• Published 27th Feb 2014
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Take Two - LordBrony2040



A much older, arguably wiser, somewhat darker and definitely crazier Twilight Sparkle switches minds with her younger self to FIX EVERYTHING that went wrong before

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Chapter 9: Lunar Confrontation

The goddess Twilight Sparkle read through the information on the crystal screen attached to the collecting crystal in front of her. In fifteen hours, the last bits of Rainbow’s essence would be pulled from the aether and her 275,654th attempt to revive the first of her friends would be ready. Then all she had to do was implant it into the blank pegasus, wait for the body to adapt, and Rainbow Dash would emerge from her chamber and into the world.

A sliver of doubt crawled its way up through Twilight’s mind, informing her of the futility of it all. That if it hadn’t worked in all these years, there was no reason for it to start now. The imperfections would begin to show once testing began, and she would need to recycle the materials to start everything over.

Twilight crushed the thought. It didn’t matter if the process hadn’t worked so far. All she needed was a single success. And she would never give up. She had promised Rainbow that the pegasus would fly again one day. Pinkie Promised.

After Twilight finished her final checks to make sure everything was going smoothly, she headed for the exit from her lab. A nap before Rainbow was reborn sounded like a good idea. Not to mention fitting.

A sudden disturbance in the magic of her castle made Twilight stop in mid-step and frown. “What is that?” she mumbled to herself. It felt like somepony was wandering around inside her domain. But that was impossible.

Reacting almost on instinct, Twilight called up her magic and created a dozen scrying windows to display the perimeter of the area around her home. While nopony lived within one hundred miles of her castle, she did get visitors from time to time. Tourists wanting to photograph the Palace of Friendship came nosing around about once a month, hoping to catch a glimpse of the most powerful alicorn.

Twilight always made it a point to avoid them. The last time she had felt like smiling and waving at such ponies, Celestia had thought it was a sign she was getting ready to come back into the world. Kicking her old teacher out hadn’t been a pleasant experience.

When her scrying found nothing, Twilight frowned at the empty projections. A pegasus doing a flyby wouldn’t have been detected unless it landed on the balcony. Which would have then activated the enchantment to teleport the pony back to wherever they came from with a sign stuck to their head for a week that read ‘I LIKE TRESPASSING!’.

The only ponies allowed in Twilight’s palace were her friends.

And Princess Celestia…if only out of necessity.

Twilight found herself a little excited by the mystery. She hadn’t had a good one of those in millennia. The break in her schedule was almost…refreshing.

“Okay so…quick scan of the castle then,” she mumbled to herself before lighting up her horn again to display a map of her home, complete with the location of every pony inside.

The goddess nodded to herself as she saw her own magical signature displayed in the basement section of her map. Nothing out of the ordinary there. However, Twilight paused at the section displaying the first floor. According to it, there was an earth pony just wandering around unhindered.

Curiosity, shock, disbelief, worry over her sanity, Twilight’s mind went through half a dozen different emotions and a million more possibilities as she looked at the impossibility in front of her. There was no possible way that a pony, dragon, diamond dog, or anything from beyond Equestria’s borders could get in. Much less roam around without activating her palace’s defenses!

Feelings of intrigue were replaced by those of anger. The only creatures that were allowed to roam within Twilight’s Palace of Friendship were her friends! All of whom were murdered long before any living creature in Equestria was born. The fact that something had found a way to bypass that requirement and trod upon ground meant only for those dear to her made the goddess furious.

After calling up enough magic to crush mountains, Twilight bent the fabric of spacetime to change her location so that she stood in front of the intruder that was daring to wander around the palace’s entry hall in her full glory. Ablaze with her power, she glared at the tan earth pony with the brown mane and spread her wings in a display meant to cow him. “Who dares trespass within these sacred halls?”

Twilight’s voice shook the ground for miles around, and she glared at the little pony in front of her with contempt. If some party pony had managed to sneak in by deciding everypony in the world was his friend, Twilight would quickly dissuade him of such a notion.

“Ah Twilight, good to see you again old girl,” the earth pony in a tie exclaimed before he completely ignored the all-powerful being that could crush him like a bug and actually walked a circuit around her before coming back to look at the goddess face to face. “Had another one of those growth spurts did you? Although what’s with the cutie mark? I didn’t think those things could be altered. Removed, yes. Switched around…with certain side effects, doable. But outright changed? That’s new! Oh I do love new things!”

The familiarity that the stallion spoke to her made Twilight’s mouth drop out of surprise…and stay down as she noticed his cutie mark. She had seen dozens of timepiece cutie marks over the years. When she first came to Ponyville there was a stallion with one that nearly matched Minuette’s. So Twilight ignored its outward appearance and examined its magical signature, something that was different for every pony. When the goddess recognized it, she only became more confused.

T-Time Turner?” she asked while her back legs gave out and she fell to the ground with a loud smack. Her magic didn’t lie. The pony standing in front of her was indeed the wacky inventor that ran the Wibbly-Wobbly clock shop. The stallion that had disappeared eons ago. “But…you…how? Y-You left Ponyville a year after Ditzy passed.”

Upon hearing the name, the little pony cleared his throat and blinked a few times. “Yes well, that wound is still a bit fresh. So I’ll thank you not to mention it so casually,” he told her before letting out a long sigh. “And I thought I had told you to call me Doctor.”

Despite her age, the impossibility of it all, and a million other things, Twilight found herself doing what she always did when her old friend made that request. She pointed her hoof at him and frowned. “I’ve checked with every single University and Med school in Equestria, and not a single one says you attended. No doctorate, no Dr title!” Twilight told the stallion.

Then she suddenly noticed the foolishness of what was going on, and shook herself out of the routed response. “Wait a minute, never mind that! How the buck are you even here!?”

Time Turner blinked. “Ah yes, that. Well, after Ditzy…you know. I got back to tinkering with my TARDIS,” he said before pointing to the far corner of the hallway next to the door where a strange blue box sat. “Still can’t get it to go backwards in time. The time stream of this universe operates on a different…well, flow you could say, than my old one you see. But forward in time is easy enough. Thought I’d jump a few thousand years to see if ponies ever managed to make a proper English muffin.”

Twilight…blinked…and looked over to the unassuming blue box that looked a great deal like a fancy outhouse with windows. “You have a…time machine?”


Princess Celestia stood outside the large golden double doors to her little sister’s quarters, trying to find the words she needed to say, unsure if she even should go in at this time. Twilight had mentioned that Luna would eventually take up her duties on her own but…the way she said it…

Obviously, Twilight’s interpretation of things were slanted.

Still…Celestia couldn’t help but acknowledge the underlying theme in all of Twilight’s accusations. Even if a quarter of what she said was true, it made the Alicorn of the Sun more depressed than she had been in months.

There wouldn’t be any more trouble from Luna, because her little sister had…accepted her place. No more Nightmare Moon, because Luna had gotten used to feeling inferior. No more arguments from Luna because…Celestia had tamed her.

