Gotta Get Back
Since meeting Discord, Spike had figured out a number of things. The chief among them being: if noise was coming out of Discord’s mouth, make it stop! He had tried to tell Twilight, tried to get her away before whatever plan caused the draconequus to put on his grin came to fruition, but she had just ignored him in favor of...listening to Discord?
Twilight really was out of it if she had decided to throw away Spike advice in favor of the draconequus’s.
There was a rise in temperature and Spike looked back at Celestia. The mare’s coat take on a slightly golden hue as her mane began to go from a multitude of color to a single blazing orange. “You?” Celestia asked in a voice that made Spike’s entire skull vibrate despite the fact it was still the same volume as what she usually used. There was just more power behind the words. “All this time, we’ve waited with baited breath, for YOU?”
Twilight pulled in on herself as her look of confusion became one of fear. “W-What? W-What’s going on? P-Princess? I don’t understand. H-How do you know about me traveling through time?”
Chrysalis put on a frown as she pulled her head back a little. “Oh, that’s what this is,” she grumbled before looking over to the blazing alicorn. “Okay Tia, you’ve frightened the foal, now you can calm down-”
“HURRY UP AND GO, TWILIGHT!” Discord shouted at the top of his lungs before he hefted the purple pony as high as he could and tossed her over the heads of both quadrupeds. “I’LL COVER YOU!” With that, he jumped at both horned equines with his arms outstretched to grab onto their horns.
Then, the entire erupted in a conflagration that filled Spike’s vision with fire. The dragon heard Chrysalis shoot off several curses attached to Celestia’s name before the buzzing of her wings told him she had flown up to the ceiling. Not one to waste an opportunity, Spike quickly dashed through the flames and out into the living room, where Twilight was shaking off the dizzy spell caused by Discord’s throw.
With one last shake of her head, Twilight looked back to the dragon. “Come on Spike, let’s go!”
As he jumped onto the alicorn’s back, which didn’t make her wince in pain this time, Spike looked back into Twilight’s bedroom to see Discord going through the window, his body covered in flames, and laughing at something Spike just didn’t understand. “W-What’re we doing?” he asked as Twilight reared up in preparation for a swift gallop.
“We gotta get back, Spike! Back to the past!” she shouted as they went through the door and into the hallway.
Spike tried to wrap his head around the sudden change in Twilight’s thinking, but came up short. “What happened to resting, getting something to eat and some sleep!”
“Two out of three!” Twilight shouted as she galloped along.
“TWILIGHT SPARKLE! YOU GET BACK HERE RIGHT NOW YOUNG LADY!”
With Celestia’s voice shaking the very foundations of Twilight’s castle and actually making the purple alicorn’s legs skid to a halt, Spike held onto the pony’s back for all he was worth before before the sheer strangeness of what he had just heard made him speak. “Uh, Twilight? Did Celestia just yell at you like she was your mom?”
The question snapped Twilight out of whatever autonomic response that had caused her to stop moving and looked back at Spike in a panic. “Princess Celestia is evil!” she exclaimed.
“Twilight, I think you need to take a deep breath and calm down,” he told her. “What makes you think that Celestia could be-”
“She’s evil Spike! And so am I!” the purple pony exclaimed before she frowned and looked down at herself. “I think. It makes sense. If Princess Celestia is evil, then I’d be evil too. The other I...me, whatever! That’s the only reason Trixie would be living here and my menor-how do I even have a mentor? I had a teacher, Princess Celestia, and that was all I ever needed.”
Oh no, Spike thought as he hopped off of Twilight’s back so he could look her in the eyes. She had a harder time ignoring things that were right in front front of her face. And with the purple pony quickly getting trapped in a logic loop of her own making, Spike needed all the help he could get to snap her out of it. “I think Trixie’s more annoying than evil, Twilight,” he told her. “And now that I think about it, I think I might have seen her back when you were in magic school. Maybe the two of you became friends back then this time around.”
Twilight’ panicked expression slowly twisted into one that had Spike worrying that she might lose her lunch for a few seconds before she frowned at Spike’s suggestion. “I could never be friends with Trixie!” she said before straightening up. “Which means I would have to be evil. Ergo, Princess Celestia would have to be evil! Didn’t you see what she did in the fake Twilight’s bedroom?”
“Didn’t you do something like that once before?” Spike pointed out.
Twilight rolled her eyes angrily at the reminder. “That’s just because I’m one-sixteenth kirin on my mother’s side, Spike. But this, this is different! This is big. Really Big! Princess Celestia, s-she, what if she went evil like Luna and-”
“Hey, where is Luna?” Spike asked as he realized they hadn’t heard anything about the moon princess at all in the some thirty minutes they had been in this Equestria.
“This isn’t about Luna, Spike!” Twilight snapped frantically as the dragon saw the panic in her eyes continue to build as her breaths became more frantic. “This-this isn’t, this isn’t...we have to get back home!”
As much as the instincts he had developed over the years of dealing with Twilight told him to just step aside and let the purple pony wear herself out until she was too tired to argue with him, Spike couldn’t bring himself to do so just yet. Because he didn’t know what kind of damage it would cause to literally everypony’s lives. “Can we?”
Spike had to admit that while he probably would have agreed with Twilight's single-minded approach to things before, after talking to Chrysalis and having his worldview broken in regards to Rarity, maybe they did need to stop and think for a second, or sixty.
