It was so obvious to Sweetie Belle, not so much to Elias. Elias was trying to be as quiet as possible, because Elias was scared of sounding too girly. That was understandable enough, but it had the effect of extreme girlishness. If Sweetie had felt confident about her grasp of Elias’s predicament, she would have advised Elias that she’d feel better about her voice, if she spoke more assertively. But instead, Sweetie held back on giving any advice for now. She just rolled with it, trying to figure out how to get this pony some hay, how to start a not upsetting conversation with this pony, and how not to squeal at how freaking adorable Elias sounded.
Ponies everywhere in the Apple household it seemed. Apple Bloom, Sweetie Belle, Scootaloo and Noi, and now these four. The people here who weren’t ponies were either police, or had some relation to the pony people. They were all interacting to varying degrees of success considering any given pony’s attitude and ability to speak. But Elias was all alone, and Sweetie wanted to connect with her, both because she was the only unicorn in the room, and because it just hurt Sweetie’s heart to see Elias going through such pain and fear, with no one to help her.
Hay on a plate, that would never do. It was never well received, by someone used to actual food being served on a plate. Plus, Sweetie had to carry it with her mouth, and she didn’t think Elias would appreciate eating off of the same plate as her mouth touched. Thankfully, Apple Bloom had been a pony for a while now (and really, Sweetie Belle had too). The Apple family was nothing if not resourceful, and over that time they’d had plenty of reason to figure out a way for a pony to carry hay around. Thus, there was a wooden bucket with a metal handle, left near the hay bale just for that purpose. That bale certainly wouldn’t last much longer, with this many ponies eating it. But for now, it would serve Sweetie well.
Sweetie pushed some hay into the bucket with her dumb, clumsy hoof, then just bit the handle of the bucket, to lift it up and totter off with its weight throwing off her balance. With a thunk, Sweetie plunked it right down next to Elias, and smiled at her as gratifyingly as the little unicorn could muster. Elias seemed surprised at the gesture, and exclaimed with wide eyes “Hueweren’—!” before her mind caught up with her mouth, and she blushed her way back to silence again.
Sweetie didn’t press her to speak, but instead of futilely trying to remain silent, the blue unicorn slumped in defeated resignation, saying in that sweet voice of hers, “Hweren’ ...gidding abou’ he hay.”
“Oh. No, it’s really good to eat actually,” Sweetie stated, looking at the dry straw a bit hungrily. “Important for pony digestion.”
“How’u diges’ ith?” Elias asked, uncurling enough out from under the blanket, and stretching her neck forward to peer into the bucket with open curiosity. “Diges’” she repeated. “Digesud... sorry,” she gave a frustrated huff. “I know I soun’ weirld...” and there was her blush rapidly returning. “...rlike htis.”
“Don’t worry about it,” Sweetie said appeasingly, “I don’t really know how you digest it, but it’d be a good question to ask Twilight Sparkle, or Sunset Shimmer.”
“Who?” Elias asked glancing around cluelessly.
“The firey haired girl over there, and the really purple one,” Sweetie explained, tossing her tail vaguely in their direction. “They used to be ponies, so they know all about how ponies are supposed to live.”
“Y’meaweca—?!” Elias said in choked excitement, actually trying to struggle to her hooves. Sweetie cut that right off though, swishing her tail and saying,
“No, wait. I meant that they were born as ponies... like we are now. And they got changed into humans against their will. So they’re just as stuck as we are, just opposite.”
“...oh,” Elias whimpered, sinking back down.
“They used to be unicorns, too!” Sweetie pointed out. “Just like you and me. They’ve been teaching me a lot about magic, even if I can’t figure out how to use it yet.”
Elias gave Sweetie a blank stare, then raised an eyebrow. “You’re shoking,” she chirped disbelievingly. Sweetie had to pause at that, because she wasn’t joking, so what part sounded like a joke?
“Joking about what?” Sweetie asked cluelessly.
“Hy know we’re hunicorns, bu’” Elias scrunched up her muzzle and squeaked out, “Magic? Thishsh jus’ a bone!” She poked at her own horn, while Sweetie shook her head saying,
“No, Sunset Shimmer said it was a specialized gateway for our magic channels, that only unicorns have,” Sweetie stated from what she remembered them telling her. “There’s a thing called the cochlea at the base that you can use for drawing it in from the cosmic field. Which is like gravity, but um... not made of energy. I didn’t really understand that part, but you draw the magic in from it, and project it into the world is what she said. It looks like a bone because it doesn’t have to be hollow, since the field isn’t... aligned with our um... solidness? Sorry, I um...
“I tried to listen,” Sweetie said, blushing now, “But I just got lost when they started talking about dimension brains or something. I dunno I barely got through regular geometry, so it’s really confusing. The point is yes it’s a bone, but it’s the shape of the bone that lets us... do magic. In theory.”
To a stunned looking Elias, Sweetie said, “You can ask them, Sunset Shimmer and Twilight Sparkle, but I think they’re going to present soon, so before they do, you should start eating some hay.” The purple haired, light blue unicorn mare glanced down at the bucket with a lot of curiosity. “It’s really easy once you get started,” Sweetie encouraged her, “Just watch how I do it.”
