//------------------------------// // [Dark Past Arc] A Trip To A Horrific Alternative // Story: Season Spike // by Haoryu Changer //------------------------------// In the town of Ponyville late at night, footsteps coming from a shadowed figure could be heard in a dark hallway in one of the many homes of this town. The footsteps echoed throughout the hallway as the figure approached a large room. Inside the room, was a huge machine of some sort, with many different colored lights, large wires all around, and one blue control panel in front of it. "So the doctor finally finished..." The figure said while looking at the machine with a smirk. "I'll have to thank him later." He walked towards the machine, and before morning he was gone in a blinding flash without any pony knowing. *** 7 Days Later Doctor Hooves ran down the streets of Ponyville with an alarmed expression on his face. He ran past many ponies at the market who were purchasing goods for their own needs. He ran through the park where ponies peacefully talked, relaxed, or where foals were playing games. He also ran past a little white unicorn at which he stopped and greeted, "Ma'am." Sweetie looked up with an exhausted expression. She had baggy eyelids and her eyes looked empty. She replied with a smile, "Hi, Doctor! How's your day going?" "It would be much better if you told me where Prince Spike is!" Doctor Hooves said with unease. "I need to speak with him this instant!" "Oh! I was just with him! I felt a bit tired so he told me to get some rest. He had to finish up some chores anyways." She explained. The doctor was heading there already, but Sweetie Belle would have saved him some time if he was elsewhere so of course, he asked. "Excellent! Thank you greatly young Sweetie Belle!" He said before he continued his way towards the friendship castle. "You're welcome!" Sweetie yelled back at him, before continuing to trot back into town after rubbing her head from another random magic shock to her horn to which she made a small, "Ow..." at. Doctor Hooves sprinted down the straight path leading to the crystal castle in front of him. He walked up the golden steps and rapped his right hoof on the golden door. After waiting a dreadful minute, the door finally opened to reveal Spike, who had a broom in his claw. "Hey, Doctor Hooves! How may I help you?" "Prin-" "Just Spike! Please." "S-Spike! I need your help! First off, where's Princess Twilight?" "Oh, she went off with Fluttershy to solve a friendship problem. She might not be back for a few days an-" "Good! Now, come with me, hurry! And tell no one where you're headed!" The earth pony made a mad dash back towards the town and Spike stared at his form in confusion for a quick second before dropping the broom and following him. Sure, it was odd that the doctor called for him alone and asked for no other pony to know, but Spike trusted the doctor as he knew him ever since he first moved into Ponyville. He was a warm-hearted stallion and has done nothing wrong that Spike has ever seen. Spike followed him for about three minutes, with Doctor Hooves looking back at him every fifteen seconds. Soon, they reached what looked like a normal blue building in the middle of Ponyville. The doctor looked all around for any signs of any other pony possibly watching them before ushering Spike in after opening the front door. He too stepped in and closed the door behind him. "Follow me downstairs." He said before swiftly opening a door a couple of steps away and heading down the set of stairs behind it. The two headed deep into the basement, and with every second that passed, Spike could feel more nervousness bestowing upon him. Why did the doctor need him all the way down within his basement, away from the ponies above ground? Soon they finished descending the stairs and Spike now saw himself entering a very long stone hallway. "It's not much longer. I promise." The doctor said before hurrying onwards. Spike felt the urge to ask him something, so he picked up his pace and started to walk alongside the brown earth pony. "So what's this all about?" He asked. Doctor Hooves sighed. "I suppose I could explain while we near the time machine." "Wait? Time machine?" The pony cleared his throat. "I will explain that first then." Spike listened carefully. "I've studied science for years... my whole life really. It was my passion ever since I was a little colt. It all started with basic mathematics and chemistry, then it gradually rose to something much bigger!" "Um... time travel?" Spike asked. "No, no, that came much later in my life. About when I was as young as your sister, Princess Twilight. I meant my studies of creating matter. Heh, looking back that didn't turn out as bad as I thought it would have." "Oh," Spike said in realization. "So yes, long-story-short, I studied time travel greatly, and I figured out something fascinating!" "You do know there's a magic spell for that right? Twilight kept telling me that-" "I wasn't finished! Yes, time travel is possible with magic, and even only Starswirl The Beard could only travel mere minutes. But I've figured out that time travel using technology differs from using magic!" "How so?" "I'll