“Like, time, it’s… it’s not made out of lines! It’s made out of circles!”
The rest of the Elements of Pandemonium and Sunset “Isekai” stared at Insipid in disbelief.
Insipid smiled innocently as she finished her drink that might have been made out of clouds. “That’s totally why clocks are round!”
“Just when I think I’m going to get used to your antics.” Havocwing shook her head, chuckling.
“One does not simply ‘get used to’ Insipid,” Curaçao said. “You must prepare for endless novel observations, oui?”
“Ascribing the term ‘novel’ would be a stretch in logic,” Shadow added. “However, it is certainly no hindrance to our dynamic.”
“I’m betting it’ll get old after a few years,” Grayscale said.
“Nah, it’s one of those timeless jokes,” Velvet said. “By the way, all six of us just said something in a round, establishing our presence and our personality. Something’s gonna happen soon.”
Isekai stopped cleaning a wine glass, glancing at Velvet with an uncertain expression.
Velvet lifted up her current book: The Strands of Fate and the Story they Weave. “Wanna borrow it?”
“I’ll pass. The idea that what Pinkies do is something that can be learned is terrifying enough. Not to mention the fact that I don’t want to second-guess the deeper thematic meaning of every joke I crack.”
Velvet smirked. “Afraid?”
“A bit,” Isekai admitted. “But if you eat my fear we’ll be having another discussion…”
“Awwww…” Velvet pouted, returning to her book.
“Every day, Velvet becomes more of a nerd,” Grayscale said.
“Nah, she’s just doing what she’s got to,” Havocwing asserted. ”The Pink Ones must be met on the battlefield!”
“She was reading a tome on relativity not all zat long ago,” Curaçao said.
Insipid gasped. “Like, no way! Really Velvet?”
Velvet looked like a deer in the headlights. “Uh… h-how did you girls know? I changed the cover and everything!”
Curaçao raised an eyebrow and pointed at herself.
“...Stupid freaky observation skills…”
“An interest in academics should not be a shameful hobby,” Shadow declared, stepping in to aid her sister. “Expanding our cranial capacities is… delightful!”
“Says the nerd,” Grayscale snickered.
“Nothing wrong with being a nerd,” Isekai commented as she poured herself a purple concoction. She glanced at it like she wasn’t entirely sure what it was. “I studied a lot of random science books myself, just because I was curious.”
Velvet held up her book again, raising her eyebrows repeatedly.
“There’s scientific curiosity, and then there’s digging into things I’d be much happier not knowing.”
“You know you want toooooooo…”
“Nope. It’s been years since you all started showing up, and I still haven’t given in to those mystic tomes of yours.”
“Years?” Insipid blinked. “Uh, wait, didn’t Suzie discover this place a month or two ago?”
“Time does not move consistently across the multiverse,” Shadow explained. “Within the Equis Cluster, we are relatively constant with each other with only minor variations. The Isekai Bar extends its lattices far into the multiverse and thus suffers from drift through metatime only compounded by its tendency to alter universal times to reach the proper people at the proper times.”
“So time is made out of circles!”
Shadow shook her head, trying not to laugh. “Sometimes. In general, though, time follows a strictly forward progression with the rest of the multiverse. Rates change and… think of it like playing a game, Insipid. Some parts of the game feel like they go really fast, and some go slow. And parts you enjoy aren’t enjoyed by other people. By the end of the game, you all disagree on how long it was.”
“Oooooh,” Insipid said, pretending she got it.
Shadow made a mental note to explain it in simpler terms later, when the two weren’t surrounded by the others.
“...I wonder if zey’re discovering anyzing new,” Curaçao said, wistful.
“Of course,” Shadow said. “Swip’s found lots of new planes recently, I check the reports myself upon return from our outings. The best was a strict linguistic divide built into the thaumical structures o—”
“I mean Cinder and ‘er friend,” Curaçao interrupted. “They’re out zere, looking for who she is…”
“They’ll find something,” Velvet said. “Pretty sure, anyway.”
“Mmm…”
“A pony like that doesn’t just vanish forever,” Isekai added. “She’ll be back. She’s got spunk in her.”
“Fire in her eyes, hmm?” Grayscale suggested.
“Yes,” Isekai deadpanned.
A portal opened up in the middle of the bar, depositing a Rarity in a fashionable hat with a pink ribbon twisted around the rim—Overhead Renee.
“You know you can just use the door, right?” Isekai said, pointing.
“Sorry, darling, force of habit.” Renee sat down at once of the stools, glancing around the bar. “Is there anyone else here at the moment?”
Isekai shook her head. “Nope.”
“Ah, that’ll save us a trip back to my office.” Renee turned to the Elements of Pandemonium and smiled warmly. “I have an interesting mission for you involving a stolen time travel device.”
“AHA!” Insipid slammed her hooves on the table. “I knew it! Time is round!”
“Depends on your point of view,” Renee said without missing a beat. “Regardless, I need you six to capture the criminal responsible.”
“Why not send Aradia?” Shadow asked.
“I have. Several times, in fact. No version of her has returned. It’s quite concerning.” Renee took a data pad out and handed it over to them. “We tracked them to this world, no idea if they moved past that, but this is where Aradia vanishes. It’s not one we have established contact with, so I can’t tell you much. Your job is to go there and recover the time machine.”
“...That may be problematic, if he has a time machine,” Shadow pointed out.
Renee smirked, pulling an object out of her mane. A triple layered gyroscope made of smooth silver with an hourglass in the middle. Currently, the sand in the hourglass was frozen solid, particles suspended in midair. “This is a Merodi Issue adaptable time gyroscope, almost an exact copy of what has been stolen.”
Shadow was all but drooling. “Woah…”
“Shouldn’t it be sparkling?” Grayscale asked. “Looks dead.”
“That’s because we’re in the Isekai Bar,” Renee explained. “It can’t have us messing with its time, so it doesn’t allow it. It’ll work anywhere time travel is allowed, trust me.” She tossed it to Shadow, who caught it in her magic. “I’m sure you know how to use it?”
“I’ve read up everything I can on these magnificent devices,” Shadow said, turning the device over in her magic. “This is a lot of power.”
“You’ve proven yourselves as trustworthy, and honestly you were one of the few teams I haven’t surprised with one of these at this point. Go, have some fun, try not to break too many timelines, hmm?”
“You can count on us,” Curaçao said. “Elements! Move out!”
“...This isn’t a military unit,” Havocwing said.
“I was attempting to get in ze mood.”
With a shrug Havocwing jumped out of her seat and followed the rest of her sisters out of Sunset’s Isekai.
“Daiquiri, please,” Renee ordered, laying some Merodi quid on the counter.
Isekai delivered almost instantly. “Are you trying to turn my bar into a place to make shady deals?”
“Dear, I did that in full view of you, what part of that was shady?”
“You could have used your office. Probably more secure.”
“But then I wouldn’t have an excuse to come here and have a drink, now would I?” Renee raised an eyebrow.
With a shrug, Isekai leaned back against the wall.
“Sometimes our reasons for doing things are unbelievably petty and simple.”
“Yeah. Yeah.” Isekai laughed at the exchange. Turning back to her glasses, she felt compelled to ask the mare a question. “What’s it like, being in charge of all the adventurers, Overhead?”
“Just ‘Renee’, please. And as for your question…” Renee put a hoof to her chin. “It’s a very meaningful job, but there’s a rather large issue with it.”
“What’s that?”
“When you make laws that allow teams to make moral judgments on the spot, you end up disagreeing with so, so many of them.”
“...Are those six problem children in that regard?”
“Not the worst I’ve had, but they do tend to… take things a bit far.” Rarity ran a hoof around the edge of her glass. “I know we need ponies like them to do the difficult things, and they do good work. But when the first thing you hear about a mission is ‘we dropped the moon on Australia’ you aren’t exactly in the mood to think clearly about the possible ramifications and reasonings behind said event.”
“...Did they really drop the moon on an Australia?”
Renee nodded. “The worst part? Thinking about it now, I think they needed to. That was a particularly nasty zombie outbreak...”
~~~
New Pandemonium City had seen better days.
Which was to say it didn’t see days at all anymore. No plane in Fae Epoque could withstand something so cosmically regular as a day/night cycle, and negotiations with the Fay never lasted long enough to cement such familiarity. Sometimes it was light, sometimes it was dark, and the ponies just had to live with it. They griped and complained about it all the time, but they knew one thing for sure: they weren't leaving their city. Magical Fae realm or not, this was their land and they weren’t getting off of it, no matter what crazed deal some Queen had made with some Fay creature. If anyone told them they would have been eaten by the void if the deal hadn't been made, they just found some other way to complain.
That was what Pandemonium ponies did. Complain. Complain about the Fay, complain about the lack of day and night, complain about the streets twisting in unpredictable patterns, complain about the lack of a stable border wall, complain, complain, complain…
Harmonia, goddess of Harmony for the now-defunct Equestria V, was one of the primary targets of said complaints. Not one week into this little experiment with the Fae and someone—probably an impish Fay—had made Harmonia’s existence public knowledge. It was alarming how ponies who previously hadn’t believed in goddesses at all came to resent the idea that there was one protecting them from the dangers of the Fae Wilds.
They even passed legislation to get rid of her. Not that she listened. She would never abandon these ponies to this cruel, ever-changing landscape.
Which created an interesting situation when she petitioned the Aid Division for assistance.
“Thou art essentially working as illegal immigrants,” Harmonia said, walking down one of the streets of New Pandemonium. One of the benefits of being well-known was that she could go for strolls as herself: a brilliant white alicorn. They’d stopped trying to arrest her a month ago. “The system resists thine efforts. Art thou certain thy people can handle themselves here?”
“The system is also easily exploitable,” the Aid representative, one Solicitude “Fluttershy”, responded. She’d cleaned up a lot since her debacle in Vision, cutting her mane short and taking to wearing a calming blue dress alongside a lapis circlet to set herself apart. “Silvertongue’s designs that maximized misery are still in place… but so are the loopholes he designed for himself. With the Fae intruding in every location, kindness moves in.” A confident smile appeared on her face. “They can’t just kill anyone because of their laws, and the moment we spring anyone from jail they’re forgotten in the flood of paperwork. They don’t realize how fragile their ‘utopia’ is….” A frown crossed her features.
“With our efforts, this land shalt never succumb to the curse of thine own. I shalt protect these ponies to my dying breath, should I possess such a thing.”
Solicitude nodded, smiling warmly. “I’m here to protect. And my team is here to do the same. Though they will likely be much louder about it.”
“Loud…? Are they not handing out food and medical supplies?”
“Oh. They are. But they’ll find trouble.”
There was a loud crash from across the street, where a large Fae tree had grown out of the cobbled street. A white pegasus mare had fallen out of the tree, shouting unflattering swears at whatever had pushed her out and broken most of the branches.
“Quiet, will you?” Sriracha “Sweetie” demanded, tossing a pink pepper straight into the mare’s mouth. The previously foul-mouthed equine devolved into sputtered gasps as the spice seeped into her tongue. “...Eh, close enough,” Sriracha said with a shrug.
“Balls, you got her before I did,” Mattie the Rarity muttered, appearing on the scene as if from a jump-cut.
The mare made an attempt to run, but a small Sweetie jumped out of the tree and froze her up to her neck. “Gotcha!”
“Nice one, Cryo!” Sriracha called.
“C+ at best,” Mattie droned. “Nothing all that fancy.”
“HELP!” the mare shouted from the ice, forcing her voice out through the pain. “HELP ME! HARMONIA! STOP THESE CRIMINALS!”
Harmonia glanced at Solicitude. “...They are yours?”
“Yes,” Solicitude admitted with a slightly-nervous smile. “Mattie, why is your team tormenting this mare?”
“Not a mare,” Cryo answered for Mattie, smirking. “Curio, care to have a go?”
The last Sweetie of the team tapped her green visor. “Casting True Form now…”
“Wait, no, d—” the mare’s pleas were cut off as her body was reduced to a shimmering mist of… something.
“Huh.” Curio blinked, checking the signals flashing across her visor. “I guess since fairies don’t have a true form, they devolve into sparkles…”
The sparkles solidified into a vaguely humanoid elven creature with brilliant skin, oversized eyelashes, and a violent expression. He spoke, “say that one more time, horse…”
“What? What did I say?” Curio folded her ears back.
“Nothing much,” Mattie said, circling the frozen elf. “You just called him a fairy. Quite a derogatory term.”
“Oh! Sorry!”
“He was trying to steal your soul,” Cryo deadpanned. “You don’t need to apologize.”
“Is this true?” Harmonia asked the elf.
The elf scoffed. “A soul? Don’t be ridiculou—”
“Elven Fay,” Harmonia interrupted. “Wast thou attempting to solicit part of this unicorn’s life-force in a deceptive way such that she did not know what was happening in her conscious thoughts?”
“You know the dance of words, goddess,” he spat the last word out like it was poison in his mouth. “There must have been a moment of a true spark deep within th—”
“Don’t let him smart-talk his way out,” Mattie grumbled. “Let’s just dump him and be rid of his incessant babbling.”
He glanced at her with a smirk. “Are you sure you wish to do that? There are many other forms I can take…”
“Boring,” Mattie muttered, pulling out her whip. Before she could give the elf a beating, Cryo opened a portal to a random plane of the Fae and threw the elf through it. “...Hey, I was going to enjoy that…” Mattie grumbled.
“Just smack yourself,” Curio said absent-mindedly, focusing mostly on analyzing the data she’d received from the transforming elf.
Cryo turned to Solicitude and saluted. “Troublemaker removed from the city! We shall return to our previous mission right away!”
“You’re doing excellently,” Solicitude said. “Though, do try to be more… discrete? We want ponies to like us, not fear us.”
Mattie rolled her eyes. “Sure. Can do.”
“Mattie…”
“I’m not saying I won’t try, I’m saying it’s not gonna happen.” Mattie gestured at the twisted streets of New Pandemonium with a hoof. “The ponies here are so proud they don’t see the world eating their city. They’re not going to accept us.”
“That is why we’re here,” Cryo reminded her. “Help. Whether they want it or not.”
Harmonia frowned. “I wouldst prefer less violent methods…”
“This is the way we take action,” Solicitude said. “I’m sorry if you don’t like it, but it’s what we have to offer.”