Sweetie leaned forward for the hay, then hesitated an inch away, adding for Elias’s benefit, “Oh, and I can’t talk with hay in my mouth so... um, yeah. Just watch.”
Sweetie took herself a mouthful of hay, and settled onto her haunches, just munching on it while Elias watched with utter fascination. Sweetie forgot to explain how you hold it in your mouth while chewing, but it was a bit late for that, so she just pointed a hoof at her mouth, and then gestured toward the wooden bucket full of hay.
“Ca’I...?” Elias asked, leaning towards the bucket. Sweetie nodded, kicking the bucket closer to Elias. The little blue unicorn lifted a hoof, then put the hoof down, then just craned her head down and opened her mouth, hardly hesitating to chomp down on a bunch of hay... sideways. Elias looked at her own muzzle in surprise again, probably surprised how the hay slips right into that gap between your teeth. Sweetie shifted her own mouthful sideways, sort of like a cigar, so she could speak around it.
“Meg it stick straigh’ ou’” Sweetie explained, pushing one end of the hay sticking out of Elias’s mouth, to rotate it until the other end was fully inside her mouth. “Hol’ it with hyour lips,” Sweetie continued to counsel, “An’ take li’l bites.”
Sweetie might have been more irritated in dealing with someone so slow to warm as Elias, if Elias didn’t just look so cute, sitting there looking at Sweetie with big concerned eyes, with a bunch of hay sticking out of her mouth. Elias was a quick learner though; she managed to start chewing somehow, and between the both of them it looked like they were going to have no problem eating hay.
So Sweetie scooted next to Elias, and pulled the bucket sort of between them, so they could both look forward to where Twilight Sparkle was standing, with her chalkboard all ready, clearing her throat and preparing to speak. And that was just fine for both of them. Somehow (and Sweetie still didn’t know how, but) everything had gone better than expected. Elias wasn’t upset anymore, and she wasn’t scared of talking to Sweetie anymore, and she didn’t have to talk, so it was okay. Elias just kept munching placidly, seeming calmer, and more collected than she’d ever been since coming here.
“Attention everypony!” announced Twilight Sparkle. “Er, I mean,” Twilight said fiddling with her lip nervously, “Everybody, I would now like to take some time to explain my role in what has happened, or is currently happening to all of you. While I don’t have solutions to all your problems, I do have some answers. If you’ll all remain seated or standing prone, I would like to present my findings so far.”
“Woah, deja vu!” Pinkie Pie exclaimed.
Twilight squawked ungraciously, and reeled back, arms wheeling as she grabbed at the chalk board for support. “Pinkie Pie?!” she exclaimed at the pink party girl who was standing entirely too close. “When did you get here?”
“I’ve been here all along, silly!” Pinkie said, with a cheerful if enigmatic smile.
“Since when?!” Twilight blurted back.
“Siiiince,” Pinkie chirped, leaning forward on one foot, “One of my friends was freaking out because her mom called and the police were coming for her, but she really couldn’t hold the phone because she was a PONY and I was like wooooah hold the phone I know where they’re taking her! And Berry was asking to the phone “Where are they taking you?!” And then she said to me how did I know she was going to ask that, and I said I dunno, and she said to the phone that mmphmmphMMMmmphmm”
Pinkie’s further words were muffled by Sunset Shimmer and Applejack, both reflexively covering the girl’s mouth. Amid Pinkie’s muffled words, their hands touched, and the two girls blushed, pulling away.
“So then we were driving toward the farm and she asked me where I got my license so I told her I didn’t have a license silly, I had a permit! And then she went into the glove compartment and she started screaming that this was a catering permit because I accidentally mmphmmphMMMmmphmm,” Pinkie continued, until Applejack took the initiative and shut her up a second time, or at least rendered her illegible.
“Ah think we get the idea, sugarcube,” Applejack told Pinkie seriously, before carefully taking her hand away.
“Okie dokie!” Pinkie said cheerfully.
“So you’re just...” Sunset said, eyeing Pinkie Pie hesitantly, “Giving Berry a ride.”
“Ohhh. No,” Pinkie answered confusingly, “I came here for a whole other reason entirely! And also to give her a ride.”
“Does it have any significance to the lecture that I’m trying to give?” Twilight asked balefully.
“None, whatsoever!” Pinkie announced cheerily.
“Alright, then! Pinkie Pie is here for... reasons,” Twilight said. “Now I would like to take some time to explain—”
“Aaaand Fluttershy!” Pinkie cut in.
“Fluttershy?!” both Twilight and Sunset announced in mortified alarm.
“Yeah, she reeeeeeeeally wanted to come even though she didn’t have a reason, so I gave her a reason, and now she’s here!” Pinkie said, gesturing towards the front door where the pale yellow girl with the lightest blond tresses known as Fluttershy was still standing, with a very dumbstruck expression on her face, due to her slack jawed stare and dilated pupils.
“I think the ponies kind of broke her though,” Pinkie said sadly. “Oh well!” And then she danced off without a care, hotly pursued by Twilight Sparkle demanding explanations for everything.
