“Things have been so nice since that Flutter Valley adventure,” said Sunset to herself as she read her book. “Everything has been great and peaceful. Even my normal pessimism is dissipating.” She frowned. “So when is something going to happen to ruin it all? That’s how it always seems to work.”
Sunset stared at the door. It didn’t move.
“Well, might as well enjoy it while it lasts,” she muttered before returning to her book. After reading a few more sentences, she suddenly stopped and resumed staring at the door. It didn’t move.
“Really? Nothing?”
The door continued standing there doing nothing.
“Blargh!” she said as she threw the book aside. “I’ll admit it! I’m bored! Can something happen that’s exciting, as long as it doesn’t involve my life being in danger in any way? It’s so bad I’m even talking to myself out loud about talking to myself out loud!”
Just then, the door opened and Twilight came in. “Hi, Sunset! I know this is kind of out of nowhere, but I was wondering if you could help me with something.”
“Why didn’t you write to tell me you were coming?” asked Sunset.
“I was so excited that I came directly here,” said Twilight, “so there wasn’t much opportunity to write. I’d be here before the mail would have reached you. Anyway, like I said, I was hoping to get your help with something.”
“Does it involve anything that could put my life in jeopardy?” said Sunset.
“Probably not,” said Twilight.
“Probably?”
“You never know,” said Twilight. “Somepony I knew once was eating breakfast, and it turns out it created a vortex that caused a lot of giant crabs to show up and attack.”
“Well, okay, fine, what do you want help with?”
Twilight pulled out a book. “I found this journal of Starswirl the Bearded, which includes what seem to be his final writings. It mentions that he and the other Pillars of Equestria made a sacrifice of some kind to stop the Pony of Shadows, and I wanted your help to try to figure out how to get them back.”
“Why come to me? Why not ask Starlight or Sunburst, who live much closer to you?”
“Oh, I did ask them!” said Twilight. “And they were able to help me decipher this. But they’re also busy developing that ‘minivision’ invention of theirs and weren’t able to offer any additional help.”
“Sure, why not?” said Sunset as she walked over to Twilight. “I was bored anyway. So what’s the plan?”
“First we go to Ponehenge, which is apparently where they last were!” said Twilight. “And then… well, that depends on what we find there.”
“Why don’t you get your brother or his guards to help?”
“They’re busy with something,” said Twilight.
“With what?” asked Sunset.
“Mostly the invasion of the giant crabs I mentioned earlier,” said Twilight. “Since that might take a while, I was hoping you could help out.”
“All right, let’s go,” said Sunset.
“Do you want to bring along your friends?” asked Twilight.
“Well, I suppose they do work as distractions if something goes wrong,” said Sunset.
Twilight looked confused. “Distractions?”
“You know, in the off chance this all ends up unleashing some kind of great evil that attacks us. Having more targets around decreases the odds I’ll end up hit by their attack.”
Twilight stared at Sunset blankly.
“I like living, okay?” said Sunset. “Life isn’t necessarily pain, you know?”
“Uh… sure,” said Twilight, suddenly wondering if Sunset was the right person to ask for help in this matter.
Sometime later, at Ponehenge…
“I’m not sure why we had to come along,” said Lightning Dust. “I don’t know anything about magic. You weren’t here just because you wanted us as shields or something, are we?”
“Why are you asking this now?” said Sunset.
“It makes more sense to ask it now than later!” said Lightning Dust.
“I mean, why didn’t you ask this before, like on the way here?”
“Mostly my short attention span,” said Lightning Dust. “But don’t worry! I’m sure I’d be a great shield! Probably. Maybe. Actually, it’s more likely I’d just charge into danger and get taken out before you yourself were after in danger, therefore not actually serving as a shield at all. You didn’t think this through very well, if you ask me.”
Maybe I should’ve just stuck with reading that book after all, thought Sunset to herself.
“Hrm,” said Twilight. “Well, it seems like just a bunch of ruins nopony has been near for a while.”
“So it’s all a bust?” said Trixie.
“Of course not!” said Twilight. “If there’s one thing I’ve learned, it’s that if you set things up just right, you’ll get some kind of magical explanation! For example, if I put the journal on this stump, it might reveal everything!” She put it on the stump. Nothing happened. “Okay,” she continued, “what about this rock?” She put it on the rock. Abruptly, the journal started glowing. “Ha! I was right!”