“And I am ever so thankful,” Harmonia said, nodding curtly. “‘Twould no doubt be much worse without thine assistance.”
“We try,” Cryo said. “It’s… the least we can do.”
“And thou hast a young spark of brilliance in thee, young one.” Harmonia placed a hoof atop Cryo’s head. “I am sure thou shalt go far with it.”
“Thanks!”
“Harmonia!” a panicked voice called. “Harmonia!”
“Yes?”
A humanoid pixie flew in front of her face. “The Mafia’s acting up again! Again!”
“It feels like only yesterday that we came to our agreement…” Harmonia sighed. “No doubt they think they hath found a loophole. Come, Peaceflower, let us ride.”
“...You have a fairy assistant?” Curio asked, confused.
“Fay,” Sriracha corrected with a hiss.
“FAY!” Curio blurted. “FAY! I mean fay! Yes! Don’t hurt me.”
Peaceflower showed no signs of anger—just panic at whatever the mafia was doing. “We should go now…”
“I’ll come with,” Solicitude said. “Mattie, keep your team assisting in the redistribution.”
“You know we’re gonna get roped into some adventure, right?” Mattie asked.
“Probably. Until then…” She winked… and then Harmonia teleported them elsewhere.
Mattie smirked. “Aight mates, you heard the boss-lady, find some starving kids and shove hayburgers in their mouths.”
~~~
It’s not every day you appear in a futuristic version of Canterlot that clearly wasn’t made out of buildings cobbled together from dozens of different universes. Even for regular dimensional travelers, the sight was something of a treat. Canterlot castle was still there, but it had many additions that sparked and glowed with the power of magic technology. Massive buildings ran all the way down the mountain’s side, expanding the city far into the land below. It was a true metropolis, advanced far beyond even a modern Earth.
The only things that really looked out of place were a bunch of cloud-structures floating around the city. The sky itself was completely devoid of such weather.
“Whoooooa…” Insipid said, touching her hoof to one of the walls.
“We live in a giant space city,” Havocwing deadpanned. “What about this is cool?”
“I didn’t say cool. I said whoa. Like, totally different.”
“Words used as emotives often carry non-exact meanings,” Shadow added. “Furthermore, the unified, non-cobbled nature of these constructions is exquisite to our eyes and can be construed as beautiful.”
“I thought we agreed you needed to be less like a walking thesaurus?”
“I enjoy it,” Shadow said with a smug grin.
“Somepony back me up here.”
“I like all her words!” Insipid cheered, though her interest in the conversation had dipped. Currently, she was looking at a poster of a Sweetie Belle holding a microphone. Bring the Clouds Back!
“You can figure out what most of her words mean by context, anyway,” Grayscale added. “Or just listening to her enough to learn them.”
“Afraid of being confused, Havoc?” Velvet asked.
“Traitors,” Havocwing bristled. “All of you.”
“Oui, zat is in our nature,” Curaçao admitted. “Now… Shadow, what do you zink is ze best way forward?”
“I will analyze the local thaumic winds for temporal distortions,” Shadow said, taking out the time machine. The sands within it were falling at a regular rate, though neither end of the hourglass was changing size. “Then I will locate the nexus of said distortions, following Aradia to wherever the temporal aspect has deposited her.”
“Or we could save ourselves the trouble,” Grayscale said, pointing with a wing. “This guy looks like he’s here to talk with us.”
A unicorn stallion in palace guard armor was, in fact, walking right up to them. Curiously, he had what appeared to be a magic projection of wings coming out of his back—not flesh, but some kind of spell.
“You with the Handmaid?” he asked.
“Oui,” Curaçao said. “We were not expecting to be met, ‘owever…”
“A precaution. Celestia wishes to see you.”
“Zen who are we to refuse?” Curaçao shrugged. “Take us away.”
“Hold still, teleporting this many is difficult…”
“Transmit the coordinates to my cranial apex,” Shadow said. “...The base of my horn,” she corrected upon seeing his confusion.
With a shrug, the guard did so. An instant later, Shadow had teleported them to the doors of the main hall.
“I shall let the Princess know you are here. It should only be a minute.” The guard slipped in through the doors, leaving the six of them to look at… what was disappointingly a rather normal looking Canterlot castle hall.
“You’d think future ponies would change the aesthetic,” Grayscale commented.
“Soooooo Shadow!” Velvet shouted, nudging her sister. “That unicorn had wiiiiings!”
“We have been through this cadence before,” Shadow muttered. “I have no requirement of alicornification or of avian digits, my strength is my own, my abandoned spine notwithstanding.”
“Suuuuure. I bet it would be pretty easy to learn the spell, though…”
“Effortless. Also superfluous. Already know other methods.”
“You know you want t—”
“The princess will see you now,” the guard said, opening the door for them to enter.
Celestia… looked like most Celestias, though notably most of her regalia was missing save for the golden shoes. She greeted them with the warm smile most of her kind had, though the slight weariness in her eyes told of something more somber than meeting new friends.
An adult Sweetie Belle was sitting in front of her, looking at the six in confusion.
“Thank you for your time, Miss Belle,” Celestia said. “But I am afraid I must tend to more urgent matters.”
“They look kinda like…”
Celestia nodded. “I was unaware they would look like this, I am sorry, but I cannot tell you more.”
“But you will eventually?” Sweetie asked.
“I sure hope to,” Celestia admitted. “Now go, I’m sure your fans wouldn’t want a late concert.”
“You’re right.” Sweetie nuzzled the Princess’ leg before trotting away. She glanced at the Elements of Pandemonium with distrust, but not malice. She was more curious than anything.
The moment she was gone, Celestia spoke up. “I suppose I should not be surprised that the next to arrive are the Elements of Harmony.”
“Pandemonium,” Shadow corrected. “Elements of Pandemonium.”
“We’re a bit more forceful than the ponies you probably know,” Insipid added. “And, like, where are they? Can they go on the adventure with us?!”
Celestia smiled sadly. “Your counterparts have long since passed.”
“But… Sweetie?”
“Is from the past. I’m assuming time travel is a concept you are familiar with, given your reason for being here.”
Curaçao nodded. “Do you know where Aradia went?”
“I do, in fact. She told me where she was going.” Celestia paused. “Every time, to the same place. Precisely three hundred and fifty-nine years, two months, eleven days, and… seven hours from now. Each time she appeared, she knew she hadn’t returned, and she went anyway. Your presence suggests to me that you’ve come to the conclusion that throwing more Aradias at your thief isn’t going to solve the problem.”
“Somezing like zat,” Curaçao admitted. “Do you know what location?”
“Ponyville. She wasn’t more specific than that.”
“Merci, Princess,” Curaçao said. “We’ll try to get out of your universe as quickly as possible.”
“I do not wish to deny the possibility of new friends… Applejack?”
“Ah, non, non, we do not share zeir names.” She introduced herself and her sisters. “We are clones, not alternates.”
“Not much of a difference,” Havocwing muttered.
“Still…” Celesita leaned forward slightly. “I would very much like to have a talk with a Twilight sometime.”
“After this has concluded I shall submit a request,” Shadow said. “Virtually guaranteed to be accepted instantly.”
“Thank you.”
“Is there anything else before we go?” Grayscale asked.
Celestia nodded. “One of the Aradias told me that time runs differently in other worlds, and that our world runs on a ‘single fixed-loop allowance’ timestream. She seemed concerned that her presence could damage that, somehow. I never got more out of her about that.”
“Ah…” Shadow sighed. “That complicates things. If a crucial event is changed, the chances of dimensional collapse are unpleasantly nonzero.”
“...I hesitate to give you reign over such a delicate situation, but I am not the expert in time.” Celestia frowned. “Treat my world well, and remove this criminal as delicately as you can.”
“Zat is ze plan,” Curaçao said. “Do not worry, we will be back before you know it. Literally. If we are not… Zen zere might be a problem.”
“I understand the nuances of timing,” Celestia said with a sparkle in her eye. “Go.”
Shadow lifted the time machine into the air and cast a spell on it…
~~~
Symphony felt, for a moment, that something was off.
She looked around the street she was on. Sure, the sky was a myriad of warping colors and stars, there was a space whale trying hard not to run into skyscrapers, and a Fae tree was somehow devouring the nearby smog of a factory, but that was all normal for New Pandemonium City.
“Are you okay?” Belladonna, a pink breezie, asked.
“Just got a weird feeling is all.” Symphony was a white unicorn mare with blue and purple curls in her mane and musical notes on her flank. New Pandemonium City was her home, just like it was the home of so many other ponies. She couldn’t imagine being anywhere else.
Which was why she felt a mild wave of disgust as she saw some Merodi Aid agents leading tired ponies to another universe.
“They’re destroying our home…” Symphony said.
“They’re pretty sure they’re helping,” Belladonna said, landing on Symphony’s ear. “Some of those mortals would probably have starved in the next few weeks, anyway.”
“They should be repairing the Dolor factories, not tearing the city apart.”
“...I think they are…” Belladonna said, scratching her chin. “It’s just a slow process when the paperwork tells you it’s illegal to sell food made with foreign intervention.”
“There’s probably a reason that’s… okay the laws are dumb, but come on, who really listens to them? Half the ponies don’t even wear pants anymore. It’s at the point where some of those precious visitors don’t wear anything either! They should charge in and twist the entire system so we can just get on with our lives.”
“I don’t think it’s that simple.”
“It’s been years, there should be at least some progress by now.”
Belladonna fell silent.
“Bella?”
“You might be a bit impatient.”
“After years?”
“There comes a time when impatience is validated. This is not that time.”
“...You really think so?”
Belladonna nodded. “Trust me, I’d know. I’ve been around the block a few times.”
Turning a corner, the two of them found themselves face-to-face with five burly ponies, two mares and three stallions, all wearing full black suits. Symphony had been around New Pandemonium long enough to identify what this was: the mafia. Specifically, the Rossa clan, but that wasn’t surprising since they were the only real power in the criminal underground left.
“Would you look at the flanks on her…” one of the stallions said, licking his lips.
Symphony lit her horn. “You don’t want to try anything.”
“They do,” one of the mares said, scowling at Symphony. “And they very much will unless you had that little pixie of yours over to us.”
Belladonna’s eyes flew open wide.
“She’s a Breezie and she’s not going anywhere with you,” Symphony hissed.
“Doesn’t matter. Boss wants her. Boss gets her.” A stallion’s grin widened. “And we get you.”
Symphony rushed into action, drawing two short blades she had hidden in her jacket. Two of the goons had the same idea, meeting her levitating weapons with their own. A unicorn shot her with a laser spell, which Symphony met. Twisting, she intended to use the momentum of her encounter to throw the other ponies off their hooves. Unfortunately, a pegasus was smart enough to jump past her and catch Belladonna in a jar.
Freezing, Symphony had to let herself be tackled to the ground by a massive stallion, pinning her with his immense weight.
“You will regret this, mortal,” Belladonna hissed.
The pegasus flashed a small dagger made out of a marbled four-color alloy. “I don’t think I will.”
Belladonna’s face betrayed surprise at a Fay-unbinder in the hooves of such a goon.
“I’m not sure we really needed all five of us to take care of these to delightful ladies,” the stallion pinning Symphony said. “Boss must have been paranoid.”
“Boss is always paranoid,” the mare said. “And wait to have your fun, he wants that fairy as soon as possible.”
“Why does he want me?” Belladonna asked.
“No idea,” the mare shrugged.
Symphony struggled, looking for a way out. Her swords were down, any spell she fired would just give the stallion an excuse to break her legs, and she didn’t have the physical strength to remove him. Belladonna was being held hostage by that terrible dagger, which only made it harder to do something. Think, Symphony, think, you’ve been in worse situations…
She suspected she could fast-talk her way out of captivity, but… that would do nothing for Belladonna. That was unacceptable.
Maybe a distraction was in order…? She could grab a Fae tree in her telekinesis and yank it down. Might crush one of them…
“Don’t even think about using that horn,” the stallion whispered in her ear. “I’ll break it.”
Since when did goons get smart?
“Hey! Get off her!”
Symphony blinked. That wasn’t Belladonna.
Cryo launched into the stallion pinning Symphony at high speed, freezing his front leg and knocking him to the ground. Cryo took up an upright fighting stance, encasing her two front hooves in swirling ice shards. “Who wants to go next?”
A mare and a stallion attempted to jump her, but two whip lashes hit them in their sides, sending a sensory overload of pain into their nervous systems, knocking them down.
“Hey! Those were mine!” Cryo called.
Mattie shrugged, coiling her whips up for another round. “You could learn to appreciate the assistance, like they could appreciate the spice of life.”
The two ponies were still writhing in pain.
“For mafia goons you think they’d be stro—”
The massive stallion Cryo had tossed to the side punched Mattie across the face, throwing her to the ground. “Ooooh, nice hoof you got there! Try my other side, it’s got a bruise on it!”
The stallion blinked. “What?”
Cryo encased the confused goon in ice, as well as the other two writhing in pain on the ground.
The last stallion attempted to run, but Sriracha threw a pepper in his face that burned his eyes. He dropped to the ground, tears flowing from the overdose of capsaicin.
“Good work, everyone,” Cryo said, smug.
“One’s getting away!” Curio shouted, pointing at the pegasus in the sky.
Symphony grunted, firing a couple lasers at the mare. One hit, but somehow she stayed aloft.
Cryo created a javelin of ice and skewered the pegasus through the heart. With a gasp, she dropped to the ground, hitting it with a speed just slightly too ridiculous for a natural freefall, creating a small crater in the street.
Belladonna’s jar broke in the process, freeing her. She fluttered out of the smoldering crater, leaving the dazed pegasus behind.
“How am I still alive…?” the pegasus wondered, touching the area the ice had skewered her. There was no wound.
“That’s how Cryo works,” Mattie said, grinning.
“And now we get to arrest you all for illegal activity!” Curio beeped. “While also running away ourselves so they don’t arrest us for vigilante work! Isn’t that fun?”
“You like the legal system way too much…” Sriracha commented.
“It’s a mess and I love it. Anyone who tries to figure it out gets a headache but just can’t put it down…”
Belladonna floated over to Symphony and landed in her mane. “That sure looked close.”
“It did… sorry I couldn’t help.” Symphony sighed.