Sunset meanwhile unceremoniously hustled the fair Fluttershy away from the door, and sat her down on the couch. She grabbed the nearest clothed pony, Sweetie Belle in this case. Bodily lifting the unicorn filly up even as she squeaked out “Hey!” Sunset Shimmer deposited Sweetie Belle on the couch beside Fluttershy and said,
“You take care of her. Get her to pet you or whatever.” she addressed the other people and ponies saying brusquely, “The rest of you all shut your faces, because Twilight has got something to say and it’s freaking important that she tell you about this!”
Sweetie Belle looked back to Elias on the floor, who blushed and looked away. Then she looked up at the butter yellow girl and said “Um... Fluttershy, right? Sorry we didn’t invite you... over? Are you... okay?”
Fluttershy, who stopped chanting “This was a bad idea” under her breath over and over, managed to focus on Sweetie Belle. And then her pupils got even bigger!
“You’re so cute!” Fluttershy squeaked almost in anguish, “Oh, can I pet you? Oh what am I saying? You’re not animals, but you look just like adorable, sweet, cute little ponies! But I knew you were ponies, and I knew I could never treat you like people—oh, you must think I’m just awful!”
Sweetie Belle didn’t know why the girl was mumbling most of what she said, her volume going quieter and quieter, but it was still easy enough to make out Fluttershy’s words. “Is that all?” Sweetie asked incredulously. “You can pet us. I mean you should ask, but Rarity does it all the time, and it really does feel really good!”
“B-b-but you’re people, and I could never do that to you it would be... weird. Oh Fluttershy, don’t say that. Now she’ll never let you do it!” Fluttershy said, in that way of ever diminishing volume again.
“I just said I’d let you do it,” Sweetie said a little grumpily. “And you shouldn’t avoid people just because you’re scared of being weird. Go ahead, just touch my hair. I mean, my mane. In fact—”
Sweetie left Fluttershy then; jumped right off the couch, and went trotting over to the table with the lamp on it. She retrieved from it a wire brush, and with its handle firmly grasped in her mouth, gallopped back to the exceedingly nervous girl, who was trying to hide behind her pale pink hair.
“Ptheh,” Sweetie said dumping the brush in Fluttershy’s lap after having clambered back onto the couch with her. “There, use that,” she said happily. “Don’t worry, ponies do it to each other all the time, Twilight said! I can’t even reach my back, so I need someone to help me with that.”
Fluttershy remained frozen, so the little white unicorn sighed and said, “Look, how about I brush your hair? That wouldn’t be weird, would it?”
So Sweetie picked the brush up off Fluttershy’s lap in her mouth, and started gently sliding it through the girl’s long, graceful tresses. Bracing with her hoof on the other side of the hair really seemed to penetrate it effectively, and it didn’t look like it but Fluttershy actually had a lot of loose hair she needed to comb out. Sweetie was metaphorically walking on eggshells, so she couldn’t get any more than the edges of that girl’s hair, but it seemed to calm down Fluttershy enough. When Sweetie put the brush in her lap again, Fluttershy picked it up in a dainty hand, saying to Sweetie, “Are you sure about this?”
“Positive,” Sweetie said confidently. She presented her head forward. Then atop her head, a tiny, hesitant, ineffective brush stroke could be felt combing through her hair. Fluttershy continued past that though, when Sweetie didn’t make any sudden movements. Sweetie Belle closed her eyes slightly, as Fluttershy started to get more confident. Sweetie’s hair was naturally curly, which made it difficult to brush at best, but Fluttershy was nothing if not good with a brush. As the girl got to Sweetie’s scalp, a pleased noise escaped Sweetie Belle, and Fluttershy stopped, saying,
“Oh, um... is that okay?”
“It’s fine,” Sweetie sighed happily, practically lying across the girl’s lap by now, to offer Fluttershy better access to Sweetie’s head and maybe tail soon.
“You’re covered in fur all over,” Fluttershy said engrossedly, “Do you want me to brush there, too?”
“Hmm?” Sweetie said, distracted. “Oh. Yes, but you need something called a curry comb. My um... fur comes off in sort of little tufts and clumps. It’s very fine.”
“And also, you would need to get out of that dress,” Fluttershy pointed out.
Sweetie blushed at that. “You’re right,” she acknowledged. “It’s only really hard to get um, brushed when you’re wearing clo...clothes.”
“So, you don’t wear clothing often?” Fluttershy asked testily. She blushed then too, saying in a tiny voice, “Oh, I’m sorry. That was rude wasn’t it? I don’t mean to say that. Oh Fluttershy you’re such a—”
“It’s fine,” Sweetie assured her, waving her hooves to dispel the girl’s concern. This girl was so self critical, it was practically maddening! “We um... have fur, and... don’t really need a lot of clothing. I can even go outside, with just a scarf on. Just a scarf. Apple Bloom and Scootaloo are better at that though. They got super cold powers, and all I got was this,” Sweetie lifted a hoof to her forehead indicating her horn.
“That’s...” Fluttershy said quite excitedly (and quietly), “Fascinating.... What is it like?”
Looking back uncomprehendingly, Sweetie asked, “Like?”
“To go outside, in the snow,” Fluttershy murmured, “Without any... clothes on.”