Part of Celestia went over the information in the best possible light. The arguments, the countermanding of orders, the constant use of the Royal Canterlot Voice, all of it was something Celestia would no longer have to worry about! Celestia found herself feeling ill at the fact her Luna’s loss of her fire was a good thing. Oh sister, all I want for you is to be happy.

She took in a deep breath, and walked past the guards to enter into the sitting room of Luna’s quarters. The collection of rooms Luna had been given to sleep in were a near-duplicate of her own. Celestia had ordered constructed a year ago in anticipation of her sister’s return. Off to her right was Luna’s bathroom, while a door to her left held the alicorn’s private study. It was the door to Luna’s bedroom that lay straight ahead that she headed towards.

The loud hoof strikes echoed throughout the room, and Celestia waited for a few seconds while the noise did its job and awoke Luna from her slumber. “Sister, might I come in?”

A low moan came from the other side of the doorway that made Celestia think of those silly zompony picture books that had gained some popularity in the past five years. “Whaaaaaat?” the voice on the other side of the door asked in a long drawl.

“I was hoping to talk to you,” Celestia replied. “I’m sorry if I woke you, I was…” The goddess stopped herself before she said the wrong word. Busy. Too busy to talk to you while you were awake. Yes, that’s going to go over real well Tia.

She took a deep breath and let out a long sigh. Even with a canceled schedule for most of the day, Celestia had still needed to hold court and address the problems of her little ponies.

“I was talking to somepony earlier and…she made me realize a few things,” Celestia told her while hesitation built in her mind. “Can I…come in and talk?”

Another groan came from inside the room. “If you wish.”

Celestia steeled herself, and opened the door to step inside the room.

The sight that greeted her made Celestia tense. The form that laid on the bed left much of the mattress unclaimed. Her coat was too light, and the mane of the alicorn that was looking up at her lacked the magical infusion of Celestia’s that had it blowing around without a wind to provide motion.

This was not the sister that Celestia remembered. The Luna of Celestia’s memories was proud, powerful, sure of herself and strong. She had almost always had a smile on her face…at least until…their falling out.

The Luna in front of her was small and weak, a simple shadow of the power she should have possessed. But what was worse was the air of depression that the little alicorn wore like a cloak. She looked up at Celestia with tired eyes that screamed a need for sleep. “Is there something you needed, big sister?”

A tiny bit of hesitation in Luna’s soft voice tore at Celestia’s heart. Luna should have been angry at being awoken so soon into her sleep. Instead, she simply laid there, waiting for Celestia to talk.

To give orders.

Like a good little princess,” Twilight’s voice echoed in Celestia’s head.

It was disturbing how easily the word ‘princess’ was almost replaced with ‘servant’.

Centuries of experience kept Celestia’s worry from showing on her face, and she laid down on the floor. With Celestia’s much larger size, the act only put her and Luna eye to eye.

“Luna…” The feeling of unease in Celestia’s heart tripled and…all of a sudden, slowly leading the conversation into what she was hoping to talk about seemed like a better idea than just cutting to the chase. That way, she could gauge Luna’s mood, see the possibilities, and guide her sister towards the proper responses.

Once again, Celestia managed to bar her apprehension from entering her voice. “How are you feeling?”

Tired. Now ask what you came here to ask so that I may return to my slumber, lest I throw you out and let all of our little ponies know what weight the scales proclaim when you stand upon them should you try again,” Celestia’s memory told her Luna should have said.

Instead, the alicorn sighed and looked away from her. “Well enough. Although I still feel in need of rest before I resume my duties. Apologies for my selfishness sister. But I beg of you to continue to move the moon through the sky for me a bit longer?”

The moon. Before her exile, Luna had always referred to it as hers. The fact that she wasn’t was another worry for Celestia to fret over. Still, Celestia looked at her little sister with her full attention, and then moved her vision beyond the Luna in front of her, and the ones that could be.

Celestia would be the first to admit that her foresight was…confusing in the extreme. It was a combination of centuries of experience, her own mind’s ability to quickly solve problems, and a little bit of precognition that she had suspected for a long time was a gift from the Tree of Harmony. Although…Cadence’s ability to predict the romantic future of a stallion seemed to disprove that, as she had no link with the Tree.

Thanks to her foresight, Celestia had managed to ward off evil before it grew too threatening several times in the past, and maintained the delicate balance of Harmony that kept Equestria the most prosperous nation on the planet.

Several possibilities laid themselves out before Celestia as she searched for the perfect way to cheer her sister up so they could get down to what was really bothering the rightful Alicorn of the Moon.

If she were to ask Luna about the reconstruction of her Night Guard…Luna’s depression would grow.

If Celestia tried to talk about the décor…Luna’s unhappiness would increase.

A conversation about the Canterlot night scene…would drive Luna into a deeper funk.

Talking about when she would be ready to move the moon again…was the worse option that she had seen yet by far.

After seeing four of her options come to unsatisfactory ends, Celestia put her focus back on the alicorn in front of her now rather than the ones that could be and decided to skip the small talk. “Luna, what’s wrong?”

The much smaller alicorn blinked in confusion. “Big Sister?”

“I know you are not ill,” Celestia told her with a concerned voice. “Or tired…in the permanent sense, I mean. You are fully recovered from the events at our former castle. Yet still you lay in your bed, or spend only a few hours each night wandering the halls. Your Night Guard’s return lifted your spirits a little but…I still see how troubled you are and it worries me.”

Luna gasped. Her eyes widened, and she stood up. “Big Sister no! You do not have reason to worry. I would not converse with the Nightmare again! I-I have learned my lesson about-”

Celestia stood up to her full height. “That is not what I mean at all!” she shouted in a panic. The fact that Luna would even consider Celestia suspecting her younger sister of working with that…creature again made Celestia feel…ashamed of herself. Does she truly think so little of me?

“Oh Luna no,” she mumbled with a shake of her head at the situation. “I know you would never…I’m not afraid of you Luna. I’m concerned for you. Ever since you came back you’ve been hesitant and…a shadow of your former self. I see you sitting there, wrapped in your own sadness and… All I want to do is see you smile again Luna! I want to see the mare I remember from when we lived in the Everfree. I love you with all my heart and, seeing you like this…it hurts. Please, tell me what I need to do to help you Luna.”

The alicorn on the bed held Celestia’s gaze for a moment, then looked away. “You have already done everything you needed to Sister,” she replied. A brief moment of silence passed between the two, and Luna let out a long sigh. “And I am not faking my exhaustion. Yes, my magic has recovered, my body healed, my mind cleared, and yet…exhaustion lingers.”

Then, the light blue alicorn looked back up to the larger one. “Some nights, I find it hard just to get out of bed, Big Sister. It is not a physical malady though. Nor a magical one. And just last night, I believed myself recovered for a few moments when I thought another pony came to seek my council.”

Although Celestia was afraid she knew the cause of Luna’s problem, she focused on the positive. “Somepony came to see you?”

