Twilight couldn’t hear what Celestia was saying.
She knew that she was speaking – she could see the alicorn’s mouth move, and she could feel the pressure waves impact her eardrums and send neural signals to her auditory cortex. On some level she was aware that she should have been able to comprehend what the Princess was (presumably) telling her. But she couldn’t.
The thousand voices in her head were making it hard to hear very much of anything.
move without magic why can possible it shouldn’t work lied to us need shut up to hear not letting us can we do how long Luna too never see who else Cadance know when did lied to us forgive her reveal this can she shut up stop her moon too every day leave it kill us gryphons dragons how many kill her lied to us ponies shut up letting her planned it get away check again make her why would lied to us shut up ponies will will they unified in does Shining know lied to us shut up when start Broken doesn’t lied to us shut up if she lied to us shut up lied to us shut up LIED TO US “SHUT UP!”
Twilight’s chest was heaving, her eyes screwed shut and legs stiff as she fought herself away from a complete mental collapse. Ever so slowly she managed to quiet the cacophony of voices inside her mind, culling the weaker ones and forcing the stronger down back beneath the surface of wherever they’d emerged from. Eventually, when all but one of her errant thoughts had been squared away, she regained awareness of the world beyond herself; she opened her eyes as she noticed that Celestia had moved away from her, feeling them settle into a narrow glare at the guarded concern on the face of the supposed Princess of the Sun.
“How long?” Twilight asked, her voice tight. Celestia had the gall to look confused. “How long has the sun moved on its own?”
The Princess watched her student for a few moments before taking a breath. “To the best of my understanding, and with what the elder dragons have told me… forever.”
“Forever.” Forever, Twilight’s other voice echoed, it’s always’s been, we’ve never needed her- “So we’ve never needed you, then? You’ve been lying to us for over a thousand years?”
“I have never lied to you about this, Twilight-“
“The fuck you haven’t!” The unicorn cut Celestia off, standing and stalking over to the alicorn. “The first damned thing any Equestrian learns about our world is that you, you, raise and lower the sun every day, that you are the only reason why the sun moves! If you weren’t there to lower it, it would turn our lands to ash, and if you weren’t there to raise it, we’d freeze just as we would have if Nightmare Moon had won! There have been countless treaties, agreements, nonaggression pacts with other nations based on the fact that they could never defeat us because your death would spell theirs! The only reason that you came to the throne at all is because you took the sun from the unicorns, because you held it in the sky against all of our attempts to pull it down, and the other tribes feared you for it!” She was nose-to-nose with her mentor now, small flecks of spittle hitting Celestia’s lips as Twilight castigated her. The latter mare swung her hoof to the setting sun, not taking her eyes from the Princess’. “So how the fuck weren’t you lying?!”
Once more, Celestia’s response was delayed. Twilight jumped back as the Princess lifted her hoof, the unicorn’s horn glowing in preparation to defend herself from an attack; Celestia’s eyes gained a pained look as her hoof wiped the spittle from her face. She set her hoof back down, staying still and waiting for Twilight’s magic to fade before she spoke.
“I have never claimed that I am needed for the sun to rise and fall. Any treaty with reference to it is hundreds of years old, and soon to be replaced; if I make mention of it in a modern negotiation, it is only because all other options have been exhausted. And I could not take from the unicorns what they themselves never held.”
Lies lies lies all of it lies Twilight bared her teeth. “And what, exactly, does that mean?”
“I told you, Twilight. The sun has always moved on its own. I have never been needed for it to rise and fall… and neither have the unicorns.”
Twilight felt a spike of ice impale her at that particular claim. Gritting her teeth, she shoved it away and immolated the panicked voices that had risen up around it. “Th-that doesn’t change what you’ve lied about. And don’t you dare say that you’ve never claimed to raise the sun! The first time that I ever saw you was when you rai- supposedly raised it at the Summer Sun Celebration! You inspired me to pursue magic with that, and now you’re telling me it was faked! That the event that set my whole life in motion was a fucking-“
The sky turned blue.
Twilight jolted as the corner of her eye was hit with a sudden flash of light; she quickly turned away, blinking until the afterimage at her vision’s edge disappeared. She slowly turned back, squinting at the light until she managed to see past it, then feeling her eyes widen as she saw the sun fully above the horizon. Her gaze went to Celestia, and she blinked again at the glow on the alicorn’s horn.
“I said that I do not need to move the sun, Twilight Sparkle.” The Princess spoke, her voice mildly strained and her eyes closed. “I never said that I cannot.” Her horn’s glow lessened, and the sky rapidly reddened again; a quick flick of her eye told Twilight that the sun was rapidly returning to its previous position. Celestia’s horn ceased its glow, and her eyes opened to fix Twilight with a cool gaze. “Do not mistake me for having no power over the sun, Twilight. I do raise and lower it, every morning and every evening, holding it on a regular path and destroying the flares it sends towards our world. Luna does much the same with the moon, keeping it from too greatly disturbing the tides.” The Princess closed her eyes again and took a breath; when she returned her gaze to Twilight it had regained a concerned warmth. “The path you chose was not based in falsehood, Twilight. That is something I can promise you.”
“I-I… that…” Twilight took a shuddering breath. The other voice had gone oddly silent, but rage and relief still warred in her mind, the runoff from their battle seeming to clog her throat and flood her eyes. Eventually she managed to choke out a few words, allowing the most pressing of her questions to escape. “…why didn’t you tell me?”