Twilight’s frown changed from one of anger to confusion. “What? Of course I can, we still have the scroll with the spell on it.”
Ignoring the bad feeling in his gut he got just from thinking about it, Spike brought up the question he had asked himself earlier. “Twilight, what happens to the world when we go back in time?”
“Huh?” Twilight asked turned a little sour at the question. “What do you mean, what happens to the world? We go back in time! It makes everything earlier.”
“Wha?-No, that’s not-” Spike tried to think of a better way to phrase the question of what happens to the ponies they leave behind...if they even continue to exist. At least, in a more gentle way so that the alicorn’s already frayed mind didn’t snap completely. “Twilight, just stop and think for a second-”
“There’s no time to think, Spike. We have to get away from the evil Celestia!” Twilight exclaimed.
When the familiar tickle of Twilight’s magic lifted him off the ground, Spike struggled against it in vain. “Celestia’s not evil!”
Twilight glared back at the dragon as Spike floated upside down in her magic. “Yes she is, Spike. Every Equestria has been worse than the one before it. And you know what’s worse than an Equestrian wasteland? An evil Princess Celestia!”
After slapping Spike across her back, Twilight went back to running, down the hallway and looking around wildly for another route or something. “She was just angry, not evil!” he said before thinking back to the conversation from earlier. “Probably about you time traveling!”
“She was evil, Spike. I know Princess Celestia, and that Celestia was evil! She was married to Chrysalis!” Twilight argued.
Spike groaned. “Then this is the happiest tyranny I’ve ever heard of,” he grumbled before thinking of a way to maybe present Twilight with some factual evidence that would break her out of her self-feeding thought process. “What about that guard we met?”
“She looked evil!” Twilight shot back as they found the stairs.
“Yeah, but, she acted really nice, right?” Spike told her.
Twilight snorted. “Plenty of evil ponies act nice when you meet them!”
“Okay, let’s go find your friends, Rainbow Dash is in, uh, Vanhoover, or Baltimare, right?” Spike said. “Let’s find and ask them if Princess Celestia is evil.”
“They’re not my friends, Spike,” the alicorn told him. “They’re that other Twilight’s. I’m trying to get my friends back!”
And what happens when we do manage to fix everything just the way it was, and find another Twilight standing next to them, wondering who this Twilight is? Spike asked himself. Although, if they made everything exactly like the way it had been, then wouldn’t the new Twilight and Starlight just repeat the process. Which meant...if going back in time erased the present…
“Oh pony feathers,” Spike mumbled as that particular scenario played out in his mind. “Twilight, we really need to quit while we’re ahead.”
Twilight got to the bottom of the end floor stairs and stopped, then spun around so fast Spike fell off of her back and onto the floor before she reached out with both hooves to pull his face up to hers. “No, Spike. It’s hard, I know. I’m just a breath from collapsing myself. But we have to keep going. Next time. Next time, things will be better. Y-You’ll see.”
As he looked up at Twilight, her nervous eyes much too wide and her hooves quivering, something occurred to Spike. “You’ve already realized that it’s hopeless, haven’t you?” he asked. All the times they went back and forth, doing it over and over again, fighting Starlight with things getting worse and worse, then the one time where Starlight doesn’t appear for some reason Spike didn’t understand, Twilight ends up in a world where Princess Celestia almost roasted her. After their last trip, Starlight had done something to change the rules and now, Twilight couldn’t do anything to stop her.
Tears began to swell in Twilight’s eyes. “N-No. It’s not...I can still...w-we can still fix things. I-I can still...”
“Twilight, it’s over,” Spike told her sadly. “You know that. I...I think you’ve known that for awhile, now. Haven’t you?” It must have been eating at her since they arrived. Starlight didn’t even show up in Cloudsdale and things still didn’t work out right.
“Starlight didn’t show last time, and we did everything right, a-and this happened,” Twilight said before she sat down and started to cry. “It’s not fair. I did everything I was supposed to. I tried my best. I...I...but she still, she still wouldn’t listen. And now we’re trapped in this evil Equestria!”
Spike moved in close to give Twilight a hug and something to lean on. After letting her have a good three minutes to just let everything out, Spike stepped back. “It’ll be okay, Twilight. This place different, but, it’s not that bad. We can hang tight here for a bit longer and…” Spike stopped unable to think of what to say next. He knew he couldn’t just pop back in time again, but telling that to Twilight now would only cause more problems.
After drying her tears, Twilight shook her head. “No, Spike. You saw Princess Celestia, she-”
“Twilight, I also saw all of Ponyville,” Spike told her as the sound of hooves began coming up the stairs next to them. “There’s plenty of good, kind ponied all around us. Just talk to one of them about Princess Celestia. I’ll bet the next pony you meet-”
“There you are!” a voice that was, unfortunately, becoming more and more familiar to Spike said as the clip clopping on the stairs stopped.
In the spirit of this new world they found themselves in, Spike decided to use one of the words he had learned while on the streets of Ponyville to make this rather impossibly bad turn of luck. “Ah, damnit.”
“Annie Twiliy!” a squeaky voice cried out before an orange and red blur rushed past Spike to attach itself to Twilight’s leg. The little unicorn colt with the orange coat and red mane looked up at the purple princess with sparkling blue eyes. “Are you okay, Annie Twily?”
