After many more vast jumps and setting up a teleportation relay, we reached a consensus that the edge of the multiverse was completely straight. It made us wonder what shape the multiverse would be. A rectangular prism? A cube? The machines that make up matter are not straight on any side, neither are the suns, the galaxies, universes, or any of the naturally occurring phenomena central to existence. Whatever ancient race that had divided everything into universes and created the nanomachines, had not created the multiverse.
We took satisfaction that perhaps we could surpass them yet.
---
Galaxia was trudging through the designs for a fungi cell she was trying to nudge into an alternative evolutionary path, when she was alerted to a visitor. A King was tugging on a nearby piece of spacetime to let her know that he was coming. She left the bacterium alone and went to allow him into her subsection of spacetime.
“Hiya Galaxia,” Cosmos beamed as he entered the void from which she was tampering with worlds from.
At less than ten thousand universes away, his universe was the closest to her own. He had been reincarnated into a King around the same time she had, the behavior from their previous unknown lifetimes somehow warranting the role. He hovered into her controlled space.
“How have you been?” Cosmos asked.
“Quite fine, quite fine,” Galaxia said, looking back down onto the fungi cells.
“What have you been up to lately?”
“Nothing in particular.”
“Aww… come on!” Cosmos said. “You’re always working on interesting projects, what are you up to right now?”
“Well if you must know...” She turned her attention back to the cell designs and manipulated the view for him to see. “I have some lichen that’s starting to form a parasitic relationship with some of my trees, and I’m trying to make the relationship mutualistic, or at the very least commensalistic.”
“Sounds interesting! What did you have in mind for making it mutualistic? Anything your trees are lacking?”
“Nothing right now… there’s enough sunlight, most of the trees have enough carbon dioxide for photosynthesis. I’m not sure what to do. I could do nothing, but the trees really dislike the lichen and they don’t move quick enough to do anything about it.”
“Hmm…” Cosmos gave the planet a once over, viewing some of the souls that inhabited the sapient, but slow as glaciers, tree creatures. “All of your trees live in the tropics of your planet?”
“That’s where they choose to live.”
“Why not have the lichen grow thicker around the trees furthest from the tropics? That should enable some of the trees to retain more moisture in the colder climate, increasing the spread of the trees across the planet, instead of leaving them concentrated near the equator.”
“So I nudge the fungi to group more densely and to prefer colder weather?” Galaxia said, more as a fact than a question. “That is an interesting idea, but the trees hate the fungi, and if some trees start accepting the fungi to go to colder climates, it will cause a rift and lead to two separate tree species.”
“Is that a problem?”
“It’s just not what I wanted to happen, at least not for this world.”
“There are always more worlds to create, Galaxia, just let this one evolve naturally. You can get through your quota of assigning souls to worlds much faster that way. Just spread some seeds of life on as many worlds as possible and go around to see if anything grew afterwards.”
Galaxia stiffened. She disliked Cosmos’s idea of quantity over quality. As if assigning souls was a race instead of a delicate procedure. “Yes, but I still want the souls that go through my worlds to have enjoyable experiences, otherwise, what’s the point?”
“I don’t think there’s a question in the multiverse that’s more difficult to answer than that one, Galaxia.”
She turned back to the lichen cell, contemplating his idea before finally asking, “So, why did you come here?”
“I just wanted to drop by and say hi,” he said happily, “As well as check up on some of the worlds we made when we spent some time together a few millennia ago.”
She had nearly forgotten those joint projects, the memories of making those worlds bubbling up to the surface. “That gaseous plasma planet never evolved life like you thought it would. An asteroid impact forced most of the inhabitants of that silicon planet underground; they could be dead or have evolved to be accustomed to the darkness by this point, I’d have to check.”
“Oh…” said Cosmos, a little saddened. “How about that pony world we made? I know we tried a different approach to your avatar system by making two of the Princesses immortal. How are they working out? How have they—”
Sudden realization came over her, she stopped examining the lichen cell structure and stared at him.
“Is something wrong?” he asked.
