Final Mission

by Sharp Quill

20. Second Chances

Seven years had passed since the spell had been cast, but Lyra bore them well. It was still weird to see her clearly older, while only days had passed for myself, and her mane had never been done up that fancily before. Her music, however, had only benefitted from the added experience. I had always wondered if moving to Ponyville to be with me had held her back. She denied it, naturally, but seeing her here caused those thoughts to resurface.

Princess Celestia had granted her an audience. They were in a room backstage, while I waited in a different room. A royal guard would eventually come around to fetch me.

The wait was killing me.

I knew she wouldn’t know me, but some part of me refused to accept that, insisted that somehow she’d recognize me or, at the very least, the chemistry we had would somehow make its presence felt.

The door opened and a guard poked his head in. “Your presence is requested, Sweetie Drops.”

This is it. I got up and followed him, praying that the butterflies didn’t fly off with my stomach. It was a battle that was being lost foot by foot as we walked.

I turned a corner and there she was, standing next to the princess. Now that I was this close to her, the added years were a bit more evident: the beginnings of a wrinkle or two, a few strands of gray hair, a few extra pounds, a more sedate attitude. She still looked wonderful.

Her eyes fell on me, and with a practiced smile she approached me. “I’m honored to meet a mare who has served Equestria as you have, especially one who is a fan of my music.”

The butterflies departed, dropping my stomach off a cliff. I knew that smile, that tone of voice. I was just another anonymous fan to her. There was no recognition.

A program guide floated off a nearby table, along with a quill. With her magic she wrote something on it, then sent it over to me. I plucked it out of the air. I read it. It was a standard-issue, meaningless autograph: Bon Bon, we can always use heroes like yourself. Lyra Heartstrings.

I looked up and managed to croak, “Thank you.”

This Celestia never knew me by that name, but I had wanted Lyra to hear the name she had known me by—not that it made the slightest difference.

“I wish I could chat longer, but I’m afraid I must be off.” The mint green unicorn started to make her way around me. “I have to help my son prepare for a school play.”

I nearly collapsed right then and there.

A son?

I watched what once was my best friend turn the corner, then looked desperately at Celestia.

“She’s been married to Posh Pants,” she softly explained, “the younger brother of Fancy Pants, for almost eleven years. They have a colt and a filly.”

---

I awoke to the gray void.

I opened my eyes just long enough to spot the Gate, then closed them again.

I was fine just where I was.

Intellectually, I had known Lyra would find somepony else with whom to share her life.

That wasn’t the same as having it shoved in my face.

Celestia had apologized for not mentioning it beforehoof, but she hadn’t thought the subject would come up.

Maybe it did me a favor. I had lost her, irretrievably, and the sooner I accepted that and moved on, the better off I’d be.

I had no idea what I’d do, once the reset finished. I’d lost any interest in following Lyra’s life. There was no reason to go back to Ponyville. Nopony in Canterlot would know me either.

This time I’d have disappeared while still living in my home town of Fillydelphia, living my dream of apprenticing under Caramel Dreams, a dream that had turned hollow with the tragic train accident that had claimed my parents’ lives a year earlier. There didn’t seem any point of going there either; over two decades would have passed, not to mention my parents would still be gone.

And after the next reset? I would have been about twelve years old. It’s bad enough they’d have to suffer inexplicably losing me, but what if that changed their future, enough so as to avoid taking that train? They might still be alive—quite old, but alive.

That’s all I needed: proof that I was the cause, however tenuously, of their early demise.

No. I never had Lyra. I never had parents. That is what existential separation meant.

I needed to put behind me that which did not exist.

I got up and passed through the Gate. Today I would see about getting a new candy store going; after all, I had not been separated from my cutie mark.

---

I hung the vacation photograph from Fillydelphia in my new kitchen; that much I would allow myself. That just left all the other boxes to unpack. The appliances had already been installed.

It was much like my old place in Ponyville. Upstairs was my home, which was on top of the store downstairs. All that really differed was the number of ponies living under the same roof—and the lack of ordinary three-dimensional space outside.

The precisely sequenced footsteps of lemur paws approached. I turned around to see Order entering the kitchen.