Sweetie actually took a moment to consider that. “The weirdest things are hooves,” she concluded, lifting one hoof’s fingertip up, to illustrate what she meant. “The air just feels chilly and on my entire body, and that’s weird enough. But you can even walk through snow with these, and all it does is feel like... standing on hooves, that aren’t even very cold. I dunno if it’s magic or just... keratin.”
“This is just so incredibly wonderful,” Fluttershy said excitedly, “I’ve never seen anything like this before!”
“You think... hooves are better than hands?” Sweetie asked uneasily.
“No,” Fluttershy said emphatically, “Talking ponies! I mean wow, you’re not a person, but you are! You’re not big, and scary and dangerous but I can talk to you! I wish I could talk to my animal friends back at the shelter. They talk in their own way, but not like you! So many things must be different for you. I’m so curious I just don’t even know what to say!”
Sweetie settled more firmly in Fluttershy’s lap while the girl continued brushing her hair, the older girl’s words softly tumbling out of her like a dam had burst. “Well, what do you want to know?” Sweetie Belle asked, amiably. It was hard not to be amiable when someone was this good at brushing you.
“Absolutely everything,” Fluttershy said intensely.
“Okay! If I may have your attention please!” Twilight spoke up to the group at large, startling both Fluttershy and Sweetie with the volume of her voice above the mulling conversation. The purple girl was striding forward to her hastily assembled chalk board presentation, there along the wall in the living room of the Apple family household, saying, “I am so sorry for the interruption. If no one has anything else they want to address, I’ll continue with my presentation right away.”
Pinkie Pie was gone when Sweetie Belle looked toward Twilight; gone to where, she couldn’t say. Fluttershy stopped brushing her, but Sweetie was okay with that, because she was also really interested in what Twilight was going to say. Sweetie Belle really wasn’t sure what to make of Fluttershy though. This girl was weird.
“First, I want to clear any common misconceptions that may trip you up in this seminar,” Twilight said smartly, scratching out a crude pony on a chalkboard, next to a larger pony-like thing. “You all are what is known as ponies,” Twilight said. “Or on your way to being a pony, in the case of the white girl over there. Ponies are a highly advanced species, on par with humanity, so any problems, conundrums or troubles you face are not something you should assume is impossible for a pony. If there is something you cannot figure out how to do, please ask someone, and with luck you’ll quickly adapt to your current altered state.”
“The first thing I want to make absolutely clear is the process changing you into ponies is not a disease. It is not known to be contagious, nor is it transmitted by air, fluids or anything else,” Twilight went on. “Truffle Shuffle for instance... he’s here, correct?”
Truffle waved a hoof in the air.
“Truffle has been working in a delicatessan in the south district, and has had little if any contact with anyone who had any exposure to a pony. Were it possible that some people were simply immune to this... ‘pony disease,’ at the very least it would be unlikely to spread in such a randomized fashion. There would be statistically more cases in the vicinity of the high school, the hospital, and the close relatives of those afflicted, and I can assure you this is not the case.”
Twilight turned to the blackboard and drew a yucky face, followed by a guy throwing lightning down on a pony, followed by what sort of looked like a bubbling beaker, stating with each one, “This affliction is not caused by any known... disease, any known... malicious... action, or any known scientific... principle. By process of elimination, that leaves you with...”
She drew a lopsided star on the board, exclaiming, “Magic!”
A hoof went up, and without turning around Twilight said, “I will answer any questions after the presentation. I first want you all to be fully aware of the situation. Now, magic is very... real,” She paused drawing some sort of circle around the star, with lines radiating out from it. “You may not think so, as your world has historically had very low magic levels. We’re still working on a nonmagical magic detection system, but one thing is abundantly clear: if magic is the only explanation to what happened here, then magic must be increasing, to heretofore unseen levels.”
The lines Twilight drew all hit the edge of a larger square that she bounded it in, and she said, “Now one possible reason your world has such low magic levels is because of something called a time spiral, or time loop. You won’t know it, but you’ve basically been repeating the last year or so for... a very long time. This has a quasipotent effect on your world’s magical field, which could (and apparently did) drop it to very low levels. That could explain why removing it has increased the amount of magic available to you.
“However,” Twilight said, crossing out the whole star/circle/square diagram, “Higher levels of magic alone do not cause people to spontaneously change their species, all to the same species, namely ponies. What is happening here is not natural, so something must be causing it. We haven’t been able to find any little green gremlins crawling around deliberately turning people into ponies,” she granted herself a small chuckle, “But you clearly are being transformed. The only question is not how, but why? Why ponies?”
Twilight drew a square... thing. She certainly wasn’t a very good artist. “Now, you might find this hard to believe,” she said, facing everyone, “But I was actually once a pony! Before you all ask at once, no I can’t change anyone into a human. In fact, I didn’t think it was possible for there to be ponies in this world, until you started to become them!
