"The Hearthswarming season really brings the stab-happy do-gooders out, doesn't it?”
Tumult and spinning weightlessness and howling light. Travel through the Flow was always the same for Lieutenant Bramble. It would pass each time and discharge him into...
...onto a hard marble floor, which he'd learned to avoid meeting jaw-first. As he landed and the static around his senses cleared, he heard Toujours, Star Gazer, Jiffy, Solstice, and Spring Green learning their first painful lessons on that front.
He rose to all four hooves and took stock of the room around them. That was important. One time, on one of his first missions, they'd found the wallpaper a different colour and a confused sentient raptor manning the control panel. Oh, the paperwork and retroactive missions that had entailed.
They'd materialised inside a large, brass-bound box, the faces wrought from transparent, turquoise-tinted glass. Dials and wires and extraneous gears dotted the inside, and all but blanketed the exterior. Stumbling outside, Bramble found that the box – the Chronocube, if he had to give it its technical name - occupied all of one side of the room. Past it, a pegasus mare sat behind a control panel. She glanced up at them, pushed down on a lever, and nodded approvingly at whatever came up on a screen before her. A short set of stairs led up to an ajar door that squeaked on its hinges. On the wall, a sign proudly declared: IT HAS BEEN 8 DAYS SINCE THE LAST GRANDFATHER PARADOX. Below it, a line of speaking tubes sprouted.
Everything was as it should be. Bramble relaxed.
“How did it go?” said the pegasus mare, Pencil Pusher, as Bramble trotted clear of the box and beckoned for the variously groaning and/or vomiting recruits to follow him.
“You're cleaning that up, Jiffy! Ahem. Went fine, as far as these things go, Pusher. Assassin neutralised, the tyrant lived to tyrannise another day, and no obvious signs anything had ever happened left behind. What does the data say?”
Pencil Pusher shrugged and pushed another smaller lever. A stream of glowing-blue magical motes flew out of the panel before her and reformed into letters and numbers in the air. A dial whirled and squeaked. “The Fray's shot sharply down, down to about eight-point-nill. Time's flowing as it should. You're golden. Five-second delay as well. Practically pulled back as soon as you went in.”
“My stars. I might start to regard the technicians with something other than hostile contempt.” Bramble turned back to the recruits. “Form up, you miserable shower!”
With obvious reluctance and varying states of discombobulation, the five did as instructed. Jiffy, apparently having been cursed with a sensible constitution that objected to being yanked up and down the Flow of time like a yo-yo, took a moment to throw up again before straightening.
“You'll all be glad to know that our reality, in spite of the assassin's and your own best efforts otherwise, survives. Your muckups were not, according to the numbers, apocalyptically catastrophic.”
The five exchanged cautiously hopeful glances. A few relieved exhalations were ventured.
“That doesn't mean there wasn't a whole glittering array of incompetence greeting my senses back there. Get your haunches along to the mess room. I'll verbally flense you all down to the marrow in short order.”
The five slumped and trudged towards the stairs. Bramble watched them leave, and was jolted from his thoughts by Pencil Pusher briefly nuzzling the side of his neck.
“You shouldn't be that much of a monster to them,” she said. “We weren't exactly the finest Time Police ever to don badges ourselves, back in the day.”
“Heh. True. But give me some credit where it's due. I'm practically a teddy bear compared to old Tenebris.”
“Urgh. Don't bring back those memories. Let her stay safe and far away in her office rather than in my mind. And that's a low bar to set for yourself besides. Sparkle herself would probably be more suitable for training baby Police than Tenebris.”
“Let's test that. I'll borrow her the next time we go up the Flow. See how her coaching technique fares next to ...”
“Ha, no. This Fray dial's knackered enough as it is -” Pencil Pusher gestured to the dial in question and paused, frowning. “Hold on.”
“What is it?” said Bramble, craning to look as Pencil Pusher scrutinised the dial and muttered. She pushed yet another lever, and more lines of arcane text flickered into existence.
“Fray's at ten and rising sharply. Focused on this sector. Looks like Twilight Sparkle's had herself another unwelcome visitor. Or two, rather. And by that rate, it was either fatal or very informative for her.”