“You weren’t useless.”
“Thanks.”
“You know, this is in reverse,” Mattie said. “Usually we save ponies from Fay, not the other way around.”
Belladonna nodded. “I extend my gratitude nonetheless.”
“It was our pleasure, mate.”
“And you… you’re a Sweetie, right?” Cryo said, pointing at Symphony.
“Just because I’m white and have curls doesn’t mean I’m one of your Sweeties,” Symphony deadpanned.
“Pretty sure you are,” Mattie added. “You’ve got the eye shape, the spunk, and music on your flanks.”
Symphony frowned. “Doesn’t matter, I’m not joining your little League, capische? Go back to taking our city apart.”
“Ah. One of the stubborn morons.”
“Mattie!” Curio chided.
“What? She is. The Fae is literally eating this place alive and they stay here out of idiotic stubborness.”
“Sounds like somepony I know,” Curio snarked.
“The difference is that I’m fabulous.”
Cryo facehooved, turning back to Symphony. “Look, you don’t have to like us, but we’re here to help.”
“Whatever you say,” Symphony deadpanned.
“And to do that helping, I’m gonna have to ask you a few questions.” Cryo’s eyes sparkled. “Why were those goons attacking you?”
“I dunno. They wanted Belladonna for something.”
Cryo turned to Belladonna. “Any idea?”
“Perhaps they thought I was a small Fay and would be easily captured?” Belladonna shrugged.
“Hmm…” Cryo scratched her chin.
“We can ask Harmonia about it later,” Curio asked. “She is going to talk to them.”
“Right, right… well, if you need any dashing heroes to come to your rescue, don’t hesitate to call us!”
“It won’t be a hesitation,” Symphony deadpanned. “Come on, Belladonna, let’s go.”
The Sweeties let her go, devolving into random quips about what to do with the mafia goons in the mess of New Pandemonium’s legal system. Symphony turned a corner…
...and was face-to-face with the five mafia goons again, though none of them were injured.
“What…?” Symphony glanced behind her, finding that the street she’d walked off of was not the one with the Sweeties.
“Would you look at the flanks on her…”
Symphony didn’t wait to draw her swords this time.
~~~
The time gyroscope was similar in function to a dimensional device. It punched a hole in reality from one time to another, creating a direct gateway. However, it didn’t exactly create a portal one could walk back and forth through, since designing time machines like this was just asking for one side to create a paradox on the other, and side-effects of paradoxes were almost always unpleasant regardless of the universe.
To remedy this, the time gyroscope never allowed there to be a transition period where the user was half in one time and half in the other, instead relying on pseudo-teleportation to jump the user to the other time in a perceived instant. So, while the time machine spell itself involved a lot of flashing lights and time vortexes, anyone traveling through them would see absolutely none of it.
The Elements of Pandemonium were in the future, and then they were in the past with little more than a rush of air. To them, it was just as though they had teleported to Ponyville, albeit a Ponyville without Friendship Castle. It was a nice day with a few clouds scattered around and the sun high in the sky.
Shadow lit her horn the moment they arrived. “Nothing concerning… timestream steady, no fractures or lesions. Dimensional travel…” She created a portal to Earth Ottoman with ease.
“Wait… wait wait…” Havocwing pointed through the portal at the modern city at the other side. “Aren't we in the past!?”
“We are in this world’s past,” Shadow explained, closing the portal. “This Equis and Earth Ottoman are not causally related. If we translate to Earth Ottoman from any frame of reference in this Equis, we will appear in Earth Ottoman’s present. If we translate from Earth Ottoman to this Equis, we appear in its present. Past states of this Equis are accessible only through temporal displacement, which is likely why the target is occupying the ‘past’. To hide.”
“...Sure.”
“Too bad we’ve got his number,” Velvet cackled. “C’mon Shadow, track him!”
Shadow nodded, following currents of time, looking for dimensional signatures that didn’t quite match the world they were in. “Found one, Golden Oaks Library.”
“Should we be concerned about meeting a Twilight?” Curaçao asked.
“Unlikely, the world seeks to loop its own time,” Shadow admitted. “We cannot cause a paradox without intending to, and even then it may be difficult.”
“What would ‘appen if we wanted to?”
Shadow frowned. “Dimensional collapse. Rigid worlds such as this are often ludicrously fragile once the delicate supports are shaken.” Without waiting any further, she teleported them to Golden Oaks and knocked on the door.
A very tired Twilight with a mess of a mane and a desperate grimace opened the door. “What? I’m busy!”
“With what?” Shadow asked.
“Saving Sweetie! I don’t have time for this!”
Shadow raised an eyebrow. “Perhaps we can help. We a—”
“Are you an expert in Starswirl’s temporal mechanics? I didn’t think so! I… I have to get back to work, if you want to check out a book talk to Spike. I…” She stormed back into the library, leaving the door open.
Shadow poked her head in. Strewn all across the library floor were schematics and designs of a magical machine—riddled with clocks, wires, and magic crystals. To the side of every drawing were diagrams relating to space-time.
Slowly, Shadow backed out of the library and closed the door. “I believe this is a false alarm. The criminal is not present, this is simply the site of a time machine’s inception.”
“She’s trying to save Sweetie.” Grayscale smirked. “She succeeds. We saw her in the future.”
“Why would taking her to the future save her?” Insipid asked.
“Advances in medicine, if I ‘ad to guess,” Curaçao said.
“Ooooooooh.”
“He’s hiding behind the temporal distortions Twilight’s making,” Velvet said. “Clever.”
“I can still pinpoint him…” Shadow said, focusing more intently on her magic. “It shouldn’t be too hard…”
“You won’t have to,” a gruff voice said, drawing all six of their gazes. It was a humanoid creature in space-age armor, green and smooth. Dark slits ran through the helmet, allowing him to see while hiding his face from the ponies. “I’m right here.”
The six of them prepared for a fight… but the man showed no aggressive motion. All he had in his hand was a button that his thumb was poised over.
“Don’t make any sudden moves and listen carefully…”
~~~
Mattie rarely had deja vu in the normal way. On any given day, if she got the nagging in the back of her mind that this had happened before, it usually meant it had in some fashion or other, or that there was a connection to something previously established she had missed. It always set her on edge and gave her a mixture of paranoia and anticipation.
Of course, this meant the few times she did have normal deja vu she ended up looking like a stooge. So she’d learned to just let things play out as normal unless there was an opportunity for some good old fashioned fun.
As it turned out, letting things play out as normal involved whipping two hapless, spineless ponies, so there wasn't much of a struggle in going through with it.
“Hey! Those were mine!” Cryo called.
Mattie shrugged, coiling up her whips for another round. “You could learn to appreciate the assistance, like they could appreciate the spice of life.” She glanced at the writhing ponies, frowning. “...That’s not even that funny, I’m losing my touch.”
The massive stallion Cryo had tossed to the side punched Mattie across the face, throwing her to the ground. “Ooooh!” Mattie fluttered her eyelashes. “Nice hoof you got there! Try my other side, it’s got a bruise on it!”
“What?”
While Cryo encased him and two of the others in ice, Mattie noticed the Sweetie they were saving was acting strangely. Eyes wide, shocked… even slightly alarmed. She levitated one of her swords off the ground and threw it, right into the pegasus goon’s back before she could even take off. The jar holding the Fay fell to the ground, shattering.
That wasn’t as cool as it could have been.
“Good work, everyone,” Cryo said, smug.
Mattie walked up to the Sweetie, smirking. “Mind telling me who you are, mate?”
“Symphony,” she muttered. “Thanks for the help. We’ll be on our way now.” She turned to walk away, but Mattie was already standing there. “Wha…?”
“There’s something about you. Y’know, when you get that feeling of deja vu—” she noted with delight Symphony’s shock at the term. “—and then someone appears to know what’s about to happen?”
Symphony blinked rapidly, trying to think of what to say.
“Whatever it is, just admit it, I don’t want to have to… I don’t know, throw one of Sriracha’s peppers in your mouth.”
“Mattie!” Curio hissed.
“What? It’s harmless! She might even enjoy it!”
Symphony frowned. “Fine… time is repeating. After we wrapped this up, Belladonna and I turned the corner and ran into the thugs again.”
“It is as she says,” Belladonna added. “We repeated.”
“Both of you?” Mattie furrowed her brow. “Curio, do a test for me.”
“Already on it,” Curio said, glancing at the diagrams flying across her visor. “Yep. This world allows time travel. Not only that, but it’s a variable setup. Not surprising, for the Fae.”
“What’s that mean?” Symphony asked.
“It means time can tie us into pretzel knots,” Mattie translated. “Here, let’s try to all walk around the corner, see what happens. You in?”
Symphony frowned. “...Sure.”
“All right!” Cryo called. “Another Sweetie!”
Symphony facehooved. “I already told you, I’m not one of your Sweeties…”
“Then you already know my response to that,” Mattie said, raising her eyebrows repeatedly.
With a roll of her eyes, Symphony trotted toward the turn in the street.
Mattie coiled up her whips, preparing to take the goons out in a quick succession of matrix-like maneuvers. When they turned…
...Cryo hit her head on a street sign. “OW!”
“What...?” Symphony looked around, seeing no mooks. “How…?”
“We looped,” Cruio said, analyzing her readout. “Or… well, we jumped through time. I’m not sure which direction, but we shifted. The street behind us isn’t the same.”
“The Fae does that all the time,” Symphony countered.
“Uh… yeah, but my readings say there was a time shift.”
“There’s no way this street sign could even exist!” Cryo smacked the pole with her hoof. “Look at the names!”
Mattie glanced up the pole at the street names. This. That. The Other. The Otherwise. None of them were in line with the actual street corner itself.
“It’s almost like it’s a joke…” Sriracha mused.
Curio placed her hoof at the base of the signs. “This… doesn’t quite match the make of signs in New Pandemonium. It’s the wrong material. Too much ambient chakra-magic infused into it.”
“It is a Fay creation,” Belladonna offered. “Though not of my kind.”
“Another racket for us to deal with,” Cryo muttered. “All these Fay are making it difficult to focus on helping ponies.”
Symphony smirked. “Them maybe they’re good for us after all.”
“I stopped an elf from soul-enslaving ponies not three hours ago. Pretty sure that’s not good.”
“We can deal with them ourselves…”
“Symphony, you are deluding yourself,” Belladonna said. “My kind fly over the walls of your paperwork maze while you stay confined to the paths.”
“I… ugh, I already had this debate once today.” Symphony tossed her mane back. “Let’s just find whatever’s messing with time and deal with it.”
“Working…” Curio said, furrowing her brow. “Oh, this is going to be ugly. Everywhere around us is time distorted. I’ll be trying to trace it to the source. Be sure to stay together, everypony, we’re gonna have a—”
“AUGH!” Cryo had smashed into the street sigh again, despite walking away from it. “What the—why!?”
Getting a sinking feeling, Mattie decided to perform a head count. “...We just lost Curio.”
Sriracha bit her lip. “Oh no. We all remember Curio, right?”
“Yes, it’s not that sort of time distortion,” Mattie dismissed. “...I think.”
“She said she was trying to find the source,” Belladonna said. “Perhaps whatever malevolent force caused this did not wish her to do so. Can anyone else perform her scans?”
Nobody had Curio’s visor, and none of them had the sort of magic expertise required to analyze such things.
“Then our enemy has made a clever move, debilitating us,” Belladonna declared.
“Why not just take us all out?” Sriracha asked.
“The enemy always wants something,” Mattie said, frowning.
“OW!” Cryo looked at a second street sign that hadn’t been there before. She froze it solid and shattered it.
“...Even if part of that motive is, clearly, just to torment Cryo for existing.”
Cryo seethed. “When I get my hooves on this guy…”
Symphony frowned. “Can we break out of this?”
“Easy,” Mattie took out her dimensional device…
...and then she was in a dark basement glowing with soft Fae lights. Alone.
“Balls. Balls to the wall, I should have seen that coming.” Cryo had a dimensional device as well, but what were the chances she was going to use it? “Time to call in the cavalry.”
She opened a portal back to Celestia City.
Instead, the gate tore a hole into a version of Ponyville she couldn’t identify.
“What…?”
“Get her!” the five mafia goons shouted, coming at her from behind.
“Oh, this is going to be delightful!” Mattie cackled, unfurling her whips on the two lead ponies. “Who wants some punishment? It’s only fair if we delve it out evenly…”
“You,” a red pixie said from atop Mattie’s horn, finger sparkling with electricity.
Mattie smirked. “...Do your worst. If you would be so kind.”
The pixie touched her finger to Mattie’s horn sending a euphoric electric shock into her system. The unicorn let out a soft laugh as she passed out, face slamming into the wall.
~~~
“...Are you one of those Star Wars weirdos?” Insipid asked.
“I said listen carefully, not question me,” the armored man responded.
“But are you?”
The armored man ignored her. “I can destroy this universe with a push of a button.”
“Explain your methodology,” Shadow ordered.
“The library is rigged with explosives. Even if Twilight somehow survives, the time machine she is building won’t be completed before Sweetie Belle succumbs to her illness. There will be no Sweetie Belle in the future. Time will break. This universe cannot handle time breaking.”
Shadow levitated the time machine out. “We can always go and repair that particular fault.”
“The collapse will be instant.”
“Or we can reconstruct the mechanism under our own power.”
“And if Twilight is killed? It’s too risky for you. The Aradias all knew it. They surrendered.”
“And you killed every last one of them,” Velvet breathed. “Pretty brutal.”
The man didn’t seem bothered, though without seeing his face such determinations weren’t reliable. He pointed at them with his free hand. “Here is how this is going to go. You six are going to stand still like good targets. No resistance.”
“...Yeeeeeeah, I don’t think we’re going to be doing that,” Velvet said.
“All the Aradias saw there was no way out.”
“We’re kind of idiots,” Insipid said. “Like, you might get Shadow, Curie, or Gray to stand down, but the rest of us?” She giggled at the idea. “Wow, can you imagine Havoc standing and taking a shot?”
“Nope,” Havocwing said, launching herself at the man as a living fireball. He punched her in the face, but this was not enough to stop the enraged pegasus. She pinned him to the ground, only for him to smash his foot into her stomach. She whirled into the air and came back for a second pass, only for him to shove the button in her face.
