Friendship Day

by Crescent Pulsar

Chapter 13: Behind Blue Eyes

At first, Twilight Sparkle was overwhelmed by the tragic reality that Princess Celestia had been harboring for a thousand years. Her heart ached, and she felt like she had failed her somehow, however irrational that was.

When a new feeling tried to invite itself, however, she allowed herself to become angry... Livid... Then furious. How dare anything do that to the princess!

She suddenly went from lying down on her folded legs to floating in the air, her coat turning white and her mane and tail bursting into flames as she unleashed a primal growl. She proceeded to thoughtlessly whip her head to and fro, as her red eyes sought out the target of her ire. Eventually, after she was unable to find what she was looking for, frustration allowed simple questions to break through the din of the roaring flames in her mind, and the answers that echoed back reminded her of the cold reality.

The feeling of powerlessness, which she hadn't wanted to acknowledge, snuffed out her anger, and she fell heavily to her hooves while her appearance returned to normal, her head hung low and spirits even lower. What could she do about the situation, if even the princess couldn't do anything? What help could she seek, who was better? Ultimately, was the princess right about accepting the whims of mysterious forces, or entities, and hoping for the best?

With no answers forthcoming, she began to wonder if seeking knowledge had been a mistake for once — as crazy as that seemed. She now knew things that were going to lurk in the recesses of her mind for the rest of her life, which would raise unpleasant questions if she ever thought about them. The princess appeared to be living with it well enough, and hadn't been broken by her lot in life, so maybe she should heed what she had said.

...And she wanted to do that. She really did. But... The injustice done to the princess, and who knows how many ponies over the course of who knows how many generations aside, something didn't sit right with her. She couldn't put her hoof on exactly what was bothering her, but she was sure that it would give her a reason to forsake the princess' wisdom if she figured it out.

Not knowing what to do with the rest of the day, but knowing that she didn't want to stay at the tower, she turned her attention toward Ponyville and considered going back there. To do what? She didn't know. Certainly not to get familiar with the ponies that she was destined to become friends with, because the thought of using what she learned about them to make befriending them easier, after what she had recently learned, now put a bad taste in her mouth.

Her gaze drifted away from the town in the river valley while there was a lull in her thoughts, and it slid over Canterlot until she noticed the residence that Celestia had given to her shortly after becoming her student. Thinking it a good enough place to be, either for a bit or the rest of the loop, she focused on a spot in front of the door and teleported there.

Upon entry, an eerie feeling settled upon her. She shook it off, thinking it was caused by the discrepancy between the time she had last been there in the loop and the actual time that she had experienced being away. After closing the door behind her, she slowly and aimlessly walked around while looking about the living area, trying to think of what to do and hoping that something would spark an idea.

When nothing occurred to her, she guided her steps toward the stairs and ascended them to the second level. Along the way, she looked up at the various things that gradually came into view, starting with the bust of a unicorn, which was mounted on a pillar, and the balcony where her telescopes were. Then came the bookshelves on the mezzanine, quickly followed by the hutch desk and the tall bookshelf on the second level.

Before she could get a good look at anything else, a flash of red caught her attention as soon as her eyes rose above the floor of the second level. It was a small, ruined present box lying on the floor, and beside it was a teddy bear whose stuffing was coming out of its belly. She paused, trying to remember the reason for why they were there, and it took a while because she had been so focused on finding Predictions & Prophesies at the time.

Walking over to them, she lifted both up with her magic and considered them for a moment, wondering if Moon Dancer's party was still going. If it was, maybe that would be a good way to pass some time, until she could figure out what she wanted to do. Should she repair Spike's gift and give it to Moon Dancer in his stead?

While she was thinking about it, she realized that the box felt heavier than she would have expected it to be, had it been empty. When she gave it a little shake, she heard a series of faint thunks as an object shifted around inside. Curious as to what it could be, she opened the box and removed what it contained, which happened to be a framed photograph. Upon bringing it closer, she discovered that it was a candid shot of her and her friends.

She furrowed her brow when she had trouble remembering their names. She had an excellent memory, and she must have learned the names of her friends at some point, so why could she only think of Moon Dancer? And why wasn't she sure about which pony to apply the name to?

