Aca-decade

by Daxn

Unexpected Sights.

Once she was out of the portal and onto the stone pavementation in front of the statue hosting the portal linking Equestria with Earth, Twilight was greeted by an unusual sight.

Her calculations predicted that she was going to land into Earth at around noon and -- on Earth at least -- a month or so later since her last visit. However the landscape around her was one more akin to a corpse less battleground than to a schoolyard.

Clothes of all kinds were stacked up on opposite sides, with an odd concentration of elegant clothing in the same piles, separated from the other, more "casual," clothes of unknown ownership. Some patches of grass had been stomped to the point of revealing the muddy ground the grass was rooted in, two gargantuan black drapes covered the school building's façade, black and red flags were planted around the path to the school's entrance, giving it a semblance of unusual eeriness.

"This doesn't look good..." Twilight muttered, slowly and carefully walking along the flag-sided stone path, looking around her. "I hope no-one has been hurt when this... event, happened. Although, given how high the clothing piles are, something tells me I'm deluding myself."

A crowd's call and the faint sound of distant cars speeding by were the only other sounds that accompanied the soft rustling of the flags and the drapes'.

As she got closer and closer to the main door, Twilight noticed a piece of paper hanging on the glass. She immediately ran forward, jumping over a few steps in order to get to the piece of paper.

"What's this?" She muttered, grabbing the sheet of paper and ripping it off the door, miraculously pulling the sticky tape off along with the paper, instead of the other way around. She set the paper close to her eyes, in order to not miss any kind of clue of what had happened.

"Due to force majeure causing critical damage and injury, all activities on the school grounds will be suspended to a date yet to be determined."

Twilight stared at it. She read again. Then she loosened her grip, letting the paper fall off her hands, her mouth agape. Her mind started to project several possible scenario about what could have happened to the school and- by restriction- her friends' counterparts.

"Was it... could have been because...? No, that's not likely," she muttered to herself, her mind browsing quickly through every possible ill that could have befallen the school, ranging from a riot, to plague, to mere national holiday.

"What are you doing here Twilight? And how did you grow up again so quickly?!"

Twilight snapped her head around and, almost at the end of the flags, she saw Nurse Redheart, followed by a small group of people, in which Twilight recognized Bon Bon and Apple Bloom's human counterparts.
“Oh- uh…” Twilight tilted her head confused. “What?”

“Wait a minute, Nurse,” Applebloom said. “Ah remember there bein’ a Twilight at the Friendship Games who looked nothing like this one. Does that mean that this is the one who saved us at the Fall Formal and Battle of the Bands?”

“What are you talking about, Applebloom?” Bon-Bon raised her left eyebrow and crossed her arms. “The voice, hair colour, and even the eyes match up to the Twilight who enrolled at Crystal Prep Academy.”

“Crystal Prep Academy? Other me?” Twilight’s mouth almost dropped. “Alright. I suppose I should go back a few steps by asking what happened here.”

“She doesn’t even remember turning almost everyone into infants?” Redheart’s jaw fell in place of Twilight’s.

“It’s a long story, Nurse Redheart.” Twilight laid her hand on the nurse’s shoulder. “I’d be happy to tell you everything if you told me what happened here first.”

Redheart cleared her throat. “Well, Twilight. Every four years, a tournament called the Friendship Games happens. And when that happens, the twelve best students from Canterlot High School, and our rival school, Crystal Prep Academy compete in a series of challenges to prove who is the better school.”

“The Crystal Prep Shadowbolts won every time the Friendship Games came around, ever since it originally started,” Bon-Bon took over. “Trained ruthlessly, they became cocky, smug, arrogant, and they put their reputation in front of friendship, seeing us as nothing more than enemies.”

“But with the last Friendship Games which just finished yesterday, Sunset Shimmer and her friends were competing for CHS, and the Twilight who went to Crystal Prep Academy somehow managed to steal their magic from them!” Applebloom threw her hands in the air.

“What?!” Twilight almost fell over with how vigorously she lurched backwards. “But that’s impossible! The Magic of Friendship can’t be stolen from the Spirits of Harmony and used against them… Can it?”

“With some weird sciency-locket thing, it can. But, she wasn’t evil in doing it. The device just acted the second one of your friends had a Pony-Up as they called it. And when that happened. Poof! All gone.”