“I’ll do it.”
Havocwing raised an eyebrow. She pressed the button herself.
Nothing happened.
“‘AVOC!” Curaçao shouted.
“What?” Havocwing grinned. “You had the ‘he’s bluffing’ look!”
“Zat could ‘ave still been a real button!”
“Psh, what idiot would use a real doomsday button when bluffing?”
“One who wanted to be more believable!?” Curaçao facheooved. “Je suis entouré d'oies téméraires…”
“Oh.” Havocwing looked at the button. “Well hey, it was a fake, so we’re still good!” She smirked at the armored man. “We gotcha.”
He pulled out his blaster and pulled the trigger. A quick spell from Shadow made the weapon explode, charring his armor.
“Your options are limited,” Shadow declared. “We outpower you and your threats are meaningless. Concede and lessen your suffering.”
He lowered his arms to his sides in submission.
“Acceptable. Now… the time machine you stole?”
He took out a gyroscopic time machine, holding it out to her.
With a jolt, a dimensional portal appeared behind him.
Shadow’s eyes flew wide. We’re in the past, no natural portal should appear here.
There was a red pixie on the other side, red lightning coursing between the digits of her hand.
“GET DOWN!” Shadow shouted, raising a shield.
The moment she cast the barrier, the pixie smiled. That was what she wanted. Why?
With horror, she realized her instinctual spell had only protected her sisters—not the armored man. The pixie changed her crackling lightning into a white spark, teleporting the man through the portal. Shadow attempted to force herself through, but the pixie sealed the portal.
“I think we’ve just been duped,” Grayscale said.
“Thank you for that endearing observation,” Shadow spat, lighting her horn. “Remain motionless, I am tracking them…”
“I thought you said portals couldn’t appear in the past!” Velvet said.
“They can’t. Unless you make them purposefully. This was an intentional machination.” Shadow scowled. “And I don’t take kindly to being toyed with by fairies.”
~~~
The tallest tower in New Pandemonium City still standing was underground. It rose so high into the sky that it embedded itself into a fold of Fae land upon which hung several sparks of mystic energy.
This suited the boss of the tower, a massive hunk of a stallion named Vendetta, just fine. Currently, he was sitting behind his ornate desk carved out of a wood so warped in its grain that it had to be a Fae tree. Aside from the desk, however, the room was uncharacteristically devoid of the usual banners and paintings that he had collected over the years. Instead, the walls sported black marks, a few blood splatters, and even part of a broken tooth.
Needless to say, he was not expecting to receive a call telling him that Harmonia was here to see him.
Learn from the Fay, he thought to himself. Tell the truth, but never all of it. Hide behind words.
He made no motion to hide the signs of damage, allowing Harmonia to be brought up with her two companions—the pixie Peaceflower and the Merodi Aid Officer Solicitude.
“I apologize for the mess,” Vendetta said before they had finished coming in. “There was a recent attempt on my life. I have not gotten around to cleanup, disappointingly.”
“Understandable,” Harmonia said, no indication of suspicion.
“Now, what brings you and your companions to my office?”
“Thou hast broken our agreement.” Harmonia stated it as a fact—not a threat, and not a tentative accusation either. Unlike ponykind, she refused to give herself to the base instincts. This was both refreshing and aggravating for Vendetta.
“You’ll have to be more specific.”
Peaceflower coughed. “Vendetta, we said no more terrorizing the populace for ‘protection money’. We’re literally paying you to do that, you don’t need it!”
“Are my boys getting their hooves dirty again?”
“‘Tis more than that,” Harmonia continued. “I would believe that thy ‘boys’ hath gotten themselves into trouble without thy knowledge, but there are greater concerns. Thou art patrolling the streets more than the police.”
“The NPPD is useless, even more now that their precious system is crumbling,” Vendetta said. “I’m just doing what you asked: protect the city. We might even be doing a better job than the Merodi at keeping the fairies out.”
Peaceflower visibly twitched. Vendetta suspected this was intentional; it was a rare day when a Fay couldn’t hold their expression steady. She wanted him to know she was upset.
Solicitude frowned. “Oh… but, Mr. Vendetta, the ponies are important too.”
“There hath been numerous reports of mob lynchings,” Harmonia continued. “Too many to simply be a case of ‘mistaken for Fay.’ Almost as though thou hast been using their nature as an excuse to perform unsavory acts.”
“I assure you, I never instructed my boys to do anything of the sort,” Vendetta asserted. “I will be sure to send out word that such behavior will be dealt with harshly. If you catch any of them doing these things, you may do with them as you see fit.”
“We have no jurisdiction, that’ll be… complicated,” Peaceflower added.
“You came to me because you could not go to the shambles of pony folly this city calls a ‘government.’ The flimsy council already hates your very being, dividing out your own punishments should not be a difficulty.”
“I can put them into the relocation program,” Solicitude said. “I will send a request to Jingle to increase Aid Agent powers to include arrest and relocation of violently criminal individuals.”
“Careful, my little pony,” Harmonia cautioned. “We do not wish the city to seek direct, armed conflict, shouldst thou exercise too much power.”
“It will be a balance,” Solicitude assured her. “And my agents will know their boundaries and the intent behind my messages.” She glanced at Vendetta.
Even though her features were soft and her gaze calm, Vendetta felt like he was being judged by a deity he didn’t even believe in. He had to remind himself that this particular Fluttershy had a subtle mental ability and any impulses he might feel could be lies inserted by her nature… or perhaps what he was feeling was just a trait common to most Fluttershys.
“I am not concerned with armed conflict,” Vendetta said. “It may, in fact, be the simplest way to solve all of the problems with New Pandemonium. But I lack the power and you will not give it, so here we are.” He tapped his hooves. “I suppose you haven't reconsidered?”
“The losses from direct conflict wouldst be too great,” Harmonia said with a shake of her head. “Current methods may be slow, but they art not ineffective.”
“We will protect these ponies,” Solicitude emphasized. “And you are part of these ponies.”
Vendetta grinned. “It’s good, isn’t it?”
Peaceflower snorted. “Right. You. Good.”
“Do you have something to say to me?”
Peaceflower frowned. “Many things that we do not have the time for. There are other matters we must attend to.”
“I expect to see an improvement in thy ponies’ behavior,” Harmonia added. “The current state of affairs is unacceptable.”
“I will see what I can do.”
With a bow, Harmonia left, taking her entourage with her.
Vendetta scowled. I don’t even need you anymore. That was just a formality. Soon, Harmonia, you’ll realize that fairies aren’t the only threat to your precious ponies.
He sat back in his chair… and waited for what he had previously been anticipating.
With a flash of crackling lightning, a red pixie dropped an armored man into his office.
“Mando,” Vendetta said, forcing a smile. “Your mission has had quite a few hiccups, hasn’t it?”
“Mando” stood up to his full height and set the time gyroscope on the table—careful to keep his hand on it at all times so Vendetta couldn’t just take it. “I have the device. Pay what we agreed to.”
Vendetta frowned. “Your foolishness made us develop an extraction for you.”
“Then reduce what you paid your pixie to open that gate. Ten percent.”
“A reasonable mercenary…” Vendetta smirked. “I would agree to that, if Nightshade hadn’t come up with a much better idea.”
“Thank you, sir,” the pixie said.
Vendetta pulled an identical time machine out from under his desk and set it on top. “Do you see this, Mando?”
“You no longer require my services,” he said, retracting his own time machine. “I will find another buyer.”
“No… you won’t.” Vendetta tapped his pre-programmed time machine, sending “Mando” back precisely three hours and twenty-six seconds. He smiled as he relived the moment where the bounty hunter appeared in Vendetta’s office, surrounded by twenty of the best ponies Vendetta had to offer. It had been a quick fight, though a few bolts had passed dangerously close to Vendetta’s face. Perhaps he should not have been in the room when it happened…
But then he would have missed the carnage.
Looking down at his time machine, he grinned. He had used a time loop to pay nothing for this precious device, and now it was his. It was time to show those fairies that he was a threat equal to them. They may have ignored the temporal duplicates so far, but there were other ways to make a stand.
Now that the loop was complete, it was time.
“Nightshade, to the street sign, if you will.”
Nightshade lifted her finger, teleporting the two of them to a particular street corner in New Pandemonium City marked by a road sign with the words This, That, The Other and The Otherwise on it, pointed in seemingly random directions.
Vendetta ran his hoof along the pole, coming to the ground where it ruptured the rock, much like the Fae trees had when New Pandemonium City first arrived in Fae Epoque. Meaning it had been there before the City. But in order to place it specifically on this street corner, someone would have needed to know where the City would arrive.
Or, perhaps more accurately, when.
Vendetta held the time machine in his hoof, jumping back in time several months, before the arrival of New Pandemonium City. Time in the Fae was unusual, to say the least—winding the clock back in the City did not wind it back in all the rest of the Fae realms, nor in other universes. It was like taking a single clock in a watchmaker’s workshop and turning a hand back.
The sign was still there, sitting on a sparkling pink hill. Vendetta jumped back again. And again. Until the sign was absent.
He drew a Fay-unbinding weapon, gripping the shortsword in his jaw. Any minute now…
An elf appeared in a warp of shifting time, the sign in his hands. He planted it in the soil with a bemused grin on his face. “Ah, how many times she shall hit her had on this pedestrian wonder. I—” He jumped forward, dodging the swing of Vendetta’s blade. “Who in the courts might you be?”
He’s not even angry I’m trying to take him out. “Your judgment.”
“A mortal? My judgment?” He laughed like a stuck-up rich pony, accentuating the sound just to grate on Vendetta’s ears. “Do you even know who I am?”
“I know you’re the fairy that’s been tearing up my city through time. It’s become… personal, I suppose you could say.”
“No mortal should have been able to get this far…” he glanced to Nightshade. “One of the new kinds of pets, I see, I see! Fascinating.”
A future version of Vendetta appeared behind the elf, slicing at him. The elf slowed time down to a crawl, sidestepping the future Vendetta and kicking him in the crotch. “Such a shame, you have all the power of time and none of the finesse.”
Vendetta watched more and more of his future selves appear, forming a small army. “We don’t need finesse,” he said. “There’s something to be said about the brute-force approach.”
“Bothersome, you really will ruin all my delightful games with this.” The elf sighed, taking out a silver pocket watch. “I suppose I have time to manage you.”
The Vendettas charged as one. The elf jumped to another time, duplicating the road sign and slamming it into the ground elsewhere. “That’ll be doubly amusing.”
“There are more important things than your amusement!” Six Vendettas called, blades swinging wide.
“I disagree.” He cast a time spell that accelerated his movement, allowing him to duck through all the blades like a professional gymnast. “Your faces hide the most precious of all gifts.”
The Vendettas charged.
The elf jumped to the future, landing on his hands. Unsurprisingly, the Vendettas started pouring into the streets of future New Pandemonium City in pursuit.
“I’m afraid you’re going to have a problem here,” the elf said, smirking. “After all, the mafia doesn’t take kindly to ponies on their turf.”
“I am the mafia!” Vendetta declared.
The elf frowned. “Oh, that’s right, they do have a leader… What was it? Vengeful? Vermillion?”
“I am not part of your game!”
The elf appeared in the window of a nearby building. “On the contrary, everything is my game. You’re just an unexpected part. The twist!”
Vendetta growled. “I have the cards. This is my city.”
“This city was never yours,” the elf mocked. “This city was Silvertongue’s… and then it was ours. You are a fly on the wall who thinks he can play godling with the winds of time. But can you eliminate the timestram of an individual in its entirety with the snap of your fingers?”
Vendetta glared. “Not possible.”
“Of course not! You don’t have fingers! But I do.” He sneered. With a snap, every last one of Vendetta’s swords ceased to be. “It was never forged, it will never be. You, on the other hand…” He placed a finger on all the Vendettas’ muzzles. “You have the ability to give my maze another dimension. Anoth—”
“What’s going on here!?” Symphony demanded, Belladonna sitting in her mane. “Get away from him!”
Right on time, Vendetta thoughts. “You don’t have the loyal followers I have, elf. See her? You d—”
“I have no idea who you are!” Symphony blurted. “Why are there so many of you? And… you!” Symphony pointed an accusatory hoof at the elf. “I—”
“You’re interrupting my fun,” the elf hissed. He snapped his fingers. “Go elsewhere for a while.”
Nightshade popped out of nowhere, intercepting the temporal spell. “Not this time, Jonale.”
Jonale’s elven eyes widened. “What are you doing? You don’t know what that spell will do!”
“I know exactly what it’ll break.”
Nightshade, what are you doing? Vendetta thought.
Nightshade snapped her fingers. A sound like a massive clock tower bell shook Vendetta to his core. Glass shattered, and the world crumbled away to darkness.
Vendetta felt his heartbeat slow, and somewhere deep inside he knew everything had just broken.
~~~
Cryo didn’t like anything about what was happening.
Curio and Mattie were missing.
Time kept looping in on itself.
And she kept running into that stupid street sign. She was developing a particularly nasty headache at this point, and if she ran into it one more time she was going to fly off the hand—
Clank!
Cryo created an icy blade and cut the sign into multiple pieces, jumping on the remaining trash with reckless abandon.
“That seems… sane,” Symphony observed.
“She’s not,” Sriracha said. “Nor do we claim she is.”
Cryo froze a jagged piece of the sign to a stick, creating a hatchet. “I’m gonna chop the sign with the sign next time I see it.”
“Yes. Right.” Symphony scrunched her muzzle. “Bella, can you help us get out of this?”
Belladonna shrugged. “I do not know the layout of this maze of time.”
“It’s hard enough just to stay together,” Sriracha added, looking at the area around them with concern. “They can just pick us off one by one.”
“Not if we’re inside a giant frozen cube they can’t!” Cryo declared, erecting a hollow cube of ice around them. “There. We’re safe.”
“And not doing anything,” Symphony deadpanned.
“We can think up a plan,” Cryo said. “We’ve got to be able to do… something…” A strange look came over her face. Despite not being able to feel cold, she shivered.
“...Cryo…” Sriracha said.
“I’m… fine,” Cryo said. “So. We might not be able to do anything, but that doesn’t mean we don’t try. Ideas?”
“Leave the universe,” Sriracha offered.
