Since meeting Discord, Spike had figured out a number of things. The chief among them being: if noise was coming out of Discord’s mouth, make it stop! He had tried to tell Twilight, tried to get her away before whatever plan caused the draconequus to put on his grin came to fruition, but she had just ignored him in favor of...listening to Discord?
Twilight really was out of it if she had decided to throw away Spike advice in favor of the draconequus’s.
There was a rise in temperature and Spike looked back at Celestia. The mare’s coat take on a slightly golden hue as her mane began to go from a multitude of color to a single blazing orange. “You?” Celestia asked in a voice that made Spike’s entire skull vibrate despite the fact it was still the same volume as what she usually used. There was just more power behind the words. “All this time, we’ve waited with baited breath, for YOU?”
Twilight pulled in on herself as her look of confusion became one of fear. “W-What? W-What’s going on? P-Princess? I don’t understand. H-How do you know about me traveling through time?”
Chrysalis put on a frown as she pulled her head back a little. “Oh, that’s what this is,” she grumbled before looking over to the blazing alicorn. “Okay Tia, you’ve frightened the foal, now you can calm down-”
“HURRY UP AND GO, TWILIGHT!” Discord shouted at the top of his lungs before he hefted the purple pony as high as he could and tossed her over the heads of both quadrupeds. “I’LL COVER YOU!” With that, he jumped at both horned equines with his arms outstretched to grab onto their horns.
Then, the entire erupted in a conflagration that filled Spike’s vision with fire. The dragon heard Chrysalis shoot off several curses attached to Celestia’s name before the buzzing of her wings told him she had flown up to the ceiling. Not one to waste an opportunity, Spike quickly dashed through the flames and out into the living room, where Twilight was shaking off the dizzy spell caused by Discord’s throw.
With one last shake of her head, Twilight looked back to the dragon. “Come on Spike, let’s go!”
As he jumped onto the alicorn’s back, which didn’t make her wince in pain this time, Spike looked back into Twilight’s bedroom to see Discord going through the window, his body covered in flames, and laughing at something Spike just didn’t understand. “W-What’re we doing?” he asked as Twilight reared up in preparation for a swift gallop.
“We gotta get back, Spike! Back to the past!” she shouted as they went through the door and into the hallway.
Spike tried to wrap his head around the sudden change in Twilight’s thinking, but came up short. “What happened to resting, getting something to eat and some sleep!”
“Two out of three!” Twilight shouted as she galloped along.
“TWILIGHT SPARKLE! YOU GET BACK HERE RIGHT NOW YOUNG LADY!”
With Celestia’s voice shaking the very foundations of Twilight’s castle and actually making the purple alicorn’s legs skid to a halt, Spike held onto the pony’s back for all he was worth before before the sheer strangeness of what he had just heard made him speak. “Uh, Twilight? Did Celestia just yell at you like she was your mom?”
The question snapped Twilight out of whatever autonomic response that had caused her to stop moving and looked back at Spike in a panic. “Princess Celestia is evil!” she exclaimed.
“Twilight, I think you need to take a deep breath and calm down,” he told her. “What makes you think that Celestia could be-”
“She’s evil Spike! And so am I!” the purple pony exclaimed before she frowned and looked down at herself. “I think. It makes sense. If Princess Celestia is evil, then I’d be evil too. The other I...me, whatever! That’s the only reason Trixie would be living here and my menor-how do I even have a mentor? I had a teacher, Princess Celestia, and that was all I ever needed.”
Oh no, Spike thought as he hopped off of Twilight’s back so he could look her in the eyes. She had a harder time ignoring things that were right in front front of her face. And with the purple pony quickly getting trapped in a logic loop of her own making, Spike needed all the help he could get to snap her out of it. “I think Trixie’s more annoying than evil, Twilight,” he told her. “And now that I think about it, I think I might have seen her back when you were in magic school. Maybe the two of you became friends back then this time around.”
