I visited my friend Sunny Starscout at the Brighthouse’s observatory for a group outing. But apparently, everypony else cancelled at the last minute. That’s the second time they’ve done that; I think that it’s because I’m a human. But we were still having fun listening to jazz music, while Sunny showed me the stars and planets, without them. And Sunny baked the second best apple pie that I had ever had in my long life.
Sunny’s smartphone dinged. She looked down at it, tapped it, then held her phone out to me. “Oooh, guess what, Nonny! Zipp found an old legend about a Time Alicorn called Eternia, who lives in the Endless Caverns. She doesn’t know if Eternia’s real, but we’re planning on exploring them next month. Want to come with us? She might know what happened to Twilight!“
I took the smartphone, scrolled down, then looked at the map on the phone. Huh. That’s only a few hours from here, if I take my bike.
Frowning, I said, “I think she’s real; I’ve heard about Eternia before. And maybe she can get me into contact with Twilight, and I can finally confess to her, and fix things.“
Sunny frowned, ears dropping, and she looked at me, and started interrogating me. “Wait, confess?! This is the first time that you’ve brought this up. What were you going to say to Twilight?“
I rubbed the back of my neck, and looked away from Sunny. “It’s embarrassing.“
This can’t wait until next month. If I let myself make excuses for not seeing Eternia as soon as possible, then I might keep putting it off forever!
An enormous golden alicorn that had a silver hourglass for a cutie mark looked down at me. “I can’t believe you found me in the Endless Caverns, then passed all my trials alone, Anon. Or that you used a grappling hook to pass so many of them.“ She frowned, and continued. “The trials were meant for at least six ponies. Or creatures, in your case.“
I ignored my exhaustion, bruises, cuts, and sore muscles and joints, and tilted my head up at the Time Alicorn, Eternia. In her ethereal mane and tail, I saw glimpses of my past and possible futures, including the time that I first visited Ponyville, and the time that I beat Soarin at a pie eating contest.
I’ve never cared about what ponies think is impossible. And I’ve picked up quite a few spells, skills, potion recipes, tricks, artifacts, and so on over the years. That’s why I was the only human who ever joined the Wonderbolts.
I insisted, “A deal’s a deal. Send me back to when I first arrived in Equestria, Eternia.“
Eternia responded, “This won’t change anything in this timeline, other than making you disappear. It’ll just create a new alternate universe, where you remember everything that happened in this one.“
“I know that already.“
She sternly said, “Look, Anon, you should just accept things as they’ve happened, and move on with your life. You might think that you’ll improve things, but in many possible futures, you could make things much, much worse. There are many potential futures where you live a perfectly happy life in Maretime Bay.“
But I’m only friends with one pony here, and everypony’s able to keep Equestria safe even without my help. I’m not needed here.
I fetched my smartphone out of my suit pocket, unlocked it, and sent my farewell message to Sunny Starscout and everypony else that I knew back at Maretime Bay, then turned off my phone before I can chicken out.
“Please just send me back, Eternia. This has been bothering me for ages.“
All I’ve seen of Twilight Sparkle has been recordings, notes, and old photographs; It’s been thousands of moons since I last saw her face to face! I want to finally confess to Twilight, but more importantly, I need to stop whatever disaster made her seal away everypony’s magic!
Eternia cast her magic, and I found myself surrounded by a vortex. Everything went black.
I woke up in the middle of the Everfree forest, on the morning that I first arrived in Equestria. When I originally arrived in the Everfree Forest, it took all day to get to Ponyville, but I actually recognize the path to Ponyville this time.
A pack of timberwolves surrounds me, but they’re no problem.
I gleefully grinned, showing off my omnivorous teeth, and let out an exaggerated, roaring laugh, then gloat. “You have awful luck, running into a fire-breathing dragonborn. Prepare to burn!“
They fled pretty quickly.
They always fall for that. Dumb-flanks. This is going much better than the last time.
I ran along the path to Ponyville.
A manticore roared and approached me. I stopped, stood up straight, and looked at him confidently.
Oh, right. I still remember how angry Fluttershy was about how I originally handled this. She wouldn’t talk to me for months.
I stated, “Show me your paw. I’ve got this.“
He stopped, blinked, and held out his paw. There was a splinter in it.
I grabbed the splinter, gently pulled it out, and tossed it away. I continued running west towards Sweet Apple Acres, and said my farewells. “I’ve got to go, bye!“
I arrived at Sweet Apple Acres, and see Applejack wary of me. Her dog is barking at me.
I ordered, “Applejack, Winona. Stop.“
“What in tarnation are y’all?“
“I’m a human, and I urgently need to speak to Pri… I mean, Twilight Sparkle. It’s an emergency. Ponies will panic if I show up in town if you’re not with me to reassure them.“ I lied. “Don’t worry. I’m a vegan.“ Fish isn’t vegan, but that isn’t important.