Cryo took out her dimensional device and glared at it. “That’s what made Mattie disappear. Whatever it is can just… intercept that.”
Sriracha frowned. “Well, I’ve got spicy peppers, you’ve got ice, Symphony and Bella…” Sriracha glanced at their companions.
“Swords and music,” Symphony said. “Sorry, not much help when we can’t even see the enemy.”
They all turned to Belladonna expectantly.
“My assistance would not be assistance, but detriment,” Belladonna sighed.
“Nothing? Crap.” Cryo rubbed the back of her head.
Sriracha raised a hoof. “We could just sit here until help arrives.”
Symphony and Cryo looked at her like she was insane.
“What? It’s a legitimate course of action!”
“Not very… active,” Symphony pointed out. “Don’t you Sweeties have inter-dimensional phone things?”
Cryo pulled out her phone and tapped it. “Dimensional service is out. Which makes sense, time really screws with these things. But… maybe Pandemonium local…” She pressed a few buttons and the phone rang.
“...Yes?” Solicitude answered.
“We’ve got a minor problem involving time loops,” Cryo reported. “We’re kinda stuck in an ice cube, huddling around each other.”
“Oh! I’ll send someone to help you right away. I think we have an Aradia on si—”
A crack tore through reality, shattering the ice cube in half. Instinctually, Cryo grabbed for Sriracha and Symphony, though her hooves only enclosed around the latter. Sriracha had vanished.
The half of the ice cube Cryo could still see was suspended against solid blackness… it was the only thing she could see. Gravity flipped to the side, depositing Cryo and Symphony onto its slick surface among empty, inky blackness.
Symphony started looking around in a panic. “Belladonna!?”
“I don’t think they made it with us…” Cryo said. “...Or maybe we’re the ones that’re lost. This is way… way too black.”
“Great! Just… great! I’m stuck here in the darkness with some kid and my friend is gone and… and I’m just powerless!”
“...Kid!?”
“You’re a filly!”
“I…” Cryo processed this. “Huh. That’s… technically correct. Wow, I haven’t been treated like a kid in months. Sure don’t feel like one anymore.”
Symphony didn’t know what to say to that. She simply sat down on the ice and stared into the dark nothing. “...What have you done?”
“Me? Tried to stay alive. Hoping I succeeded.”
“There’s no time traps in New Pandemonium City. I’ve lived here all my life. There never has been.”
“The city was relocated recently, there’s gonna be a lot of weird stuff.”
“That was before I was born, how could you remember it!?”
Cryo blinked. “Uh… because it happened just a few months ago?”
Symphony stared at her. “...Please tell me you’re joking.”
“I’m not.” Cryo cocked her head. “Are you from the future or something?”
“That’s ridiculous.”
“This is Fae Epoque. The world doesn’t make sense. It’s like taking your math homework and sticking it in a blender. Not gonna be your best work.”
“Then why would we run into each other? I haven’t experienced any time nonsense before I met you.”
Cryo shrugged. “Maybe I’m in the future. It’s not like we have to notice when we shift through time. Ju—” The sign fell out of the darkness, smacking Cryo in the head. Before she could exact revenge upon it, it slid off the edge of the ice back into the nothing. “...If I wasn’t me I’d probably have a concussion by now.”
“Why does that sign hate you so much?”
“Probably some kind of running gag at my expense. I’m the ‘funny, overemotional’ one, after all.” She frowned. “I’d been hoping that would change.”
“...Can I ask why?”
“When you watch somepony die…” she didn’t finish the sentence. “I came out here to help ponies, to try something new. To give directly rather than as some kind of crazed hero who flung ice everywhere. And it was working, for a while. But… well, here I am again, in a crazy adventure, getting smacked in the head with a stupid sign because it’s funny.” She scowled, turning her glare to the darkness above. “Can’t it just be simple?”
Symphony snorted. “Life’s not simple.”
“Not what I meant but… agh.” Cryo sat down, her lower lip trembling. “...I am still a kid…”
Symphony looked at Cryo in a way she hadn’t until now—with pity. “You’ve been made to grow up too fast, haven’t you?”
Cryo nodded slowly.
“Did you want to?”
“At the time.”
“Well…” Symphony smiled. “When I was a filly, younger than you, I…” she paused. “I…”
Cryo looked up at her in confusion.
“I… I don’t know what I was going to say.” A haunted expression crossed Symphony’s features. “I… was I ever a filly?”
“Uh, okay, now would not be a good time to have an existential breakdown…”
“What’s the last thing I remember… I…” Symphony racked her brain. “Belladonna. Bella! That’s right, she’s my best friend. Since… Since…” Symphony grimaced. “Since I don’t know.”
White cracks started forming in the darkness. Cryo decided this was probably a bad sign. “Symphony, look at me, okay? It doesn't matter if you can’t remember, I’ll help you get those memories back!”
“I’ve been in New Pandemonium City all my life. What if my life has only been a few days? A few hours? Less!?”
“Well, then you would have realized it before now.”
“No no no, I just wasn’t thinking, something…” The cracks had reached the ice now, tearing the ground up beneath their hooves. “What’s different now?”
“I mean, you don’t have Bella with you, but let’s not focus on that…”
“Bella.” Symphony’s eyes widened. “BELLADONNA WHAT IS GOING O—”
The ice cube was gone. Fae Epoque was gone. Cryo was standing in Ponyville—her Ponyville—except there were no ponies around.
“Uh… hello?” she called, getting no response. The wind blew through her mane. It felt wrong—too regular to be natural. Like someone was blowing a giant fan at her from far away. “Hello!?”
~~~
Usually, when you went through a dimensional portal, you ended up in the image on the other side.
This did not happen when Shadow and the other Elements of Pandemonium followed the red pixie. They jumped… and then they were standing back in the futuristic Canterlot, exactly where and when they had been upon their arrival to the universe.
“...The buck!?” Havocwing shouted.
“Something is very wrong,” Velvet said, shivering. “Very wrong.”
“Sweetie’s mane color ‘as changed,” Curaçao observed, pointing to the poster. Sweetie was still there, holding a microphone, and the phrase Bring the Clouds Back! still dominated the image. The only difference was Sweetie’s mane: it was blue and pink.
“Then we’ll speak to her,” Shadow asserted, lighting her horn. “If we have been rewound to our arrival, she will be present.” She executed the teleport an instant later, appearing just outside the main hall’s doors. Rather than waiting for a guard to meet them, she gestured for Grayscale to kick the doors open.
The surge of gravitational energy was more than enough to snap the lock on the door. However, there were no guards present at the moment, nor was Celestia in the throne room. “Sweetie” sat alone in front of the throne, a breezie floating at her side.
“Hm?” She turned around, looking at the six of them. “You’re not Celestia.”
“And you’re not Sweetie Belle,” Shadow countered.
“...Obviously. I’m Symphony. You know, the singer?”
“Yeah, how could you not know?” the breezie huffed.
“We do, ze issue is zat we ‘ave a time problem,” Curaçao said.
“Time?” Symphony frowned. “Why is time a problem?”
“Are you not from ze past?”
Symphony giggled. “How could anypony be from the past?”
“I’m confused,” Havocwing said, raising a wing. “Wasn’t Sweetie from the past?”
“Maybe she wasn’t replaced,” Grayscale suggested.
“Or maybe time’s broken!” Insipid chimed in.
“Okay, now I’m confused,” Symphony said, cocking her head. “What are you all even talking about?”
Curaçao stared at Symphony, realization slowly crossing her face. “Only you.”
“...What?”
“Only you,” Curaçao repeated. “I didn’t see it before, because it is everywhere! But you… you are not a lie.”
“...Thanks?”
Curaçao gestured at the Canterlot hall around them. “But zis… Zis is all a lie. Every column, every window, every structure… we ‘ave not seen anozer living pony, ‘ave we?”
Shadow lit her horn, scanning for life. Shocked, she pulled back. “I… I’ve found nothing. Except…” She pointed at Belladonna. “Except her.”
“Me?” Belladonna cocked her head. “Am I a ‘lie’ too?”
“No, but it is not just lies I sense…” Curaçao walked up to Belladonna and narrowed her eyes. “I am ze master of deception. Deception does not ‘ave to be a lie, madame.”
“Hey, leave Bella out of this!” Symphony interrupted.
“Your little amie is suspicious beyond belief,” Curaçao said, examining everything she could about the breezie. “‘Er very form is a lie.”
Belladonna snorted. “All Fay are form-fluid.”
“And yet some are true, and some are lies.” Curaçao raised an eyebrow. “Tell me, Bella, what is your ‘istory in zis world?”
“She’s been with me my whole life!” Symphony blurted.
“You believe zat,” Curaçao asserted. “But I want ‘er to answer. Court Fay cannot tell lies, almost religiously devoted to ze concept. Zey can only deceive. She ‘as to respond wiz information, one way or anozer.” Curaçao smirked. “It is part of zeir ‘game’ zey love so much.”
“Having an innate ability to detect deception tends to ruin the dance,” Belladonna said.
“Claiming I ‘ave an unfair advantage? Oui, how unnatural it is to be on an even field. Against ze order of Fay to mortals.”
“...Perhaps it could be seen as a suitable challenge.”
“Or it would, if you did not ‘ave anozer task you needed to complete. A goal more important to you zan some silly verbal sparring match.”
Belladonna’s expression became completely neutral. There would be no emotion whatsoever from the breezie. Good, Curaçao thought. She understands the position she’s in.
“Why are you interrogating her?” Symphony asked. “We should be interrogating you! You… bust into the royal throne room!”
Havocwing snorted. “Kid, we have all the cards. You’re some random unicorn and a fairy. You can’t do anything to us, we can do everything to you. So keep quiet.”
“Havoc, that was mean,” Insipid chided.
“What? She was being annoying!”
“I’m so, so sorry,” Insipid told Symphony. “Havoc can be a total inconsiderate loser.”
Symphony blinked in confusion. “Are you trying to attack us or not…?”
“They think themselves heroes,” Belladonna said. “But we are the only possible target of their righteous fury.”
“Not ‘er,” Curaçao said. “Symphony is completely innocent ‘ere. It’s vous.”
“What have I done?”
Curaçao smirked. “Ah, merci for telling moi.”
Belladonna’s face remained level.
“Shadow, she is responsible for zis mess, kill ‘er to end it.”
“With pleasure.” Shadow surrounded her horn in a tangled mess of dark red thorns and swirling Void.
“NO!” Symphony shouted - but Grayscale pinned her to the ground with gravity. Symphony reached for her swords, except she had none. Confusion crossed her features.
Shadow pulled back, activating the final parts of the spell.
“Kill me and the universe this lie is based on dies with me,” Belladonna said.
Shadow’s spell went out with a puff. Symphony stared at Belladonna in shock.
Curaçao just looked smug. “Isn’t it a useful skill, being able to bluff?”
Belladonna gave Curaçao no expression.
“Now… tell us exactly ‘ow this lie works, why you’ve created it, and why killing you would destroy everyzing. Be convincing. I’m sure Shadow or ‘Avoc would appreciate ze… opportunity to grind you into pixie dust.”
“Belladonna…” Symphony whimpered. “What’s… going on?”
Belladonna gave no indication of emotion. But she did start talking.
“This is a false timeline nexus of Fae Epoque…”
~~~
“HELLO!?” Cryo called again, even though she knew it was probably pointless. “Great. Trapped in a ghost town. Best. Day. Ever.”
She walked over to the empty Carousel Boutique, sitting down on one of her sister’s drama couches. Naturally, her sister was nowhere to be found.
All right, what to do. I’m stuck in some kind of weird time nonsense. There are no ponies to help me. But everything else is here.
With a groan, she flopped onto her back. I’m useless. Even when I’m trying to help ponies, I get stuck in these messes. “MMMMMF,” she grunted, letting out a stressed burst of air.
The wind howled outside.
Not only am I useless, I’m BORED. Uuuugh...
She picked up a book on fashion and started flipping through it. Yep, not a dream, I can read this.
Wait…
If this book is here, then…
She jumped out of the drama couch and ran outside. Yes, Canterlot was there, in the distance. Now she had a destination in mind. Creating a wave of icy shards beneath her, she sailed toward the mountain city. The ice carried her over the abandoned train tracks, up the mountain, and into the sky. It wasn’t the fastest way to travel, but it got the job done.
Without any guards, it was pathetically easy to barge into the more secretive portion of the Starswirl the Bearded section. She slid up to the giant hourglass and grinned. “Time spells. Hah! Just have to…” She frowned as she pulled the time spell off the shelf. “...cast a super-complicated spell far above my skill level. Right.”
Her disappointment was short lived, for she remembered there were any number of powerful magic artifacts that could bestow her with the necessary power. The Alicorn Amulet was probably the closest, but nopony knew where Zecora had hidden that. Plus, that was probably just a bad thing to use in the first place.
...But Grogar’s bell was probably still on Mount Everhoof. Normally a treacherous and all but impossible journey, but Cryo was the mare of ice. It couldn’t be that hard.
Grabbing some saddlebags, she set the time spell and a book on Grogar’s bell within. She hopped onto her icy wave and sailed off to Mount Everhoof, leaving a glacial trail of ice in her wake. Unlike Canterlot, Mount Everhoof proved to be a less-than-ideal feature to surmount. Canterlot had roads. Everhoof didn’t. What it did have was a ton of snow that Cryo could use to push herself higher and higher up the mountain.
After quickly discovering that pillars of snow weren't very stable, Cryo rolled herself into a snowball and twisted up the mountain, accumulating more and more snow along the way.
When she arrived at the entrance to the cave, she realized that she’d forgotten about the magic barrier.
“Uuuuuugh…” Cryo facehooved. “Okay, think, think… pass the barrier…” She threw a spike of ice at the shield, only for it to shatter on contact. No amount of size or sharpness gave her the edge she needed. She would need a way to absorb magic. Which, annoyingly, was one of the things Grogar’s bell could do, but it was inside the barrier!
...And she couldn’t use the time spell without getting in, either.
“Plan B…” She created a frozen pickaxe and started hacking at the rocks around the barrier. She found that it extended further into the rock. Coming from above and below wouldn’t help either, it was spherical.
It had to have a limit on its power. It had to. How could she strain it enough to break it?
