Friendship Day

by Crescent Pulsar

Epilogue

Rainbow Dash kept her eyes clenched shut while she flew across the night sky with all of her might.

She wasn't running away. At least, she didn't believe that was what she was doing. Sure, she didn't want anyone to see how afraid she was, but that wasn't the only reason for her flight. She didn't have unicorn magic, or know any of that egghead stuff about time travel, so she fought against the fate that awaited her in the only way that she knew how. Ordinary flight wasn't going to accomplish anything, however, so her goal was to break the sound barrier.

She wasn't sure if that would help her, but she was desperate and grasping at anything that seemed even remotely useful. And what the situation had brought to mind was how time seemed to slow down more as she flew faster. Granted, the effect was usually so minor that it had taken her years to notice that it happened, outside of breaking the sound barrier, but that wasn't important. What mattered was that she didn't know if there was a limit to how much she could slow down time, which meant that there was a chance, however slim, that time could move in the opposite direction.

The thought that accomplishing such a feat could be prevented by how fast she could fly, or how much stamina she had, never crossed her mind. What drove her was primal, irrational, and there was no room for self-doubt. She just assumed that time could be slowed, what she feared involved the progress of time, and she was the only pony — that she was aware of — who could break the sound barrier.

She vividly remembered when she broke the sound barrier, despite having only done it once in her youth and — for whatever reason — never trying to do it again. The resistance was familiar, but she overcame it much sooner than she expected. She felt and heard the sonic rainboom an instant later, and then... nothing. Not only couldn't she hear anything at all, but it felt as if both the wind and gravity had completely vanished as well.

Such a disturbing development was enough to snap her out of her single-minded endeavor. When she opened her eyes, she was shocked to see an endless expanse of white instead of a night sky and a land bathed in moonlight. It was the same shade of white in every direction she looked, and she couldn't tell if it was light or a barrier, nor able to judge the distance between whatever-it-was that she was looking at and herself. Bewildered as she was by this, she stopped flapping her wings without meaning to, briefly panicked when she realized what she had done, then calmed down after she felt her hooves soundlessly settle upon an unyielding surface that perfectly blended in with the rest of the environment.

"What the heck is this?" She wondered aloud, doing her best to not panic while she looked around warily. "What's going on?"

"Whoa!" She yelped a second later, as she hopped away from a red-colored... thing that began to fade into existence in front of her.

Said red-colored thing turned out to be a mane, once it became fully realized. It belonged to a head, too, but it was the same color as their surroundings, apart from a pair of eyelashes, so she had no idea if it was connected to a body or not. She could tell that it was the head of a pony, though, because a horn divided most of what she could see of the mane, and she could make out the familiar presence of ears despite being much less conspicuous than the horn.

When the eyelids lifted, a pair of blue eyes settled upon her before their owner said, "Greetings, Rainbow Dash."

"Who're you?" Rainbow Dash demanded. "And where is this?"

She slowly and cautiously moved to the side so she could get a better view of who she was dealing with. The new angle provided her a view of a red tail, its location confirming that the other pony was at least twice as tall as she was, and she quickly identified the familiar shape of a wing obstructing some of it. Her keen eyes also saw a cutie mark, of a quill and inkwell, but she was far too preoccupied by the fact that she was in the presence of an unknown alicorn to even begin to consider its potential meaning.

"I am Foster," said pony serenely replied, "and this is a place where we can both exist and interact within the same space."

Rainbow Dash tore her attention away from the fact that "Foster" was an alicorn and kept her guard up as she accusingly deduced, "So you brought me here?" She received a single nod in reply. "Why?"

"Because you were in distress," Foster answered matter-of-factly. "I am here to reassure you that I can return you, with the memories of your experience in the time loop intact."

"Really!?" Rainbow Dash excitedly blurted, before shaking her head and staring at Foster with suspicion. "Why should I trust you?"

Foster smiled wanly. "You shouldn't. But my offer stands."

Frowning, Rainbow Dash thought about it. Between her impatience and the intolerable environment, however, it wasn't long before she decided to seek something more encouraging amid so many unknowns. "Okay, before I decide, I want to know why nopony knows about you. What do you do, anyway?"

Inclining her head obligingly, Foster said, "Nopony knows about me because I can't exist in your dimension." Seeing the question coming, she added, "Think of it in terms of density: if your dimension is water, and mine is oil, I can't enter the water because I am not dense enough."

"...I see," Rainbow Dash replied, despite clearly being uncertain about how well she understood it.

"As for what I do..." Foster continued, who shifted her stance and gave Rainbow Dash a better view of her cutie mark before gesturing toward it with a glance. "I'm a writer."

