There is no beginning to this story.
I am dreadfully sorry.
To try and claim it has one would be like trying to claim a perfect, unblemished sphere has a point. Most obviously, it does not have 'a' point.
It is infinite points, stretched and laid out simultaneously, with an unnoticeable degree of angle separating each of them, stretching on infinitely until it curls back around to meet itself and forms a lovely ball for us to kick the shit out of in a mad dash to win the kickball game for everyone.
This story is much the same way with beginnings, except you probably shouldn't kick the shit out of it.
To make this easier for all of us, I shall start with a simple to understand point that will hopefully illustrate how hard this is to understand.
Got it?
Good. Now explain it to me.
There is a pony in Canterlot.
It is not Minuette.
It is also not whoever you're thinking of.
I know, the thought is slightly distressing, but my sources indicate there are at least three ponies in Canterlot. Any more is just speculation.
His name is Murr Phelaw, and nobody likes him, and not just because his first name is Murr, but also because he is a beacon.
He's a magical beacon of weirdness, and you could set your weirdness clocks by him, because every time something ominously and thaumically weird happens anywhere, he feels a tiny bit of pain, and will make it your problem by complaining very openly about it. Most of these oddities manifest in simple twinges or itches, but depending on how disastrously inane it is, he may get a scab, bruise, or even on occasion, a broken nose.
On December 5th, year 1113 of the Solar Reign, at 8 AM, his entire body folded in on itself in a sickening crunch until his entire mass was compacted into a cube exactly a foot long, a foot wide, and a foot tall, bleeding and screaming in the middle of the street.
Nobody paid him much mind.
There are 100 new ponies in Ponyville.
All of them are Minuette.
They pour out of an unremarkable house on December 5th, year 1113 of the Solar Reign, at 8:00 AM in the middle of a sleepy cul de sac, going for the exact same very cozy cottage aesthetic as all the rest of the houses on its block. They flood the streets, all running at top speed towards a goal only they know, They trample bystanders under them, only shouting out a quick 'sorry!' as they leave them to die. They branch apart at varying intervals, all of them dispersed along their own personal routes so that not a single Minuette is left following her original path by the time they reach the house at the end of the street, whose owner had been curled into a ball on her lawn, shaking and waiting the avalanche to reach her and kill her instantly.
Luckily, it never came. By the time she opened her eyes again, only one of the original 100 remained, still standing at the front porch of her house and looking around, bewildered. Minuette 01 could tell today was going to be a long day.
There is a small diner in Ponyville.
By 8:50 AM, multiple Minuettes had already infiltrated it, filling each table quick as a flash and spilling outside to sit on the grass when no room existed anymore. Each sipped from iced coffees. None of their names were spelled right on their cups, and no misspelling repeated. You had "Minute", "Minyuete", "Minette", and even odder spellings, like "Colgate" or "Please someone help me I'm trapped in the Plastic Cup Factory and they're beginning to execute workers"
Minuette 50 was among them, sipping her coffee (which had knighted her Manatee) quietly. She had exactly 3.57142857143 fortnights behind her, and exactly 3.57142857143 fortnights ahead of her, and had decided to mark the occasion with a day off before she resumed her grind. So, in the midst of the town crumbling from the thundering hoofsteps of Minuettes all around her, she had politely invited her dear friend Lyra to have breakfast with her.
Lyra was clearly taking this all much harder than her, as evidenced by her dinner plate eyes.
"How's your wife?" Minuette 50 quietly asked, trying to drift the conversation from what she had already explained so many times for as long as possible.
She might have succeeded, too, if not for another Minuette running by the diner window on the other side of it at that exact moment, shooting Minuette 50 a giddy smile before skidding to a stop, kicking a hole in the window, and leaving. Minuette 50 reminded herself to smash in the window the next day so their conversation could progress.
"Minuette what the hell is going on" Lyra asked, with the inflection of someone who clearly wanted punctuation left out of their sentence so it could be read with optimal communication of the emotion she was feeling.
Minuette 50 sighed, looking down absentmindedly at her Mark. The hourglass was upside-down, with the top completely full. She was familiar enough with her tush to recognize that it wouldn't stay this way long.
