Prescience
“When I awoke, I was about twenty kilometres away from Ponyville city limits. I was in a makeshift hospital, set up in a clearing near the edge of the Everfree Forest, just outside a solid purple magical barrier. Apparently Twilight had formed a Magical Perimeter that had pushed every guardspony out of Ponyville. Violently.” Broken unconsciously shifted his shoulders a bit; a burn mark on his left leg was a reminder of that day. “Other guards had come down, gathered us all up, and soon enough we were on our way back to Canterlot. The barrier was still going strong, and nopony could get in or out. It was like that for three weeks.”
His audience stared at him, transfixed. The only sound was Spike’s rapid scribbling, though the dragon, too, had eyes only for the stallion. Broken coughed.
“Wait, that’s it?!” Rainbow Dash broke the silence. “What happens next?!”
“Oh, I’m sure you know – Revolution, murder of the Princesses, years of tyrannical rule under yonder bitch.” He waved a hoof at Twilight, who shrunk back a bit. Everyone in the room started glaring at Broken. “Or Rising Dawn, then.”
“Yeah, but-“
“Ah ah ah! Does Daring Do describe her daredevilling deeds ten pages in? Or does she spread her tale across a series to keep the readers interested?” Broken’s eye spastically flicked to one side as he said this. “Even if you know what happens, the devil is in the details. And although I adore this attention almost as much as the memories of the Princesses’ mortal moments, Celestia has ordered me to tell this tale, so say my story I shall.” He stood up, stretching his legs and pushing himself slightly higher. “But not all at once.”
“Might we be able to get some clarification, then?” Twilight asked.
“Clarification?”
“I mean, can we ask about certain things that we want to know more about?”
At this, Broken raised his brows. After a few seconds, he spoke. “I don’t see why not.”
“Alright, then! Who would-“
“Where were we during all of this?!” Rainbow interrupted.
“As I said, Cotton Candy was at Sugarcube Corner, Applejack and Marshmellow there were at the Carousel Boutique, and Twilight was, well, I told you about that. Fluttershy was at her cottage. I have no bucking idea where you were.”
“But-“
“Next!”
“How did you know about Applejack and I?” Rarity asked. Broken stared at her, surprised at the question.
“You were together in my timeline, you sat together, and you were radiating love whenever you looked at each other.” He shrugged at her confused expression. “Marry the Princess of Passion, you pick up a few things.”
“But we-“
“Wait, you and AJ are dating?”
“That is none of your business, Rainbow Dash-“
“But you just said-“
“Cotton Candy, what’s your question?” Broken asked over the din.
“Who died?”
Silence. All eyes turned to the pink party pony, who had on her face one of the most serious looks any of them had seen her produce. Broken sighed.
“The adults were Tarot, Greenleaves, and Tip Top. Guards were Tailspin and Night Shield. The foals…” He sighed again, a small cough following. “Apple Bloom and Sweetie Belle.”
The silence became a force of its own. It wrapped around the throats of everypony, locking them down. Surprise had been a common emotion that night; it now hit everypony with the force of a downhill train. Once more, Applejack and Rarity found themselves too horrified to do much of anything but sit stock still.
“If it makes it any better, they died protecting each other.” Broken continued. He coughed again, louder, with several smaller ones following. “They were – cah cah – hugged together, wrapped around each other – hack hee cah cah - each trying to take as many blows as she cou- cough cough hee hee could to stop the other from getting hurt.” He bowed his head, apparently gritting his teeth and gaining a sort of grin. “You know khhkt, if either one of them had been just a cah ha heh a little more selfish, just let the other take the trampling, theh – heh - then they’d’ve survived! They both died, two little fillies, just barely with their cutie marks, just because they wanted the stop the other from getting hurt!” Broken began shaking at this, little hitches at the shoulder as he faced the floor. “Ain’t heh heh hee ain’t that just hee hee ha just bucking CLASSIC?!? AHAHAHAAHAAA!” The stallion began roaring with laughter, shaking his head and slamming a forehoof into the floor.