Celestia sighed. “You were not the first student that I’ve taken under my wing, Twilight. I-“
“No.” Twilight surprised herself as she spoke, her throat clearing and eyes drying somehow instantly. She stood and stepped towards Celestia again, feeling oddly disconnected from herself. “I was the one who saved your sister. I was the one that stopped Discord. Chrysalis and Sombra would have won without my efforts. And Tirek…” She trailed off, allowing her wingless back to speak for what she’d sacrificed to enable that monster’s destruction. “You may have had countless students before me, but none of them have done the things I have. None of them have been a Princess. None of them have borne the Element of Magic. So don’t you dare try to say that you didn’t tell me because I was just another student.” Celestia’s eyes were wide, an edge of panic clearly visible. Twilight kept pressing. “Now. Why. Didn’t. You. Tell. Me?”
To Celestia’s credit, she didn’t give a hint of discomfort beyond her eyes, and she quickly hid those behind their lids. After a few moments, she sighed, and her eyes were calm when she opened them again. She gave a soft smile, and her voice was warm and clear, so very close to how she’d spoken to Twilight countless times before.
“Because I knew what you were capable of.”
Twilight blinked. What I’m capable of? Does she think I’m a threat? No, no, that was her encouraging voice, she wouldn’t have spoken to me like that… Did she mean that I could have figured it out on my own? Does she really think I’m that smart? Twilight tried to open her mouth, to ask for an explanation of what exactly Celestia meant.
Instead, she suddenly raised her hoof and slapped Celestia across the face.
Twilight stared at her traitorous limb in shock for a few moments before flicking her eyes to her mentor; the alicorn blinked several times, a small trickle of blood starting to flow from the corner of her mouth. She lifted her hoof and dabbed at the blood, staring at the stain it left for a few moments before putting her eyes on her student’s wide-eyed, shaking form.
“Twilight…?”
Her voice wasn’t angry, or hurt, or disappointed. Only concerned.
Twilight felt like she’d been stabbed.
“That… I didn’t…” Twilight couldn’t speak. She felt herself start to hyperventilate, her legs already quivering, horrified tears coursing down her face; she saw Celestia’s wing reach forward, as it had done countless times before when Twilight was upset, always to draw the mare into a safe, secure embrace.
Twilight’s horn glowed, and she heard Celestia shout her name before she teleported away.
Her landing wasn’t clean. She hit the floor hard, her legs entirely useless to break her fall, and she felt her stomach contents rise as the impact dislodged the plug in her throat. Her horn was burning, her head throbbing, her ears ringing, her eyes stinging. Everything hurt.
She curled in on herself as best she could, turning away from her sick, holding herself tightly, staying as still and quiet as possible until most of her body had finished screaming in agony. She heard a door creak open, and then she was being gently lifted, one large hoof moving around her back while the other cupped her cheek and held her head still.
“Miss Twilight? Miss Twilight, can you hear me? Are you alright?” Pip’s voice, audibly concerned. “Miss Twilight?” Twilight tried to speak, but only managed an odd croak before swallowing painfully; her throat had somehow become incredibly dry. She did her best to nod anyways, lifting a hoof to her face to wipe the remnants of her tears away. His grip on her shifted, his head turning to the doorway before he shouted loud enough to rattle the windows. “SPIKE!”
There were several seconds of silence before a scrabble of claws on hardwood became audible. Pipsqueak lifted her slightly, letting her get her hooves under her, before slowly letting her back down, now holding her in a sitting position rather than laying on her side. She gave him a smile in thanks as Spike rounded the corner of the doorway.
“Twilight!” The dragon’s voice was a mix of panicked and relieved, and the mare barely had enough time to open her hooves before he barreled into her. They hugged each other tightly, holding onto one another and letting the familiar contact work away at the tension in their systems.
She felt Pip slowly ease away from her as she became more definitely able to support herself; by the time she felt Spike’s grip started to loosen he was sitting a short distance away, allowing them their space while remaining close enough to catch her if she fell. The vomit that he should have been partially sitting in had mysteriously disappeared, and the stallion had a glass of water beside him, which he pushed over to her. She lifted and drank it, giving him a quick nod and another smile, both of which he returned after a short delay. As she drank, Twilight found herself finally looking around the room they were in.
Its resemblance to her own room, and the presence of Spike and Pipsqueak, gave her a quick, unbelievable answer as to where she’d teleported to.
“Is this the library?” She asked, her voice slightly creaking but finally returned to her. Spike leaned back, his eyes a mix of concern and confusion.
“Uh, yeah. Celestia sent a letter saying that something had happened and you’d teleported away, but that only arrived a few minutes ago. How’d you get back down here so fast?”
Twilight blinked, her brow furrowing. Pip spoke up before she could work her throat into speech again.
“I believe that you have answered your own question, Sir Spike.” At the simultaneous looks of the dragon and the unicorn, he continued. “Miss Twilight teleported away from Celestia a very short time ago, assuming that one of the first actions that Celestia took after Miss Twilight’s teleportation was to compose the letter she sent you. She has arrived here, in an incredibly short timeframe and without having travelled through the rest of the library, and exhibits a number of signs indicating both an unorthodox teleportation and extreme magical exhaustion.” The stallion exhaled. “As such, it is rather obvious that she teleported from Canterlot to here.”
