This Time for Good

by iisaw

12 Story Time

There is a cycle of folktales that originated in the Maresai tribe and eventually spread to most of Equatorial Zebrica. It's a series of stories about twin sisters who are beautiful, strong, swift, and talented. They are so alike that hardly anyone can tell them apart. The only difference between the two is that Zawadi is very wise, while Makena is very foolish. The stories are, like many such tales, tools for easily teaching young zebras hard truths about the world.

In The Tale of the Hungry Griffon, the sisters are out harvesting flowers and sweet herbs. They sing and dance as they gather, and weave flower crowns for each other. Suddenly, a griffin drops from the sky and lands before them. The sisters are terrified, because this was in the Bad Old Days when griffins ate zebras, and they were sure they were about to become the griffin's next meal.

But the griffin assures them he was struck by the beauty of their singing and dancing, and only wishes to watch them from nearby.

Makena says to Zawadi, "Surely, he must be telling the truth! Look, there are tears of joy in his eyes!"

Her sister, who is not a fool, replies, "Don't look at the eyes! Watch the claws!"

And sure enough, the griffin is flexing his terrible talons, scoring the ground at the thought of ripping into tender filly flesh.

Zawadi then cleverly tricks the griffin, and he ends up being trapped and burned to death in a giant thorn bush. Modern versions of the story leave out that gruesome ending on the mistaken assumption that it might frighten sensitive young ponies, but fortunately, the most important lesson of the story survives.

= = =

Windfall retreated a short distance from the spot lit by Twilight's horn, while still listening to what the crazy older version of her friend had to say about a terrible threat to Equestria and the entire world. It made some sense. Not the specifics, of course, but Windfall had enough experience with strange creatures and magic to know that such things happened from time to time. Even the warning that only the "Magic of Friendship" could defeat that evil, was a familiar element.

"Yeah, yeah," Windfall muttered to herself as she circled around in the darkness, forgotten by the other two. "Always some magical whatsit that can kneecap the bad guys." She'd been on enough search-and-retrieve missions to know that the world just seemed to work that way.

But that the magic was created by the synergy between Twilight and her friends was a new twist. Friends that were long dead from the maniac's point of view.

Twilight (her Twilight) must have thought the story was reasonable as well, because she nodded in agreement at several points. It wasn't until Windfall had gotten to her desired vantage point that she realized that Twilight's nodding was exactly in time to the odd cadence of the huge monster's voice.

Then she stopped speaking full sentences and began repeating simple phrases. "I will have them back. I will have them back. I will recreate them. I will make them again. I will have them back."

Windfall shook her head to stop herself from nodding along. She realized that she had almost fallen under the same influence. That, and the terrifying sight she had half anticipated when she began to circle the two, convinced her to act immediately.

She took the knife from under her wing with one forehoof and silently scooped up the severed horn and iron cone with the other. Twilight's shield flickered and dimmed just before Windfall struck. The cone killed the weakened shield in a burst of wrenching nausea an instant before Windfall buried the knife in the back of the monster's skull.

The giant's body spasmed and writhed for several seconds, Twilight nodding jerkily, trying to keep time with the convulsions of the dying monster for a few heartbeats until she suddenly snapped out of whatever trance she had been in.

"What? What happened? Windfall, what did you do?"

Windfall had collapsed near the body, too dizzy and exhausted to avoid the spreading pool of blood. She reached out and shoved the head so that it lolled grotesquely over, revealing the hoof length of regrown horn that the maniac had been carefully hiding from her younger self.

"Watch the claws!" Windfall said before passing out.

= = =

Windfall awoke on a big, soft sleeping cushion. The room around her was large and extremely expensive-looking. Every bit of furniture was simple but beautifully crafted. There was a low table near the cushion, and on it rested a covered silver tray. She sat up and suppressed a groan at her aching muscles. She promised herself that she'd stretch out after she determined if there was food under the silver cover.

There was not only food, but juice and aspirin under the lid. It was while she was inhaling her third oat roll that she realized that her coat was clean and her feathers neatly preened. That observation brought a few more questions to her mind, but it didn't stop her from finishing off the food before getting up.

Twilight had been lying so quietly on a small couch in a shadowed corner, that Windfall hadn't noticed her until she began a closer inspection of the room.

The alicorn was awake, but didn't look up as her pegasus friend approached.

"Hey, Princess," Windfall asked, softly, "you okay?"

Twilight shrugged.

Windfall sighed. "I'm sorry, but I had to do it. Even with just that stub, she could have blasted us both to pieces, or—"

"That's not it," Twilight interrupted. "You did the right thing. I had no idea she could regenerate so quickly, and that might have been a fatal mistake. You saved us both. Thank you for that."

