Splintered Twilight
Captain’s Log, Thon Iridescence.
I am aware this log will never be read since this Enterprise is not connected to the other, but I feel the need to record a log anyway.
We have joined the Navigator’s Guild and have proven invaluable to its efforts to explore and understand distant digital realms. The work pays well. However, despite this, we are no closer to completing our goals. While we have heard rumors of Twilight, we can never pin her down, and the information we originally entered Thon for is hard to come by.
Over half of our allotted time has elapsed. I fear that if we do not start making progress soon, this mission will have been a failure.
~~~
It seemed that even within the digital realm of Thon, where people could become anything they wanted, bigoted hatred remained for those deemed “other.” When Picard had taken that job with the Navigator’s Guild he’d half expected to run into situations he’d never even dreamed of before. As it turned out, there really was nothing new under the sun.
“You keep your true form, and yet you protect the blasphemers,” a humanoid being with silver skin was saying, a scar across his left eye. “Why?”
“Because I believe in freedom,” Picard said. “This world is the ultimate expression of freedom. We are permitted to do what we wish to ourselves—even if, often, we choose to alter ourselves to our own detriment. That freedom to ruin ourselves—or to better ourselves—is what makes us who we are!” Picard gestured with a hand at the sea of humanoids behind the silver speaker. “You seek to remove that freedom. By removing the choice, you make yourselves and everyone else lesser for it.”
“They can still choose between their true selves and death.”
“That is no choice at all, my friend.” Picard said, shaking his head.
“It would be like…” Picard’s only companion, Troi, took a moment to think before continuing. “It’d be like someone coming from another realm and claiming you had no right to speak a certain word, or think about a certain topic, or to enjoy a certain meal.”
“We do not go that far,” the being asserted.
“But the arguments for such things are the same!” Picard turned to address the entire company. “You say it is wrong and detrimental to the soul to change one’s form, and you may be right! But it is also wrong to engage in pathological lies, greed, vile mockery, and even murder itself. Yet, seeing as you are planning on committing murder on a vast scale to right this ‘unreal heresy,’ you do not find murder something worthy of being corrected.”
Behind the crowd, Picard noticed Ty Lee and Bon Bon stealthily moving along the edge of the back wall toward the control panel that held the digital corruption weapon. Tails had deduced how it worked and had told them how to disable it stealthily. The hope was that it wouldn’t be necessary, but they couldn’t take a chance that some young resentful man would press it anyway.
The silver man frowned. “The murder is, in fact, quite detrimental, but the betterment of society is worth it.”
“Then where does it end?” Picard asked as Ty Lee kicked the control panel with her foot, popping a chip out that she caught in her free hand. “Do you purge the heretics who change their forms? Then purge the ones who revel in lies? Do you not see where this ends? Eventually, you will remove choice from people entirely.”
The being nodded slowly while Ty Lee snapped the chip in half and jumped onto Bon Bon’s back. It looked like they were going to fall onto the crowd, but a stealth grappling hook embedded itself in the fleshy ceiling and whisked them soundlessly out a window.
“I implore you,” Picard continued as though nothing had happened. “Consider rethinking your position. We are free—so long as our choices do not harm others. Do not take it away.”
“We shall consider it,” the silver man finally said. “You are free to go.” He gestured at the doors.
Picard bowed. “Thank you for listening to us.” Respectfully, he and Troi walked out of the building to a realm with a blue sky and completely natural forests. Ty Lee and Bon Bon were waiting for them. Wordlessly, they all nodded and walked down the dirt path together.
Once they were out of earshot, Picard turned to Troi. “Do you think they will listen?”
“I think their leader will listen.” Troi locked her hands behind her back. “I am unsure of the others.”
“As well as can be expected, then.”
“I am curious, Captain.” Troi turned to him with a thoughtful expression. “What do you really think of all the citizens of Thon who alter their forms?”