“I nearly forgot! What year is it!?”
“It’s 200789805—” he started to rattle off before she cut him off.
“Sorry, I didn’t mean multiverse standard time, I meant for Equestria. I need to get over there now and see what’s happening.”
“Mind if I come along?” he asked.
“Sure, you helped me build the place.”
She tore a portal to Equestria open and changed to her tangible alicorn form, casting the standard invisibility spells. Cosmos filed in after her, a stallion alicorn, appearance like the very stars in the cosmos.
“Do you mind filling me in?”
Galaxia placed her horn against his, passing the memories of all the souls she had analyzed from the last time she was here.
She started flying to the rock farm.
“Hey wait! Give me time to all process this!” Cosmos chased after her. “So Luna is on this planet’s moon? And we’re going to visit that soul I gave you a few years back?”
“You gave that soul to me?”
“Yeah, I hoped that since my bird world didn’t work out for it, you would find something in one of your worlds. I didn’t think you would send it here though, Hope prefers we leave worlds in progress alone,” said Cosmos as he flew alongside Galaxia, peering at the vast green landscapes and lush forests of Equestria below him.
“Oh good! The pegasi still build cloud cities,” Cosmos said after flying past Cloudsdale. “Do you remember when we tested those out, Galaxia? We nearly had to rewrite how water molecules behave in this world to allow clouds to support pegasi and griffons.”
Galaxia ignored him, racing to the rock farm, anxious to see how the soul had turned out, she hoped she wasn’t too late to nudge her cutie mark to being something else besides a rock.
She finally spotted the rock farm. A pink dot stuck out against the drab landscape.
“Is that Asvarel?” Cosmos asked as he caught up with her. They neared the pink form that was shuffling rocks around with her muzzle. They landed next to her, remaining invisible to the filly.
“She’s pink!” Galaxia said in surprise.
“Are you sure that’s her?” Cosmos asked as Galaxia landed and went straight to access the creature’s memories to confirm. The soul’s current form was a filly named Pinkamena Diane Pie.
“It’s her alright!” Galaxia said as Cosmos went to view the memories of the current incarnation.
“Pinkamena, huh? Well she certainly is pink,” Cosmos said, eyeing the small filly. “And her color is a fluke of genetics too. Well isn’t she something. What did you have in mind for her?”
“I thought I would just get her to see the outside world somehow. She has no memories of laughing or smiling, just these rocks and the gray landscape.”
“There’s not a lot of options, Galaxia, at least nothing natural,” he said, looking around at the rock farm, rifling through the memories. “There are no books, little imagination, and it looks like little Pinkamena doesn’t have any curiosity about the world around her.”
“That was my plan, Cosmos. Now how do I get her interested in the world outside? At least enough to get her a cutie mark.”
“Well…” he said, putting a hoof to his muzzle and looking up, and then back to her. “This whole thing is a little unorthodox, Galaxia, exactly how far did you want to intervene?”
Galaxia stared at the filly, watching as she kicked one of the rocks and sighed dejectedly. She remembered the myriad of tragic previous lifetimes, determined to change the sad cycle. “Whatever it takes,” she said, turning to look at him.
“Alright then,” he said, grinning at her and looking up, “these gray clouds stay pretty consistent, but there aren’t pegasi to move them.”
“So we find some pegasi?” Galaxia asked.
“Yeah! Let’s go with that!”
Cosmos thrust off the ground, spread his starry wings open, and started flying to Cloudsdale, Galaxia dashing after him.
“We can’t exactly have Pinkamena’s father hire a pegasus,” Galaxia began. “The rock farm doesn’t even need the sun like most farms do.”
“So we don’t have him hire a pegasus. Why not have a gust of wind blow the clouds out of the way? Pinkamena will see the blue sky for the first time.”
“I don’t think that’s flashy enough,” Galaxia said as they reached the outskirts of Cloudsdale. “We want to really spark some curiosity within her.”
“Well she’s such a pink pony, and she’s never really seen color before, so let’s give her some color!”
“How?” Galaxia asked.
