Epilogue: Advanced Landscaping
Our minds are not designed to comprehend the activities of crystalline spirit trees on the Astral Plane. As such, we must settle for a rough approximation of what will soon happen amidst its mists and beneath its strange stars, using humanized forms of the ones involved for the sake of convenience.
From a certain point of view, the Tree of Harmony approached her daughter, who was in a mental state that approximated sitting and sulking with her arms crossed. Harmony put a proverbial hand on Junior's figurative shoulder and metaphorically said, "Hey, Honey. You doing okay?"
Junior turned away, wrenched her toy-castle-shaped hat back into place, and huffed, "I'm fine."
Harmony couldn't help but smile. "Oh dear. I had hoped that I wouldn't have to deal with an adolescent for another few centuries."
Junior just rolled her eyes.
"We really do need to talk, though."
"Fine. It's not like I can talk to anyone else right now." Junior scowled at her bracelet, its large crystal disc marred by a few hairline cracks.
"That's why we need to talk. You shouldn't have done that to the human Twilight. We should only guide, not command."
Junior sprung up to her feet. "I can't guide if I can't talk to them! And they don't know anything about the Map! For all they know, it's supposed to never work again. If they're just going to leave me mute for the rest of my life, I might as well find some other way to communicate."
Harmony shook her head. "There's communicating, and then there's directly nudging brains. That's a slippery slope you're on, young lady."
"She didn't have to follow my directions."
"No, but direct mental interfaces like that lead to dark places. Harmony has to be in balance with all things, including itself." Harmony shut her eyes. "Taking such a direct approach can lead to a bunch of empty, self-satisfied smiles not accomplishing anything."
After a few moments of silence, Junior said, "You seem to know an awful lot about this."
"We all have youthful indiscretions we're not proud of." Seeing that Junior still looked unsure, Harmony added, "The future's never very clear, but I can say with some confidence that they're going to know something's wrong in a matter of moons. Just trust them."
"Well..." Junior heaved a sigh. "Okay. I guess."
Harmony smiled. "Attagirl."
There were no more once-upon-a-times in what once had been the magical land of Equestria. The sun was a dying ember, the moon a derelict wreck, and any timekeepers long dead. There were only the untended clouds above, the shifting dust below, and her coasting between them.
She had accepted this state of affairs, had finished mourning the Equestria that had been. There had been anger and blame shifting. There had been desperate attempts to correct her mistake once she saw all else wither and die around her, long after her efforts might have made a difference. Now she drifted, her heart as cold and indifferent as the world she ruled by default.
Something registered in her senses. Faint, yes, but a pin dropped in an otherwise silent auditorium. It took her a moment to place the sensation, and once she did, she nearly fell out of the sky in her shock.
Magic. There was magic somewhere else. There could be life somewhere else.
She pumped her wings, even her muscles aching in protest after their long motionlessness. She paid no heed to the discomfort, intent on the possibility of something else, someone else out there. In her long transit, she noted that she had no idea what she might do when she finally found it.
Another flare of magic spurred her onward, helped steer her toward the source after she had drifted a bit off-course. And when she arrived...
Nothing. No motion.
She snarled and landed hard enough to crack the dead earth. A bare husk of a tree fell over, catching her eye. It brought to mind another tree, how she had watched its colors fade, watched it crumble into dead stone.
She never saw the blast. She just felt her moon-marked crown heat up, and then the fallen trunk became splinters and flames that dwindled to cinders even as she watched.
Snarling, she turned to go, when she noticed that there was something else there, a low table made from a painfully familiar material. It still glittered weakly, but the poor light and scouring breeze were doing their best to change that.
The crown burned against her skull once more as she erected a shield. She opened the saddlebags she'd never been able to leave behind. From one pocket, she pulled out crumbling chunks of the Tree of Harmony.
From the other, she pulled out its fruit.
She arranged five of the Elements on the table. The sixth she left in her crown for now. She still needed the power; there was no telling if the broken portal would pull her magic from her otherwise. Besides, the crown itself had long since fused to her skull.
She took a deep breath. "Well," she said, her voice creaking from long disuse, "let's begin."
And Sunset Shimmer, demon queen of dust, began to experiment.
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Uh-oh...
Cliffhanger reactions aside, you have a real knack for weaving comedy into your stories. This whole world is becoming more and more fascinating.
I take this last scene from the world where everything is dead.
Sunset came back took over and everything went FUBAR.
Whoa....
Sunset.... please... don't stray further into the dark path....
Here's hoping that open ending may lead to continuation, and possibly cross dimensional war.
Uh-oh indeed! That's a serious cliffhanger there, FoME.
This makes me want to do some alternate pony universe shenanigans myself...
7735913
The only thing Sunset was able to take over was a highschool. And that was only when she got possessed by the elements of harmony.
Worst villain, decent hero. How bacon hair has gotten such a large fanbase is beyond me.