The glimmer of happiness in Luna’s eyes faded at Celestia’s question, and she drew into herself just a bit. “No. One of the mares that saved me crossed my path the other night. It was a mistake on my part to think she had been brought to me by anything other than coincidence,” she said before brightening up just a little. “Still, I did manage to be a bit of some help to her. Like in the old days.”

Celestia smiled at the news. “That’s good,” she replied as a plan formulated in her head. “You know, an arrangement could be made if you want to see them again. I’m certain they would enjoy your company.” While Twilight would probably raise holy hay and dig her hooves in, it wasn’t really going against her word since it was Luna they would be dealing with, not Celestia herself.

That was apparently the wrong thing to say, as Luna’s face became a scowl. “And shall you be scheduling play dates for me with the local foals as well?”

Rather than step up to the challenge, Celestia backed away from the alicorn and lowered her head slightly in a bow. “I’m sorry if I offended you Luna. I just…” she took a deep breath to giver herself some time in order to find the proper words. “I want you to be happy Sister, and I know that you have been rather…reclusive since your return.”

“Well with all the changes that have occurred, what did you expect Big Sister?” she mumbled. “I have fallen one-thousand years behind the times. It shall take months before I can hope to make a public appearance without embarrassing myself.”

Celestia nodded as she worked her mind to at least try and work the situation to its best outcome. “Perhaps a private audience then?” she asked as new ideas formed in her mind. “Twilight and her friends were here the night before. If one of them met you, I am certain the rest would be interested in doing the same.” Rarity seemed like quite the wannabe socialite, she would certainly jump at the chance to be one of the first mares to get an in with the new princess. “We could invite them all back for…a private function, perhaps?” Once again, the goddesses mind called up the memory of her discussion with Twilight and she pushed it to the side.

When weighed against her sister, such things mattered little. It was doubtful the purple unicorn would accept anyway.

“So you are hoping to set me up on a play date then?” Luna deadpanned.

Celestia groaned in response. “You know that isn’t it sister!” she countered. “But…grumble if you wish for me mentioning this, but if you had a few personal relationships, then you might have not turned to the Nightmare.”

She turned away from her little sister’s bed. “And I know I was the same! With a few friends to whisper in my ear, I might have bothered to be there for you rather than been so willing to busy myself with meaningless things,” the goddess admitted.

Memories of a thousand years ago assaulted Celestia. Despite not wanting to remember, they came in force. As Twilight had said, she had been invited to a thousand balls when the night began and her duties ended, oversaw hundreds of celebrations that she had worked into her schedule as part of those duties, and her stomach turned as she remembered a thousand ponies looking up at her in admiration, thinking at the time that was proof of her magnificence.

But, as always whenever such doubts crept in…Celestia consoled herself with the fact that everything that had happened, had to happen. If Luna hadn’t become the Nightmare, Celestia wouldn’t have realized her own flaws and worked to remove them. On top off which, now that Luna had learned the error of her ways, Celestia could…show her…how to be the princess she was…supposed to...be.

You really rotten princess!” Twilight’s voice accused Celestia, using the goddesses own childish reservations against her.

Still…the accusation lingered, despite her attempts to shake it off.

But that was the problem with personal relationships. The weight their words carried was more than any cheering crowd or faceless admirers. And the fact that Twilight was armed with knowledge Celestia couldn’t know made her attempts to bring forth a defense useless.

On top of which, the anger her student had towards Celestia…it pointed to a future that wasn’t what she had envisioned. A future that, despite all her suffering and sacrifice to make things perfect in the wake of her sister’s banishment, was anything but.

But WHY? What was it that she was missing? What she had overlooked to cause such a disruption to her plans so close to their fruition?

The obvious answer were the five friends that Twilight had made, and how they rose to claim an Element for each one of themselves, rather than teaching Twilight about the five that made up her own so that she could wield them all herself. But how that could have made such a difference in the long term, Celestia just couldn’t understand.

The alicorn cleared her mind with a sigh. Now was not the time to think of such things. Her sister was more important than the oddities that were Twilight’s friends.

Another deep breath, and she turned again to face Luna. The smaller alicorn was looking out the window, making Celestia wonder if she had even been heard what she had said previously. “Luna?”

The other alicorn winced as if in pain.

Celestia was by her side in an instant. “LUNA!”

“Apologies Sister I…Twilight Sparkle is experiencing a nightmare,” Luna replied with a little grimace. “A nightmare the likes of which I have not felt since…I was on the moon.” Unsaid went the fact that she had been a captive of the creature that created such things. “I must go to her sister. This is one duty I cannot shirk.”

For the tiniest moment, Celestia actually considered telling Luna to forget about it, and let the little mare face what was more than likely a guilty conscience. It served her right for how she had acted. The fact that such a thought existed at all also shamed the larger princess.

“Then go Little Sister. Go and perform your duties.”


Luna was filled with an odd sense of trepidation as she floated through the land between wakefulness and dreams. Despite the area of the place having no true form, Luna willed it into a semblance of navigability. Two long rows of doors appeared and flanked her. Although thy extended into the distance, the alicorn didn’t walk down the hallway or even need to move to locate what she was looking for.

She opened the door to Twilight Sparkle’s dream, and stepped inside. A tingling sensation passed through Luna’s dream body as she crossed the threshold of the unicorn’s dream, and the Princess of the Night took note of the toothless defense before continuing on.

The first section of the dream that Luna came across was shattered, yet she could detect the lingering remains of several guilt phantoms calling attention to something that Twilight had tried to bury in her mind. The second area of her journey brought the alicorn through a modern hospital that, like the first section of Twilight’s dreamscape, was littered with reminders. Not as intense as the guilt that had come before, but still possessing a special weight of their own, all the same.

Luna moved through the area as quickly as she could, feeling Twilight’s presence up ahead. She ducked into the next area of Twilight’s mind and-

“DON’T GIVE ME THAT!” Twilight’s voice rang out. “You’re a part of me! You know as well as I do what had to be done! THE ONLY WAY TO BRING HER BACK WAS TO GET RID OF YOU!”

Luna slowed her pace as the world around her turned to crystal, reminiscent of the ancient empire so long vanished even before her departure from Equestria. In front of her, she made out two occupants in the room, as well as several more pony-like shapes floating in large glass cylinders spaced evenly throughout the room. As was her usual method, she concealed herself within the background of the dream, then slowly moved into a position to observe.

The sight before her was…disturbing. While seeing a pony’s dream persona change was not unheard of, the image Twilight cast of herself brought memories Luna would rather leave in the past. By her stature alone, Luna could tell the student had decided that she was far greater than the teacher.

The other pony was another guilt manifestation, only conversing with its creator. It didn’t take much for Luna to recognize the form it had been crafted into as one of the pegasi that had freed her using the Elements of Harmony. The only difference between the two was the number one upon the manifestation’s head, and the missing lightning bolt on her cutie mark. But why Twilight would be feeling guilty about Rainbow Dash, Luna couldn’t comprehend.

