“When did you say this thing is gonna hit us?” Rainbow asks.
“In about ten minutes,” I say. It took extra time to gather everyone in the library, but I’m hoping they’ll find the familiar surroundings comforting.
They all look at me expectantly, except Rarity, who’s staring off into space with her mouth slightly open. Even in shock she looks graceful, as if she were about to take a dainty morsel from a tiny silver fork.
“Relax,” I say. “We’re not going to do anything this time. I just want your opinions.”
“This time?” Rainbow asks.
“It’s complicated,” I say. “But we’ll have twenty-three minutes to do whatever you come up with, starting from thirteen minutes ago.”
They look at each other, then back at me.
“Okay,” Applejack says, “I believe you. I’ve seen crazier than that.”
“But… didn’t you say we’re all going to… die?” Rarity asks. “I distinctly recall you saying something to that effect.”
“Flaming mountains will fall from the sky. The air will burn. Lakes will boil away. There'll be earthquakes, floods, and tsunamis. Ash will fill the sky, and after the planet stops burning it will be winter for a hundred years. So, yes.”
“Oh.” She holds the “O” after the breath is gone. “So… what, exactly, do you want our opinions on?”
“On how Ponyville should spend those last twenty-three minutes,” I tell them all.
They look at each other again, then back at me.
Except Pinkie. "Well, duh!" she says to us all. "Don't you know the phrase, 'party like it's the end of the world'? Only now it'll actually be the end of the world!"
She's got a point.
“Um,” Fluttershy begins. She's taking it surprisingly well. "So, maybe ponies won’t survive. But what about the others?”
“The others?” I ask.
She nods. “Like… fish. Little fishies deep down in the ocean. Or oysters. Or ants.”
“Oh… Fluttershy, I’d never even thought of that.” I hang my head. I’m not just a Princess of Ponies. I’m supposed to be a Princess of Equestria. All of it. All of them, I correct myself.
I do some quick mental calculations. Oysters? No; they’re coastal. Deep-water fishes? Possibly, but they’re not adapted to temperature changes. Will shellfish extinction change the water’s acidity? Oxygen content will diminish. Salinity will increase after the geologic upheaval. Ants? Only if they eat fungi, and have a ready supply. But what will the fungi eat? My mind goes into overdrive, and I start over, running through the taxonomic possibilities in chronological order. Bacteria? Algae? Mold? Rotifers? Angiosperms?
“What about dragons?” Spike asks.
Twelve pony eyes stare at him, including my own.
He looks down and drags one clawed foot across the floor. “Well… we’re pretty tough. Fire can’t hurt us. If it gets too cold, we just slow down, or hibernate. And we don’t need plants. We eat gems.”
I hadn’t even thought of that. A moments’ reflection says it’s not possible: In fifteen minutes, Ponyville will be under three miles of rock, and the winds above it will be twenty-thousand miles an hour and burning hotter than the sun. But until now, I hadn’t even thought about it. Thousands of cycles, and I never thought of anything but ponies. I’m not just a terrible Princess of Equestria. I’m a terrible friend.
I wrap a wing around Spike and pull him to me, more to comfort me than him. “Oh, Spike. I’m sorry, Spike. But there won’t… there won’t even be oxygen, Spike. Not for years.”
He lets out a breath. “That’s kind of a relief,” he says with a weak grin.
“What about trees?” Applejack asks grimly. “Can ya save my trees?” Mouth set, eyes sharp. I’ve seen her look at an aphid infestation with that expression.
I hear shouting in the streets outside. The others hurry to the windows. “Time’s up,” I say. “Thank you all. I think this has been a very productive meeting. I’ll see you again in fifteen minutes.” I stand and summon what magic I’ve gathered since I arrived, pulling it into my horn—
This is interesting.
3877398 Balm already, in chapter 2? That would be bad structure. You'd better read through the end, now that you've come this far.
