Edited, let me know if y'all see any more mistakes or have anymore feedback, also as of 1/8/13 the rewrite is done
Maybe this is how things were suppose to be.
With the memories of the past years flowing through her head, there was no doubt in her mind that there was truth in that. Looking back on those memories it was easy to see that everything had worked out right.... come to think of it, even when it came down to the mundane activities of every day life. No matter how trivial something was, there was a resolution to be found, a lesson to be learned.
That had been the real question she had asked herself; if maybe things were supposed to happen this way. It was easy for her to justify her confusion, even the disorientation as she recalled the percussive blast that has sent her through the window, followed quickly by the blast of fire that had lit up her surroundings.
She could have sworn that the heavy metal framed fragments of the stained glass window had held her perfectly for a fraction of a second, the blood from the slit on her cheek splashing a few drops onto the surface. For a moment she almost found comfort in the beauty of it.
of course it didn't take a genius to tell her that it would break. Twilight Sparkle was a genius after all.
But, shouldn't she then have seen the signs? That they were being prepared for something, like a farmer feeding its stock, fattening it slowly for the slaughter.
Its at the end when everything makes sense, Hindsight being 50/50 for us all.
In her studies after and prior to each catastrophe that struck Equestria, or even just Ponyville, Twilight had done research. It wasn't that she didn't trust her mentor. It was simply that she knew Celestia was lying about Nightmare Moon. That, had truly been the start of what became an investigation.
It didn't take long for her natural inquisitive nature to give way to obsession. The Eternal Sun of Equestria was hiding something, fabricating lies about the biggest events(not just her sisters return) in the past thousand years. Even the other Elements began to catch on in their own time.
It all began with a simple census that had been abandoned in the forbidden section of the library. The only reason it had caught her attention was because it was unfinished. When Twilight had skimmed the numbers, found them to be accurate, but the report unfinished she realized Celestia had never seen this census. Nowhere could she find any mark that bore semblance to her teachers sigil. Not even one for Luna. The most disturbing thing about the report was its factual numbers. Twilight crunched them over and over, cross-referenced with other historical documents. It was inconclusive.
There had been hundreds of Summer Sun Celebrations, One-thousand and 27 to be exact. The number struck her as odd for only a second. The light switched, and a realization dawned upon the Suns Favored Foal.
Twilight, the oldest of the Elements,was 27. The year she was born should have been the year Nightmare Moon returned if the legend had been accurate. She should have been a ruler for all of Twilight's and the other Elements lives. Nightmare Moon defeated at the hooves of her and the Elements she had conveniently met just before hand. Luna was returned to a position of power immediately, despite having just been stripped of some demonic force, no questions asked.
Discord freed by a field trip of arguing filly's. THE reigning king of chaos himself who had been sealed not only by Celestia, but by Luna as well was freed from his stone imprisonment simply because the Elements had changed hands. The science and explanation had been sound enough, despite two things. The fact of the matter was he had been imprisoned for , wait for it, one thousand years. If his sentence had been true he should have been freed shortly before Nightmare Moon's return. Another convenient twist of the records. The second being that the Elements link to Luna and Celestia had been broken with Nightmare Moons uprising. The very power that was said to have been holding his prison in check had been severed for a millennium.
Besides, thought Twilight, how many tours had the schools not only from Ponyville, a town miles away besides the point, done with young ones arguing and fighting? Thousands, so why was it that the one group had such an adverse effect? Simple, Twilight thought, convenience. Two of the fillies were directly related to Elements and the third was almost as close to another.
At least the Elements of Generosity, Honesty, and maybe Loyalty already have their new bearers lined up. Luna is no where in sight through the whole incident and oddly enough, Discord never tries to contact or harass her as he did Celestia. A being that has been defeated by the Elements before, just like Nightmare, gives his only threat the opportunity to use the only weapons that could defeat him, the undisputed trickster of the universe, is undone by one of his own riddles. Or the all more real possibility that whatever he and Celestia had talked about behind closed doors had influenced his downfall to be more.....smooth.
Blinking as a bit of blood stung her left eye, Twilight could make out the objects falling with her. The table that had been between her and the castor was nothing more than chunks of debris and splinters. Most of the splinters stuck in her forehooves and chest. Blinking again, she could make out a few spots where purple fluff was stuck to bits of the wood. She was seeing chunks of her fur stuck to the larger pieces of wood that had struck her on the way out of the window. The infiltrating sting of the splinters and the sight of specs belonging to her, stuck on an alien object brought to mind a picture of someone masquerading as her. In this case, Some thing.
Possibly her second biggest point in the heated argument that had broken out minutes ago was the Queen. That a goddess would allow the ultimate predator into her lands and so deep into her company....was unfathomable...and so were the circumstances around the event.
Twilight's brother gets promoted right at the time that Canterlot would need his special talent, his fiance is the one taken, and her brother is the one controlled. Isn't it a bit odd that it would be easy for Chrysalis to infiltrate a position that would allow her knowledge of Shining Armours new responsibilities? Though Changeling magick is strong, Even Celestia has said that without the focus of the wedding she would have sensed it. Luna makes an appearance but seems to be watching for something outside of our situation, something has been keeping her busy whenever there is a problem. One of the biggest details is that a queen, not just acting on her own, but acting on behalf of all of her subjects, falls into the machinations of greed and potentially endangers the entire affair by acting out of character. From whats known of the species of changelings, they are taught from their first feeding to duplicate their prey and never break character. Its the difference between a meal and death. Not a thing one would expect a queen(of all creatures) to forget let alone in these circumstances.
