Princess Celestia did not send the pirates back to prison. The Red Whatever, now of historical significance for its role in a battle to save the world, was commissioned as a museum ship, and they were given a permanent assignment as its crew. They were never forced to rob, pillage, or behave in a nefarious manner again, though out of habit some still did so from time to time. To Celestia's mortification, she signed the order that the ship be preserved for posterity -- in precisely its current condition -- before its nose art had been deleted. It remains there to this day.
Discord was required to fully disclose the locations of any and all superweapons, doomsday devices, dimensional anomalies, metaphysical manipulators, and practical jokes. He is still not done cataloging them, and the equestrian military is expected to need at least another seven hundred years to track down and disarm those he has already codified.
The Doctor disappeared shortly after the battle, but has been seen in Ponyville since. When questioned about his involvement with the probability inverter, he appears to have no memory of the machine or of the incident as a whole.
Through use of the scene skip button on Discord's remote, Derpy's family was kept unaware that they had ever been paused.
Because of this incident, Ditzy Doo "Derpy" Hooves became famous, and in Canterlot Tower, there is a stained glass window depicting a tiny gray pegasus rising out of an enormous, impossible machine. She is clutching a strange object that should not exist, and her eyes are not at all misaligned or out-of-sorts. They never really were after that day; not even briefly.
Not even a year later, in fact, they stared straight ahead into a mirror in Carousel Boutique. For the second time in her life, Derpy Hooves was being fitted for a wedding dress, and that it was lovely hardly bears mention, given the skill of its maker. Here, it seemed, was the end of Derpy's many strange misadventures, but she could not have guessed that there was one more to be had.
"I'm really sorry I don't get to see you more often," said Rarity, pulling at a piece of fabric, and pinning it back tightly. "You and I should be friends after all; we know all the same ponies and we've both been involved in saving Equestria, but we hardly speak. Why, it's downright criminal!"
"It's okay," said Derpy. "I have felt your influence on my life in ways you can only imagine, Rarity."
"Such a sweet thing to say!" said Rarity, blushing slightly. "Now, I'll have to work extra extra hard on this dress. Now, hold still while I fit up your veil."
"Oh, I don't think I should wear a veil," said Derpy. "I've been married once before."
"Oh, it's just a decoration, really," said Rarity, fitting the veil to Derpy's mane and face despite her protest. "Nopony takes it that seriously these days; have a look."
She stepped from in front of the pegasus, and left her to see herself once more in the mirror. She felt herself changed somehow by her own image. She was ten years younger; hopeful again, and unburdened by the weight of the tragedies and trials she had witnessed and endured. It caused a smile to spread over her face, and tears to well in her eyes, though they did not spill.
"You see?" asked Rarity. "Absolutely stunning!"
"Yeah," said Derpy. "It really is."
And then she knew. Her eyes widened, and she gave a little gasp.
"I know who needs the thing!" she all but shouted.
"Who needs the what!?" asked Rarity, startled.
"Oh, wow," said Derpy, beginning frantically to remove the dress. "I know exactly who needs the thing!"
"What's the thing!?" asked Rarity.
"The impossible dream I keep on the shelf in my broom closet!" said Derpy.
"Excuse me?" asked Rarity.
"Never mind!" said Derpy. "Just help me get out of this dress; I have a trip to make."
Two days later, Derpy Hooves found herself once more in the sky above a place to which she had never imagined herself returning: the city of the changelings. She had of course questioned her own wisdom in coming back here, but there was a debt she felt she owed, and at last she thought she had the means to repay it.
The city, however, was substantially different than she remembered it. Whereas before it had gleamed black and glowed green, it was now darkened and red, caked all over with what appeared to be a thin layer of rust. There were no changelings to be seen anywhere; not a single one emerged from any of the tall, jagged spires.
Even Queen Chrysalis' own huge tower was derelict and ruined, and as Derpy made her way through its darkness, she began to worry that her long trip south had been in vain. It was only when she fluttered up through the half-open, sphincter-like door of Chrysalis' chamber that she found even the faintest glimmer of hope.
It was less rusted inside, though patches of dark red could still be found here and there. Even a bit of the dim, green glow she remembered remained in the sconces on the walls. The only thing that seemed at first to be missing was Chrysalis herself, but that was because Derpy had expected to find her as she had before: standing and silently awaiting her entry.
Instead, what Derpy found was the queen's malign form sprawled across her bed in almost exactly the same pose in which the pegasus last recalled seeing her, except that she was caked over with rust, and more pitted and ragged than ever. She had even rusted solidly to the weird, chitinous iron of the bed itself in several places. The wedding veil that Derpy remembered was clutched in one of her hoof-like claws, torn and frayed from how the creature had stroked and caressed it in her sickly fascination. Her mane and carapace were both corroded like copper or brass, and now caked with a thick patina. Her eyes were half open, their color faded. They neither blinked nor moved.
So for all her trouble in coming so far, Derpy had found Chrysalis dead. She felt her heart sink at this discovery, and moved towards the bed, meaning to leave the triangle there as her memorial to a loathsome creature that most ponies would likely have been glad to know was gone.
Then, Chrysalis moved.
