//------------------------------// // 3 Shattered Bottles, Shattered Rainbow // Story: Starlight's Shifting Sands // by Voldine //------------------------------// “Okay, I was wrong. This is much worse than I was expecting. Thank you for showing me how to fully phase myself out of the physical world.” Twilight felt nauseous as she looked around the room. Bottles of all kinds were strewn across the floor in piles that defied all logic, and spread among them were packages and containers of snack foods and take-out. Two pizza boxes were on top of piles next to the bed, one empty and one with half of a large pizza still inside of it. Three more could be seen in various places, with the open one on her desk holding a few moldy slices. Rainbow herself was taking up a good two feet of space above the mattress, and the room positively reeked of old beer, whiskey, and various moonshine grain variants. The only clean spot was an arc at the door for it to open, and the bottles and other garbage around it looked as if they were regularly compacted into higher piles. Rainbow was in no better shape than her room. Her mane was long, dirty and faded out. Gone was her athletic build; replaced by soft pudge and a not small beer belly. Dark bags hung under her eyes, which were themselves lifeless and bloodshot. She stared at the wall, a large, half-empty glass of straight absinthe resting in her hooves, the variety of liquor betrayed by the pungent anise smell and the distinct green color. She had just finished taking a large gulp from it. “Oh, Rainbow, I’m so sorry.” Twilight trembled, turning her gaze from her fallen friend. “I-I can’t believe this happened. I just... Why? Why did Starlight have to do this?” Turning her head towards the door, she heard the sound of two raised voices going back and forth. “I don’t care if it’s the fifth time, Windy, our daughter needs to go back into rehab before she gets back into the harder drugs. You know we won’t be able to help her up the next time she has a seizure from snorting lunar lightning! We can’t risk it.” The masculine voice was thick with emotions, sounding as if the speaker had just finished sobbing. “Maybe this time we’ll be able to keep her hopes up, but we’re not going to bother with yet another ‘Best Patient’ trophy.” “Bow, just accept it, please!” a female shouted back, just as emotional. “We both know she’s not going to get better. We failed her, and you have to accept that.” That was a pause as Windy choked back a sob. “I think it’s a-about time we start thinking about giving her a ‘most wasted potential’ trophy.” “We can’t afford that. We can’t afford any more trophies. I’m working myself to the bone, Windy, and she couldn’t even hold herself together to get through a cakewalk interview at the weather factory that I set up for her. We need to cut her off.” Twilight shook her head, blocking out the argument. “I can’t. I can’t listen to this anymore. Dahaka, please, what do we have to do to fix her? Even a second more of this is unimaginable.” Her eyes lingered on Rainbow Dash, sadness erupting into anger. How dare Starlight Glimmer do this to her friends! Over what!? Petty revenge?! Her focus lost, she slowly faded back into reality, her canons displacing a few bottles to tumble down the nearest pile. Even for one such as I, this is not a simple thing to fix. We will have to be careful in moving history back into the proper place. Too much power could break the tenuous thread of her timeline. “Tartaros you supposed to be?” Rainbow Dash asked with a heavy slur in her voice, looking over her shoulder. “You death or somethin?” Throwing her head back, she slammed what was left of her drink down her throat before chucking the glass at Twilight’s head. “Took your sweet ass time, I’ve been ready for decades.” Sitting on her haunches, she closed her eyes and spread her wings. “Just take me already.” Twilight blinked, flinching instinctively at the thrown glass before realizing what Rainbow had said. “This is wrong in so many ways I don’t think I could even begin to count them.” Twilight stepped closer, kneeling down in front of the fallen pegasus. “I realize you can’t understand me but, I’m not death. It’s me, Twilight, and I’m going to make this better.” The words had at least caused Rainbow Dash to open her eyes once more, and the kneeling caused her to tilt her head in confusion as she looked up into the blank purple face and white eyes of the mystery being. “Well, what are you waiting for? Do it already!” Raising her hand, Twilight hoped that whatever harmonic magic that had connected them still held, even if by a thread. “I dunno if this will hurt but, it has to be done.” Drawing on the Dahaka’s instincts, she placed her hand on Dash’s head, letting her fingers phase into Dash ever so slightly. We must make the first adjustment here. Expand your senses slightly and feel for the part of the mind that trembles the most as that will be where the easiest alteration is housed. For Rainbow Dash’s part, for the first time in her life, she knew where she had gone wrong. In a brief moment of existential realization, it became clear that she was in the wrong shape. Whatever the creature was, it knew she was wrong and she hoped it would fix her. “What made you start drinking, Rainbow. What sent you staggering down this self-destructive trail of horrors? Four previous drug rehab stays? A mountain of junk food garbage in your room?” Twilight couldn’t stop herself from asking even as she tried to focus on the instruction the Dahaka gave her and feel for a part of her friend’s mind that trembled. Then she found it. Deep in the back of Dash’s mind was a funeral. A foal’s funeral. Fluttershy’s funeral. Before Twilight’s eyes, Rainbow’s life played out: Fluttershy going missing, the yellow casket, Rainbow blaming herself, the downward spiral into delinquency, the stints in jail, the drugs, until finally the guilt became too much and Rainbow drowned herself in booze and junk food. A vision of some kind came from this, the Rainbow dash in her hands on the far left, followed by a series of progressively more fit and less ragged-looking ones, and all the way on the right was one wearing a Wonderbolts Reservist flight suit in reversed colors, yellow being the dominant color and blue saved for the accents. This is the spectrum of potential presents for Rainbow Dash. I have omitted the ones that are worse except for a few that come between where she stands now and where we need to get her. “And how do we get her there?” Twilight pressed, looking at the Dash on the right. “How do we make her a wonderbolt?” By walking backwards along the thread of her fate and correcting where it sits in the tapestry. Each wrong decision she made skewed its course, and we must erase those mistakes. We don’t have to correct every single individual one, but if we go back and correct too many at once it could result in an unexpected deviation, and we would be pulled back to start over with a new baseline. Going back to the funeral from here and having her demand to see her friend in the casket without changing anything else could even result in her thread snapping under the strain, and all would be lost. From the possibilities I can see, that funeral seems to be an immutable event as things stand now. Maybe later we could come back and correct it, after working with Kindness. “Okay, so slow and steady then? All things considered...” Twilight took a breath, slowing moving her arm, and by extension Rainbow Dash, to the right. Each time a pair of Dashes met, the one in her hand altered, taking on the appearance of it along the spectrum. The room altered around them as well. The first few changes merely resulting in smaller and smaller piles of garbage until one of the rooms blurred into red and dissolved. Twilight felt her arm lurch to the next point immediately as the Dash in her hands began screaming. “Oh, Faust! Dahaka! What did I do!?!?!” Nothing wrong. My mistake. I failed to read that potential properly and had to pull her for you to avoid a collapse. “Was she... dead?!” Twilight panicked, serious doubt starting to fill her mind. Mortals are so frail, their minds fragile, and their emotions volatile. That possibility looked like a happier present until we got there. She was prescribed a medication that had an opposed reaction from normal. You moved her from her room to impacting a cliff at near-rainboom velocity, and I moved her back to her room. We should have stopped time at the beginning, That would have spared her the flash of pain. I have stopped it for us now. This room was far cleaner, though the odd bottle of booze here and there still dotted the floor. Rainbow remained somewhat on the pudgy side in her hands, but the distended beer gut was gone. Instead of a pizza box, there was a pile of Hayburger uniforms on her desk. “Well... almost there at least...” Twilight chuckled, more than relieved that Dash wasn’t begging to die anymore. Would you like to take a break, relax your arm a bit? The spectrum shrank, cutting off the poor presents they had just dragged Rainbow through and expanding those that remained slightly as a result. Moving into and through a bad choice is never without impact. If we keep moving her now before unfreezing, she will scream in a less plausible situation. “You say that like there’s ever a good time to be screaming in pain.” Twilight lowered Rainbow to the ground, slowly removing her fingers from the still mare. “I’ll take that break though.” Twilight felt their body phase back out of the physical world, though her form was still reflected in Rainbow’s cornea, meaning the blue mare would be able to see her at least. The flow of time resumed, and Rainbow continued to scream for a few seconds before falling over face-first on the floor as the aborted sensations faded Two sets of hooves came running from far closer than her parents voices had sounded like they were coming from a minute ago, and