Cosmos eyed a rainbow maned filly lining up on a cloud outside Cloudsdale, assuming the position of a pony about to race as fast as possible.
“Let’s give her all the colors at once! That should be flashy enough.” Cosmos flashed Galaxia a grin before racing to get to the rainbow maned filly.
“What!?” Galaxia said as a yellow filly with a soft pink mane lowered a flag, starting the race.
“I’m just gonna give this rainbow filly here a huge burst of magic,” Cosmos said, racing alongside the flying filly, Galaxia right behind him.
“Ooh! I like this one, she’s fast!” Cosmos took a shortcut and flew to a ring of clouds close to the ground. He cast an invisible, intensely magical aura inside it.
“Hold on a moment, how much magic are you planning on giving her?” Galaxia asked as the filly dived toward the ground.
“You’re right, I’m not giving her nearly enough,” said Cosmos. He pumped even more magic into the cloud ring, the aura of magic so strong it would start piercing the visible spectrum at any moment, the rainbow maned filly seconds away.
“That’s too much magi—” was all Galaxia could say before the rainbow pegasi bounded into the gate.
All at once, a cacophonous rainbow shockwave jutted outward from that point, the rainboom carrying an intense powerful magic rippling across the land of Equestria.
“Wow!” was all Cosmos could say as he excitedly went to chase after the rainboom, hurtling himself along in front of the sheer tsunami of magic.
Galaxia chased him, wary to venture into the mess of magic that Cosmos had created. She flew around wave of magic and finally caught up to him. “Where are you going!?”
“I’m going to go see Pinkamena’s reaction, of course!” Cosmos said.
He dived down and landed next to Pinkamena, closing his eyes in anticipation as the roaring rainboom was about to hit.
But the rainboom never did.
He opened up his eyes to see Galaxia staring condescendingly at him. The rainboom stopped above them mere meters before it would pass.
“I’m not letting any atom on this world move another nanometer until you tell me what you’re planning on doing to Pinkamena,” Galaxia said, a huff of annoyance escaping her.
“Relax, I’m just gonna give her an earth pony magic boost,” he said, a happy grin plastered on his face.
“Extra farming power?” Galaxia asked.
“No, just some party powers,” Cosmos raised a hoof to his muzzle, ticking off the abilities. “Time and space manipulation... an ability to catch glimpses of other worlds... some precognition... and general silliness.” He added. “Nothing too big.”
“You put all that in a rainboom!?”
“Well yeah! Well… uhh… at least I set some of the magic to only go into Pinkamena here. It is a rainboom, no telling exactly where all of it will end up,” Cosmos said through a sheepish smile.
“I can’t allow this. The soul has been depressed through all of her lifetimes, I wanted a massive change for her, but this is too much. Give me time to calculate the best course of action.”
Cosmos’s horn glowed as he told every atom to continue, unpausing time, the roaring rainboom engulfing Galaxia as—
“Cosmos! What are you thinking!? We have a magical blast permeating all of Equestria and you’re just gonna let it roll on through!?” Galaxia had stopped time again and was berating Cosmos through the rainbow blast. “How can you—”
He smiled and unstopped time again.
She stopped it again, the blast directly in front of a very surprised Pinkamena.
Galaxia and Cosmos kept stopping and unstopping time. Their back and forth spells like foals on opposites sides of a room flipping light switches that belonged to the same light.
“WILL.” Time stopped, the rainboom engulfing Pinkamena and making her mane stream backwards.
“YOU.” Time started, the magic of the rainboom taking hold.
“STOP.” Time stopped, the rainboom past Pinkamena, her straight mane starting to frizz.
“THAT!” Time started.
Time stopped again and Pinkamena’s mane had gone completely frizzy, a large smile beginning to form across her face.
“To be honest, those last few spells unstopping time were all you. You should have been using a spell that only stops time, not the spell that flips the states,” Cosmos snickered.
“And you wonder why we don’t collaborate more often,” Galaxia muttered under her breath, starting time up again. “I’ll just sit here and watch Pinkamena then.”