So in this multiversal cluster, Sunset is the cause of the Ashlands timeline.
Either that or she happened upon it after the fact and had no way to return to CHS.
FOME, you've done it yet again
And that ending
Is that a continuation I smell?
7736157
Well, there shouldn't be too many ways a whole country if not world turns into a barren wasteland within a decade. A burny demon girl seems to fit the deal well enough.
7736332
I read that as Bunny Demon Girl. Of course, bunny demon is redundant.
7736372
If there really was a bunny demon girl it truly would be the apocalypse. At least if she comes across Angel Bunny. Two bunny demons, multiplying like... well, you know.
7736694 I wasn't even aware it was an actual word.
7736709 yeah calving is usually a cow having a calf, but it also applies to glaciers or large pieces of pack ice having metaphorical babies as well.
Well, at least we know who the Dead World belonged to.
Also, is Uncle from Jackie Chan Adventures going to show up and say "Only Sunset can defeat Sunset"?
That ending... Each worldline has it's own Astral denizens, right? ... If so, then Ashlands!Junior... If she's not dead... I don't wanna think about it...
Then again, she might be mentally/spritually independent from the castle, and she's just mute as well... just more sad and angry than Main!Junior...
... Where's Ashlands!Discord? Or is he dead or something due to Sunset or something??
And "Taking such a direct approach can lead to a bunch of empty, self-satisfied smiles not accomplishing anything." ... Sounds like a story there! ... As a one well read in FOME, should I know what it is?
Twilight being controlled makes sense now, of course.
7736880 I found the "empty, self-satisfied smiles" reminiscient of Our Town. (Also, I think I can recall most of FoME's work, and I can't recall anything like that in any of it.)
...damn you. Now I'm picturing Twilight's castle as a moeblob. A pouty moeblob. A pouty tsundere moeblob. Voiced by Rie Kugimiya.
With Twilight's cutie mark on her panties.
Ooooh, wonder where that last bit is going...
This was a delicious bedtime snack.
Nice to see that tidbit expanded. But, gotta say, the story image made me lose it
OH SNAP
That was DEFINITELY not what I was thinking to be the cause/correspondance to the Wastelands timeline! If that's a sequel hook than call me a fish because I have been CAUGHT on this line!
(I think that metaphor degraded on itself pretty quick...)
7736880
If I recall correctly, in one of FoE's other stories, it was stated that Discord, as an atemporal being, was aware of the timeshifts, but wasn't able to do anything to correct them- not his type of magic/preview. in some timelines, he was still imprisoned, in others he was dead (rather disconcerting, as he commented), and in one of course, he still ruled.
7737960
Yeah. This one I think: https://www.fimfiction.net/story/269242/1/time-enough-for-friendship/making-the-stars-right
And with this story, time travel and free will and stuff sort of make sense. Every choice is made, it's just some are less likely, so Starswirl goes to the most likely future. As that has enough probability to arise from the probability space background:
7735907
Thanks! Ever greater fascination is never a bad thing.
7736076
By all means, do so! AUs are tremendous fun to work with, and the flash fiction thread awaits should you choose to play in the Oversaturated World.
7736132
Twilight stopped her before she really got going. Yes, a teenage army wasn't the most menacing threat in existence, but causing a rupture in the fabric of reality? That made a bit more of an impact.
7736157 7736332
"Ashlands" is a poor name for this a particular instance of that timeline. That world didn't burn. It was bled dry, its magic-exsanguinated corpse slowly collapsing until the time battle found its way there.
7736709
I'm glad I could expand your vocabulary.
7736880
Junior never had a chance to exist in that timeline. Moondancer—yes, Moondancer, she's why the crown is moon-marked—failed to thwart Sunset before she could return the Elements to the Tree.
Discord is almost as dead as he can be. That's pretty darn dead, but not completely gone. As long as there is change and dissonance, he is there, but at the moment, he's incorporeal and comatose.
That doesn't refer to anything I've written. Yet.
And yeah, human Twilight does have an unfortunate tendency to get hijacked by cosmic principles. Still, if Sunset's anything to go by, they find her very attractive.
7737140
You're welcome.
7737801
There weren't a lot of villains left to perpetrate it; even the Flimflam brothers went full Once-ler beforehand. By process of elimination, Sunset seemed like the most likely candidate.
7737960
Bingo. Also, small but important detail, don't forget the M when referring to me. FoE is something very, very different. And I don't mean Kkat's crossover story.
7738275
Probability space can summarized as follows: Everything happens. Time is what keeps everything from happening at once. Space is what keeps everything from happening to you.
7738319
Hmm... Do you mean a Formido Oppugnatura Exsequens?
7738301
Well, we also saw her turn snips and snails into demons- presumably she could do that to the other teens as well. An army of demons, teenage or not, could probably do a decent amount of damage. And arguably, she could have probably enslaved the entirety of humanity, eventually, and without magic, they'd be helpless to stop her... and Equestria likely overwhelmed.