“I think almost everyone in this place is trying to lie about who they are, most of all to themselves,” Picard said. “This digital realm is an escape, a bigger escape than anything ever can be. I agree with them that, by readily altering themselves, they throw away the unique part of their identity. Though, naturally, I would go to the ends of the earth to defend their right to do such things. I meant what I said about freedom.”
“We need to be able to make mistakes, or what’s the point?” Bon Bon added.
“Precisely, Lieutenant.” About this time, they arrived at the shimmering veil that led to the rest of Thon; a hole in a mountain’s side that was guarded by four humanoid beings. They lowered their guns and spears.
“You may leave,” they said.
Before Picard’s crew could move, however, there was a flash of magenta light, depositing a purple alicorn at the gate. Without looking behind her, she jumped through.
“Twi—” Picard sighed as he realized she was gone. “It’s been a week and we never see her for long…”
Bon Bon turned to the guards. “What was she doing here?”
“We have no idea,” a woman responded with a shrug. “She started showing up about a month ago. The first few times we just killed her for trespassing, but she kept appearing so she probably had some kind of replay artifact. We just stopped attacking her after a while. She comes and goes as she pleases.”
Picard nodded in appreciation. “I extend my gratitude—but we still must be off.” He led his crew through the mirror just as he heard an angry scream from far behind them. Just in time.
~~~
After reporting their mission’s success to the Navigator’s Guild, they returned to the Enterprise bridge, where Tails was sitting in the first officer’s chair. He sat bolt upright when they arrived. “Did it work?”
“Their chip is smashed,” Ty Lee confirmed, dropping the two halves of the chip onto the ground. “They’re not going to be able to replace that!”
“Thon is saved from a digital war,” Picard said. “We’ve done good work. Commander, add another Twilight sighting to the list, in the Pure Hills realm. She has apparently visited regularly, and was killed multiple times.”
Tails logged it into the computer. “She really must have one of those replay artifacts. No idea how she obtained a permanent one, though, most people think that’s impossible.”
“Twilight has a way of doing the impossible,” Bon Bon said.
“Good point. Anyway, while you four were out, I wasn’t able to find anything in the records we purchased. Just lots of hearsay and weirdness that may not even be true.”
Picard sat down in his chair and pulled up their remaining time on the main screen. One hundred and twenty-four hours left, twenty-four before the next exit cycle. Frowning, he pulled up the “map” of Thon, plotted with every single sighting of Twilight, both by themselves and by people they’d talked to. There was still no pattern.
“Any ideas?”
Everyone shook their heads. They had already tried camping out at the entrances to worlds she returned to regularly—she never seemed to come back to them while they were watching. If this was just bad luck or some other force at work, they had no way to tell. Some of the people who had met her had claimed to tell her that “Captain Picard” was looking for her, but she never reacted to this.
It was all deeply troubling.
Furthermore, they’d still found nothing about the Pure Heart and only unrelenting rumors about the Ancient Wanderers—or the Architects, as they were known to the people of Thon. They were no closer to any of their goals, despite having earned a fair amount of cash from their work for the Navigator’s Guild. It appeared that what they wanted to know just wasn’t available for purchase.
“I’m open to suggestions,” Picard said, scratching his chin.
“I could run the Ecatora markets again,” Ty Lee said. “Maybe I’ll find something this time.”
“If we can think of nothing else…”
The red alert lights came on as a Thon avatar materialized at their shimmering entrance, just behind the forcefield.
“Cancel red alert,” Picard ordered, turning his chair around and discovering that he recognized the blue fish-cat from the Explorer’s Guild. “Ah, Rachi. What brings you here?”
“You did real good on that last mission. Real good.” The fish grinned, revealing rows and rows of sharp teeth. “But, how about, instead of direct femto payment, I give you some information you’ve been dying to hear.”
“What kind of information?” Picard asked.
“About that little purple horse you’re always talking about.”
“Done,” Picard said. We have little use for excess femtos anyway.
“Good…” The fish chuckled. “She’s been sighted in the realm known as the Library of the Lost several times over the last week, to the point at which the people who visit there almost always see her.”