Tilting her head down, she thought back to whatever moments with her friends that she could recall. What ended up happening, time and time again, was that she would remember them being present while her attention was on something else, instead of them being the focus of the activity or event. They were almost always... peripheral.

Pursing her lips, she wondered why they had hung around with her so much, if they hadn't been her friends. Was it because they went to the same school? Did her association with the princess factor in at all? Or did the princess, perhaps, put them up to it?

That last thought made her pause to consider if that would actually be a bad thing or not. While it wasn't all that dissimilar from what bothered her about the seer, in terms of manipulating aspects of someone's life for whatever purpose, the difference was that she trusted the princess. Even if the princess did something that made a negative impact on someone's life, she believed that it would have been done with good intentions. The seer, on the other hand, she neither knew nor trusted.

Her head snapped up when she realized that was what was bothering her. Whatever the princess had planned for her, she could live with it because she trusted her. To an extent, she could even accept the seer's designs on her, if the princess was fine with it. The problem was that the princess might not know all of the seer's plans for her. Not only that, but it was clear that she wasn't the only one being manipulated. Were all of their best interests being considered, or were there going to be sacrifices?

This was a problem that she couldn't leave unresolved. The only issue was: how was she going to find or contact the seer? What would she have to do, or what power would she need to obtain, to accomplish what the princess couldn't? And that's before considering the possibility that the seer was bad and needed to be stopped, so she also had to think about spending many a loop becoming so strong that she could do that — just in case it was necessary.

"I wouldn't recommend doing that," a familiar, effervescent voice suddenly spoke up from behind her.

Startled, she jumped up and dropped the picture. She spun about as soon as she landed and faced Pinkie Pie, who stood near the top of the stairs that she had just climbed with a seemingly-guileless smile on her face. Her presence, not just in Canterlot but in her abode, rose many questions, and she made a couple of false starts trying to decide on the most important one to ask.

By then, however, her harried mind caught up to what had been said, and realized those questions paled in comparison to: "Did you just read my mind?"

"Maaaaybe," came the playful reply.

Sure that there was something very wrong about this situation, Twilight Sparkle cautiously asked, "Why are you here?"

Pinkie Pie began to slowly walk to one side while maintaining her distance, continuing to look innocent and upbeat while Twilight Sparkle warily tracked her. "You were doing a bunch of new and peculiar things, so I just had to investigate. As it turned out, this is the earliest you've ever been in a time loop — and left to your own devices, to boot!"

That gave Twilight Sparkle a lot to think about, so she didn't get to respond when Pinkie Pie continued to speak a few seconds later. "And by the sound of it, you've been able to learn things that you shouldn't know yet." She suddenly pushed herself onto her back, or would have if her mane and tail hadn't supported her weight and began to move her back toward her starting location, then looked up thoughtfully while she tapped her chin. "Hmmmm... Should I allow this to play out, or should I set things back on course?"

Twilight Sparkle narrowed her eyes and sharply retorted, "I think you should leave that decision to me... 'seer!'"

Pinkie Pie paused and rolled onto her side, with the knee of a foreleg digging into her mane so she could prop her head up, and looked bored as she flatly challenged, "You think you can stop me?"

The sudden change in demeanor, and the threat, made Twilight Sparkle take a step back and think twice for a moment. However, she quickly regained her resolve and adopted an aggressive stance before defiantly replying, "What matters is fighting for what's right."

After staring for a bit, Pinkie Pie gave a Gallic shrug, simply returned to her hooves, then cheerfully said, "Okie-dokie! You can do whatever, then."

Confused, but keeping her guard up, Twilight Sparkle expressed her distrust by asking, "Seriously?"

Pinkie Pie turned her back on Twilight Sparkle and walked a few steps away before stopping and saying, "I've never been able to convince you — or anyone of importance, for that matter — that what I've done, and will do, doesn't make me a bad pony, so I won't bother trying. It's no problem for me if I just wait for my loop to end and not repeat the action that made this scenario possible."