“She must’ve re-purposed a compact quantum mainframe to absorb electromagnetic frequencies, therefore being able to extract the magic as if it were a source of energy, like electricity in the air.” Twilight scratched her chin for a few seconds. “An ingenious idea for harvesting raw unicorn magic for study, but very dangerous in the wrong hands…”

“Twilight’s magic-stealing spree eventually opened up a number of rifts in the sky, floor, walls, and even thin air. It eventually got out of hand, and Crystal Prep took advantage of what it could do.” Bon-Bon walked closer. “They all pushed her against the wall, and with some final pressing from the school’s Principal Cinch – or former principal after the blast – the magic became a torrent of white light, turning almost everyone into babies, toddlers, or elementary school children.”

“Hmm… Abacus Cinch in Equestria was a megalomaniac who once tried to conquer the Crystal Empire back in my world when my parents weren’t even born from what I’ve learned.” Twilight pulled out a book from her backpack. “Before King Sombra rose to power, she led her armies against the empire in the hopes to extend her legacy for years to come, but with the help of the powerful alicorn princess Radiant Hope, Cinch was not only defeated, but her whole kingdom abandoned her, and took all their food, resources, and even water with them.” She flipped through the pages to eventually show a unicorn version of Cinch being defeated by a purple alicorn with light blue hair. “Huh. Comes as no surprise that that very same personality would be embedded in this world’s Abacus Cinch too.”

There was a long pause before Applebloom continued. “Anyway, in the wake of that massive explosion, mah sister Applejack was reverted to a four-year old, with Pinkie Pie and the others only months old!”

“Where are they now?” Twilight asked.

“Everyone went home with their parents, but Sunset Shimmer was all alone because she didn’t have any. Ah was worried sick at first, but I did see Crystal Prep’s Dean Cadence going to the park with her this afternoon.”

“My sister-in-law’s a dean in this world?” Twilight nearly bounced in delight before she recomposed herself and coughed for a few seconds. “Sorry. How nice of her.”

“Celestia, Luna, Cadence, and Cinch didn’t suffer the regression as much as the others. Instead, the four of them are all sixteen, maybe seventeen years old now,” Nurse Redheart finished the explanation. “Unless there’s a way to fix this, everyone’s gonna have to grow up all over again.”

“That might be harder than you think now, Nurse Redheart.” Twilight looked at where all of the dirtied clothes lay. “If they’re all babies again, then the magic will be very hard to call on, since their minds will rapidly jump from one thing to another in their infantile states. If anything, I wouldn’t be surprised if the magic was gone forever with the regression.”

“So there’s no way to fix this?!” Applebloom arched her arms so that her elbows pointed towards the ground.

“I didn’t say that there would be no way to fix this, Applebloom. Just that the chances are almost slim-to-none,” Twilight corrected. “In order to find a solution, I would need to know the full extent of the events leading up to this issue first. Then I would be in need to find the right material to create another mainframe, and only then I can figure out what to do.”

“That would be a problem,” Nurse Redheart said with a deadpan tone. “Remember, your, shall we say, ‘counterpart,’ isn’t currently best fit to talk, so are the so-called ‘Wondercolts’ and, if I am not mistaken, Principal Cinch is in a similar predicament as Celestia, Luna and Cadence.”

“Yeah, unless you know how to make them talk or somethin,’” Applebloom said, sighing deeply. “Or, well, go back in time.”

Twilight shook her head vigorously, shuddering at the mere thought of undergoing time travel issues once more.

“That would be a good idea, but no thanks,” Twilight said. “Aside from the fact I am pretty sure it would take more power than I can take here, I do not feel ready to face potential time paradoxes and other anomalies. Trust me, I tried.”

“What do you mean exactly?” Applebloom asked curiously. “You mean you went back in time.”

“Take a guess,” Nurse Redheart said, as she then turned around. “Now, Twilight, do you mind help us to retrieve some things lost in the piles? We’re trying to bring those to their original owners, in case something extremely valuable had been lost inside them.”

Twilight nodded and soon proceeded to walk towards the piles, shifting throught them.

Comments

[Galaxy of Equestria]

i hope sunset get go home? paring she does.

[Kikio3000]

Yay Twily came! :)