“Please forgive the intrusion,” she said. “I thought I would check up on you, to see how you’re doing.” Her eyes swept the room, her displeasure at the mess quite evident.

“Sorry about the mess. I just started unpacking.”

“Allow me,” she said, looking at me for permission.

“Knock yourself out.” I was curious to see what would happen. At least she asked for permission, unlike how a certain draconequus behaved.

Order reared up on her hind legs and snapped her fingers.

The kitchen instantly transformed. The boxes were empty, collapsed, and neatly stacked on a counter. The appliances were moved just enough to position them with mathematical precision, their sides perfectly aligned with adjacent walls, counters, and other appliances, either parallel to or at right angles. They were also sparkling clean, as if dismantled, scrubbed, polished, and reassembled.

I went over to a drawer and opened it. It held the utensils, perfectly arranged. I opened several cupboards; they were full of diverse ingredients, none of them mine. I shot the lemur a questioning look.

“Consider it a housewarming gift,” she said with a placid smile.

I certainly couldn’t complain about the results. Maybe she’d be generous with information as well.

“Look, I know there’s still one reset left to go, but I was wondering if I could finally get some answers to some questions.”

“You are certainly permitted to ask, and I am not so inflexible as to refuse the offering of answers.”

Not that I’d had a lot of experience with these “Spirit of Order” lemurs, but that did kind of surprise me. Perhaps it shouldn’t; it wasn’t as if Discord was all chaos all the time, incapable of an orderly thought or action.

I’d start with the big one: “Why me? Why was I selected?”

Order got comfortable on her haunches. “You had knowledge and experience with weapons based on forbidden knowledge. Your princess wisely terminated her offending Agency, quickly and efficiently, and thus she was able to negotiate protection for former agents such as yourself, in exchange for other considerations.”

“Such as the return of a ‘reformed’ Discord?”

She nodded. “Very good.”

“Yet I got zapped by that spell anyway.”

“That protection was subject to conditions. We sent the bugbear as a test.” A flawless frown graced her muzzle. “Unfortunately, you did not pass.”

So Discord had told me, I thought with growing anger. What was I supposed to have done? “Because I failed to capture it again?”

Order sadly shook her head. “Because you did anything at all. You should have minded your own business. You should not have gone back into Special Agent mode. Did not Celestia make herself clear?”

I gaped at the lemur in disbelief. “It was after me!”

“The Element Bearers had the situation under control, did they not?”

“Well, sorta, but…”

It seemed more or less evenly matched, but even at the time I thought they would eventually win. Because the monsters always lost.

“Why do the monsters always lose, no matter how overpowered they are?”

The lemur replied with an enigmatic smile. “We can continue this conversation later, perhaps after you have confections for me to sample.”

She once more snapped her fingers and teleported away.

---

I returned to the Gate room, perhaps for the last time. The Gate was in view mode, positioned within the library of Twilight’s castle. The alicorn herself was there, apparently giving a magic test to a unicorn filly, a filly I didn’t recognize.

Well, of course I wouldn’t! Almost thirty years has gone by. Twilight hadn’t aged at all; she might have been a bit taller, but that was it.

A unicorn mare nuzzled the filly, offering encouragement. She had a light, grayish violet coat and a golden blonde mane; if I knew her at all, it would’ve been as a filly.

Then an old pegasus mare joined her.

Those eyes.

It had to be Derpy, which meant the mother was Dinky, and the foal…

Beyond took notice of me. “Just another minute.”

I got closer for a better view. Unfortunately, no sound could be heard in view mode. “What’s going on?”

“Well, as far as I can tell, Twilight has taken on Dinky’s filly as her personal student.”

Dinky’s filly. It seemed like only yesterday that she herself had been a filly, enjoying my candied alfalfa. My life may have been almost completely erased, but their lives got to continue.

“Are you in a rush to get back?”

“No… no, I’d like to watch for a little while.”

One of the things I had learned was that they took advantage of these resets to see how the future would progress. Once the existential separation completed, time would roll back to the instant the spell had been cast, just as it had when I’d used the crystal to undo the spell.

And once it had completed, there’d be left just one bit of unfinished business.

---

Discord studied the door to the vault as he stroked his goatee.

“We could visit Celestia and tell her the good news,” I pointed out.