“I come from a magical kingdom, in another world,” Twilight explained drawing a... horse on top of the square. Oh it was the— “The horse statue at your local high school had a mysterious secret,” Twilight explained, “Once upon a time, once every year, it becomes a portal to my world. That’s how I came here, and how my body was normalized to the human standard. I am one of two explorers, who have both become quite totally stuck in your world, because when the time loop resets, we get dragged along with it. Or, we already did, and so we will again, because the future is in the past. There are good reasons that we are the only two... envoys let’s say,”
She drew a line, with a pony on one side, and a stick figure on the other. “...and most of those reasons pertain to the time loop. You see, if someone from your world, myself included, enters my world, and remains there the moment the time loop resets, this causes a catastrophic paradox.” She scribbled out the pony with extreme prejudice. “This is the reason for keeping something fantastic as an otherworldy portal secret.”
Twilight drew a sweeping line from the scribbled out pony, through the...line, to the stick figure, saying, “The hapless victim in all this returns to whatever state they were in when your time loop reset, but the damage it does to my world is simply too dangerous to toy with.”
“I’ll be frank with you,” Twilight said turning to face everyone again. “I’ve been trapped here for years, Sunset for decades, and your world is long overdue for breaking out of this time spiral. So in order to return home, that’s just what Sunset and I did, or tried to do. Break out of the spiral.”
She drew a big pony’s head, and a lumpy thing inside it that didn’t look like a brain, saying, “The key to breaking the loop, as Sunset Shimmer researched in her extended stay here, is a dream construct known as The Golden Apple. Now, of all ponies here, only one is an Apple, and as luck would have it, Apple Bloom was the very one to dream of the Golden Apple, and the one to break the time loop.
“That’s right,” Twilight chuckled, rolling her eyes, “I got you all worried about getting yanked around in time, and it’s actually completely gone! No more time loop, no more problems. When September rolls around next year, you’ll proceed to the next year ahead for the first time in history.” Nobody really laughed at her joke though. Twilight continued with a flushed expression,
“Now, I can only speculate on why Apple Bloom was the one to have this dream, or why she had it this loop, instead of another one. Considering how long you’ve been looping though, my and Sunset’s presence probably played a deciding factor.
Twilight drew a ...square with triangles atop it. “When I first came to Canterlot High, Sunset Shimmer was quickly aware of my presence. A naked girl trying to figure out how to walk isn’t exactly inconspicuous. She foalnapped me, sabatoged my chance to return, and got me caught in the time spiral, not out of loneliness or spite, but so that she could steal a powerful magical artifact, an artifact which the Princess Celestia was sure would not stop the time spiral on its own. And it certainly did not stop it, despite Sunset’s... attempt.”
Now Twilight was scribbling over the Canterlot High in what looked like flames. (She used orange chalk.) “Sunset took over the school, used the magical artifact to enthrall the entire campus population, and planned on marching them through the portal the next time it opened, having turned into a raging she-demon bent on—if not escaping the time spiral—causing a lot of death and destruction, on the pony side of things.”
Sunset Shimmer wasn’t confirming or denying the issue, the leather jacketed, fire haired girl leaning against the wall, off next to the portrait of the family’s most famous pioneer Smudged Apple, returning nervous looks every bit as nervously as the ponies and humans in the room were giving them.
Twilight was energetically scribbling on the other side of the portal line, of ponies screaming, legs flying all over the place. “She was... quite insane at the time... it’s an inevitable... consequence of being caught in this time spiral.” Boy, Twilight was really getting into drawing all that—oh, she’s done.
“Ponies you see,” Twilight continued, “Or... people from my world have their bodies reset in your time spiral, but not their minds. Minds are notoriously temporally complex aspects of our being. We can speculate on the future, which is the tiniest window to travel into the future. We can’t transport our bodies into the past, but we certainly can transport our minds. In that way, some of you might even have some recollection of events happening in previous loops, if extremely traumatic and memorable.”
“Ponies from my world, trapped in this world,” Twilight went on, trying to erase some of the scribbles over her world, “We remember all past loops as clear as if they had really happened. It’s a terrible condition, which leads to feelings of being trapped, extreme ennui, and mental instability. Sunset was basically frustrated, to the degree that she would burn down the school and march its populus through an extrauniversal portal in order to blow everything to kingdom come.”
“And, as you may have noticed, the school is not on fire, nobody is enthralled, and Sunset has not transformed into a raging she-demon,” Twilight said with a smile at Sunset. Sunset Shimmer herself was sitting backwards on a chair, trying to hide the blush by burying her forehead in the chair’s back. “So, really, it was a good, healthy way for her to express her frustration. Time loops, no consequences!”
Twilight’s face went flat, “Except my world doesn’t reset when you blow it up.”
Sunset lifted a hand like she wanted to retort, but thought better of it.
Now Twilight was drawing four columns, in which she titled, “Demon, Denial, Depression, Demon 2.”
“The first year I was here I was learning how to be human, so to speak. I’ve lived on four hooves my entire life, and walking on two was a disorienting experience. I’ve had to accustom myself to your culture, and clothing, and technology, and your unusual diet. I have to admit I still haven’t managed to acquire a taste for meat. And during this year, Sunset stole my crown and used its power to wreak havoc etc etc.”
“That was the year me and—and my friends stopped her just in the nick of time,” Twilight explained, clutching a fist to her chest. “I made... I made friends here and together, we countered the magic of the crown with the power of friendship, and saved Sunset from making a huge mistake.”