“Call her Pinkie, Galaxia! That name fits so much better for her now. And come over here quick, that is the biggest smile I’ve ever seen on one of these ponies before!” Cosmos said as he watched her smile, her eyes reflecting the beautiful rainbow in the sky, a rainbow that Cosmos was slightly altering.
“I just had that rainbow teach her to smile!” Cosmos grinned before scrunching his face. “And… I might’ve given her a glimpse into the creation of Equestria in the process, but I don’t think it’ll have any lasting effect.”
“You—wait, what?” said Galaxia flustered. “Nevermind, forget I asked. What’s going to happen now?”
“Just watch! I gave Pinkie all the ideas, and now she’ll figure out how to throw her first party ever!”
“A party?” said Galaxia, almost annoyed. “Really?”
“Just you wait, it’s gonna be the best party ever! It’ll be her own ‘end of wandering worlds’ party!”
They watched as Pinkie Pie went to the farmhouse and started to think.
“She’s getting ideas!” he crooned, watching as Pinkie imagined up some balloons, the mere act of wanting the balloons willing them into existence.
“Thousands of years, you have barely visited this place a few times since we created it, and you spend your first time here in ages watching a pony plan a party?”
“This is fun! And besides, I gotta make sure she’s not abusing her newfound powers.”
“You do that, Cosmos,” Galaxia said. “I need to see what havoc you’ve accidentally wrought elsewhere.”
Galaxia spread her nebulous wings, propelling her upwards and flying quickly through Equestria, looking for signs of something amiss. There didn’t appear to be any lasting effects on the landscape, just a few shell shocked animals.
If something had gone wrong, Celestia would know. She zipped to Canterlot, stopping time and appearing in front of her. She had been talking to a small lavender filly that was positively bursting at the seams in excitement.
“Hello, Celestia,” Galaxia began, “how are you?”
Celestia was disoriented at the sudden stop in the flow of time, interrupting her conversation with one of the most promising fillies she had ever admitted to her school. Once Celestia realized what had happened, she embraced Galaxia, “Mother! You just missed the most amazing event!” Celestia motioned to the unicorn bubbling over in excitement and wonder, “This filly passed the rock portion of our entrance exam with flying colors!”
“Flying colors?” Galaxia asked, cringing.
“Yes! A rainboom went through Canterlot at the moment she was taking her entrance exam. Somehow, she was able to transfigure a rock we painted like an egg into an actual dragon!” Celestia said, pausing, ”and turn her parents into cacti.”
Transfiguring the rock into an entire dragon must have taken a ton of magic. How much had Cosmos put inside that rainboom?
“Her name is Twilight Sparkle, mother, and she is going to be one of my best students.”
Galaxia nudged the filly to analyze her lilac soul. Before this life, her previous three incarnations had been gifted with a lot a magical ability. She had already attended Celestia’s school for gifted unicorns twice before. The raw magical ability of the filly had nearly septupled in power permanently from the rainboom’s effects, and the cutie mark allocation algorithm had celebrated the occasion by granting Twilight stars on her flanks.
“A cutie mark from that rainboom…” Galaxia spoke softly to herself.
An idea crossed her mind and she sparked her horn to life. The room they were in, all of Canterlot, all of Equestria, and then finally the entire planet was enveloped in an amber magical glow. Galaxia started feeling around for the root spells that she had set in place for the planet.
She felt around past hoof dexterity spells and plant magic and found the system that gave cutie marks to ponies. She refreshed herself on how the cutie mark allocation spell worked, and made a list of the last ponies that had gotten their cutie marks. In addition to Twilight, there were two other fillies that had gotten their marks at almost the exact same time. And three more, including Pinkie, that were in the process of getting theirs directly because of the effects of the rainboom. Six ponies… six elements. Galaxia smiled and a few ideas popped up in her mind on what she should do.
During this entire process, Celestia watched, awed at the display of magic that was beyond even her comprehension. “What did that spell do?”