explain in better detail just now, but basically changing the past or future works an entirely different way. With magic, changing the past can affect the future massively, but with technology time travel... er, well, you'll see in just a moment." With those last words out of his mouth, the two finally reached the end of the hallway and entered what looked like was a lab with a huge machine in the center of the room and a gray mare that Spike immediately recognized. "Derpy?" "Hi, Spike! How's it going?" She asked. "I'm doing great but what are you doing here?" "Well, she's my assistant, of course." Doctor Hooves said before leaning down and whispering to Spike. "And I love to keep her around. She's a great friend." "I see... so... why did you bring me here exactly?" The drake asked. The doctor gave out a sad sigh and looked at Spike. "These past few days have been very stressful Spike. I tried the best I could but I couldn't do anything..." Spike raised his eyebrows in concern. "What happened?" "Last week, as I was checking some unknown readings on my time machine. It seems that something or someone changed the past drastically. A-and... I went back in time to see what had changed and... it's horrifying, to say the least." "Wait. What changed? And why didn't anything in the present change because of it. Twilight said that time traveling is dangerous and should be prohibited because it could ruin our lives." Spike explained. "You'll have to see for yourself Spike, I don't think I could explain it to you." The doctor started to walk towards his machine. "As for why the future, or rather, the present hasn't changed, is because like I said earlier time travel works differently with technology. I'm sure with magic our futures would have been changed. But with technology, when a change happens in the past, instead of changing the future that change goes down its own timeline." Spike scratched his head in confusion. "Um... could you explain that in different terms perhaps?" Doctor Hooves took out a marker while Derpy rolled a white board into the room. He drew one horizontal straight line across the board while he spoke. "Say this is our timeline right here, from right to left when we were first born to the present. Now..." He drew two short vertical lines on the long horizontal line, one near the beginning and one on the very end. "Say this line on the far left is a point in our past, if we were to use magic to change the future, all of the future in our timeline will change. Are you still with me here?" Spike nodded. "Alright, now let's go back to that point in time, but this time when we use science and technology..." The stallion drew a diagonal line from the left vertical line upwards to the right, then he stopped and continued the line horizontally parallel to the longer one below. "The change makes an entirely new timeline. Much different to ours, and with a different present." "Oh, I get it!" Spike said. "So if we used tech to go back in time and destroy a tree, for example, the tree wouldn't be gone in our present, but instead a whole 'nother time universe will be created with that tree gone. Am I right?" "That's exactly how it works." "Alright, so back to my original question, why do you need me?" "We need your help to fix the alternate timeline, Spike. Like I explained before, it would be easier for you to see yourself but it is really terrible over there Spike." "But... why didn't you get Twilight and her friends to help? I'm sure if they used the Friendship Magic they acquired they could do more than me." "Actually," The doctor started. "I was going to call for them but I got some kind of message. A voice in my mind." "A voice?" The stallion nodded once. "It told me... something. It's all a blur now but I'm positive it involved you." "Well... I would be happy to help. But what exactly do I do to help?" "First," Doctor Hooves walked over to the right side of his machine and pulled a lever connected to it. "You must travel to the alternate timeline with myself." Below the blue panel on the front of the machine, a metal part with four slots, holding three silver necklaces with the first slot empty, extended out towards Spike and Derpy. "What about me, doc?" Asked Derpy. The doctor walked over to the necklaces and picked two up. "Are you insane Derpy?! There's no way in Tartarus I'm letting you go to that dreaded alternate timeline! It's bad enough I asked the Prince of Equestria to travel with me there." "But I want to come with you!" Derpy said, her ears drooping. "I know... but it's too dangerous for such a pretty mare like you." Derpy blushed at the comment. "So it's alright for me to stand here and let you both endanger yourselves?" "Derpy..." The doctor walked up to the wall-eyed mare until he was a step away from her. He stared at her with great concern. "I understand completely. But I'm prepared to face whatever dangers may appear. I just can't let you come." "If you understood you would let me come with you..." Derpy scuffed her hoof on the stone ground and looked sad. "Think about Dinky. What would she do if she lost you?" "She wouldn't like a mommy who let her best friend trot to his end." "She would