Locked out of the Loop

by Archmage Ansrit

Chapter Three

Twilight opened her eyes.

It had been just that morning when she had gotten princess Celestia's letter and, she had to admit, had gone a little crazy over it.

Alright, mildly crazy. It was not every day that Twilight's lavender coat turned a nearly-white orange, or that her deep blue mane turned into fire... it was the pressure! There was a point that simply made her too jittery to function properly!

"Feeling better?" Fluttershy, her cyan eyes having never let Twilight out of their sight, asked at a volume that was almost drowned out by all the different sounds from the train.

"I'm having mixed feelings." She replied. On one hoof, she had to re-do everything, and more than once... on the other hoof, if there was one thing she had gained, was time.

Unless that other pony was wrong (and Star Swirl assured her he rarely was in cases like that) there were many things going on in the background that she could help with, lest they grow beyond control. And what did 'the root of the problem' mean anyways?

"What is that supposed to mean, darling?" Rarity asked, and Twilight had to remind herself that Rarity didn't know what was going on. Not that she couldn't be told, but Twilight was aware that, given her little episode in the library, explaining things before their departure to the Crystal Empire would be awkward.

"Uh... I'm sure everything's going to be alright, but I'm still nervous?" She didn't mean to make it sound like a question, but the conflicting feelings of familiarity and threading into uncharted waters threw her for a loop.

She groaned internally at her unintended pun.

=====

The group trotted out of the train station after a long, awkward ride.

Like, really awkward. Like she could never believe. She didn't say anything, nopony said anything, and she could only escape the uncomfortable glances by - surprise, surprise - opening a book and taking shelter behind its cover and pages.

However, she didn't have much time before having to go to the castle and off to help Shiney - just because she was going to be looping for a while that didn't mean that she could just ignore ponies in trouble. She would just give the merchants' district a quick look, see if anything caught her attention, and go to see the princess.

Hoo! She saw some earrings that had the shape of her cutie mark! Nice... oh, and they would look really good with that dress in that other store! Simple and practical, just the way she liked it. Hm? For some reason, she felt like she should look inside the sports store, even though she did not have much interest in that kind of things. Strange, but she would have time to do some actual shopping once the world stopped being threatened; she had to focus.

'A fortuneteller can help' they said, as if you could find an authentic Seer on every corner; Far Sight the Learned may have been well-known during his own time and made the prediction of Nightmare Moon's return, but even he had liked his privacy a bit too much to actually live inside the city (and had rejected Celestia's attempts at rewarding him for the news, at least the ones that would have drawn unwanted attention to him).

'Don't be afraid to ask your friends for help' they said. Well d'uh! She had no intention of taking the same path as the protagonist of 'Best Night Ever'.

'Always take care of problems from their roots' they said. Cryptic, that last one; typical wizards. At least her friends were with her... wait a second...

One shop stood out from the rest, at least, to her eyes. The two-story building had a lot of green - green awning, forest-green door, green walls- and a touch of yellow accents here and there, a crystal ball sign... and it was called "Yggdrasil's Root", according to the golden letters on the window.

Twilight was not one to rely on 'hunches' or 'gut feeling', but then again, if she wanted to look for a fortuneteller, she might as well try one who might have named her shop to fit her search.

If said fortuneteller wasn't a sham, anyways.

Huh, a good reason to hate time... twisty-wimey-chrono-whatzit whatever-the-hell-she-was-doing. Trial and error and a lot of guessing. Yay.

"I'm going to check out this store." She said, but then a strange sensation came over her... like somepony looking at her, only somehow reaching deeper than any gaze had a right to do - judging from the sounds of hitched breath around her, the others felt it too.

Twilight was not one to rely on 'hunches' or 'gut feeling', but she was fairly certain that not many ponies could look at one's soul without at the least looking them in the eye - Celestia couldn't do it through a closed door, but Luna did.

*****

"Wh-what do you mean, spirits?" Fluttershy squeaked, trembling slightly.

Despite the low volume, Twilight was still distracted from her trip down memory lane (and a nested one at that, since she had just recalled Celestia's glare hitting somepony around a corner a few months before Luna's return).

"The definition is not very accurate." Twilight waved a hoof through the air, as if trying to follow and read a jumbled sentence written on the train's walls and ceiling. "They are beings with artificially-constructed bodies, capable of... pretty much anything anypony else can, only tailored for specific situations like light or water magic, as well as the ability to cooperate with a spellcaster to perform spells that would otherwise be outside of their level or require a longer casting time."

Kind of like certain other high-level magic-boosting objects, only that they were... alive. Not merely semi-sentient, like the Alicorn Amulet (its 'awareness' is what made a careless user go crazy), but actually capable of deciding to pick a lock, break into a cellar, and swipe a bottle or two right under their friends' noses.

Water was weird like that.

That would be 'Water' with a capital 'W', not the substance - even if she was made mostly of it.

"Wait, so she just made ponies?" Dash asked, eyes wide.