“Wait…” She scratched her chin, a grin starting to form. “Oh… oh this is going to take a while, but this is going to be so fun.” She exchanged her pickaxe for a series of jagged icy blades arranged in a chainsaw-like fashion. With a twist of her hooves, she hacked at the mountain, removing several pounds of rock in one fell swoop.
She hacked again, and again, acting like a beaver as she ran around the mountain. The sun rose, the sun set, and she continued on, pushed by sheer force of will. The mountaintop was soon precariously settled on a single column of rock, in the middle of which sat the spherical barrier protecting Grogar’s bell.
“Let’s see if you can support the weight of a mountain all on your own…” Cryo snarked, bashing the last of the rock out of the way.
For a moment, the shield remained active, supporting the weight of the entire mountaintop with only its magical power. However, Cryo was right—the shield had its limits. The weight of several hundred tons of rock with no support from the mountain below shattered the magic, allowing the mountaintop to fall.
Cryo realized that she was currently standing under the falling rocks. She really hadn’t thought this far ahead. In a panic, she raised a barrier of ice around herself as the rubble piled around her.
All was dark.
Cryo felt a pain in her left front leg. Pressure. Something was crushing it and she couldn’t move it. Not that she could really move much else, there wasn’t much space here buried under several tons of rock.
She started pushing out with her ice, though she was already exhausted from the whole cutting down a mountain operation. She could move a few rocks around, free herself, but getting back to the surface… that would require a miracle.
Grogar’s bell fell from the rocky ceiling into her hooves.
“That’ll do nicely,” Cryo giggled. She may not have been a great wizard, but the spell to activate Grogar’s bell wasn’t all that difficult. Two minutes of sparking horns later, she had the bell’s power in her grasp. With a resounding gong sound, the magic surged into her.
She sprouted wings, of course. She made a note to get rid of those later.
But first… she was going to get out of all this rubble.
“Boom,” she breathed. A burst of icy shards flew out in every direction, sending the chunks of mountain far and wide, like meteors. She flew into the air, holding the time spell high.
“Let’s do this…” She put all her energy into the time spell. “Let’s go back to before I was here… back… bac-”
Reality shattered like a glass mirror, taking her to eternal blackness. The writing on the time spell’s scroll vanished, as did her wings and the magical power from Grogar’s bell. That hadn’t been part of the plan.
She fell into the eternal darkness, letting out a scream not of terror, but of annoyance.
Her plight was not to go unnoticed for long. She was caught by the wings of a graceful alicorn.
“Wh… Harmonia?”
“‘Tis I,” Harmonia admitted.
“...How did you send out a time distortion?” Peaceflower asked Cryo, buzzing around Harmonia’s ear.
“I was stuck in some kind of fake Equis. I just went to where the time spells were.” She smirked. “Not that I really knew what I was doing…”
Solicitude revealed herself to be flying alongside them. “You did great, Cryo. We didn’t know where we were going until Harmonia sensed the surge.”
“Where were you guys stuck?”
“Vision,” Solicitude breathed.
“Oh… geez, I’m so sorry, that must have been terribl—”
“Vision back when it was nicer,” Solicitude corrected. “Before… before everything went too far.”
“...Was that… good?”
“I don’t know,” Solicitude admitted. “But I do know it was empty.”
“I forced time to break,” Harmonia explained. “And we ended in this darkness. We were flying aimlessly until I saw thee. Now, I believe I know enough to navigate this timeless shadow.”
“Where are we going, though?” Peaceflower asked.
“To an annoying elf…”
Harmonia encased all of them in a bubble of time. With a tick… tick… tick… the magic extrapolated a destination from the temporal machinations of Cryo compared to what Harmonia had already done. A map spread out before them, of lights in the darkness, secluded from each other. Each light was a beacon of loneliness.
Only one held the spark Harmonia wanted to see. They appeared on a Fae hill, where mob-boss Vendetta and temporal-elf Jonale were going at it, trying to beat each other to death with obscure street signs. Nightshade sat off to the side, observing closely.
“ENOUGH!” Harmonia bellowed, stopping the two of them in their tracks.
Jonale sneered. “With all due respect, goddess, this is our engagement, not yours.”
“Thou art stuck in time and don’t even realize.”
“Don’t be ridicul—” Jonale glanced at one of his watches that was spinning out of control. “...Ah. Well, it appears as though I’ve been played at my own game. I am impressed, Vendetta.”
“What?” Vendetta said, visibly confused.
“Of course you didn’t do it…” Jonale growled. “Goddess, who is responsible for this…” he checked the watch again. “Shattering of time?”
“Unknown,” Harmonia admitted. “I would not put it past a future version of thee.”
“That isn’t the case…” Jonale glanced at two watches at the same time. “It can’t be me, my temporal sparks have no reliance on outside timestreams.”
“Outside… timestreams?” Cryo cocked her head.
“Fae time is much more interesting on its own,” Jonale explained. “A true artist can weave timelines that never existed, shadows of people with partial memories, extrapolations of that which can never will be… this shattering is feeding off another realm’s unstable time-state. In order to end whatever trap this is, we must find the open portal they are exploiting.”
“Can you do that?”
“Not without the help of a goddess…” Jonale extended a hand. “Shall we make a bond, dear Harmonia, to restore the status-quo?”
Harmonia nodded. “Of course.”
“...Goddesses who humble themselves…” Jonale chuckled to himself, as if this were a brilliant joke. For a moment, a burst of blue light exchanged between the two of them, forging a “Water” bond between their spirits. “There! Together, we can light the way of the future!”
“Do not misunderstand, this is by no means permanent,” Harmonia decreed.
“I’m aware. I’m going to revel in it for some time, I hope you understand.”
Vendetta frowned. “This elf has been manipulating time behind the scenes in New Pandemonium City for longer than I can possibly be aware, and you are working with him?”
“He hath the requisite skills and the desire to assist,” Harmonia stated. “‘Tis the same reason I worked with thee, despite knowing thy background and tendency for treachery.” She pointed at the time machine in his hoof.
Vendetta nodded slowly. “It seems we will have to resume this late—”
Harmonia glared at him. “There will be no resumption. The time machine is not thy property. Thine actions will be reported to Merodi Universalis upon the resolution of this crisis of time.”
“You need my ponies, Harmonia.”
“Thou hast sought my downfall, and the control of the City, that much is clear. My mistake was judging it to be beyond thy grasp.”
“You’re not getting another chance,” Solicitude added.
“Yep! You done screwed up!” Cryo laughed.
Jonale coughed. “I have found the core of the web, Harmonia. Shall we engage the transport?”
“It is done,” Harmonia said.
With a flash, Harmonia, Jonale, Cryo, Vendetta, Solicitude, Nightshade, and Peaceflower were all standing in front of a portal open in darkness. The room was featureless, aside from Mattie’s passed out form to the side. Through the portal, they could see a Ponyville.
Harmonia approached it. “Jonale, let us seal this gateway.”
“Gladly, my games have been so rudely interrupted.”
Peaceflower and Nightshade glanced at each other—nodding. Both of them snapped their fingers as one.
Harmonia and Jonale were tossed through the portal by a burst of the pixies’ magic.
~~~
“A false time nexus is difficult to explain…” Belladonna continued.
“Try me,” Shadow deadpanned.
“The temporal instances of nonexistent futures manifest through the twisting of Fae Inconsistent Timestreams in order to infuse the experiences of all through the focal point.”
“That’s not that complicated.”
Belladonna said nothing.
“What, didn’t foresee me parsing that?”
“Can you… translate?” Curaçao asked Shadow.
“Easily. She’s referencing the fact that Fae Epoque is made out of interwoven universes, each with different rules on how to handle time. Given the weave, they tend to even out their various rules, allowing for what I’m going to call ‘inherent paradox’, the trait she tried to hide behind the term ‘nonexistent futures.’ Every time the ‘Inconsistent Timestreams’ are ‘twisted’ a new sort of secluded existence is created, where rules of time flow according to either randomness or whatever the experienced time mage desired. This allows for objects to be drawn out of series’ of events that have never actually happened. For instance, Symphony taking place of the local Sweetie Belle.”
“But… I live here!” Symphony shouted.
“You no doubt have memories, or at least think you do, but I suspect without a direct connection to the false time you’re being forced into, you wouldn’t feel anything of the sort.”
Symphony fell silent.
“I still don’t get it,” Insipid said.
“The world we’re standing in right now doesn’t exist,” Shadow simplified. “It is an aspect of Fae Epoque twisted to resemble a timeline that doesn’t exist. Though I am currently unable to ascertain her reasons for doing such a thing.”
“She’s stalling for somezing,” Curaçao said. “Zough why a time traveler would need to stall…”
“Fae Epoque has to follow metatime like all worlds,” Shadow said. “However loosely, there is still a forward projection once the falsehoods are peeled away. There are likely other nexuses akin to this one, centered around other ponies.”
Symphony glanced at herself. “Is this all centered… around me?” She looked to Belladonna desperately. “Bella, talk to me!”
Bella’s face betrayed nothing. Shadow wondered how difficult it was for the breezie to keep that up.
“She’s got us talking,” Grayscale interrupted. “Discussing. Wasting time. That’s exactly what she wants.”
Shadow cursed under her breath. “The revolving game... Bella, now that I know what this false nexus is, how does it destroy the Equis?”
“I exist in multiple timestreams at once. My life in this one is tied to the lives in the others. The Mandalorian may not have had any bombs on Twilight Sparkle’s time machine, but I do. They detonate upon my connection to my other selves being severed.”
“She’s telling ze truth,” Curaçao said.
“W-what!?” Symphony blurted. “Bella, what are… Is all this a lie?”
“More than you could ever possibly know.”
“Wh…” Symphony took a few steps back. “I…”
“You don’t actually exist. I drew you out of a timeline that had no prior place in this game. You were the focal point for drawing that which should not be. Y—”
“She’s stalling again,” Grayscale interrupted. “We have got to deal with her quickly.”
Curaçao growled. “Bella, what is your plan?”
Belladonna kept her gaze on Symphony. “I have intention to, through the twisting of fates, introduce a new variable int—”
“Enough of your stalling word-game shit,” Grayscale spat. “Twenty words or less, fairy. What is your goal?”
For the first time in several minutes, Bella’s expression changed—one of thoughtfulness, as if trying to figure out how best to word it.
“And zat’s a lie,” Curaçao said. “No words were spoken, but you don’t need to zink to come up wiz an answer. You know what your goal is, and you don’t want to tell us.”
“How can you be so certain?”
Curaçao ignored the question—seeing it as yet another attempt at distraction. “Eizer you zink your plan is worse zan destroying a single universe… or your plan includes destroying ze universe.”
“A very confident assertion.”
“You can let me know I’m wrong by saying ‘no’, casting me into uncertainty. But…” Curaçao grinned. “You can’t say no if it isn’t ze truth. I’ll take any other response as confirmation. So tell me, Bella, does your plan involve destroying ze ozer universe, or is it somezing we would be willing to sacrifice ze universe in order to stop?”
“It is no—”
“Kill her,” Curaçao ordered.
“FINALLY!” Velvet shouted, having spent the last few minutes eating up the vast amounts of fear Belladonna had been suppressing. Blood erupted from her back and the light of the false time grew dark. “Goodnight, little bug…”
Belladonna dropped the false form of a breezie, becoming an orange pixie. She snapped her fingers, embedding a soul-rending blade into Velvet. It did absolutely nothing to the fear-fueled monstrosity. Velvet wrapped her blood around the pixie’s limbs, pulling them taught. No amount of form shifting could get away from the pony of fear.
“So far below…” Velvet licked her lips. “So insignificantly pathetic compared to me, the mortal. Your plans are like glass!” She pulled tighter, beginning to rip the Fay’s essence in half. “No more plans…”
Belladonna lit up like a matchstick, bursting with orange energy. “If you won’t let this happen, I’m taking it all down!” An orange chain of magic shot out of her eyes, going right for Symphony.
Symphony screamed, but couldn't close her eyes. Shadow jumped, intercepting the chain in her magic. The chain exploded into several sparks, three of which jumped past Shadow’s shield, touching her time machine.
It sent a burst of temporal energy at Symphony, hitting her right in the horn.
Velvet tore Belladonna in half.
Two pixies standing outside a portal let out a screech of pain.
Twilight’s library exploded, sending a fissure of time through the universe.
Harmonia and Jonale, the targets of this entire debacle, were not through the portal yet. They would not be erased by the collapsing universe.
But Belladonna and her other selves were sore losers...
Symphony screamed.
~~~
Symphony woke up in her bed, sweating in a panic. The sun was shining through the window, blessing her blankets with outside warmth. Twilight Sparkle was sitting at the foot of her bed, a look of concern on her face. “Are you all right, Symphony?”
“Yeah, mom,” Mom? Wh… no, that’s right. Mom. Yes. “Just a… bad dream.” She rubbed her horn. “Was I shooting magic off? It hurts.”
Twilight pulled Symphony into a hug, her artificial wings providing extra support to the gesture. “No, you weren't shooting at me in your sleep.”
“Good.” Symphony took a deep breath, taking in the presence of her mother. “Sorry for worrying you.”
“We all have nightmares. I’m here if you want to talk about it.”
“...Don’t you have work?”
Twilight glanced at the clock, panic crossing her features. “I’m going to be late!” She scrambled off the bed, falling flat on her face. “Uh… we can still talk about it!”
“We can talk about it when you get back, it’s not a big deal.” I can’t even remember what it was about. “I’ll be fine.”
“Okay, uh… stay safe, I’ll be home before you know it!” She lit her horn and teleported away, leaving Symphony in her bed.
Symphony couldn’t take her eyes off the clock. It’s turning backward. Weird.
No, that’s how it’s always turned.
With a shrug, she got out of bed and made her way downstairs. The house was a common pony abode in Canterlot: magic appliances, a fireplace, brick walls mixed with synthetic metal, and posters of her singing. And posters of her sword fighting. Twilight really did like to collect all of Symphony’s accomplishments.
There was a small statue of Silvertongue on the counter.
Symphony stopped short, staring at the statue.
It was Harmonia… Celestia? Celestia. It was Celestia. What else could it be?
Symphony rubbed her head. That nightmare did a number on me.