With Applejack trotting ahead of me, I walked to the Golden Oak Library, getting suspicious looks from everypony, but luckily there’s no angry mob and there were no ponies fleeing and screaming this time.
I knocked on the door, and greeted Twilight. “It’s a pleasure to meet you, Twilight Sparkle. I’m Anon.“
She paced around me, looked up and down, and excitedly took down notes with a quill. She asked. “Wait, what even are you? Are you an undiscovered species? I could write so many papers about you; I’ll be famous!“
It’s strange to finally see Twilight Sparkle again, especially now that she’s shorter than me and doesn’t have wings. I’d forgotten how adorable she was when she was excited and obsessed she was when researching something. The library’s smell filled me with nostalgia. She doesn’t even remember me, but I still need to confess. I stated my intentions, “I need to get something off my chest. I can’t keep hiding this.“
Twilight’s ears drooped, and she hesitantly asked, “What is it?“
I confessed, “I’m sorry for eating all the apple pie that Spike baked today. My plan was to stop at eating just one piece, but it was so good that I ate all of it. And it was wrong of me.“
The adorable unicorn glared up at me, and yelled at me, “How could you do that, you jerk! Spike baked that pie for everypony, and we were really looking forward to having it together!“ She frowned, then looked to her windowsill, then back at me, confused. “That’s not funny. It’s still there!“
Oh, right. Time travel. Duh. I beg, “Can I have a slice? I can still remember how good it was.“
“Uh… I guess that you can have a small piece, but just one. We made that pie for my friends and I to eat together tonight.“
She used her telekinesis to lift a pie cutter to cut out a tiny slice of pie, place it and a fork and knife onto a plate, and passes the plate to me. After accepting it, I picked up a piece with my fork, and eat it. I knew that I wasn’t just imagining things from my hunger; This really was the best pie that I had ever had.
I stopped eating, then yelled, “But first, it’s an emergency, Twilight! It’s horrible! Decades from now, there will be a disaster that will make you seal away everypony’s magic in the Unity Crystals! And I need your help to figure out what it was!“
“But assuming that’s even true, did ponies get their magic back?“
“Well, yes, but…“
“And would anything bad happen?“
I responded, “Well, yes, there was a Fire Alicorn named Opaline that tried to take all the pony magic, and almost everypony spends half of their time using things called smartphones, which let ponies communicate with many far away ponies at once, and put all the world’s information at your hooftips.“ I pull out my original phone from Earth and turn it on, to show her. Twilight figured out how to recharge it a week after seeing it last time. Huh. I wonder if ponies managed to invent smartphones because they reverse engineered some human’s phone.
“I don’t see a problem with that. Did anypony get hurt when she failed?“
“Well, no. But I forgot about the most important thing. The three pony tribes split apart after you sealed away magic, and they hated each other for thousands and thousands of moons, because Opaline started turning the pony kinds against each other and convincing them to use their magics against each other, and they turned against each other. Oh. And Deputy Sprout promoted himself the Emperor of a military dictatorship, and tried to convince an angry mob to wipe out the unicorns and pegasi. And almost everypony thought that you and your friends never really existed. I probably should have started with that, actually.“
Twilight glared at me, then angrily stated, “That’s all horrible if it really happened. But I can’t believe your story; That’s just unbelievably poor record-keeping!“
I shrugged, and mentioned, “I think that some towns held book burnings.“
Twilight winced, then yelled out in rage. “Those Celestia-forsaken monsters! I thought that ponies would be better than this.“ She continued enthusiastically. “Assuming you’re telling the truth, anyway. But those ’smartphones’ sound fantastic! They’re like a tiny library in your hooves.“
“Trust me, they aren’t.“
“More importantly, like I told Doctor Whooves this morning, Emergency Protocol Gamma is top secret, and it needs to stay that way!“
“You planned for this?“
“Look, just trust me. If Princess Celestia or I sealed away everypony’s magic, we had a really important reason for it. It must have been worth the sacrifice; Probably a threat beyond what you could even comprehend, such as eldritch creatures which would be too dangerous to even describe! Or maybe it really could have been to stop the ponies from using their magic against each other and not being able to work things out, if the pony kinds were about to destroy each other. But we would never seal away magic for something as silly as stopping Opales… whatever that Fire Alicorn’s name was.“
What should I do next? I should try to find out more about these possible threats and try to stop Opaline earlier, just in case. And I should definitely savor this pie.
The door slammed open, and a disheveled, green unicorn filly with a black mane and tail rushed into the library. She was covered in small cuts, mud, and tree sap. Broken twigs, bark, and leaves were stuck in her mane and tail. “Pri… Twilight Sparkle, it’s an emergency! Everypony’s magic will…“ She noticed me, and looked up, surprised. “Wait. For hoofness sake, how did you already get here, Anon?“
Twilight Sparkle looked at her, ears drooping, and brought her right hoof between her eyes. “Why does this keep happening today, for Celestia’s sake?“