Twilight’ panicked expression slowly twisted into one that had Spike worrying that she might lose her lunch for a few seconds before she frowned at Spike’s suggestion. “I could never be friends with Trixie!” she said before straightening up. “Which means I would have to be evil. Ergo, Princess Celestia would have to be evil! Didn’t you see what she did in the fake Twilight’s bedroom?”
“Didn’t you do something like that once before?” Spike pointed out.
Twilight rolled her eyes angrily at the reminder. “That’s just because I’m one-sixteenth kirin on my mother’s side, Spike. But this, this is different! This is big. Really Big! Princess Celestia, s-she, what if she went evil like Luna and-”
“Hey, where is Luna?” Spike asked as he realized they hadn’t heard anything about the moon princess at all in the some thirty minutes they had been in this Equestria.
“This isn’t about Luna, Spike!” Twilight snapped frantically as the dragon saw the panic in her eyes continue to build as her breaths became more frantic. “This-this isn’t, this isn’t...we have to get back home!”
As much as the instincts he had developed over the years of dealing with Twilight told him to just step aside and let the purple pony wear herself out until she was too tired to argue with him, Spike couldn’t bring himself to do so just yet. Because he didn’t know what kind of damage it would cause to literally everypony’s lives. “Can we?”
Spike had to admit that while he probably would have agreed with Twilight's single-minded approach to things before, after talking to Chrysalis and having his worldview broken in regards to Rarity, maybe they did need to stop and think for a second, or sixty.
Twilight’s frown changed from one of anger to confusion. “What? Of course I can, we still have the scroll with the spell on it.”
Ignoring the bad feeling in his gut he got just from thinking about it, Spike brought up the question he had asked himself earlier. “Twilight, what happens to the world when we go back in time?”
“Huh?” Twilight asked turned a little sour at the question. “What do you mean, what happens to the world? We go back in time! It makes everything earlier.”
“Wha?-No, that’s not-” Spike tried to think of a better way to phrase the question of what happens to the ponies they leave behind...if they even continue to exist. At least, in a more gentle way so that the alicorn’s already frayed mind didn’t snap completely. “Twilight, just stop and think for a second-”
“There’s no time to think, Spike. We have to get away from the evil Celestia!” Twilight exclaimed.
When the familiar tickle of Twilight’s magic lifted him off the ground, Spike struggled against it in vain. “Celestia’s not evil!”
Twilight glared back at the dragon as Spike floated upside down in her magic. “Yes she is, Spike. Every Equestria has been worse than the one before it. And you know what’s worse than an Equestrian wasteland? An evil Princess Celestia!”
After slapping Spike across her back, Twilight went back to running, down the hallway and looking around wildly for another route or something. “She was just angry, not evil!” he said before thinking back to the conversation from earlier. “Probably about you time traveling!”
“She was evil, Spike. I know Princess Celestia, and that Celestia was evil! She was married to Chrysalis!” Twilight argued.
Spike groaned. “Then this is the happiest tyranny I’ve ever heard of,” he grumbled before thinking of a way to maybe present Twilight with some factual evidence that would break her out of her self-feeding thought process. “What about that guard we met?”
“She looked evil!” Twilight shot back as they found the stairs.
“Yeah, but, she acted really nice, right?” Spike told her.
Twilight snorted. “Plenty of evil ponies act nice when you meet them!”
“Okay, let’s go find your friends, Rainbow Dash is in, uh, Vanhoover, or Baltimare, right?” Spike said. “Let’s find and ask them if Princess Celestia is evil.”
“They’re not my friends, Spike,” the alicorn told him. “They’re that other Twilight’s. I’m trying to get my friends back!”
And what happens when we do manage to fix everything just the way it was, and find another Twilight standing next to them, wondering who this Twilight is? Spike asked himself. Although, if they made everything exactly like the way it had been, then wouldn’t the new Twilight and Starlight just repeat the process. Which meant...if going back in time erased the present…
“Oh pony feathers,” Spike mumbled as that particular scenario played out in his mind. “Twilight, we really need to quit while we’re ahead.”