never say that!" "Well, that's what I think when I look at myself..." Doctor Hooves sighed and walked over to the last silver necklace with a quartz carved in a shape of a circle at the front. He hesitantly gave it to her. "I'll let you come with us, on one condition." He grabbed her right hoof in his own and spoke with seriousness in his voice. "As soon as it gets too dangerous, you must travel back here safe and sound, you hear me?" "If it gets dangerous," Derpy said before smiling and nodding rapidly. "Of course." Spike walked up to the both of them. "Alright, now that that's settled, can you explain how we travel to the timeline Doctor?" The stallion nodded once in response and cleared his throat. "Using the collected data my machine acquired, we can travel to the timeline that I have spoken of. It will use these necklaces to focus on our bodies and send us through time." He gave Spike a silver necklace that had an emerald instead of quartz in the middle. He then snapped on his own that held a sapphire, to which Spike and Derpy followed suit. The doctor then trotted up to his machine, tapped on the blue control panel for a bit then looked back at Spike and Derpy. "Before we go, let's put on some cloaks to hide our identities. We might want to be anonymous if we have to. Our past selves will be there after all." He walked over to a wardrobe near the entrance and pulled out three black cloaks. Two for ponies, and one for a little dragon. "These cloaks have magic spells on them. Once you put them on, it would be impossible to see under the hood, nothing but a shadow. Of course, if you were to pull back your respective hood, your face would be revealed. It was hard but I did my research and got the best I could find." He explained as all three put on their cloaks without their hoods pulled up. Doctor Hooves again walked over to the control panel. Once he looked over the information that was displayed one last time, he looked back at the other two in the room. "Now, is every pony and dragon ready?" Spike and Derpy nodded with determined expressions and pulled their hoods up. "Then let's get going..." He pressed his hoof on one last button which made the machine beep loudly before quickly making his way towards Spike and Derpy. At first, the time machine seemed to do nothing. But when Spike noticed light coming from beneath him, he looked down to see the emerald on his necklace glowing bright green. He looked at the doctor and Derpy and saw theirs were also glowing their respective colors. He focused on his own necklace as he begun to witness the green glowing light start to emerge from the emerald and swirl around him. With slight shock, Spike found himself being lifted up by some force coming from the necklace, howling winds started to be heard, and a few seconds later he felt himself get lighter. "What's going on!" Spike tried to yell over the wind coming from nowhere. "There may have been a little bit of magic used for my machine, as electricity was never the best source!" Doctor Hooves started to explain. "And the way my machine lets us travel through time is different than what you think!" "How so?" Spike asked feeling lighter every time a second passed. Also, everything in the room and even the room itself disappeared, being replaced by a void in various shades of blue, rapidly moving around them. "Instead of pushing us back in time, time itself is getting pushed forward towards us!" "That's so cool!" Spike and Derpy said out loud. "Haha!" Doctor Hooves laughed. "Why do you thunk I studied science my whole life?" Then suddenly, all three of them dropped to the ground. Spike picked himself up and rubbed his head. "I can't wait to do that again..." He said in a daze. He rubbed his eyes with his palms and opened them to gasp and see something shocking. They weren't in the basement holding the time machine anymore, they were on dirt and rock, surrounded by many destroyed and blown up buildings. The ground also had massive cracks and looked nothing natural. To accompany the depressing atmosphere, large gray clouds with occasional lightning followed by thunder covered the sky, blocking any vision beyond them no matter how much one would try to get a peek. "W-...Where are we? And why is this place so destroyed?" Spike asked. "Yeah... and there's no pony to be seen," Derpy said, looking around the area. "Spike, if you truly want to know where in Equestria we are, then look up my good friend." The dragon did as Doctor Hooves told and gasped in complete horror when he saw what was hovering above. Canterlot Castle. A symbol of peacefulness, the true capital of Equestria, was in shambles before Spike the Dragon. Most of its towers had their tops blown off. The walls had many holes in them caused by magic, explosions, and what looked like two different tall ponies. There was also light smoke that could be seen coming from various places not only in the castle but all around canterlot. It looked like a war just occurred in the city of Canterlot. Spike had one huge question that had to be answered or he was about to lose it. He turned to Doctor Hooves with a frightened expression and asked. "What happened to Canterlot...?"