the two of them burst into the room with looks of concern on their faces and a pair of small trophies on Bow’s back. “Rainbow, what happened? You didn’t-you didn’t take something again, did you? Not after six months clean…” “No!” Dash jolted to her hooves, shaking her head frantically. “I haven’t touched the stuff, I swear! I just had a weird dream and rolled off my bed.” Looking away, she rubbed her neck. “I was going to crash head first into a cliff...” Windy put her hoof to her mouth with a gasp before rushing over to wrap her wings around as much of her daughter as she could reach with her hug. “Don’t you ever think of doing that. We’re here for you, and you know we love you. We...we even thought it would be a good idea to maybe celebrate, for old-time’s sake.” “Yeah, six months with nothing stronger than whiskey, and just last night you got promoted to assistant manager after working at that Hayburger for a year. That’s the longest you’ve ever managed to stay clean, and the longest you’ve ever managed to hold a job. I really feel like we should have three here, but overnight is short notice to get a trophy made so we had to combine the two job ones.” Dash returned her mother’s hug, nuzzling into her side. “Thanks... Both of you. I don’t know where I’d be now, if I didn’t have you guys helping me up.” She giggled a bit at the trophies. “You guys sure know how to make a mare feel good about herself.” “Well, you know how to use your father’s tools if you ever want to make a ‘Best Parents’ award or something in your spare time. Maybe even find a special somepony yourself so we can start spoiling a grandfoal instead of you?” “Oh come on, mom. I’ve gotta lose, like, thirty pounds before any guy would even look at me.” Dash punctuated her point by poking her belly. “More like ten.” “DAD!” “What? I happen to know a few stallions who like the chubby look.” “No, no I’m drawing the line there. We are not talking about setting me up with anypony you know, we are not talking about my sex life, and we are certainly not talking about falling off the wagon ever again. I need to have some boundaries, and you absolutely will not be making a ‘best orgasm’ trophy for me.” She shot both her parents a look. “I mean that. If I see one, I’m chucking it out the window.” Twilight giggled softly at the exchange, shaking her head. “She’s getting there. I had no idea her parents gave her trophies for everything. That explains her inflated ego, honestly.” She earned that ego in your native timeline, Twilight Sparkle, or do you deny that she earned a number of actual accolades? Young Flyer’s champion, fastest promotion from cadet to active Wonderbolt, Element of Loyalty, hero of Equestria three times over. Sighing, Twilight shock her head. “I was just trying to cheer myself up, Dahaka, not deny anything.” Shifting her stance, she made herself known to Dash once more. “Think we’ll need to take another break, or will we be able to get her back to normal in one more go?” she blinked. “Wait, what? Active Wonderbolt?” Dash gave a slight nod before pushing her mother away at last. “Alright, you cheered me up. I have to get ready for work now, so...” Using her wings, she shooed them to the door. “Go on, get outta here.” It happens maybe a month into your future. You won’t remember much of these events anyways, so it will most likely still be a joyous surprise for all of you. As for being able to get her as close to normal as possible, we’ll have to wait and see. “Alright, champ. We’ll let you get washed up and ready. Think you can smuggle home a pickle triple combo for me, compliments of management?” Bow winks as he backs out of the room and starts pulling the door closed. Letting out a sigh of relief, Dash looked back at Twilight. “I don’t know what you are but... I feel like I know you.” Sitting down, she hung her head. “I really hope I didn’t take anything, my folks are so happy that I got my act together, and I don’t want to be that kind of pony again.” Twilight steps forward, her center horn lighting up as she creates the illusion of a smiling mare’s face in front of her head. One smooth motion has her hand on Rainbow’s head and her voice echoes understandably in the cyan flyer’s ears. “You never were that kind of pony in my memories, Dash, and once I’m done, you will never have been that kind of pony. I swear by Celestia, Luna, and Cadance that I am real, and you are not high....on drugs. Because you are high, in the air. I mean, this is Cloudsdale after all.” “Okay, yeah, I definitely know you, but trying to remember is like flying straight into a fifty wingpower headwind. I’m not getting anywhere.” She smiled, and appeared even more relaxed than when she was drunk and begging for death. “Will I remember you doing this once we’re done?” “No, you won't, just like you don’t remember how I found you.” Twilight's smile turned sad. “Your memories of me, as things should be, won't come back until I fix all of us.” Arching her fingers, she