Twilight got to the bottom of the end floor stairs and stopped, then spun around so fast Spike fell off of her back and onto the floor before she reached out with both hooves to pull his face up to hers. “No, Spike. It’s hard, I know. I’m just a breath from collapsing myself. But we have to keep going. Next time. Next time, things will be better. Y-You’ll see.”
As he looked up at Twilight, her nervous eyes much too wide and her hooves quivering, something occurred to Spike. “You’ve already realized that it’s hopeless, haven’t you?” he asked. All the times they went back and forth, doing it over and over again, fighting Starlight with things getting worse and worse, then the one time where Starlight doesn’t appear for some reason Spike didn’t understand, Twilight ends up in a world where Princess Celestia almost roasted her. After their last trip, Starlight had done something to change the rules and now, Twilight couldn’t do anything to stop her.
Tears began to swell in Twilight’s eyes. “N-No. It’s not...I can still...w-we can still fix things. I-I can still...”
“Twilight, it’s over,” Spike told her sadly. “You know that. I...I think you’ve known that for awhile, now. Haven’t you?” It must have been eating at her since they arrived. Starlight didn’t even show up in Cloudsdale and things still didn’t work out right.
“Starlight didn’t show last time, and we did everything right, a-and this happened,” Twilight said before she sat down and started to cry. “It’s not fair. I did everything I was supposed to. I tried my best. I...I...but she still, she still wouldn’t listen. And now we’re trapped in this evil Equestria!”
Spike moved in close to give Twilight a hug and something to lean on. After letting her have a good three minutes to just let everything out, Spike stepped back. “It’ll be okay, Twilight. This place different, but, it’s not that bad. We can hang tight here for a bit longer and…” Spike stopped unable to think of what to say next. He knew he couldn’t just pop back in time again, but telling that to Twilight now would only cause more problems.
After drying her tears, Twilight shook her head. “No, Spike. You saw Princess Celestia, she-”
“Twilight, I also saw all of Ponyville,” Spike told her as the sound of hooves began coming up the stairs next to them. “There’s plenty of good, kind ponied all around us. Just talk to one of them about Princess Celestia. I’ll bet the next pony you meet-”
“There you are!” a voice that was, unfortunately, becoming more and more familiar to Spike said as the clip clopping on the stairs stopped.
In the spirit of this new world they found themselves in, Spike decided to use one of the words he had learned while on the streets of Ponyville to make this rather impossibly bad turn of luck. “Ah, damnit.”
“Annie Twiliy!” a squeaky voice cried out before an orange and red blur rushed past Spike to attach itself to Twilight’s leg. The little unicorn colt with the orange coat and red mane looked up at the purple princess with sparkling blue eyes. “Are you okay, Annie Twily?”
Twilight looked up from the foal that looked, at the most, half the age of the CMC and over to the lilac unicorn that had just come up the stairs. “No,” she whined before she pulled away from the little colt and backed away. “No. No, no, no, no, no.”
Oblivious to the other history between them, Starlight Glimmer trotted over to Twilight with a confused but worried look as she pushed the tiny colt away. “Twilight, what’s wrong?” she asked. “I heard Celestia yelling, and Princess Chrysalis is leading the guards to search the town for you and there’s that weird table thing in the center of the meeting room giving off a lot of power, and here I find you crying. Twily, what is it? I haven’t seen you like this in years.”
“Why’re you here?” Twilight asked as she reached up and rubbed her head with a hoof before looking down at the floor.
Starlight smiled at her. “Because of you, silly. Twily, you’re my best friend. Now, let’s go-”
“No,” Twilight mumbled before her hooves stopped trembling. “No.”
The response made Starlight blink. “Twily-”
Spike winced as he saw something snap in Twilight’s expression. “STOP CALLING ME TWILY!” Twilight screeched at Starlight before a beam from the purple alicorn’s horn struck the other pony and sent her flying into the wall next to the stairs to cause an audible impact. “We are not friends! We were NEVER friends! I hate you! YOU RUINED MY LIFE!”
“M-Mommy!” the little colt cried out before he rushed over to the unconscious mare.