It was with much disbelief that Rainbow Dash flatly replied, "You're a writer."

"Mm-hm," Foster affirmed.

Unable to wrap her mind around an alicorn having a talent for something as mundane as writing, since she couldn't think of another way of interpreting a cutie mark with a quill and inkwell, Rainbow Dash released a frustrated sigh and said, "Whatever. I guess I'll trust you."

"Very well," Foster acknowledged, before gesturing for Rainbow Dash to approach her. Once the pegasus was standing in front of her, she warned, "Moving between dimensions can be disorienting, so I recommend closing your eyes."

Rainbow Dash looked up at her with mistrust as a rainbow-colored aura enveloped her horn, but she ultimately opted to heed her advice because she was completely out of her depth, wasn't keen on staying in a white void, and just wanted to find a cloud to take a nice, long nap on after everything that she had been through mentally.

Foster lowered her horn and touched its tip to Rainbow Dash's forehead. The pegasus quickly turned into a small orb of rainbow light before fading away. When it was gone, she closed her eyes and shed a tear.

While she had been true to her word, Rainbow Dash hadn't paid particular attention to what she had said and had made assumptions, exactly as she had expected her to do. After all, saying that she could return her didn't mean that she would, or in what state. Nor had she specified when her memory of events would return, so she could safely give them back when such knowledge wouldn't derail the future that she had been cultivating for ages.

She hadn't needed to spirit Rainbow Dash away, but she had wanted to indulge herself just once before her own story ended, and personally offer a pony some mercy for the first time since she had become an alicorn and ascended to a higher plane of existence. She wished that she could have given her a hug, but she knew that would have made her uncomfortable, which would have defeated the purpose of easing her mind before effectively terminating her.

Upon opening her eyes, she focused her attention on a certain time in the third dimension before wielding her magic to dismiss the barrier that prevented unwanted visitors from entering the pocket dimension. Unsurprisingly, she saw Pinkie Pie enter a few seconds later, since her vigil over the pocket dimension was constant. She was in her twilight years, but as she marched up to her with a steely-gazed determination, the white of her hair washed away from root to tip, the wrinkles retreated, and her steps became more steady as the ravages of time reversed themselves.

When Pinkie Pie stood before her, she was completely rejuvenated and staring up at her quite intensely. In response, she simply closed her eyes and bowed her head, making it clear that her fate was in her hooves. After all, of all of the ponies that she had manipulated over the course of many millennia, Pinkie Pie had been the most abused by far, and thus deserved whatever justice she desired to mete out.

She shouldn't have been shocked when Pinkie Pie hugged her, because of how well she knew her, but that's how she felt as her eyes flew open, so she could look down and confirm the reality of it. She had convinced herself, regardless of how well-intentioned her actions had been, that even Pinkie Pie wouldn't forgive her. She thought that Pinkie Pie would understand how terrible she was, because she'd had to do the same thing for what she believed in as well.

"Ah," she silently realized, before briefly closing her eyes and lightly shaking her head. "It's exactly because we're so similar, isn't it?"

When Pinkie Pie drew away, she looked up at her and evenly said, "You know why I chose the path that I did. Why did you choose yours?"

That was more than a fair question, so Foster turned her head aside while indicating that Pinkie Pie should look in the same direction. When she did, a misty-looking display screen appeared a short distance away, its oval frame hazy and gently oscillating. In short order, a vision of the distant past appeared, showing an overhead view of a pony settlement. There were a couple of adobe buildings, but most dwellings consisted of poles and animal hide, suggesting that these ponies were nomadic but regularly returned to that location.

"To give you some context," Foster calmly began, "by this time ponies have been fighting horses for a very long time, because their land was verdant and abundant beyond compare — especially in comparison to the steppes and desert where they lived. They've long since forgotten that their ancestors were horses who had been driven out of their lands, after they had failed to usurp the reins of leadership."

The perspective being displayed began to steadily draw closer to the settlement, focusing on one of the portable dwellings in particular. It soon entered that dwelling's interior, revealing a dozen young ponies raptly listening to a mare as she spoke to them. The mare in question bore a strong resemblance to Foster, save that she wasn't an alicorn, looked middle-aged and half as tall, and didn't have a cutie mark.

"As you can no doubt imagine," she continued, "it was common for ponies to be orphaned. I was one such orphan. I also lost my husband, and later my only child, to our war with the horses."

The orphans got up and raced to go outside, leaving Foster alone. The perspective moved to maintain a view of her face as she turned away from the entrance, as her grief pushed aside the facade that had been used for the sake of the children.