She poured herself a bowl of cereal, sprinkling some fairy lily dust on top for flavor. She sat at the stool facing the window and watched as the sun continued rising. A flying whale rose with it, letting out a beautiful call as sparkling creatures swirled around it. Clouds gave the scene a beautiful halo. Buildings of metal, stone, magic, moss, and trees lined her view, filling her with a sense of confused delight.
It’s so weird that the world works this way.
A smile on her face, she took in another spoonful of cereal.
A white unicorn in four leather boots crashed through the window, landing on the floor of the kitchen at such an odd angle she cut herself in several locations all at once. Unaffected by the injuries, she hopped to her hooves and fixed Symphony with a wild expression. “You. You are the only pony with any sense that something’s wrong.”
Symphony stared at the unicorn in shock.
“...Besides me crashing into your house, mate.”
For some reason, the only response Symphony could get out was, “you sound like a guy.”
“You’ll get used to it,” she muttered, removing a shard of glass from her shoulder.
“Do you need… bandages?”
“Nah, I’ll be fine, always am. Now. Ahem. You know something’s up.”
Yes, yes something is totally up. “I have no idea what you’re talking about. And you’re in my house! That’s breaking and entering!”
“Look, if you want to call the cops, we can get into a whole complicated song and dance, but I need you to remember the motherbucking time shenanigans! Like… do you recognize me?”
Symphony thought about it for a moment. “Actually… I think I do.”
“Thank Celestia.”
“You’re the mare that stands on the side of the road and takes money from passing stallions before walking away with them.”
She gawked. “I am not a two-bit—oh. Well, in this timestream it appears I am. How disappointing, I like to think I have at least some standards.”
“What?”
“Ugh, you still think you belong here, you’re basically still a kid. Mmmf, how to jog your memory…”
“Why don’t you just, I don’t know, tell me the things I’m supposed to remember?”
“See, I’d love to do that, except I’m working off incomplete information here. My mind’s been wiped and set in here just like yours, I’m just cheating to know something’s up, get some basic background information, and know that you are the focal point of all of it.”
Symphony raised an eyebrow. “So you’re insane.”
“You’re the one talking to a mare of the night who just broke into your house instead of calling the police, so who’s talking?”
I really should have called the police. Why haven’t I?
“Good, that’s good, progress!”
“You can read my mind!?”
“Not exactly, but the effect is probably close enough.” She extended a hoof. “The name’s Mattie. You’re Symphony, and something is really wrong with the world and we’re going to fix it!”
Symphony found herself shaking Mattie’s hoof without really thinking. “I’m still not convinced.”
“Okay, okay, I need to jog your memory somehow, it’s in there somewhere. Hmm…” Mattie scratched her chin. “I’ve got it! Feast your eyes on the outside world!”
“You mean look out the window you just broke?”
“Yes. That. Just look out there. Does that look natural to you?”
Symphony glanced at the contradictory buildings, sky whale, and the sun. “Not really? But I’m from the past, the future has to look weird.”
“It has to look like somepony stitched together several unrelated theme cards and just let them lie? I…” Mattie’s eyes widened. “Aha! Symphony, your poster back there. What does it say?”
Symphony glanced at the poster of her singing. “Bring back the clouds.”
“And look outside. Those look a lot like clouds to me.”
Symphony glanced at the sky. “I brought them back.” No I didn’t. “Or, well, somepony must have… Uh…” I would have a memory of that!
Mattie looked at her expectantly.
Symphony racked her brain. Think, think, there has to be something in here. A memory, a… She replayed a day she’d sat in the grass in Ponyville, looking up at the sky. And in that sky, there had been a cloud of the exact same shape as the one outside right now. She called it the best cloud she had ever seen…
“Holy mother of the Princesses…” Symphony trembled, taking a few steps back. The divisions in her memory became more apparent. That building there was from New Pandemonium City. The hill? A Fae creation. There were both farms and machines, clouds and spotless skies… It was like all of her experiences were bundled up into a ball and shown to her all at once.
Even though they were outright contradictory.
“I… am a singer… I am from the past… and I spent my whole life in New Pandemonium City. What… I…” She jumped up, looking around in a panic. “Where’s Belladonna!?”
“Who the what now?”
“She did this. She did this all. Those ponies were stopping her from whatever her plan was, and she was going to destroy a universe—this one—but she couldn’t let them win. She… did something to me.”
Mattie frowned. “Well, if I’m here, maybe she’s here too? You remembered the ‘me’ from this time, maybe you can find her.”
“I don’t exist…”
“What?”
“Not… important.” Symphony shook her head, focusing on her memories—her many, many contradictory memories. She was surprised how few she actually had of Belladonna, and how all of them were in a city that didn’t exist here, except in chunks taken out of her memory. There they were, being friends for seemingly no reason, and then there was the confrontation, the ice, the shattering, and… a little pixie running a flower shop downtown.
“Downtown, flower shop,” Symphony reported. “Let’s go.”
They jumped out the window and trotted down the street, which changed from pavement to cobblestone to Fae grass every dozen steps. The ponies of the world didn’t seem to notice, even though most of them were tripping over the uneven ground. Peacefully oblivious.
“Smoking wombat carcasses, this is worse than I realized.” Mattie grimaced. “I didn’t see how blind it made them. Or me.”
“I remembered, they can too.”
“Can they? Symphony, I’m cheating with my freaky brain. You were important. I haven’t actually officially remembered anything yet.”
“You are Agent Mattie ‘Rarity’ Belle of Merodi Universalis and the League of Sweetie Belles. ...For some reason. You’re a Rarity.”
“Oh, I took up my sister’s mantle after she—” Mattie shuddered. “Yep. That’s an effective way to reboot memory. Right to the painful experiences.”
Symphony stopped in her tracks. “You… lost her?”
Mattie nodded. “Sweetie Brute, she was. Absolute darling who crushed her enemies. Or, well, talked about it a lot.”
“What was… how did you cope?”
Mattie shook her head. “Not in the way most Rarities do. I decided to get out of my stupid-inducing universe and see what she’d been doing. Never go to Equis Ultra Fast, they’ve proven that staying there lowers your intelligence.”
Symphony nodded slowly. “What a—”
“Hey, it’s Insipid!” Mattie shouted. “INSIPID!”
Insipid looked up from the crack in the sidewalk she was examining. “Like, who are you?”
“How can you forget a face like this?” Mattie asked, pursing her lips.
“Uh, I forget a lot of faces.” Insipid rubbed the back of her head. “Sorry!”
“Hmm… looks like I’ll have to jog your memory a bit. Hey, Insipid, remember Silvertongue?”
“...Who?”
Mattie blinked. “Your father?”
“...My dad had a second name!? Wow, wait until I tell mom!”
“Balls,” Mattie muttered. “I was sure that would work.”
“It looks like we might be the only ones,” Symphony said.
“Odd,” Mattie scratched her chin. “I know I’m here because I’m Aware, what makes you so special?”
“...I don’t exist.”
“You’re going to have to explain what that means.”
“Bella brought me out of a fake timeline, or, something. I had no past, and I had no future, and that was important for some reason.”
“I bet you’re the focal point of all this, somehow,” Mattie mused.
“She’s the one that caused it, we’re going to find her and make her explain i—”
Insipid poked her head between the two of them, interrupting their conversation. “This sounds like an adventure in the making. I want in.”
“...Can you still copy magic?” Mattie asked.
“What?”
“Unfortunate.” Mattie pursed her lips. “I suppose you can come along anyway…”
“Yay! Where are we going?”
“To the downtown flower shop,” Symphony said, climbing up a set of golden stairs. “Right this way.”
“But that’s right through the Queen’s throne room!” Insipid sputtered.
“It’s the way to the market, I don’t care if it doesn’t make sense, capische?” Symphony trotted further up the stairs.
“If you’re the focal point of all this, this might just be the organization of your own brain!” Mattie called.
“Let’s not think about that!” Symphony called back, starting to think about just that as she ascended. What would the Queen at the top of the stairs be? Her memories seemed to disagree. Harmonia? Celestia? Not Silvertongue. Why did she even know about Silvertongue? She didn’t have memories of him, like she did of Harmonia and Celestia.
Celestia…
Symphony found herself dwelling in the memories of a pony named Sweetie Belle. A pony who most definitely wasn’t her, doomed to die unless Twilight could take her to the future to be operated on. Three hundred and fifty years… and they couldn't go back.
Except Twilight did. But… Twilight was here, in this universe, wasn’t she?
Symphony shouldn’t have been surprised. Time broke. The universe was supposed to die. Whatever had been done to stitch it together crazily could have moved any and everypony out of time…
At long last, she reached the top of the stairs. Sitting in the throne was a tall pegasus mare Symphony didn’t recognize at all.
“Who dares interrupt Queen Blackburn?” a guard asked.
“I, uh…” Symphony couldn’t stop staring at Queen Blackburn. Her belly was pronounced—was she pregnant? Why did it matter?
“Strange,” Blackburn said. “Familiar face. Do not recognize. Do you know me?”
“N-no,” Symphony stammered.
“Curious…” Blackburn frowned. “You are just passing through to the market.”
“Yes,” Mattie offered for Symphony. “I do hope we’re not intruding.”
“No. This happens often.” She narrowed her eyes at something unseen. “Be on your way unless you have business.”
Mattie shuffled Insipid and Symphony out of the throne room and down a set of Fae-grass stairs. “What was that about?”
“I… I have no idea,” Symphony said, rubbing her eyes. “I had no context for that. At… all.”
At the bottom of the stairs was a nice bustling market that was taken directly out of future-Canterlot. Most ponies were wearing fake wings or horns provided by the magical amulets, though there were a few other races moving around in the midst.
Symphony marched right up to a stand operated by an orange pixie. “Belladonna.”
Belladonna looked at her in confusion. “...My name’s Snapdragon. You must have me mistaken with someone else.”
“I don’t. You did this.”
“Did… what?”
“Let me handle this,” Mattie said, coughing into her hoof. “Snapdragon, do you have any inclination or memories that suggest this timeline is not the one that should exist.”
Snapdragon blinked. “No. What are you even talking about? Madponies…”
“An uncharacteristically straight answer that can’t be a lie.” Mattie sighed. “She’s not going to be of any help.”
“...Is the quest over?” Insipid asked.
“There’s got to be something we can do to break out of this,” Symphony muttered. “To set everything right.”
“How?” Mattie asked. “We’re the only ones who know something’s up, and we don’t have any clue how any of this works.”
“Mom knows.”
“...Come again?”
“Twilight Sparkle knows,” Symphony said, standing up. “She’s trying to build a time machine. We can figure something out with her help. She doesn’t have to understand what’s going on to help us!”
“She might think it’s crazy,” Mattie said.
“You are crazy,” Insipid pointed out.
“She’ll believe me,” Symphony said. “I just know it.”
The three of them ran off, leaving a very confused Snapdragon standing behind her flowering wares.
~~~
Twilight Sparkle stared at Symphony in mild disbelief.
“It’s too ridiculous, isn’t it?”
“I…” Twilight glanced out the broken window of her home at the complex skyline. She looked at the mixed posters at the wall. And, finally, her gaze settled on Mattie. “It’s ridiculous, but… it makes sense.”
“Oh thank Celestia,” Symphony breathed.
“I don’t think I would have believed… any of this if it wasn’t for you.” She pointed at Mattie.
“What did I do?”
“You look exactly like Rarity. And are definitely not her. I should have felt something the instant I met you, but I didn’t.” Twilight ruffled her wings nervously.
“Woah,” Insipid said, eyes wide. “We really are stuck in round-time.”
Symphony ignored her. “So… mom? Do you have any… ideas?”
“Give me a second to think…” Twilight scratched her chin. “So, based on everything you’ve told me, we’re in a synthesis of several timelines stitched together the moment everything broke: likely this Belladonna destroying my lab while I was making the first time machine. Instead of the universe exploding, you were used as a focal point to… trap everyone?”
“I’m not sure that what she was trying to do, but that’s what happened.”
“If all this is true, it should be a simple matter of jumping back and forth in time to end it all. But…” Twilight tapped her hoof on the ground. “If I understand the temporal theory correctly, everything will just play out the exact same way as before, since our minds get reset with everything else. We can use the Fae’s time to revert everything, but it will also revert ourselves.”
Symphony glanced at Mattie. “Can you…?”
Mattie shook her head. “My sense isn’t reliable. Only Symphony here has the inkling in the back of her mind. And it’s… subtle.”
“What if you, like, go further back in time to stop that from happening? Give yourself a heads up? Make a circle?” Insipid suggested.
Symphony raised an eyebrow. “We’re already going back in time.”
“Sort of,” Twilight said. “More accurately, what we’d be doing is ‘rewinding’. Dialing back the clock to revert the worlds back to where they belong, using you as the center. It’s like you have a clock inside of you that everything hangs on, and if you turn it back, everything turns back with it.”
“So we really can do Insipid’s idea? Go back super far?”
Twilight shook her head. “I don’t think that would give you any longer to remember. And I don’t want to chance layering everything… From what you’ve told me, moving very far from the timeline we’re in right now will just give the Fay a chance to do whatever they want.”
“Them and their time that doesn’t exist,” Mattie grumbled.
“It’s possible that we could use that,” Symphony said. “I’m from a time that doesn’t exist, after all. I think that’s why it’s all focused on me. Bella grabbed me to serve as a focal-point-thingy.”
“But we don’t know how,” Twilight sputtered. “We can’t know how. The only people who knew about the false timelines are all stuck in this one without their minds!”
“Minds.” Symphony furrowed her brow. “Minds…”
“I have a feeling I’m going to like this idea,” Mattie said with a grin.
“My mind remembers things, unlike the rest of you. It’s always a nagging feeling in the back of my skull, but I have to remember, because I’m the ‘focal point’. What if we manipulated it, somehow? Forced me to remember?”
“That’s some… highly unethical magic,” Twilight pointed out.
“Forget about ethics for a moment, is it possible?”
“Mind control is a thing, yes, and it’s very functional when used on the willing. But I don’t know how to do it, nor do I want to.”
“I know somepony,” Mattie said, smirking. “Twilight, have you seen Fluttershy lately?”
Twilight blinked. “I left her behind in the past.”
“Ah, but this wouldn’t be Fluttershy. She would be going by… Solicitude.”
