//------------------------------// // Tool, Traitor... // Story: My Little Pony: Through Space and Time // by Magic Step //------------------------------// "All unicorns, get in line!" Twilight Sparkle stood in front of the guard, heading the line to... wherever they were going. She looked over her shoulder. Rarity was behind her, her eyes shining with unshed, frightened tears. Behind Rarity, a line of unicorns formed, all of them young, like students. The one immediately behind Rarity looked slightly familiar. "You look just like Princess Rarity!" Rarity whirled around and gasped. "S-Sweetie Belle?" Sweetie Belle was fully grown up and as big as Rarity. Her mane was longer and straighter, her coat was grayer, and her eyes... Rarity blinked in suprise. Sweetie Belle's eyes were gray. Sweetie Belle glanced over her shoulder. "Can I hide in your tail?" "What!?" "Oh... sorry, you're new, aren't you? I guess you wouldn't know." Sweetie Belle shrunk back, hurt showing in her eyes. "Oh, dearie, I'm sorry." Rarity leaned closer. "Why are your eyes that color?" Sweetie Belle shrugged. "I was born that way, I guess." She didn't seem to want to talk anymore. Rarity now saw Sweetie Belle's cutie mark. It was diamond shaped, with stripes- a red at the bottom, then an orange stripe, then a yellow stripe, and the tip of the diamond was green. The whole thing was surrounded by a yellow burst. "Why do you want to hide... in my tail?" Rarity asked. "So the Princess won't see me," Sweetie Belle said. "You're new, so you wouldn't know. One of the princesses always stands at the head of the line, and if one of us looks to tired or ill to work the treadmill, she sends us to the back of the line." She cringed. "That's how it's supposed to work. But, whenever Princess Rarity is on duty, she always sends me to the back of the line... for no reason! I'm healthy and strong! I'm young! This is even my talent, see?" She pointed to her cutie mark. "But she keeps sending me back, and all the other unicorns hate me for it! It's not my fault! The princess hates me or something! I have no idea why she'd be doing this! I'm just one little unicorn, I'm not special! Why does she pick on me, out of all the unicorns?" Rarity blinked. "You have... no idea?" "No!" Sweetie Belle was crying now. "You don't... think the princess might care for you?" "Well... maybe, but why me? I'm not any more virtuous than the rest of the ponies." Rarity was about to ask more, but then remembered what Princess Twilight Sparkle had said. "Maybe I sent you back in time, and just erased your memory!" And then Princess Rarity: "Yes, that does sound like something you would do." Princess Twilight Sparkle sent all the guards and servants out of the room except for Rainbow Dash. Then, her horn glowing, she set a shield around the room. "Now we can conference in private," she said, motioning for Princess Rarity and Rainbow Dash to come closer. "What's the matter, Twilight?" Princess Rarity asked. "That Applejack, she wasn't a..." "She was," Princess Twilight sighed. "I could tell she wasn't lying." "What is it?" Rainbow Dash asked, hoping she didn't sound clueless. Princess Twilight shook her head. "Earlier today, Princess Rarity and I met a pony who looked like Rarity, except without wings. I determined that she was, in fact, a Rarity from the past. It seems... it seems there are more of them. This Applejack had no idea of the crimes she committed- because she hadn't committed them yet. She's from the past." After considering carefully, Rainbow Dash said, "You mean... we've all got past selves running around Canterlot?" Princess Twilight nodded, biting one cheek. "It appears." "What are we going to do, Sparkie?" Princess Rarity asked. Rainbow Dash blinked. Sparkie? she thought. Since when did we call her that? Princess Twilight rubbed a hoof under her chin. "We don't want to let Past Twilight or Past Rarity go just yet- we could make good use of them. But I don't want to send the other past versions home without them- we could cause a paradox. If we presume that none of the past versions know they are in the future, we could lure them out... somehow. We already have three of them- we just need to find Past Pinkie, Past Rainbow, and Past Fluttershy. That is... assumming they are all here... which might be too large an assumption..." she paced to the other side of the room and stared out the window. Princess Rarity gave Rainbow Dash a small smile. Rainbow smirked back, sensing this was an in-joke. Suddenly the door burst open. "Princess Twilight!" A familiar voice called. "Lightning Strike told me you'd captured BlackJack!" Rainbow Dash whirled around and gasped. "Scoot- Scootaloo?" Rainbow Dash hardly recognized the little pegasus filly. She was tall and skinny, sinewy. Her wings were now fully grown and held at the ready. Her mane looked torn up. She wore a tight black uniform with a hood that she had just lowered. The uniform hid her cutie mark, but it seemed likely to Rainbow that the But the biggest shock was Scootaloo's eyepatch. Scootaloo went down on one knee. "Captain Dash! I must congratulate you for this great capture!" She bowed her head, as if Dash was the princess herself. Dash glanced over her shoulder, feeling nervous, and noticed that Princess Twilight was frowning. More than before, anyway. She turned back to Scootaloo. "Erm. I didn't actually capture Applejack- two soldiers did." Scootaloo lifted her head. "But I'm sure that it was your excellent training that allowed her to be subdued, my captain." "Uh. Sure." Rainbow Dash looked over her shoulder again. Rarity was shaking her head sadly. "Actually," Princess Twilight