Bramble winced. It was a struggle to not look down at himself, to look for the telltale signs of the universe deciding to Fray his sudden incongruous self away.
No danger yet, though. They still had a fair amount of time before the universe caught on.
“Another one? Now? The Hearthswarming season really brings the stab-happy do-gooders out, doesn't it?”
“Time spent with friends, time spent with family, time very much not spent with those who aren't there,” said Pencil Pusher quietly. “You'll get a few doing some thinking in those latter cases. Not enough thinking. Shame, really.”
“I'll get the idiots back here,” said Bramble, heading for the stairs. “Another chance to acquaint them with the ropes. Depending on how well they do this time, I'll hold off on the bollocking. Spirit of the season and all that.”
“Gosh. You do have something vaguely resembling a soul. I was beginning to wonder.” Pencil Pusher allowed a faint smirk to cross her features as she headed towards the great box itself.
“Less snarking, more box-resetting. No need to make it fancy. Just quick and accurate enough to prevent another murder.”
“You mean, undo another murder -”
“Less being a pedant as well!”
“Do you ever get that feeling,” started Twilight Sparkle, sat within the warm confines of Carousel Boutique, “Right on the edge of your mind, just out of reach, that you've forgotten something? Something very, very important, but when you go through your list of Important Things to Recall, you just don't find a match?”
Rarity sat across from her, and sipped at a steaming cup of tea as she appeared to ponder the question. “Well, I don't have such a list,” she said hesitantly. “But I do recognise the sensation. Why, when you're in the zone, when you hit that sweet spot of inspiration that makes the world melt away, it's sometimes rather hard to bring yourself back to reality. I once got so wrapped up in a new line, I forgot to go outside or interact with anypony at all. I believe I was declared legally dead for a few days.”
“That's, um.” Twilight hesitated and then rallied. “Not quite what I was thinking about, but still something. How did that work out?”
“Frightfully, Twilight, and not resolved nearly quickly enough. I don't recommend being legally dead at all. Ponies just scream and try to push garlic in your mouth whenever you so much as walk down the street.”
What had begun as a visit to retrieve Spike from the boutique had turned into afternoon tea. Twilight was happy for it, though. The tea was good, her winter clothes were getting nicely toasted on a little magical heater, and Rarity's company was never something to be passed up. Spike and Sweetie Belle, by the sounds of it, had found a board game in the next room behind Rarity and were doing an adequate job of entertaining/tormenting themselves while the approximately-functioning grown-ups talked.
Twilight sipped her own tea, and as drowsiness set in, she let Rarity's prolonged account become as much as a part of the background noise as the patter of the snow outside. From the room along, there came a triumphant squeak from Sweetie Belle and Spike groaning, “You sunk my galleass!”
Twilight liked this current state of existence, and was happy to see it prolonged.
From outside, there came a couple of muffled pops, to which she paid little heed.
“- and that was when Mayor Mare said, 'That could be anypony's pulse.' I ask you! As if I was some sort of ghastly skin-trotter. Which, for the record, I'm not -”
From the door behind Twilight, there came a muffled thump, as if something had hit the window.
That shifted her from her drowsiness, a job which was finished by noises from the next room to the effect of an indignant squeak of “There's no air ships in this game! That's cheating!”, which was followed by “Hey, technological progress waits for no stupid ruleset -” and which in turn was terminated by the sound of a board and pieces being overturned.
The alicorn and unicorn glanced briefly at each other, before Rarity rose with a sigh. “I'll see to those two,” she said, as the sounds of a scuffle escalated. “You check the window in the back room, darling. Make sure no foals are throwing snowballs at it or anything of that nature.”
“Sure,” yawned Twilight, rising from her chair and making for the back room, stifling a yawn as she went. She opened the door and stepped inside, a rising series of “He started it!”, “No, she started it!”'s at her back.
She stepped into the murk of shadows and shrouded boutique materials and wrapped Hearthswarming presents, pressed the light switch, glanced around, and stopped in her tracks.