began to reinsert them. “Just know, I won't stop until you get your dreams back.” “All of us? How many ponies are messed up like me? Do I know any of them?” “You know all of them, Rainbow Dash, they’re our best friends, ponies we couldn't live without if we tried. I'm going to start again, Rainbow, as I said, you won't remember this. This is goodbye for now.” “I hate goodbyes. Ever since Fluttershy when I never got to say mine to her face, but if I won’t remember you anyways, it’s not really a goodbye. It just means that I’ll have a new friend again the next time we meet.” “That's... Really nice, Rainbow,” Twilight replied, asserting her power once more. “I promise, you won't have to wait long.” Lifting Dash back into the air, the rainbow of other possibilities reappeared. Breathe, relax, and this time remember to freeze time before we begin to ease her to the next stopping point. If fate is kind, we will not have to deal with another backlash. “Right, freeze time, I forget I can do that...” She gave Rainbow one last smile before bringing time to a halt. “Let's do this.” Moving her arm once again, she moved Dash through the remaining possibilities. The room changed once more, old racing medals and trophies appearing on the walls. After one or two moves, the hay burger uniforms vanished and a flight school coach outfit replaced it. “How close do you think we can get? If my understanding of this is correct, we won't be able to get her perfect until we fix Fluttershy.” We can ease her to the point where she’s in the reserves now. Slow down a bit, her thread is straining slightly. That's it, just like that. When we finish, she will be Loyalty again, and put the first crack in Starlight’s plagiarism. The main difference between the Dash you know and the Dash she will be for now, is that this one will be flying and racing in honor of the memory of her friend rather than giving up because of it. “Good to hear,” Twilight replied, anticipation growing in her chest. “And like dominos, Dash’s influence will reassert itself, right?” If only things would be so simple as to all fall in line once the foundation is set in place. Your analogy is apt, Twilight, but you misjudge where we are in the process by a fair margin. Right now we’re still setting up the first of five pieces that will radiate major changes outward. Look at the coach uniform. You’ve gotten her to the point where she’s certified to teach advanced stunt flight to students. A few more steps and you erase an old injury that kept her from recent competitions. “Right,” Twilight responded, more than a little embarrassed. “I suppose this is why I'm the Princess of Friendship and not the Princess of Time.” She paused for a moment, thinking. “There isn't one of those, is there?” Not yet, no. Keep picking up on how this body works and the powers it holds so easily, and I may petition to have you ascended in the event of your untimely demise. “I’m already ascended,” Twilight responded, continuing to move Dash along her path. “But uh, I'll keep that in mind for now.” Not above the fourth dimension, you aren’t. Your mortal existence is still tightly bound to the dimension of time. Your life expectancy has extended greatly as a result of your evolution beyond being a mere unicorn, but you and the other four princesses are still mortal and able to be killed. Celestia and Luna would take far more effort than it’s worth, but they could still die. “Right, let's just focus on getting Rainbow fixed, and not send me into an existential crisis more than I already am.” Existential crisis? I am unfamiliar with that phrase. “Don’t worry about it,” Twilight grumbled, shaking her head. “It’s only something us mortals have to worry about.” I believe I have offended you. That was not my intention. We do not often have opportunities to conduct a civil discussion about such matters. Perhaps it is time to send an envoy to Luna once more, to see if we can obtain a clearer picture of society as we used to. “Wait, Luna knows about you?” Twilight asked, moving Dash through another series of points. “Shouldn’t we go to her then? Maybe she can help us?” The Luna of this world knows of you as a wanted criminal who was responsible for stealing pieces of ponies’ souls in a mad effort to force her own cutie mark to emerge. Assuming Starlight did not send a missive to the sisters about capturing and deciding to rehabilitate you, that is. She has been hostile to us in the past because we torment our targets through dreams, and she would likely think we were hunting the wrong mare, as she sees Starlight as the hero that you were. The room changes drastically as they move closer to the desired point, with much of the clutter of a lived-in room being replaced with even more awards, trophies, and parental mementos that a child would not keep on their own, such as a framed diaper, for some reason. Twilight could feel timelines starting to grind together, Moondancers and Rainbow Dash’s. Her arm slowed at