(Note: Yes, Assistants is supposed to be spelled like that. Its intentional wordplay.)
Arriving in the darkened Ponyville, Silver found this town had swollen and grown in this time. He wasn't aware they had something as prestigious as a university and suspected that this was another strange result of this alternative Equestria. He kept his disguise, trying to look as inconspicuous as possible, feeling miserable on all sorts of levels. For the first time since coming to Equestria he realized just how little and how rarely him and Angel had really been apart. Hours at most, often meeting at lunch breaks. Now he'd gone a whole day by without her. If he fixed this he didn't care if she would be angry, but he vowed that even if she wasn't ready to see him he'd stay nearby. There was a pony in this universe who might know something of what this Timelock specifically was, perhaps how to cast it.
All spells, well done ones at least, operated within specific rules. They might be esoteric at times, but they all had an internal logic without which they'd fall apart and little if any effect. This efficacious time travel was something else, twisting the fabric of the worlds history. Except for a little foreign splinter that never really been part of the yarn though entangled in its weave, him, it fell on his shoulders to restore this world. He sighed, thinking to himself. And after that I'll just move in with you, Angel, be a quiet adviser to Novaria… but first I'll make it up to you, somehow, once I've put all the pieces together again.
Room 112. That was the room he'd been given. As he approached the end of a long hallway, the door was closed, a class was in session. He'd have to wait. A strong leading voice came from within. "... And when every point in space is measured from its origin along the axis you're using, it'll be equal the distance to the..." A bell overhead chimed, cutting him off. "Time already? Damn. Alright, off you go, don't forget to work on your dioramas, they're due in two weeks and worth half your grade!" The voice commanded, as the door opened and many colored ponies filtered out through it.
Sounds like geometry, sometimes useful for certain spell. Magical theory was dense and hard to get into, there was a whole vocabulary for all the eldritch powers the horns could connect with. He was moderately proficient, his only real pride being an ability to occasionally teleport. His training for advisory took the time away that could have been spent pouring over books, but then again, magic itself wasn't his cutie mark. He stood to the side for a moment, letting the students clop past him and worked his way inside the small auditorium. Time to test how quick and smart the person inside was. "Zecora sent me." He said wasting, no time.
The pony at the blackboard turned. A brown colored earth pony, hourglass on his flank. He had an arguably silly looking pair of red and blue glasses on his nose. "A friend of Zecora's eh, well, come in, come in!" He said cheerfully. "Welcome to the University's Time Department, how can I help you?"
With a deft levitation spell, he made the door shut behind him. He stood up and weighed the pony in front of him. Recognizing him easily, suspicious, but he wasn't sure in what way. If he was antagonistic, then he didn't have any other leads to follow.. but whether friend or enemy, he would likely know enough that revealing anything would not cause harm. "Timelock." Silver said. "A Historical causality shift has happened, this world is different; But I'm still the same, born in another realm so I escaped the effects. Explain the spell, what it does, how it works". He left out how to cast it. "Someone has already used to affect this world, I must undo it." He minced no words and wasted no time. Headaches didn't help with having a friendly attitude.
As if recognizing him wasn't enough, the stallion brightened up immediately. "Whoa, slow down, slow down. A Timelock, you say? Fantastic!" He exclaimed. "Of course, I recognize you now! You're the one who was running from that giant bubble, weren't you?" He winked in amusement. "Found yourself in a bit of a time distortment, have we? Wish I could help you there, but alas, time is a bit wonky, in that respect." He approached, and shook one of Silvers front legs. "In that regard, a friend of Zecora's is a friend of mine, of course. Whooves and Hooves, at your service." He frowned. "Sounds a bit like a Firm, when you put it that way." He called to the back, to a grey pegasus wiping down the desks. "Miss Hooves, come meet this nice young lad!" The pegasus stopped what she was doing and trotted down the steps of the auditorium, stopping in front of the pair. Her unbalanced eyes, a bright and friendly gold, fixated on Silver.
Friendly, yeah, we'll get along just fine, Silver thought to himself ironically. It was hard taking someone serious who was speaking so flippantly about the state of the world. However getting angry now and biting off his head wouldn't do anything to furthering the goal of getting the world back. "Yes." He said to answer all the empty questions he'd been given. "Greetings." He nodded to the pegasus. "As much as I like pleasantries what the…" His mouth stopped, and his tongue seemed to be caught in his throat. He wondered for a moment what was wrong with him. Oh right. "...hay, happened, you were there. The princesses summoned me, and the next moment I enter the throne room, with that temporal distortion and you as the only witness."