“Even if I wasn’t her,” the Rainbow-guilt went on as she looked up at Twilight. “Wasn’t I a friend? We spent weeks together, flying and having more fun that you ever did since Ponyville was destroyed! You were finally getting out of the castle again!And then you ruined it all! All because I couldn’t remember one stupid little filly!”

Twilight stomped her hoof down, and the dream shook. “Scootaloo was Rainbow’s little sister! She would NEVER forget about her! AND THAT MEANT YOU WEREN’T RAINBOW! You were just some stupid doll I made that looked and sounded like her because I gave you an incomplete soul! You weren’t her! You were never her! NOW PLEASE JUST GO AWAY!”

From her hiding place, Luna watched on in rapt attention as dreamtime magic coalesced around Twilight’s horn into a deconstructing spell. There was a bright flash of light, and when it cleared, she saw that the Rainbow-guilt was gone, banished to the back of Twilight’s mind until she awoke. It was hardly a permanent solution to a pony’s mental distress, but usually the first one Luna used to allow her time to converse with one of the ponies under her care.

It was also a spell only she could have access to. Dream magic was her domain, and had been accessible only by her since Luna had trained no others for one-thousand years. The fact that Twilight Sparkle had used it was…odd.

Twilight stood motionless, staring at the empty space where what she had called a faux Rainbow Dash had been a moment before. Then, her rump fell to the crystal cavern's floor with a loud smack, and the pseudo-alicorn’s body shivered. Glistening droplets of water fell from her eyes as the goddess took in a sniffling breath. “I’m sorry,” she told the empty room before letting out a tiny whimper. “I’m sorry I couldn’t do it right. I tried so hard, so many times, but I could never do it right. Memory…personality…skill…there was always a piece of you missing no matter how many times I tried.”

Another shudder wracked the giant alicorn’s body, and she slid forward into a slump onto the crystal floor. After what felt like half an hour, Twilight let out a long sigh, and picked her head up to look in Luna’s direction with tired eyes. “Did you enjoy the show, Luna?”

The Princess of the Night stiffened. For a moment, she wondered how Twilight could have possibly known of her presence, but… The ward spell, she realized. It must have been set to detect intrusions. Caught red-hoofed, Luna strained her back and slowly walked out of the shadows in all her regal countenance. “If you seek to try and force me into embarrassment for watching your actions Twilight Sparkle, you waste your time. Long have I guarded the dreams of my little-uh…why are you looking at me like that?”

The expression on Twilight’s face was not one of shame for dreaming above her station or anger at being intruded upon within her own mind. Rather, she looked like a mare that had just seen the most adorable of animals and was barely holding in making one of those ridiculously annoying sounds.

But as soon as Luna asked her pointed question, Twilight’s expression cleared. “Oh! Ah-he, sorry. It’s just been so long since I’ve seen you look so…um, young!” It was obvious that was most definitely not what had been coming out before Twilight’s proprieties beat her mouth to the punch.

Luna blinked at the oddity and let out a suffering sigh. A big rear and that line, it was almost as if she were speaking with another version of her older sister. “Yes, my appearance is most different from that of the Nightmare that-wait! What are you talking about? This is the second form that you have seen me in, not the first. Explain yourself Twilight Sparkle!”

Despite the fact she was laying down on the floor, Twilight was able to look Luna right in the eyes, and the look she gave was one of annoyed confusion with one eyebrow frowning, and the other raised. “Wait, you mean Celestia didn’t give you her half-baked idea about me using a time spell and going into the future for so many years that when the backlash, the de-aging side effect occurred, I ended up back in the current era at pretty much the same age that I left it?”

“What?” Luna managed to asked as her confusion built.

Twilight sighed in an aggravated way, and turned her head away from Luna. “So she’s actually keeping everything from you too,” the apparent alicorn grumbled. “I guess the little princess doesn’t think she has you under her hoof enough to tell you anything yet.Typical.”

Annoyed at the insult to her kin, Princess Luna drew herself back up to her full height. “Twilight Sparkle! You will not speak of my sister in such a way while you stand within my presence!”

The seemingly larger alicorn looked over to Luna with an annoyed expression. “Seriously?” she asked. “I know you’re probably feeling a bit lessened by the lack of your lunar empowerment, but you can’t expect me to believe that you're actually more of a lap dog than-”

“And you shall stop this cryptic rigmarole and tell me what is going on at once!” Luna commanded as she struck a hoof to the ground.

Twilight stared at Luna for a long moment, and then let out a long sigh. “Okay…I guess you deserve the truth as well,” she told the other mare before her expression hardened. “But I should warn you. This isn’t going to be something you’ll find pleasant.”

The warning was appreciated, but unneeded. “Very well. You may begin.”

“It all started when Celestia tricked me into casting this stupid spell that swapped the cutie marks of my friends,” Twilight told her. “If I had known what she was planning for me to do with what I made from that spell, I would have burned that stupid book and shoved the ashes down her throat.”


Luna sat on a soft bench she had made for herself in mirror of the one Twilight created for herself as the larger alicorn came to the end of her tale. “…and then, I transported myself back into the past,” she said before a small smile crossed her lips. “It wasn’t until I looked at myself that I found this one tiny flaw in my plan. I only had a few seconds to talk to…well, myself. If I hadn’t said yes…thousands of years of planning, all my experiments, what I did to…to get here. All of it would have been for nothing, and I would have to bear the guilt everything that I had done.”

Throughout the tale, Luna had managed to keep her composure. While the revelations that Twilight had given her were…disturbing, the alicorn could tell the purple pony was still holding things back. Some of them things she obviously didn’t want to think about, while others probably revolved around information that the other…sort-of-alicorn was trying to hide.

While it was within her power to look into such things with a normal pony, Luna was unsure what her hindsight would reveal. The events Twilight described had not happened yet to the general populace, and from the fake alicorn’s own admission, much of it would not be happening again. So, Luna was unsure what she would see when gazing at Twilight, and decided not to risk it at the moment.

“These’s something I don’t understand Twilight,” Luna spoke as she readjusted on her seat. “Why do you place so much blame at the hooves of my sister?”

Twilight’s face darkened, and she looked away from the smaller alicorn. “Right, guess this is the first time we’ve had this conversation from your perspective.” she grumbled before addressing Luna directly. “Celestia may have not have done everything personally, but she got the ball rolling and made sure things occurred according to her plans, no matter who she hurt along the way.”

A glistening on the edge of Twilight’s eyes made Luna wonder if she should continue the questioning. Whatever the other alicorn was remembering, the pain it caused her must have been great. To continue with the inquiry would have only brought her more suffering.

“Twilight, my sister is many things, but…what you’re saying…I can’t believe that she would have personally engineered the death of your friends,” Luna told her.

Twilight snorted. “Because you don’t know her like I do Luna.”

The larger alicorn’s words caused the smaller to frown. “You claim I do not know my own sister better than some…” Luna searched for a word to correctly describe the creature that was sitting in front of her.