a few spots from the goal, pushing against what was. The two series of events clashed, each threatening to overwrite the other. “Come on!” she hissed forcing her arm to move. “I’m sorry, Moondancer, but this is Dash’s life, and she’s getting it back!” Push no harder, Twilight. Look down at Loyalty. She is becoming harder to move because time is being strained to keep her in this location. Keep hold of her and start walking about, following the pull that time exerts to find where she should be right now. You have done well so far, and she feels none of the strain that I can see. “Right... walk around... I can do that...” Twilight nodded, standing back up, making sure not to put too much pressure on Dash’s neck. She began to walk, prodding around for the flow of time. Two things happened as she approached the door out of Dash’s room. A slight tug was felt running from Dash’s body up through her shoulders, and Dash also began to feel more solid, more real, slightly heavier despite the vast decrease in bulk from earlier. Heavier means down as well, Twilight. Next time we will hope we don’t have to move too much physically, though Honesty will present a unique challenge...and Laughter. The pull is gentle, so we shouldn’t need to move her too far. “Okay, looks like we’re going down.” Spreading her wings, Twilight let herself fall through the clouds. Catching herself, she was very happy that her wings didn’t need air to fly at the moment. “Okay, find the flow again and follow it along...” Finding the flow and following it along leads to the kitchen of the house, where two distinct versions of each of Rainbow’s parents stand in different places. Each one is slightly transparent, looking more like illusions than living ponies. “Okay, uh... which one do I go with?” Twilight asked, looking between them. She took a moment to study both, looking for any clue that would help her decide. Don’t use your eyes. Use your friend. The pull will be quite subtle, but she will want to move to one place in particular if you use the smallest amount of pressure possible to finish moving her to the right on our spectrum. Twilight closed her eyes, stepping between the pair of parents. Focusing solely on Dash, she felt for the tells, her arm almost moving on it’s own. In the end, she allowed Dash to guide her to the pair on the right. Releasing Dash from her hold, she stumbled backwards. A great snap rang out through time as Moondancer’s connection to the Element of Loyalty was severed and Dash’s renewed itself. The world wobbled and reordered itself and Twilight knew if she was not one with Dahaka, her mind would have been torn asunder at the sight. Relax, breathe. This is normal. We just succeeded in completely undoing Starlight’s erasure of the rainboom itself, but not the other alterations. You noticed the resistance as two equally powerful Loyalty elements were forced against time and history, correct? “Yeah, I did.” Twilight stepped back, letting time resume. Reality shuddered again, taking a few moments to readjust. The still transparent copy of Rainbow’s parents faded away, leaving Dash and the other pair to solidify. “Cursed Crash to Wreck Wonderbolts. Filly never formally accused of killing her best friend 'saves' entire class at academy from rogue tornado.” Bow Hothoof read from the headline of the paper in front of him before tossing it aside. “Honestly, Rainbow, you can’t pay any attention to this kind of propaganda. Whoever wrote that was out to make you look like the villain, but we know better.” “We know it’s not your fault that Fluttershy died. You even told us that you’d been sticking up for her before the race. We were there for everything you went through after the funeral, when you started wearing that pink and yellow scarf everywhere…” “Hey, I liked that scarf!” Dash snapped before flinching. “Sorry, I didn’t mean to yell.” Fluffing her wings, she glanced at the paper. “I just... the only reason I fly like I do, is to make it up to her. Besides you guys, she was the only one who ever thought I could be the best...” Shaking her head, Dash puffed her chest out. “That’s why there’s no way in Tartarus I’m gonna let some guy like that scare me off!” “You do realize, of course, that we’re still upset with you for trying to keep this a secret. Something as big as getting into the reserves, as one of the first members of the reserves even, that’s something that deserves some celebration, Dash. I know as you’ve gotten older you’ve enjoyed our...enthusiasm less and less.” “We aren’t completely blind after all.” Windy chimed in as she placed one of three plates of waffles on the table, freeing her mouth. Two more were balanced on her wings until she made a graceful pirouette and slid one across the table in front of Bow and then reversed the spin to allow the other to slide itself off and stay almost perfectly in place in front of her. “Right, and you’re not an active part of the shows either at this point, but you’re, what, third