“Of course she’d spend all her time in a library,” Bon Bon said, shaking her head.
“Where is the Library of the Lost?” Troi asked.
The fish snickered. “You’ll have to pay up for that information, lady.”
“I’ll have a thousand femtos transferred to you immediately,” Picard said. “Now, the coordinates?”
“Sure thing!”
~~~
The Library of the Lost had no exterior; they appeared on a shimmering surface at the base of a square wooden pillar, walking onto a red, carpeted floor. Around the pillar were eight other pillars, though all of these were not solid wood, but were rather carved into bookshelf shapes absolutely filled with books on all four sides.
This pattern of eight bookshelf pillars surrounding a wooden center repeated itself for infinity. Every “central” pillar had a shimmery surface that could serve as an exit to the library, never more than a few seconds’ walk away from any location. In addition, the “central” pillars had ladders that went both upward and downward to other floors that were effectively identical to the first.
As far as they could tell, the library had no end in any direction.
“...If she’s here, we’re going to be searching a while,” Bon Bon said, walking up to one of the bookshelves. “Oh no.”
“What?” Tails asked.
“The books aren’t sorted. If I know Twilight, she’s probably trying to organize this place.”
“Actually, that’s more of a habit of mine than anything else,” Twilight said, flying by with a pile of books in her hooves. “I spend most of my time researching. Speaking of, there’s no time to waste! Bye!”
“Twilight!” Picard called. “Stop!”
Twilight turned back, smirking. “Can’t stop, won’t stop!” It was at this point Picard realized Twilight had no horn—that it was a pegasus flying by. But the Twilight they’d seen out in Thon had a horn for certain.
“Curious…” Picard scratched his chin. “It is clear that something strange is going on with Twilight, if it even is her.”
“Uh, yeah, that’s her,” Twilight said. As she walked up to him, Picard noticed that her mane was dyed black and she was chewing bubblegum, though she had a horn again. “But I’m also Twilight. How can I, like, help you, or whatever?”
“Don’t you remember me?” Picard asked. “I’m Captain Jean-Luc Picard, Captain of the Enterprise.”
“Not ringing any bells.” She blew a bubble and popped it. “But I’m not exactly focused on memory. One of the others might know you. So let’s get rollin’.”
“There’s… more than one of you?” Ty Lee asked.
“Obviously.”
“...Okay then.”
“Stop boggling vacantly at the nonsense, I don’t have all day. There’s quality brooding I need to get back to.”
Ty Lee mentally dubbed the black-maned Twilight “Edgy-Twilight” in her head as they followed her through the Library of the Lost. As they got deeper and deeper, they started to see more and more Twilights. There was an earth pony with a blank expression reading a book about rocks. There was an alicorn with a completely white coat and fire for a mane. There was even a human Twilight walking around on her hands as if it were completely normal.
“What is going on?” Troi asked.
“I’m just gonna let one of the wordier ones explain it,” Edgy-Twilight said. “I don’t want to get into an argument over the disambiguation or proper use of the word ‘Splintering’ at the moment. I don’t even want to be here, but you know how it is, just one endless book to the next.”
The density of Twilights increased as they moved until they found an area of the Library that could hardly be called a library, but instead was a pile of massive books arranged into the shape of a fort. Twilights crawled all over the structure; some adding new books to it, others carefully swapping books out. There was a large variety in the Twilights, for while most were purple alicorns, there were a fair number of other pony types, alternate mane styles, and palette swaps. Most of them glanced at Picard’s team without recognition.
However, at the front arch of the book fort, there was a simple unicorn Twilight who wore triangular golden earrings. When she saw Picard, she let out a squee of glee. “Ohmygosh! It’s you! You… you’re really Picard, right? I’m not just getting a fake memory here?”
Picard lowered himself to be closer to eye level with this Excited-Twilight. “I am Captain Jean-Luc Picard of the Federation starship, Enterprise.”