"...What?" Came Twilight Sparkle's faint response, who had been almost too shocked to say anything at all.

Pinkie Pie tilted her head back and said, "Oh, yeah," before looking over her shoulder and nonchalantly confirming, "I'm in a time loop, too. Except mine lasts until I die and I'm being prevented from dispelling it."

Seeing that she was being stared at with what was clearly disbelief, she turned her body to face Twilight Sparkle and continued to speak while maintaining her uncaring demeanor. "It doesn't matter if you believe me, but I know you're dying to ask me some questions even if you don't, and I'm willing to give you the opportunity to ask them because you're important to me."

Twilight Sparkle had a lot of questions. One of them was in what way, exactly, she was important to Pinkie Pie, but she wouldn't allow herself to be sidetracked by that. She didn't know the scope of the puzzle, or how many pieces featured the pony before her, so she was keen to inquire, "For how long have you been manipulating events, and are you doing it alone? Princess Celestia seems sure that whatever is planned for me has been in motion for at least a millennium."

Smiling, Pinkie Pie commented, "Good questions, as expected." She looked up thoughtfully and stroked her chin. "We-eeeeeell... Technically, I've been active since I got my cutie mark, which is when my time loop begins." She lowered her hoof and looked Twilight Sparkle in the eye. "While I can travel back in time, the actual," her face very briefly flashed with anger, "thing that's running the show prohibits me from traveling before that point." She turned her head aside and frowned. "Whether what I do is what they want me to do... I dunno. I like to assume I'm not, because why else would they keep me trapped in a time loop, right?"

After mulling over her answer for a bit, Twilight Sparkle decided to stick with asking her preexisting questions, with the reasoning being that she would likely get more out of them than any based on the potential lies being divulged to her right now. "Are you what you appear to be? How are you able to avoid being detected by Princess Celestia?"

Pinkie Pie perked up upon hearing those questions, and a mischievous glint appeared in her eyes. She proceeded to do a backflip, but she reached a full rotation early, and at that point she slowed down and stopped several feet above the floor. While seemingly standing on nothing, she gazed down at her staring audience and giggled before saying, "You'd be surprised by what a pony can learn when given enough time and motivation."

Twilight Sparkle gasped when she unceremoniously plucked her head off of her body, which she began to roll down one foreleg, then up the other, as she spoke. "You can do stuff like this." She grabbed her head and began to pull and compress it, making silly faces while accordian sounds issued forth from her. "Or this!" Holding her head in one hoof, she used the other to pull out, then haphazardly toss away, one object after another from inside of her mane, some of which couldn't have possibly fit in there. "Or even this!"

A second Pinkie Pie leaned into view from behind a bookcase. "You!" A third popped into view from behind the large hourglass, her crane pose comically distorted. "Can!" A fourth squeezed the upper half of herself out from under the hutch desk. "Even!" A fifth flopped herself over the largest telescope on the balcony. "Pull!" A sixth jammed her head into a space between two books. "Time travel!" A seventh swung down and plastered herself on the outside of the floor-to-ceiling windows, who yelled a muffled, "Shenanigans," before sliding down noisily and disappearing from sight.

Staring at where the last Pinkie Pie had been with wide eyes, Twilight Sparkle didn't notice the other ones going back behind something and vanishing. She didn't notice the sound of the first Pinkie Pie walking either, so she was quite startled when she appeared in her periphery as she walked by from behind, who came to a stop and turned to face her when she was about an equal length away from both her and the windows.

With a grin, Pinkie Pie raised a foreleg high into the air. "And this? Easy-peasy."

She slowly began to lower her foreleg, and as she did so Twilight Sparkle quickly noticed the shifting shadows, followed by the gradual change in the sky's color. Her mouth dropped open in complete shock when she saw the sun through the windows, heading toward the horizon and soon dipping below it, ushering in a very early night. Her wide eyes shot toward Pinkie Pie's other foreleg when she noticed it rising slowly, and with the motion moonlight began to part some of the gloom.

When the moon stopped moving, she used the same foreleg to reach across the distance between her and Twilight Sparkle, who was several foreleg lengths away, and closed her mouth at the same speed as it took Celestia to return the sun to its proper place in the sky. "Just one more thing..."