By the window – open past the blinds, if the draught was any indicator – two unfamiliar ponies stood; a yellow-coated unicorn mare, and an earth pony stallion entirely covered by heavy metal barding. They looked up guiltily in the sudden light, and locked awkward gazes with Twilight. The strange mare's eyes narrowed ever-so-slightly.
“Who are you two? What are you doing breaking into Carousel Boutique?” said Twilight after a pregnant pause.
“Before we answer that,” said the mare, “Are you Twilight Sparkle by any chance?”
“Yes. What does that matter? Why are you in here?”
“Ah,” said the mare, with satisfaction thick around the syllable. The stallion took a step forwards, and Twilight found herself taking an involuntary step back.
“Let us spare you elaborate explanations,” said the stallion, one armoured hoof pawing at the ground. “Truly, as the great Shakelance himself penned in The Tragedy of Iridium, 'Speak, hooves, for me -!'”
“Coprolite, give the quoting a rest,” said the mare wearily. “Nothing is going to make that Equish degree relevant.”
“Nova, please! You're ruining the moment ...” Coprolite breathed out. “Oh, to Tartarus with it. EVERY TYRANT TO THE SWORD!”
And with that, before Twilight could so much as blink, he was up and rearing, two iron-clad hooves clawing at empty air before he came plunging down upon her.
She yelped and reflexively teleported back a vital few inches, hooves cleaving the air a hair’s edge from her snout and slamming into the floor with enough force to rattle the walls. “Clear a space!" came the shout of Nova, muffled by sudden pounding clouds of adrenaline, and Coprolite lumbered to one side. Twilight found herself staring down Nova’s horn, the whole levelled length of it incandescent with orange light.
Twilight delved swiftly into whatever magic she had at hand, and a thin magical shield snapped into existence before her in the next instant. The lines of it flared, bolstered by her innate alicornhood, but she could still see the sheer blazing force of Nova’s magic fly out -
It impacted. Twilight’s world turned to spinning chaos as she was bowled clean off her hooves by the weight of the magic. Weightless, deafened, she tumbled through falling shards of door and wall and scorched dust, leaving the suggestion of a Twilight-shaped hole in Rarity’s inner wall. She knocked into the table, and cups and boiling tea fell down around her recumbent and coughing form.
In her blurry field of view, where the floor and ceiling filled the right and left sides, she saw Coprolite and Nova bludgeon a path clear of the splintered door and wall. The armoured stallion advanced on her, and Twilight’s fragmented world painfully focused on the sheen of his sharpened shoes.
The same hoof lifted to the left, and as if from a great distance, she heard him begin, “Sic semper -”
“TIME POLICE! STOP IN THE NAME OF AN ORDERLY CONTINUUM AND WE WILL USE LETHAL FORCE!”
A window at the room’s side that had previously been offering distinguished service by way of admitting wan rays of sunlight exploded inwards, and a blue-armoured pegasus mare rocketed through. She alighted on the floor, exhaled, rummaged with a hoof around the edge of her peytral, and produced a badge which she waved triumphantly at Coprolite and Nova. “See! We’re official Time Po-”
Coprolite’s hoof was a grey blur in the air that connected with a resounding thunk. The pegasus exited the window with the same speed she’d entered, hitting another blue-armoured earth pony mare that had risen in the window at the worst possible time. They fell with mutual aggrieved screams.
“Quick!” Nova exclaimed, “While they’re out for the count -”
And in the next instant, four circles of light flashed in the room and faded to reveal four ponies. One unicorn mare, slumping and panting as her horn smoked with the effort of the carry-along teleportation. Three earth ponies, a mare and two stallions. The shortest stallion cast his gaze quickly around the room and snapped, “Focus on the assassins! Star Gazer, on the unicorn! Solstice and Toujours, with me on the earth pony! Keep them clear of Sparkle!”
