RoMS' Extravaganza

by RoMS

Jun.-Jul. 20 - When The End Came To Town 11.2

“So, you solved the case right here,” Luster asked, her hoof stomping the grassy knoll that extended down to the river, and stump.

“Oh, it wasn’t much of a case, I think,” Sweetie Belle laughed.

“As I said, it all came down together here,” Mare confirmed.

“Let me get this straight.” Luster rubbed her face. “You were drinking your ass off right here, during a biting cold winter, while disserting on the stupidity of a message-teleporting book, when all of a sudden she —” Her hoof shot at Sweetie Belle “—wrote you, in that same book, from the other side of whatever the Wall was?”

“Uhm, about right,” Sweetie said, nodding to the absurdity of that situation with a wry smile stamped on her face.

“But why then? And not...” Luster gesticulated, “not before.”

“That’s where the terrifying, fun, eh, fun-ish thing was,” Pinkie said, startlingly popping out from behind Luster. “Time!”

“Time?”

Luster’s rump dropped with a thump. She felt little rocks hidden under the green prick at her flank. But that was a distraction. She was at a loss. Time… Time… Rubbing her temples, she let out a long, drawn-out sigh.

“Time, right?” Luster repeated, a rhetorical question rather than anything else. “But the only pony I know can mess up time is…”

“Twilight?” Sweetie Belle offered.

“The letter did talk about a mistake,” Mare said. “A gravest one.”

“No,” Luster said, a cutting tone to her voice. “You said ‘failure,’ I have a good memory.”

“Yes, yes, you’re right.”

“Don’t you yes-yes me. Teacher Twilight can’t be that reckless... couldn’t. That black thing, eh, the Wall, it could have only been an enemy, a– a monster.” Luster looked at Pinkie Pie first, looking for a cheer. But the party pony looked away. She moved on to Sweetie Belle, who rubbed her leg apologetically. And so, she was left staring at Mare and Cheerilee who stood side by side a bit lower on the hillside, at eye-level with Luster.

“Everypony makes mistakes, Luster,” Cheerilee said. “Even Twilight.”

“I can’t believe this.”

“It’s a fact, though,” Mare added as she fetched Teacher Twilight’s letter out of her purse. “She’s left a message for you at the bottom of the letter, you know.”

Luster sighed and took the letter. Swallowing, she unfolded the truth, eyes closed to wrinkles. A long breath in, then out, she opened back to the world and scoured the content down to a mention of her name, and the text that towed below.

She read.

Read.

And read again.

As she folded the letter back, a long sigh dug its way out of her lips. Mare, Cheerilee, and Pinkie Pie had walked off down to the dirt path below, next to the stump where they exchanged a few laughs. Only Sweetie Belle and a warm smile remained.

“What did she say?” She asked, walking up to put her hoof laying on Luster’s shoulder.

“Eh.” Luster had nothing else to say to her, following with a whisper to herself, “this is one overly engineered lesson… or punishment, teacher.”

“Are you okay?” Sweetie Belle continued.

“Yeah. Yeah…”

Luster ran her hoof through the grass. Though green, it had the stiffness of summertime. It would turn yellow and dead soon. She pouted, then held her face in her hooves.

“It’s been a grim story so far,” Sweetie Belle said after she cleared her throat. “I guess.”

“It is one grim story. A horrorific one.” Luster sighed and looked over at Mare, Pinkie Pie, and Cheerilee, gathered around the dead stump. “All the ponies that left. All the stores that closed. And everything that crumbled down. Though I know it’s resolved now.” Luster pointed at the town itself, a grimace maring her face. “Everything is back up, if it really was ever gone behind the Wall. And still, when I see those mares. I feel like the scars are still there. Behind closed doors, silent walls and ageing ponies.” Deep breath. “I really can’t imagine what they went through.” She turned to Sweetie Belle. “What you went through, I guess?”

Sweetie Belle waved her hoof and huffed dismissively. “Pah, it was pretty quick.”

Luster laughed. “Quick? It sounds like you were in the sphere… bubble? The Wall, I mean. You were in there for months. How did you survive?”

“You’ve not gotten it, yet? Time of course!”

“Teacher Twilight can be cryptic when she wants,” Luster mumbled.

