Twilight Sparkle reappears in her library with a loud crack, depositing Spike next to the pile of books. “Oh, Spike!” she lets out in a loud wail, a pillow flying through the air for her to bury her face in. She screams through the pillow; it barely deadens the sound. “What am I going to do?”
“Well, Rarity likes eating ice cream,” Spike offers, getting up to make his way to the kitchen. He yawns. “Probably could do with some coffee, too.”
“I don’t need succulents or stimulants!” Twilight slaps a hoof against the table, barely avoiding the nearest book and lightly enough to not leave a mark. “The Elements of Harmony didn’t work! Why didn’t they work?”
“Well, maybe because they aren’t supposed to be a catch-all solution to every one of our problems?” Spike shrugs as Twilight huffs. “I mean, don’t you have a fail-safe spell that will fix everything?” Twilight nods, though not very enthusiastically. “Have you ever cast it?”
“Well, no,” Twilight admits, scratching at the floor glumly.
“And why not?” Spike folds his claws across his chest.
“Because I’m afraid it will fail,” Twilight admits in a quiet voice.
“Exactly. Tough problems like this aren’t going to be solved by just waving a horn around.” Spike taps a claw against his chin. “Remember what it was like with the Cutie Mark Crusaders?”
Twilight stares at Spike for a few seconds, as if she is thinking through all the times with the Crusaders. “The time with the tree sap?”
“They all had tree sap,” Spike drolly replies.
“The time when Diamond Tiara got her cutie mark and they were all bummed for a week?”
Spike shakes his head. “Closer.”
“When I pulled all the chaos magic inside of them together, and they got their cutie marks?”
Spike raises an eyebrow. “Just you?”
Twilight’s eyes brighten. “Of course! It wasn’t just me, I had Friends there to help me!”
“Exactly!” Spike smiles as Twilight stands up. “Wait, what are you doing?”
“Getting Starlight! I’ll be right back!” Twilight disappears in a crack of magic, leaving Spike sighing to himself.
Twilight appears high above Canterlot, studying the train tracks leaving the capital city. She reorients herself to the northeast, another flash of magic taking her to a station in the seeming middle of nowhere. Her wings carry her along until she spots a thin row of houses, following the path Starlight told Doug of how to get to Our Town.
There is a surprising amount of activity in the small village, a gloomy procession of ponies proceeding into one of the houses. A quick scan reveals the ponies exiting the house are actively being drained, their coats slightly duller than their counterparts. She frowns at the lack of a certain pink unicorn, landing next to one of the undrained ponies. “Hello, my name is Twilight Sparkle.”
“Welcome!” the stallion says with a cheery smile, though it immediately fades to the pursed look everypony else shares. He looks her up and down. “If you don’t mind me asking, what brings a Princess to our little corner of Equestria?”
“I’m looking for Starlight Glimmer. Is she around somewhere?”
The stallion motions with a hoof to some of the hoofhills. “She’s at the cave, monitoring the crystal. There was… an accident. Why?”
“I need to talk to her. Thank you for the help,” Twilight says, perhaps more curtly than she could have, as she teleports in the indicated direction. She follows the rough trail leading to one of the caves, following the constant surge of magic inside.
The glow inside grabs her attention, her eye instantly drawn to the single blown out section. Dozens of cutie marks remain, encased in the crystal; several are shaking, and one begins vibrating violently. Starlight Glimmer, cutie mark of an equals sign, is standing next to the Cutie Mark Crusaders, each markless. Her horn flares as she consults a list, a section of crystal sliding open. The vibrating cutie mark slips out, but rather than return to its owner it dissipates into nothing.
“Hello, Starlight Glimmer,” Twilight says as she steps forward into the room. “Can you talk?”
Starlight Glimmer shrugs. “Just watching the future of Equestria slip away, one cutie mark at a time. What are you doing here?”
Twilight frowns at the implication. “I came to ask for your help.”
“Me.” Starlight turns as another cutie mark disappears into the aether. “Why?”
“Because your brilliant insight helped these three,” Twilight motions to the Crusaders, “and I’m hoping you can pull it off again.”
“The great Twilight Sparkle admitting she isn’t big enough for the job? Wow, it must really be important.” Starlight horn flares again as she turns back to the crystal.
“You read the letter,” Twilight says, growing impatient. “Are you in?”
Starlight bows her head, choking back a sob, her sarcastic exterior crumbling. “We’re not making it out. I can’t help. You’re out of ideas, if you’re coming to me. And with Celestia and Luna gone…”
“They’re not gone. We can still do this.” Twilight finds Starlight’s cutie mark, sliding open the panel.
“What are you doing?” Starlight demands, watching Twilight warily.
“You’ll definitely want your cutie mark for this.” Twilight’s horn glows, sending Starlight’s cutie mark careening towards the startled unicorn. The teal and purple wisp of magic slams into her, knocking the unicorn down. She slowly gets to her hooves as Twilight opens a different cage, that cutie mark dissipating.
“I see. It really does make a difference.” Starlight pauses for a moment before her contemplative expression fades to a scowl. “I hate it.” Starlight Glimmer huffs. “Not you, or my cutie mark, but this.” She motions to the area around her. “That I was wrong, that these cutie marks really do give us purpose.”
The Cutie Mark Crusaders wisely stay silent, merely scratching another name off the list.
“You’re still welcome,” Twilight says with a smile, the first she’s had in what feels like a long time. “To stay with us. To be Friends. Once this is all over and taken care of.”
“Yup.” Starlight takes a deep breath, closing her eyes. “Okay, back to the problem at hoof. What have you done?”
“Um, we tried the Elements of Harmony. They didn’t work, and nearly fully drained the other Element Bearers.”