So if Sunset Shimmer, Demon Queen of Dust is going to be the mother of this new world, does that make Starlight Glimmer the father?
7738301
My personal theory for that one was that Twilight still had her surge (maybe through something Twilight did in that instance), but far less controlled than in the original timeline, making her first connect with the element of magic and then break it, pretty much breaking magic in the world.
...of course, that wouldn't fit for this instance, since Sunset obviously has a (somewhat) functioning Element of Magic on her head.
7738481 7736132
I don't get why everyone is so hung up on that "army of teenagers" thing. She put the crown on at Canterlot High, she turned into a demon at Canterlot High... unless there's a military base two blocks down from the school, what else would she start with than flaunting her new powers on the closest convenient targets? Even Discord started his rampage in the Canterlot/Ponyville area, and not in Manehattan.
7738319
That's a good point- personally I kind of figured it was a "Starlight Glimmer wins" timeline where all of equestria got equalized- and with pegasi being only as good at weather stuff as the other two races and earth ponies only as good at farming as the other two, etc etc, the entire world collapsed due to nobody being skilled enough to actually take care of it
Of course now you simply have to to Getting the Band Back Together.
7736031 I figure it has to do with an almost literal life time of training, and being around an extremely obsessive and meticulous mare. Between the two of them, he must have picked up quite a lot about certain things, like remembering certain details of something when he worked on it.
In the more exaggerated versions, Spike probably has to make Twilight salads with a very exact number, size, and shape of each ingredient, such as twenty-five pieces of lettuce, each cut into two inch by two inch squares.
Sequel hook, line, and sinker.
7745459 Yeah. The bit about dragons being able to instantly memorize every detail about their belongings.
Huh. Hadn't considered who might have been behind the wasteland timeline. Or would it be more of a dustbowl?
7751927
Six of one, half-dozen of the other. After all, Sunset's the only one left who can make the distinction, and she has more important things to worry about.
7737140 would it help theres a fic about that? basicly pony twilight has to take care of junior and teach her to be the new tree of harmony whom the orignal is tree is dying and pretty much unable to take care off her and pretty much says twilight ......your her new mommy shes your problem now but the babby tree who is in human form in equestria IS a tusundere
7754529 wait is this the same junior who is a tsusundre brat being taking care for by twilight being her mom
7761144
Moth knows that that story exists. After all, he wrote it.
That said, I may have inspired him, but that story's taking place in another Equestria entirely.
7761144 You know, it's funny you mention there being a fic like that? Because I totally remember there being a fic like that in the feature box in the week since I posted that comment. The one I, y'know, WROTE...
7761178 u......wrote it?......um.....derp?
7735985 What war? Sunset, the one in EqG, could just seal up the Demon sunset, throw her into another more worse reality, remove her powers. She didn't with Tirek because of his unique ability to steal powers and didn't want him taking hers even slightly, and cause she didn't want to dictate how those in her world lives. But the Demon Queen version of Sunset most likely doesn't have power absorption abilities, and is invading from another world so Sunset would protect her against the invader.
Wouldn't be a war, more of a... Snap and it's over.
7738781
Moreover, as others have pointed out, she could turn them into demons as well...
derpicdn.net/img/view/2013/8/13/399626__rainbow+dash_shipping_equestria+girls_straight_comic_magic_sunset+shimmer_semi-dash-grimdark_flash+sentry_snails.png
And even if she doesn't, the Sombra Timeline shows an army of mind-controlled minions isn't nothing. Every moment the heroes hesitate in taking them down is precious time wasted, but can they just go all out against people who are innocent victims in this?
Thirdly, who says Sunset will stop with her mind-control rampage once she's on the other side of the portal? Anypony not an Element of Harmony is more fodder for her army.
7735985
Man... an interdimensional war where demon sunset conquers all the minor dimensions and leads them against the prime dimension. That would be badass.
Also Demon Sunset's army should all totally wear brown (coats).
7857464
Their love, land, or sea may be taken, but the sky shall forever be free. You cannot take the sky from me.
8198432
It isn't, but you are. That "Part of the Oversaturated World" in the description was a warning. That being said, I do carry some blame for not properly tagging this as a sequel. I'll get right on that.
7738301
Exanguinated? ... Oh, Plunder Vines?
And the portal is the EQG portal... ... Hmm... Now EQG World has more magic than Equestria? Oversaturation in reverse??
8349402
More like The One Who Shot Away taken to its logical conclusion. This Sunset shattered the mirror when she returned to Equestria. That turned out to be a big mistake.
8349429
And there isn't enough magical pressure to close the portal on either side...
So why doesn't magic travel back into Equestria from EQG, if it's EQG that has more magic now? Some sorta attractive force is pushing magic from Equestria into EQG instead of just magical pressure trying to equalize?