Ah, Sector Z-2. It’s good to be back!
“That was sarcastic, right?”
I don’t know what you’re talking about! What is this sarcasm you speak of?
“Ha ha, you’re so funny.”
My my, Twilight, and you call me sarcastic? Scandalous, I say! Hey… why is it so dark in here?
“Exodus.”
Is that really still in effect here? I thought you’d eliminated all the hotspots—
“Hold up there Sky, don’t give the whole story away!”
Sorry. Do you want to give the audience a basic rundown for this story then? Twilight nodded. Alright, expose away!
“Well, this wasn’t the first time I tried to reconstruct my old life, not by a long shot. In fact, it was try number fifty-two! I was getting a little… discouraged at this point, though, and…”
And you had a temper tantrum? Also, why are we suddenly speaking in bold?
Twilight sighed. “I suppose that’s one way to put it. And we’re speaking in bold to differentiate parts of the story from each other.”
Ah, I see. Continue, please.
“So I… had an episode. I was still pretty angry at the whole situation, and I wasn’t quite used to my new abilities yet, both of which contributed to more than a few skewed aspects of the world. At a glance, it really didn’t seem all that different, but that definitely didn’t last long…”
Ooh, is that my cue?
“Yes, now start the story!”
Alright! Ahem…
Twilight was furious. Amazingly, astoundingly, ‘holy crap my face is being seared off by your pure hate of the world’ furious. Nothing had been going right for her since her so-called ‘ascension to true godhood’ nearly one hundred and fifty years prior.
She huffed a huff so powerful, the house she was standing in front of collapsed into splinters. The two mares inside remained unaffected by the falling debris, even when a particularly nasty looking shard flew point first into the white-coated pony’s eye, slicing all the way through her body and out the other side.
Twilight waved a hoof, restoring everything to the way it had been before she arrived. Turning to her left, she dragged her hooves in the dirt road as she slowly pulled herself toward the massive crystal tree that was her castle. Shoving one of the massive doors open, she moved inside, winding her way around the frozen figures inside to where she had been standing when the World had almost ended.
Blindly, agonizingly, she lit her horn, filling it to the brim with life force, just as she had so many times before. She poured all of her emotion into it, trying to achieve an even balance, but despite her efforts her fury and frustration shone brighter than any other element of the spell. Too tired to notice the discrepancy, Twilight cast the spell, immediately falling unconscious from the strain.
Huh. You know, for such an ‘all-powerful deity’… you’re really not all that powerful.
“Have you ever tried to revitalize several trillion living organisms fifty-two times in the span of one and a half centuries?”
Well no, can’t say I have.
“Then shut up.”
Is that a command?
“Just continue the story, Sky.”
Right. Left. Left again. Right. Forward. Elevator up. Forward three more times. Left and through the third door on the right. A large infirmary, empty except for a single doctor, a sleeping patient, and now her.
“How is she, doctor?” the new arrival asked in a hushed voice.
The stallion never hesitated in his inspections as he replied, “Fine in every single way. There is absolutely no reason for her to be in this state.”
The mare scoffed. “Well, obviously something is wrong, because she is in this state, and you better figure out what that is or you’re fired.”
The doctor paused, finally looking up from his work. “I don’t think you understand, Captain,” he replied smoothly. “My colleagues and I have performed every single test ever conceived by any race on Equus. Thrice. There is literally nothing wrong with her. In fact, she’s so perfect it’s almost frightening, and you know how difficult it is to scare me.”
The mare hesitated at that. If Doctor Ekki is truly intimidated by this mare, she thought, she can only mean trouble. “When you say ‘literally nothing wrong with her’—”
“I meant exactly what I said, Captain. She shows no sign of wear, is devoid of bacteria and other detrimental inclusions, and apparently stopped aging the moment she was born. She is perfectly toned, has perfect eyesight, and every injury we inflicted upon her was healed the instant any obstruction was removed. We even drove a rusted and dirty railroad stake through her skull and brain at one point. Her reaction was to bat at it like a fly buzzed in her ear, and when we removed it, she rolled over and snored. There wasn’t even any blood on the spike.”
The mare in the bed suddenly groaned. “Spike…” she murmured.
Both other parties jumped at the sound. “Doctor, say that again,” the mare said.
“Spike.” The patient stirred.
“Again. Louder.”
“Spike!” The patient’s eyes fluttered.
“Louder!”
“SPIKE!” The patient threw her hooves up.
“One more time, right in her ear!”
The doctor leaned in close. “SPIIIIIIIIIIKE!” The patient shot up, her horn narrowly missing Doctor Ekki’s nostril. She barely had time to register the room she was in and the fact that it was occupied by two changelings before the world was cast into disarray by a blinding light and an enormous boom—
“Hey, wait a second! You’ve skipped almost all of the story!”
What? No I didn’t. The changelings found you unconscious in the middle of Changelingville and took you to the Changelingville Hospital, where they spent three days attempting increasingly more desperate methods of murder in an attempt to be rid of you, but since you’re a god you couldn’t be killed. Then you finally woke up after they shouted “SPIIIIIIIIIIKE!” directly into your ear, and after that Sector Z-2 was annihilated, officially making it your seventeenth failure to end with an apocalypse. THE END, and all that jazz.
“No no no, you can’t just go directly from my waking up in the hospital to the big finale! There’s, like, two whole months of story that you just ignored! You can’t do that, Sky!”
Twilight, what are you talking about? You made a spectacularly bad mistake and the world was destroyed! There’s nothing more to it!
“Yes there is! Do you seriously not remember? Uuugh, I wanted this to be a spectacular entrance to my retroactive ‘laughing at past mistakes” parade, but noooo! You had to go and forget, didn’t you?”
Sorry! Geez, if you want me to remember, just make me remember! You’re a god now. Remember?!
“Oh… right. Aheh… sorry I snapped at you.”
…S’okay, just try to stay calm next time, okay?
“I promise.” Twilight lit her horn, exposing the world’s inherent threads around it. She pulled at the ones stretching up into the sky, the ones attached to me, and slowly my memory… ah, slowly my memory… uhm… Twilight, nothing’s changing.
“What?!” The threads vanished as she glared into the sky.
I don’t know! I could feel you pulling the threads, but it’s like they weren’t doing anything! They’re definitely there, but… I just don’t know! I’ve… I’ve never seen anything fight against you like that…
“Well then I’ll just have to out-power it!” The threads almost solidified with the amount of power Twilight was putting out, wrapping them tightly around her horn and—wait, no, Twilight wait! Don’t—
GAK! AHK! AH-AAAAH! OWWWW! TWI—OH GOD! TWILIGHT, STOP!
Hah… hah… oh god… owie…
“Sorry, Sky.”
It’s… okay… ah… I’ll be fine…
“Well, that didn’t work.”
No… no it didn’t.
“Hmm… what now then? I want to find out why you can’t remember Sector Z-2, and why I can’t help you remember.”
Help… being very liberally defined…
“Yes, yes, I already apologized. It can’t hurt that much, you baby.”
Trust me… it did…
Twilight… sighed… “Well then how about a trip to the fountains? Does that sound nice?”
That sounds… very nice…
“Alrighty! Stop one: the Fountains of Everfall!” Twilight trotted… out… and turned toward… the setting sun…