Twilight and the others wore looks of varying horror and confused disgust as they backed away from the madpony. Broken looked up, catching each of them with a pinpricked pupil. His face looked painfully contorted, his grin almost literally splitting it in half; Twilight figured that if it was wider by five degrees, skin and muscle would begin to tear. He kept laughing, taking in laboured, hitching breaths in the few spaces where he could, even as tears began rolling down his cheeks. Then he slammed his face into the floor.
“NO!” He roared. Another laugh, another meeting of floor and face. “NO! It’s not funny! It’s never been funny! Ponies, little foals, died! AHAHAAAAAARGH!” Broken slammed his head into the wooden walking space several more times, drawing blood from his snout on the second, his mouth the third, and, with a crack that set Twilight’s and Rarity’s teeth on edge, from the base of his horn on the fifth. Then he simply slumped onto the floor, shaking a bit as he cried.
Fluttershy, after a few seconds, moved. Without a word she slowly flew to a space beside him, brushing a wingtip gently along his back as she leaned in and mumbled small words of comfort to the stallion. He stiffened when he first felt the appendage, but soon seemed to relax into the embrace. Gradually, his shaking softened and his tears dried, and the library sat in silence, six staring at two from across the room. Broken shook his head and stood.
“Sorry about that. Happens sometimes, not much I can do.” He shrugged, tongue lapping out to lick at some of the blood trickling from his nostril. “Can we take a break? Just give me a few minutes, I should be okay after that.” Twilight nodded slightly, and Broken briskly brought himself up the stairs. A slammed door and running water were heard before anypony let out the breaths they hadn’t known they were holding.
“So, anypony else really bucking uncomfortable with letting this guy be anywhere near us?” Rainbow asked, hoof raised. Four others and a claw matched it; Twilight was the lone dissenter.
“Oh, come on, girls! And Spike.” She tacked on at a level stare from the dragon. “He’s been through a lot, that much is clear, and both Princess Celestia and I want to find out the full extent of what happened to him. He might be a little… abrasive, let’s say, but he’s already sworn not to try to kill me again.”
“An’ what about the rest of us?” Applejack countered. “D’ya think he’s just gonna sit around an’ do nothin’ between tellin’ us how his universe-time-thing got all feathered up? I doubt y’could keep him locked up in here if you tried, and then we got a madpony on the loose in Ponyville!”
“He hasn’t acted aggressive towards anypony except me and Pip, and you saw how he treated the Princess even after her trick. He still seems to think of himself as a protector of Equestria, so I doubt he’d be willing to hurt other ponies without a really good reason. Besides, he wasn’t very cooperative in the dungeon, so we figured that he may be more open if he was placed into a more relaxed environment.” She moved over to Spike’s notes. “And look at this! Twelve pages detailing the start of the Revolution, the event that led to the Princess’ murders, the action that made Shining Armor into Broken Shield, the thing that I started… because I thought that I could do the Princess’ jobs better than them…” Twilight fell to her haunches at the last statement, staring at the words on the parchment as they became blurrier and blurrier, washed out of her vision by tears. A few seconds passed, and Twilight found herself wrapped in five pairs of hooved appendages.
“Twilight, darling, you must realise that we would never think of you the way that ruffian does.”
“Yeah! Even if Dawny was a meenie-weenie, you’re still Twilight, and you’re the most smartest, helpfulest, librarianest pony I know!”
“Like the Princesses said, Twi, y’ain’t responsible for what that stallion says y’did. You’re you, an’ the Twilight Ah know wouldn’t ever do somethin’ like that!”
“So what if his-Princesses didn’t like what his-you wrote? There’s a whole bunch of lame laws that are really outdated, and if you wanted to fix them then the Princesses should be begging for your help!”
“What the others said…”
Spike clambered onto the counter the ponies were huddled against, placing his good claw against Twilight’s cheek. “Twilight, I don’t care what he says you did, what you think you did, what happened to me, any of it. I don’t care. You’re my sister, I love you, and that’s never going to stop being true. You didn’t do anything to make him what he is, and everypony but you knows that. So please, please, stop beating yourself up over it. Please, Twilight?”