Windfall waited, but the alicorn didn't continue. "Okay," she said, instinctively feeling that Twilight would be better off for some conversation, even if she didn't feel like talking. "So, I guess we're safe now, right?"

Twilight nodded. "These are her private quarters. I carried you here and, um—cleaned you up before putting you on the sleeping cushion. I didn't want you to wake up all covered in—well—"

"Don't sweat it, Princess," Windfall replied, a bit amused by Twilight's slight embarrassment. "I appreciate it."

"Bathroom is down the hall, two doors on the left. It's pretty impressive," Twilight went on.

Windfall glanced around the room again. "Pretty swanky for a villain's lair. Have you found the way out yet?"

"Oh, yes," Twilight said, sounding not at all happy about it.

"So…?"

Twilight cut off a laugh by biting her lower lip. "We're in Canterlot," she said, without unclenching her jaw. "The supervillain lair is just an excavated area under the mountain that connects to this tower."

"Canterlot? Huh. Believe it or not, I've never been there."

"Me neither. Not this Canterlot."

Windfall was going to ask her to elaborate, when Twilight lit her horn, and part of the wall became transparent. Windfall's mouth fell open in shock.

The city spread out below them, down and down until it reached the valley floor and flowed through it like a river of gleaming marble, disappearing in the haze of distance. It was a gorgeous architectural symphony of alabaster, gold, and lapis. Towers and arches swept down the mountain like sculpted frosting on an enormous wedding cake. Parks and public squares bloomed along the streams and waterfalls that wound through the city like jewels on a chain of sapphires. Cloud structures dotted the sky, nearly as elaborate as the more solid buildings below, and flocks of airships floated between them and the city like colorful sea creatures of fanciful shapes.

"Welcome to the Canterlot of her time."

Windfall closed her mouth with a click of her teeth. "Holy shit," she said, quietly.

"Accurate summation," Twilight said through her teeth.

"We… Are we stuck here?"

"No, thank the stars," she said with a little more animation. "I can probably get us back to our own time. It will take an insane amount of power, but fortunately, as well as being insane, my future self has a very well equipped laboratory. It may take a while, though."

Windfall gave a sigh of relief. "What about the threat to Equestria? Are we going to have to worry about that? Hey, I just thought… Who's going to raise the sun and moon when we're gone?"

"She will."

"But she's—"

"Only temporarily," Twilight said. She didn't sound very happy about it.

"What? But I swear that blade went clear through her brain! How could she—"

Twilight sighed and got off the couch. "Come on, follow me." She gestured to the double doors to her right. "Why should I be the only pony to have unending nightmares?" she muttered under her breath.

Twilight led the way along a wide hallway past several side halls and other doorways until they came to a huge archway closed by two very undecorative, but solid-looking steel doors. Twilight gave them the lightest touch of her magic and they swung open silently. Beyond the doors was a vast, dim space. It was obviously a pony-made cavern, carved into the heart of the mountain.

The first thing Windfall saw was a huge glass tank that stretched from floor to ceiling. Floating in the clear blue liquid filling the tank was the alicorn that had tormented them for weeks. She was bound around with thick silvery straps of metal. Windfall recognised the cones set at the six cardinal points around the floating body as near duplicates of the steel version Twilight had improvised in the tunnel.

"You built this? How long was I out?"

"Only half a day or so. Most of this was already here." Twilight gestured with a hoof, pointing further back into the cavernous space. "Those, too."

Windfall turned her gaze to the line of smaller tanks that stretched back into the darkness. There were ponies in most of them.

And parts of ponies.

Windfall started and shied away. "Wha...What... "

"Go ahead and throw up, if you think it'll make you feel better," Twilight said flatly. "It didn't do much good for me, but it might be different for you."

"She was chopping up ponies?" Windfall's natural reaction to unpleasant surprises was anger, not illness. "That miserable—"

"No, she was growing them from different parts, as far as I can tell." Twilight gave a laugh that had more than a little bit of hysteria in it. "Making friends."

Windfall didn't swear. She didn't scream. She just stared at Twilight with white showing all the way around her irises and her teeth bared.

Twilight lit her horn and a big ledger-style book appeared beside her with a pop and flash of light. She opened the book and skimmed through it until she found the page she wanted. "The pegasus that was with you in the labyrinth before me. You said she was timid, but she was also very kind, wasn't she? I bet she loved animals."

Windfall didn't relax much, but she nodded and said, "She told me all sorts of stories about her pets."

Twilight nodded and read from the book. " 'Subject 47, Fluttershy analogue: 87% epithaumic match, 96% physical.' You're even better. A 91% epithaumic correlation with Rainbow Dash."

