The Many Twilights of Ascension

by SvenFoxx

1. Meet the Captain

My name is Twilight Sparkle, and I am the Princess of Friendship.

However, what is a Princess of Friendship… without her friends?

I don’t know the answer to that question. So, I decided to seek the advice of one of the four entities in Equestria that are older than me.

I would have spoken to Celestia, but I already knew how loneliness affected her. She hid it well, but eventually I discovered a mare that had been shattered by the loss of her sister, and never quite recovered from it.

I would have spoken to Luna, but I already knew how the loss of her subjects had affected her. She went mad with grief and attempted to bring about Eternal Night. She recovered, but only with help from friends.

I would have asked Cadence, but she’s still holed up in the Crystal Empire, mourning the loss of my brother. She’s yet to deal with it.

That leaves me only one other immortal I could ask, at least an immortal that is, if tentatively, my friend.

Discord.

I really should have known I wouldn’t get a direct answer from him, but… well, I can’t say it wasn’t effective.

---

Twilight Sparkle was awake and out of bed near instantly. She had heard something from downstairs. Grabbing her shield, she crept quietly from her room and down the stairs, hearing a voice swearing to itself.

“...erbucking jerk! He could… east warned me!”

She frowned. That voice sounded familiar. Similar to her own, yet not as rough. A voice that hadn’t spent a lifetime barking orders and drilling Privates.

She carefully pushed the door open just enough to see into her kitchen. A purple pegasus had her back to her as she panted on the floor. She couldn’t see the face, but the form was feminine.

The mare groaned. “I just wanted some advice dammit…” she moaned. “Not to get flung to some random pony’s kitchen.”

Twilight frowned again. So she didn’t actually break into her home on purpose, but was sent here against her will? Could Twilight trust that this oddly familiar mare was in fact innocent?

No. She couldn’t.

With a hard buck, she slammed her kitchen door open, making the strange mare visibly jump. “Hooves in the air! You’re under arrest for breaking and entering!” Twilight shouted as she leapt into the kitchen, brandishing her shield.

The purple pegasus frantically tried to spin around, and Twilight found herself wondering when a mirror had been put between them.

“... What the buck?” The two mares asked in shock upon seeing each other. Their voices intermingled oddly.

Purple eyes, unicorn horn, wings, two-toned purple and rose colored man and tail. Twilight Sparkle found herself staring into the eyes of a mare that was very near a perfect copy of her.

Well… not perfect. She could see differences. Their manes for one. Twilight kept hers short because of the risk in it getting grabbed by an opponent, while this mare had a longer, more cared for mane. Twilight also noticed that she was more physically fit than this new mare, though that wasn’t to say the imposter was fat. She was in good shape, but not the kind that long hours of training almost every day of your life got you.

That was when Twilight’s mind finally kicked in and fury flooded her veins. “Chrysalis! How bucking dare you!” she roared, diving for the mare.

The unknown Alicorn yelped and vanished in a burst of magenta magic. She appeared on the other side of the kitchen. “Wait! I’m not Chrysalis!” she tried to say.

Twilight, however, was having none of it. She reared back with her shield. “I don’t buy it! I don’t know what you’re plan is now, but you aren’t getting whatever you’re after!”

Then she hurled the shield at the mare, her horn flashing with magic. The imposter vanished in another teleport, but Twilight was ready this time and used her magic to bounce her shield off the hardened crystal of her kitchen wall and direct it at the spot the mare exited the teleport.

The last thing the imposter saw before darkness took her was the shield in front of her eyes.

Twilight frowned as the mare hit the floor with a thump, out cold. “Huh. Normally she can take a hit.” She shrugged after a moment, then waited until the transformation on Chrysalis faded so that it was safe to grab her. Those flames Changelings used hurt.

After a full minute of waiting, Twilight’s frown deepened. A Changeling always reverted back to their base form when knocked unconscious, even the ones like Chrysalis and Thorax. Unless…

Twilight built up some magic before unleashing it on the Changeling as a pulse of electricity. The imposter’s body jumped, much like any pony would when they got jolted by a defibrillator… but failed to react in any other way. She was truly unconscious.

The electricity also doubled as a means to break a Changeling’s disguise. Enough electricity scrambled the disguise and shattered it. This imposter still looked like her. So… not an imposter. What then?

“Ow…”

Twilight narrowed her eyes as the mare slowly got back to her hooves. But she didn’t attack. The mare shook her head, holding a hoof to it. The she looked at Twilight. She also frowned.

“That… was rude.”

Then Twilight was flipping through the air, having been blasted through the wall of her kitchen and into the open air of the Crystal Empire. Flaring her wings brought her to a stop. The mare flew up to her, but didn’t attack further. Twilight decided to not retaliate. She did, after all, attack this mare first.

“Who are you?” Twilight asked.

“Twilight Sparkle, the Princess of Friendship. You?”

“That’s not possible,” Twilight said. “Because I’m Twilight Sparkle, the Captain of the Royal Guard and one half of the Diarchy of the Crystal Empire.”

Both Twilight’s frowned at each other.

“Well… one of us is clearly lying,” the Princess of Friendship said.

“But which one?” The Captain of the Royal Guard said.

Then the Princess groaned and slapped a hoof to her face. “Stars damn it. DISCORD!!!” she roared to the skies, startling the Captain.