Twilight stared, wide eyed, at the heartfelt little speech from the normally anti-sappy dragon. She started shaking again, tears still falling, but this time with a smile on her face.
“…thank you, everyone…”
A voice from beside her. “What, did the orgy start without me?”
It was as if a cockatrice had materialized on the floor below the group. Six ponies sprang apart from each other, Spike falling back behind the counter, as Broken Shield descended the ladder and walked slowly, deliberately, to the couch. It was only at the sound of springs compressing that the ponies relaxed, each turning to watch and as the scarred stallion made himself comfortable upon the furniture piece. Rainbow and Applejack glared, and Rarity was muttering under her breath about inappropriateness and crassness. Broken laughed.
“Throwing your voice is a valuable skill for a soldier to have.” He levelled his eyes at the butter-yellow pegasus hiding behind a potted plant. “You were next.”
“Oh! Um, okay, um… was Dawn really that bad?” Fluttershy shrank back as the room’s attention swung to her. “I mean, I know she ki…killed the Princesses and a whole bunch of ponies and all those terrible things, but Discord tried to do a whole bunch of mean things too, and we just turned him into a statue. Chrysalis tried to take over Equestria and drain everypony’s emotions and Shining Armor and Princess Cadance just kicked her and all of the changelings out of Equestria. Was Rising Dawn really so bad that she needed to, um, die? That you’d be willing to die if it meant that she got stopped?”
“Yes.” Broken, though surprised again at the timid pony’s longwinded question, didn’t hesitate. “Rising Dawn… You know Nightmare Moon? Evil, malicious monster born of Luna’s jealousy and anger? How she wanted to bring in eternal night? Didn’t even think about how the lack of sunlight would kill all the plants, how the drop in temperatures would freeze ponies in their beds. She would have destroyed Equestria, completely accidentally, had her plan gone through.” He took a breath, glancing at Twilight. “I think of Rising Dawn in much the same way. There’s something in Twilight Sparkle that’s just itching to come out and make things the way she wants them to be. The difference is that with you, Twilight, when Dawn… took over, I guess, you’d already gone through the disaster scenarios. You knew exactly how bad things could have gone, how bad things were going to go, no matter how nice you tried to be. And you still let Dawn through. There’s only two reasons I can think of for that. Either you didn’t care about what might happen, or you wanted to see things go bad. And judging by how Dawn handled most things, it looked a lot like you just wanted to see the world burn. Nightmare would have destroyed the world unintentionally. Dawn – and by extension you - seemed to want to destroy it for kicks.”
“But I’d never-“ Twilight began. She was cut off by her own voice.
“’No, no, I’d never, not, never that young.’” Broken made the words, but they came out of his mouth sounding exactly like Twilight. His voice took on its regular guttural tone afterwards. “That’s what you said when I talked about Pip. Not ‘I’d never do that to a pony’ or ‘I’d never tell a pony to do that.’ ‘Never that young.’ Meaning that of what I listed, him killing ponies, guards, a bucking Princess, it was his age that you were shocked at. I ask you how that sounds, that the only surprise you felt when I was speaking about the atrocities you ordered a pony to commit was that you ordered him to do them when he was a colt.”
Twilight’s mouth moved, and air came out, but any sound she attempted was reduced to a squeak that would have made Fluttershy proud, had the demure pony cared for such things. Rainbow, Rarity, Pinkie Pie and Spike were all staring at Twilight in a mix of shock and mild, suspicious apprehension, though they were quick to hide both and shift their attention away. Applejack, however, laid both of her narrowed eyes on the stallion on the couch.
“How d’we know that y’ain’t just makin’ all this up?” She asked. Broken’s eye locked onto hers and narrowed.
“What?”
“How do we know that you ain’t just some crazy pony that’s used magic or somesuch to make himself appear as Twi’s brother? That you ain’t just inventin’ this tale to try to get us to do something for ya, or that y’ain’t just completely off your rocker and thinkin’ that this happened when it didn’t? Y’sound like yer tellin’ the truth, but the Element of Honesty ain’t foolproof.”
“For one, the Princess-“
“Has also bin fooled before. Ah want more than her say so.”