“The term you're looking for is sociopath,” Twilight told her with a bored tone and a shrug. “I’ve been called worse, but I won’t deny it. After Ponyville and my friends were taken away from me…I...lost myself. I stopped caring for anything outside my little corner of the world. I know I don’t…function well…without my friends and Spike.”

Luna raised an eyebrow at the mention of the dragon Celestia had told her was responsible for communications between her and the unicorn. “Yes, that is something I was wondering. Would not your child be able to help you cope with your loss?”

For a moment, Luna was afraid she had overstepped, as Twilight closed her eyes in pain. “No, he…Spike…” A shivered rushed through her body and she took a shuddering breath. “He died with Ponyville.”

Another mention of something Twilight had avoided speaking of made the temptation to see for herself rise in Luna. The fact that there was a future threat involved only made her decision all the more made up the second she considered it.

The deposed Alicorn of the Moon took and deep breath, and gazed upon Twilight Sparkle. She looked past the mare that was sitting in front of her, to the pony she had been before this day, or the day before, the week, the month, year…decade…

…century…

……millennium…

………and…



Luna blinked as she found herself standing in the town Twilight had been speaking of, much different than the one she could see from her tower’s window. The buildings were a tiny bit more upscale, with roofs of tile instead of thatch, and brick walkways ran their way through the grass. A large palace made from crystal loomed large in the center of down, refracting the sunlight and transforming it into every color of the rainbow. A simple wooden fortification surrounded the large village, and…

…the world…

……changed…

The alicorn fought to keep her footing as everything around her suddenly shifted. Without warning, the ground turned to…boiling pudding?

Luna leaped into the air and willed herself to stand as the entirety of the town suddenly shifted from a picturesque scene of tranquility, into something of a horror novel written by a madman. Beneath her, she saw ponies screaming as they sunk an impossible amount of feet until the burning lake of chocolate swallowed them up.

Inside the buildings, Luna could only catch glimpses of what looked to be insanity made manifest. Surprise slowed her thinking, but after the surprised horror of watching foals being eaten by gingerbread ponies inside their own homes, Luna believed she knew what was going on.

“DISCORD!”

The name of her ancient enemy drew Luna’s attention to the sky a second before Twilight descend from the sky at an impossible speed.

The alicorn was exactly the same as Luna had seen in the dream, only more…real. Larger than Tia by several feet, the future version of Twilight Sparkle glowed with the power of a million suns.

The second she touched the ground, the lake of boiling chocolate became grass, and other comic horrors were undone by Twilight’s very presence as if an invisible wave of harmonious magic washed out from where she impacted the ground. However, the restoration of the natural order was too late for the occupants of the town.

All around, what had been a perfect little community just moments ago was no more. Ponies laid on the ground and inside their homes. Some with their coats mostly gone and burn marks covering all of the visible skin, others had been put through other terrors that looked just as painful judging by the conditions of their bodies. None of them were moving. None of them were alive.

DIIIIIIIIISSCORD!” Twilight howled again, her horn lighting with every color of the rainbow to the point where Luna had to shield her eyes. When she looked again, the Spirit of Chaos was standing in the middle of the field of corpses.

Twilight seethed as the draconequus as he gave the alicorn an obviously fake look of surprise. “Why Twilight, you’re looking…taller? Been drinking your milk?”

You!” she growled with closed teeth. “WHAT HAVE YOU DONE YOU MONSTER?

Discord blinked, then smirked a little bit. “Now Twilight, there’s no reason to lose your head,” he said before sticking his arm behind his back. “Your assistant’s already taken care of that for you.”

He pulled his arm out from behind his back, and Luna fought the urge to gag. At the end of the draconequus’s lion arm was the severed head that he was manipulating like some sick puppet. “Don’t worry Twilight. I’m way ahead of you.”

On the other side of what Luan was sure to soon be a battlefield, Twilight began to breathe much too quickly to make use of the breaths she was using. “You…you killed…you…WHY?”

Discord blinked, and then looked at the severed dragon head before coming to a decision of some sort and tossing it over his shoulder like some bit of junk. “Come now Twilight, I’m just trying to do what Celestia told me.”

You…what?” Twilight demanded, surprise overtaking her anger for a moment.

“Oh, just something she said a few months after I got free and found myself getting bored. She said, I needed to seek a balance. Didn’t really understand it until now though,” she replied as he held his hand together. “She told me to…seek a balance. I thought she was just talking about finding a way to have some fun without doing any damage, or maybe find a way to help ponies while still having fun. But no. No…now I understand what this whole balance thing means.

“You kill my friends,” Discord continued as she slowly spread his arms. “So I got to kill all of yours. Isn’t that great?!” There was flash of light, and then a scroll and quill appeared floating next to the creature. “Although I’m curious who I’m supposed to send the friendship report to these days. You, or sunbutt? I mean, you are bigger now, and everypony knows it’s size that determines who rules in Equestria.”

Another light began to build in Twilight’s horn.

“Okay, so I only had two friends, and the smooze went all purple again and tried to eat the world while you had...how many in this town? One thousand? Two? Never did learn to count right you understand. Numbers just mean so little to someone such as myself,” Discord asked. “But that’s just quality versus quality. It’s not like they mattered nearly as much as Fl-”

Discord was cut off as Twilight let out a bloodcurdling scream as she released her magic. “DIE!”


Luna blinked as the vision faded, and she was once again in the crystal chamber, on the dream bench across from Twilight as she sat on her own. She was glad she was sitting down, as the fact that Discord of all things had been shown to her, once again free and more malevolent than ever would have knocked Luna on her dream plot. The fear and pain on the faces of nearly a thousand ponies made the former Alicorn of the Moon tremble with the horrid realization that the draconequus hadn’t just taken the lives of that small town, but ensured that every one of them had been suffering to the maximum possible amount when they did go.

He had tortured them to death.

Twilight’s expression was slightly annoyed. “So, what did you see?” she asked.

The question made Luna focus on the presence rather than the extremely disturbing pictures that would be frozen in her mind for years to come. “Discord…he…breaks free?” she asked before another realization occurred. Something Luna knew she would have spotted earlier if not for the horror of the scene. “And the way he spoke to you. He knew you.”

Twilight frowned and grit her teeth. “He didn’t know…oh, you mean…” The larger alicorn let out a disgruntled sigh and shook her head. “Yes, Discord knew me. Within the year, Celestia will have a bout of insanity, and somehow decide that Discord deserves freedom. That he can be reformed,” she spat as her forelegs shook in rage. “One of my friends, Fluttershy, actually manages to make us all think she befriended him, and so Celestia just gives him a tiny little corner of Equestria to treat as his own personal play pen.”

As the explanation finished, Luna managed to keep her mind calm. The reason for Discord’s release was disturbing indeed. It nearly made her nearly look deeper into Twilight’s past to see if it was indeed true, but Luna resisted the urge to concentrate what was being said in the present with some effort, and picked out an oddity in Twilight’s words.

“What do you mean that Fluttershy made you all think she befriended Discord? Why would she spread such a falsehood?”