"Psst!" Pinkie stage-whispered - since she was on the other side of the group, everypony heard. "You can do that, too; it's called 'parenthood'."

Twilight openly laughed at that.

"No Dash, she just made the... blueprints, you could say; even then it is not something easily done, because it's so detail-intensive." Shaping things out of magic, instead of conjuring materials and then shaping them, was a horribly complicated affair - even when using actual materials to make the basic form, and not to mention giving the body a magic system! That was yet another difficult task, and the primary reason why artifacts like the Amulet were both so rare and really powerful. "She... cheated, so to speak; she can see through objects, and even things commonly regarded as 'invisible' like inner energy."

*****

"Welcome, how may I help you?"

The mare on the other side of the door was a white unicorn with a long, mostly straight blond mane (honey-almond, according to the teller's boyfriend), while her eyes were covered by a blindfold... what called her attention, other than her extravagant clothes, was the mark on her face. A large, red cross was.. painted? projected with magic? It was there; it extended from her left brow to her neck, likely passing right through the middle of the eye, while the 'arms' crossed below the eye itself, crossed over her muzzle to the edge of the other eye while the other hiding somewhere under her mane.

The mare was wearing a typical wizard hat, with a white silk ribbon around the bottom of the cone, and a thin gold chain circling the very edge of the rim, with little ruby pendants hanging from it in the same fashion Starswirl's had bells, and also matching her earrings. She also wore a saddle-dress, red as well, with long sleeves to the fetlock and more small chains with tiny jewels on a red vest with white and yellow accents. Everything else was hidden behind a table with a crystal ball on a cushion.

Twilight could feel the tickle of magic coming from the fortuneteller. She learned from Star Swirl that the bells on his own outfit were far more than decoration, and wondered why would an accomplished spellcaster work as a-

"Goodness!" Rarity gasped, the compliment to the dress she was about to say was forgotten. "Why would hoof polish be so expensive?!"

Indeed - there it was in the showcase to the side, a bottle of black polish with a label putting the price as a couple of hundred thousand bits. A bottle of black ink was similarly priced, as were many of the other objects within... at the very least, the crown that had a silvery inner glow looked that expensive! There were many shelves as well, each with either a decorative/possibly-magical plant or another object for sale.

"Everything here is magical." Twilight stated, having recalled the outrageous amount of money that Trixie had - by some miracle, regardless of how dark- saved to pay for the Amulet. "I take it you are a fortuneteller?"

"And so much more." The mare replied with a smile, tapping her hooves and waving one through the air; she didn't look (nor sound) any older than her, but Twilight knew better than to judge at first glance - that thing with the book was just taking the poor choice of words on the title at face value. "Ever felt that Fate is playing with you? Ever thought that you were dealt a bad card? Are you lost as to how to take your destiny on you hooves? I either have something for you, or know where to find it, Miss Twilight."

Twilight nodded; this might just be the mare she was looking for.

"Hey, how didja know that was Twilight?" Applejack asked with a wary glance, which the mare answered with a flat look.

"I've heard her speak before, I've seen her walking through the streets back when she lived here, I saw her during your knighting, I don't need eyes to see... I can go for a while, if you'd like." She said, quickly recovering her smile. "But where are my manners? My name is Cassandra La Croix, pleased to meet you."

"Yes, I'm foreign. I have no accent because of practice. Yes, I can see the future. Yes, I'm doing it right now. Yes. Your number is 'forty two'. Yes. Yes. No. Maybe. I'd love to! No. Yes. I do; he taught me everything I know; how to help myself. Not yet, but planning to. Sure! No. Yes. Yes, and cut back the hot sauce." The rapid-fire answers were supplemented with a quick glance to a pony, presumably the one to ask.

Nopony said anything for a few moments.

"Ohh, she's good." Pinkie said, and Cassandra chuckled.

"It's situational, but yes, I have practice with it." She brushed a lock of hair with a hoof in mild embarrassment. "Don't you have somewhere to go, though? I'm still here if you need anything."

Uh oh.

=====

Princess Luna raised an eyebrow - Twilight was short of breath and... tense. She understood some of the reasons her sister had to trust Twilight with this, but she was still of the opinion that Celestia was being too irresponsible - surely there had to be more... something!

"I've- I've- phew! I'm here for the test." Twilight said between large breaths, wiping some sweat from her forehead; it wasn't that far from where she was to the castle, but she had ran like that one time with the snakes and the Hearts-and-Hooves ornament.

Celestia almost - almost - rolled her eyes and chuckled, thinking that it was merely Twilight's usual nervousness.

"This is a different kind of test. The Crystal Empire has returned." She said, trying at the very least to get Twilight to stop her usual pre-examination stress.

Twilight let out one last huff, and nodded. "Yes. I'm- I'm getting right on that. I don't have to waste any time searching the whole city for the Crystal Heart anyways."

The princesses both shook their heads in an example of synchronized confusion.

"What- why do you know of the Empire? Few remember it ever existed at all. Even my knowledge of the Empire is limited." Celestia asked, quite surprised.