Broken glared at the farmpony. He vaguely noticed that the room’s attention was on him again. He sat for a few seconds before uttering a simple phrase.
“Uncle Orange is in the pantry again.”
Applejack paled through her coat. “B…beg pardon?”
“Oh, come on, you know how this goes. ‘Uncle Orange is in the pantry again. Lock up the fillies, the colts and the hens.’ A little rhyme your grandmother taught all of you Apple foals in case-“
“Enough!” Applejack hollered. Broken cut off, a small smirk curving up one side of his mouth. The farmpony took in a few breaths. “How. The feather. Did you learn that?”
“You used it as a code during Dawn’s reign. The response was to ask how many of each ‘he’d already gotten’, with fillies being captured, colts being injured, and hens being killed in battle against Dawn’s forces.”
Applejack still stared at Broken, though astonishment had replaced her anger. Without a word, she stiffly walked out of the library. Rarity called after her, eventually saying hasty goodbyes before running off after the farmpony.
“Damn. Didn’t want her to do that. She’s the only one of you I actually like.”
For the final time of the night, all the library’s eyes turned towards Broken Shield. As he often did, he ignored them. He stood up from the couch and started walking towards the stairs.
“Welp, that seems enough for tonight. I’m gonna tuck in.”
The eyes followed him until he ascended the stairs, opened a seemingly random door, flung the contents from the closet behind it, stepped in, and closed the door behind him.
“Are you sure you’re gonna be okay with him here, Twilight?” Rainbow asked.
“No.” Twilight answered, voice somewhat shaky. “But he’s my responsibility. Even if I… didn’t do anything to him, I want to help him.” Rainbow nodded, and both she and Pinkie Pie left.
After negotiating Spike into going to bed on his own, Twilight found herself standing in the middle of a scattered pile of cleaning supplies haphazardly thrown out of her broom closet. Muffled sounds of movement came from the closet itself, and Twilight was arguing with herself (rather stupidly, she recognized) over whether or not to open the door and grill Broken on the questions she had wanted to ask. Then the movements stopped, and in their place a faint sound began. It was a heavy voice, wet with tears.
“Hush now, Dazzle, don’t you cry
Daddy’s going to make sure that you fly
Up in Auntie Luna’s sky
Hush now, Dazzle, don’t you cry…”
Twilight decided to leave him alone for the night.
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Right, here's Chapter 5, in the morning because my internet was very angry last night. In this chapter, Broken answers the questions of his audience.
Got hit with a major writing assignment right out the gate here, so I might need another two weeks to get Ch. 6 ready. My deepest apologies.
Another apology for the snail's pace of the updates. At this rate it'll probably take until July to get the story done, which was not my plan, so hopefully I can start writing more than 500 words a night.
Coming up in Chapter 6: Action!
To be honest, I'm still thinking that Broken's actions will lead to Twilight/Dawn to try and take over Equestria. Seriously, what was up with his rant about Pip? Acting like Twilight already is a monster isn't helping his cause, I think.
Great chapter though, I like how more and more details about the future are being revealed.
This is a wonderful story!
But, I can't remember, who was Dazzle again?
Was it Broken Shield's foal?
Or have we not been told yet?
1479479
Broken is still very much in the mindset of Twilight=Dawn, even if he recognizes that she isn't. (yet.) His gut reaction to her is still hostility and despisal, but he's (trying) to control it for the Princesses. Right now, his plan is to relate as much of the bad things that Dawn did in order to turn Twilight into a pariah, which would severely hamper her ability to become as powerful as Dawn did. The Pip rant was part of this, trying to show the others that Twilight may already be in the mindset of Dawn, accepting that ponies and the Princesses are going to have to die in order for her to rise to power.
As for motivating her into becoming Dawn, that`s certainly not what he`s trying to do, but _SPOLIERS DETAILS REDACTED_
1479523 Like I said before, I think his actions will lead to her turning into Dawn. Trying to turn Twilight into a pariah isn't going to help if she's deadset on taking over Equestria. It might even make things worse, if she starts to feel betrayed by everypony...
There's always so many ways things can go wrong.