“Bah!” he sneered. “What’s the fun in that?”

I figured Discord would be Discord and decided to change the subject. “Look, while you’re thinking that over, there’s something I’d like to know.”

His attention remained on the door, which I took as permission to continue. “When you turned Ponyville into a chaotic wonderland, and Twilight and the others fought you, you deliberately let them ‘defeat’ you and supposedly turn you back to stone, right?"

His mismatched eyes continued scrutinizing the door. “Yes, yes…”

“Well, why did you wait so long before letting yourself get ‘reformed?’ That was the point of Celestia’s deal, right?”

He finished tapping on the door, with a talon on numerous random locations, before replying. “I was occupied elsewhere—the cat realm, actually. Once my services there were no longer required, I was free to try out Celestia’s idea and be ‘reformed’ by Fluttershy.” He looked wistful. “No idea it would turn out the way it did, honestly.”

Discord stepped back from the door. “I think I’ll keep it simple this time.” He thrust out his lion paw and slammed it into the door. It fell over, hitting the floor with a thud, exposing the stash of forbidden weapons.

No alarm, no flashing lights. Discord strolled inside; I followed, somewhat hesitantly. I guess we wait for something to happen. The seconds ticked by…

“Discord, what is the meaning of this!”

I spun around. A thoroughly unhappy Princess Celestia was standing before us.

The alicorn’s eyes fell on me. There was no recognition, only confusion. “Why did you bring this pony here? That’s a violation of your own protocols!”

Discord walked over and put a paw on the baffled princess. “The meaning, my dear Celestia, is that the protocols have changed.”

“Ch-changed?”

I stepped forward. “The contents of this vault, and the two others like it, shall be destroyed. They shall no longer pose a threat to Equestria’s future.”

Celestia’s gaze locked on to me. “Who are you?”

I smiled at my former princess. “A pony who does not exist.”

---

After the melted sugar had turned golden brown, I switched off the heat and poured in the peanuts, stirring until they were evenly distributed. Before it could cool too much and turn solid, I poured it into a large tray and spread it out to an even thickness with a spatula. All that remained was to let it cool off, then shatter it with a hammer.

My heart wasn’t in it.

Order had come back to continue our conversation. My separation was now complete and irreversible; no longer was I to be denied answers.

The monsters always lost because their purpose was not to “win.” They were there to both test and drive the development of the realm’s dominant sapient species. The real sin of The Agency, apart from relying on forbidden magics, was that it had tilted the playing field so much in our favor, that it had rendered the monsters ineffectual.

Other topics were covered too. Why populate the Nexus via kidnapping? It turned out that conception was impossible here. It wasn’t healthy for growing and developing creatures, period.

It was considered a necessary evil. They did have an involved process for identifying suitable candidates, made all the more complicated by the requirement that, with the exception of their rulers, the realms remained ignorant of the Nexus. Resets helped here, as well; as one pony was being separated, others could be approached without consequences.

Some answers were still denied. I still didn’t know who or what were above the lemurs and draconequi, who created the Nexus and the numerous realms, or what they had hoped to achieve by all this. I supposed I could live with that. It’s not as if I knew answers to questions like that back when I had a life in Equestria.

I was offered the opportunity to be a field agent, much like Beyond, though not in Equestria; field agents rarely operated in their realm of origin.

There was no pressure to accept. The Nexus needed a functioning economy as well, and I could spend the rest of my life making and selling confections. Or even split my time between the two. This really wasn’t a bad place to be, if you ignored how you wound up here. I guessed it was their way of making up for it.

Regardless, my heart wasn’t in that either. Fighting them, managing them, it didn’t matter; I was done with monsters.

I looked again at the photo of me and Lyra. “Maybe that wasn’t such a good idea,” I said to myself. Maybe I should have kept that buried in the back of a closet.

I hadn’t felt this empty inside since my parents had passed away.

Yet it reminded me of the only good thing to have come out of this: Equestria had a future. Lyra had a future. I had even caught a glimpse of it.

Sure, there was always the possibility of something else going disastrously wrong, but I had faith Celestia would avoid that. I was even allowed to give her the executive summary of what had happened, so that she could adjust Twilight’s guidance accordingly.