Ignoring the foal, Twilight looked over to the dragon as she pointed to the unconscious mare on the ground with the worried colt trying to shake her away. “See, Spike? EVIL!” she shouted before the dragon was snatched up by Twilight’s magic as the alicorn quickly moved down the stairs.
“Yeah, I’m really starting to wonder that about you,” Spike deadpanned.
Twilight looked back to the floating dragon with a frown as she moved down the stairs as fast as a purple pony possibly could, apparently having gotten a second wind from Starlight’s sudden declaration of friendship. “What?”
“Twilight, you just blasted a mom who was trying to comfort you in front of her foal,” Spike told her.
“That doesn’t matter, Spike!” Twilight told him right as they reached the bottom of the stairs and run forward to kick the door open to the throne room.
Spike frowned as Twilight looked left and right, to the sides of the doors. “What’s that supposed to mean?”
“We’re going back again, so what I do here doesn’t matter!” Twilight told him as she finished her inspection or...whatever it was.
“I think it does, Twilight! What happened to realizing this is all hopeless and giving up?” he asked Twilight as she brought them to the center of the room, right before the table and looked around in a rush.
Spike’s question made Twilight spin around and frown at him with uncertainty. “I, well...I-I had a moment of doubt! I can have those. But princesses never give up!”
As Twilight’s words ran in his head, Spike couldn’t help but think back to the time when she just stopped fighting after her friends became discordred, let Spike save everyone after Twilight got trapped, just went home when Twilight’s friends told her to go after Discord’s seeds began choking the tree of Harmony, and then there was the time Twilight surrendered to Tirek because he had hostages. “Actually, you tend to give up when the chips are down by a rather lopsided amount.” It was rather surprising she had been fighting Starlight for so long, actually. “What really just happened back there?” All Spike could see was that Twilight had just snapped after Starlight started acting nice to her.
“...w-well, I’m not giving up this time! One more time, I’ll go back one more time and beat Starlight and fix things for everypony!” Twilight declared as she pulled the scroll out from under her wing. “And if that doesn’t work this time, I’ll just do it again, and again until it does! Now let’s go!”
Twilight’s horn lit up and she jumped onto the table before placing Spike on her back. Then fired off a blast of magic at the scroll…only to watch in horror as a bright, golden glow of magic surrounded the scroll to deflect the activation spell.
“You know, one of the signs of insanity is doing something the same way over and over again, expecting different results,” Celestia’s voice echoed throughout the throne room before she just casually walked out of thin air, the space she had been occupying obviously wrapped in some sort of concealment spell. The big princess pulled the scroll away in her magic before her expression became much more sympathetic. “Oh Twily, what did I do to you?”
Spike tensed. “Princess Celestia, wh-what’re you doing here?”
“Well, after learning that you and Twilight appeared in this room, right on top of this table, I had Starlight run an analysis on it and we detected the temporal magic clinging to the harmonic energy. It’s amazing that this thing is still working, considering how badly you’ve been twisting its use,” she said. “So, it was only logical that you two would return here, eventually.”
Despite the fact that she as no longer on fire, the appearance of Princess Celestia had Twilight down on her belly with shaking knees. “P-Princess Celestia, please, I...I need that spell. I need to fix everything.”
A sigh came out of the big princess before she took in a deep breath. “Twilight, are you even listening to yourself? Are you even thinking about what you’re doing?” she asked. “What the consequences are?”
Twilight winced, as if Celestia was using a lash instead of soft words. “Please. I...I have to save my friends,” she cried softly.
“And how many times have you done this? How many failures have you had?” Princess Celestia asked gently despite a small tick in her eye. It as like she was forcing herself to keep a friendly face and calm demeanor. “What makes you think this time around is going to be any different? Twilight, I can see you’re hurting and even with everything you’ve done to my family, it isn’t a pleasant sight to me. So come down here and let me help you.”
There was a long silence in which Spike heard the light creaking of a door opening on the far end of the room opening as Twilight looked over to Celestia, her expression brightening a little. “Help...me?” she asked.