"I've never told you what this mark means, have I?"
"Is this a roundabout way of answering my question or are you trying to make me forget, because if it's the latter there are just so many other ways to do that."
"It's the former, just hold on."
Lyra shook her head, preparing herself to be fully engrossed. She couldn't help her hyper-fixative tendencies, but she could at least recognize when they came and go with the flow.
"I got it a few days after I was enrolled at school, a day before I met you, to be exact.
"Gah!"
A blank flanked Minuette from many years ago sat up in bed, rubbing her head and looking around for the source of the sudden lump on her head (that wasn't the one she did magic from). Inexplicably, a bowl of cereal had fallen from the sky into her bed, dripping milk down her covers and drenching her hair.
She groaned, picking a few stray marshmallows out of her locks and rolling out of bed, wrapping up the covers. Where in Equestria had-
Lifting the covers revealed something she hadn't taken notice of before, that while being the most noticeable as it ran down her neck, the cereal wasn't the only thing suddenly dumped into her bed. A large book fell with a thump onto her floor, followed by the clattering of a spoon, and finally a small folded paper note dripping milk.
Minuette wrinkled her nose, levitating the note up close enough to read but far enough to not smell the milk covering it.
[1] from vision import bowl of cereal
now = datetime.datetime.now()
trav(-3600000) trust me
-M
"It was a spell, one I didn't recognize. So, I put my faith in it, and tried it at breakfast, and it didn't take long for me to figure out what it did."
The bowl of cereal instantly disappeared, and a flash of light emitted from her rear. Minuette whinnied in surprise and turned back around, dumbstruck by the sudden appearance of an hourglass on her flank; and what's more, one that was moving. The sand was quickly falling from the top to the bottom, and it wouldn't stop for another hour more, at which point it finally collected at the bottom and ceased.
"After the shock wore off, I quickly began to experiment. What would you know, tried with a book from my shelf and a spoon I had planned to use on my bowl, substituting the necessary variables. I tried to experiment with the milliseconds, but for some reason, that variable never budged; it always timed back to exactly 8 AM on the current day."
"So... time travel, but only to the beginning of the day. That's... Kind of limiting." Lyra admitted.
"Yeah, well, how far back can you time travel?"
Lyra begrudgingly relented to this position.
"Did you figure out what your changing hourglass meant?" Lyra tilted her head curiously.
"Of course. It showed me how long it took the object I had sent back to return to the millisecond I had cast the spell from my perspective; or in other words, the time variable."
"And eventually, you experimented on yourself, right? So that answers that."
Minuette 50 hadn't expected her to accept this concept so easily, but she supposed she wasn't in Canterlot anymore.
"But why are there so many of you today?" Lyra sipped her tea, beginning to calm in the face of rationality.
Minuette sighed, looking over at her many hers and saying, "Because I have something important to do today. And I'm not stopping until it's done."
There is a bar in Ponyville.
Like all good bars, it serves food too, food that doesn't really constitute a very filling lunch but could do in a pinch, like fucktons of nachos. Nine different Minuettes at once were stopping in for the unlimited credit they had won in a game of Secret Shipfic Folder with Berry Punch, all of them piggybacking off the other with the excuse that they were all the same person. Minuette 39 watched as one made off quickly with a beer bottle, slipping out the front door in the confusion, only to collide with another Minuette going the opposite way down the street and tucking a red rose into their saddlebags.
She returned to her table, cracking a bottle with her magic and sipping it as she looked over the ideas she and Lyra had planned on a napkin.
"How about... planting a tree, using a spell on it to make it grow really quickly, and then waiting by it the entire day, then trying to cut it down with an axe on the next loop?"
"I tried that already." Minuette 39 explained, as another Minuette nearby overheard them and suddenly ran off to try this new idea without sticking around to hear the rest. "My future self just chopped it down successfully, and I didn't have the strength to fight myself off."
"Does that make you weak or strong?"
"I don't know, I think the axe kind of skewed the results of that test."
"So then, why didn't you just not chop it down in the next loop?"