"I'm in there? Lemme see!"

Twilight hesitated and then tried to pull the book away from her, but Windfall was quick enough to read the last lines under the "Subject 48" heading.

"Physique overdeveloped. Discard entire body after harvesting."

Windfall let out all the air in her lungs in a rush and sat down heavily. "I… For the sun's sake, why?"

Twilight let the book slip out of her magic field and it flopped, pages down onto the floor.

"You may think my magic is powerful, or hers, but compared to the power of Harmony, we're wet firecrackers. The Magic of Friendship is born from the special connection between friends who embody the Elements of Harmony. I and five very special ponies share that bond. But they… But for her, they died a very long time ago. She needs the power of Harmony to solve her little problem, so she went about getting it in the most horrible way imaginable!"

Windfall took it all in and shook her head in confusion. "But if she could travel in time, why didn't she just go back and get the—originals, I guess?"

"Because they are my friends, not hers! She's too old, too different. They wouldn't have that special connection with her, that spark that makes it all work! That's why she eventually grabbed me. I've read all her notes, and she was onto something. Something unpleasant, but perhaps effective." Twilight paused and shook her head. "I was supposed to be the catalyst that brought it together for her bits and pieces. She was going to wipe my memory and send me back home when she was done with me." Twilight's voice grew louder and more ragged as she ranted, and she spun and slammed a hoof against the glass of the big tank. "You thought you could force-transplant friendship, isn't that right, you insane monster?"

Windfall almost fled when the floating alicorn's eyes snapped open.

The huge pony struggled against her bonds and her mouth moved, emitting a small stream of bubbles. But no sound reached the ponies outside of the tank. Considering how easily she had nearly hypnotised Twilight with words alone, it was just as well.

= = =

It took longer for Twilight to craft the time travel spell than she had anticipated for a number of reasons. Fortunately, she quickly learned that her future self had automated the celestial mechanisms of the sun and moon sometime in the second millennium of her rule, and there were no panicked ponies pounding on the doors to her private chambers with embarrassing questions about why the day was lasting too long.

Evidently, the sole ruler of the entire planet often locked herself away for long periods, and even an extended absence wasn't unusual, so there were no interruptions at all. Twilight teleported in food and drink when they needed it, and otherwise they kept to the bedroom and magical laboratory.

And the library. Twilight told herself that it was extremely unwise to look into books that had been published after she had departed her original timeline. Causality, paradox, all that stuff… Blah, blah, blah. It stopped her from snooping for about three hours, and then she gave up and dove in. It wasn't like she was going to let the future unfold in any way that could possibly turn her into the monster in the tank, anyway. She was going to alter the future of her world, and this time around she'd be better informed.

She checked on the Thing in the Tank four times a day, and made extra sure that the enchanted silver cap that kept her horn from regenerating was still firmly in place.

Her future self didn't try to speak again, but whenever Twilight entered the laboratory, the imprisoned alicorn's eyes were open and she was watching.

= = =

=

Comments

[Jphyper]

This is getting creepy enough to warrant a Dark tag.

[Southpaw]

10506563 The lights might be a little dimmed and the area surrounded by darkness, but the story itself isn't truly dark on the whole. This is more a kind of Forbidden Planet level of dark. Well, so far.

[Daedalus Aegle]

Great chapter. This story gets more and more unsettling

[iisaw]

10506563
10506570
If I were judging it by my own standards, it might warrant a Dark tag, but grading on a curve... this stuff isn't half as disturbing as some cover art I've seen!

[FanOfMostEverything]

Fortunately, she quickly learned that her future self had automated the celestial mechanisms of the sun and moon sometime in the second millennium of her rule.

Most Twilight tend to at some point. The trick is making sure the automaton doesn't achieve self-awareness or, failing that, ensuring that it's friendly.

In any case, yeah, this definitely makes sense as a motivation for those mad experiments. Somepony needs to get out more. Twilight might want to consider forging a few decrees that increase her future self's exposure to mortals. In any case, we'll see where this goes from here. I can't imagine it will be pleasant for anyone involved.

[Herald of Opera]

So it sounds like Windfall's past was outright fabricated memories, the Maze being the only thing that ever actually happened to her.

Destroys my specific hypothesis from those deleted comments on the early chapters, but mostly preserves their spirit. Time travel was involved.

[Ninjadeadbeard]

Well... the only problem I can see now is, how do you permanently stop Maniac-Twi from starting this crap all over again, or specifically going after Twilight?

Cuz, she cray-cray. And you can't reason with that.

[bigbear]

Creepy!
I like it!!

[Herald of Opera]

10506768
I'm going to assume a lot of fire and/or acid will be involved. Because that's how you deal with regeneration, right?