For a moment, the grey pegasus cast reminders of the one he'd bumped into before in Canterlot, however briefly. Same blonde mane, same cutie mark, same unbreakable spirit. But if she recognized him, she made no mention of it. The stallion simply shrugged casually at the assessment. "Yes, I was. Don't you worry, I have a habit of being in the right place at the right time. The question is, how do we go about fixing it?"
"There seems to be a recursive problem, but until you explain more of the temporal mechanics all the pieces of the puzzle won't be there." It became a lateral thinking puzzle, rather than one where you knew you could work it out if all the pieces were there. "If its all one timeline, then if we simply go back and undo what was done, then we'd also undo the reason we had for going back in time in the first place, so that wouldn't work because it wouldn't be possible. We'd have to stop the Timelock from ever occurring in the first place instead." And the timeline would shift... this alternative Silver who he was would fade and he'd be returned to a previous state. Though that was unlikely to occur for him as he wasn't part of the time stream. He'd remember things, nopony else would.
The stallion thought for a moment. "Well you can't go back in time and stop it from happening, if you did, then that would have happened already, and we wouldn't be here now." He said simply. "So since it's already done, what you need to do is find a way to undo what's been done from here. There's always a way, trust me."
"Undo what's been done, but not being able to undo it either?" Silver got out his thermos and slugged a little of the potion down his throat. "You're not making much sense, if the past could be modified once, creating an alternate timeline, then this can be done again." He went over to the black board, levitating a piece of chalk drawing a line. "Lets call this the original timeline of Equestria… someone at some point went back in the past, at least fifteen years." He picked a point and drew a line back. "Here this person instigated some actions that led eventually to this alternate timeline." He drew a line down representing the new one. "Which is where we currently are… if what you said was correct, then if the pony went back in time and altered something they'd alter their own future, preventing them from going back in the first place.. why go back if the world is already the way you want it to be? Also, if what you said about inevitability preventing us from doing it was correct, then that would also have been true for whoever did the original time travelling... they would already have been living in the world they set out to create. Hence since that pony could change time, so can we."
The Doctors energetic attitude carried over to the pegasus who was with him, as he raced out for his next class. If the world was ending, he didn't seem particularly concerned by it, or his prioriites were elsewhere. "Hurry up now, Miss Hooves! Allons-y!" The grey pegasus politely exclaimed a "Nice to meet you, Silver." And rushed after him. The unicorn, meanwhile, hidden behind stacks of books, was mostly hidden. "Of course! Come this way, please. I have to return these to the library, you can accompany me."
The Earth pony had begun to pack up his things, but he listened, and nodded in agreement. "You're right. As long as you're a unicorn, chances are you can change time, given the right tutorage. But it's an extremely powerful spell, and time is... for lack of a better word... wobbly." He said. He was about to say more, but a voice came from the top of the auditorium stairs. The voice was familiar, but Silver couldn't see anything other than purple legs behind an enormous stack of books floating in the air. "Excuse me, Doctor! Did you still want that scientific journal on black holes?" The Earth pony looked up, momentarily distracted. "Oh! Thank you, Miss Sparkle. Yes, just leave it on my desk. I'll fetch it momentarily." He returned his attention back to Silver, handing over a card. "I must get ready for my next class, here's my office hours, feel free to stop in any time."
This wasn't due diligence, if the world was at stake, then classes didn't matter much. In fact training anyone in a timeline that might be altered soon seemed a waste. Then again Silver wasn't one to make managing decisions yet. He was a unicorn, of some ability, but he didn't know if he would be able to use such a powerful spell. If he trained hard for the next couple of years... maybe... but then again, whoever had been intent on changing the world in the first place, would also seek to put a more permanent stop to him changing it. Miss Sparkle? His ears perked and he turned his head to the fairly recognizable unicorn. Not a princess, not here, without the necessary lessons that had fostered her growth in character and her discovery of friendship as a source of great magic. If she was unable to do the spell, Silver would never have a chance, and as it was she stood a much greater chance than he would on his own. "Miss Twilight Sparkle,, a word with you on temporal mechanics?" He payed as close attention to her as he could, body motion, cutie mark, see how much of a story she could inadvertently tell him.
