• Published 2nd Jan 2017
  • 628 Views, 28 Comments

The Mission Begins Anew - comicfan616



The Cutie Map is back to normal after Starlight Glimmer's time travel escapades. Which means the Spirits of the Map now have more missions for the Mane 6 to fulfill.

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The Upgrade

“I think it’s time.”

“Time for what?”

“Just a little something I’ve been thinking about for a while now.”

“Well, don’t keep me in suspense.”

“For the past few months, I’ve been looking into some areas further outside the Equestrian border. Manehattan and Canterlot may be rife with friendship problems, but there are places beyond Equestria that barely even grasp the concept.”

“So we just saw. Between some of the outskirt towns and even the hippogriffs, I think Equestria is probably the only country in the world where the whole idea of friendship is a given. I mean, the whole nation was founded because ponies figured out it was better to get along, for goodness’ sake.”

“Anyway, I’ve been compiling all that I’ve observed into a… let’s call it ‘secondary map.’ Something to add to the existing map when the appropriate time comes.”

“And you think that time is now…”

“While the circumstances were… less than ideal, the Storm King’s invasion did force Princess Twilight’s hoof in exploring the outside world. I don’t even think she knew half as much about the world as she does now.”

“Fair point, I guess. Not that I’m planning on sending His Storminess a thank-you card anytime soon. For more reasons than the obvious, of course.”

“I can imagine. At any rate, now that Princess Twilight and her friends are more aware of the world, I think it’s time we gave them a… larger scope for their missions.”

“…Wow. Princess Twilight’s going to have her hooves full with this.”

“It won’t be any different than when we send them on any other mission. It’ll just be outside our previous borders.”

“I realize that… Hmmm…”

“What’s wrong?”

“Well, I’m looking at these modifications you’re making and, well, I don’t think we have enough room to put this on our current map.”

“I was thinking we could compress the magical image and scale it appropriately.”

“Nope. Not gonna work.”

“What?”

“Look, after Starlight and Star Swirl messed with our map…”

“Are you still sore about that?”

“Not as much as I’m making it seem. But back on topic, after all that, I decided to look into how the Magical Matrix works, and, to make a long explanation short, compressing that much imagery would make the whole map unrecognizable.”

“Unrecognizable how?”

“At best, the image would be hard to identify, even when looking directly at it.”

“Wait, really?”

“Mhm.”

“…”

“So now what? Even putting aside my own bias toward this expansion, we can’t just leave a literal world blind to the true potential of friendship.”

“Well, if making the image smaller isn’t the answer, the next logical step would be to make the map bigger.”

“I… suppose we have enough room… except for maybe the thrones. They’re pushed up right next to the table.”

“Ooh, good point.”

“…”

“Wait. Those thrones grew out of the ground when the Harmony Seed was planted, right?”

“Yeeeeeaaaah…”

“Could we maybe reverse that growth for a little bit and then regrow them once we’re done?”

“…I guess that could work.”

“Let me just… adjust the temporal magic field… zero in on the thrones… try not to reverse the whole darn castle… aaannnnndd… There. That was easy.”

“I’d hate to see your definition of tricky. You barely made that work.”

“It’s called ‘sarcastic levity.’ Just do what you gotta do while I get the thrones in place for the regrowth.”

“On it. Expand the size of the table, fill in the empty space… Now that was easy.”

“Har-diddy-har. Almost got it. Going up… And done.”

“Huh. That actually looks a lot better than I would have thought.”

“Considering you didn’t really have a plan until a minute ago, that’s not saying much.”

“The point is we now have a bigger map and more missions to call for.”

“Because the backlog wasn’t big enough. Okay, where do we start?”

“Actually, I was thinking we don’t.”

“WHAT?!”

“And here I thought you weren’t nearly as excited about this as I was.”

“Keep in mind, I had to reverse time down to a single point in space, a process which is not easy, mind you, to make this happen. And you’re saying we’re not doing anything with it yet? Is there no justice to my exhaustion?!”

“…You finished?”

“…Sure. But in all seriousness, why not?”

“We have to give them time to adjust after seeing this upgrade. Maybe wait for them to make a move of their own accord after realizing the scope of the mission has changed.”

“Oh, of course. Just like we did when we first showed them the map oh, waaait…”

“That was different; we needed to let them know immediately what the map was and how it worked. Even with this upgrade, they’ll already know what to expect. And after their last adventure, I think they’ll need some rest before we start sending them out beyond Equestria again.”

“…Yeah. I mean, I know Fluttershy’s probably had enough of life-threatening adventures for the time being.”

“Or until the end of time.”

“…Okay, we’ll do it your way for now. But this ‘upgrade’ better be worth the headaches.”

Author's Note:

I wish I had a good excuse as to why I waited through half of season 9 to start uploading this next set. :derpyderp1::facehoof:

But it's here now.

This season was actually a lot of fun to work with, given the amount of things that happened involving the map, such as this bit right here. Be sure to look forward to some really interesting dialogues between the Watchers of the Map with these next few chapters. :raritywink: