Minuette: A Short Biography

by Revan

Early Life

Author's Note:

Envisioned as a one shot initially as I lay in my bed, but has now been 'chunked' into several parts.

Minuette was born to unicorn parents in the year 1984 AU (After Unification) in the city of Canterlot. As an only child, she was the focus of attention for her parents, who loved their daughter deeply. She was raised and nurtured with much love and care, and at first she seemed to be a perfectly ordinary unicorn filly. But that illusion of normalcy was soon dispelled.

In 1989 AU, at the age of five, Minuette used her time-altering magic for the first time. Inside of a small bubble of space-time, she slowed down the flow of time, which caused the motion of objects to speed up, in agreement with the general theory of relativity formulated by the great scientist Starshine in the year 1915 AU. Her parents were startled to find a small ball bouncing up and down at great speed, faster than normal gravitational acceleration could account for. Initially assuming that Minuette was using her magic to hurl the ball upward and then slam it downward, her father stepped forward and stretched his right forehoof out to catch the ball in midair, which nearly resulted in catastrophe, as his hoof entered the space-time bubble and proceeded to move faster than the rest of him, which began to stretch his foreleg out and threatened to rip it off. Minuette collapsed the space-time bubble before this ensued, saving her father's foreleg from destruction, but not soon enough to prevent internal injury from the stretching.

Her father was rushed to the Emergency Room, where the unicorn healers attempted to fix his forehoof. They managed to slow the rate of the internal bleeding but were unable to halt it entirely, or to heal the stretched-out bones. Allowed in to see her father and accompanied by her mother, Minuette was clearly upset. Her father, in violation of the doctors' instructions, used his magic to remove the restraints from his right forehoof, and reached towards his daughter.

At this point, Minuette used her time-altering magic for the second time in her life, this time accelerating the flow of time in a small space-time bubble, which slowed the motion of physical objects. Her father's forehoof suddenly slowed down, which undid the stretching and restored the bone back to its natural shape and density. Before her father could draw back his hoof, she collapsed the bubble, preventing him from re-stretching out his forelimb.

After hurriedly escorting Minuette and her mother out of the room, the doctors examined the forelimb again, checking for additional damage. Amazingly, the bone was perfectly restored, leaving only damaged blood vessels to be fixed. The healers tried again, and this time the hoof was healed.

News of this strange occurrence spread rapidly through Canterlot. Princess Celestia heard of it, and arranged a meeting with Minuette and her parents. While interviewing her, she noticed that the young filly was using her magic. Curious, Celestia surreptitiously scanned for magic. She discovered a bubble of altered space-time around the pendulum clock in the residence, which was making the pendulum swing faster, causing the clock to register time as going faster, even though time was actually proceeding at a slower rate than normal within the bubble.

Princess Celestia had never encountered or heard of any pony having the ability to control space-time. Fascinated, she invited Minuette to attend her school for gifted unicorns. Her parents, puzzled by Minuette's abilities but loving her no less than before, gratefully agreed, hoping that Minuette would learn how to control her abilities more thoroughly.

Minuette attended Princess Celestia's School for Gifted Unicorns for the next thirteen years of her life. She was able to use several principles of magic to refine her time-altering abilities, though she had to experiment and discover what she could do on her own, as no other unicorn could even begin to do what she was capable of doing with just a thought. However, the lessons did assist her, as she learned how to accomplish more common feats of magic, including highly precise levitation and the art of teleportation.

Teleportation in particular was easy for Minuette. Teleportation involves creating a wormhole in the fabric of space-time, allowing one to suddenly be somewhere else. In rare cases, if a pony had the power and the knowledge, one could teleport back in time a short while, though the natural fabric of the timestream would bring them back to the present rapidly.

Minuette, however, took teleportation to a whole new level, being able to teleport through time as easily as she did through space. She quickly became a terror in the games of magicball, a version of dodgeball played by unicorns in which magic use is allowed, that were played as a recreational pastime. She could teleport herself back in time after the game, causing two versions of herself to be on the field at once. What's more, as her abilities increased over time she became capable of doing this repeatedly, and all opponents would be swamped by the armada of herself that took the field.