Galaxia opened her eyes, staring at her. “I was refreshing myself on some of the rules I set in place for this world, including the cutie mark allocation algorithm. It gave me a few ideas. Do you currently have an apprentice, Celestia?”
“My last apprentice didn’t turn out so well,” said Celestia. “I don’t think I’ll take on another for some time.”
“I request that you reconsider. This new student of yours has a lot of potential. I want you to take her as a new protégé.”
“What do you want me to prepare her for?”
“She needs to be a powerful magic user. If that cutie mark is what I think it is, she is destined to be the bearer of the Element of Magic.”
“Element of Magic? As in, the Elements of Harmony?” Celestia asked, taken aback at the mention of the most powerful weapon she had at her disposal.
“Correct.”
“But only the bearer of the element of magic? Shall I be wielding the other five?”
“I’m still figuring that part out, Celestia. If you do bear an element of Harmony again, it would only be one of them. The magic system of this world runs on relationships, particularly friendship. The more souls involved, and the tighter the bond between the bearers, the better. The ideal amount of bearers would be six, one for each element of harmony. But this configuration raises the chances of failure. If any of them don’t like each other the system could end up very weak. However, if they all get along the strength they give each other can only multiply.”
“So who are these bearers?” Celestia asked.
“I’ll tell you when I’ve found the rest of them.”
Without a word more, Galaxia teleported away and unstopped time, leaving Celestia to readjust to the conversation she had been having with her new student, Twilight Sparkle.
* * *
Accessing that cutie mark spell made the process of hunting down those fillies much easier.
The first filly to check up on was named Rarity. The cutie mark allocation spell was intent on this filly getting a cutie mark in fashion. She descended from above enough to examine the filly’s soul, all while the white unicorn tugged and carried a mess of jewels.
The most recent memory was the most remarkable. The spell had dragged the poor filly to a big rock, supposedly to have her wait for the ideal moment to see the jewels stashed inside, which was when the rainboom hit.
Besides that, the memories were fairly unremarkable, she was the daughter of one of the couples she had rifled through when searching for a boring family for that soul. Five past lives, including a theatre teacher, politician, architect, and two lifetimes spent as a nurse.
Was she Element of Harmony material? Galaxia thought about it for a moment and then teleported to where a filly named Fluttershy was.
The emerald forest was teeming with life, and all of that life was rapt with attention on a single gangly pink maned pegasus. Fluttershy was talking with the animals, somehow tapping into a rare branch of pony magic that allowed for such communication. She stepped closer and placed her horn on the crown of Fluttershy’s head, examining her soul.
There were only three past lives, a carpenter earth pony that had constructed furniture, a dragon that had died in infancy, and an earth pony forester. Her current incarnation offered an interesting study into given names and how the ponies given them turned out. Her soul would make a great statistical report for one of the many studies Galaxia was conducting on how souls behavior changed over lifetimes based on names, though the tiny sample size of only three lifetimes was not enough for statistical significance. She looked forward to seeing the full data set when Equestria eventually ended.
She teleported again, envisioning the orange Applejack. The spot she arrived at was deserted, so she flew up high and followed the road until she spotted the filly.
The spell had set up Applejack for a long life of farming apples with the rest of her family. Racing alongside the filly and accessing the soul’s memories, Galaxia perused the previous lifetimes.
Twenty lifetimes, most of them being earth pony farmers, but there were several as schoolteachers, a weather pegasi, two lifetimes as camels, once a griffon, and once a short lived life as a dragon.
Applejack was heading to Ponyville, a place of mourning ever since her parents had both died. This soul was strong in every sense of the word, a fine candidate for an element bearer, but also the hitch in her plans.
Applejack was destined to work on a farm in Ponyville. For her to be an element bearer meant that every other pony would have to move there. Fairly simple for Rarity, she already lived in Ponyville. Fluttershy wanted to leave Cloudsdale anyway now that she had seen the ground. Galaxia would just have to make sure everypony else ended up in Ponyville somehow.