An older stallion who was presumably Starswirl appeared, along with various other ponies.
“Starswirl?!” exclaimed Twilight. “I can’t believe you’re here!”
“Uh, did you miss the fact he and the rest are all see-through?” said Gilda. “I don’t think they’re real.” She went over and tried to touch Starswirl, but her claw went through. “Yep, not here. You should get your eyes checked if you didn’t notice the obvious transparency.”
“Actually, I read that partial transparency isn’t that uncommon of a problem for older stallions to suffer from,” said Trixie.
“Really?” said Suri.
“Oh, wait, no,” said Trixie. “I’m thinking of incontinence.”
The holographic Starswirl sent a blast of magic towards the center of the area and a large, shadowy pony appeared. “You summon me at your peril, Starswirl!” it declared. “Once I defeat all of you, this realm will embrace the darkness as I did so long ago!”
“That’s incredibly cheesy dialogue,” said Suri.
As Starswirl’s group and the shadowy pony did battle, the aforementioned shadowy pony continued. “Drawing me here will only make me stronger. You will never defeat me!”
“Seriously, that’s really cheesy dialogue,” said Suri.
“Now, see, if not for the fact I know this isn’t an actual thing, I probably would’ve tried to fight the guy,” said Lightning Dust. “So your shield plan wasn’t very good. I expected better of you, Sunset.”
“Can you stop talking?” said the shadowy pony impatiently. “We’re in the middle of a re-enactment here.”
“Oh, sorry,” said Lightning Dust.
“We did not…” started Starswirl before stopping and frowning. “Uh, I forgot. What was my line here? I got thrown off by the interruption. Darn it, the Magical Hologram Union is going to get really upset about this.” He turned and looked at Sunset and the others, who were staring with completely blank expressions.
“Uh… well… so… okay, I’ll just get to the point. We weren’t here to defeat the Pony of Shadows, but to contain him, which I suppose is sort of the same thing when you get down to it. We trapped him in limbo by taking him there ourselves, thereby banishing all of us. The end.”
“Just as well we didn’t go through with actually showing that,” said the magical holographic Pony of Shadows. “Those special effects would’ve been expensive. Maybe the union won’t mind since the expense was less.” He turned to the group, who were still staring incredulously. “Anyway, we’re off to another gig, so we hope this was useful to you.” The entire holographic group disappeared.
An awkward pause ensued. “Well, I guess we got our answer,” said Flim.
“The worst thing,” said Sunset, “is that I honestly wasn’t that shocked something like that happened.”
“Well… um…” said Twilight. “The weirdness towards the end aside, it’s clear what we need to do now! We should rescue Starswirl and the others! All we have to do is figure out how to free them. I’m sure if we put our heads together, we can figure it out!”
“You mean put our heads together as in work together to figure it out, not put our heads together as in actually meld our minds into one, right?” said Sunset.
Twilight stared blankly at her.
“You know how weird magic can get!” said Sunset. “It wasn’t an unreasonable question!”
“Hang on!” said Trixie. “I just realized something!” She turned to Lightning Dust. “You never answered my question about how you were able to fly around if you got honey on your wings!”
“That was weeks ago,” said Lightning Dust. “Why are you asking me about it now?”
“Because that’s what I forgot!” said Trixie. “Now, I want an answer!”
“I ran over and washed it off with water from a nearby river,” said Lightning Dust.
“Oh,” said Trixie. “Well, why didn’t you say that back then?”
“We got interrupted by Sunset, remember?”
“Well, that clears that up,” said Trixie. She turned back to Sunset. “You can carry on with whatever you were doing now.”
“Sure, let’s go figure it out,” said Sunset to Twilight. “It’d certainly be less irritating than dealing with this.”
Some figuring it out later…
“Got it!” said Twilight. “All we have to do is find the most important relics that belong to Starswirl and the rest of his compatriots. Then we can use them to bring them back. Let’s do it!” She paused. “Uh… how do you think we should get the relics?”
“Enlist the help of your brother to get them?” said Sunset. “He does have an army. Plus there’d probably be some kind of negotiations necessary as some of them seem to be in other countries.”