Once the games hit this stage, it became Minuette vs everypony else, with the games being close-fought at first but rapidly swinging in Minuette's favor. This culminated in the legendary game known as the "Timeball Game", held on March 13, 1997 AU, where Minuette played against all the other students - and faculty members, an unusual event since they were not interested in or allowed to play in the students' magicball games under normal circumstances.

The game was hard-fought initially, since Minuette had only traveled back in time eleven times, meaning only twelve of her were on the field, rather than her more usual twenty-five that she had utilized for the past year. The twelve versions of Minuette struggled to stay in the game against so many opponents. She appeared to be on the brink of collapse when she suddenly unveiled a new refinement of her time-altering abilities.

Minuette had refined her space-time bubble techniques to the point that she could make it any shape she wanted. But even more importantly, she had developed the ability to make moving space-time bubbles.

Suddenly, every version of Minuette on the field created a space-time bubble around themselves that only included themselves, and none of the surrounding air. They slowed the flow of time, which had the effect of speeding up the motion of objects - which, due to their recently developed ability of making moving bubbles, meant that no matter how much they moved, they stayed inside of a space-time bubble that included only them and nothing else - not even air or the ground.

Suddenly, all the Minuettes moved with blinding speed, catching their opponents by surprise. All opposition to Minuette crumbled under a hail of dodgeballs, the relentless pummeling leaving bruises due to the Minuettes also creating space-time bubbles around the dodgeballs, slowing time and speeding motion. The balls heated the air around them due to the friction of air in unaltered space-time being run into by time-slowed, motion-speeded dodgeballs.

The game was won. Then, right after the game finished, the other Minuettes disappeared, going forward in time to their teleportation point, and the last Minuette - who was all of the other Minuettes, them being herself earlier on - collapsed on the field, unconscious.

It turned out that Minuette had overexerted herself, with each successful travel through the magicball game draining her reserves of magical energy, the final straw being that she had accidentally forgotten to take a deep breath before she had generated the space-time bubble around herself on the last run-through, which knocked her out due to oxygen deprivation. She was out for three days. When she awoke, she was greeted with the news that she was the all-time magicball champion of the school and that she was going to be a member of the school's hall of fame - and that, due to safety and fairness concerns, she was banned from playing magicball ever again.

During her years at Princess Celestia's School for Gifted Unicorns, she became close friends with the future alicorn and princess Twilight Sparkle, along with Moondancer, Lyra Heartstrings, Twinkleshine, and Lemon Hearts.

When her education ended and Twilight Sparkle left for Ponyville, a chapter in the life of Minuette closed, and a new one began.

Comments

[Trimontar]

Minuette alicorn or spirit of time!

[Metool Bard]

...

Is this supposed to be legit? As in, are you actually trying to write a biography for Minuette, dry format and all? Because if that's your intention, well, I'm not sure what to think of it.

On the one hand, I do give props to you for breaking new ground that I haven't seen on this site before. That does take a lot of guts. Not only that, but this does read like something out of an actual biography, or at least a history textbook. However, by successfully replicating the format of a biography, you may have alienated people who find that kind of stuff dull and uninteresting. Especially since biographies are exempt from the "Show, Don't Tell" rule that most stories have.

So while I applaud you for dabbling in genres and formats other authors haven't, there might be a reason why other authors haven't dabbled in those genres. This is not to say that biographies are inherently boring, or that your story is bad by any means. I too have a headcanon where Minuette's special talent involves space-time manipulation. But the dry format you decided to use for this piece is an acquired taste that I don't think many readers on this site have. That's just my take on it.

[Revan]

6251698 Thank you for your insightful comments. I decided to write it as a bio because otherwise the story would wind up becoming too long - and long stories, for me at any rate, take a long time to write.