Her next stop was Rainbow Dash, the pony that Cosmos had infused with an absurd amount of magic. It was hard to find her at first, since the blue pegasi was still racing around trying to create another sonic rainboom. She caught up with her and was flooded with another set of memories as she examined her soul.
Nine lifetimes, all of them with wings, five lifetimes as a pegasi with jobs ranging from weather control to beekeeping, three lifetimes as a griffon, and one especially long two thousand year period as a dragon.
Galaxia didn’t like seeing all these ponies stories like this, all of them right in the middle. Under the guidance of Hope, Galaxia made sure that the souls under their care were put under as ideal conditions as possible and then they let the planet go for a couple million years. They only came back when the planet, or the galactic civilization that followed, was good and dead. They harvested all the souls, carefully recording all of the data about their lifetimes, analyzing how they had ended and why. Once done she would send the souls back to Hope, who would wipe the memories and send them back to other Kings and Queens. Reading the stories of the souls now felt like starting a book series without the last book having been published yet.
Rainbow Dash flitted away, completely unaware that all her thoughts, feelings, desires, and forgotten lifetimes had just been scanned.
She wracked her mind with how to ensure that Rainbow Dash would inevitably move to Ponyville, deciding instead to procrastinate by visiting Pinkie Pie and Cosmos again.
“How goes the party planning?” asked Galaxia as she appeared next to Cosmos.
“Ooh! You came just in time. Look at all of this,” he said, gesturing to the streamers and the cake and the various party paraphernalia decorating the silo. Pinkie Pie had been hard at work placing everything just right, still working tirelessly as Galaxia and Cosmos watched, music playing from some unseen location.
“She thinks she invented the entire concept of a party,” Cosmos said.
“Cosmos, have you been thinking at all about the lack of freedom you’re giving her?” Galaxia asked.
“You said ‘Whatever it takes,’ Galaxia,” said Cosmos
“Yeah…” I didn’t think we’d take it this far though. “We’re supposed to ensure that the souls in our worlds are allowed absolute freedom so their data won’t be skewed by the end.”
“And we’re given loose guidelines about that for a reason. A forty-eight lifetime soul still without a home planet is grounds for some sort of intervention. I gave her ideas. It’s up to her to act upon them or not. Besides, having an idea in a mind is one of the hardest things I think these souls have to deal with. There could be hundreds of ideas bouncing around in the mind of a pony all at once. The true freedom for them is picking out the most important ideas to try to put into practice first. I showed Pinkie Pie a lot of information at once, it’s up to her to interpret those ideas and choose to act on them.”
“So you think we have given her a real choice in this matter?”
“I would say so.”
“Interesting, ideally Hope will agree,” said Galaxia, staring at the pink pony decorating a party she shouldn’t know how to create, the first step to a lifetime friendship with other ponies that Galaxia would have to manipulate to cross paths with her.
“What’s got you worried?” Cosmos asked, staring at her.
She sighed, surveying the concerned expression on Cosmos’s muzzle before admitting her problem. “I need to somehow give four ponies a nudge to go live in Ponyville. They need to become friends with two ponies that already live there, and they need to wield the Elements of Harmony and defeat Nightmare Moon when I — or should I say ‘the stars’ — aid in her escape.”
“I beg your pardon?”
Galaxia touched her horn to his and transferred the memories of the last few hours into his mind.
“Nightmare moon…” Cosmos began. “I almost forgot about that. Her and that Discord statue thing really need to be looked into. I take it you haven’t even checked on Luna yet?”
“No… not yet. To be honest, I don’t know why I’m spending so much time here for this one soul. You as well, we have to get out of here and back to work on getting other worlds up and running.”
“I suppose you’re right,” Cosmos said.
“We don’t have time to waste on this, does she get her cutie mark or not?” asked Galaxia, her horn glowing as she commanded all of the atoms on the planet to speed up, the sun rushing down, the moon momentarily taking it’s place, all the while, a pink blur was adding more decorations and ideas into the barn. Speeding up atoms could mess up a planet, but a short leap wouldn’t hurt in the long run.
When the sun came up again Galaxia slowed down the atoms back to their normal speeds, time returning to normal.