She gave a long look at Applejack, Fluttershy, and... oh, there’s Pinkie Pie, saying, “Then... the time loop reset, and none of you could remember me. You didn’t even know who I was.”
Twilight started filling out bullets in the “Denial” column saying, “I sought answers. I sought some explanation why you were ignoring me. I blamed Sunset. I blamed myself. I may have taken some extreme interrogation tactics on one or more of you. I didn’t want to believe I’d been caught in something so... terrible. I made friends with all five of my...friends again, by the end of the year.”
She moved to the third column, “And then... they all forgot about me again. I was all alone, except for Sunset, who I hated for doing this to me. Not much happened this time around, at least not from where I was concerned. I went on a starvation diet, just to see if I could do it. I couldn’t. I dropped out of school, or... never dropped into school. I tried some of those psychotropic drugs Sunset had said to stay away from. And one thing led to another, well... I’m pretty sure it was an accident that I stepped in front of the train.”
Twilight sighed, with the chalk grinding against the chalkboard, her expression unreadable. Then the purple girl turned around with a bright smile and said in a really fake sounding cheer, “And when the time loop reset, I was alive again!
“I’m telling you all this,” Twilight explained, “To give you an idea of what your real history has been, so that I can speculate on what I or Sunset may have done that caused Apple Bloom to dream of something she never dreamed of before. The ending of the time loop is the key to this pony transformation; that much is baldly obvious. But how, what, and why remain elusive.
“Sunset took care of me the fourth year. She knew how painful it was to die, so to speak. I couldn’t get it out of my head and... well, suffice to say I was quite mentally unstable from the experience. So I devoted my newfound mania into finding a solution! And, one thing led to another, and I sort of ...transformed into a raging she-demon, and destroyed the school. A very cathartic experience, but... not what I’d call productive. I thought that if... if the Elements of Harmony couldn’t stop it, then maybe the opposite would do it. I don’t know why I—I basically ended up just mirroring what Sunset did.
“I planted drugs in Apple Bloom’s locker, and told Applejack about how she had been dealing with shady people, and acting crazy. By the time the truth came out, Applejack hated me. I vandalized Rarity’s apartment, made it unfit to live in. She and... and I didn’t know Sweetie Belle also lived there, but both of them were quite homeless and hating me by the end of the year. Rainbow Dash, I... suffice to say I did whatever I could to achieve the exact opposite of Friendship and Harmony in all my friends... former friends. And sure enough, whatever happened to Sunset ended up happening to me. And even that dark power couldn’t stop the time spiral from turning around.”
Twilight confessed, “I... I did some terrible things, and when it all came to a head, and the building was falling down around me, and that hatred was just... I just wanted to destroy everything, and... Fluttershy saved me.
“She doesn’t remember it,” Twilight said solemnly, looking at the pale yellow girl, stiffening nervously under Sweetie’s hooves and chest, “But Fluttershy came forward, and she forgave me for... all her animals, I... I did something very bad to her. She just... she didn’t care that I was the blackest of evil, she just saw someone who needed a... hug. So, um... thanks Fluttershy. Also, pleased to meet you. Again. I promise I won’t do that ever again.”
Sweetie looked up at Fluttershy, who just had a vague and distant mask of horror on her face.
“So, the time loop went around one more time,” Twilight continued, turning self consciously to eye the chalkboard again, “And I was... well, this year I was trying to not interfere with anything, so I could get a base level measurement. And so I wouldn’t... mess up so badly again.
“Then, Apple Bloom went and had that strange dream, the very dream we’ve been searching for. We saw her turning into a pony on the news network television show. That was... remarkably strange, but what got us actively measuring her was hearing that she’d dreamt of a Golden Apple. Whatever turned Apple Bloom into a pony, while it was happening, she was also part of the greatest magic this world has seen in ages. Literal ages. Sunset and I even got photographic evidence that it was occurring. Our cameras could actually pick up the raw magical flux.”
Twilight went to a cork board, where she had several photos of a glum looking indistinct Apple Bloom pinned up. “Now in this first one you’ll see—”
“Hang on, you were taking pictures of me?!” Apple Bloom spoke up in surprised outrage.
Twilight looked like she really wanted to let her ears turn down. She just hunched her shoulders instead, then turned to Apple Bloom with an apologetic smile, saying, “I... maybe? I would have asked directly, but then I’d have to...”
She glanced at Applejack, saying, “Make friends with Applejack again... you really don’t know how much she hated me. I... I mean you hated me,” Twilight told Apple Bloom anxiously, “I got you expelled! I... I just didn’t want to interfere, but this was too important to pass up, so I sort of yes I may have been spying on you, just a little bit.”
With a full face blush, Twilight turned around and said loudly to the corkboard photos, “So here you can see the secondary exposure from the sorceral aura already starting to appear. It maintained at the level shown in this picture, (and I assure you it isn’t doctored or overexposed), for about a month, until Sunset finally convinced me to allow her to ...interfere. Sunset Shimmer had discovered in her investigation that Sweetie Belle and Scootaloo also had the Golden Apple dream, so the presence of the three might have been the catalyst to get it started.