Once again, Luna feared that she had misspoke. Twilight raised her head up and glared at the smaller alicorn. “Fluttershy would never-oh…wait,” she mumbled before letting out an angry breath and breaking eye contact for a few seconds.

When Twilight looked at Luna again, the smaller alicorn could see that the purple one was still angry, although that anger was most certainly not directed towards her. “You misunderstand. Fluttershy…she managed to…well, she managed to give Discord something he never had before. A companion.”

Luna nodded once. “So, she did manage to befriend him.”

“No,” Twilight replied with a shake of her head. “While I’m sure Fluttershy considered Discord her friend, to him, she was…well… Fluttershy was somepony he could use to make himself feel good. He could show her things, and get an ego boost when she said how impressed she was. He could have someone to talk to in order to help fight off boredom. Everything Discord did with Fluttershy was so that she could applaud him, and feed his ego. Not once was there ever any true sacrifice on Discord’s part in Fluttershy’s name, or real expressions of care for her feelings. True friends care for one another on a level Discord never did for anything that wasn’t useful to him. So for Discord, all Fluttershy ever was…was an audience for his comedy.

“After I killed him-”

The rest of Twilight’s words were lost to Luna as she steadied herself. “You…what?”

Twilight tensed and looked away from her. “I used the full power of Harmony to end his existence. I’m not…proud of it, but…I just…” The purple alicorn’s breathing began to increase, and she looked down at the ground.

Not wanting to disturb the creature in front of her any further, Luna delved back into the road Twilight had walked down to get where she was…


When the memory came into focus, Luna watched as Twilight fired a rainbow at Discord from the air above as the draconequus looked around wildly in a panic. Judging from the positions, Luna was certain this showing of the past was only a few more moments along than her previous vision.

Down on the ground, repeatedly snapped his fingers in agitation. “Why in the name of all things random won’t my magic work?” he demanded just before looking up in time to see the rainbow strike him.

The draconequus let out a scream of pain. His tattered body flew from the impact site to slid a good five feet on the ground before Twilight landed near him, her horn already aglow with the light of harmony. “M-My magic.”

“An inverse harmonic energy field centered around you,” she explained in a hard voice as she began to slowly walk toward him. “Hay, it just feeds of the magic around us. After the startup, I don’t even have to maintain it.”

Discord began to rise, and then collapsed as his mismatched appendages gave out from under him. “You…why?”

The alicorn paused misstep, and narrowed her eyes. “You…you have the GALL to ask me that?” she demanded. “Three hundred years, I have lived in this town! I have seen every single stallion and mare on the day they were born, gone to parties to celebrate their lives, and paid my respects when they passed! And every night they would dream with me and my friends to share their joy and friendship with all of us! Every single pony in this town considered the six of us FAMILY! AND YOU ASK ME WHY? EVERY LAST ONE OF THEM WAS PRECIOUS BEYOND ANYTHING YOU COULD EVER HOPE TO IMAGINE!

“No,” Discord choked out. “Only one pony…was ever…really important.”

OH SHUT UP!” Twilight screeched before she sent a rainbow beam through Discord’s body, making him cry out in pain. “You…you say something like that, but you…you never really cared about her!”

The draconequus coughed heavily. “That’s…not true. I cared for Fluttershy, more than you ever did.”

LIAR!” Twilight accused. “If you had respected her, you never would have done something like this!”

Discord sneered. “And if you had truly care for her, you never would have taken her connection to the Tree. Without that-”

Another beam of rainbow light cut Discord off and changed his words to a scream. A second later, Twilight was standing over him in all her anger. “BE QUIET! I don’t want to hear that from you! What I was doing to them was selfish! I only kept them around for my own benefit, not theirs! And the happiness I was able to give them is NOTHING compared to what they’re experiencing now in Elysium, surrounded by everypony who’s ever loved them for eternity!”

Despite his predicament, Discord let out a laugh. “Elysium? Is that how Celestia convinced you to finally take the Elements away from your friends? To kill them? Oh Twilight, aren’t you a little too old to be believing in fairy tales?” he asked as Twilight prepared to fire another blast of harmonic wrath from her horn. “You stupid little pony.”

The rainbow loosed.

And Discord gave a final grin filled with cruelty.

“There is no such thing as Elysium.”


The memory faded, and Luna found herself sitting back inside of Twilight’s dreamscape with the other alicorn frowning at her. “Luna…would you please stop doing that?” she asked before shuddering a little bit. “No offense, but it gives me the creeps.”

Luna frowned back at her. “It would appear I had to, as your explanation of what happened to you after becoming an alicorn was extremely lacking in detail. Such as the end of Discord, and the continued life of your friends.”

“That…” Twilight paused and sighed. “I’m sorry. I didn’t think it was relevant to…no.” Once again, she sighed. “No, the truth is…I didn’t want you to know.”

The odd reasoning made Luna cock her head. “Pardon?”

Twilight looked over to the other alicorn. “Luna, after my friends…died,” she said with great difficulty. “You were there for me. You comforted me. You kept me together. Without you…I…I would have become a true Nightmare! I would have killed Celestia and plunged Equestria into…well…to tell the truth, I’m not sure what I would have done to the rest of Equestria. I didn’t really care about anypony outside of Ponyville, and after it was gone…” she sadly shook her head. “You gave me focus, and let me find my hope again.”

“Hope?“ Luna questioned. “Explain.”

After taking in another deep breath, Twilight looked back to where the door leading in had been. “Well, I take it you saw what my mind was like on the way in?”

“Yes,” Luna acknowledged.

Twilight nodded and licked her lips nervously. “It didn’t happen for about one hundred years, but…eventually, I started to consider Discord’s words. Both you and Celestia assured me he was just trying to get one final lick in, wound me where it mattered rather than simply damaging me physically. But I couldn’t let it go. So, I started my experiments involving the afterlife.

“At first, I was hopeful,” she went on. “I worked under the theory that there was an Elysium, or at least some place to go after death. And to find it, I needed to try and follow somepony who went there. So I traveled across Equestria, going to every hospital and hospice there was. I would find terminally ill patients close to their expiration dates and offer them whatever monetary or political favor they wanted. After awhile, I also posted guards in hospitals with orders to inform me if mortally wounded ponies should be brought in.”

Luna raised an eyebrow. “Ponies you could have healed.”

“Ponis I did heal,” Twilight countered as she frowned at Luna. “I’m not Celestia. Yes, as a ruler, Celestia is able to help more ponies than she would be able to if she just went around Equestria mending broken bones, but…that wasn’t me.”

Twilight closed her eyes and shook her head. “Getting off topic,” she said before a resolved look reappeared on her face. “After several years of observing the deaths of the elderly and healing the injured with no success, I decided to reexamine my approach. While I couldn’t stand by and let a good pony die, the life force of a healthy pony presented me with a stronger signal to follow. With some veiled threats to Celestia to keep her from opposing me, I reinstated the death penalty for criminals who had proven to be unrepentant for heinous actions. I had hoped with a stronger pool of magic to trace, I would be able to find the dimensional frequency or the afterlife to prove Discord wrong and reassure myself that everything was okay.

