Entry 1- May 19th, 1003

The Diary of Blue Lightning: Adventurer.

Entry 1- Tuesday, May 19th A.B. 1003, 5:30 PM
Location: Ponyville, Equestria

Today… was an interesting day. Something that makes somepony like me keep a diary all of a sudden. I've never really been much for writing things down, but after the events of the day so far, and the dubious nature of the stuff I think might happen, it's probably better that this stuff get written down.

I guess I should write a bit about myself first, so anyone who might eventually reads this might put face to name if I survive. Well, my name's Blue Lightning, and I'm a Pegasus stallion from Cloudsdale. I've got a blue coat, with a teal-and-dark-blue mane and green eyes, and my Cutie Mark is a thunder cloud. I moved to Ponyville when I was a colt, and I found my special talent here: I am very good at handling lightning, as my name might suggest. I took a job as a Weather Pony, where a lot of my work comes from what nopony else feels like doing that day. I have the distinction of being a storm specialist, though… for what that's worth. Second on the totem pole next to Raindrops, and first in command if it's a thunderstorm. My boss, Rainbow Dash, and I are good enough friends, and I swear her relaxed attitude towards management is why I end up doing so much of the cleanup work on the day-to-day stuff. Today, though, was scheduled to be quite stormy in the afternoon… little did I know the meaning of the storm I was getting into.

It'd been a pretty busy day. Full of maneuvering clouds and making sure the lightning wouldn't go off early. Stuff's unstable! I was doing some last minute checks over the market when I spotted some ponies still milling about, two of them were strangers. One was a pegasus stallion named Ash Cloud, decked out in heavy armor. He has a light gray coat, a mixture of dark gray and black hair and deep blue eyes. His cutie mark is a four-leafed clover. He was also clearly a member of the Royal Guard, supposed to be just passing through, but had missed the train. The other was a unicorn named Gypsy Cake. And WOW, is she crazy… I live in the same town as Pinkie Pie and I am having trouble understanding her. She's got a dark lavender coat, blue-violet and green mane, and similarly blue-violet eyes, with a cutie mark of a magnifying glass with a question mark inside. The pony I did know was Sweetie Belle, out running errands for her sister Rarity. After an extended discussion of how it's going to rain soon, Sweetie getting the tea she needed from Gypsy, who… conjured it? Somehow? Apparently crystal balls can be changed into bags of tea somehow. It's all weird unicorn stuff to me. Rarity hadn't been feeling well, so she had gone out to fetch the tea. Ash, not wanting the filly wandering around alone, offered to escort her home. Gypsy wanted to tag along for some reason, and I didn't trust that mare (and still don't) so I went too. Should have been a simple walk to the Boutique, but when we got there, the place was in shambles. The door was bashed in, and there as a large hole out the opposite wall. After talking to Rarity herself, we learned little of the events, aside from a bright flash that had happened an hour and a half ago or so.

We're interrupted by fillies screaming from outside, as Apple Bloom and Scootaloo come running from the direction of the Everfree Forest, no doubt seeking their friend. Ash and I went out the window, and took up defensive stances, only to find the source of their fear was the 'Great and Powerful' Trixie in an argument with a gray-purple unicorn stallion named Unicos, who she'd apparently shot at. As she left in a huff, Numros had asked what happened to the boutique. With the help of Gypsy's weird crystal ball and some lucky sensing by Ash, we figured out a group of ponies, including my friend Shade Shadow, had broken into the boutique with the intent of fighting Rarity. While she wasn't harmed in the end, she was apparently under the control of some sort of dark magical suggestion necklace… or something like that, anyway. We rounded up the gemstones in her shop that were infected, and Gypsy blasted them. We managed to trace the spell back to the Crystal Empire, but our group was under-prepared to go there and fight whatever caused the problem. So, instead, we went into the Everfree Forest to get some help from Zecora for whatever the magic did. As it turned out, due to some exposure to a half-finished remedy, she'd been infected with Poison Joke. The resulting symptoms led to her hiccuping after only short phrases, making her unable to speak, let alone help us. It's on the way back that Unicos started… changing. It was immediate, and I was sure at first that I was hallucinating, but he lost his horn and got wings with next to no warning. Weirder still, he had no memory of anything that had just happened, and introduced himself as Docios. He still had the same blue and blue mane, the same maroon eyes, and even the odd triangular cutie mark with the three theater masks. He seemed to be on the same wavelength of crazy as Gypsy, and they hit it off immediately. In fact, the amount of time they spent quietly was limited. At least Ash Cloud was sane. His stoic attitude was the only thing keeping me from telling off the crazy squad… at least until we found the rift.

It was like a crack in the universe, and by far the weirdest thing I've ever seen. Then Gypsy, in her infinite wisdom, jumped into the portal, which collapsed instantly. Docios had changed into Unicos again, and had no idea what was going on… but all we had to do was look up to see the problem. The sky itself had become a mad jumble of frayed cracks in reality… cracks in time or something, if I understand it right. We were debating what to do for a few minutes before Docios was back. He could somehow communicate with Gypsy through 'table talk', whatever that means, and had arranged a place to meet her. Luckily, she'd only traveled back in time roughly fifteen minutes. When we found her, I noticed the epicenter of the event was happening right above us, about a thousand feet in the air. I shot into the sky, coming close enough to see that it was like a crystal ball, mirroring the cracks in the sky with cracks in its own surface. I didn't touch it, though. Then Docios, armed with the crystal ball he'd 'borrowed' from Gypsy, dropped it into the epicenter. Whether it was a stroke of insane genius or just dumb luck, I can't say, but the crystal ball merged with the thing before the event collapsed in and formed the shape of a pony, who Docios caught while I… tried my best. As we lowered the pony to the ground, we'd found that his name was Fractal Prism, a brown unicorn stallion with a dark blue mane and blue eyes. His cutie mark was a fraying transparent rope with a rainbow shining through. He'd apparently come from 20 years in the future to change the timeline. I believe it, having seen the stuff that I just did. He'd had to break the timeline in order to change it, and that event might have been the break. Whatever's going on, we're on the train to Canterlot now, in search of Starswirl the Bearded's Laboratory, the next step in Prism's quest to fix the future.

Now, in this notebook Ash has given me, I'm going to keep a log of this journey, because for all I know, this is the most dangerous magical disaster in the world's history we could be trying to prevent… Prism hasn't really talked much about it. Poor guy seems so sad. Can't say I blame him, though. Time travel sounds like a mess. I'm sorry if I'm not the best writer, seeing as I don't exactly have a quill and paper as a cutie mark, but hopefully the tale of this adventure will be exciting as I think it might be, because between Gypsy's blatant insanity, Unicos/Docios' mysterious amnesia, and Prism's time thing? I think I'm in over my head here… but no great pony ever solved any problems by playing it safe, right?

Armed with my twin daggers, Mercurious and Smiir, just in case, I hope I'm ready for the moment this journey's dangers rear their ugly heads.

End Time: May 19, A.B. 1003, 8:45 PM
End Location: Ponyville-Canterlot Express

Author's Note:

What we know so far:
- Gypsy is insane
- Unicos and Docios seem to have no knowledge of each other and don't share memories
- Prism broke time to fix the future for some reason
- Blue is way out of his depth
- Ash is a ROYAL GUARD. ...yeah, I got nothing either.