3877601 Score! You totally called it. Smart. Maybe too smart...
one problem........... dsicord. discord would likely die if he had to, but he would stop it. for he would be compelled by his love for fluttershy, an even by the fact that if no ponies are left, he would have no fun. chaos is meaningless without those to create and or experience it.
and how could tow beigns able ot move giant orbital objects fail to stop a mere meteor? hell technically speaking if we take into theory that the power is elemental, that they are able to do it without expending much energy, a meteor would be well within luna's jurisdiction.
outside of those flaws, i do like the idea of it all. twilight tying to delay the disaster by creating a time loop. but still, discord, regal sisters, twilight, cadance......... there is no way a mere meteor would be a problem.
I mostly wonder what made the princesses explode or melt as noted in c1 or c2
3883850
True.
But then we wouldn't have a story. BH said something to that effect earlier, that in order to tell the story he wanted, he had to make some concessions. I agree, that in any Equestria I like to imagine, this wouldn't be an issue: move the planet, intercept the meteor with the sun, blast it to pieces, any number of magic spells. Sadly, if we want to see this story through, we have to accept that they're all gonna die.
3883969 guess that argument could be made. still though, a story that relies on certain factors being ignored has some amount of issues to it.
Don't stop writing this. Please don't stop writing this. It is a total mindfuck and it is glorious.
3883986
I say again: True.
It's not a perfect story, no. But it is well done for what it is. I in general hate tragedies... but this doesn't have a tragedy tag, so MAYBE things will work out somehow. I really hope they will, but I'm not deluding myself. Plus, we have to remember than, in a sense, all fan fiction is contrived to some degree.
3884002 important thing about fiction is making an illusion that hides the contrivances. make you think this is happening not because of the author but because of the characters decisions in the story.
with that it does okay. though it is still glaring that so much is ignored.
Fascinating. I'd love to see you continue this for more than one final chapter.
Out of pure curiosity, how large is the asteroid? Larger than the Chicxulub rock, but smaller than Ceres? Larger?
It's like someone read the Hard Reset trilogy and said, "you know, this is a nice idea, but it's a bit too happy-go-lucky."
Why not just use the moon?
The amount of magic to move something essentially weightless is trivial. All she would have to do is move the moon into the path of the asteroid. Granted the moon would probably not survive. But the millions of other unicorns in Equestria could just fashion the rubble back together like what Twilight did with the dam in Mysterious Mare do well on a larger scale. I could go on and on with different ideas but the point remains the same. For everything she gases on about with how thinking is pointless when you rely on instinct and just go through the motions, she is failing to take into account how the smallest change can upset her predetermined path. Just like when she told Macintosh and failed to kiss him and learned about how he is in love with Fluttershy. Time is not math. It bends and flows and is unpredictable like water. You may not know where it will go, but it can be redirected if you put a split in its path.
How many years has it been?
This story touches a piece of my mind that I hate to go, that isolated part where your thoughts can get the better of you. This story gives me nightmares. But you can't stop reading until you reach the end, otherwise you could get stuck there.
This is incredibly fucked up and I absolutely love it
3881336 3883850 3884174 You're right that this is a consistency problem--why not block it with the moon? But there's not much I can do about it, other than not write this kind of story.
Equestria is a big sphere, but it doesn't orbit around a sun, and therefore is not a planet. It can't revolve around a sun, for several reasons:
- In planetary systems, the sun develops much earlier than the planets, whereas the Equestrian sun may be younger than Equestria.
- If Equestria were a planet, the sun would "rise" all on its own, due to the planet's rotation.
- The show says that Celestia raises the sun; therefore, Equestria doesn't orbit the sun.
Celestia is probably younger than Equestria. Therefore, she doesn't do anything necessary; the sun did something before she was born, and everybody survived.
The moon that we see is spherical and has impact craters, indicating that it is in a planetary system.
For Celestia to revolve the Earth's sun around the Earth fast enough to create 24 hour days, she would have to move 2*10^30 kg at 36 times the speed of light, which isn't even theoretically possible.