“Darn it, we’ll have to wait until they’re done with the giant crabs,” said Twilight. “That could take a while. I want to rescue Starswirl as soon as possible.”
“How about you go and help him against the giant crabs?” suggested Sunset. “In fact, now that I think about it, why didn’t you help them before doing all this?”
“Because I think rescuing Starswirl is more important,” said Twilight. “In fact, it’s so important that why don’t we go and find those relics ourselves?”
“What’s the rush?” said Sunset. “Why’s it matter? They’ve been gone for so many years that I doubt a little extra time will make that much of a difference. Heck, for all we know they’re frozen in time and thus it doesn’t matter to them anyway.”
“Hrm… you may have a point,” said Twilight.
Some time later…
Sunset heard a knock on her door and went over to open it. “Oh, hi, Twilight,” she said.
“Great news!” said Twilight. “We’ve gotten everything ready! Now we can rescue Starswirl and the others!”
“What did you need me for, then?” said Sunset.
“You helped me out, why wouldn’t I invite you along to see the actual rescuing?” asked Twilight. “What have you been up to in the meantime?”
“Oh, you know, the usual,” said Sunset. “We had to deal with some evil clones of ourselves, nothing too weird.” She paused. “I can’t believe I consider that sort of thing to be usual now. At least there wasn’t time travel involved. But anyway, sure. I’ll go.”
“Do you want to bring along your friends?” asked Twilight.
“I’m pretty sure they’re all busy with other things,” said Sunset.
One transition later…
“All right, we’ve put all of the artifacts in the right places and done the other necessary work!” declared Twilight. “Let’s do it!”
“Why did you rig up the machine to what looks like one of those things you push down on to make dynamite go off?” asked Sunset.
“So it seems more dramatic when I do it,” said Twilight.
“That seems like a weird thing for you to do,” said Sunset.
“It wasn’t my idea,” said Twilight.
“Then whose was it?” asked Sunset, but was cut off because Twilight had already pushed down on the aforementioned device. This resulted in a lot of cool-looking magical effects that are difficult to convey properly in text. After the budget-breaking effects finished, Starswirl and the others had appeared.
“Yes!” said Twilight. “This is so going to get me another entry in one of those magical peer-reviewed journals.”
“Wait, you did all this for that?” asked Sunset.
“Not just that,” said Twilight. “Why wouldn’t I want to help one of the most famous unicorns get out of the prison he was in?” She went up to Starswirl, who appeared to be in a temporary daze. “So, how are you feeling?”
Starswirl rubbed his forehead. “What… what has happened?”
“You and the others have been trapped in limbo for a lot of years, but I figured out how to get you–”
“What?!” said Starswirl. “No, no, no, no! You must undo what you’ve done!”
“What? Why?” asked Twilight.
“You cannot bring us back!”
“I’m pretty sure she just did,” said Sunset.
Starswirl sighed. “No, I mean you can’t only bring the Pillars back!”
Just then, the Pony of Shadows appeared as well, who laughed evilly. “You might be wondering why I showed up a little laster than the rest of the group, but I was waiting for dramatic effect! In any event, your pathetic attempt to imprison me has failed, Starswirl!”
“You must return us to limbo. It’s the only way to stop him,” said Starswirl to Twilight. He then took notice of the cannon next to her. “Wait. What’s that?”
“Oh, this is the other only way to stop him,” said Twilight.
Quite a while earlier…
“So, just go help out against the giant crabs, then get it all together,” said Sunset. “Though I’ve been meaning to mention something. Are you sure it’s safe to bring them back?”
Twilight looked confused. “Why wouldn’t it be safe?”
“I mean, they sealed themselves away to get the Pony of Shadows with them, right? So there’s a high probability that getting them back would bring him back as well. Do you have some kind of plan on how to deal with the guy if that happens?”
“Um…” said Twilight.
“Wait, you were going to just bring them all back without some plan to deal with the highly probable chance that you’d unleash the Pony of Shadows along with them?”
“When you say it like that, it does seem I didn’t think the plan through very well,” admitted Twilight.
“Well, why don’t we get that big cannon your brother used to beat Nightmare Moon? That would probably do the trick.”