Twilight looked up from the foal that looked, at the most, half the age of the CMC and over to the lilac unicorn that had just come up the stairs. “No,” she whined before she pulled away from the little colt and backed away. “No. No, no, no, no, no.”
Oblivious to the other history between them, Starlight Glimmer trotted over to Twilight with a confused but worried look as she pushed the tiny colt away. “Twilight, what’s wrong?” she asked. “I heard Celestia yelling, and Princess Chrysalis is leading the guards to search the town for you and there’s that weird table thing in the center of the meeting room giving off a lot of power, and here I find you crying. Twily, what is it? I haven’t seen you like this in years.”
“Why’re you here?” Twilight asked as she reached up and rubbed her head with a hoof before looking down at the floor.
Starlight smiled at her. “Because of you, silly. Twily, you’re my best friend. Now, let’s go-”
“No,” Twilight mumbled before her hooves stopped trembling. “No.”
The response made Starlight blink. “Twily-”
Spike winced as he saw something snap in Twilight’s expression. “STOP CALLING ME TWILY!” Twilight screeched at Starlight before a beam from the purple alicorn’s horn struck the other pony and sent her flying into the wall next to the stairs to cause an audible impact. “We are not friends! We were NEVER friends! I hate you! YOU RUINED MY LIFE!”
“M-Mommy!” the little colt cried out before he rushed over to the unconscious mare.
Ignoring the foal, Twilight looked over to the dragon as she pointed to the unconscious mare on the ground with the worried colt trying to shake her away. “See, Spike? EVIL!” she shouted before the dragon was snatched up by Twilight’s magic as the alicorn quickly moved down the stairs.
“Yeah, I’m really starting to wonder that about you,” Spike deadpanned.
Twilight looked back to the floating dragon with a frown as she moved down the stairs as fast as a purple pony possibly could, apparently having gotten a second wind from Starlight’s sudden declaration of friendship. “What?”
“Twilight, you just blasted a mom who was trying to comfort you in front of her foal,” Spike told her.
“That doesn’t matter, Spike!” Twilight told him right as they reached the bottom of the stairs and run forward to kick the door open to the throne room.
Spike frowned as Twilight looked left and right, to the sides of the doors. “What’s that supposed to mean?”
“We’re going back again, so what I do here doesn’t matter!” Twilight told him as she finished her inspection or...whatever it was.
“I think it does, Twilight! What happened to realizing this is all hopeless and giving up?” he asked Twilight as she brought them to the center of the room, right before the table and looked around in a rush.
Spike’s question made Twilight spin around and frown at him with uncertainty. “I, well...I-I had a moment of doubt! I can have those. But princesses never give up!”
As Twilight’s words ran in his head, Spike couldn’t help but think back to the time when she just stopped fighting after her friends became discordred, let Spike save everyone after Twilight got trapped, just went home when Twilight’s friends told her to go after Discord’s seeds began choking the tree of Harmony, and then there was the time Twilight surrendered to Tirek because he had hostages. “Actually, you tend to give up when the chips are down by a rather lopsided amount.” It was rather surprising she had been fighting Starlight for so long, actually. “What really just happened back there?” All Spike could see was that Twilight had just snapped after Starlight started acting nice to her.
“...w-well, I’m not giving up this time! One more time, I’ll go back one more time and beat Starlight and fix things for everypony!” Twilight declared as she pulled the scroll out from under her wing. “And if that doesn’t work this time, I’ll just do it again, and again until it does! Now let’s go!”
Twilight’s horn lit up and she jumped onto the table before placing Spike on her back. Then fired off a blast of magic at the scroll…only to watch in horror as a bright, golden glow of magic surrounded the scroll to deflect the activation spell.
“You know, one of the signs of insanity is doing something the same way over and over again, expecting different results,” Celestia’s voice echoed throughout the throne room before she just casually walked out of thin air, the space she had been occupying obviously wrapped in some sort of concealment spell. The big princess pulled the scroll away in her magic before her expression became much more sympathetic. “Oh Twily, what did I do to you?”
Spike tensed. “Princess Celestia, wh-what’re you doing here?”
“Well, after learning that you and Twilight appeared in this room, right on top of this table, I had Starlight run an analysis on it and we detected the temporal magic clinging to the harmonic energy. It’s amazing that this thing is still working, considering how badly you’ve been twisting its use,” she said. “So, it was only logical that you two would return here, eventually.”
Despite the fact that she as no longer on fire, the appearance of Princess Celestia had Twilight down on her belly with shaking knees. “P-Princess Celestia, please, I...I need that spell. I need to fix everything.”
A sigh came out of the big princess before she took in a deep breath. “Twilight, are you even listening to yourself? Are you even thinking about what you’re doing?” she asked. “What the consequences are?”
Twilight winced, as if Celestia was using a lash instead of soft words. “Please. I...I have to save my friends,” she cried softly.
“And how many times have you done this? How many failures have you had?” Princess Celestia asked gently despite a small tick in her eye. It as like she was forcing herself to keep a friendly face and calm demeanor. “What makes you think this time around is going to be any different? Twilight, I can see you’re hurting and even with everything you’ve done to my family, it isn’t a pleasant sight to me. So come down here and let me help you.”
There was a long silence in which Spike heard the light creaking of a door opening on the far end of the room opening as Twilight looked over to Celestia, her expression brightening a little. “Help...me?” she asked.