Twilight stirred and unsteadily rested one hoof on the ground as chaos unfolded, as the unicorns wheeled on each other. Furious arcs of magic crackled back and forth between them, pink meeting orange with the sound of fireworks and the clash of meeting daggers as each sought to disrupt the energies around each other’s horn. The three earth ponies plunged on Coprolite and the armoured behemoth swung to meet them with a furious roar. Hooves swung and armour crashed and a pony went flying, too quickly for Twilight to notice who. The newcomer’s apparent commander, who had all but swung himself up onto Coprolite’s back, slammed one gleaming shoe on a back plate and sent it flying away as rusty powder. Coprolite cursed, bucked, and sent the stallion flying to bounce off a wall.
It was a lot to take in, and with adrenaline’s initial wave washing away, Twilight really wanted to have a nice lie-down and a cup of tea and to calmly observe it all from a distance.
A door slammed open behind her, and Twilight turned.
In the open frame, Rarity stood, her mouth hanging open as she regarded the current state of the room. Below her, Sweetie Belle stared with a kind of bewildered enthusiasm. Spike, who seemed to have a little ship-of-the-line jammed up one nostril, boggled.
“No! Get back!” yelled Twilight. “Get the authorities, get somepony else, send a letter to -!”
Another roar from Coprolite jangled her already-rattled eardrums, and she turned back to see him kicking the last assailant into a wall. Behind him, the unicorn duel as yet raged. Coprolite turned to regard it, snorted, and wheeled back on Twilight. His eyes narrowed behind the slit of his visor. “The rest is silence, Sparkle.”
“Who in the BLAZES are you all and what are you doing destroying my HOME?” screeched Rarity, her own horn flaring blue. Coprolite ignored her and focused on Twilight, who was only now struggling to rise to her hooves. He started forwards, and Twilight tried to goad her own staggered reflexes into action as he neared.
A purple-and-green blue flew past her, surprising her as much as Coprolite, whose own eyes opened wide upon seeing a dragon whelp lunge at him. Spike screamed a high-pitched battle-cry as he leapt out and bit hard on the tip of the stallion’s snount, flames flapping out the sides of his own mouth as he yelled, “Oo shkay away fr’m Kwiligh’!”
Pony and dragon screamed in unison, the big stallion spinning on the spot and flailing at his front to try and dislodge Spike. They whirled like a spinning top, concussing a rising armoured newcomer as they did so. Sweetie Belle, sensing a moment to contribute, jumped in as well past Rarity’s yelled warnings and bit down on the tip of Coprolite’s tail as it whipped past. The spinning medley of colours acquired a note of white and the chorus of ongoing screams shifted ever-so-slightly higher.
Rarity dived in after Sweetie Belle, and was rewarded for her pains by Spike slamming into the side of her head. She stumbled back with a discombobulated “Glerk!”, rallied, stepped forwards, and was clocked across the teeth by her little sister. She fell, and displayed no great enthusiasm in rising.
Twilight shook her head, and the last of the fog cleared. One pulse of magic built around her horn, and she unleashed a concussive blast at the centre of Coprolite’s mass and past the white-and-green-and-purple edges. It staggered the stallion, sending him flailing back even as Spike and Sweetie Belle continued to affix themselves.
It was all the opening one of the armoured newcomers needed, the taller of the two earth pony stallions. He charged right into Coprolite and slammed one gleaming shoe into his unarmoured underbelly. Coprolite turned, opened his mouth to curse, and then started to scream.
The scream lasted up until the instant where Coprolite’s body collapsed into dust and fell across the stallion. The barding fell into the pile like shipwrecks breaking the surface of the shore.
At that point, Rarity, Spike, Sweetie Belle, the pinned stallion, and Nova all started or renewed their screaming, upon which Twilight’s eardrums just gave up and found the nearest metaphorical bar in which to unwind from a hard day.
Nova’s screams didn’t last long. The unicorn she’d been fighting stunned her with a brief blast of magic, trotted up while Nova reeled, and punched her with another gleaming shoe.
Dust scattered across the floor.
“Is every -” The fallen commander began, then coughed as he wearily rose. “Is everypony alright?”
“Oh sol, oh sol, he’s in my mouth!” wailed the stallion underneath the dust pile formerly known as Coprolite. “He’s in my eyes. He’s in my ears!”