Starlight opens an eye to regard Twilight. “Have you tried hitting him with a hoof?”
Twilight rolls her eyes, “No, and we haven’t tried turning him off and then back on again. Why? What are you thinking?”
“Well, maybe we should start with that.” Starlight’s horn glows, the last door opening, leaving a marred giant crystal and a much dimmer glow than before. She sighs, a last look at her life’s work as she takes two steps towards Twilight. “Where is he?”
“Ponyville.” Twilight steps next to Starlight. “Ready?”
Starlight shrugs, the two disappearing with a very loud crack.
“So,” Twilight says as they appear in the center of the Golden Oaks Library, “how do we turn him off? Get him to go to sleep?”
“Has he?” Starlight asks, inspecting Twilight. She frowns at the alicorn’s tired sigh. “Have you?”
“I don’t think so. I’m too wired to sleep, and I bet he’s the same way.”
“Well, it’s a start. But there’s another way to put somepony to sleep.” Starlight mimes hitting herself in the head with a hoof.
“Okay, well, Rainbow Dash tried something like that, but he didn’t even flinch. Granted, she didn’t hit him very hard.” Twilight pauses. “With all that magic… how hard do I need to hit him?”
“I would liken it to a gemstone.” Starlight draws a hoof over a wooden desk, leaving a long groove. She picks up Star Swirl’s spellbook, leafing through it. “You just have to be harder than he is.”
Twilight stares at her own hoof, twisting it this way and that and imagining it striking Doug. “I’m going to need more power.”
Almost on cue, not one but three alicorns land outside the Golden Oaks Library. Cadance enters first, staying well away as Celestia and Luna.
“You... “ Twilight says, confused at their approach. “What are you doing here?”
“The drain underestimates the power needed to raise the moon.” Celestia steps forward, bowing down. “I suspect it will be the same with the sun.”
“We propose giving you our remaining magic,” Luna says, motioning to Celestia, then joining her Sister. “We hope that you will be able to carry on in our stead. With the ponies of Equestria bravely giving of themselves, we should be able to weather the loss.”
“That… that could work.” Twilight nods, turning to Starlight. “With the remaining Alicorn magic, I might be able to dislodge the spell from Doug. Without a lid on his bottomless well it should all escape, hopefully returning to everypony.”
“And if that fails?” Celestia asks, glancing at Starlight as she holds up Star Swirl’s spellbook.
“Time travel.” Starlight flips to a page almost to the end.
“And you are?” Cadance asks, readying herself as if for battle.
“Starlight Glimmer. I helped Twilight with a magical problem before, and she requested my help.” She turns to Twilight. “All you have to do is go back in time with this spell, to a week ago, and tell yourself what’s going to happen. Then we find Tirek before any of this can happen, and stop Doug from meeting up with him.”
Twilight considers for a second before she sighs. “It won’t work.”
“Why not?” Starlight demands, glaring at Twilight.
“Because it didn’t happen.” Twilight motions towards the book. “That spell requires a closed loop. If I never met myself from the future, then I can’t go to the past and tell myself something.”
Starlight lets out a long sigh, looking back at the book. Gears turn in her mind as she starts muttering to herself.
“But time travel is extremely finicky,” Twilight Sparkle says, glancing to Celestia for confirmation. She studied with Star Swirl, after all. “And a lot of it is linked to dimensional travel. After all, according to the infinite universe theory: every decision everypony makes, and maybe even more than that, results in two or more universes splitting off. Time travel is very frequently misconstrued as going back in time when instead you’re traveling to another one of those universes.”
“And you need an extraordinarily large amount of power to do so,” Celestia adds. “Not the kind we could provide on a moment’s notice, even if each of us was at full strength. You would need a…” Celestia trails off for a moment before continuing, “You would need to find a ‘when’ when that already happened, where the fabric of space and time was already weakened.”
“You know of one,” Twilight says, turning to regard the white alicorn.
“Yes,” Celestia admits, glancing towards Sweet Apple Acres. “It was the moment Doug arrived in Equestria. It was masked by a disturbance at another location, a temple that housed the capacitor that provided the energy.”
“Starlight, can you work that out?” Twilight asks, the pink unicorn somewhere between a scowl and a look of euphoria brought on by reckless abandon.
“In what time frame? Maybe if I had exact coordinates, both spatially and temporally. We’d need to account for the rotation of the planet, which means you leaving at exactly the same time you want to arrive.” Starlight frowns at the difficulty. “You have all that information?”
“We do,” Celestia confirms, writing it down.
“If I only had some confirmation this would work,” Twilight says, still unsure.
All of a sudden a raspberry glow appears in the middle of the library. It slowly expands, growing brighter and brighter, pressing everypony to the walls as it soon envelopes half the library.
“What’s going on?!” shouts Twilight Sparkle, her own horn flaring and ready to shield herself.
Everypony takes a step back, gasping as a second Twilight Sparkle appears out of the light, collapsed against the floor of the library.
“You’re me!” Twilight exclaims, bounding up and down in her best Pinkie Pie impersonation. “Do you have some super important message from the future? Oh, I can’t wait to hear it! What-”
“Celestia, please silence her,” the second Twilight asks as she gets up, reading off a note card. “I have important news, and she’ll interrupt it.”
“How do you know this?” Celestia asks, though she complies, a golden glow surrounding Twilight number one. She looks quite cross, and probably able to overpower Celestia in her weakened state, but sits down and crosses her forelegs across her chest.
“Because I know me. Now, I know what you’re thinking sounds risky, but it all works out in the end. You see, all you have to do is-” Twilight cuts off as she disappears into nothing.
“Oh, come on!” Twilight shouts, the golden glow around her fading. “Seriously? I couldn’t prepare anything better than that?”