"Holding an axe makes you feel strong enough to take on Celestia."
Lyra tapped her chin, looking around before settling on Big Mac at the next table. "Hey, Mac! Next time you get the chance, would you mind punching my friend in the face?"
"Eeyup."
Minuette 39 raised an eyebrow at Lyra. "That's... asking him to do something in the future, to my future self. That won't prove anything, and now I can never go anywhere near him again."
Lyra's lip pouted out. "Unless he punches one of your past selves."
"That would be great, but even if he overcame time, how would we know?"
Lyra lowered her raised hoof. "Ooh, yeah. Good point."
There was a lull in the moment, where Lyra tried to think of new ideas but kept getting sidetracked by invasive breeds of thoughts that were brought to her brain as livestock by foreign travelers from the things she saw around her. Finally, she took the obvious idea, drawing from a conversation topic Minuette had brought up and never followed up on. Apparently she was talking to an older Minuette after the last one ran off? Wild.
"Hey, so, why do you want to disprove predestination anyway?" She finally asked.
Minuette 39 groaned. "Isn't it obvious? Time is policing my life. I wouldn't have even learnt that time travel spell if it weren't for a future version of me I had to become!"
Lyra nodded sagely, rubbing her chin thoughtfully. "Ok, I getcha... Yeah, I can see that."
Minuette 39 quirked an eye up from her paper. "That's it? You can see that? No terrified reaction?"
"Well, not really. I mean, if time really is policing us, if there are little invisible gremlins who have us wrapped in yarn and lay more yarn exactly where they want us to walk and talk, wouldn't it be better to just not disillusion ourselves? This is kind of a funny thing to happen today. It would be a shame if it turned out to actually be really sad."
Minuette 39 shook her head vehemently. "No, of course not. I need an answer, dude."
Lyra shrugged. "Hey, that's your choice. Go ahead and pursue it. Just, you know, don't tell me if you find out the answer, okay? I'd much rather just not know."
Minuette 39 quirked her eyebrow, but said nothing. "Yeah, alright. I won't tell you how the entire universe works, Lyra."
Lyra winked. "Hey, thanks best friend! Well, second best friend. You know."
Minuette 39 rolled her eyes. She had no idea how Lyra couldn't see how important this was. Irregardless, she returned to her plan with a fresh face.
There is a lone sign on Ponyville beach.
It shows a seagull, with a cross over it.
Many people assume this to mean "Seagulls are not allowed", but this is, of course, ridiculous, as seagulls cannot read and obey the sign.
What it really means is "You are responsible for the seagulls you see."
It's in the eye of the beholder to decide the seagulls fate. Some chase them off instantly. Some take them home as pets. Some leave it to be the next beachgoers problem. But if they are left alone by all tourists for the entire day, they will inevitably be chased off by a lifeguard. As the day goes on, stress increases. This beach is the land of trolley problems.
It is also not a beach. It's an expanse of sand around a lake. But Beach sounds much better on brochures than 'expanse of sand around a lake'.
'Land of trolley problems', however, does not sound any better on a brochure, which is possibly why it gets so few visitors.
Minuette 08 watched Minuette 01 from a distance as the latter ran between her future selves, frantically asking their numbers to try and gauge just how long she'd be here. She scratched the back of her head sheepishly, more than a little embarrassed at how naive she had been 7 days ago, before turning back to her target; a robin's egg blue colt, looking around at the many identical adults around him in confusion. She liked him already. Blue was a nice solid color.
Gah, that sounded bad! She quickly shook herself of the thought, catching another version of herself from across the lake raising an eyebrow at her, embarrassed.
She returned to watch the kid, in a totally not creepy way. In a few seconds, he would back away from the sudden influx of clones back towards a particularly steep overhang above the lake, and topple into a deceptively deep part. A minute later, he'd rise for air, coughing and choking distracting him from the shiny golden dolphin on his flank.
Minuette 06 had heard him recounting the tale to a distressed mother, and quickly devised one of her first major pony experimentations, which, once again, weren't as creepy as they sounded when she soliloquized them out loud. Cutie marks were inevitable, everybody got them. If she could delay the arrival of one by even a day, after being explicitly told one had come today, she could change the flow of time.