“And I’m Twilight Sparkle Splinter Seven!” She bowed slightly. “Oh, I’m so glad you’re here, maybe you can help us with our problem…”
“Maybe you should explain what you are, first?” Troi asked.
“Right! We should go talk to Splinters One, Three, and Fifty-six about that. We probably have time. Probably.” She led them into the book fort, filled with many more Twilights, most of which were pouring over massive tomes, searching for information of some kind or other. None of them looked like they were finding what they wanted.
Toward the back of the first bookish room, there were three Twilights. The first looked exactly like Twilight normally did, horn and all, while the other was the same except she had bright blue eyes. If Ty Lee had to guess, these were One and Three. Which would mean the earth pony with three eyes was Fifty-six.
Splinter One recognized them immediately. “Oh! Oh thank Celestia someone finally showed up! I… Seven-hundred-two! How long has it been since I came online?”
“Eighty-two years, Thon time,” the miniature Twilight said from atop a pencil eraser embedded in the floor.
“You’ve…” Troi sat down, placing her hand on One’s shoulder. “I’m so sorry you’ve been alone for so long.”
“Me? Alone? Psh, naw, I’ve had the other Splinters to keep me company! And I take vacations to the other realms of Thon all the time. Though… uh… yeah I don’t remember your name, which one were you?”
Troi smiled sadly. “Counselor Troi.”
“Right, yes, of course. Uh… Captain Picard, no idea, no idea, Bon Bon. ...Bon Bon? What are you doing on a dangerous mission near the edge of the universe?”
Bon Bon smiled awkwardly. “There’s a lot you don’t know about me. ...If you’re really Twilight.”
“Oh, I am, I’m the only exact copy among the Splinters,” One said. “Though, uh, naturally I’m eighty-two years older and so much wiser!”
“And nuttier,” Three added. “One-twelve had to perform psychological evaluations on all us early Splinters a while back to keep us from forming a book cult that probably would have culled in the Thon glitch patrol. General rule? If you run into a low number, chances are they’re probably not all that mentally stable if they seem anything like the original.”
“We are fine, though,” One huffed. “Seriously, how do you exp—”
“The Book of Boregal,” Fifty-six deadpanned, staring One right in the face.
“I said never bring that up again!” One shouted at the top of her lungs, tossing a few books over.
“Point made,” Three said.
“I didn—ugh!” One put her hooves over her eyes. “Okay, yes, time hasn’t really been good to us unless we were lucky enough to be splintered far from the original. Those without strong memories seem to do better.”
“I’m afraid we still don’t understand what’s going on,” Picard said. “Can you explain… simpler?”
“I will,” Fifty-six said, closing her normal eyes but keeping her third open. “Twilight awoke already part of the Thon Iridescence over a month ago in real-time, but it’s been almost a century Thon-time. It didn’t take her too long to figure out where she was, but once she did, she realized she had an opportunity: she could stay in Thon and have plenty of time to research possible methods of defeating Bleck without the constant threat of the Void overhead. So she began researching.
“But, she soon realized she would slip away as time wore on. By the time she left, left to return to the heroes, she wouldn’t be the same and might even have developed some serious mental conditions due to the strain she was putting herself through. She was considering leaving for the sake of the others and their relationship; that is, until she found the Splinter artifact.
“When first used, it created One, a nearly perfect copy of her in every way. A few more times, it created Two and Three, who were derivatives of a derivative, and started to deviate further from the main template. Now she had friends, and a reason to stay. Unfortunately, she didn’t understand how the Greeter’s timer worked and it ran out during this time, trapping her in Thon. Rather than wasting time searching for an alternative exit, she decided to put herself in stasis, leaving the continued research to her Splinters—us.
“So here we are. Several hundred strong at this point, researching tirelessly. Trying to find information on the Pure Heart, the Void, and alternative ways to leave Thon. We’ve… found nothing on those three in the library, though our operatives exploring the other realms have found possible ways to leave Thon.”
“You’ve just been sitting here for years?” Troi said, gawking.