Celestia smiled at her. “Yes, despite everything that you have done, you are still one of my little ponies. Although trying to take the blame for seeing you like this would be quite hypocritical, I can’t help but feel in some small way, guilty for what has happened to you,” she said before her face hardened a little. “What she did to you.”
“That’s it!” Twilight exclaimed happily. “You can help me!”
That bad feeling in his gut started to return, and Spike took a step towards the purple pony. “Uh, Twilight, I don’t think you and Celestia are talking about the same thing here.”
Completely ignoring the dragon, Twilight took a step forward as if she was a drowning mare, reaching out for a lifeline. “You can come back with me. I know we can defeat Starlight with you helping us, Princess! Then, all we have to do is go back again without you, and everything will be right again!”
Celestia’s gentle demeanor evaporated in an instant, the small smile replaced by an angry frown. “You did not just ask me to help you to undo countless lives for your own selfish desires,” she said before a ball of flame appeared underneath the scroll holding the time travel spell. “I can see now that trying to reason with you is the height of foolishness. At the end of the week, I will lay you at the hooves of my daughter and ask for forgiveness for the wounds I’m about to inflict on top of whatever happens to you in the dungeons over the next few days.”
“NOOOOOOOO!” Twilight screamed in desperation as flames threatened to touch the scroll.
Spike found himself wondering that maybe, just maybe...all of this was for the best. Twilight had obviously been pushed far past her limits, with the last ten minutes turning her into an absolute wreck of a mare that couldn’t even think in a straight line. Well, Starlight’s still around, good-Starlight, I mean. Maybe once Twilight’s had some sleep, they can really talk and try to figure something out, he thought to himself. Celestia didn’t seem to want to hurt Twilight, she was just really angry about something.
And what was all that stuff about a daughter?
As the flames of Celestia’s magic touched the bottom of the scroll-“HERE I COME TO WRECK THE DAAAAAAAAAY!”
Spike blinked as Discord suddenly crashed into Celestia, sending both of them out of his field of view momentarily as the flames and Celestia’s magic. A second later, Twilight was on the ground, stomping on the singed scroll. “Don’tburn!Don’tburn!Don’tburn!” she begged in a rush.
There was an enraged shierk from Celestia. “GAAAAH! GET OFF OF ME YOU FOOL! OR I’LL DO MORE THAN DROP YOU OUT A WINDOW THIS TIME” the Princess yelled as she flailed about with Discord on top of her.
“What’s wrong Tia? All these changeling throne pieces your boyfriend put in me make it hard for your magic to work?” he said with a laugh before looking over to Twilight. “I’ve been waiting for this! UNDO IT, TWILIGHT! UNDO IT ALL HAHAHAHAHAHAHA!”
Twilight leaped back onto the table and fired her magic at the scroll. “Come on Spike, we’re going!”
The temporal bubble appeared over Spike’s head as one of the crystal chairs flew back fast enough to give Rainbow Dash a run for her money and slammed into Discord. “NO!” Celestia shouted she got free and glared up at Twilight. “YOU FOOL! DO YOU HAVE ANY IDEA WHAT YOU’RE DOING?!”
“I’m saving my friends!” Twilight cried out as they were pulled upward.
Celestia frowned back at her before the big mare’s horn lit up with an intensity Spike had never seen before. “I will not let you destroy Equestria!” she shouted back at them as her horn pointed right at them.
Spike grabbed onto Twilight in fear. Princess Celestia...she wasn’t about to...do what...he thought she was going to do...was she? Oh buck, she’s really gonna kill us.
Another second ticked by as Celestia stood there, her horn ablaze with enough power that had Spike wondering if being a dragon would be able to protect him at all. Twilight gripped onto him tightly, probably thinking the same thing. They floated closer to the bubble and the rage on Celestia’s face twitched ever so slightly.
When Twilight and Spike were nearly inside, Celestia let out a cry of pure rage and pointed her horn away from Twilight.
Until it was aimed at something right in front of her. A beam of devastating energy short forth from her horn, striking the cutie map.
