“There we go,” Cadance thought to herself, finally satisfied that everyone was here. “Everypony’s finally in the same place. That makes this a lot easier.”
Twilight could see the look in her eyes too, remembering that she still had the bell and that Discord was out of commission. She realized that Cadance might have been trying to set it up this way, so that she could steal the magic of the whole room at once. It would be a good plan if that’s what she intended, and she didn’t know how she would be able to counter it.
She could see her former sister in law already moving her hooves and lighting up her horn, the rest of the room distracted by Celestia and Amore. Suddenly, the bell was materializing in her grasp and the alicorn was smiling smugly, broadcasting to Twilight exactly what she was about to do.
“Need to protect myself,” she thought frantically as she lit up her own horn to cast the protection spell over herself. She didn’t know what she was going to do, but she at least wanted to be standing if all hell broke loose.
“Alex!” she yelled a second after she was finished with her spell, moving toward the pink alicorn. “Cadance! She’s-”
Before she could say more, Cadance was using her bell to steal the magic of her royal counterparts, her bell quickly eating up the magic of Celestia, Luna, and Amore in quick succession, the last of them only having time to send one blast her way, which the bell only ate up. The three quickly collapsed to the ground, Cadance effectively removing three of her toughest opponents in a few seconds.
She wasn’t without enemies though, Rainbow Dash and Applejack both tackling her from behind. It took all her concentration to keep her grasp on the bell, fighting back physically against the two mares. The second she could overpower them, she knew she would have to take their magic, too.
“What do I do? What do I do?” the only alicorn left standing asked herself as she watched her friends struggle against the mare. “This is getting more out of control with each second. I have to do something. Can’t use magic right now, so…” She looked around at the room, watching her friends fight for a second before glancing to Alex. He was watching Cadance, too, and already had his horn lit up, interestingly enough. She couldn’t help but be confused by the sight, wondering why it was. If he had his protection spell and Cadance had the bell, it wouldn’t make any sense to cast magic at all, unless…
“Fluttershy,” he said flatly, looking at the yellow pegasus, Twilight watching them catch each others eyes. “Get over here,” he instructed. He took a step forward to meet her, the pegasus already lifting up her wings to glide over, seemingly knowing what to expect. It took Twilight all of one second to figure out what was happening, and even given how things stood right now, she didn’t like it one bit.
The two were right next to each other when Twilight started to move, Alex clearly ready to disappear with the mare in a moment. Before he could though, the alicorn was pushing him down to the ground, away from Fluttershy.
“Alex!” she yelled as he looked at her with complete shock. “You ca-”
“-a’nt use… that…” The mare trailed off as she looked around, her surroundings having suddenly changed. She was standing in the Crystal Empire, in Sombra’s secret room, a place she’d only been in about twice before, if that. She breathed heavily and closed her eyes at the fact that they were in the past right now. She had too much experience with time travel to know that no matter the situation, it was always a bad idea.
“God damnit, Twilight!” Alex yelled angrily, getting back up as he looked at her with rage. “One thing! Why can’t I have just one single thing, Twilight? One thing is all I ask for and yet you ponies seem to want to make my life a living hell in every single way possible! I hate every single one of you!”
“Why are you doing this?” she yelled back. “I told you before that you can’t mess with time like this! It’s not good! There’s no way it will ever end well! We need to go back before something happens and we screw things up!”
“No, I’m not going back. We’re already here, and I’m fixing this if I can. I’m completely done with all of this. Now where am I?” he asked as he looked around. “Sombra! Get out here right now!”
They waited around in silence for a minute, Twilight looking around nervously, expecting the shadow pony to appear. Alex called out again after a minute of nothing happening, and another minute passed silently without any creature making an appearance.
“We need to fix this now,” he said, trying to make an appeal. “For Hope, and for myself. The course we’re on will not work, I’m telling you that right now because Cadance is a witch.” He sighed for a second after no response and said, “I hope I took us to the right spot. I cast the spell quickly. Either that, or I just don’t want to show myself to me. I would expect that from me.”
“Where were you aiming for?” Twilight asked. “If you don’t have the exact time, as in down to the minute, you’re gonna end up at the wrong time.”
“Well I was nowhere near down to the minute. I only used my memories and estimated roughly two years ago. I assume that means it would’ve put us in the past of exactly two years ago today, which is a bit of an issue.”
“This is why you shouldn’t mess with spells you don’t know, Alex, especially ones like time travel! Oh, this is so bad…”
“The only reason it’s bad is because Fluttershy’s not here,” he responded angrily. “I could've had the chance to say goodbye to her properly, but no. You just had to jump in front of her, and now she won’t even remember who I am when this is all over, will she? This is what I said about not being able to have even one thing go right.
“But I don’t care about that right now. Cadance is raging, and I’m going to put a stop to it. At the very least for Fluttershy, because she deserves it. With Celestia and Amore and Princess Luna out of the picture, there’s no way anypony will be able to stand up to her. It’s just too out of control to handle directly.”
“I’m sure we can think of something though,” Twilight offered worriedly. “If we put our heads together, we can come up with something. Using time travel is the very, very last thing we should be doing. It’s so far down the list that it isn’t even on it, that’s how dangerous it is. There is never a reason to be using time travel.”
“Welp, I already cast the spell, so it’s too late now. It’s not like I can just undo it, or rather, I won’t.”
“We can think of something else though, Alex!” she begged. “There has to be another way to confront the situation we’re in!”
“Oh yeah?” he asked as he looked her in the eye. “And what other way would that be, might I ask?”
“I- I… I don’t know, but-”
“Then this is what we’re going to do,” he said with finality as he turned to leave the room.
“We really shouldn’t be doing this, Alex,” Twilight told him seriously, nervously. “Messing with time is risky business, and I’m not gonna-”
“I don’t care,” he said as he casually went up the stairs into the main floor of the Crystal Castle. “If you want to help me, help. If you don’t, stay here. I’m finding Cadance. All of this has got to stop.”