Over the noise of the musical instruments that seemed to be playing from nowhere, Galaxia heard a voice outside of the barn.
“Pinkamena Diane Pie, is that you?” asked Cloudy Quartz.
Pinkie flung the door open, confetti and balloons escaping out of the barn as Pinkie yelled, “Mom! I need you and dad and the sisters to come in. Quick!”
“Wait, her family is going to come to this?” asked Galaxia.
“It is a party! And they’re the only ponies Pinkie knows, so of course it’s a party for her and her family,” Cosmos said.
“I specifically chose this family for how boring they were, how are they going to react to all this?”
The door flung open. The stern faces of the Pie family had a split second to react to the change in scenery in the room before Pinkie shouted out, “Surprise!”
“Do you like it? It’s called a party!” said Pinkie, the jovial attitude in her voice masking her fears.
The stern looks on the Pie family turned to shock as their gaze shifted around toward the cake, the balloons, the confetti, and the whole transformation of their now unfamiliar barn. Their mouths started to wobble as if they were buildings ready to be toppled over any second by a stray breeze.
“What do we do!?” asked Galaxia, a twinge of panic carrying in her voice. “They have to love this!”
“Shhh… it’s alright Galaxia. I’m sure it’ll all work out,” Cosmos said.
The silence continued and Pinkie Pie started to deflate, melancholy replacing her happy attitude and dragging her smile down into the depths of a frown. “Oh, you don’t like it.”
“Cosmos, we have to do something.”
“Need I remind you that you were the one worrying about not giving ponies enough freedom.”
The silence and the wobbles wiggled for a while until Pinkie’s parents and sisters pasted huge smiles on their faces, most likely the first smiles of the entire family’s life.
Pinkie inflated, excitement taking over and bringing her back into high spirits, “You like it!”
And then she was suddenly dancing with her family and shouting, “I’m so happy!”
Galaxia could feel the magic of the cutie mark allocation spell seep into the barn and deposit three balloons onto Pinkie Pie’s flank.
“Did… did that just work?” asked Galaxia.
“I think it did!” said Cosmos.
“You did it!” yelled Galaxia, grabbing him and starting to dance along with everypony else in the room.
“No, we did it! I just stuck Pinkie on a solar planet, hoping she’d like it. It was you who wanted to give her the divine treatment!”
“I guess I did. And it worked, she got her cutie mark! Now all that’s left is to make sure the rest of her life is this happy.”
“Wait, hold on there, do you plan on following her entire life?” Cosmos slowed down his dance, looking at Galaxia.
“No, just enough to get her on track. To let her choose,” said Galaxia following Cosmos’s slow rhythm until they both had stopped completely, staring into each other’s eyes for a few moments, enjoying the sounds of the small party around them, leaning closer.
“Well… it’s been fun,” Cosmos said, opening a portal back to his own universe, turning to leave. “Anything else I can help you with before I go?”
She stared at him, unable to say anything for a moment, before shaking her head and finally asking, “How do I get four ponies to go to Ponyville of their own free will?”
“I think you need to learn the fine art of delegation, Galaxia. If you can’t think of anything, ask Celestia to take care of it, that’s why we have Princesses.”
And then he jumped up through the portal. His alicorn form dissolved into something else in the void between his universe and this one, what form Galaxia didn’t see before the portal collapsed away.
She turned back to Pinkie’s party and watched the partygoers for a few moments before teleporting back to Canterlot.
Celestia was preparing for another day when Galaxia commanded the atoms to slow to a trickle and appeared in front of her.
“Celestia, I’ve found you the six element bearers,” Galaxia said, the surprise on Celestia’s face relaxing and turning into excitement as Galaxia detailed whom she had found.
“My task to you is to nudge these six ponies to Ponyville, where Applejack and Rarity already live. Make sure they are in a position to become friends with each other. Those six ponies and I can handle the rest. There’s no guarantee that you’ll be able to reform Luna afterwards though.”
“I can do that,” said Celestia. “Just be the stars that aid in her escape.”