“We were desperate, you have to understand,” Twilight said turning forward with a pleading smile. “Sunset has tried so many ways to return home, she’s... she’s suffered horribly in a way that nopony should ever have to live. And finally, for the first time in her life, and in recorded time over my world’s historical records, Apple Bloom dreamed about the Golden Apple. It might never happen again! We might never be able to perfectly recreate the conditions. So um...”
“So,” Twilight recovered her wind, standing up straight and speaking confidently again, “Sunset used her knowledge of past loops to convince Rarity into allowing Sweetie Belle to visit, and getting Applejack to coordinate with Scootaloo, on the notion that... Apple Bloom was in trouble, see. She thought she had to eat only hay, and it was wreaking havoc on her new biology. We didn’t know she was eating so poorly, so I suggested that Sunset suggest that maybe the presence of her friends would get her mood up.
“It... sort of worked?” Twilight shrugged apologetically. “If only I hadn’t been so freaking... hands off about this loop. Apple Bloom, she... she figured out on her own how important it is to get a balanced diet of fiber, fat, protein and sugars. I was hoping seeing her friends would make her feel better again, but she ended up figuring out the true reason for her ill health all on her own. I’m... sorry, Apple Bloom. I just didn’t want...”
“Hang on! You mean you were the one who got Sweetie Belle and Scootaloo to come over?” Apple Bloom asked in disbelief.
Twilight scratched her chin, saying, “Well, Sunset and I jointly agreed that it might trigger the cascade, so yes.”
“Forget chocolate cake!” Apple Bloom declared, “Without them, ah was all alone! All the time! I would hug you, if you weren’t giving a presentation, and I wasn’t all the way across the room, sitting on the back of the couch like this!”
“Well, thank you,” Twilight said with less of a blush than before, “But, it wasn’t just for your benefit. That brings me to my last photographic set.”
There, she showed the CMC, and Sweetie Belle took a quick intake of breath as she realized that she was looking at herself, at her human self, before she changed into a pony. Sweetie Belle saw herself and Scootaloo, standing there on those spindly little legs, while a smiling Apple Bloom ran circles around them. And on the pictures labeled “polarized filter” and “UV filter” the three of them weren’t just figuratively shining with happiness. There was a bright boundary all around them, forking off radially, like lightning bolts! Sweetie sure didn’t remember that being visible, when she reunited with Apple Bloom!
“The cascade was for better or for worse outside the visual spectrum, so you wouldn’t have seen anything to the naked eye,” Twilight said, “But it was at least seven solar units of magical power, if our theoretical models of ultraviolet film exposure are accurate. Bringing those three together started a cascade that completely wiped out any temporal torsion. In theory, it “untied” the time dimensional knot that every molecule was bound up in, spreading outwards exponentially from that point.”
Twilight gestured at the last photograph, which was zoomed out from the Apple family farm house, with an overexposed, spreading ring of light turning the trees white with its glare. “And within the next ten minutes, it reached the border of your world, and ended once and for all this awful nightmare that we’ve all been trapped in, whether aware of it or not.
“Then...” Twilight’s triumphant smile became a little more strained. “Then, a month later, Sweetie Belle and Scootaloo also changed into ponies. And... as you can see, it has since not been limited to them.”
Twilight Sparkle sighed, and crossed her arms. “My world is home to a whole kingdom of ponies,” she said, “With ponies everywhere from land to sky. I can’t... figure out any way that my world could somehow have perverted your prophecy, but... I mean, Sunset and I have been making waves lately. But it shouldn’t have... there’s no way for pony-ish-ness to just leak out from the portal and just randomly float into people. It doesn’t make any sense! It’s the only explanation I have though.”
She looked at them solemnly and said, “I’m afraid I’m the one who has accidentally turned you all into ponies. I... came here to tell you why I’ve had such a risky methodology, apologize for mistakes I’ve made, and to say that I’m doing my absolute best to stem this... pony... ifying magic, whatever it is.
“There’s only so much I can do without a horn, though. And... even with a horn, this defies all the principles of magic that I know. To transform you so totally, without any resistance? Without anyone there effecting it? Just randomly? Perhaps human biology is less resistant toward magic, but still to perturb one’s natural form is not something that happens without a lot of light, fury and sparkle. So... that’s what I came here to say. If anyone is at fault, it’s me, and it doesn’t matter since there seems to be nothing I can do about it!
“I can’t just find another golden apple, and change you all into hamsters or whatever,” Twilight quipped wryly.
“That’s what I said!” came Scootaloo’s voice from the kitchen, where she’d apparantly been listening and/or getting a snack.
Twilight cleared her throat. “Anyway, to make matters even more serious, you might have noticed there are a lot of you ponies. Now, I took the liberty of reviewing with the police the exact dates that each of you changed. I sketched it up on this graph... here.”
Twilight pinned a crudely drawn set of plusses in a line, with a row on the bottom marked “day 0, day 1, day 2...” and something about this diagram was immediately apparant to anyone who looked at it.
“As you can see, the incidents... are closer together towards the present moment,” Twilight pointed out grimly. “Considering Apple Bloom’s transformation as day 0, Sweetie Belle and Scootaloo changed simultanously, but approximately two months later. And... Noi changed approximately one month after that. The four of you... all changed in the past month. Furthermore, Elias changed only days ago, and Cotton Cloudy here is changing on this very day. I don’t want to alarm any of you unduly, but according to our calculations, not only are more people changing...