Celestia smiled at her. “Yes, despite everything that you have done, you are still one of my little ponies. Although trying to take the blame for seeing you like this would be quite hypocritical, I can’t help but feel in some small way, guilty for what has happened to you,” she said before her face hardened a little. “What she did to you.”
“That’s it!” Twilight exclaimed happily. “You can help me!”
That bad feeling in his gut started to return, and Spike took a step towards the purple pony. “Uh, Twilight, I don’t think you and Celestia are talking about the same thing here.”
Completely ignoring the dragon, Twilight took a step forward as if she was a drowning mare, reaching out for a lifeline. “You can come back with me. I know we can defeat Starlight with you helping us, Princess! Then, all we have to do is go back again without you, and everything will be right again!”
Celestia’s gentle demeanor evaporated in an instant, the small smile replaced by an angry frown. “You did not just ask me to help you to undo countless lives for your own selfish desires,” she said before a ball of flame appeared underneath the scroll holding the time travel spell. “I can see now that trying to reason with you is the height of foolishness. At the end of the week, I will lay you at the hooves of my daughter and ask for forgiveness for the wounds I’m about to inflict on top of whatever happens to you in the dungeons over the next few days.”
“NOOOOOOOO!” Twilight screamed in desperation as flames threatened to touch the scroll.
Spike found himself wondering that maybe, just maybe...all of this was for the best. Twilight had obviously been pushed far past her limits, with the last ten minutes turning her into an absolute wreck of a mare that couldn’t even think in a straight line. Well, Starlight’s still around, good-Starlight, I mean. Maybe once Twilight’s had some sleep, they can really talk and try to figure something out, he thought to himself. Celestia didn’t seem to want to hurt Twilight, she was just really angry about something.
And what was all that stuff about a daughter?
As the flames of Celestia’s magic touched the bottom of the scroll-“HERE I COME TO WRECK THE DAAAAAAAAAY!”
Spike blinked as Discord suddenly crashed into Celestia, sending both of them out of his field of view momentarily as the flames and Celestia’s magic. A second later, Twilight was on the ground, stomping on the singed scroll. “Don’tburn!Don’tburn!Don’tburn!” she begged in a rush.
There was an enraged shierk from Celestia. “GAAAAH! GET OFF OF ME YOU FOOL! OR I’LL DO MORE THAN DROP YOU OUT A WINDOW THIS TIME” the Princess yelled as she flailed about with Discord on top of her.
“What’s wrong Tia? All these changeling throne pieces your boyfriend put in me make it hard for your magic to work?” he said with a laugh before looking over to Twilight. “I’ve been waiting for this! UNDO IT, TWILIGHT! UNDO IT ALL HAHAHAHAHAHAHA!”
Twilight leaped back onto the table and fired her magic at the scroll. “Come on Spike, we’re going!”
The temporal bubble appeared over Spike’s head as one of the crystal chairs flew back fast enough to give Rainbow Dash a run for her money and slammed into Discord. “NO!” Celestia shouted she got free and glared up at Twilight. “YOU FOOL! DO YOU HAVE ANY IDEA WHAT YOU’RE DOING?!”
“I’m saving my friends!” Twilight cried out as they were pulled upward.
Celestia frowned back at her before the big mare’s horn lit up with an intensity Spike had never seen before. “I will not let you destroy Equestria!” she shouted back at them as her horn pointed right at them.
Spike grabbed onto Twilight in fear. Princess Celestia...she wasn’t about to...do what...he thought she was going to do...was she? Oh buck, she’s really gonna kill us.
Another second ticked by as Celestia stood there, her horn ablaze with enough power that had Spike wondering if being a dragon would be able to protect him at all. Twilight gripped onto him tightly, probably thinking the same thing. They floated closer to the bubble and the rage on Celestia’s face twitched ever so slightly.
When Twilight and Spike were nearly inside, Celestia let out a cry of pure rage and pointed her horn away from Twilight.
Until it was aimed at something right in front of her. A beam of devastating energy short forth from her horn, striking the cutie map.
Spike could do nothing but watch as the crystal artifact shattered into a million pieces from the impact of Celestia’s force beam. “She...she broke the map,” he said in a dull tone.
The force fulling him and Twilight upwards came to a sudden stop.
“No,” Twilight breathed as the magical white sphere that surrounded them began to flicker. “Nononononono!”
Panting heavily, Celestia looked up at the purple alicorn as she grabbed Spike to keep him from falling and began to frantically beat her wings. “It’s over, Twilight.”
“NO!” Twilight screamed before she lit up her horn. The bright light of Starlight’s spell turned to a light purple as Twilight fed her magic into it. “Destination’s still programmed. Magic is still in place. It just needs power. Just needs power!” With one last yank of her head, and a panicked cry from Celestia, Twilight touched her horn to the top of the spell.
And the world around them disappeared.
“W-What just happened?” Spike asked as he looked around the timestream.
“I don’t know, Spike!”
“T-Twilight, what’s going on?”
“I...I’m holding...the spell together w-with, my magic,” Twilight said as she strained under the weight.
Spike pulled in on himself as the bubble around them began to constrict. “Uh, T-Twilight?”
“I need to concentrate!” she said as the bubble closed in around them until Spike could barely move and Twilight continued to talk to herself. “Just one more time. Just one more time. Please, just one more time.”