on the list for them to pick up in the event of an emergency?” Twilight smiled beneath her distorted visage, watching the three chatting way about Dash’s future prospects. “Who do we fix now? Go right to Fluttershy, or do we have to go in a certain order?” We may restore them in any order you like, however we will only be able to restore one roughly every twenty hours. Our duties are so much less taxing when we can simply drain the extra time from someone and go home. Even chasing them down across continents and through time is less taxing than slowly and carefully manipulating their history. Except for one griffon. That vulture managed to run a Dahaka so ragged that he forgot who he was supposed to be chasing, and then couldn't reconstitute himself after falling into the ocean. May his sands find freedom in the wastes at the End of Time. Twilight reached up and brushed away something from the corner of their eyes as she felt some minor irritation. Small shards of glass fell through the floor of the cloud house to fall harmlessly in the wilderness below the floating city. “We cry... glass?” Silicate crystals. Dahaka are spirits more than physical beings, and we animate sand to form bodies and interact with the physical world. Merging with an organic entity can provide extra benefits, such as reduced vulnerability to water. A dahaka that becomes injured or confused may end up trapped in the sand they have gathered, unable to free themselves to return home. They, effectively, die if they are unable to find some way of healing themselves. If you bring us to a desert, we can recharge a little faster and you could form a mirror to perhaps reshape our body slightly? We are aware that mortals sometimes experience problems if their body does not suit them. “Right, okay, that’s a little odd, but I can live with it for now.” Twilight phased herself completely out of physical contact to drop through the clouds before spreading her wings to fly towards the Mild West. She didn’t even notice the small flash of light from her hips or chest. Starlight gaped at Moondancer’s throne. She could see the violet moon and three lavender stars pulsing and fading away slowly. Her eyes widened, thoughts of the earlier creature filling her mind. Had it... killed Moondancer? The thought made bile rise in her throat, and already blame began to bubble forth in her mind. “I should have stopped it, and now Moondancer...” she bit her lip, drawing a few drops of blood. Before she could finish voicing her thought, the cutie mark faded completely out of view and left the throne blank and dull. Taking a shaking step forward, her eyes watched as rainbow colored energy surged across the surface. Color began to swirl and concentrate where the cutie mark had been, forming a blotch that slowly separated into smears of red, yellow, blue, and white. The blue began to spread and form an outline and series of highlights around and within the white before spearing down, snaking up and left, then shooting back down again. “No...it can’t be.” Despite her protest, the yellow began to sweep up and mimic the contours of the lower blue section, only slightly wider and longer towards the top. The red smudge wasted no time before painting itself as the finishing stroke along the right, creating a curved lightning bolt design under a white cloud. “NO! NO! I stopped that! I ended her race with a faceplant into a pillar! NO!” She punctuated her denial by rearing up and bringing her forelegs down on the seat of the throne in a stomp. Then the world exploded. Her eyes and ears were both assaulted; one by a riot of light and color, and the other by the sharp and extended crack of something breaching the sound barrier. A rainboom had just gone off right in front of her face, and she found herself to have been blown across the room once she had blinked away the temporary blindness and the world stopped spinning. “Oh...buck my life, that hurt. Oh my head.” She groaned as another set of memories came flooding in, conflicting with, but not overwriting, the memories she had of the last year or so with Moondancer and the other girls with Rainbow Dash in her place as the Element of Loyalty in all official duties. ”Oh by Faust this is getting confusing.” The main door of the throne room opened after another few seconds and Twilight Sparkle walked into the room with a stack of paper as well as a few art supplies suspended in her telekinesis. “Starlight, what was tha- oh, that's what that flash of color was, you fixed the map while I was getting the paper. You could have just told me you knew how to do it, you know." Starlight turned to snap at Twilight about how she hadn’t done anything, only for her jaw to drop to the floor as her eyes registered an anomaly. There, on Twilight’s flank, was a pink star with a sideways figure-eight made of six thick white lines superimposed over it. Her headache seemed to intensify tenfold in an instant. Today was going to be a VERY long day.