That was all the warning that Twilight Sparkle got before she saw the events that had just transpired do so again, along with her actions, except in reverse and at a much greater pace. It stopped almost as soon as it started, a second before Pinkie Pie had begun to lower her foreleg and — with it — the sun. She lowered her foreleg again, only this time the sun was unaffected by it.

"Just being kind and sparing the princess the trouble," Pinkie Pie casually explained, with a slightly humorous lilt.

Twilight Sparkle was so overwhelmed by what she had experienced that she could only stare in gobsmacked silence as her hind legs gave out from under her.

Rather than let it end there, Pinkie Pie pronked over to her, sat beside her, threw a foreleg across her withers and conversationally said, "That's just a few of the things I've picked up after three hundred and eleven thousand, seven hundred and sixty-nine loops. To, y'know, stop looping and seek vengeance." Twilight Sparkle turned her head toward her with searching eyes, and because she could read her mind she addressed one of her fore-most thoughts. "Oh, I hadn't remained sane. Or good, for that matter. But I can assure you that stuff is far behind me, 'cause I have complete control over my thoughts and actions now." She regarded Twilight Sparkle with a solemn expression. "And the truest pony I could be was the young filly who saw a sonic rainboom and was inspired to make everypony as happy as she felt at that moment."

She hopped back onto her hooves and walked over to the edge of the second level, near the stairs, and Twilight Sparkle craned her neck to keep an eye on her. "To that end, with all of the terrible fates awaiting us in the near future, as well as farther down the road, I've made it my mission to deny all of them. Sometimes that requires controlling many aspects of certain events, like replacing an old, dilapidated bridge and door, moving rubble, clearing out certain fauna and flora, and making it easier to find the Elements of Harmony, so everypony takes the right actions at the right time and place."

"Anyway," she went on, as she looked over her shoulder, "I think I've given you enough things to think about. I'll remember this and all of your future loops now, so come and see me whenever you feel like it. See ya!"

She proceeded to leap off of the second level and dove into a potted plant, where she inexplicably disappeared.

After a minute of staring into space, Twilight Sparkle allowed her forehooves to slide outward and ease her body onto the floor. She really did have a lot to think about.

Comments

[FurryBrony]

Pinkie Pie the Time Looper... Abandon All Hope, Ye Who Encounter Her.

[Warrior of Virtue]

If Pinkie actually was a time looper, it would explain so much.

[Zhafran]

Wow. More than what I was expecting.

Not in a bad way, though, at least we know who the seer is.

[Yoshifan30]

Pinkie Pie began to slowly walk to one side while maintaining her distance, continuing to look innocent and upbeat while Twilight Sparkle warily tracked her. "You were doing a bunch of new and peculiar things, so I just had to investigate. As it turned out, this is the earliest you've ever been in a time loop — and left to your own devices, to boot!"

What the how the heck does Pinkie Pie knows about the time loop 😳

[Yoshifan30]

Pinkie Pie tilted her head back and said, "Oh, yeah," before looking over her shoulder and nonchalantly confirming, "I'm in a time loop, too. Except mine lasts until I die and I'm being prevented from dispelling it."

Ohh so that's how she knows she's also stuck in a Time Loop then how come she could help us in the beginning

[Yoshifan30]

Holy mackerel that blew my freaking mind so after hearing the information from Princess Celestia about this whole planning and everything she felt like everything kind of fell apart for her but Twilight trust her judgment so she tried to see if anything she can find a way to break the time low but nothing or anything and still nothing but then Pinkie Pie suddenly showed up Pinkie Pie admitted that she was also stuck in time Loop but much longer that Twilight never expected for her to be in if he told her about everything well almost everything what Pinkie does and everything but man that turned kind of dark a little bit so I wonder what Twilight is going to do I guess we'll find out next time

[Venerable Ro]

Well Twilight's lucky she missed Pinkie's Sakura phase, that's all I'm saying.

[3-tap]

Twilight being able to bend reality like pinkie? Oh yeah, fun shenanigans will occur