Floating in the void, Starlight Glimmer wished that she had brought some cards.
Or magazines.
Something to pass the time, at least.
All Starlight had been able to do was think while Twilight was taking her sweet time, and sitting around with just herself and a crystal magic syphon on her head that gave the unicorn a shock whenever Starlight tried to touch it wasn’t a good place to think.
She knew what was coming.
She was ready for it, too.
When Starlight was taken to Cloudsdale again, she would just fall from the sky and hit the ground. It was a fall from a height that would end her life.
She...looked forward to it.
Because she knew that she deserved it.
Back when Starlight had broken into the Canterlot Archives to look for a way of getting back at Twilight Sparkle, she hadn’t even thought about using the time spell she found to save Sunburst. All she had wanted to do was ruin six lives because they disagreed with her on a subject she didn’t really believe in herself.
Starlight snorted at the thought. Equality, what a joke, the unicorn thought to herself. Her philosophy had been nothing more than a catchy word that she used to hide her need to control everyone around her, to keep them under her hoof. Just like she had with Sunburst.
She missed Sunburst.
She...k-killed Sunburst.
And instead of admitting she was wrong, Starlight had kept doubling-down on her bad decisions and twisted thought process. It hadn’t been her fault. He made her do it. It was always somepony else’s fault. Nothing she did was ever wrong! The whole thought process made her feel sick to her stomach.
She laid out on her belly. “Just let me die, already.”
The barrier around her began to flicker, catching Starlight’s attention and jolting the unicorn out of her dulled state. “What the?” she asked as the magic around her continued to destabilize. “Oh no.”
Starlight didn’t understand. The magic for her barrier came from Twilight’s stupid table-map thingy. It was the most powerful artifact that she had ever seen, an unlimited font of magical power. There was no way it could go out!
But if it did...if Starlight tossed out into the temporal void without its protections...she...she would…
Actually, Starlight realized as she failed to construct a scenario from the lack of data. I’m not sure just what would happen to me.
She did know who to blame, though. “Twilight, what did you do?” Starlight asked as the spell continued to fade. Despite how futile it was, Starlight tried to press magic into the spell through her horn. If she could reinforce the magic, there was a chance she might be able to…
A dozen little sparks fly out without any effect. “Well...buck me.”
Once Starlight had realized the way her life had gone, she had been ready to call it quits. The Sunburst that was out there was alive. She didn’t know how, and she didn’t care. All that mattered was that he was okay. But being thrown out into the timestream without a protective barrier or ability to navigate, she...didn’t know what was going to happen to her.
And as the last bit of the magic left in the spell disappeared, all Starlight could do was hope that maybe, just maybe, she would catch a glimpse of Sunburst’s life. And it would be happy.
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Satisfying! I am looking forward to your further works! Poor Twilight, she really needs a snack upside the head. We'll see what comes!
Well that was a tad depressing and ominous. Poor original timeline Twilight and Spike... I even feel sorry for original timeline Starlight.
Poor Twilight. Lack of sleep really affected her Judgement.
Also Twilight? When Discord is going MUAHAHAHAHAHA!!!!!! and urging you to do something...Maybe you should wait a little?
Wait. It's complete! WTF!!!
Let me get this straight.
You jump forward in the timeline, tell us about all these cool and interesting events but they took place already, offscreen, and we don't even get half the context behind them, just so you can kind of put us in universe-displaced Twilight's shoes a bit. You also give Sunset the Bergentrückung treatment so she doesn't get to do anything whatsoever, do nearly the same thing with Shining Armor, and make Cadence BFFs with Chrysalis, the queen of the race which she previously feared and despised more than anything else in the world.
Then you have both her and Spike completely fail to comprehend the idea of just saying that she's chasing someone who's trying to use time travel to destroy Equestria, in favor of having them try to be duplicitous and fail so badly that even I wouldn't trust them farther than I could throw them, and yet have nobody call them on it at all until Discord shows up to ruin everything forever. Meanwhile, everyone who talks to them avoids mentioning Sunset's name in the clumsiest way possible just so that Twilight isn't allowed to realize she's active in this world and/or make the mirror world connection.
Then you have Twilight go completely off the deep end, declare everyone evil including Celestia and herself, and laser Good Future Starlight Glimmer in front of her kid just to make Celestia's irrational hatred actually be justified.
And all of that ends on a cliffhanger that jumps to Starlight Glimmer stuck outside time and doomed to dissolve into nothingness, which also ends on a cliffhanger, and given the content of the author's notes both cliffhangers could very well end up being utterly meaningless since it's officially possible that none of this will have ever actually going to happened because LOL, time travel.
I'm not entirely sure I want to keep reading this series at this point if you're going to just yank your readers' chains like this.
Not going to lie, that was a letdown after all the buildup.
9195443
You need to remember that Twilight is half-insane by this point, and of the belief that once she fixes time, none of it will have happened anyway (which in fiction is a common belief of time travellers). Secondly, as far as Celestia is concerned, Twilight lied to the other Celestia about Sunset, and deliberately left her to be crippled. Ofc, more than likely Twilight had no idea how important Sunset was to her, but Celestia has been shown to be a bit irrational when it comes to family.