The colt backed away quickly as a Minuette she hadn't been yet ran in front of him with her eyes closed for some reason, shouting something. His hindleg reached for the comfort of grass, only to find a heart dropping absence. He yelped and stumbled, but before he could fall backwards, was suddenly grabbed by a magical aura that fell awfully close to the hue of his own berry blue coat.
Minuette pulled him back onto shore, chuckling fakely. "Whew, that was a close one, wasn't it?"
The colt screamed and jumped into the river.
Minuette's far-too-wide smile dropped as watched with unchecked annoyance at the flailing body as it broke the surface of the river beneath her with heaving coughs. A collective groan and a single annoying laugh filled the air around the lake, and it took her a moment to realize nearly every future Minuette had simply arrived out of a masochistic desire to be embarrassed by an awkward moment in the past.
Minuette smiled sheepishly as a golden glow emitted from under the water. The colt shot the type of annoyed glare that only a child with no understanding of social conventions and politeness can afford up at her.
There is a house in Ponyville.
Well, there's a lot, but most are actually just hollow shells, waiting for the Ponyville housing industry to take off so they can finally be filled. They've been waiting for a very long time. A malicious forest full of monsters downtown by the playground where kids frolic doesn't do much to attract all but the most desperate.
But one in particular is of notable interest, mostly for the amazing ability of its infrastructure, able to support the sudden appearance of 99 ponies within its walls thundering out through the door, windows, and backyard like a swarm of rats vacating a restaurant and still stay standing.
Very few Minuettes remain in this house, but the ones that do have taken to trashing it like the site of a college house party. Papers and strings litter the walls, and all seem desperate to be heard amidst the barrage of voices, creating a problem that loops into itself and doubles with every new arrival, like a.... Funny, I can't seem to think of a metaphor that involves loops.
A knocking at the front door disturbed them from their ruckus, and without argument the youngest Minuette, number 21 answered the door. A lemon yellow stallion in a beige suit and trilby answered with a smile that did not to much to dilute the sinisterness of his clipboard.
"We're kind of in the middle of something. Sir." 21 offered with annoyance.
"No trouble!" The stallion replied, dangerously misdiagnosing whose trouble it was. "I'll only be here for a second. I'm a collector for the Celestial financial division, and I'm here to collect your due to the government."
"What do you collect, stamps?"
"I'm sorry to vaguepost, but studies show that saying the word 'tax' within a collector's first four sentences greatly increases the likelihood of a citizen slamming the door in their fa-"
21 slammed the door in his face.
"Ma'am, tax evasion is a crime."
22 opened the door, swap unbeknownst to him.
"We're in the middle of a disaster." She tried to excuse, conveniently leaving out who had caused the disaster. "I'm pretty sure we're exempt during tax season if a disaster is occurring."
"Sorry, but due to the common nature of such disasters, the government has decided to make certain exceptions to this rule. Time travel related incidents, disturbances in the astral plane, moral panics, and pandemics are exempt from that amendment."
"You can't just amend your amendments without telling people."
"It was written very clearly on a notice in the boiler room of Canterlot Castle."
"Hold on, I don't have time for this. Let me pass the phone to someone calmer, wait here."
22 slammed the door. A minute later, another, mysteriously epithetless Minuette opened it.
"Eat my ass."
The unknown Minuette slammed the door. A minute later, 25 answered.
"Sorry, where were we?"
"You had invited me to-"
"Yeah, Canterlot. Listen, this is a mirror pool incident. Is that covered?"
He checked his clipboard. "Sorry, but no."
"Well, I'm actually a clone. I compulsively lie. Hold on, I'll get you the original."
25 slammed the door. A minute later, 63 answered.
"What do you want?"
"How do I know you're the original?"
"Because I'm the one that always tells the truth. Listen, what are the requirements for the disaster to qualify as worthy of tax exemption?"
The collector checked his notes. "Well, at least one person has to die, and then I suppose-"
"Yeah, someone's died. Poof. Off the mortal coil. They got stampeded by one of the clones. And then stabbed, and then eaten. By an Ursa."
"Oh dear. I'm so sorry. Was it someone close to you?"
"No, I hated them actually. That's why one of my clones fed them to the Ursa. I'm legally pardoned by evidence of alibi, sucker."
63 stuck her tongue out as she backed into the door, and slammed it shut.
"See you next month!"
63 returned to the fray, exhaling in annoyance at the delay. No more distractions, she only had 37 days left. Something had to happen by day 100, or her efforts were in vain. No matter what happened, she wasn't going to waste any more days.
There is a body in Ponyville.
It has a dirty brown coat, an aged old silver mane and tail, and a cutie mark of a paintbrush leaving a multicolored streak. Its skin is two sizes two large for the skeleton it covers, resulting in wrinkles over its body, especially on the facial area.
Its pulse has already faded. Its eyes have lost their light, and are staring off into space.
It lies on the sidewalk in front of a house on the outskirts of town that it presumably owned. Twenty seconds ago, it slipped from the roof it had climbed up to work on, falling headfirst to the pavement and snapping its neck instantly. Its neighbors are all either gone or inside; none have noticed its departure from this world, save ten.
A group of ten Minuettes are gathered around it. Some appear shocked, some dismayed, and some emotionless, only quiet resignation upon their faces. Murmured denials and panics sound out, and they begin to disperse at various speeds, the majority stopping to take one look back before they depart for good. Some leave because they are confident in their assertion they can stop it; some leave because they are desensitized to it by now.
Two stay behind. Minuette 64 collapses to her haunches, eyes wide as she tries to comprehend the sight in front of her. Minuette 74 takes a seat next to her and gently runs a hoof over her back.
"I... Oh, oh Celestia, he's dead." 64 sputters.
"Yeah, he is. It's alright." 74 soothes.
"It's not alright. I can stop this, I can save him. I just have to get here sooner."
"You know you can't. That's not how time works." 74 gently reminds.
"Every other Minuette arrived at the same time. If I just arrive earlier, I can save him."
"You'll get held up. You know you will. Even if you try that. Or that. Yes, even that. You can't save him." 74 knew she wouldn't listen, but felt obligated to give closure, by a stronger feeling than simple predestination. She may have been able to disprove predestination by leaving 64 be, but she couldn't. She had to say something, even if it lost her an opportunity. She had 26 left.
"I won't get held up. I'll make a beeline here, no distractions." 64 whispered.
"Please, just let it go. You can't stop it."
"Am I supposed to just live with this?"
74 sighed, turning to look her past self in the eyes. "That's what everyone else does."
"I'm not everyone else."
"You want to be. That's why you decided to do this. You want to be free from worrying about time and just live life normally. You've done this 64 times already. Do you want to stop now?"
64 couldn't look at the soulless thing in front of her anymore. She buried her face in her hooves, choking back sobs as the reality finally began to crash into her. 74 waited patiently for her to run out of breath and slow down, before continuing.
"You want life to be normal. Death is normal. It's just something we have to put up with."
64 sobbed again, head shaking as she tried to talk through gasps of breath.
"We... We want to disprove predestination. If there's any chance of that happening, I need to spend it on this pony."
"Look at him, 64. He's old. His day was coming soon anyway. How many times do you plan on saving him?"
"It's got to happen.... It's got to happen on try 100, right?"
"No, 64. It won't. And you know why? It's because I'm going to let him rest. I'm moving on, and you will too."
64 sniffled. "What... number are you?"
"74."
"Ten more tries?"
"Yeah, ten more."
64 stood up, exhaling. "I'd better get started then. I could never forgive myself if I didn't try."
64 left down the same path she had been traveling down when she first saw the body fall. 74 watched her go, before standing up herself and brushing herself off. Taking off her saddlebags, she levitated out a brilliant red rose, and delicately tucked it behind his ear, then lifted his body onto her back and made her way into his house.
There is a bench in Ponyville.