“The rate of change is accelerating.”
When Cheerilee awoke, she knew in her heart that it was the weekend. The lazy late morning sunlight filtered in through her apartment window as she cracked her eyes open. Cheerilee awakened into solitude, the only signs of humanity being the dim sounds of her neighbors waking up beyond her apartment walls.
It was long past dawn, because Cheerilee didn’t have to get up today, so she didn’t even bother setting the alarm. She didn’t have to go to work! So she lay there, just appreciating the dazy thin light that met her on her eastward facing apartment. Alas, her slumber was not to be, because the troubles of her life started coming to mind again. In particular, when she sat up in bed and looked over to Scootaloo’s room... weekends were so quiet now.
Cheerilee wanted to be there for her daughter, but... she just didn’t know how to deal with any of this. Scootaloo seemed happier than she had ever been, over there on that farm, just a farm animal among farm animals. But Cheerilee couldn’t just move in, take over someone’s bedroom, and keep watch over Scootaloo 24/7. She, and Rarity, were stuck taking a satellite role in this, and unlike Rarity, Cheerilee didn’t have studies to distract her. Cheerilee couldn’t help but feel a little... helpless, and forgotten in all this. That girl of hers was so independent, it was a weak point of hers. Scootaloo hadn’t even called Cheerilee yesterday after work, to check up on her, and make sure her mother was okay.
Cheerilee had to chuckle at that, laying back in bed. It was the best way to get Scootaloo to engage with her, is to make Scootaloo feel like she was the caretaker. But as much as that girl cared passionately, her lessons didn’t take as well as they should have. So once again, Cheerilee was going to have to be the one to check up on Scootaloo today. Go ahead and laugh, roll your eyes at the irresponsible parent here, reluctant to check on her own daughter, living all the way across town from her. But Cheerilee was laying in a warm bed, on a lazy Saturday afternoon, and absolutely nothing was going to make her feel guilty about enjoying that for a minute.
She got up slowly, groggily. Her two, socked feet hit the floor, and she started walking around her empty apartment, wrapping her fuzzy robe around herself in the chilly morning air. Empty, but certainly not silent, Cheerilee could hear the neighbors were already clinking and cooking, and talking to each other through the walls, and there were sounds of automobiles, and rowdy shouts of children running around outside on the common green.
Cheerilee picked up the dirty clothes she’d discarded from yesterday and carried them to the hamper, just to get her blood moving. The air in the house was chilly, because Cheerilee kept the heater down for cost savings. A librarian’s job, while enviably secure, does not have all that great a salary. She warmed up quickly, though.
In the kitchen, Cheerilee licked her teeth, feeling more like brushing them than eating. It wouldn’t do to eat right after you brushed, though. So she stumbled to the refrigerator, and set about making some buttered toast and eggs. She wasn’t going through eggs as quickly anymore, now that her teenage daughter was subsisting on a diet mostly composed of hay, away somewhere else, somewhere that Scootaloo didn’t need her mother any more.
The noise of the percolator snapped Cheerilee out of her grumpy gloom, and she poured herself some coffee, waiting for it to cool while she flipped the slowly sizzling eggs.
Nothing quite like making a nice hot breakfast on a Saturday morning. Scootaloo never really saw the use in something that slow and leisurely, but Cheerilee was always happy to do it for two on weekends, if her daughter could hold back from playing video games, or gallavanting all around town on her scooter long enough to eat it. But this morning, Cheerilee was a bachelorette, so to speak. Solo, on her own. She put the eggs on her toast, and salt and pepper on her eggs, and sat it on a plate in front of her at their small dining table. A meal fit for a queen.
With her breakfast over and done with, Cheerilee was happy to retire to the bathroom. The coffee and the food in her stomach were already starting to rouse her metabolism, and she spared a smile, as she turned on the faucet, to run her toothbrush under it, then put on a little bit of toothpaste. Brushing her teeth, Cheerilee looked askance at Scootaloo’s room again, which had been empty for a month now. Should they turn it into a storage room? That was what you did when your daughter moved out, right? Cheerilee’s maternal instincts wanted to turn it into a historical monument, preserved for all time, but her practical instincts suggested that her lease agreement probably wouldn’t allow that, and not many people would pay admission to see the pile of dirty clothes that Scootaloo once called a bedroom floor.
Whatever the case, it sure was an empty room now. Cheerilee was really looking forward to heading to that farm again today. She’d been working late last night, and she really needed to see that smile on her daughter’s face, even if it was a pony’s face now. That and the fresh air, and the rustic architecture, there was just something healing about that farm. Cheerilee always felt better having driven that way, now that she had good reason to do so.
Spitting out her toothpaste, and running the water to rinse off her toothbrush, Cheerilee placed the brush aside and vigorously splashed her face. She felt fully awake and refreshed, and smiled at herself in the mirror, reaching for the brush to tame her unruly mane. There, nestled in her light pink curls were a moderately deep cerise colored pair of conical horse ears.
...
“You have got to be kidding me.”