There was no point in running the same experiment twice, after all.

And that gave me an idea, an idea for something that would give me new meaning: If I had managed to give my own realm a second chance, what about others?

---

I stepped through the Gate and into the royal bedchambers. A majestic lion gazed upon me with sad eyes, his head dipping.

“So it doesn’t work.”

I got the crystal out of a saddlebag and tossed it to King Apollo. He caught it with his magic. “Actually, it works splendidly,” I corrected him. “I voluntarily underwent existential separation afterwards. It’s a long story.”

I located a cushion and set myself down upon it, and I gave the bewildered monarch a smile.

“Let’s talk about second chances.”

Comments

[Victus454]

Well done, beautiful fan fiction. I still hate the idea of overlords experimenting with poeple's lives like they don't matter. But, hey Bon Bon made it work. Good job. Hope to read another story from you in the future.

[Eruantalon]

I know this said "Tragedy"... but I was still hoping up until the very last chapter that Bon-Bon would somehow get a happy ending.

[Meta Four]

Bravo. That was a very compelling read. Every time I thought I knew where the story was going, you threw a curveball. And your twists walk the fine line between being unexpected while making perfect sense in retrospect.

I gotta admire your take on Bon Bon, both for her no-nonsense attitude, and for the way she managed to give the cosmic overlords a black eye.

So, were you trying to make a bizarro version of Background Pony, or were the parallels coincidental?

[Sharp Quill]

7637220 Background Pony was in the back of my mind, but naturally I was aiming for something quite different.

The curve balls were very much the intent. I didn't really have the story planned out in advance, but I did know how it was to end and how what looked like an unqualified victory would become anything but (a BP parallel, I suppose). So I kept coming up with stuff to foreshadow what needed to happen. And sometimes I needed to foreshadow that stuff. This backwards-chaining is how unexpected twists make sense in hindsight.

And it's nice to see some spillover here from my currently featured story. It got very little attention while it was updating, and virtually none since.

[Meta Four]

You know, for a story with the tragedy tag, and which earned that tag, it still ends on a remarkably uplifting note.

7637295

And it's nice to see some spillover here from my currently featured story. It got very little attention while it was updating, and virtually none since.

Yeah, popularity on Fimfic can be fickle and strange like that. Ironically enough, I read that other story while it was the New Stories box, before it made the Featured box. Which is odd because I don't normally cruise New Stories for reading material.

[Stonecrop Sedum]

Good story...I gotta read something happy next.

[Fenton]

Finally read all chapters and well, it was great, I enjoyed it.

Like some stated before me, Background Pony seemed to have been an inspiration but the story and its treatment is enough different to not be a repetition.

So upvote (of course) and I expect to see more story from you.

[ferret]

In the future when they finally need the third princess to be the tiniest bit in the know, I want genius horse to read between the lines enough to come to learn that they wiped her mind, once she found out they conduct cruel experiments on sentient beings for their own amusement, and were willing to murder everypony in the world, just because she once had the tiniest chance to stop them. Except this time, she truly is ready for that knowledge, and acts with tact, discretion, and humility, until it's far too late to stop her. That's the story I wanted to read. Bon Bon's story here could have been revealed in fragments and hints in that story, as Twilight secretly pieces everything together, but it doesn't stand well on its own.

And just when they're starting to reason with her and weaken her resolve, Twi finds an aging photo of the pony who does not exist, smiling together with a pony Twilight once knew. Twilight cannot remember a relationship that never existed; Lyra never had such a friend in her life. In this way, she realizes just how much of an enemy of friendship the lemur Order is. Then she fucks their shit up.

So, had potential, but it was the wrong story to be told. The monsters win, everything remains unresolved, and even the tragedy feels lukewarm and tepid. Good try, I guess.

derpicdn.net/img/view/2013/11/15/473386.gif

[Ponygon]

Well, finally read the whole thing. This is a good story. Loved the concept of all those different races, and the weird geometry of the Nexus.

It was a sad story, but slightly hopeful. The ending was bitter sweet, and wasn't overwhelming, which was nice.

[Biker_Dash]

Damn... the level of feels in this story...
Well worth it's placement in my John 15:13, The Feels Run Deep, and my Best of the Best bookshelves.