kinda far-fetched, but I seriously thought this would become a plot point and they would use this as a method to both remember what happens and not have to do the same loop over twice. Ah well. Horizon's current storyline is better anyway.

3525701
Summer punched me pretty hard in the free time, and with conventions and vacations and ultimate frisbee league and a bunch of migration projects hitting me hard at work, I've barely touched any of my writing in months except for the shorts I've dashed out for the Writeoff Association.

But I AM working on HR2! I literally, actively am. I wrote words today (*spoilers) and as soon as I can get out of the office I'll write more. The chapter I tore apart months ago is now reassembled and I'm pushing ahead again.

It's not happening very fast, but those first words are the hardest.

And yes, the non-chapter chapters will vanish as soon as the next one goes live.

3527043
Ah, right. If you're talking about the gap I think you are, the answer's the same as it is here: 3295469. If not, I'll have to go back and double-check the story, so give me a pointer to which explosion you're discussing.

3527063
Gotcha. I think it's easiest to just put on my Author Hat here and confirm that Twilight did die when Luna killed her. (As obvious as that sounds, we can't take it for granted. ) Harmony was able to undo the permadeath, but it had to inject her into a new loop (resetting everything back to how it was at the moment Twilight cast the looping spell).

3734502 - it's worth waiting for. :) horizon's been dealing with a bunch of Stuff this past year (coincidentally, so have I) but he's still working on his various projects, with HR2 somewhere at the top of the list.

I also feel like I should get back to this timeline and revise it a little. We now have a few answers to questions we didn't previously, and also I need to finally figure out the headmeltingly convoluted details of Twilight's interrogation and resurrection. Hopefully that'll be coming soon, before HR2 returns!

3734502
If you missed my blog post earlier this month, that's where I talked about the Stuff that 3736208 mentions. Situation's still about the same, although I've finished editing and adding to FIMFiction some of my writeoff competition content. For the immediate future, at least, all of my new horsewords are going to HR2.

S: Given that she's an alicorn-level threat, Chrysalis could easily be hundreds of years old, and so could have been timelooping for hundreds of years - but it seems unlikely, as someone as power hungry as Chrysalis would have surely used that power to make a move long before now if she had had it. It's more likely that her acquisition of the timeloop power is recent.

Is it not implied during the forest/changling arc that she only got her powers 'a week ago'? Seems like a missing data point that further backs up the 'recent' claim.

She played up those divisions to delay it as long as possible, but a revolution was inevitable … right up until a week ago."

"What happened?"

"She recalled all her infiltrators for a big hivewide announcement. In front of everydrone, she called forward her five most powerful underqueens — and then declared herself a goddess, murdered one of them on the spot, and told the other four they had 24 hours to prove her wrong before she killed them. She stopped eight assassination attempts and two military coups that day, and hung the bodies of the underqueens off her balcony the next morning."

I make a mental note to mention that to Celestia — it sure sounds like a just-started-to-loop sort of day.

3749835

Is it not implied during the forest/changling arc that she only got her powers 'a week ago'? Seems like a missing data point that further backs up the 'recent' claim.

You're correct (although the speculation is still valid; it's just disconfirmed). I'll update it when I get around to updating the timeline. :)

I have a theory...

Maybe Luna IS the 4th looper? I don't recall everything that leads me to belive this, but she does hint towards it in the whole dreamscape thing where she's trying to discover twilight's identity or whatever.

Another thing, it's evident that the looper has to be present before she is banished to the moon that causes Celestia to start setting an anchor every morning, and change the time line in general.

Maybe she reset to her designated point in time after twilight did something pre-chapter 1of HR2, which happened to be before the NMM incident? She somehow influences Celestia to start looping and setting an anchor every morning?

As for the loop that Celestia reset due to Luna "dying", she doesn't share the details of her death, maybe it was a (for lack of a better term I can think of right now) false positive and she wasn't actually dead?

I would go through the stories trying to find stuff that could help back me up on this, but I'm currently on my phone, so that's not happening quite yet,if at all.

So what do you think? Plausible?

3897072

Maybe Luna IS the 4th looper?

Hmmmm. This may be possible, but unlikely given the events of Hard Reset.

It's possible because Twilight never actually saw Luna die in HR. The only report of Luna's death is secondhand (her mangled armor is returned, but she's not in it). So, Luna could be a timelooper, and this wouldn't contradict any of HR.

However, if she is a looper, then she must be holding open a thousand-year-plus-length timeloop, which, as Celestia notes in HR2, is pretty insane - nopony in their right mind would want to repeat a loop of that length.

There's also the problem of the world-destroying harmony wave - it destroyed Equestria many times, and Twilight surely wasn't always closer to the Elements than Luna, considering all the things she tried.

One possibility is that Luna started off with her timeloop turned off (we know that it can be turned on and off, as Luna isn't looping during HR2 - as far as we know), and turned it on out of desperation. That still doesn't explain why she would be keeping her anchor point 1000+ years in the past, but Celestia did claim in HR2 that Luna's anchor was stuck at the moment of her banishment as a result of being blasted by the Elements. Although that doesn't quite explain things either, as then the universe of HR1 would be the same as the universe of HR2, and they aren't.

She would also have to conceal the fact of her also being a timelooper from Twilight during Hard Reset, but we know loopers are pretty secretive by necessity anyway.

So I'm gonna say no, not plausible, but possible. :)