“Instead…I proved the exact opposite,” she said with another sigh.

The rather…disturbing implications of Twilight’s words made Luna become tense. “What do you mean?”

After a few seconds, Twilight spoke again. “I found out where dead ponies go when they die, and it is not an eternally green land filled with friends. Or…well…the later might be true, in a way.”

Luna’s nervousness grew upon hearing Twilight’s words. “Explain.”

“Well…a basic law of the universe is the conservation of magic. The very makeup of what we are shall always exist in one form or another. You can’t take it away, and even our methods of neutralizing magic doesn’t really cancel it out, just suppresses it. So, when a pony passes on…their magical energy, the essence of their being, it joins the ether, the background magic of Equestria.

“I…guess you could call it an afterlife…of sorts, where all are one,” she said with a shrug. “I’m not really into the theology of it. Even after so many years, I never bothered looking into it because the answers given aren’t all that solid. I just know what happens to the core of our being after our bodies are done.

“And then I developed a magical system to find specific trace elements of that energy and collect them to be inserted into a vessel,” Twilight explained as she looked around at the crystal cave.

Luna’s eyes widened as she looked around the cave, and then turned back to the alicorn. “Twilight…are you saying you…found a way to restore a dead pony to life?”

“Yes,” she replied softly. “It takes some time. The first time I remade her, she was…very incomplete. Even with my spells to restore her memory, Rainbow Dash couldn’t recall important details of her life, and her personality was slightly off. It took me a few years to understand the reason for this was that I hadn’t reconstructed her in full. Some of her soul-stuff had been used to construct another pony.”

There was a pause, and Twilight took in a deep breath, only to let it out a few seconds later. “So I had to…try and recreate her again,” she said, obviously choosing her words very carefully. “Which meant recycling the reborn Rainbow to make the new one.”

Luna’s eyes narrowed. “In other words, you killed her.”

“I didn’t know it was going to be permanent!” Twilight said in her defense. “But…when I added in the missing pieces of Rainbow’s essence, I hadn’t tried doing that before it had rejoined the greater mass. It was unstable. New information as overwritten, and the pony I had gotten to know in those five months just…ceased to exist.” She shook her head. “After that, I promised myself to perfect the process. It took longer to pull her essence out of the greater mass rather than just collect it from her corpse, but...I could never manage to stabilize it any other way.”

When Twilight paused for several more seconds, Luna gave her a good ten count to allow her some time to gather herself before prompting a continuation. “And then?”

“Failure,” Twilight answered softly. “Failure, after failure, after failure. The new Rainbow Dashes were…more her, but…something was always missing.” She looked over to her own flank. “Because I carried a piece of her…inside of me.”

Tears welled in Twilight’s eyes. “Hundreds of thousands of times, I tried to bring my best friend back into the world, to perfect the process so I could bring the others I had gathered as well. We were going to be together forever. But…because of that stupid spell that Celestia tricked me into casting, I would never truly get to see my friends again.”

Luna did her best not to let her emotions show as Twilight curled up into a depressed ball. Mostly because she didn’t know what to feel.

Angry at the disruption of the natural order?

Disturbed at Twilight’s actions?

Terrified of the creature in front of her?

And the way Twilight had described this rebirthing process… “Twilight…would not your friends be…mostly there?” she asked hesitantly.

“Luna,” Twilight replied as she raised her head back up to look at the other alicorn with tired eyes. “If Celestia were to die. Would you want her back? Or somepony that was just ninety-nine-percent her?”

Once again, she sighed and shook her head. “Eventually, things changed. Somepony…showed me my foolishness in just endlessly trying the same process forever. I would never be able to get my friends back,” Twilight told Luna. “But…then he offered me a new solution.”

Luna nodded once. “Your time travel, I take it?”

Twilight became hesitant for some reason. “Yes, but…it isn’t really that simple,” she admitted. “I could go back in time, but what would that solve? I could meet and play with my friends all over again” She paused, and tears began to form in her eyes. “And it has been more wonderful than I had ever dreamed, but…”

A few moments later, and Twilight had managed to put on a mask of composure, if barely. “But what would any of it have accomplished if I had no solutions to the long-term problems?”

“Which are what?” Luna asked as her eyes narrowed.

Twilight studied the other alicorn for a moment and then shook her head as she sighed. “Luna…I don’t want to hurt or dethrone Celestia. As monstrous as she is, she is still a better ruler than I could ever be. Scare her a little, make her feel a little of the pain I have gone through, but…physical harm and death…that’s…no,” Twilight assured her. “Still, I’m not as strong as I used to be. In the time I came from, I wielded the full might of Harmony. Even four alicorns aided by the magic of the Crystal Heart were no match to the power I controlled. Now…I’m only a unicorn with the power of Magic. I may not be able to be as gentle as I once was, if she tries to get in my way.”

The roundabout threat had Luna on her hooves in an instant. She found herself on the floor and glaring at Twilight Sparkle. “If you should try and set yourself against my sister-”

“Luna please!” Twilight pleaded with more emotion than she had shown since they began talking. Although whether it was from her sincerity, or merely a leftover of the emotional moment from before, she wasn’t sure. “I don’t want to hurt anypony! I’ve never wanted to hurt anypony! All I want to do is set things right! Put them the way they were supposed to be from the beginning!”

“So you say,” Luna replied as her eyes narrowed. “Yet you know not the powers my sister-”

Twilight was on her hooves as well, and Luna tensed as the giant alicorn loomed over her, the smaller alicorn nearly the size of a foal in comparison. “Don’t mention Celestia’s stupid foresight to me! That…idiot thinks it makes her so infallible, when it’s really nothing more than an excuse for her own foolishness!”

“Twilight-” Luna began as she stepped backwards.

“If her sight is truly so grand, where was she when you fell into darkness?” the other alicorn demeaned. “Why was she unaware of your creation of the Tanabus? How did she not know that Discord fed every pony that delivered a letter to his house to monsters in a maze of chaos, or that he would attack Ponyville?

“The only reason your stupid sister holds to her destiny rhetoric is to excuse her own foolish actions as something that had to happen to alleviate her own guilt!” Twilight went on. “Anything that doesn’t fit her vision threatens to break apart her delusion, threatens to lay the guilt where it’s supposed to be, and so it must dealt with.

That’s why my friends had to die! Not because I needed the full power of Harmony to stop the Smooze, not because it was destiny. My friends died because Celestia couldn’t admit to herself that she wasn’t perfect!”

Although she had heard everything Twilight had said, Luna had latched onto something that demanded her attention. “You…know about Tantabus? I only crafted it days ago!”

Twilight’s expression softened. “Oh Luna…take it from a pony who’s been there. Beating yourself up over these things…it’s not worth it.” The irony that they were meeting in Twilight Sparkle’s nightmare at the moment was not lost on the smaller alicorn. “You brought about the eclipse that let the Nightmare in,” she continued. “But…everything else was not your doing.