As if his mentioning them had caused them to appear, Twilight finally noticed the small scorch marks dotting her legs and the singed edges of her mane. Those, alongside her irritated eyes and ears, would be from the ‘unorthodox teleportation’; the headache, pain in her bones and dryness of her throat would be the magical exhaustion. The vomiting and burning horn were likely a mix of both.
Twilight couldn’t help but feel slightly mollified at the explanation for her condition, even if that explanation was impossible.
“That’s not possible, though.” Spike said, giving the stallion a sidelong glance and voicing Twilight’s thought. “Even Princess Celestia can’t teleport that far. Twilight’s tried dozens of times and she’s never been able to work up enough magic.”
“A unicorn’s root always holds out some magic for cases of emergency, Sir Spike. Miss Twilight may not have been able to teleport between here and Canterlot because her mind did not consider her sufficiently endangered to allow her access to the reserved magic.” His eye shifted to Twilight. “Though this begs the question of what exactly occurred between you and Celestia to cause your mind to feel so threatened, Miss Twilight.”
Twilight winced as Pip brought that particular topic back to the forefront of her mind. She brought her hoof up and rubbed between her eyes, blinking and taking a few breaths before lowering it and answering the stallion’s pseudo-question.
“Celestia told me some things that I found… disconcerting. Like how she killed pretty much everypony who criticized her for two hundred years after Nightmare Moon.” Spike’s eyes nearly bugged out of his head. Pip flicked an ear.
“That was a secret, Miss Twilight?”
The unicorn sighed. “In this timeline, yes. She was open about it in yours?”
“Yes, Miss Twilight. And it lasted several decades longer there.” Pip blinked. “Was there anything else, or was such a revelation so terrible as to incite this? I can understand you feeling endangered from being in such close proximity to a pony that you had only recently learned was a mass murderer, Miss Twilight, but your mention of it sounded like there were other things that Celestia revealed to you.”
Twilight was silent for several seconds, considering what had occurred, before shaking her head. “I… There is something else, but… it probably wouldn’t be good for me to tell you. Either of you, or anypony else for that matter.” She added the last point when Spike had looked ready to ask her himself. She felt a twitch in the back of her head, but the other voice remained silent. Belatedly, she realized that she hadn’t heard it since shortly before her little selfcentered rant at Celestia.
A rant that she’d never thought about saying, after which she struck Celestia without any desire to.
Twilight very suddenly felt like she’d been stabbed again.
“Spike.” The mare spoke softly. “Please send a letter to Celestia. Tell her I’m okay, everything’s fine, I just need some time to think things over. Okay?” Spike furrowed his brow at the shift in Twilight’s tone, but slowly nodded. She sent him off with another hug before putting her attention to the other pony in the room. “I need to be alone for a while, Pip. Just to talk some things over with myself.” The stallion flicked an ear, but nodded; within the second Twilight was alone, the slight breeze and door creaking shut being the only indication that Pip hadn’t simply vanished from existence.
Twilight let out a breath, then took in another one. Her eyes were closed, her face was blank, her form appearing entirely calm.
I know you’re in here. You’re as much a part of me as my horn. Now stop hiding.
Just because I’m silent doesn’t mean I’m hiding. The other voice responded.
Great. So you’ll be fine with telling me just what the BUCK you did up there?
What makes you think I had anything to do with it? You’ve lost control before. Given what that lying harridelle just showed us- the voice cut off as Twilight felt a flare of anger. ... what Princess Celestia showed us, then. It’s not surprising that you acted without thinking.
Did I, though? When I ‘lost control’ at Broken, you were the one who defended what happened – Faust, now that I’m thinking about it, you even gave me at least the first few words of it. You were screaming in my ear over Celestia until she showed us that she could still move the sun, and then I couldn’t hear anything from you, not even making little ‘suggestions’ to add to that rant like you’d been doing before.
I was in as much shock as you over that, given that, you know, we’re the same pony. Maybe I couldn’t think of anything to add? The voice gave a snort. And what do you mean ‘did I’? I started the one with Broken, sure, but Celestia’s just happened-
But it didn’t ‘just happen’ either, did it? Twilight cut the voice off. You’re a part of my mind, but you’re obviously independent enough to argue with me like this. You see and hear the same things I do, but I’m the one who chooses how to act, so you’re left sitting there, with your own ideas on what should happen, forced to watch as I do things without any of your input. If I were in your position, I’d be doing everything I could to take control, to do things right even if only for a few moments or one key action.
Right, because obviously I want to act in the same way that you would. Get over yourself; I’ve been here for our whole life without trying to take over. I’m just one of the many voices in your head, one of the many ways that you see things, telling you one of many ways that you could act. Just because I’m more active than the others-
But you are more active than the ‘others’. You’re the only one that I ever actually hear. Sure, I get odd urges and thoughts and ideas, but never another actual voice telling me ‘hey, you should go steal that candy from that foal’ or ‘go climb to the top of the clock tower and jump off’. You aren’t just something that suggests a possibility, you actively fight to try to convince me of it. And every time we’ve ‘talked’, you’ve always been arguing from the opposite side.
I don’t see what that has to do with anything. Everypony has an antagonist, a part of their mind they have to argue against in order to convince themselves that what they’re doing is right. How do you know that nopony else has one like me?
Because you aren’t my ‘antagonist’. I’ve had to convince myself of things plenty of times without having to argue with you about it. You never even showed up until- Twilight physically gasped, her eyes shooting open. –until a few days after Broken and Pip.
Before the other voice could give a retort, a memory echoed through Twilight’s mind.