“Builds character. Dig yourself out of there, Toujours. Where’s Jiffy? Where’s Solstice?”
“Here, sir,” said the first earth pony mare to appear at the window, holding an unconscious pegasus over one shoulder. “Had to retrieve her from a market square. Got some funny looks along the way. I think other ponies might be coming to check on the fuss.”
“Nightmares take it.” The commander ground his teeth. “This is going to be one monster of a clean-up job. Get started. Check the environment and add up the disruption, Star Gazer. Put Jiffy down and allay the civvies, Solstice. You and Spring Green can wipe their memories and then attend to those outside. Toujours, you and I will do the same for Sparkle.”
Amidst the teeming barbarian hordes of questions which battered at the gates of Twilight’s mind, the first one to cleave its way to the forefront was Wait, memory-wiping?
The commander advanced on her then, painting a wide and easy smile across his features. “Now then, Your Highness, apologies for all this disruption. We’ll soon be out of your mane and set everything back the way it was.”
Behind him, the Coprolite-covered Toujours advanced on Rarity, who regarded him with a expression of mute horror. A small twinkling device in the cleft of his outheld hoof flashed blue, and Rarity’s expression blanked in that moment.
“Now then -” said the commander reassuringly.
Twilight teleported away.
She reappeared in the back room, to the sound of a blistering curse from the commander outside. Her gaze swept from side to side, hunting for what she needed, what she’d planned as a contingency in the event of oncoming memory-wiping when she was a filly (and she had a normal and mentally well-adjusted foalhood, honest). There - a sheet of paper and a pencil.
From outside, a shout. “She’s in there, Lieutenant! Look through the hole!”
Little time. She positioned herself to try and block what she was doing from sight with her tail, pretended to just be coughing and gathering in breath, and swiftly set pencil to paper, writing more quickly than she’d ever written before.
The dying-spider-scrawl flew across the page, and hooves scuffed outside. Twilight looked around for a corner that hadn’t been disturbed at any point, saw a dusty cloth that seemed to conceal a pile of Hearthswarming presents, and tucked the paper under there.
“‘You’re being paranoid, Twily, nopony wipes memories’,” she muttered in a sing-song tone. “Chew on this, BBBFF.”
The broken wood around the hole she’d made with her body cracked, and she turned to see whoever was forcing a way through. Briefly, she saw the form of the commander, and looked down to see a twinkle in his hoof -
Her world turned blue.
It was a lovely winter’s afternoon in Ponyville, as ponies ploutered through the snow blanketing the streets. Evening edged closer, with orange and indigo suffusing into the cloud-covered sky. Foals laughed and threw snowballs under the golden glow of the tall magical streetlights.
Twilight observed it all from within a cosy set of walls, with a cup of hot chocolate at her lips. She’d already come home to the library from a lovely afternoon tea at Rarity’s, and saw no reason to end the day’s pleasure early. With Spike asleep upstairs, she’d get some peace to herself.
A knock sounded at her door. She wondered who could be calling, and set down the hot chocolate and went to go see.
Rarity stood at the front door, her scarf being tossed about in the cold breeze. A piece of paper floated at her side.
“Rarity? Come inside. Did I leave something at your place?”
“Maybe, Twilight, I’m not sure.” The unicorn stepped into the cosiness with a grateful shudder, and then winced. She poked at the inside of her mouth, as if checking for a wobbly tooth. “I found this piece of paper when checking a few of my things - it seems to be for you, or even by you, judging by the hoofwriting. I haven’t presumed to open it, of course.”
Twilight frowned and accepted the paper. The front read, in her own hoofwriting, For the attention of Twilight Sparkle. Her frown deepened. She unfolded it and read:
Dear Me,
If I’m reading this, and have no idea where it comes from, then my memory has been wiped. This deserves investigation, don’t I agree?
Your (My?) Dutiful Self, Twilight Sparkle
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Oh dear, shit is going off rails.
5444887
Just a little bit, aye.