“Oh, that?” said Twilight. “Actually, that was made specifically for Nightmare Moon. It probably wouldn’t work as well against the Pony of Shadows, unless his quasi-quintessence rating was similar enough.”
“Quasi-quintessence rating?” asked Sunset in a confused tone.
“You know, the ratio between one’s photopolaron count and magic sequential variable,” said Twilight.
“Oh, right, that,” said Sunset, not wanting to admit the only one of those terms she actually knew the meaning of was ‘photopolaron count.’ “So, uh, what about making one that does work on the Pony of Shadows?”
“That could take a while,” said Twilight.
“How long?”
“Depends on when they finish dealing with those giant crabs,” said Twilight.
“See?” said Sunset. “Just another reason to go and help out against them. Then you can all get the weapon ready while looking for those relics.”
One return to the present later…
Twilight pushed a button on the cannon and it blasted the Pony of Shadows with incredible force. “What, you didn’t think I’d be dumb enough to bring you back without a plan to deal with him, right?” she said.
“Uh, you kind of were planning to do so until I suggested otherwise,” said Sunset.
“You’re right; let me correct that,” said Twilight as the cannon continued blasting the Pony of Shadows. “What, you didn’t think I’d be dumb enough to bring you back without having somepony else around who was smart enough to make sure I had a plan to deal with him, right?”
“I guess that’s good enough,” said Sunset.
At about this point, the Pony of Shadows was overwhelmed by the canon’s power and vanished. Twilight turned the machine off, and the group looked to where the Pony of Shadows had been. A relatively small gray unicorn was left in its place, sprawled out on the ground.
“Ugh… what happened?” he said.
“Huh, another super-powered enemy who turned out to be a regular pony after you blasted them with enough magical force,” said Sunset.
“That’s Stygian,” said Starswirl. “He was a former ally, but he betrayed us and turned to darkness.”
“No!” said Stygian. “You were the ones who betrayed me. I brought you together. I planned strategy, and I read all I could about the beasts we faced. But I didn't have magic or strength, so nopony ever noticed me. I went to Ponhenge to make my own copies of the artifacts. With them, I thought I could be a Pillar, too, and stand by your side in battle. I never wanted to steal your power. But instead of sharing and letting me help, my friends threw me out. So I became stronger than any of them! The darkness welcomed me when no pony would!”
“Wait,” said Sunset. “So this whole thing was just a stupid misunderstanding? It could have been avoided with just slightly better communication?”
“It looks like it,” said Twilight.
“Well, I suppose it isn’t quite as dumb as Starlight’s motivation,” said Sunset. “Oh well. I guess we send him in for reprogramming, then, like with Luna?”
“Aw, that’s no fun,” said Stygian. “Is it at least Object-Oriented Reprogramming?” he added hopefully.
“You know,” said Starswirl, “with this new information, I think I need to tell Stygian that–”
“Anyway!” interrupted Twilight. “Now that we’ve dispensed with all of that, I have to ask. As you’re the most famous and smartest unicorn in history, is there any chance you’d be willing to teach me everything you know? I’d love to know your thoughts on photopolarons!” As Twilight said this, Stygian was led away by some of the guards that were in this scene the entire time but weren’t mentioned up until this point.
Starswirl looked confused. “Photopolarons? What are those?”
Twilight looked equally confused. “Didn’t you do a lot of research into energy theory? They’re a major, if advanced, part of it.”
“Wait, exactly how long have I been out?” asked Starswirl. “What’s the current date?”
“I have trouble remembering that sometimes too!” said one of the guards. “That’s why I always get a newspaper!” He held up the newspaper to Starswirl.
“I was gone for that long?” said Starswirl. “Well, no wonder! Magic must have advanced enough in the interim that I’m now uninformed in important parts of it.”
“Wait,” said Sunset, “you made that time travel spell, and nopony’s been able to replicate it since; the full version, anyway. I know because Starlight used it in a not-very-well-thought-out plan to try to get revenge on me. But then it stopped working because it turned out it was a demo version. That seems like something you’d know that nopony else does.”
“Oh, that?” said Starswirl. “I never was able to make a full version. Those things always eventually stop working and cancel out any effects of time travel they may have caused. Good for a bit of fun, but not much else. Which is probably a good thing, because if the changes could be permanent, it could cause major problems. Can you imagine living in a world overrun by flesh-eating zombies and flesh-eating leeches?”