Interesting with how much Twilight has reached well beyond her breaking point, I wonder if she will become Sunset's main protagonist, heck if she abandons all her morals for the sake of restoring Equestria. I don't think she will take it wall Sunset changed the pass, but there is a slim chance that she can understand her situation and looks beyond that. I think the idea of Celestia actually turn on her really traumatized her and won't see her as her teacher until she restores the time stream. As she knew it shy might just go ''fuck all' with the time stream and just takes over Equestria so as to make sure the events that are important for her come to pass, I wonder if she could steal Nightmare Moons powers to try and kill Sunset in an attempt to fix everything. Spike might be the last voice of reason that she will be willing to listen to, wonder if she will start ignoring him completely at this point. I would say that this world really seems to put too much authority on Sunset Candence and the Mane Six with how much of a heavy hoof they seem to be using on everything they decide to do and put a lot more importance on wining then they do in the series.
Ok. OK. What the hell!? This can not just be me, but does anyone else feel this is really contrived? Spikes complete 180 too becoming a hardcore advocate for this timeline he knows barely anything about all because he got is heart broken thanks to finally learning the truth about the relationship between him and Rarity. Now all of a sudden he is utterly trying to convince Twilight to give up and stay in this new timeline that they don't originate from because he thinks this is as good as it gets.
And screw this erasing the current timeline excuse, that logic can be applied back to the original timeline, what about their lives? Don't they deserve to have their lives restored?
And Twilight, my god. She has turned into a violent mess, one that a just can't buy. She has done bad things before, lost her mind yes. But this...this is just a whole new level of insanity. Ahh boy.
And screw you Celestia, man I really do not like this version of her.
The only thing I am,disappointed with is that this was such a short series. I wish I could have lasted MANY more chapters and eventually had Twilight meet Empress Sunset. But I will continue reading as I want to what happens next.
It's times like this that a particularly favourite quote of mine comes to mind:
egscomics.com/comics/1375930092-2013-08-08.png
Still, hoping this isn't the last we see of prime timeline Twilight... she never even found out that the one who has twisted everypony against her is Sunset Shimmer! Because I'm sure that will do wonders for her opinion of this world's morality.
9195443
You took the words right out of my mouth.
While I thought the story was a bit interesting I didn't like the way Spike was treated, he was just a nobody to Twilight while he tried his best to help, and maybe he was having depressing thoughts about his life over there being over. I really want to see somepony telling the Empress about Spike because it would make her snap to the timeline with Princess Twilight. Well, while it's a good reading, it isn't my favorite like the others.
*sees complete tag*
9195443
This is harsh, but fair.
Way to end a fic without resolving anything... >__>
This ending was one of the worst I have ever read. The whole story was pointless and ultimately a depressing letdown. Also the damn cliffhanger is pointless it is inferred that it will never be finished. UGH.
Also, I think Celestia is out of her mind. Why is she not a princess also? I also think blaming Twilight is extreme given the setup from the movie. Heck Twilight may have thought she was doing Sunset a favor. Given her crimes could be construed and high treason. This is extremely unfair.
Twilight didn't care about the consequences or what could happen if she altered time again. Even if she ends up in the past, time was already altered way before that. And with the map destroyed, there's no way to return to the future since it acted as a beacon for Twilight to return after traveling through time.
At the end of the day, I can't tell how much of this was legitimately supposed to be a bleak vision of a possible future and how much of it was just the fixficcy nature of this series finally crossing the line.
Meh.
Interesting. Don’t think I’ve ever seen the time travel equivalent of “rocks fall everybody dies”.
I bet in the sequel, Twilight and Spike end up back in that alternate future and are in big trouble. Well, Twilight will be.
Samurai Jack
*wh-chaahh*
Love your series man but damn this idiot ball is too heavy for all these characters to hold. This would make more sense if Discord fully rebelled after Tirek and Sunset couldn't fully stop him so he set all this up perfectly so that it went as fucked up as it could possibly go. Contrived is a little too harsh a word but it's something like that.
This really left me disappointed with the lack of resolution. It was a wonderful buildup, I loved Discord forcing a confrontation, anticipating that the Twilight who changed time would meet Sunset who got lost in time, but then... nothing.
Twilight is gone - maybe - we don't know!
Starlight (Evil) is gone - maybe - we don't know!
Cliffhanger completes are really unsatisfying, which is why I'm changing thumbs to down.
I hope this has some sort of payoff in a later story, because I have to agree with those saying this was really unsatisfying. Really, I wish Spike had manned up and actually done something to stop Twilight, since she'd clearly gone off the deep end. Also assuming this timeline survives, Discord's getting tossed in a woodchipper for this. The only part of this I agree with is that it would be totally in character for 'Princess of OCD' Twilight to freak out like this, given the circumstances, and main timeline Celestia needs a lot more newspapers to the nose for Twilight turning out like that.
Was this all just setup to destroy the map?
If so, going back in time should fix it, unless they're actually traveling to infinitely possible and persistent worlds and not actually traveling through a timeline of one singular world. Like, instead of fast forward and rewind it's a playlist of alternate scenes to choose from, and the time spell is just programed to make it seem like time travel to the user.
9195457
I'd be nice to have an epilogue to point out what in this actually carries forward to have an affect on the series.
I have to agree. This just fell flat for me, and the author's notes just poke a stick at how meaningless this is.