Either Twilight is going to destroy the timeline as the Time Police know it, or their constant intervention and her paranoia will combine to form a self-fulfilling prophecy of tyranny. Either way, this is going to be an epic comedy of misunderstandings.
Also, being legally dead doesn't sound too bad. I mean, hey, free garlic.
Looking forward to more.
5445513
Or, depending on the undead traditions, free rice scattered in your path, free burial at a crossroads, or free stakes applied through your torso. So many freebies!
Free garlic!
Glad it continues to entertain.
missing a quotation mark...
I think I get it now! If you do stop, you get to die! If you don't... you suffer a Fate Worse Than Death!
***
Nice to see what the Time Police look like! I wonder how it started, where it's located, and who commands it... How do they recruit?
Perhaps a comma before 'incandescent'? What's going to happen next?
I'm liking the chapter titles being quotes from the chapters! It's always interesting to see how they come about!
Nice terminology too!
So, the Fray is a measure of how much the timeline the Chrono-cube is placed in deviates from the timeline that happens... or something? How much Fray is dangerous? Is any amount of Fray dangerous? I suppose not, given that 8.0% Fray is good. I guess if they try for 0 Fray is near impossible because going back into the timestream adds Fray, unless you're really careful, so it's hard for it to go below a certain point...
Yep, agree with FOME two posts ago!
5449809
Thank you for the corrections. One of these days, I really will have to go about finding an editor.
Yep, you've got it. Fray is a measure of how badly disturbances in the past have mucked up the smooth functioning of the present. There's always going to be a small amount, since time-travellers are hard to regulate and most of their offences are fairly minor in scale. The flow of time's got a lot of momentum behind it, and stomping on one butterfly's not going to do much to throw it off. However, something major, like assassinating Twilight Sparkle before her rise to power, will rapidly increase the Fray levels. If they get past a critical threshold, then the current timeline will necessarily change and eliminate anything living in it. The Time Police are rather keen on this not happening.
As for more details on the Time Police themselves? They're a-coming.
Well isn't that just a victory for carefully managed paranoia, not to mention the general concept of being ready for anything.
Either this whole series of time interventions is so going to be what creates Tyrant Sparkle in the first place, or it's going to create a fray built on the actions of the time police themselves that they might not be able to fix.
5445513
I'm betting on Twilight becoming the founder of Time Police. Magitech, meddling with time and history, and obsessive attention to preserving details... it seems like it would appeal to her, a lot.
Goshdarnit, Carabas! There're so many things that I Loved in this chapter that I'm going to have to start listing again.
1.) The title.
2.) One of the recruits is named 'Jiffy.'
3.) Twilight's list of Important Things to Recall.
4.) Another Reaper Man reference! (That bit about Rarity being declared legally dead. If that wasn't a reference to RM, then I'll eat my left shoe.) Of course, I may be projecting. [Reaper Man is my favorite Terry Pratchett novel]
5.) Pompous English Equish assassin that quotes
ShakespeareShakelance.6.) The blue pegasus that's always waving her badge around. She's cute.
7.) But not as cute as Spike and Sweetie Belle's tag team!
8.) Bramble's catchphrase: "Builds character."
But when this happend:
I had to call bullshit. The first thing that they teach you in the academy is a list of code words and phrases which could potentially trigger a Twilight-Contingency-Paradox. And one of those phrases being spoken by a commander, no less!? My suspension of disbelief has been severely derailed.
Also, 'Tenebris' is one of the Latin words for 'Darkness.'
I sense foreshadowing . . .
Also, also, the only reason I know that is because I researched a lot of latin terms relevant to night and darkness for UALS!
It seems that I read this story once in the past, (since it's already upvoted) but then proceeded to forget about it completely.
Ah well, now I get to enjoy reading it for the first time for the second time.
Roundclaw boggled at the ponies that had suddenly appeared in the Chronocube. Surely this meant something had gone terribly wrong.
After all, lunch was still another two hours away and he was certain he hadn't arranged for any delivery.
Wow. Naming your child after a Troll curse. Harsh.
I appreciate that -- even on the verge of being mindwiped -- Twilight is meticulous enough to second-guess her own grammar.