“Well, we have,” Three confirmed. “The original is locked in stasis with only a couple weeks of extra experiences. She should be fine.”
“Assuming there are no side effects from the stasis,” One commented.
“Oh. Yeah. Right.”
“Wait…” Bon Bon cocked her head. “The gray people said they’d killed you several times. ...You don’t have a replay artifact, do you?”
“I do,” One said. “As the only one with all of the original’s memories, I’m deemed important enough to carry it. But none of the others do.”
“You’ve been throwing your own lives away?”
“There’s a lot of us,” Three said. “It… doesn’t make me feel very great, but the nine-hundreds seem to volunteer for it a lot. They even went out and kept throwing themselves at that guy with the board game realm, it only took them six attempts of that game of life and death to get the prize.” She held up a white sphere that swirled itself like a shell. “Cortex key. One of the rarest things in the Thon Iridescence.”
“What does it do?” Tails asked.
“Grants you access to the primary Cortex of Thon,” One explained. “Where you can, in theory, control everything you need to. We’re planning on sending somepony there the moment we get anything solid on the Pure Heart. Or when we get fed up. We’re getting pretty close to fed up at this point.”
“You’ve been fed up a grand total of twenty-four times!” called another Twilight from across the room.
“One-twelve, you weren't around for the first years! How could you know?”
“Statistics!”
Picard scratched his chin. “You know, I find it strange that you’ve found nothing on the Pure Heart, alternative exits, or the Void. Surely you’ve come across something?”
“Not in this library,” Three muttered. “It’s like the topics were stricken from the record. And this is supposed to hold every physical book in Thon somewhere on its shelves!”
Picard leaned forward. “Have you found any passages about… the Wandering Ancients?”
“Oh yeah, loads.” Three levitated a book out of a nearby wall. “They built this place and a lot of other structures across the entire Ninth World. Not entirely sure why but we weren’t exactly researching them directly, just found references to them as we were studying.”
One pointed at the book Three had levitated out of the wall. “That’s a cookbook. Not the Wandering Ancients Compendium.”
“What?” Three glared at the book in confusion. “But I’d been so sure…” She placed the book back in the wall and looked at the books around it. “All right, who moved the Compendium? I was keeping it for later reading!”
“I don’t think anypony’s been here since you put it back,” One said.
“I can confirm,” Fifty-six droned. “None have approached here since you last put it away.”
“But… wait, that means it just vanished? How?”
Picard’s grimace deepened. “Perhaps the same reason you’ve found no reference to the Pure Heart or other methods of escape in the library all these years you’ve been here.”
“That…” One’s eyes widened. “Eighty-three couldn’t have been right… That… There’s no curse here, I looked for one!”
“If the curse keeps you from finding what you’re looking for…” Three breathed.
“Oh my Celestia,” One said, putting a shaking hoof to her head. “We’ve… we haven’t been on a wild goose chase this entire time… One of us would have noticed…”
“Unless the curse tries to stop you from noticing, too,” Fifty-six said. “And the only reason we’re able to think about it is because these newcomers have shown up who aren’t in the curse’s grasp.”
“That it.” One lit her horn on fire. “I’m burning this library to the ground.”
“Leeeet’s not get too hasty!” Ty Lee said. “You still found a lot of interesting things! Like… the Cortex! And stuff about the Wandering Ancients!”
“I… suppose that is useful…” One dissipated the fire on her horn. “If there’s no real point in continuing research in this forsaken traitorous place, we might as well just wake her up and go look at the Cortex.”
“Which is a possible exit,” Fifty-six reminded her. “As we got from the outside sources.”
“Right.” One tossed her head back. “Okay everyone! We’re waking up the original!” She lit her horn, pulling a wall of books open as if it were some kind of secret door. On the other side stood Twilight Sparkle, frozen in a cube of ice, a serene, sleepy expression on her face. The Element of Magic sat snugly on her head.
“...You froze her solid!?” Ty Lee gasped. “That’s… what!?”