“You’ve been watching me? How? For how long?”
“With my eyes. And since three days after Broken and Pip’s arrival.”
Twilight heard nothing for several seconds.
…no. No, no, no no no! What the- what is wrong with you?! What kind of deranged disconnect from reality do you have to have to make that leap in logic?! ‘Oh, this voice in my head disagrees with me, it must be some mass-murdering psychopath from another dimension.’ WHAT THE FUCK?!
Twilight didn’t respond. She quickly stood and walked to the door, opening it and leaning out; she found Pipsqueak leaning on the edge of the doorway, his ears perking up with her arrival.
“Miss Twilight?”
“Pip, I need you to go get the others. Rainbow, AJ, everypony. Tell them to bring their Elements.” The stallion blinked, but nodded.
“Is there something wrong, Miss Twilight?”
What in Faust’s name are you doing Twilight winced, one hoof rising to press at her temple. Pip immediately moved to catch her against a possible fall, but she waved him away, gritting her teeth and drawing a hard breath.
“I’ll tell you later, Pip! Just go!” The stallion nodded again, vanishing, and Twilight pulled herself back into her room, slamming the door shut and leaning against it.
Twilight, Faust-dammit, you need to stop and think. Remember back in the Everfree? You were getting all critical of Broken’s rebels, and I was the one who defended them? Why the buck would I defend the ponies who were trying to overthrow me?
I wasn’t being critical of the rebels, I was worried that what I’d said to Pip would make him think even worse of them. You were arguing that making him cry was a good thing.
The other voice – the Dawn voice – growled. That wasn’t my point, you pinheaded idiot! And that still doesn’t mean that I’m Dawn! I can’t be Dawn! How could I respond to your thoughts if I wasn’t literally in your head?
It wouldn’t surprise me to hear that you developed a mind-reading spell during your ‘experiments’. You’ve already shown that you have a spell to render you incorporeal, and to allow instant teleportation, and to completely hide all traces of your magic.
Oh come on, do you really think that that’s possible? You know that absolutely hiding magic is impossible! Otherwise Celestia could have just done that so that she didn’t have to explain away her lie when somepony inevitably found out about it! Twilight frowned at that actually-reasonable point. And it’s not like this even matters because I’m. Not. Dawn! Dawn’s voice paused for a moment. Do you want to know why I made us punch Celestia?
Twilight’s ears perked, her eyes cracking open. So you admit-
Yes, fine! I did it! Whoop-de-bucking-doo! Now listen to me, you ingrown foal! There was another pause, and then a memory came forth.
“Because I knew what you were capable of.”
Twilight blinked. So wha-
SO SHE KNEW ABOUT DAWN! The other voice thundered. Twilight winced again as its ‘volume’ pounded at the inside of her head. That bitch knew that Dawn was coming, she knew that we could become her, she knew what we might do if we knew that the sun didn’t need her! She knew, she fucking knew and she lied to our face about it! The only reason I didn’t do worse to her was because of how scared that little slap made you!
H-hold on a minute, how could she know about Dawn? Star Swirl didn’t invent timeline magic-
Who told you he didn’t? Celestia? The tutors she payed for? The textbooks she edited? She’s lied about killing hundreds of ponies, she’s lied about moving the sun, who’s to say she didn’t lie about gaining the ability to see into other worlds? Who’s to say she didn’t kill him to stop him from telling anypony else about his discovery?
Who’s to say that she did? We can’t assume that she’s lying about everything just because we know that she’s lied about some things! Look, I’m not happy with Celestia either right now, but-
That’s the problem! You aren’t happy with her right now! Soon enough you’ll have shunted this to the back of your mind, just like you did after Chrysalis and every other time she’s bucked up, and you’ll be back to smiling and bowing and sucking at her teat and refusing to accept that your precious Princess isn’t perfect! Don’t you remember what Dawn said would happen if you did that here?
Twilight’s jaw set. Yes, in fact, I do remember what Dawn said about that.
“…these ones, they don’t just get subsumed into that morass of worship you call your relationship with her. They get stuck in the back of your mind, festering…”
Good. Then you should know-
And I also remember what she said after.
“…and one of those little voices in the back of your head that you’re never, ever supposed to listen to picks up on them.”
So which are you? Dawn? Or one of the voices that turns me into her?
The little voice in the back of her head was silent. Twilight was willing to wait, taking the reprieve to let herself calm down. A minute passed, easily, then two, then five, then-
I’m only trying to protect us.
Before Twilight could respond, there was a knock on the door. She quickly stood up away from it, moving to the centre of the room before magicking it open. Her friends entered, alongside Spike and Pip, the latter bringing up the rear.
“Alright, what’s goin’ on that we need the Elements for?” Applejack asked.
“Yeah, the only weird thing I know about was what Celestia did with the sun a little while ago.” Twilight cringed as Rainbow shrugged. “Unless there’s something wrong with the Elements themselves. Is that it? They aren’t leaking anything, are they?” The prismatic pegasus lifted her Element up, apparently eyeing the necklace for any ‘leakage’. Twilight shook her head.
“No, no, nothing like that…” She pulled her Element from its spot and held it in front of her. She stared at it for a few moments before fixing her eyes on the only stallion in the room. “Pip, do you remember a few days ago, when I asked if anypony had been in the kitchen with me before you came in? How I said that I’d thought that there had been?”