Next on Twilight's long list was Celestia's defeat. An alicorn that was arguably three thousand years old and gains an order of magnitude to her powers with each century, was defeated by an insect that had only been feeding for a few months if not weeks. The elements of harmony are present in the form of their bearers. But the magic is not required. Instead, one of the many holes in the queens plan finds its way onto the scene in the form of the original Cadence. A ruthless killer queen let not only the subject she was going to permanently impersonate, but the student of her only rival live and left them alone in seclusion with nothing but three hypnotized ponies to safeguard them. Twilight could still see the flowers of the bouquet flying through the air, twirling.
Bits of glass rotated in her vision and she could make out droplets, tiny specs of her blood playing Jacob's Ladder with any other dot of essence they come in contact with. If she were not dying this might be beautiful, at least the theory of your life before your eyes is holding true.
Theory. Oh how many of those she had, in the end she wished she had been wrong. Maybe then she could have just kept on playing this sick game until one of them died and had to be replaced. Or would it have gone that way? If one piece was missing would the whole set need to be replaced? It would be so much easier to tell the world they had all died together in a final stand against some made-up, far away, evil.
It had taken an even shorter amount of time than the number crunching for Twilight to unravel what otherwise would have sounded like a ridiculous conspiracy theory.
A stand that had been staged from the start.
The book had been put in her saddle bags.
The numbers for the celebrations recalculated to say one thousand and the ledger left out.
Rainbow Dash's assignments leaving her in the vicinity of Ponyville for three months minimum.
Rarities Designs never being properly shipped to Canterlot, leaving her undiscovered and in Ponyville.
Fluttershy's constant need to care for animals with the Everfree right beside her was enough that it didn't need to be tempered with.
Pinkie Pie was much the same. Her ambitions? nonexistent, she wanted parties and smiles, it wasn't hard to keep her in town.
Applejack? All it took was a subtle deterioration spell on the farms barn and a reminder of Granny's Smiths age to give her enough reason not to leave.
Finally alongside the book in Twilight's saddle bag came the order to go to Ponyville. From the one pony she would never question.
For the Love of Titan and Terra, Twilight Sparkle could see the events falling into place. Not until the moment she had realized her and her friends had been separated on purpose and a nightmare come true did she see the truth of it. By the time she had the epiphany it was already too late to even put up a moment field to stop the magical blasts destroying everything around her. Then again, she hadn't wanted to. A moment shield from a unicorn, even as gifted as her, was no match for a direct blast from either of the Princesses of Equestria, Night or Day.
Indeed Luna was still in the towers quickly distancing pinnacle. In the end the one mare she and more than half of Equestria had turned their backs on before had been the one to step forward and say enough is enough.
Looking a bit past the personal globe of debris, she could see that the magic bolts had stopped flashing around and bits of the tower were no longer disintegrating in swirls of spikes and energy. Twilight could still see the look on Celestia's face as Luna and her telepathically said their goodbye's and made their move. The dawning comprehension and panic as Luna turned the charging spell she had been focusing towards her sister and shot it full strength into Twilight across the room.
They had agreed in that moment that the only way to stop what Celestia had planned was to kill one of the Elements, as the most powerful of the six, Twilight had been kept in sight of Celestia under the clever title and masquerade of Her Most Faithful Student. The others had been practically scattered at the ends of the earth. As Luna and Twilight had found, it was only at Celestia's whim that this had been done, with the intention of calling the Element bearers back to Canterlot whenever she had finished creating the next disaster and could follow it scene by scene. She was the ultimate director and her star actress had just been blasted through the window of a tower hanging off the side of a mountain....over a chasm.
Twilight took a moment to send a blast of energy across the horizon and magically search for Spike. She found him sleeping in his room in the library. Though he had indeed grown, in this moment she imagined him as the baby dragon she had hatched in the eastern tower decades ago. With that aside, tears joined the blobs of floating blood and blurred her vision as she chose the last sight her eyes would ever see.
The glistening surface of the full moon.
And just like that, there was another ear shattering explosion and Twilight stopped. In her mind she had expected the stop to hurt, the end, inevitably being the ground and her body being mangled into a fleshy bag of splintered marrow and liquefied remains. Instead it felt oddly soft, maybe she was just going to heaven or wherever it was and this was that feeling of moving on, it was so comfortable. Maybe, Twilight thought, this death thing is not so bad.
But in that next moment the ground shifted and deep shades of blue and indigo, stars and galaxies flickered into her vision as if she were floating in space itself. In fact that's what was waving in front of her, a flowing, twitching tear in reality that lead to space.
It was Luna's mane, and she was laying on Luna's back. Alive. Luna had caught her somehow, for some reason....then she heard it. The voice, having been so close to death, sounded like an angel in the flesh.
"Do you remember the last thing you said to me?"
Twilight smiled and blood dripped from the side of her upturned mouth. "You're going to have to carry that friendship."
Silence reigned supreme for a moment, Twilight beginning to lose consciousness.
"I called them, my...our friends will return quickly...is it-"
"Yes Twilight." Answered Luna in a hollow whisper, a faint trace of hope in her eyes as her horn lit up.
As Twilight lost consciousness she witnessed Queen Luna raise the sun "We did it, we won."
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The last thoughts Twilight had as she unintentionally witnessed the rise of the New Lunar Republic was a terrifying one, and as she fixed her failing vision on Queen Luna a chill ran down her spine;
What if all of this, had been part of the plan?
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Inspired by this video