“Ah, yes.”

Luster drummed her hoof over the grass. “Mare spoke of a mistake. I get it. That event was of Teacher Twilight’s own doing? And it was related to time.”

“Yes.”

“How could she?” Luster’s eyes shot wide. “Are you telling me she was playing around with time!?”

“She did snort the glue,” Sweetie Belle said, chuckling in her hoof, and seeing Luster’s confused expression, followed up, “It wasn’t the first time she played around with time. But that attempt… I think it was and will be her last.”

“Really?” Luster racked her brain for an example of her teacher waxing theory about time magic. “I mean. She never teached me anything about that.”

“I mean, there is a reason to it.”

“It’s too dangerous.”

“Yes.” Sweetie Belle nodded, a tight expression on her face. “You know Starlight right?”

“By name. She’s the director of the School of Friendship, right?”

“Yes. But there isn’t the question,” Sweetie Belle said. “Starlight is one of Twilight’s key workmares and confident. But do you know how they started?”

“Let me guess. Enemies?”

Sweetie Belle laughed. “Yeah. You’re absolutely right. But their confrontation ended on something terrible, I think. Because neither Twilight or Starlight talked about it much. What I know, though, is that it involved time.”

“Time…” Luster rubbed her chin. “So this whole ordeal is just a warning about using time magic. It sounds convoluted.”

Sweetie shrugged. “Is it? I mean, Twilight has taken a lot from Celestia. Mostly using metaphors but,”Sweetie Belle rocked back and force a little as words seemed to fall into place behind her eyes, “it’s just… She’s still a pony. Ah… I don’t know what to say. She must care so much about you, you know?”

“Yet, she sent me here, across the land, far away from Canterlot to learn a lesson I don’t quite get.” Luster threw her hooves up, followed with a sharp grunt, then produced the letter, nearly throwing it at Sweetie Belle’s folded legs. “It’s a punishment. It’s even written in there.”

“Twilight would never punish somepony if there wasn’t a valuable lesson tagged to it.”

“Or a twelve-step to-do?”

Sweetie Belle cackled. “You’re awfully right. But still, Twilight wants you to learn of her deepest mistake because it nearly broke this town she loves so much.”

“If she loves it so much, why isn’t she coming here more often?” Luster growled, only then holding a hoof to her lips. “She… She can’t, right?”

“Responsibility takes what we love away,” Sweetie Belle said. She threw her head back. “Or takes us away from what we love. In a sense, it’s the same thing. It’s only when you lose something that you really cherish it.”

“But she didn’t lose this town in the end.”

“But she nearly did,” Sweetie Belle retorted. “But I don’t think that’s what matters here.”

“What does, then?”

Sweetie Belle threw her hooves up and stretched, wrestling a satisfying pop out of her shoulders. Then she looked at Luster with a thin-lipped smile.

“You are destined for great things, Luster.”

“Nah,” Luster cut, waving the praise off, thought not without pride.

“No, no. I mean it. You wouldn’t be Twilight’s prized student if you weren’t. And in a sense, you are gifted that Twilight is your teacher. I think she’s trying to be different from Celestia.”

“What do you mean?”

“Celestia was more… hooves-off. To say the least. And sometimes, it nearly condemned a lot of us.”

“I don’t understand.”

“Celestia is… an institution more than a pony, I think. A monument? Eh, a monolith. And sometimes, I think it led to mistakes on her part, who then fell onto Twilight’s shoulder then wingblades.”

Luster hunched over and looked into her legs, enclosing a small patch of green blades of grass.

“Right,” she said, “Teacher, eh, T– Twilight wants me to learn from her mistakes?”

“Yeah.”

“Yeah.” Sigh. “I’ll have to think about it.”

Sweetie Belle rubbed her temple. “Twilight is trying to walk into her mentor’s hoofsteps, but at the same time to resolve some of the shortcomings she’s had to grapple with.”

So Luster was a sort of blank canvas. She didn’t know how to think about it.

“What about you?” Luster asked, quite jarringly.

Sweetie Belle frowned, then her eyes grew wide. She smiled and chuckled. “Oh, you mean inside the Wall.”

Luster nodded. “Yes, you’re the pony that went in right. How did it feel?”

“It was… weird.”