Pipsqueak nodded, his brow furrowing a very small amount. “Yes, Miss Twilight. As I said then, I can assure you that nopony had been in that room, aside from you, for at least an hour beforehoof.”
“I know, Pip, and I appreciate that. But I did see somepony in the room with me. I, I’m fairly certain about that, now.”
“Who was it?” Spike asked, glancing between Twilight and Pip. The former took a few breaths before she answered.
“Rising Dawn.”
That got a reaction out of her audience. Everypony went wide-eyed and slack-jawed, a few making small utterances or noises of shock. Rainbow dropped to the floor, glancing all around as if Dawn was hiding in some corner somewhere. Pip went completely stiff, his eye wide and pupil pinpricked, breath caught in his throat. Twilight brought her hoof to her head, rubbing it between her eyes.
“…and to make matters worse, I’m not even sure if she was really there.”
“Wh...what’d’ya mean, y’don’t know if she was there?” Applejack’s brow was furrowed, her eyes holding clear concern.
“Well, she, I couldn’t feel any magic from her, she was able to just disappear and reappear without teleporting, I wasn’t able to touch her with my magic or my hoof, and she quite literally walked through the kitchen table. And as Pip’s mentioned, she didn’t leave a trace of her presence.”
“Only within the hour, Miss Twilight-“
“But I wasn’t in there for an hour, was I?” Twilight asked, glancing at a fraught-with-worry Fluttershy. The mare took a moment before shaking her head. Twilight sighed.
“Right. So she probably wasn’t there. Meaning that I was hallucinating her.” She paused for a moment, working her jaw as the others glanced between themselves. “Which brings me to my second point.
“For the last… little while, I’ve been hearing another voice in my head. My voice, just… separate from my own thoughts. I didn’t think very much about it at first, I just thought that it was just another one of those things that everyone gets in their own heads, something that their subconscious invents for one reason or another, but then, it started… pushing. It got louder, started talking more, started arguing more forcefully. And then, one day – that day that I told you about Dawn raping Pip – Broken made a comment about Pip, and I just snapped, I took him to task for how he’d been treating Pip, how Pip had been hurt by Dawn just like he had… except it wasn’t me talking.” Twilight took a few breaths. Applejack spoke up before she could continue.
“So this… this ‘other voice’ a’yers… it’s a strong enough part’a’ya t’take over yer speech? An’ y’didn’t think t’tell anypony?”
“I didn’t even know that it had done it at the time! Or that it was ever going to be able to! I still thought that the voice was just something in my head, that I had just lost control of my anger for a minute! And it hadn’t done anything else like that since then, until today!”
“So what’d it do-“
“Weren’t you meeting with Celestia today, Twilight?” Rarity asked, her voice in a very controlled calm. Very suddenly, every eye in the room was on Twilight again.
“…Princess Celestia told me some things. Things that I’m not very comfortable even thinking about, let alone telling anypony else.” Twilight could feel one of her eyes twitch. “B-but what she told me isn’t important, not right now. After all of this, I might tell you, or Spike can send a letter and ask or… something. But not right now.” She glanced between everyone, waiting for at least a few nods before letting out her breath. “Okay, okay. So I found something out, and then Celestia told me something else, and those things made me very, very angry with her. But she explained herself, and I was calming down, and then that other voice took over again. I didn’t notice, I thought I was just… talking without thinking, or something, but when Celestia responded to what the voice had said, and I tried to ask her what she meant, i-instead of talking, I …” Twilight’s throat was starting to swell, her vision blurring as her eyes wetted. “…I hit her.”
Applejack blinked, which was more movement than anyone else in the room. Her mouth fell open, but it took a few seconds for her to speak.
“…you hit her? W-what’d’ya mean, y’hit her?”
In response, Twilight raised her hoof, then swung it in front of her as fast and as hard as she could. The motion nearly made her fall over, the same hoof that had replicated the strike having to plant itself awkwardly to the floor in order to keep her upright.
“I-I wasn’t trying to!” she said, her voice cracking as a few silent cries worked their way up her throat. “I was in control again less than a second later, and Celestia was more worried about me than anything, but I just panicked and teleported back here and-“ her voice caught on a sob, and she had to clear her throat before she could speak again “-and as soon as I realized what had happened, I confronted the voice, and it admitted to it, it said it would have done worse if it’d been able to, a-and that’s when I knew something was wrong.”
Everypony was silent as Twilight recovered; Spike looked like he wanted to move to her, but something was keeping him tied to his spot. Twilight shot him a smile anyway, rubbing the tears out of her eyes and taking a deep breath.
“But it’s okay! Now, now that I know that this voice isn’t really me, that it’s some kind of thing that’s not supposed to be here, I know how to get rid of it!” She raised the Element of Magic from where she’d dropped it, placing it atop her head.
“Wait, so you want us to use the Elements on you?!” Rainbow asked incredulously. “I mean, yeah, you gotta get rid of that voice-thingy somehow, but-“
“I didn’t just come up with this off the top of my head, Rainbow.” Twilight cut the pegasus off. “The way I see it, this voice is something like the Nightmare – an entity that induces behavioural shifts and attempts to take control of the pony it’s inhabiting. So, we should be able to deal with it the same way.” The unicorn looked between her friends, her face falling slightly at their visible apprehension. “Come on, girls! This isn’t me! I don’t hate Celestia, I don’t think she’s a monster, I don’t want to hurt her, but this thing does and I’m terrified that it might get strong enough to start taking control of me whenever it wants! I don’t want to turn into Rising Dawn, but I’m fairly certain that a voice like this is what she started as!” The mention of Dawn seemed to stiffen everyone’s backs; Twilight glanced around again, meeting each of her friends’ eyes. “Please, please, trust me on this. Please.”