“She’s fine.” One said. “So long as we thaw her out slowly a—”
“Replay’s enabled for everyone in this realm,” Three said, pulling what looked to be a miniature bazooka out from her mane. “Let’s just do this the quick way.”
Before anyone could do anything, the bazooka unleashed a rocket that hit the ice cube and exploded, disintegrating not only the original Twilight but a few of her Splinters as well, while catching some of the books on fire as a bonus.
A second later, Twilight and all her destroyed Splinters popped back into existence, perfectly healthy. Twilight took a moment to examine herself. “I don’t feel very cold…”
“I blew you up to make it go faster,” Three said, lowering her bazooka. “As an added bonus, you don’t even feel the cold. Replay’s great, huh?”
“It’s like a video game.” Tails shook his head. “Bizarre.”
“So…” Twilight glanced around at all her Splinters. “Geez, you made a lot.”
“One thousand four hundred and twenty,” Fifty-six recited. “The youngest—we call her Fourteen Twenty—is that floating eyeball over there watching everything ominously.”
Twilight looked at the eyeball watching her with nervous concern. “Er… okay.” She turned to Picard. “And you somehow found a way into this universe?”
Picard nodded. “Vivian managed to restore the stone heart and open a doorway back here.”
“That’s wonderful news! We just have to go get the last Pure Heart now!” She clapped her hooves excitedly. “...Why is no one else excited?”
“Turns out, we’ve spent eighty-two years in a cursed library,” One muttered.
“Eighty-two years!? Curse!?”
One coughed. “Yeah, so, the library prevents you from finding what you’re looking for and, apparently, tries to keep you from thinking about how strange it is that you can’t find what you’re looking for.”
“I did wonder why it was called the Library of the Lost,” Twilight said, scratching her chin. “So… we’re just giving up then? After a thousand Splinters?”
“Oh, no, we found some unrelated things that might help.” One tossed her the Cortex key. “This’ll get you to the main control of the Thon Iridescence. If you take Eleven with you, she should be able to access the mainframe and get you an alternative exit with Picard and the rest. Maybe something else useful is in there, I don’t know.”
“So halfway giving up?” Twilight suggested.
“I guess so.” One shrugged.
“Um… question.” Bon Bon glanced at all the Twilight Splinters. “Are you all coming with us?”
“Oh, no,” One shook her head. “I don’t want to try to push your Twilight out of her life. Plus, I’ve made one for myself here in Thon. I didn’t spend all my time in the library. Just… ninety-nine percent of it.”
Twilight glanced over the dozens of Twilights. “...I’ve created an entire species of digital creature.”
“Yep!” Three winked. “Thanks, ‘Mom,’ you’re the best!”
“I am unsure how to feel about this.”
“Wait until you hear about the no-replay missions…”
“The what?”
“Nothing important!” Three laughed nervously. “Let’s just get you to the Cortex. Eleven!”
An alicorn Twilight with extra-pointy ears appeared in front of them all. “Yes?”
“It would be very logical of you if you took Twilight and Picard’s away team to the Thon Cortex and made use of what you can there, yes?”
“Most logical,” Eleven agreed, turning to Picard and Twilight. “Shall we?”
“Well…” Twilight ruffled her feathers. “Just let me say goodbye to the Splinters and we can get going, then.”
~~~
Eleven, Twilight, Picard, Troi, Ty Lee, Tails, and Bon Bon arrived in the Thon Cortex. There was no sign of the entrance portal. There was no sign of anything at all. The entire realm was a seemingly endless plane of white with an equally white sky.
“I… I don’t like this place,” Twilight shivered.
“I’ll work quickly,” Eleven said. Lighting her horn, she prodded the ground with a specific spell. A small console rose up out of the ground, creating a holographic display in a language no one but Eleven recognized. “Even so, this will take time. Have patience.”
Twilight shivered. “Okay…” She turned to Picard and the others. “So, why are you here?”
“We believed it was possible that the Pure Heart was here,” Picard said. “I’m beginning to think it isn—”
“It isn’t,” Eleven confirmed. “I just performed a search algorithm through all of Thon’s scanning procedures. The Pure Heart was never scanned.”