“Unfortunately, yes,” said Sunset. “But wait, if there isn’t a full version, why did it say it was a demo version?”
“I probably added it by accident when I was under the influence of that ‘Make Self Incredibly Drunk’ spell that I invented,” said Starswirl.
“Why would you make a spell to do that?”
“I’m not sure,” said Starswirl. “I might have been drunk at the time I invented it.”
“So you don’t have any magical super-knowledge to teach me?” asked Twilight in a disappointed tone.
“Probably not,” admitted Starswirl. “I’ll have to spend some time catching up on all the new magical developments that have happened in the meantime.”
“Well, at least I can probably get an entry in one of the magical journals over this,” muttered Twilight as she walked off.
“Wait,” said Sunset as she followed Twilight, “your only goals were to learn super magic from Starswirl and get an article in a magical journal?”
“Hey!” said Twilight. “Learning super magic is a very worthwhile endeavor! And those magical journals can be quite prestigious!”
“Well,” said Sunset, “it’s just that I thought you idolized him or something from when you were a child and that because of that, you wanted to get him out.”
“When I was a child, I wasn’t even in this universe,” said Twilight. “How would I have been idolizing him if I didn’t know he existed yet?”
“Oh, right, alternate universe and all that,” said Sunset. “I forgot about that. I guess you wouldn’t have as much of an obsession over him as you would have if you had grown up here.”
“So, I’ve kept quiet so as not to interrupt you,” said Somnabula, one of the Pillars, “but what’s changed in Equestria after all these years? Does tech support come to your house on time now?”
“No,” said Sunset.
“Didn’t really get my hopes up on that one,” admitted Somnabula.
“You know what?” said Sunset. “I’m trying to figure out if I’m happy this whole thing got sorted out so easily, or irritated that it meant I’m just stuck sitting around here trying to make conversation. It just felt like there was a big wait for this, and then nothing really happened. There has to be some kind of happy medium between the annoying adventures I keep getting stuck with compared to this sort of dull event.”
“Well,” said Twilight, “what do you think of trying to finish that secret unfinished masterpiece of Starswirl’s? He wasn’t able to get it right. Maybe we can!”
“Oh, that dumb thing?” said Sunset. “I already figured it out by accident. Trust me, don’t bother with it.”
“But what does the spell do?” asked Twilight.
“Uh, nothing as far as I can tell,” said Sunset. “If you cast the unfinished version, it messes up all the cutie marks nearby. Then when you finish it, they’re all back to normal. So it appears that the finished spell does absolutely nothing other than cancelling its previous effects out. Apparently, if you’re the one who finishes it, you get some ascension that affixes the race of whoever happens to be in charge of Equestria to you, but I’m pretty sure that only applies to the first to solve it and is independent of the spell itself.”
“That’s a disappointment,” said Twilight. “Well, unfortunately I don’t really know of anything else for the two of us to do, unless you really want to help with writing that entry for the magical journal.”
“That doesn’t really sound like my sort of thing, unfortunately,” said Sunset. “Of course, knowing my life, I’m sure something is going to happen soon enough. I guess I’ll head back to Ponyville for now.”
Later…
“Okay, I’m back,” said Sunset. “Anything important happen in Ponyville while I was gone?”
“Oh, not really,” said Lightning Dust. “Except–”
“Wait,” said Sunset, “I know how this goes. You’re going to tell me ‘except for’ and then follow it with something really big, like ‘except for the invasion of rogue changelings,’ right?”
“Actually,” said Lightning Dust, “I was going to say ‘except for that cake auction.’ You missed a pretty good one.”
“Huh,” said Sunset.
Suddenly, a large Bugbear started rampaging through town.
“Now, see, I could have done what you said, if you had come back a day later,” said Lightning Dust. “As in, I could have said ‘except for the Bugbear that showed up and started attacking.’ Your timing could have used work.”
Sunset sighed heavily. “Well, I guess we have to deal with this.”
And so the Saga of the Bugbear began. But that is another story. Or at least it would be another story, if not for the fact it all ended quite quickly, because it turns out they’re not actually that hard to defeat.