Twilight Sparkle stared at the infant Scootaloo, her mouth hanging open. She glanced back to Rainbow Dash. Neither spoke. She remembered Dash barging in during the crisis on infinite Equestrias shouting about Scootaloo being a problem, but that issue was cast aside as being of far less importance. As ashamed as she was to admit it, she had actually forgotten all about it. The damage had just stopped spreading and then began to fix itself. All the Twilights went into a frenzy trying to push themselves and any other matter they came through with back to their rightful places before they were trapped forever. In the confusion and the chaos, the issue of elements being slightly out place in their own timelines was dropped entirely.
Twilight had burned all her notes to prevent anypony from attempting to travel through time again, but she still remembered some details. Concentrating hard, she could recall a small number of inconsistencies regarding Scootaloo… but that couldn’t be right! Inconsistencies along the timeline would cause massive instability if they didn’t outright destroy it!
Even assuming she was mistaken and everything did play out correctly, that did nothing to explain how or why she was looking right into the face of a Scootaloo who was no more than a few days old.
“You’re about to ask me a whole bunch of questions, and I only know the answer to one of them.”
Twilight paused with a thoughtful look on her face. “What’s her name?”
“You have half a guess.”
“So then how…”
“I don’t know, and it doesn’t matter.”
“It absolutely matters, Dash! We have a responsibility to clean up after ourselves. This is pretty clearly our mess, somehow or other, and we need to do something about it. You can’t just run around leaving all the hard problems for future generations to solve!”
Scootaloo made a gurgling noise, blinked, and smiled.
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Twilight felt awful. She knew it had to be done, but that didn’t make her feel any better. The magic was hidden. Magic wasn’t even the right word for it. There was SOMETHING in Scootaloo. Something strange buried under the surface that you couldn’t see if you weren’t looking at just the right angle. Something powerful.
She reached back through her memories for all the details she could remember. The three books glowed softly, floating in front of her. It wasn’t right to use somepony like this. To push them in a direction they couldn’t understand and leave them stranded there alone. But it had to be done! Scootaloo had been in the past, and Twilight needed to make sure she got there. Maybe she even had a hoof in fixing everything. It didn’t matter, though. As terrible an act as it was, Twilight needed to separate mother from daughter and leave her stranded in the past for... how long? When was the first time Scootaloo showed up? Where? How to retrieve her with minimal temporal impact?
For now, Twilight Sparkle could put it off. She could excuse herself from the task, claiming that she needed more information. Needed more time to plan it perfectly. That was partially true, but she couldn’t fool herself forever. Sooner or later, she would have to be the most dishonest and least loyal friend she could be. She could only hope her friends would be able to forgive her.
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Scootaloo couldn’t wait. She really couldn’t. She was already trying out the things she was reading in those books Twilight had given her, even though she’d been warned many times that this would be dangerous. She didn’t care. Today she would fly.
She was a little confused. Some of this junk didn’t seem to have anything to do with flying, but she wasn’t exactly an expert yet. She cast aside her doubts and charged forward. She didn’t notice when the books began to glow slightly.
Each of the three books had been enchanted to impart an effect on her. The first book would ensure she remained safe. It provided a magical shell strong enough to fall from hundreds of feet in the air and sustain absolutely no damage. The third book would launch her much higher into the air than the flight exercise it described was designed to. The second book was supposed to prepare the magics necessary for time travel and implant the required energy. Twilight had worked very hard to find an efficient method for storing that much power. The second book had failed.
The spells relating to time were repelled, unable to affect the little orange pony who should never have been born. Without a suitable receptacle, the energies that were meant to follow bounced back into the nearest available magical conduit. The third book radiated an intense light. Scootaloo stopped her wing exercises and stared at it. It was meant to trigger when she made a specific motion, but the added magic had intensified the sensitivity of the triggering mechanism. She stepped toward the book and was flung skyward. Up and up and up she went. Hundreds of feet into the air. Then thousands.
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Scootaloo sat still and thought. She pushed her little brain as hard as she had ever pushed it, trying to fit the pieces together. There was a puzzle to be solved. Something was going on, and she needed to know what.
Idolizing another pony is nothing unusual. Tons of foals have idols they worship. But Rainbow Dash was different. There was something more. Something incredibly special. She had felt it every time she was near her for as long as she could remember.
She had a perfect working memory of everything AFTER one particular point in time. She suffered from near total amnesia of everything before that point.
There had been two of Rainbow Dash flying around that day. There had DEFINITELY been two of herself just a minute ago playing a little prank on one Rainbow Dash.
Some special, unnamable bond existed between the mare and the filly. There were somehow at least two of both of them. She had amnesia. She’d never bothered asking… maybe Rainbow Dash had amnesia too? Maybe they were both part of some mad science experiment… or maybe they were related. Could they be sisters? Dash was too young to be her mother…
Time slowed to a stop. All color drained from the world. All sound faded to nothing. There was only Scootaloo and the tidal wave of memories flooding back to her all at once. She screwed her eyes shut and clamped her forehooves over her ears, curling into a ball on the ground. If her eyes had been open, she would have seen the cracks start to form in the world around her.
An enormous spider’s web of unending complexity unfolded. The more closely it was examined, the more detail could be seen. All around her the world was illuminated by the shining threads of the web, reaching out into the whole of the world, but the only pony capable of seeing it refused to look.