“That answers that question,” Bon Bon said. “Maybe we’ll at least get something on the Wandering Ancients, so this trip isn’t a complete waste of time.”
“Working…” Eleven said.
“How are the others?” Twilight asked Picard.
“As far as I know, they’re doing fine—though we haven’t located Toph yet.”
“Ah.” Twilight frowned. “Has Data... or Caspian taken my role?”
“Actually, Vivian has!” Ty Lee said, grinning.
“Vivian.” Twilight smiled. “That’s… that’s great for her. Not who I would have expected, but amazing nonetheless. I hope she won’t push me out.” She frowned. “...I’ve only felt like I’ve been gone a few weeks. But… it’s been over a month for them, hasn’t it?”
“They’ll welcome you back, don’t worry,” Troi said. “Cosmo was accepted back just a few days ago from their perspective. That little trick you pulled by putting yourself in stasis will ensure you won’t feel alien to them.”
“That was the intent,” Twilight admitted. “...I feel like I should thank you, Picard, for coming to get me.”
“Anytime,” Picard said with a nod.
“Right. Well…” Twilight tossed her mane back. “Let’s return to the real world.”
“Found something,” Eleven said. “Not the exit—I found that a while ago. I found something on the Wandering Ancients. It seems to detail the history of this universe… starting before its creation.”
“Let’s hear it,” Picard ordered.
“It starts with a scientist named Merlon…”
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Picard, that's not a stardate, silly!
Checks out. Old habits die hard, I guess. Also they're a great way to convey information to the audience, good thing Starfleet is so obsessed with them.
Ah, sweet, the horrors of man's inner hatred follow us wherever we go!
Sir you are threatening to execute them, that's about as far as you can possibly go.
Something about this line is making me laugh and I don't know why. Possibly because it just sums up all violent extreme ideologies in a single sentence? I can't explain it but it's funny to me.
I would disagree, considering the fact that physical form is only a small part of one's identity, but hey, trans viewpoint here.
Picard saving a place from a war after only being there an extremely short time? Inconceivable!
Wait a second, isn't that- oh, wait, this is the Library of the Lost, not the Lost Library. My mistake.
Hang on, this feels familiar...
Really familiar. Jorge Luis Borges may want to sue for royalties.
This is getting out of hoof. Now there are two of them!
Man, the Sparkle Census looks way different to what I remember.
It's like some kind of... Crisis, of Infinite Twilights!
This is... concerning in ways I don't have a way to put into words.
Picard, can you please stop showing up and immediately solving long standing problems with little effort? I know it's an Enterprise tradition but it get's a little obnoxious after the 50th time.
Tails, of course, knows nothing about being in a video game. Because he is from an anime.
You know, conceptually that makes this a terrible library. I can see absolutely no practical use in it even existing in the first place. I mean, it's a neat curse, but I think I'll stick to the Lost Library instead. Now, if only I could find it again...
I'm getting the weirdest sense of deja vu right now... I don't know why, but I could have sworn I've seen this concept before somewhere...
Twilight Spockle. Fascinating.
Hmm, very interesting... Lore is incoming. But, wait, as I've just remembered I asked in the drafts, shouldn't there also be a Merlon in Lumash, considering he is also a Paper Mario character?
I am a sucker for gimmick libraries, and this one is particularly good, if irritating as all hell. Also Twilight made her own species. Cute, even if they did waste their entire existence. Now that they have no task to focus on, they're free to be unleashed all over Thon. Also, it's the lore, we've found the lore! Because of this, we can tell that this story takes place in 20XX and is canonically a sequel to Wanderlost! But hey, that's just a guess!
You've just been Punk'd!
It's strange that nobody has found Toph yet. She could be in Celerillion still, but somehow that doesn't seem right either.
The crew of the Enterprise is joined by a Twilight splinter that very much resembles a Vulcan. Yeah that tracks.