Yeah I gave this side story a chance even after all my concerns with jumping ahead the main narrative. Well sorry to say that this was a real disappointment. The biggest issue to me isn't all the events you now have hinted at that you may never even elaborate on if you decide Twilight could change them all anyway. Though those are big since you really shouldn't offer up all these amazing ideas just to go haha none of them will you ever learn about. The biggest issue to me is you did all this created this mess of continuity and potentially deliberately crushed set up expectations and then due to the ending got zero out of it. Yes zero. This story means nothing accomplishes nothing has no effect on the main narrative at all. It could have made its own interesting story but you cut it short with that ending. No resolution to any of the events that happened now let alone any details of past events. You had a bunch of stuff happen then stop dead and hinted at a bunch of stuff that at best will mean less surprises as the main story continues and at worst are very appealing interesting ideas that will never play out basically trolling your readers.
9193890
Unless I am remembering wrong the author has already said that the romantic aspects of the mane 6's relationship will not be in the main story. It is planed to end before those changes even begin.
9195747
Oh dear God.
Literally all Celestia had to do was call Sunset's name.
Actually this whole sidefic was too dumb - stupid consiracy, no one except Spike vs Crys developing, dumb climactic scene, all this pointless running. It would be much better if there was actual prisoning, investigation, conversations, comprehension and apperance of Sunset after all of this to be unnecessary in the end. But no, it was only pile of this timeline facts without any development.
Well everyone has already given a fair amount of constructive criticism so I won't jump in on the bandwagon and just say I agree with most of them, but their were two parts that I disliked the most here.
1. Celestia still holding such a powerful grudge toward Twilight. To me it shows a lack of character growth, she has never moved on past a misperceived wrong that she holds Twilight as mostly responsible for, she has never had the talk with Sunset that would of cleared a great deal of this up, she has never realized or even acknowledge one of her greatest personality faults, the immediate and incorrect judgments of others. Throughout the series this has been one of Celestia's greatest faults by far and you have done a great job of making a part of her character, it truly helps make her feel more human (or pony in this case) while also making it feel believable at the same time, but the Celestia in this time skip is still the same pony that we see in the last book, and I don't mean this in a positive way.
I think that it would of been better if this future Celestia was shown as someone who has matured a bit, one who recognized that the Princess Twilight that she built up inside her head was just a means to throw blame for what happen to her daughter, one who recognized that she needed to owe up to what she did to her daughter, not what someone else did to her.
2.Twilight's undeserved treatment in this story. Most often when authors have a character just... break down like Twilight did they give some sort of reason for this kind of punishment that the character is receiving, some wrong that justifies the universe/person's action against them, but none is ever given. True there is the moral argument of possibly destroying all life in the other timelines (if that is how time-travel even works in this universe) which I'm sure will cause a comment section war down the line, but I still genuinely felt bad for Twilight due too everything she went through. Having all of her hopes of saving everyone she ever knew and loved being destroyed, not by some evil villain but by Princess Celestia, her idol in life, to feel having the kindest and most caring pony that she knew genuinely hate her and want her dead. All of this at the end of of seeing every single Equestria being destroyed or ruined beforehand and being unable to do anything for them.
I don't blame Twilight for just... wishing that this Equestria would be different from the rest... but I think this one turned out to be the worse for her.
9195687
Given that the map was powerin Starlight's temporal shield between timelines, it's likely that the map is a universal constant. Whatever happens to it in one timeline happens in all connected timelines. So the map will be broken the moment a time traveler appears. Don't think too hard on the cases where the timeline is in play before the map exists (unless it's an aspect of the tree of harmony, in which case Celestia may have done some major damage...)
Sigh.... So, then. I'm going to ask this now. And I would really appreciate an answer. Like, PM me if you have to. I honestly don't care about it being spoiled, because I won't be reading otherwise.
Is this still a closed and stable loop as the Equestria Girls movie suggested? Because if you're betraying the fact that everything is supposed to go back to normal, then I really don't feel like reading whatever you come out with next. I can put up with a lot of unnecessary drama. Heck, unnecessary drama is a bit of a guilty pleasure of mine when it comes to reading, but your story has been getting more and more unbelievable for a while, and this has basically just killed any interest I had in it. The only thing that might salvage it is knowing that you aren't looking for an excuse to keep your alternate timeline around, because if you're trying to do that all your story is is basically one giant fix fic.
Lord brony. This piece of carp story better not be Canon to the Sunset verse. This was just awful and we'll below your usual work. If you needed a break from Sunset verse then do what you are saying to do and go back to fae.
This felt like a waste of everyone's time especially yours
I see what you did there
On the story itself... What kind of non-ending was that? It explained nothing and only left an rather obscure cliffhanger that makes the entire story pointless. You built a helluva expectation for a confrontation between the parts, the resolving of Celestia's grudge.... And then threw it all away.
Look, I follow your stories and know you might take a long while to build things up, but always deliver on them. It's worth it. But this time? It honestly seems like you posted half the chapter. Is there an epilogue coming? Because as it stands right now, that complete tag is a lie. There's a whole lot of rising tension and the beginning of a climax, and then it dies with no resolution at all.
If this is your intention please explain what it's supposed to accomplish, because if it's purely build up for another story it would be that story's prologue, not a standalone
You can never have too much Sunshine Dance!
Is there a missing word there?
Didn’t end how I thought it might, but as this is just a side story with likely no real impact and the main story it shouldn't really matter. The only question I have is what will happen to Starlight and Twilight. Are they gone for good? Trapped in the past? Or what? Needs clarification at some point and I’m somewhat disappointed that Twilight didn’t find out who the Emperess was or her reaction to Sunset being Celestia’s daughter.