[Serifina]

Holy hell. Iisaw, you are a mad genius, but this is creepy as hell. That is very much the stuff of nightmares!

[Frazikar]

Hmmm, this is -a- future so it's still parallel to Twilight, plus what happened to the other alicorns (especially Flurry!)

As for senior Twilight, that certainly makes the expression 'making friends' take on a whole new frankenstein meaning ... too bad it wouldn't work out (no rainboom connection), not to mention the size mismatch ...

[Black Hoof]

I'm not much into "older immortal Twilight who can't move on from her first friends and wallows in sadness or turns insane trying to get them back" but this fanfic is still a good adventure story.

[duckmagee]

10506768
put her in a magically induced coma, then travel back to twilight original time and prevent this future from existing

[Reese]

...So, Future Twilight. Did you ever consider maybe just, I don't know, popping open a time portal to Old Ponyville and saying "Hey past me and friends, want to go on a fun time adventure together and save the future?!" Because I think that probably would have worked a lot better in all sorts of ways!

10506646
My understanding, at least, is that Future Twilight was kidnapping ponies, then testing them in the maze; the new ponies would then be made from samples of the most successful kidnapped ponies.

[Herald of Opera]

10507155
Unfortunately, it's not known whether changed futures properly cease to exist. Certainly, we've written plenty of stories where they don't...

[Walabio]

> "The alicon was awake, but didn't look up as her pegasus friend approached."

"alicon" should be "alicorn".

We are getting somewhither now. The Future Twilight seems to act logically, as to ethically, I cannot say:

If something will kill all, but it can be avoided by killing some, it is ethical. Let me give an example:

Let us suppose that one is in a bus hidden in the bushes with enemy soldiers outside. If they find the bus, they will kill all occupants. On the bus, is a baby crying. If the only way to silence the baby is to kill it, it is ethical to do so because the baby would die in all eventualities, but killing the baby saves the other occupants. This does not justify killing babies on planes. ¿Does anyone catch the reference? or ¿am I too old and this reference is before your time?

This process may not be ethical, just most expedient. The Doctor (now Doctrix) encountered a possible future evil version of himself called the Valeyard. The Doctor took steps to avoid moral degeneration of the Valeyard. Perhaps, Twilight, over myriads of years, might deteriorate morally and now, Twilight can avoid that.

The automation of the Sun and Moon makes me think:

Because 360 is a superior highly composite number (the next highly composite number is 2x larger), I would make the year length 360 days. I would have 30-day long Lunar months. I would have 6-day weeks. One would need only 1 eternal calendar with days and lunar phases repeating year-to-year.

[iisaw]

10511844
It wasn't a baby, it was a chicken. I'm old enough to have been in an episode of M*A*S*H.

"Character" should be "calendar," and yes I agree... we could do that in the real world by adding extra holidays at the year's end... but we can't even get rid of the idiotic Daylight Savings Time.

[Walabio]

10512011

¡Bingo! "¡Suicide is Painless!"

I fixed character to calendar. That was a strange thing for me to write, or maybe autocorrect did it.

I do not observe DSt:

All of my clocks are set to UTC. I say that we should abolish timezones. Arthur C. Clark came to the same conclusion.

I forgot to mention that the article about Trick-Or-Treating, SARSCov2, HelicopterParenting, Halloween, CoViD19, and Free-Range Parenting is up on tSGtE. Basically, as an outdoor activity where everyone can easily stay 2 meters apart and wear masks under their masks, it is safer than indoor grocery-shopping with masks and keeping 2 meters apart. This is just another attempt of the HelicopterParents to ruin childhood (the last time a child was abducted on Halloween was the 1970s and strangers have never poisoned children on Halloween).

[matt s0101745]

10511844
Or if Ponies insist on keeping their seven-day weeks, you can make a 364-day calendar with thirteen months of four weeks each (there are already well over twelve lunar months in a solar year, hence the commonness of "blue moons"), or four seasons of thirteen weeks.

[Walabio]

10538051

If we would have an holiday or 2 on leap years with does not count, a 13 month calendar with business-qurters being 3 months and 1 week.

The advantage of 360 is that it is a superior highly composite number (the next highly composite number is 720 which is 2x 360). Repeating events can repeat evenly 24 ways.

The 6-day week would have 4 workdays. Maybe, one should breakup the workweek:

If we do that, we might as well have 3-day weeks. That would be 10 weeks a month, 30 weeks a business-quarter, and 120 weeks an year.

[PresentPerfect]

Kinda wish you'd extended the scene before the stabbing into its own chapter. That was some tense shit, with a fantastic payoff at the end. :D