“…Ah trust ya.” Applejack was the first to speak, giving a nod and a solid stare at Twilight. The others quickly followed, each speaking and nodding. She gave them all a great, relieved smile before putting her eyes on the two non-Bearers in the room.
“Spike, Pip, you’re going to have to step outside for this. We’ve never used the Elements with anypony else around, and I’m not sure what might happen if you were in here.”
“I don’t think you’ve ever used the Elements on yourself, either…” Spike said, before moving forward and giving Twilight a tight hug. “Just be careful, alright?”
Twilight hugged her assistant back, holding him tight to her. “I promise. I’ll still be me afterwards, don’t you worry.” She felt Spike nod against her neck, and then he let her go, turning and quickly walking out the door. Pip followed him, giving Twilight a sharp nod and a worried eye before stepping out and shutting the door behind him. Twilight turned back to her friends, giving them a final nod before working her magic.
The Elements activated normally, the lights of Honesty, Loyalty, Generosity, Laughter, and Kindness each sparking and bathing their owners in their power. Twilight could see the glow of Magic around herself, and as she felt its power peak the other Elements shot out, drawn towards their kin like a moth to flame.
It didn’t hurt as they hit her; it was a warm, soft, safe feeling, purely comfortable even as the light grew too bright for her to see and the roaring too loud for her to hear. The harmonic power washed through her, rejuvenating her, leaving her feeling cleaner, healthier, happier than she had ever been before. She felt her mouth open, but if she screamed it was something of ecstasy rather than pain. As the power filled her more and more, she felt something pulling at her, pulling her away from herself, and she could not find it in herself to resist.
When she returned to awareness she found herself lying on the floor. She could feel five others around her, from the heat of their bodies and the little sounds they likely weren’t even aware they were making. She raised her hooves and stretched, feeling something odd in her back, making sure they knew she was awake before she opened her eyes.
“Hey there, Twi. Y’kinda collapsed when th’Elements went back t’normal. Y’feelin’ alright, sugarcube?” Applejack asked. Twilight stood in one fluid motion, some of her other friends stepping back away from her as she did so, before fixing the farmmare with a smile.
“I feel stupendous! I don’t think sex with Faust would be that satisfying!” She giggled at the funny look that Applejack suddenly got, glancing around to find similar looks on the rest of her friends. “Thank you all so much, everyone!” They all looked at each other, their smiles weirdly wobbly.
“Um, sure, Twilight. Always happy t’help.” Applejack gave an odd-toned laugh, rubbing the back of her head.
“Er, yeah. Those nasty voices all gone?” Rainbow asked. Twilight paused for a moment before nodding, wiggling her back to try to figure out whatever was bugging her back there.
“Yep! All gone! Can’t hear a thing up here!”
Applejack grinned at her again, though the edges were saggy for some reason. “Well, so long as yer okay, Ah think the rest’a us’d better head back-“
Twilight’s eyes widened as she heard the mare’s words. “Oh, wait wait wait! You can’t leave!” Twilight’s horn glowed, forming a barrier around the door and windows. Her friends stopped smiling. “There’s still things we need to do and plan and prepare! Since we’re all already here, we might as well get it done now, right?”
“Twilight?” Pinkie asked in a worried tone. “What are you talking about?” Twilight fixed her eyes on the pink mare, causing the latter to shrink back from her for some reason.
“Why, killing Celestia, of course!” Twilight rolled her shoulders as everypony else froze, giving a small gasp as she finally figured out what was troubling her. Her horn glowed again, pouring magic on the two empty sockets in her back, buried beneath coat and skin and muscle and just sitting there. Flesh and bone quickly reformed under her direction, and within seconds she heard herself moaning in satisfaction as two new wings sprouted from her back. “Oooh, that feels better. Don’t know how I didn’t notice that for so long.” She glanced back at her friends as her wings settled, her brow furrowing at their stiff forms and horror-stricken stares. She thought for a moment, her recent words and actions replaying in her mind, before she came upon the answer. “Oh! Don’t worry, girls!” The newly-winged unicorn said with a grin. She glanced between each of her friends, to reassure them of her sincerity.
“I’m not Rising Dawn!”
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Edit: damn gif wouldn't embed
Ah, the subtleties, they are strong with this one.
...WHAT.
“Why, killing Celestia, of course!” ERROR. BRAIN REBOOTING.
aaaaah, what.
next chapter soon please.
Looking at this again, I'm reminded of one of the endings to the first Silent Ponyville. Y'know, the one in which CUPCAKES PINKIE took over Pinkie's brain! Definitely getting that kind of vibe, yep.
Now we just need Broken to enter and then it's going to be fucking WW3 in Ponyville.
Aaaaaah sheit. Dis gun b gud.
So ... Twilight got sealed in the Element of Magic?
6249341
Don't worry, it's not quite a straight takeover. More of an enforced shift in perspective.
The funny thing about harmonies is that every part is equal.
6249429
...
6249628
Not quite; it's mentioned that she 'returned to herself' after the Elements were done.
No part of her actually got sealed away. Certain things in her head just got rebalanced. Check the spoiler tag in this comment's first response.
Yeah, not feeling very reassured there.
Can't wait to see what happens next!
All together now....