said, annoyance in her voice, "It wasn't Blackjack that we captured at all." Scootaloo frowned. "How has that moon-sent pony tricked us this time?" Twilight flipped her flowing mane over one shoulder. "It's a long story... but let's just say that we will be needing your expert skills, Spy Scootaloo." There was a metal rod sticking down from the ceiling. Wires spiraled down it, ending in a dangling piece of metal that looked like a sad party hat- although Twilight Sparkle was sure that a gray part hat was against all of Pinkie's party rules. Below it was something that looked like Big Mac's cider press- a conveyor belt, she believed. A dark purple stallion entered through a door and stood next to the computer by the conveyor belt. Turning to the guards, he said, "We've been asked to increase our quota." "WHAT?" Screams and moans came from the unicorns standing behind Twilight Sparkle. Some started crying. The purple stallion turned to them. "It's not by much! Just a, uh, an extra thousand horn power! That's all, really!" "Thousand?" a hysterical yellow unicorn demanded. "Do you know how many of us there are?" "Over a hundred, I'm sure," the purple stallion said, "So, all you have to do is give a little extra and-" "Some of us don't have extra to give!" shouted a stallion from way back. A skinny little preteen filly was lifted above some unicorn's head. "Look at her! How can you ask her to give any more than she already has?" "QUIET!" a unicorn guard shouted in a magically amplified voice. "Stop complaining! The princess' rule stand, PERIOD!" There was silence. The purple stallion locked eyes with Twilight. "Ah! I heard about you! The princess was very excited about you. She already said we should run you, so I guess we can hook you up while we're waiting for the princesses to inspect the unicorns." He motioned her forward. "If you are as powerful as you look, you may be able to help the other unicorns some. You can tell they don't like the new quota; maybe you could ease their burden a bit?" Twilight Sparkle could tell that she was being manipulated. All it took was his tone of voice. But that didn't change the fact that it was an effective argument. "What's the total quota?" She asked the unicorn as she stepped onto the treadmill. "9500," the unicorn guard said, as he pulled the party hat like object down and fit it over Twilight Sparkle's horn. 9500! Twilight began doing some quick calculations. The average telekinetic spell used only a tiny amount of horn power- depending on object levitated, distance, time, things like that, but it usually hovered around 10 horn power. Many unicorns just used telekinesis and never bothered with any other powers. That left her nowhere for determining the average horn power of a pony. Why nopony had bothered to take a survey, she wasn't sure. "Get moving already," the guard said. Twilight began to walk. Perhaps it had to do with the subjective nature of magic. While Celestia could, in normal circumstances, outpower any unicorn without trying very hard, it would change depending on the emotions. If Celestia, for some reason, didn't want to perform the spell she was using, and the opposing unicorn had a strong will to make his spell happen, then, if the opposing unicorn had a fair amount of power to begin with, he might possibly succeed in countering the princess. Theoretically. Twilight's pace increased. The computer began chugging. 9500 horn power. There were 'over a hundred' unicorns, according to the purple stallion. Each unicorn would need to produce about 95 horn power. That didn't seem that unreasonable. "Faster!" The unicorn guard said, lashing a whip at Twilight's legs. He missed, but Twilight moved faster anyway. 950 horn power didn't seem unreasonable, at least at first. But that was more than the average unicorn used on a daily basis. And to make the sudden leap would be like expecting someone to run a mile when they'd never done any real running before. And doing that every day? It would wear them down- and when they wore down, they would do even worse the next day. And that wasn't even accounting for the fact that some of the unicorns were young- and therefore would have even less power. She began to run. She had used quite a bit of horn power once or twice, for the more complicated spells. The time-travelling spell had come with a warning that it took at least 200 hornpower, and that most unicorns should not attempt the spell if they weren't more familiar with complicated magic. Most unicorns would be quite drained from that exertion. But it hadn't seemed that hard to Twilight. The purple stallion glanced at the computer. He looked alarmed and motioned the other guards to come look. Twilight Sparkle didn't want to see it. She shut her eyes and pumped her legs, the energy from her muscles adding to the energy pouring from her horn, into the machine, up the wires, off to power... whatever it was the Princess needed powering. If she gave a little more, she might save more exhausted unicorns from having to work themselves to death. Her muscles screamed at her to slow down, her head pounded like someone was slamming it in a door. But she couldn't stop. If she could just give more... Some voices called to her, telling her to stop. They sounded so distant. Then Rarity's voice right in her ear: "Twilight Sparkle, stop right now!" Her urgent tone startled her. Twilight stopped running, and dazedly staggered around for a bit before collapsing. She lay on the ground, panting. Her head hurt so much. The purple stallion cleared his throat. "Um. It appears we have fulfilled our quota. You can go back to your rooms now." Twilight Sparkle fainted.