"Uh... I know that the Crystal Heart channels the energy of the citizens' emotions in very much the same way a unicorn's horn does, allowing somepony to use the crystal to cast spells - in the case of love and hope it makes particularly potent defensive magic capable of keeping even Discord at bay. The city was the place from which you and your sister organized the last offensive and ended the Chaotic Era." Twilight inhaled deeply, and nodded. "I know because I've already done it but I've been forced into a time loop."

"Wait, like in 'Best Night Ever'?" Luna asked, perplexed. She had taken a liking to most modern works, and found the romantic novel to be entertaining if a bit... hard on the protagonist.

"I... guess? However, I do know how to get out of it." Twilight replied. "I just have to wait some more loops."

Celestia blinked once, twice... then let out a small 'hmm'.

"That is a relief, then. Oh well, one more point off the list." She said, as a large scroll materialized in front of her.

It was Twilight's turn to be confused. "List?"

"Oh, ever since you got your cutie mark, I knew that the unusual and the fantastic would happen around you." Celestia drew a checkmark on the scroll. "A time loop I thought unlikely, but ever since the incident with the teapot-"

Twilight groaned and facehoofed, while Celestia and Luna chuckled.

"Oh, you managed to cross three points with that one." The Sun princess beamed.

"I suppose that now it is only a matter of time before the genderswap and mindswap incidents." Luna tapped a hoof to her chin, making Twilight shrink into herself.

"So... you have already saved the Crystal Empire at least once?" Celestia asked, feeling a mix of hope and pride.

"I... kind of. I found the Crystal Heart, but fell for a trap meant to imprison would-be thieves. I didn't know if I could break out of it in time, because it included a counter-teleport spell, so I had Spike return the Heart to Cadence." She rubbed her legs together.

"Even if it has not happened yet, I can be at ease knowing that you have everything under control." Celestia sighed in relief, and Luna... Luna smiled.

"I... understood it later, why I was sent 'alone'; you knew my friends would never let me go, and I would never turn them away." Twilight sat down. "King Sombra was incredibly paranoid, and a brilliant strategist - with the entire population of the city being earth ponies, none had the capacity to open his trapped doors, and there was a second trap... a fear illusion."

"I do not mean to pry, but what was this illusion?" Luna felt conflicted; for one, she wanted to comfort her friend, on the other hoof, she wanted to wring Sombra's neck and buck his teeth in for using that spell.

"I-I was back here, and-and the princess said that I failed and I wasn't her student anymore!" Twilight blurted out the words, and held back shivers...

Celestia approached her young, little student, and gently nuzzled her cheeks. Luna, too, decided to reassure Twilight.

"Even had you failed, I would not hold it against you." Celestia whispered to her ears. "I have seen you grow from back when you were a little filly, and I know that you would have done everything in your power... and your friends would, too."

"I know." Twilight sighed, having shaken off the memory of the illusion. "I know that you told me to go alone, knowing that I would not refuse my friends' help, that I would place other ponies before me... and in the process lose that nervousness around you that you find so disheartening. I also know that you won't go in person because Sombra would just see us as being beneath him, and his arrogance would be his downfall."

"I know I won't remember this, but never forget how proud I am to be your teacher."

Twilight smiled. "I won't let you down, princess."

Author's Note:

I felt like I should give that other story a nod; it was an entertaining read, after all.

And I imagine most ponies believing Twilight when she tells them she's in a time loop, and most going 'heck, it's not the weirdest thing that has happened'.

Also, the five character tag limit prevents me from adding one character we're going to be seeing a lot of (besides Luna, Shining, and Cadence) - see if you can guess who! Though I'm not going to say if you are right or wrong...

I... don't want to discourage people by writing huge chapters, but I don't want readers to feel like I'm yanking chains with a lot of cliffhangers, so... what should I do? Keep chapters under 4.5K words whenever possible or just let them run their course?

Comments

[i_am_the_jam]

Don't forget the story "MLP Loops"

[Super_Big_Mac]

Let the chapters run their course, I'd say. If they go to great lengths, then let them fly, but if they end up meandering like a drunken horse... cut it short.

[toafan]

"Psst!" Pinkie stage-whispered - since she was on the other side of the group, everypony heard. "You can do that, too; it's called 'parenthood'."

Yup, that's Pinkie all right. (I might steal it, it's so perfectly her.) Which is rather a relief, actually; so far, everypony has felt slightly... off. I'm not sure how to describe it.

You've got an approach I haven't seen before; I'll look to see how it goes.

[toafan]

I felt like I should give that other story a nod; it was an entertaining read, after all.

Oh, I hate not knowing these things. Best Night Ever? You name-dropped it a bunch. Hitchhiker's Guide? Forty-two, after all. Something else I don't have the context to guess?

If you like time loop stories in general, you should sometime check out the hard Reset metacycle.

[Dream Seeker]

Heh. Grab Home Run in time for the wedding.