“Sheesh, you’d think she would be more appreciative.”

“I agree. We go out of our way to help her, and get yelled at.”

Both Twilights spun and found a sight that made them both gape. Discord stood there… next to himself.

“... I think I’m gonna be sick…” the Princess suddenly said, before vanishing in a teleport and reappearing next to a trash can on the street, and promptly hurling her lunch.

One of the Discords appeared next to her and held her mane back for her. “Easy there Twi. Shoving you through dimensions like I did is gonna leave you reeling for a while.”

The Captain raised an eyebrow before looking at what she was beginning to suspect was her Discord. “Shoved through dimensions?” she asked.

He snapped his fingers, bringing both of them down to where the Princess was. “Twilight Sparkle of dimension four-five-eight, meet the Twilight Sparkle of dimension zero-zero-two. The Twilight that Lived, as we call her,” he said.

“Ugh… you mean…” the Princess tried to speak, hiccuped, and then her eyes widened and she was once more throwing up in the trash can. “I didn’t even have corn!” she moaned.

“Like the multiverse theory?” the Captain asked in place of her counterpart.

The Discord holding the mane of the Princess nodded. “Only it’s not a theory. Reality is a far bigger place than most wish it was. For every action one of us takes, there is an equal and opposite action that another one of us has taken. Or event. Honestly, if you can imagine it, it’s probably happened to a Twilight out there.” He motioned towards his Twilight, who was now moaning to herself as she almost hung from the edge of the trash can. “My Twilight, for example, is the Twilight that Lived.”

“What do you mean? Do we tend to die?” the Captain asked.

Her Discord nodded. “Yes. Either through battle, old age, or even just an experiment gone wrong. Every Twilight dies eventually… except her.”

The Captain frowned. “So… she’s immortal?”

The Discord holding the Princess nodded. “About as immortal as you can get. In our dimension her Alicorn ascension was slightly different, and it resulted in her becoming immortal. It wasn’t really a problem. At least… it wasn’t until her friends and family began dying around her to old age.”

The Captain’s eyes slowly widened. “The Twilight that Lived,” she said, understanding. She closed her eyes. “How… how many…” she tried to ask.

“She’s the only one, if that’s what you’re asking,” local Discord said. “If you mean how many of her friends… all of them. They all died eventually, some sooner than others. Some messier than others. And some… slower than others.”

The Discord holding the Princess gently pulled her from the trash can and held her in his arms as she shivered, remembering all of her friends. “Spike was the last one. He’s a dragon, so he’s got a ludicrous lifespan, but it eventually ended only a few weeks ago in our world. He… he died after over a century of constantly forgetting who he was… and who Twilight was.”

The Captain frowned. “Spike? You mean… Dragonlord Spike? The same dragon that brought the dragons together into a single society a few years ago?”

“In their world, Twilight hatched him from an egg during an entrance exam into Celestia’s school,” local Discord said. “Twilight raised him as her own.”

The Captain cringed. That meant Twilight had watched her own son die a slow and painful death.

However, as much as she felt bad for this Twilight, she still had one question that needed an answer, one she was sure the Princess wanted to know as well. “Why did you send her here?”

Author's Note:

And here we go. The story I've been building up to. TMToA. The Many Twilight's of Ascension.

Twilight Sparkle, the Captain of the Royal Guard, is based on another story with a very similar background, one where Twilight and Shining Armor's roles are swapped. However, I took a different spin on it an made Twilight a little more similar to Captain America, and Shining more similar the Stephen Strange.

Alfonso_rd_33, eat your heart out.

Comments

[Anar Isil]

Some things, you don't realize you've wanted until you see them.

This is one of those things.

Thank you, and I look forward to where you take this.

[Comickook]

Really good job on this first chapter of your multiverse-spanning story. Yeah, I can see where Discord would think it might help his Twilight to talk to some of her counterparts from other universes. And, yeah, really good choice for the first stop on the tour. Talking to one of the co-rulers of the Crystal Empire should definitely be informative. And, hopefully, we will learn the REASON Discord picked THIS universe as the FIRST stop on the multiversal tour.

And, yeah, it WOULD be extra painful for Twilight to be forced to watch Spike die a slow, painful death due to dementia. Finding out one of the other Spikes DID become (and STAY) Dragon Lord was a superb detail though.

And maybe one or two of the future chapters could have Twilight checking up on her counterpart from the universe where Rainbow Dash was Fluttershy's imaginary friend given magical life by Twilight during her entrance exam surge, only for that life to come to an end shortly after Chrysalis's attempted invasion, if only to finally see how she, Fluttershy, Rarity, Applejack, Pinkie and Spike are coping without Rainbow.

And maybe the Supermare chapter(s) could have THAT Twilight mention visiting an alternate universe that had as many similarities as differences to her own (a nod to your "Hero Souls" story).

But, anyway, really good job on the exchanges, characterizations and future chapter set-up.

[alfonso_rd_33]

SVEEEENNNFOOOOOXXXX!!!! You don't KNOW what You've Unleashed...

Considering that Twilight Sparkle is the Alfonso Rodríguez of the MLP universe has gotten ALL of us in a Tizzy... Will be interesting to... spar... With the Twiptain...

[prism heart]

Eagerly awaiting more.

[CommanderBigMac]

This will be good. Keep going