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Oh wow. Now shit is really going down. And I really can't say I don't want to see her dead myself at this point, either.
I really hope the next update won't take another month, though, because that was one hell of an awful cliffhanger to end that chapter on.
Broken mentioned that Dawn put a lot of research into giving herself wings.
Interesting, then, that this "not-Dawn" could do it the very instant she had control.
6249716
It's a brand new Dawn for Twilight Sparkle.
6250172
I have more time to work on the story this week, and given how heavily I've planned this part out it'd be really odd if I had too much trouble writing it. Updates should be faster (I DO plan on finishing it before Sept. 11, even if the end looks to be about as far away word-wise as I've written in the last 4 months.)
6250282
I'm not quite sure where Broken said that - He was adamant that Dawn wasn't an alicorn, but from my checking back in the story he's never talked about how she regained her wings.
Pip mentioned that she 'performed the required actions' between his recruitment and the attack on Canterlot, but also that he had no idea what those actions were.
Also, Twilight wasn't trying to become an alicorn again - she noticed that the sockets that used to hold her wings felt weird without them, so she just shifted some stuff around and magicked a new set. She doesn't see herself as an alicorn and has no plan to try to become one (because, y'know, that's what Dawn did, and she isn't Dawn. ).
I could have SWORN that I'd mentioned her using a kinda-sorta healing spell, but apparently that got lost in editing somewhere. Fuck. Might add it back in.
6250695
I hope so, because this is getting to the point where a certain minimum pace really starts to look necessary to keep up the tension. Maybe it would be best to take a break and then have the rest of it ready all at once, actually, as unhappy as I would be about the wait personally.
6250972
Everyone in this show is a total idiot, if you apply even the least bit of real-world common sense to how they behave most of the time. If anything, this story still makes them look better than they really deserve.
6250937
Yeah, I'm aware. It's too ubiquitous in the early chapters for me to go through as of yet, but I'm planning a mass-edit once I get the story finished to clean up crap like that.
6250972
Keep on reading; there's actually an explanation for it in-story.
6251680
I'm sorry to hijack a reply here....
I'm currently on the chapter 'Propugnator ' and I'm very enthralled by the story thus far, however I'm a little lost. (Very lost, actually).
If I'm reading this correctly...Twilight became a Princess and then lost her princess-hood? Did I miss a chapter somewhere by accident?
If you could clarify for me a little bit I would be greatly appreciative.
6251084
Yeah, it's a result of me trying to keep the story 'up-to-date' with canon (as it was started right before season 3 began). There is an explanation for it, though.
Basically, due to differences in events between this timeline and the main timeline (ie the show), Tirek found out about Twilight alongside everybody else in Equestria (ie during her nationally-announced coronation) and decided to go after her as soon as he regained his ability to steal magic (because Element of Magic + magically powerful as a unicorn + alicorn bonuses to magic = all-you-can-eat buffet to him). He didn't bother stealing magic from random ponies, so Celestia and Luna weren't aware of him (beyond, presumably, knowing that he'd escaped Tartarus, because the idea that they wouldn't check on the prisoners after the sole guard abandoned its post melts my brain with its stupidity).
Tirek waited out in Ponyville and ambushed Twilight soon after she returned from the Crystal Empire (Twilight's Kingdom, Pt. 1), managing to rip out a good chunk of her magic before she even realized what was going on. However, he wasn't yet strong enough to handle alicorn magic, and the power he stole from Twilight was hurting him as much as it was making him stronger. This surprised him, and he broke his absorption spell in order to give himself a chance to adjust to the magic he now had. Now free to act, Twilight realized a few things:
-he had the ability to handle large amounts of magic (and he'd been surprised when he couldn't handle all of hers, implying that he knew he should be able to handle as much magic as she possessed, leading to the second point)
-the amount of magic he could hold varied, and could presumably be increased to at least the amount that she herself held
-letting him expand his capacity for magic was a bad idea (as he intended to return and steal more of her magic once he'd become accustomed to what he'd already taken)
-she didn't know how long it would take him to expand his capacity for magic (meaning that he might be able to do so before she could send for help from the Princesses, and given that he hadn't tried to flee and hide somewhere, he likely expected to become adjusted within seconds)
The third point was bad, but the fourth point made it an immediate, do-or-die issue. She knew that she had to defeat him, fast, before he was able to adjust to the magic he'd already stolen, and she knew none of his weaknesses beyond the fact that too much magic, too fast, caused him harm. So she took advantage of that by forcing the absorption spell to reactivate (Tirek's ability to absorb magic is referred to as a 'dark power' and something that he had to build up enough strength to use again, so I'm guessing it's a type of magic like Sombra's was, and thus that Twilight's 'can use all magic she sees' ability applies to it like it does Sombra's) and then forcibly draining herself in order to pump as much magic as she was able to through the spell, overwhelming Tirek and causing his body to fail from the sheer strain of attempting to handle that much magic power.
That is, she force-fed him as much of her magic as she could, and then he exploded in a fountain of harmonic magic and meat pulp.
Unfortunately, the sheer amount of magic that Twilight pulled from herself largely burned out her body's capacity to produce said magic - as she'd been a unicorn before her ascension, her inherent unicorn abilities were able to recover, but the newer pegasus and earth pony aspects had been crippled to the point of near-destruction. She chose to abdicate her position as a Princess rather than regain her abilities (partially because Celestia was unsure as to how the ascension process would affect somepony who was already an alicorn, partially because of timeline differences making her less interested in/more reluctant to be a Princess in the first place). Her wings had shielded her from Tirek exploding, but were largely damaged in doing so, and given that she wouldn't have enough pegasus magic to allow her to fly anymore, she had them amputated for convenience's sake rather than having a doctor heal them and leave her with two largely useless appendages, thereby rendering her a 'unicorn' once more.