Neither Luna nor Celestia are anything like creatures that could move the sun of a solar system, or a moon. The energy involved in doing that is literally astronomical. If they had that kind of power, their fight would have vaporized the world instead of leaving little black smudges on the castle. They could have split all Chrysalis' baryons into gluons in a nanosecond. That kind of power is totally off the scale of the MLP world.
The only not-completely-ridiculous explanations, from first to last, are:
1. The physics of our world doesn't work in Equestria. We have no more basis on which to draw conclusions than would a medieval peasant staring at the sky.
2. Luna and Celestia are con artists who have fooled ponies into thinking they raise the sun and moon.
3. The Equestrian sun and moon are tiny, perhaps a few thousand feet across. Equestria may also be very small; every part of it is a one-day slow-moving-train-ride away from every other part.
4. Luna and Celestia don't move the sun or moon; they rotate their planet.
My personal head-canon is #3, but if I put that in the story then people will complain about that. It would just be a distraction.
There is no possible canon-consistent way of interpreting Equestrian planetary mechanics. The writers threw a big ball of hooey at us. If you start thinking about how the sun and moon work in Equestria, it will just throw you out of suspension of disbelief, because it doesn't work. That's why I don't want to write an explanation of exactly why they couldn't stop the asteroid. It would be complicated, and it would focus your attention on the complete lack of sense and consistency in the MLP cosmos.
Luna was on the moon for 1000 years, and she can supposedly move the moon at will. Does that make any sense? No. Did anyone complain about it? No. And you can start making up a story about how transforming into Nightmare Moon, or the banishing, removed her power to move the moon--well, why don't you use that energy making up a story for why they can't move the asteroid?
People never demand this level of scientific consistency from the show. I just can't do it with the canon I have to work with. Equestrian physics and cosmology is broken.
3885212
You're not thinking mythic enough! The moon has impact craters not because it's been bombarded by asteroids, but because that's what The Moon looks like.
3885212
We don't have to make up anything. NMM refused to move the moon out of the way for Celestia to bring the day. After Celestia used the Elements on NMM and banished her to/in the moon, the problem was solved. Ergo, NMM/Luna didn't have control over the moon anymore.
3885212 >>>He looks down and drags one clawed foot across the floor. “Well… we’re pretty tough. Fire can’t hurt us. If it gets too cold, we just slow down, or hibernate. And we don’t need plants. We eat gems.”>>>
Oh dear... dragons don't make sense, do they? Biology forbids their existence.
Guess they must be illusions too!
Heck, EVERYTHING is an illusion!
Twilight's really a human who's in a coma a dreaming all of this! Because that's the only way it makes perfect sense.
Stop being absurd. If the world's rules say something can happen, and it's not one of the poorly written 'Equestria is future Earth', which REALLY screws up internal plausibility, then it's fine so long as the fictional world doesn't violate its own rules... unless some plot device is included which allows violations of said rules.
Your way of thinking is far too rigid and inflexible. I've known scientists like you. They refused to acknowledge the existence if microRNAs in genomes because they didn't fit with how THEY decided genes were SUPPOSED to work. Of course, now tens of thousands of microRNAs are known and they have proven CRITICAL to many aspects of development and regulation.
Learn to think outside the box.
3877601
I had a feeling Twi was holding herself back, resigning herself to a cyclical fate of the same old shit.
Now some shit can get done.
... to be honest, I was under the impression she was into flaccid snogging with Big Mac for all eternity. Dum dee doo.
3884330
Welcome to a Bad Horse story! Just leave your tears in the shot glass and our host will be here to pick them up in a bit.
It fuels his need to project his all encompassing bleakness onto everything unsuspecting like a teacher that taught you everything you wanted to know, but less than you needed.
Actually, I think I'd like some brony tears. I'm bloody parched. Come here, you...
3893824
I WILL DRINK A TIPPLE OF YOUR TEARS