9195824
it shouldn't have a comment war the author told everyone in the first one that destroying everything back to the point the spell took them is exactly how it works. which is why it would have been very bad had Sunset not returned when she did. she not being temporally present due to the different temporal axis between worlds, Equestria and EG, would result in her disappearing a month before she ran away.
i would concur that Celestia seems to have hit a road block where it comes to "princess" Twilight Sparkle. but as she seemed to view current timeline twi as separate it is conceivable that it hasn't come up.
as the spell was only powered by Twilight there's a chance they'll fall out of time prior to their destination, maybe save Luna(if she needed it), and save Discord from himself.(i can only presume that with the threat of the "Empress" he never truly befriended Fluttershy or anyone else)
That's a shame. If that was the way the ending was going to go, tying up the original Twilight/Starlight plot was essential. But that didn't happen. Combined with Celestia's complete lack of maturity including a dangerously casual approach to time magic, and Twilight's unnecessary "everything is evil" complex ("we need to go" doesn't require that the current timeline be awful), and we're left with an ending that jumps all over the place and then ends almost in the middle of the senten
I had..HAVE so many questions, and this answered a whole ONE of them. ONE. In fact, now I have MOAR questions!
It was still a fantastic read, but UGH
...So, um. I kind of don't have a problem with the ending? Kind of, ah, puzzled, actually, seeing the comments. Possible I'm just missing something I would object to, but... yeah. I mean, there are things left unresolved, sure, but you're planning to write more in this universe; it's not as if you're intending to leave us on that forever.
Wait... That's it?
I really liked this story, but ending it with a bait and quits left a bad taste in my mouth.
All these people berating the story, and not a single one of them is asking what comes next, or what the ending really means. So what does it mean? It means, there's no more map. There's also no more Starlight. So what does this mean for Twilight, if she really *did* cast the spell? It means that she's going to go back one last time to when Dash was a kid, but Starlight won't be there. There'll be nothing to change. And she'll be stuck there. In the past. Where she'll certainly bump into Sunset and the gang. This isn't an end, it's a way of getting her into the main story.
Mwahahahaha. I see exactly hat the writer is doing. And I love it. I see the twists and turns that's are being put in!
spoiler alert. This story will be Canon. The way I see it happening is as follows. 1. This happens. 2. They fall short of the intended destination, right after the last story ended but a year or so in the future. 3. They stop an event from happening how it's supposed to to create the future they just visited and alter things further. 4. This results in changes to the timeline the writer will reveal slowly and detailed.
I just love it all. The twists and turns are perfect.
So... Twilight destroyed the world? Reality? I honestly don't get the ending here...
9195729
Second
Twist and turns are their master plan, but the goal of the fic is right back where it began.
Nyuh! I wanted Princess Twilight to meet... Polygamous Twilight. Also I wanted her to meet Shimmy cause I wanted to see how Shimmy would react. Aw well, Twilight is working with magic she does not fully understand so the possibility is still there.
After all, Spike does not exist in this timeline, but somehow he exist in the timeline's future babysitting a teen Flurryheart as a fairly adult drake. Which means one of two things. One: PT and Spike gets dumped somewhere in the timeline, Spike accepts it even if PT goes crazy. Or two: The egg spike came from is hatched at a later time in the timeline, but that really does not synch up with the ages like they should. After all Glimmy already have a kid and yet spike have not been hatched yet, so it is very unlikely that he will be an adult by the time Flurry is a teen in this scenario...
I'm gonna be honest with you, the concept of the story is good and all but it feels so...forced, rushed. Like here we have Prime-Twilight go into the Sunset Reset timeline and just...exist there, finding out things didn't go the way Twilight knows them as and automatically assumes ill of it and sort of just say "Buck it, time travel again".
Celestia herself seems to hold a very big grudge against Prime-Twilight for simply being herself in another timeline that Sunset has interacted and after all those years past Sunset Reset, she doesn't seem to have developed much.
What I'm saying is, this story has a nice idea but in the scheme of this series you're making, this fic should have more time to be fleshed out and maybe introduced later when we have context for any of the things happening in this point in time. We went from forcing Changeing detecting spells in fear of Cadence being assassinated to Chrysalis is suddenly married to Celestia, and Twilight apparently married Rarity, said mare wasn't really around, not to mention Sunset's name wasn't ever mentioned at all.
What I'm trying to say, is that the story has done a complete loop-de-loop from Sunset's Crowning Achievement to Twilight's Time Traveling Troubles. It kind of throws you off especially reading the previous stories, if this was not part of the stories and a standalone in its own universe it'd be a bit better.
I get a reasonable amount of people aren't very satisified with the ending, me in particular, because this doesn't feel like an ending, it feels like it should be the end of Act 1 or 2 in the story.
This holds comedic elements more than drama. I felt it was a light comedy playing at Twilight's OCD tendencies.
Why'd it end so suddenly, without resolution?
Did she/they die? Never win? Finally win? Temporal paradox or not, it ends like 'The girl or the Lion', and I'm not a fan of figure it out and you're right ends to anything.
*update*
Apparently this is a side story I didn't realize, as such it holds no context to new readers... And seems just as confusing to readers that know the whole story itself.