The Doctors energetic attitude carried over to the pegasus who was with him, as he raced out for his next class. If the world was ending, he didn't seem particularly concerned by it, or his priorities were elsewhere. "Hurry up now, Miss Hooves! Allons-y!" The grey pegasus politely exclaimed a "Nice to meet you, Silver." And rushed after him. The unicorn, meanwhile, was hidden behind a stacks of books, masking the majority of her body and her cutie mark. "Of course! Come this way, please. I have to return these to the library, you can accompany me."
He paid as close attention to her as he could, body motion, cutie mark, see how much of a story she could inadvertently tell him. With courtesy he levitated a couple of the books. Following her "A pleasure to meet you, are you familiar with the works of Starswirld The Bearded on time travel?" A small test to see how much of a difference she was here. Presumably she had all her talents intact.
The library was not particularly far away, they walked down the hallway a few doors and the unicorn dumped one book at a time into a slot in the wall. Physically, she was relatively unchanged, save for the lack of wings. She trotted at a cheerful pace, greeting most of the ponies she passed, most of whom greeted her back. As she turned to face him at last, he could see an open scroll and feather on her flank. Fitting. "Oh, gosh, do I? He's only my favorite scientific publisher. I have all his journals!" She said. "Well, all except the time travel ones." She looked a bit downcast at the mention of it. "It was kept in the Canterlot Archives, and some horrible pony..." She trailed off. "So much knowledge lost..."
He got the picture, they had gotten to her as well. "I had a sister with a similar cutie mark, a quill and an ink house. She became a writer." It was a good way to open a story about cutie marks to get another pony to talk about theirs. He didn't want to reveal anything yet. Fluttershy, he had judged to be so timid that getting the full story out of her would be a pain, though the implication was that she discovered it by living with Zecora. No probing questions, he wanted Twilight to tell the story of her own. However it figured that that if Rainbow Dash had been taken out of commission she would not have passed her entrance exam.
Twilight fell right into his leading, and brightened up again. "A quill and- oh!" She laughed. "I wish I could say I was a good writer. While a few of my articles have been published in Canterlot Weekly, I'm just the librarian at the University. I always wanted to work at Canterlot Library, but sadly, that's not an option anymore."
"I got mine fairly late, my fiancee helped." He suddenly got a bit more emotional than he intended, but decided to play into it. "Sorry, its a sad story, but I had been ill for quite a while and so she got me a stack of puzzles. Figuring out the last one was the hardest. I'm a dunce at magic, but this was a puzzle.. figured it out and voila." Still a proud moment in this mind, weren't all ponies proud of their cutie mark? Some had marks that seemed odd but signified the world to that one pony. "How did yours come about?"
She gazed at him with only a moment of curiosity. That was an oddly personal question to be asking a pony he'd only just met, but fortunately, she didn't seem to mind. "I got mine shortly after I was hired at the University, surrounded by books and ponies who love reading, what's not to love?" He said brightly. "It doesn't leave me a whole lot of time to practice magic, but there's a whole section just on research journals! Can you believe that? It'll take me years to get through them all!"
Suspicious answer aside, it seemed to fit, but it seemed too straightforward. Her real talent was magic, sure she was a lover of reading and was organized but that was incidental, even if she had been a klutz her real talent would still have been magical. "I'm sorry for the question." She was also a smart pony, if he was too direct she'd figure out she was being lead on. "I find cutie marks a puzzle to be worked out see, sometimes what the symbol means but also how it came about. I guess getting mine as late as I did, last year in fact, has left me with an bit of a fixation on them. No cutie marks in cutie marks though." He smirked, time for some other tests. "I'm in need of a magical sparring partner.. can you assist with teleportation?" Assist being key meaning either that she could show it was done, how to improve, or that she'd be there to help the spell along even if she couldn't cast it herself, vague enough that she could offer herself in any role. How much have you been allowed to know about magic here, Twilight?, he wondered.
Twilight nodded with enthusiasm. "Of course, I'd love to help." She motioned for him to follow her, leading him out towards the courtyard, where while it was cold, at least it had stopped snowing. "What sort of assistance do you need? I'm not extremely talented, but I can do all sorts of tricks." She said said cheerfully. "I'll help how I can. Do you want to learn how to teleport, how to defend yourself, something else?"
Too much like Angel back when she had put him through the paces of teleportation magic. He half emptied the headache concoction, and made apologies in advance to his horn. Horn, don't crack on me now. "Long distance jumping." There were spells reaching greater and greater distances, but the amount of effort needed to go increasing distances grew with hefty power. Your accuracy dropped proportionally with distance. A few hundred feet you could do within remarkable accuracy, a few thousand less so. "Last time I did it I ended in a field from quite a distance. A pegasi was quick on its wings, but I almost broke my hind leg that day." Close enough, it had been Angel who had strictly forbidden him from long jumping, or even teaching him how to do it safely. Hadn't allowed him to levitate as much as a napkin for three days before she had been satisfied that his horn was unscathed. He eyed something fairly distant. "That tower over there as the target." He suggested.
Twilight looked in the direction he was gazing, and nodded. "That's easy. The most important thing to remember is that you must always focus on both the ground and the object you're trying to appear at. It's a bit harder to focus on two things at once, but it's a lot easier if you're teleporting somewhere you've been already. I want you to aim your attention on the base of the tower, and jump." She did just that herself, and with a brief burst of purple smoke, disappeared from his sight.
It was a fairly impressive distance, and quite a flash as she had gone off. She went off in less time than Angel would have.. He suddenly felt as if a spotlight was on him, and the distance seemed a lot further all of the sudden. Taking a few deep breaths he went through the motions, fixing the target in his mind and charging up the alicorn of his horn, carefully building the energy needed... aim your attention at the base of the tower. He let the spell slide in place and the magic spill out through him. I'll have to thank Zecora once the timeline is restored, even if she'll never have made this brew. With that thought, he teleported off.
Teleporting short distances, he was used to the feeling of disorientation. He expected it to be harder than it was, but having done just as Twilight had instructed, he found himself standing next to her at the base of the tower. "Very good!" She exclaimed. His feeling of success was short lived, however, as the expenditure of energy he'd given off caught up with him, and it caused a fairly discomforting throbbing to start up in his head again.
"Yeah.. thanks, your advice worked." Okay, can you feel any eddies of current draining out. Cracks in the horn would bleed of magic straight into the air, visible to anyone as a thin flat shaft of light following the contour of the crack. Just one would mean he'd be unable to cast spells for weeks. Hopefully there was one. His headache disagreed with him something powerfully. "That was quite a jump you were capable of there.. any other unicorns here as good at teleporting as you?" He drank a little more of the headache killer, it wouldn't do to interview her if he was talking through a wince half the time.
No cracks, no fractures, nothing that wouldn't go away in a short time. He needed to build up a magical tolerance, and having focused mainly on small spells, bigger spells had a larger impact on him. Twilight thought for a moment. "There is one, she used to be Princess Celestia's student until the Princess disappeared. She might be able to teach you even more magic than I can." She said casually.
Another pupil? Interesting... that gave quite a few clues actually. Time to drop the horsing around. "Miss Twilight I'm afraid I haven't been honest with you.. except the bit about my teleportation spell and my cutie mark. My name is Silver Key. I'm here because I believe that you and a few other ponies past have been tampered with, which has resulted in the world you inhabit currently. It used to be different, but someone has used a time travel spell to alter things for their benefit." That was quite a lot of exposition to believe in. "If you know any truth sayer spells I'm willing to repeat this whole thing under the influence of one."
Twilight shook her head. "I believe you, as I have no reason not to, but I'm afraid I can't help you. I'm mediocre at magic, at beast, and I'm just a Librarian. Heck, even Rarity is better at magic than I am." She forced a laugh. "Doesn't mean I don't try, of course, but it's just not my talent."
"You just teleported a rather impressive distance... are you really sure?" Something very fishy was up here. "Tell me about your friend Rarity, her cutie mark. Its important, Twilight." Seeing this pony, insecure as she had always been, now pushed to being self-deprecatory. This world was a sick joke of its original. "And do you know anything of this pupil of Celestia?" Could just be that this pupil was someone else picked in Twilight's stead.
Twilight smiled a bit. "Well I wouldn't say we were very close friends, but we're acquaintances. She's one of the leading designers in Canterlot, the only one I know of who can make a potato sack a leading fashion. She's very busy, however, you'd have to make an appointment if you want to talk to her. As for Princess Celestia's student, she lives just outside of Ponyville. Her name is Trixie."