Minuette 100 sat on it in the early morning, sighing heavily. Last day. As many times as she had asked around, she had never found anyone with a number higher than 100. That didn't mean they didn't exist, though. Did she risk it and try the loop one more time? What if nothing happened today that would satisfy her? Was she content with just giving up? Could she screw over predestination with the simple act of looping one more time, back to 8 AM on day 101? Was it possible?
She was out of ideas, and out of chances. She had already wasted 100 days trying to find this big answer to everything, and for her efforts she had distressed and creeped out the entire town, and watched someone die.
What a great leap in her understanding of the universe.
"Wow! There sure are a lot of you today. You didn't use the mirror portal, did you?"
A bright blue eye was pointed judgingly in her direction, somehow popping out of its socket to jab at her. Its owner frowned exaggeratedly at her. She hadn't heard Pinkie arrive, but there was a lot about her she didn't understand; this was pretty tame in comparison.
Minuette 100 scooched away, leaning her cheek into a foreleg and flicking her ear in annoyance.
"Hey, Pinkie. I didn't use the mirror portal, it's just boring old time travel. Can you go bug another me? You kind of have a large selection."
"That depends, silly! Do you remember talking to me? Haven't you ever seen Bill and Ted? It's kind of like that scene with the keys, but instead of keys, it's me, and instead of hiding them, it's asking me to talk to another version of you, in which case I should really remember to remind you to remember to remind me to-"
Gah, goddamn, does nobody care that time travel is real?
"Pinkie, I appreciate the friendliness, but I really don't have time to-" Minuette 100 paused, raising her head. "Actually, you're right."
"I'm always right! Funny how some people go their entire days without realizing it."
"No, really! You're, like, detached from reality! I've never talked to you at all during the last loop, not even in passing conversation, but you do all sorts of things that don't make sense! All you have to do is talk to another version of me, and suddenly I'm free! My proof is right here!"
Pinkie smiled widely.
"No!"
Minuette 100's smile did something like the opposite of widen.
"I... Why?"
"Because you don't need it! It doesn't matter if predestination exists!"
"It... doesn- but no, that would mean free will isn't real!"
"What gave you that idea silly? Was it, by chance, yourself?"
Minuette 100 scratched the back of her head. "Well.... Yeah."
"Of your own free will."
"It's a bit more complicated than that."
"Is it? Seems to me like you had an idea, and decided to try that idea out. Did a future you give you that idea?"
Minuette paused, pondering the idea. She hadn't talked to anyone but herself for quite a few loops by now.
"No, but... in a way, I only got that idea because I learned I could perform a time travel spell, which was told to me by a future me." Minuette 100 reasoned.
"But didn'tcha choose to do this 100 times of your own volition?"
MInuette considered asking how she knew the word volition, but quickly realized how rude that was and bit her tongue. "I... Descartes?"
Pinkie nodded exuberantly with a loud mm-hmm. "You thought, and only you could think that thought! Every other you here bent to that thought!"
Minuette 100's gears turned slowly, thinking of a rebuttal. On one hand, she h
"Ah! You're thinking of a rebuttal, aren't you? More free wi-illll!"
"No- That doesn't count! I can't prove I wasn't going to do that anyway!" Minuette 100 sputtered in embarrassment, sitting up and glaring at Pinkie for her intrusion on the mare's mind.
Pinkie grinned back. "Do you think you're going to keep debating me?"
"Yes! Because you're wrong!"
"Cool! Then don't." Pinkie lounged back, sipping from a juice box that seemed to have materialized between her hooves. "Prove predestination false, or at least be comfortable in your free will to do so!"
Minuette 100 opened her mouth. Then closed it. Fuming, she fell back into her seat with her forelegs crossed tightly.
"Feel better?" Pinkie patted her on the head.
Minuette 100 grumpily hmphed.
"...Kinda. Was it that easy all along?"
"If it isn't, isn't it at least nice to think it is?"
Minuette 100 chewed on that, then sighed. "100 days. 100 days spent, which all could've been avoided if you had talked to me on day one."
"Yeah, I guess so. But you know how we can make your other 99 days worth it?"
Minuette 100 turned back to Pinkie, confused at why her smile was suddenly spread nearly to her cheeks.