This is why I like time-travel stories
1479523 - It almost seems like a pre-ordained cycle. Turn Twilight into an outcast, shatter her friendships based on what might happen in the future, thus insuring that she follows the same path. A nihilistic Twilight is entirely believable if she had already lost all she cared about. It fits in with Broken's depiction of Rising Dawn.
Some confusion though with regards to who brought down Sugercube Corner and thus ended up killing Spike, Why? It seems like there's quite a bit more at play here than even Broken is aware of.
1479523>>1479535 Take away everything Twilight views as important; have her turn into an Equestria-destroying monster. I'd believe it.
1479535>>1479628
Blargle. This is why I wish I was a faster writer. Both of you are asking the right questions, ones that will be answered in later chapters, but I just don't have those bloody chapters written yet.
What I can say without spoiling everything:
Broken is not trying to stop Twilight from becoming Dawn. He views that change as rather unstoppable, for reasons that are spoilers. Twilight, early on into her Dawn-ness, still relied on her friends to a large extent. Preventing this initial power base will, in Broken's mind, lessen the impact that Dawn has when she arises. He doesn't care if he makes Dawn come out early, because his plan was to get her killed anyways, and the earlier she comes out (past the point of her friends abandoning her), the less damage she can cause due to having less of a plan/power base.
And Obsidian, you brilliant thing you, you are correct to assume that the Sugarcube Corner incident had more to it than Broken knows. He is but one pony, and wasn't there at the time, so his relation of the events is obviously not going to be the most precise. Beyond that, it's spoilers so
.
(If anybody thinks they know what's going on, PLEASE don't put it in the comments. PM me if you want, I'll answer to a more spoilery degree, but remember that almost anything I say is going into the story eventually.)
1479749 Hehe, sorry. It's just so much fun to speculate about what will happen next
1479759
No worries. Wasn't meant as a criticism, just a pleading warning. My brother is one of those people who reads the comments before a story, and half the surprises/twists have been ruined for him because of it. He doesn't really care, but I do. I really do.
But yeah, general ideas/speculation are fine, significant plot details (which, when they happen, should be fairly obvious) I'd rather not have revealed. As soon as I refer to it, though, go nuts.
I hope in this timeline at least that knowing of Rising Dawn's evilness may snap Twilight out of it before she goes and kills for her pleasure.
1488958
It's certainly a possibility that something like this might happen / be happening / has happened.
Amazing story
I acn't wait to see if twilight really dows turn into this tyrant
Ah... Broken is too quick to assume, and you know what they say about it.
The comment about youth could also mean other things, what you say in shock can mean any number of things.
(Just today stumbled upon your story. My hands are shaking, I can't wait to read more!)
2672692
Thanks!
And I'd agree that Broken is rather quick in his assumptions - though he has a 'good' reason for it.
We all have a monster inside of us, the same way a spoon has a knife inside of it.
So wait, Rising Dawn is Twilight gone all NMM (according to Broken Shield), and she want's to destroy the world slowly, dragging it out as long as she can, for what amount to, shits and giggles?
Damn, Twilight goes hardcore...
I think the reason Twilight was more astonished at Pipsqueak being a super soldier at such a young age and not him being a super soldier period, was because Twilight recognizes that some things might be necessary. Luna once went made with envy and nearly destroyed the world, Celestia fell for a trick that should have been obvious to everyone, Discord betrayed everyone in the show after his 'reformation.' I see that as Twilight subconsciously being ready to make sacrifices and to do bad things, if she truly believes that it will end in an ideal scenario in the long run. I understand why Applejack asked the question she did, but I still think it's stupid. One person supposedly being from the future actually being someone else in disguise, believable. Two people (Broken Shield and Pipsqueak in this case) being from the same future while trying to kill each other, but actually working together for some unknown goal? Extremely doubtful, so doubtful Tzeentch wouldn't implement that kind of plan.
Oh my god, Broken is so frikkin annoying. Reading anything coming out of his mouth is like chewing tin foil. I can't even feel bad for him because I just want him to shut up already.
I know I'm late to the party but the Story behind the Uncle Orange rhyme piqued my interest, I'm guessing he was a pedo or something similar?