It began with a cracking and crumbling of the rust around her joints. Rusty flakes fell away as she sat up, and her eyes rolled slowly in their sockets, their dim glow flaring only faintly brighter. Her head turned slowly with a creaking and cracking that filled Derpy more with pity than with any fear or disgust, and when their eyes met, Chrysalis blinked.
"Little pony," she said.
It was the same voice Derpy remembered, but weaker, and hollow, as if it was echoing up from within the queen's chest. She coughed twice, a sound dry and coarse, accompanied by the faint scent of burned oil or grease.
"Queen Chrysalis," said Derpy.
The changeling shook her head slowly left and right. Cracks ran through her neck at this motion, and flakes of her skin fell away.
"I am no one's queen," she said. "Did you not see my city?"
"I did," said Derpy. "What happened?"
"Nothing," said Chrysalis. "This had already begun before last you came here. Changelings die if we do not feed."
"And you didn't?" asked Derpy.
Chrysalis shook her head again, causing more flakes of rust to fall away to reveal only more pitted, black iron underneath. Very faintly, she smiled, revealing fangs the uneven gray of tarnished silver. Still more rust fell away from around the corners of her mouth.
"Do you think I do not understand myself to be an abomination?" asked Chrysalis. "I am hideous, through-and-through. I can hide what I am from the world, but never from myself. I can consume love meant for others, but can never cause another to love me for what I am. This is surely a curse, and though I am certain I must have committed some sin beyond fathom to deserve it, I cannot even recall what that sin was.
I am weary of it, little pony. Mine is an existence without purpose or meaning, gone on for so long that I can now hardly feel the misery I am owed for being what I am. If I cannot even suffer in my soul; if I cannot even experience that one paltry portion of the simple act of being, then I would rather no longer be."
"What if you could?" asked Derpy, immediately realizing she had misspoken.
Chrysalis only sat silent, but for the hollow rasp of her breath.
"Uh, let me rephrase that," said the pegasus. "What if you... didn't have to be... what you are?"
"That is a worthless question," said Chrysalis; "a meritless hypothetical."
"Well, would it hurt to answer it anyway?" asked Derpy. "What if?"
Chrysalis' expression changed not in the least, but after a few seconds, she spoke.
"It would not matter," she said. "I have no more intentions, and those I once had were proven impotent and superfluous."
Derpy reached into her saddlebag, and removed the triangle.
"Then I think this is meant for you," said Derpy. "Or maybe it's not really meant for anypony. I'm still not really sure if the world works like that... I'm just giving it to you, whether you're supposed to have it, or not."
Chrysalis stared at the strange object, but did not speak.
"It's an impossible dream," said Derpy. "I don't know how it works... how to 'turn it on' or whatever. I just know that it can make your most impossible dream come true. I know that sounds stupid and childish, but I've seen it work once before... sort of... almost."
"So, if I wanted to rule the world?" asked Queen Chrysalis. "If I wanted to create an army of a million changelings, and take every drop of love there is for myself and myself alone?"
Derpy sighed as she sat the object on Chrysalis' jagged, pitted desk. She smiled faintly at it, and shook her head.
"That's a risk, I guess," she said, "but I don't think that would be an impossible dream for you. In fact, I think the only reason you haven't already done it is that your heart wasn't in it."
"My heart?" asked Chrysalis. "What a fanciful delusion; I have no such thing, and among all your kind you know that better than most."
"I don't believe that," said Derpy. "There's one in there somewhere. It's just a little rusty; that's all."
At this, very faintly, Chrysalis smiled again, more broadly than before. Once again, the rusty, iron skin around her mouth cracked and shed away in tiny flakes. A low, grinding chuckle rose up from inside her.
"A heart of rust, frail and crumbling," she said. "Fitting, but still more than I possess... or deserve."
She coughed again, and this time she also wheezed, a grating sound so harsh that Derpy cringed at it the way she would have an unshod hoof raked over a chalkboard. It ended in a harried sigh that filled the room with even more of the sickly, burning odor of her breath.
"Still, I wonder what it might be like," said the dying queen, "were it merely a heart of rust."
It was only slowly that Derpy became conscious of a sound. It was a chorus of crackling, like the shattering of ice cubes dropped into a drink on a hot summer's day. Then, the thick coat of iron and corrosion that covered the changeling's body gave way. It crumbled, falling in huge chunks that shattered as they struck the floor and bed.
For a moment Derpy was certain that the changeling had simply died, and was crumbling to pieces, but soon she became aware of something within the rusty shell that had been Chrysalis' chitinous, iron skin. It was a creature smaller than the changeling had been, though still tall for a pony: a unicorn mare, her coat the dark gray of iron and with a mane the green of tarnished copper. Upon her flank was a heart, rendered as if it were forged of ancient steel; jagged, pitted, and speckled with red rust.
Soon, the final pieces of her corroded skin sloughed away, and the penrose triangle likewise crumbled into red, powdery rust where it rested on the desk. She sat then, only breathing quietly in the dim light of the chamber, the unicorn that had been Chrysalis. When at last she spoke in a voice no longer insectoid, frail, or unwholesome, Derpy Hooves listened just as closely as she watched, her two eyes fixed firmly forward.
"What would it be like to love and be loved," asked the unicorn, iron-gray, "if only with a heart of rust?"
finem