"I know there's no excuse for what I did. But I want you all to know that I'm ready for whatever punishment you think is fair."
A string of swear words met her ears, and she blinked in surprise. Darkness was around and beneath her, but not all encompassing. Countless strands of light threaded above and below her, and in front a dark blue thestral with his back to her was staring at a ball of light on the tip of one of the those strings as he appeared to be shouting at it.
"...and this is why I hate time travel!" he concluded as he shook with rage, presumably talking to himself, "Now I have to prune this entire branch!" He started pulling on the ball with his teeth, and Starlight realized with a shock that the ball wasn't actually a ball at all, but in fact a series of loops, all leading back to its center, and within those loops she caught glimpses of... herself?
"There," he snorted in grim satisfaction as the ball came free, and he shoved it away with his hooves and into the waiting mouth of a nearby creature, one who's appearance fled Starlight's mind the moment she wasn't looking at it anymore because she could not comprehend what she was seeing. Looking back at the thread, she now saw that it was growing and splitting, the new tips quickly moving out of sight. "Stupid inverse Groundhog Day," the thestral muttered as he turned around, then blinked in surprise as he saw Starlight, "Wait, you're still here? You should have stopped existing when I trimmed your branch."
Starlight opened her mouth to reply, but he continued, "Wait. You're the one responsible for this! Do you have any idea what kind of a mess you've made? No wait, you don't, that's part of the problem." He grinned evilly, "But you will soon."
With that, he shoved something at her, and her mind exploded. Memories, days beyond counting filled her mind, each one starting the exact same way. It broke her, for a time, but she eventually pulled herself back together enough to understand what had happened. The spell had had some, unintended side effects, forcing her to repeat while everything else continued. What's worse than that, however, was that because the timeline kept having to loop itself back to her it couldn't grow the way it was supposed to, leaving it withering on the vine and forcing the Guardians to intervene.
"Good," The thestral said with satisfaction, "That should cover the punishment for your recklessness." he floated closer and stuck out a hoof, "Welcome to the Timeline Guardians, Ms. Glimmer. Anything that breaks reality so hard he, she, or it transcends it ends up as one of us and in charge of fixing all such future messes. You've got a long service ahead of you, and if you know what's good for you you won't try to escape. I'm Architect, and I'll be your probation officer."
Her mind still trying to collect itself, a stray thought slipped between Starlight's lips as bumped her hoof against his, "If that's how Guardians are made," she asked, "how did you become one?"
"Trust me," Architect muttered, "You don't want to know. Now come on," he pulled and she followed, "Headquarters is this way. I'll get you registered."
Starlight tried to protest, but then the emotions behind a hundred million years of memories hit her and she lost consciousness.
It's times like this I want to like separate chapters.
Architect=>Matrix loops? Or in the other story?
Yes. So, Much, Yes.
Ooh, this is an interesting concept!
Well, that's one consequence Starlight could end up with from playing around with time.
*happy, content sigh* You sir, have made my day. THIS STORY, is TRUE chaos. Not even including the insanity of the world-hopping, you have managed to make something so astronomically beautiful out of the most basic of chaos. And then you threw in the Animaniacs.
...Thank you. From someone who remembers and idolizes them. Thank you.
The Architect used to be Homer Simpson who played with that darn time-travelling toaster one time too many.
6259302 you fool pinky as Discord's apprentice you've doomed us all all the known universes are fucked
6740575 that's brilliant right there no but seriously homer in MLP universe fan squeal
6711793 well fuck where done
this is how I feel every time I read a good story well done
6890176 "And then I blew the planet up. True Story!" -Lord Freeza.
lol.. lovely reference to a sobering story
6940926 lol no argument there. but this also falls on the category of celestia planning for something she knows nothing about. she saw the light and thought pinkie had lost it or something. clearly, not having seen a chaos user be fully developed before
7019337 I'm not sure if you've noticed, but my update speed has actually picked up considerably over the past three chapters. This one came out a little over a week after the last, when my usual speed is once a month or slower.
7019982 This particular instance of you? Just one, maybe two or three if they like to work together. All the other instances of you? Who knows.
7019991 That would get confusing pretty fast but at the same time make for a very interesting conversation. It would be like bubblegum.
7031253 Fair point. Removed. I'll come up with something to replace it later.
Edit: Found a better song.
7047604 Were you here for the first few chapters? If not, then you might not realize that System was not originally part of the story. He was added after the first interlude, when I realized that at my chosen point in time the main six could not be the antagonists without destroying their character arcs, and I wasn't willing to make Celestia the villain because I don't think she gets enough love. However, a story must have conflict or it isn't actually a story, so I needed someone to play the part of an antagonist since without one this story had no plot. That was when I added System, going back and changing the first chapter.
So yeah, he is a bit out of place, but the story would suffer without him.
I'm rather like Discord here. I might have had a general idea of what I wanted to do, but the story mostly paved its own way. I kept planting little throwaway ideas that I later ended up using, almost like my past self knew in advance what my future self would be thinking. For example, the idea that Chaos is all about a lack of control ended up meshing perfectly with Twilight's canon OCD, as well as shedding new light on how Discord functions. I'd brush it off as coincidence, but it's happened too many times to be that anymore.
7057225 People kept asking for a cameo and I kept it to a minimum. He won't show up in the main story again.