“And…” she took a deep breath and placed her hoof on Luna’s shoulder. “When it comes time, I know you will be ready to face it again.”

Luna tensed. “You know about it then?” she asked as she spoke the basic realization. Which made her feel foolish. If Twilight was from the future, then of course she would have known about the creature. “I’ve felt it, waiting for me on the moon. If I should raise it once more…”

Twilight nodded. “Do not be afraid. After all, it’s not the first time I’ve dealt with that particular monster, or even the second. You’re stronger than that thing, and my friends will be here for you when it returns.”

The world rumbled, and both the alicorns looked at the ceiling. “My friends…they’re waking me up.”

“Then it would appear we shall finish this conversation later Twilight Sparkle,” Luna replied as they looked back to each other.

Twilight tensed, and then sighed when there was another dream quake. “Listen, about Celestia…”

Luna’s frown returned. “I say again Twilight Sparkle, should you threaten my sister-”

“ARGH!” Twilight cried in aggravation as she stomped her hoof onto the ground. “Look! I don’t want to hurt Celestia! I’ve never wanted to hurt Celestia! Even after she made me-”

Another shake cut Twilight off and she focused back to Luna after finding her footing. “Look, I promise I won’t harm Celestia. And if she still tries to stick her muzzle into my business, tell her that I made a deal with her in the future! If she stays out of my way, I will return to Celestia what was lost fif-”

TWILIGHT!”


Twilight shot up and looked around. Then, she winced at the ringing in her ears, and gave Pinkie a half-lidded expression when she noticed the megaphone in the pink pony’s hoof. “Hello Pinkie. Had a hard time waking me up?”

Pinkie Pie put the megaphone back into her mane and giggled nervously. It took Twilight by surprise when Fluttershy of all her friends answered her surly question.

“You were tossing in your sleep and crying out,” she said. “But we, um…you needed your rest Twilight. Even if you were having bad dreams.”

The reminder of her night terrors made Twilight have to fight from getting too aggravated. “It’s fine,” she assured Fluttershy, albeit not too gently. “I…Princess Luna showed up to help me deal with them. Still, thank you for your concern everypony. Hope you weren’t all too worried.”

“Somethin’ you need to get off yer chest sugarcube?” Applejack asked in concern.

Twilight thought about it for a few moments, and then shook her head. “No, I was just…reliving some bad memories,” she said before forcing herself to smile. It was an act that got her a slight frown from Pinkie. “But that’s why I’m here, right? To make sure I don’t have to.”

The train slowly came to a stop, and Rainbow Dash jumped into the air. “Alright! Finally get to stitch my wings. See you girls later!”

“That pony, I swear,” Rarity mumbled as the rainbow trail vanished. She looked over to Twilight. “Darling, you still look a bit uneasy. Need some help getting home?”

The offer of help brightened Twilight’s spirits considerably. “Thank you Rarity. With the headache Pinkie’s wakeup call gave me, I don’t even want to try using my horn.”

“Sorry,” Pinkie apologized.

After she had assured the pink pony everything was fine, Twilight left the train with her unicorn friend, a fair bit of luggage floating behind them. Thankfully, Rarity was quiet most of the way back to the library.

“So…any plans for the rest of the day?” she asked when they made it to the door.

Twilight gave a little smile. “Since I barely got two hours on the ride back, I think my body spent more energy getting into sleep mode then it got out of it. I’m going to down a sleep potion, and then hit the hay until tomorrow. You?”

Rarity smiled. “Well, with the Grand Galloping Gala coming up and my time now free of the need to actually make bits, I’m going to buy some fabric, and get to work on some dresses for the lot of you.”

If Twilight had more energy, she knew she would have spent some time gushing over Rarity’s declaration. Her original dress had never fit correctly after becoming an alicorn, even with the resizing Rarity performed. She looked forward to seeing herself in it again. “That sounds great,” she said before a poor attempt to resist certain urges made her take a step closer. “Oh…and don’t work yourself half to death on them this time Rarity. The last time was just…pretty terrifying.”

“Wait,” Rarity spoke up, confused. “I did this before?”

Twilight did her best to give Rarity a bright smile in response. “And they were wonderful,” she assured the unicorn.

With the usefulness of her foreknowledge returning, Twilight found her body relaxing in the want of a bed. As far as she could tell, everything was looking up. Her friends knew the truth, Luna had been…contacted, and Celestia…

Twilight let out a long sigh to let go of her anger before it could build up too much.

Celestia would be dealt with if she tried anything. Luna had been told about their agreement, and… “Oh who am I kidding?” she asked herself quietly before taking the luggage from Rarity now that her headache was gone. “I do it even if she does try something.”

Even Celestia didn’t deserve the pain of what Twilight had felt for all those years.

Still…Twilight couldn’t help but think she was forgetting something as she opened the door and…blinked at the sight in front of her.

On the other side of the room, Spike and the pink unicorn Sparkler were on the couch. With the vertical order of things being: Sparkler, Spike, and couch.

Twilight’s bags fell onto the grass.

Lips detached.

Sparkler’s eyes widened. “Uh! M-Ms Sparkle! We were just-”

Twilight let out a groan of a sigh as she looked at the young mare laying atop her still pretty much colt of a son, attempting to make use of the impressive length of tongue that dragon’s possessed.

“I’m well aware of what you were doing,” Twilight told her in a grumpy tone. As her luggage was wrapped up in her magic, Twilight’s mind decided that it was a good time to remind her that colts tended to fall for mares that had things in common with their mother.

Bucking half-plotted organizing unicorn with a thirst for knowledge. Spike was too young for her!

She walked into the library and shut the door behind her. For some reason, it made a rather loud bang that had Sparkler jumping off the couch. Judging by the look on her face, something had scared her. “Sparkler.”

“Y-Yes ma’am?” the unicorn asked as her legs trembled beneath her.

Twilight groaned. She wanted to go into a dreamless sleep, not deal with…whatever the hay this was. “We’ll talk tomorrow. Go home. Now.”

“Yes ma’am!” she said before running out the door, taking care to open and close it as she did.

“Spike?” Twilight spoke.

The dragon looked around nervously. “Um…yes Mom?”

Twilight stood there for a few moments, and let out another sigh. “I love you very much, and clean up all the empty tubs of ice cream you’ve got behind the couch, and anywhere else you made a mess.”

After looking behind the couch, he looked back to her nervously. “Uh…how did you-”

“Mom status has given me all-knowing magical powers,” Twilight told him on her way to the stairs.

On the way to her room, she paused in thought. Her friends were one thing, but Spike…certainly the dragon deserved to know, but…

Sleep first. Latest crises...later.

Author's Note:

Damn green smooze, had planned on that thing being the reason Twilight needed the full power of the Elements when her friends were too disabled/old to do anything with them from day one, and then the Gala happened.

THANKS M.A. LARSON! NATASHA LEVINGER!