"Despite the pain and sorrow that many of us suffered, I was among a small minority who were willing to settle for the lands far in the west, so we could experience peace. Unfortunately, our leader, who was quite charismatic, was dead-set on taking the horse's land, and had little trouble revitalizing the chauvinism that was deeply-rooted in our culture. And that's relevant because our penchant for discord attracted the attention of a certain spirit of chaos when he happened upon us."

The display screen switched to a view of a battle between the ponies and horses. After a few seconds, the focus shifted to a hill in the distance, which overlooked the battle, before the perspective suddenly moved there in a blink. The aforementioned spirit of chaos, Discord, was there, sitting in a cinema chair. He was watching the battle with interest, slurping up film strips from a popcorn tub with a pair of chopsticks.

When the battle ended, with the ponies retreating, Discord looked thoughtful for a moment before making a big show out of having an idea. The scene changed, and now Discord appeared to be somewhere in the steppes, near a well-trodden path. He snapped with his feline digits and an object appeared in the air, a plasma globe set on top of a thumper from Dune, which he drove into the ground before activating it. After rubbing his hands gleefully, he disappeared.

The view flickered, and now there were ponies cautiously standing around the object, with most staying with their supplies on the opposite side of the trail. By now their fear and awe had subsided, and one pony was ordered to approach it. They did, reluctantly, until they were within reach of it. When nothing happened, they were compelled to touch it, and hesitated long enough to be yelled at before complying.

There was a flash of light, which caused a panic, but some realized that nothing else had happened and eventually calmed everyone down. They soon discovered that the expendable pony appeared fine, except now they had a pair of wings on their back. After some experimentation with their wings, and discovering that they could fly, the new pegasus inspired others to touch the object, and before long there were more pegasi, along with unicorns and earth ponies.

"With that device funneling raw Earth, Heaven and Aether magic from nature, keeping them separate but together, Discord was able to infuse ponies with them at random. No doubt he had hoped for physical transformations that were more extreme, but it wouldn't be long before their chauvinism more than made up for the disappointment."

While Foster continued to speak, the scene began to regularly change every couple of seconds, showing the beginning of the hostilities between the three types of ponies and how it worsened over time.

"At first, ponies used their new abilities to make inroads into the horse's territory and gain a foothold there. However, they didn't accomplish much more than that because they began to turn on each other. As they discovered more of what they were capable of, they wanted to prove which race was superior, which one was actually destined to rule. It wasn't long before the three tribes were established, and the rifts created between friends and family caused even more pain and suffering. Discord was over the moon at this development."

While the display showed Discord enjoying himself immensely, as he watched the ponies fighting one another, Pinkie Pie couldn't help speaking up to confirm what she suspected. "So it wasn't by chance that Discord took over Equestria shortly after the three tribes united?"

Foster nodded her head while she paused the scene with Discord. "That's correct. He had lost interest and turned his attention elsewhere when it had seemed likely that the windigos would be the end of the ponies. When he checked back up on them, he was quite surprised and upset to find them united and getting along."

The display resumed by showing the actions of the ponies, now focusing on the development of their abilities and their pursuit to one-up each other.

The earth ponies tamed the land, proliferating enough food to feed all ponies several times over, and created immense earthen fortifications and cave systems. A fraction of them became so in-tune with the minerals that they worked with that their bodies crystallized, and those ponies opted to find a new home in the west, so they could strengthen their number in peace before becoming contenders.

The pegasi relished the seemingly-limitless expanse of the sky, and many regularly went out to hitherto unexplored and unheard of parts of the world before coming back with what they had learned. This included their observations of other civilizations, particularly the tactics and technology of their armed forces, which they adopted and modified to suit their spacial freedom and agility. They also learned to manipulate the weather, creating storms that they'd never seen on the steppes before, and built a massive kingdom in the sky that was completely made out of clouds.

The unicorns mastered levitation and illumination, as well as projecting magic beams and shots from their horns, which alone were versatile enough to have many applications. They discovered teleportation and shields by accident, in the face of danger and fear, which opened the door to more experimentation and led to the development of basic spells. Eventually, though, they desired to illustrate that their supremacy was unquestionable, and that resulted in many unicorns combining their levitation magic to move the moon and sun.

"That had been quite the fiasco," Foster commented, lightly shaking her head. "The one good thing that Discord had done, in those days, was rein in the sun and moon so they didn't drift away. He couldn't restore order, of course, so he set up a geocentric system that required manual labor to simulate the old one and left the burden on the unicorns."