It was a lovely day in Ponyville, and there was a horrible time traveller empowered with the hubris of someone who had a readily accessible pool she could excuse for all of her actions.
Minuette 100 grinned evilly at her older self as she had breakfast with Lyra, smashing the window in and running away from the yelling owner.
Minuette 100 closed her eyes, running along the beach recklessly and shoving into a small blue colt, giggling at his satisfying yelp then stuck around to laugh at Minuette 08's fuckup.
Minuette 100 swiped a beer from a bar in the confusion as the owner tried to serve nine versions of her at once.
Minuette 100 lounged around her own house, yelling loudly to feed the chorus of voices trying to talk over themselves to be heard, and insulted a tax collector to his face.
Minuette 100 spent her last loop running around, mildly inconveniencing her older selves. Everything she had once considered a future burden that would distract from her task at hand happened in the course of a day, and Ponyville quaked at her might.
(After the loop ended, she ended up paying 150 bits in property damage, but that was future Minuette's problem.)
Minuette 100 cackled pettily, running up to a surprised looking Big Mac with the intent of jumping into the cart he pulled behind him for an impromptu hay ride.
She remembered right before making the jump, and ducked just in time.
There is a movie theatre in Ponyville.
It's not a very good one, but it sure does exist.
Each room was filled with at least one Minuette, sometimes two or three depending on how much she had liked it the first time around. Every day for the past 100 days had been spent here, with the petty goal of watching every single movie airing today at least once. At 11:30 PM, Minuette 100 took a new friend to see one of her recent favorites, an Urban Fantasy spoof about a pair of crooks who did awful things but could still be rooted for because they were funny while doing it. One of the main characters was a taztlpony, and the director's fetish for them was apparent in every second scene. It was filled with entire minutes of nothing but characters standing around and cracking dumb puns. It was the best movie Minuette 100 had ever scene.
"Oh, here's the part in every movie this girl makes where one of the characters mopes about philosophy for twenty minutes right before they keep killing people with no character development or notable impact on the world."
"Funny, I have noticed a lot of those in recent movies!" Pinkie ponkily pondered.
Minuette 100 sighed happily, fully engrossed in the movie for the first time in weeks without reminders and plans bubbling in her head. She could finally appreciate just how godawful it was. During a slow scene, she snuck a look at her own flank. The sand was nearly completely gone from the top of the hourglass, only a hair or two remaining.
When the credits finally rolled, the other four Minuettes in the room stood up, chuckling to themselves before lighting their horns. One behind them accidentally dropped their empty popcorn bin onto Pinkie's head, apologizing sheepishly.
"Don't worry, I don't mind at all!"
The Minuette finished charging up her horn, and as the clock struck 12 PM, every Minuette in the building yelled out in a sound identical to one Minuette yelling very loudly;
"001100
010010
011110
100001
101101
110011!"
This was followed by an earth shattering POOF, and the theatre was suddenly vacant, save Minuette 100, who had to remind herself that as of 12:01 AM, she was just Minuette.
Pinkie stood up, brushing herself off. "How ya feeling?"
Minuette stood up, exhaling. "Like I wasted 100 days of my life, searching for something for no reason?"
"What can I say, that's Canterlot girls for you."
"Lyra also came from Canterlot."
"Lyra got laid while she was there!"
Minuette begrudgingly relented to that position.
Pinkie thought it over. "Well... At the very least, was it kind of funny, in hindsight?"
"Yes, most definitely."
"Well, happy ending!" Pinkie squeed.
Minuette shrugged. "Yeah, I guess so." Scratching her head, another thought struck her. "Hey... Did you just randomly happen to pick me to talk to, or did you have a reason for why me, out of every other Minuette?"
Pinkie giggled, as if the answer was obvious. "C'mon, really? It was because you asked me to."
Minuette's face drained. "No... I didn't."
Pinkie patiently waited for her to come to the realization.
Minuette sighed, lighting her horn one final time.
"You're buying tickets next loop."
"How?"
"Damn it."
There is no end to this story, but there isn't an end to much, either.