“Oh…” Twilight’s eyes widened. “Oh you’re right, I do know her. She’s runs an animal shelter!”
“She… might know how to do it,” Mattie admitted. “And once we do… we will fill Symphony’s head with the exact instructions on how to stop ‘Bella’.”
“Hold up, once we rewind everything…” Symphony cocked her head. “How are we going to stop her? What am I going to be able to do?”
Mattie smirked. “You’re going to find me.”
“Huh?”
~~~
Solicitude ran an animal shelter.
Really, that’s all she did. Animal shelter. In a world as chaotic as the one she lived in, animals needed a place to stay, and she provided.
The fact that animals were always docile around her was not an indication of anything more insidious going on.
She definitely didn’t run an illegal business in the basement where she took troubled ponies and cured them of mental illnesses using highly detestable magic.
She was a pegasus, after all. What pegasus would know the dark arts?
Nopony could ever point to her and say she was a dark wizard. That would be ridiculous. She didn’t even own a unicorn amulet!
So when Twilight Sparkle, the Queen’s magic advisor, walked up to her and told her they needed help altering a pony’s mind, the only natural response was to go “What?”
And then Twilight had told her the most insane story she’d ever heard.
So, naturally, Solicitude had believed her. You couldn’t make that stuff up. She was sure to establish immunity to charges of dark magic if this didn’t work, which Twilight granted.
So she led them into her basement that totally-didn’t-exist and performed an operation that nopony knew how to do. All it took was twenty minutes of her Staring right at Symphony’s willingly moldable mind to imprint the instructions given by Mattie and Twilight.
After this was done, she only had one request.
“I want to see this time machine.”
So she was taken to Twilight’s personal laboratory, where there was a time machine. A car-sized, gyroscopic twisting mess of cables and crystals wound through any number of magic amulets, computers, and other things she couldn’t identify.
“You know, pretty sure the computers aren’t supposed to be here,” Symphony said. “The actual time machine was a lot simpler.”
“The world had to make sense of itself,” Mattie said. “Thus, computers. Probably from our end, messing with the Fae.”
“I, for one, am glad we have computers!” Twilight declared. “That way I can run simulations before I toss my daughter into a time vortex to fix everything.”
“How long will it take?” Symphony asked.
“You’re in luck, because rewinding all of time is easy,” Twilight chuckled to herself. “Punching a hole to move backward? No. Resetting? Pathetically easy, if you don’t want to remember anything. I had to be very careful never to do that accidentally, because it’d create an infinite loop… or maybe it wouldn’t and it’d just seem like I’d failed when there really is a part of me being reset back every few seconds…” She shook her head. “Regardless, if our assumptions about you are correct, Symphony, you’ll go back with those deep imprints in tact.”
“Assuming the mental conditioning service was proper,” Mattie added.
Solicitude smiled warmly. “I pride myself on a job well done.”
“How many ponies have you driven mad?”
“Considering the fact that, according to you, this world didn’t exist yesterday? None.”
Mattie held a hoof to her forehead. “Crikey, I’m going to be so relieved when this is all over. I hate time travel.”
“Especially when the rules of time travel don’t match between universes,” Twilight added. “Can you imagine how much of a mess that must be to manage?”
“Nobody manages i—” Mattie stopped herself. “Oh, haha, very funny, yes, we should pity you and your headache.”
Twilight blinked. “...What?”
“Never mind, just get it working.”
With a shrug, Twilight flipped a switch. “There. Done.”
“...Wait, really?”
“What? I did say I almost did this accidentally before, right? I just turned off the safety.”
“Great.” Symphony jumped into the seat in the middle of the room, bracing herself. “Here we go..”
“This feels so exciting!” Insipid bounced up and down.
“You have less idea of what’s going on than I do, and you’re still excited.” Solicitude smiled. “You are a precious mare, Insipid.”
Twilight looked up at Symphony. “...Are you ready?”
Symphony nodded. “...Even though technically we didn’t meet until today… I love you, mom.”
Twilight smiled warmly. “I love you too.”
She pulled the lever.
~~~
“You can let me know I’m wrong by saying ‘no’, casting me into uncertainty. But…” Curaçao grinned. “You can’t say no if it isn’t ze truth. I’ll take any other response as confirmation. So tell me, Bella, does your plan involve destroying ze other universe, or is it somezing we would be willing to sacrifice ze universe in order to stop?”
Symphony’s already strained heart approached its limit. She was already pained enough by what was happening, now she was in a life or death situation where an entire world was on the line an—
FIND MATTIE.
What the…?
FIND MATTIE, SPELL LATTICE 32.435 UPSHAFT 938.328 RING DELAY 9.2345.
Her horn lit up with a spark of… yellow? What’s going on? Where am I…
Belladonna stared at her with a terrified expression. Like she knew what was happening and hated it.
“Kill her,” Curaçao ordered, having received no response.
“FINALLY!” Velvet shouted. Blood erupted from her back and the light of the false time grew dark.
EXECUTE SPELL.
Symphony didn’t exactly… teleport. It was more like she stepped out of time and into the darkness, whatever that actually meant. As she drifted in the nothingness, images came to her. Images of a split world…
REMEMBER LATER, ACT NOW. UNIVERSE MUST BE SAVED. MOM’S LIBRARY IS IN DANGER.
Mom, Symphony thought, the term not seeming alien in her mind at all. Locate Mattie. Locate Mattie. The spell was supposed to do that, but I don’t see her!
She landed painfully on a dark, stone floor. The darkness vanished, replaced with a merely poorly-lit corridor. Mattie was lying to the side, unconscious. Next to her there was a portal held open by orange magic.
THROUGH THE PORTAL.
It occurred to Symphony that she could try to resist the mental orders, a thought quickly replaced by the memories of why she was here. She’d already jumped through, running into Ponyville.
IS IT THE PAST?
It was, in fact, the past. Ponyville, with no Castle of Friendship.
DISABLE THE GOLDEN OAK LIBRARY EXPLOSIVE SPELL.
Symphony ran into the library, tripping over a few loose documents spread around by Twilight.
“Wh… hey!” Twilight shouted. “That’s important!”
“Sorry!” Symphony said. “Uh… Twilight, can you check for explosive spells?”
Twilight blinked. “What? Do I know you?”
“Just humor me.”
Twilight lit her horn, checking. “I haven’t found anything.”
Crud. It’s not an explosive spell, is it, it’s something else. How do I… no time to think. “Twilight, we have to get out of the Library now. Teleport all your research with you!”
For a moment, Twilight looked like she wanted to argue.
“Think about Sweetie Belle.”
Twilight wasn't willing to take that risk. She lit her horn and teleported everything out of the library.
It exploded in a flower of orange Fae dust less than a second later.
“Wh…”
LEAVE.
“Bye!” Symphony shouted, running back toward the portal. “Don’t thank me, just get back to work!”
GRAB HARMONIA AND THE ELF.
Harmonia and Jonale were still processing that they’d been thrown through a portal when Symphony picked them up with her magic and hurled them back. She jumped in afterward, coming to a sliding stop as the portal closed with a comical pop.
Two pixies were writhing on the ground. Their names? Peaceflower, Nightshade… though those were as good of names as Belladonna and Snapdragon. They were all the same, in the end.
“I… do not understand what just transpired,” Harmonia admitted.
Mattie grunted from her position on the ground. “The kid saved us all from a testy fairy’s delusions.”
“Yep. I did.” Symphony pointed a hoof at Nightshade and Peaceflower. “Explain.”
The trembling pixies looked up to her, speaking as one. “I brought you into this world…”
“You created me to be used,” Symphony hissed. “Dragged me from a time that shouldn’t exist and stuck your entire nexus of nonsense on me.”
“Fascinating…” Jonale said, leaning in to inspect Symphony. “I never would have thought of such a method for time weaving…”
Symphony ignored the elf. “Worse than that, you were willing to destroy an entire world… for what?” She gestured at Harmonia and Jonale. “To get rid of these two?”
“Harmonia was the target,” the pixies spoke in unison. “Jonale’s fate was… a bonus.”
“Fishing with nets?” Jonale asked.
“Razor blades.”
“Hmm. I’d love to learn a few of your tricks.”
“You will be doing no such thing,” Symphony hissed. “She’s going to pay for what she did.”
“You have undone it,” the pixies said. “Whatever act…”
“Intent to murder is still a crime. And I’m not with the Merodi. I don’t give a flying feather if you’re a citizen of the Fae, you’re going to pay.”
“She will be held accountable,” Harmonia asserted. “But not by thee. By I.”
The pixies stared at Harmonia in terror.
“I wisheth to know… why is it that thou hath such hate for me?”
“You are a goddess, definer of all you see,” the pixies said. “You live in our world and ruin the game.”
“Ruin?” Jonale snorted. “You just don’t know how to play properly.”
The pixies ignored him. “Gods are not meant to be in the Fae. But you stay, and you upset our way, our dance. You keep the city adhered to one place! You anchor it!”
“Ah…” Harmonia smiled sadly. “Religious differences… I am sorry, I cannot help thee with that.”
“And if you tried it would be no more than an insult…” The pixies stopped a moment, breathing. “...Taking punishment from you would be a fate worse than the final death.”
Harmonia’s eyes widened. “Do not be ha—”
They removed the temporal locks they had placed on each other. The future version sank a dark blade into the past, and time weaved itself in a circle around them. Shifting back and forth until they were one, an ouroboros devouring itself until only a spark remained. The spark eventually took the form of another pixie… one with blank eyes and confusion all over her face.
“Hmm… it appears you’ve just rewritten yourself,” Jonale observed, leaning in.
“W-what?” the pixie stammered. “I don’t know what that means!”
“A complete rewrite, fascinating.” Jonale smirked. “A real Buddleia, you are.”
“...Is that my name?”
Jonale shrugged, turning away.
The newly dubbed Buddleia scooted against a wall and pulled her knees to her chest, refusing to look up.
Symphony forced herself to look away, shock on her face. “I…”
“‘Twas their choice…” Harmonia said, placing a gentle hoof on Symphony’s shoulder. “They wished to spite thy heroic efforts. Do not let them, my little pony.”
Symphony nodded slowly.
“Come. Let us go outside.”
Everyone crawled out of the basement, stepping out onto one of New Pandemonium City’s streets. Ponies were running to and fro, a Merodi Aid team was trying to give food to a bunch of ungrateful children, a sky whale dominated the twilit sky, and a factory in the distance was churning up smoke.
No darkness. No time fissures. No annoying signposts.
Just a normal day in New Pandemonium City.
Symphony smiled taking in the breath of…
...well, it wasn’t her home, not exactly.
It was the stability of what was meant to be.
~~~
Nopony really understood what happened after all was said and done. Only Jonale had the prerequisite knowledge to figure out what Belladonna had done, and even he had to admit he turned up empty as to what exactly made Symphony. And when he attempted to explain what the pixie’s plan had been… well, it was hard to follow, though that may have been because he treated everyone else in the room like an idiot.
To everypony’s surprise, Harmonia did not end the bond she forged with Jonale, instead offering to continue forward with him in a sort of partnership. He was a master of time itself, and she needed someone new to assist her in managing the city now that Vendetta was no longer an option. The details of the deal they made were never released to the public, but it no doubt had something to do with the inherent paradoxical time loops that were added to New Pandemonium City. No doubt the ponies would soon become used to these loops as the old government crumbled, giving way to a new society of ponies in the Fae.
The Fay courts themselves weren’t quite sure what to make of the debacle, either. Some praised Belladonna’s ingenuity while others complained that the final goal was too simple to be a proper part of the dance. The arguments would likely never end, which wasn’t surprising, given the Fay. Similar arguments occurred involving Jonale, and he had a habit of never being around for comment when the other elves made a move to track him down.
They still agreed that they all hated Harmonia. That much hadn’t changed. Her city was a blight on Fae Epoque. There would no doubt be many other attempts to alter or sway the city.
The Elements of Pandemonium received credit for their work, even though it was Mattie who finally grabbed the time machine from Vendetta. She taunted them with it for quite some time, only giving it up once Velvet started getting… freaky.
Cryo’s team continued to work in New Pandemonium City for a while, even after they found Curio locked in a cage made out of red cheese and Sriracha in a box of bacon, but after Jonale’s time loops started becoming more common, Cryo declared she was done and they moved on to another city. They offered to let Symphony come with them, but she refused. She had somewhere else in mind she wanted to go once New Pandemonium City settled.
She was one of Harmonia’s advisors, for now, though she didn’t intend to stay that for long.
“Thou shalt be leaving soon,” Harmonia said.
Symphony was leaning against the railing of a tall tower, overlooking the sparkling lights of New Pandemonium City. “Yep.”
“Where, pray tell?”
“Hope’s Point. The Queen… there’s something about her. I feel like that place holds the secret to who I am. I can’t explain why.”
“I hope that thou findest what thou art looking for.”
“I’ll only find part of it,” Symphony said with a sigh. She looked up at the sparkles in the sky. “No matter what’s there… I still remember the times that didn’t exist.”
Harmonia nodded. “They bring up difficult questions.”
“Yeah. I wonder… what happened to all those ponies in the fused timeline? Nopony remembers their role there aside from me and Mattie, somewhat. Were they the same people? Or… are they just gone?”
“I do not believe that is for us to know,” Harmonia said.
“Yet.”
Harmonia looked at her with confusion.
“Thanks for watching over this city,” Symphony said, changing the subject. “It really would fall into the ground without your guiding hoof.”
“Thou hast flattered me.”
“You deserve every bit of it.” She checked her watch, giving her the time in another universe. “I’ve got to go catch something, see you around.”
Harmonia bid her farewell.
~~~
“This song… is for my mom,” Sweetie Belle said, standing on top of the stage. “She’s not with us anymore, but she did more for me than anypony else.” She cleared her throat.
“I remember when you gave me another chance
To change my life and start anew
I remember when we would go prance
Through the fields we covered with dew…”
Tears ran down Symphony’s face as she listened to the mare sing of her mother. Their mother. This Sweetie Belle would likely never know what the song meant to Symphony, no matter how involved the universe became in the wider multiverse.
Sweetie Belle had no idea there was a sister out in the crowd, smiling in memory of a mare who touched both their lives in a way nopony could ever understand.
A mare willing to break time, just for them.