"Now, with all that in mind..."

The display screen showed where Discord's device was, only now a large fortress had been built around it. The view switched to the room where it resided, in the innermost area of the fortress. Foster was there, being forcefully escorted to the device by unicorns. She looked noticeably older from before, and her haggard appearance made her appear even more so. With a final push, she stumbled toward the device and stopped just short of touching it, but she looked resigned rather than relieved.

"With so many of the unicorns preoccupied with moving the sun and moon," she began to explain, "taxing them every day and night, their campaign against the other tribes began to falter, and they felt vulnerable. So, they took control of Discord's device and forced the ponies who had not been transformed by it to touch it."

"About a fourth of all ponies remained unchanged at the time," she continued, "for one reason or another. As for myself? I had been hesitant at first, but after what had eventually happened to my friends and family because of the changes, I had been keen to live out the rest of my miserable life as I was."

The display showed Foster's past self being shot in the flank with unicorn magic, inflicting a severe burn there, which made her cry out in pain and collapse.

"And with the unicorns in control of Discord's device," she dispassionately went on, "there was a two-in-three chance that I would die after touching it, to ensure only their ranks would grow. By that time, I began to prefer any result except a unicorn, but..."

When her past self finished crying, she looked up at the device with her eyes ablaze with hatred.

"...Something snapped inside of me. I'd suffered and lost so much. I thought, if I was likely to die anyway, then I might as well do something constructive and try to destroy the object that had caused ponies to turn against each other."

Her past self stood up and seemed ready to pounce, but then hesitated, eyes clenched shut and teeth grit. A threat was shouted at her by the unicorn who had shot her.

"However, at the last second, I wrested control back. That wasn't me. I couldn't be like them, being guided by hate and resorting to violence. Destroying that device, even if it would do some good, wouldn't change the past or reunite the ponies. So..."

After taking a deep breath, her past self steeled herself before leaping upon the globe and hugging it with all of her extremities. A flash of light immediately followed, which flooded the entire display screen before it was dismissed.

"I had wished," she softly said, still staring at where the display screen had been, "with all of my heart, to have the power necessary to save ponykind from itself. An unknown entity, who either couldn't make themselves known to me or chose not to, heard it and transformed me into what I now am."

She turned to regard Pinkie Pie, who was already staring at her impassively. "To make a long story short, I couldn't make any changes to the past that would alter the circumstances leading to my ascension, so I used the magic that was released by the destruction of Discord's device to transform the rest of the population and brand everypony with it, in order to have the influence needed to cultivate the future that I desired for ponykind. And with the prescience afforded to me, I could compose the strangest of circumstances, and the unlikeliest of outcomes, to make it possible."

Pinkie Pie nodded her head, then turned away and stared at the white void, with Foster following suit. They stood in silence for a while, until Pinkie Pie lightly chuckled and said, "This is a pretty boring ending, isn't it?"

"Mm," Foster voiced her agreement.

They shared another moment of silence before Foster looked over at Pinkie Pie and evenly stated, "It's time for me to rest. I wish you the best in the hereafter."

Pinkie Pie turned to face Foster and solemnly replied, "I wish you the same."

Foster closed her eyes, whereupon her body began to coruscate with all of the colors of the rainbow. Said colors broke away into individual motes and drifted upward for a few seconds before fading away. Soon, all that remained was her cutie mark, which didn't fall despite the disappearance of its owner.

After regarding the cutie mark for a moment, Pinkie Pie turned about and walked away, discarding her youthful appearance as she gradually vanished. Before she was completely gone, a faint smile graced her lips, inspired by the thought of having gotten closure before lowering the curtain on her own life.

Author's Note:

And there you have it: another piece of refuse cast into the Worthless river and swept out to the Sea of Obscurity.

Comments

[GhostCreator]

sequel?

[Gazer]

It's not worthless. You went and made something. You shared it with others and let them experience your world. I've read your work, so now it is a part of me, for the rest of my life. It's not worthless. Thank you.

[Yoshifan30]

Wow that is some story and a very interesting might as well so apparently rainbow was stuck in the void but then an Alicorn named Foster helped her to regain her memory of the time Loop so with that she was gone back to the time then Pinkie Pie showed up talking with Foster about the history and everything boy that was some history lesson I never thought of that this was a pretty good story and don't worry it's not worthless I still think this was a pretty good one don't doubt yourself keep up the good work

[Venerable Ro]

A very interesting story, I was glad to have read it.

[Lunar Beat]

As a time loop story enthusiast, I commend you for finishing one!
I loved reading it and am glad to have found it.
Well done!