Spike could do nothing but watch as the crystal artifact shattered into a million pieces from the impact of Celestia’s force beam. “She...she broke the map,” he said in a dull tone.
The force fulling him and Twilight upwards came to a sudden stop.
“No,” Twilight breathed as the magical white sphere that surrounded them began to flicker. “Nononononono!”
Panting heavily, Celestia looked up at the purple alicorn as she grabbed Spike to keep him from falling and began to frantically beat her wings. “It’s over, Twilight.”
“NO!” Twilight screamed before she lit up her horn. The bright light of Starlight’s spell turned to a light purple as Twilight fed her magic into it. “Destination’s still programmed. Magic is still in place. It just needs power. Just needs power!” With one last yank of her head, and a panicked cry from Celestia, Twilight touched her horn to the top of the spell.
And the world around them disappeared.
“W-What just happened?” Spike asked as he looked around the timestream.
“I don’t know, Spike!”
“T-Twilight, what’s going on?”
“I...I’m holding...the spell together w-with, my magic,” Twilight said as she strained under the weight.
Spike pulled in on himself as the bubble around them began to constrict. “Uh, T-Twilight?”
“I need to concentrate!” she said as the bubble closed in around them until Spike could barely move and Twilight continued to talk to herself. “Just one more time. Just one more time. Please, just one more time.”
Floating in the void, Starlight Glimmer wished that she had brought some cards.
Or magazines.
Something to pass the time, at least.
All Starlight had been able to do was think while Twilight was taking her sweet time, and sitting around with just herself and a crystal magic syphon on her head that gave the unicorn a shock whenever Starlight tried to touch it wasn’t a good place to think.
She knew what was coming.
She was ready for it, too.
When Starlight was taken to Cloudsdale again, she would just fall from the sky and hit the ground. It was a fall from a height that would end her life.
She...looked forward to it.
Because she knew that she deserved it.
Back when Starlight had broken into the Canterlot Archives to look for a way of getting back at Twilight Sparkle, she hadn’t even thought about using the time spell she found to save Sunburst. All she had wanted to do was ruin six lives because they disagreed with her on a subject she didn’t really believe in herself.
Starlight snorted at the thought. Equality, what a joke, the unicorn thought to herself. Her philosophy had been nothing more than a catchy word that she used to hide her need to control everyone around her, to keep them under her hoof. Just like she had with Sunburst.
She missed Sunburst.
She...k-killed Sunburst.
And instead of admitting she was wrong, Starlight had kept doubling-down on her bad decisions and twisted thought process. It hadn’t been her fault. He made her do it. It was always somepony else’s fault. Nothing she did was ever wrong! The whole thought process made her feel sick to her stomach.
She laid out on her belly. “Just let me die, already.”
The barrier around her began to flicker, catching Starlight’s attention and jolting the unicorn out of her dulled state. “What the?” she asked as the magic around her continued to destabilize. “Oh no.”
Starlight didn’t understand. The magic for her barrier came from Twilight’s stupid table-map thingy. It was the most powerful artifact that she had ever seen, an unlimited font of magical power. There was no way it could go out!
But if it did...if Starlight tossed out into the temporal void without its protections...she...she would…
Actually, Starlight realized as she failed to construct a scenario from the lack of data. I’m not sure just what would happen to me.
She did know who to blame, though. “Twilight, what did you do?” Starlight asked as the spell continued to fade. Despite how futile it was, Starlight tried to press magic into the spell through her horn. If she could reinforce the magic, there was a chance she might be able to…
A dozen little sparks fly out without any effect. “Well...buck me.”
Once Starlight had realized the way her life had gone, she had been ready to call it quits. The Sunburst that was out there was alive. She didn’t know how, and she didn’t care. All that mattered was that he was okay. But being thrown out into the timestream without a protective barrier or ability to navigate, she...didn’t know what was going to happen to her.
And as the last bit of the magic left in the spell disappeared, all Starlight could do was hope that maybe, just maybe, she would catch a glimpse of Sunburst’s life. And it would be happy.