(In related timeline-difference news, the plundervines never happened and the Tree of Harmony has, without their presence straining it, managed to stave off death for a while, so the Elements are still independent of the Tree.)
6251931
I saw your comment earlier, it just took me a while to figure out how to word everything correctly. Sorry about that.
Ooooh, I think I see where the logic is.
if the voice is Rising Dawn, it might not remove her because she technically was not in the same universe! It removed Twilight because she IS that universes Rising Dawn, and The Elements could not detect the voice.
It could be also because the voice is, not a antagonist, but a influence because of coming into contact with ponies (Broken, Pip, and Dawn(?)), that effects others who stay around them.
Maybe the voice is not an antagonist, but the literal bad side of Twilight? It would remove or suppress twilight because they were focused on Dawn, not the voice.
Lastly could be because it is a voice that poisoned the thoughts of Dawn, turning her into Dawn, like NNM's darkness...... Which means it either exists in different universes, or it has ways of being omnipotent/omnipresent? I dunno which is the right term.....
6252219
Yeah…
…don’t do that! It’s as annoying as fuck, confusing as hell, jarring as shit, and thrice as stupid as all of them combined. Besides which, if I recall correctly one of the things that turned a lot of people off of Past Sins was the nigh unending revisions necessary to bring it into line with canon and that was “just” a season. Trying to shoehorn two whole seasons into the story now is beyond foolish. Are you going to try try shoehorning in season five next? ’cause shoehorning in three whole seasons is just about the only thing dumber than than that.
6249841
BEAKER IS BEST FOR OH SHIT PICS AND GIFS
related side note-
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unrelated side note-
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6254003
I'd always planned for it to be set [indistinct number of years] in the future from the show, specifically so that I could make reference to parts of the show that popped up while I was writing it; however, I didn't expect to actually be working on this for so long (nor for it to have gotten as long as it has), so the sheer amount of progression in the show has resulted in some janking. But believe it or not, I feel that it still actually probably works better than my original plan.
For example, in Broken's timeline, Twilight as a Princess would have gained an awareness of just how much power and ability to change things a Princess truly had, as well as allowing her to view the troubles of Equestria on a national scale. Her attempts to use her newfound power to induce positive changes in Equestrian society were quashed by Celestia, inducing in Twilight a resentment and a view that Celestia didn't care about the suffering of her citizens, as well as making her somewhat disillusioned with being a Princess (from the previous points as well as the knowledge that she was a power only in name, with Celestia still as dominant over her as she was when Twilight was her student). This disillusionment was added to her reluctance to having become a Princess in the first place in her decision to abdicate after Tirek's attack.
With all of that having happened, the Charter was written not from an outsider's hopeful perspective on what the Princess was able to do, but from an insider's educated perspective on what the Princess absolutely COULD do. Nothing in there was actually outside Celestia's power (from an absolutist perspective, ignoring social, legal, and economic ramifications), so her rejection of it gave Twilight the idea that she simply didn't want to change things no matter how well thought out and justified the changes, which cut the younger mare's opinion of the Princess even lower than it was from Celestia's stoppering her attempts as a Princess to enact change. This, alongside what was directly shown in the story, incited Twilight to start the Revolution.
With the Revolution itself, ponies were more willing to follow Twilight because they remembered her tenure as a Princess (giving their herd mentality more of a reason to follow her - she HAD been a leader before, after all) as well as the fact that she rather publicly attempted to affect positive changes for them while she was a Princess. She was seen by the more royalist-minded ponies (eg the nobility) as a more legitimate opponent to Celestia than she would have been had she 'just' been the Princess' former student, and the corruption within the guard ranks that Broken mentioned was largely rooted in Twilight's former Royal guardsponies.
Dawn was also able to spin making herself an 'alicorn' as her 'taking back the power that Celestia stole' from her, lessening the view that she was trying to replicate the Princesses that she'd just overthrown and killed.
And that's just how the Princess thing affects BROKEN'S timeline - the 'current' one is a whole other can of worms that I am happy to open should anyone desire.
(For the record, the story's main timeline is officially 'between' seasons 4 and 5, though a number of things from 3 and 4 happened differently, as did some things from 1 and 2, and 5 pretty much won't be happening at all due to those differences.)
With Past Sins, from what I remember, a good bit of the problem was that he'd ALREADY finished the story when he started revising it for canon - I remember reading it in full (after the make-it-suck-less revisions, but before the bring-it-to-canon revisions). I only added what I did to Prevention because I thought it over and felt that what was added would help the story as a whole when I got everything sorted out. Shit like the plundervines, the Elements returning to the Tree of Harmony, Tirek blowing up the library, etc. wouldn't help, so they never happened in this timeline - they're one of the differences between this particular Line and the Primary Line (that is, show canon). Twilight being a princess did, and Tirek as a character did, so they're a part of the BACKstory, albeit with differences from how they worked in the show (because, again, this Line is different from the Primary Line). The MAIN story and plot points of Prevention itself is/are actually largely unchanged from what I'd set out when I figured out where I was going with it, and the changes that have happened since then have little-to-nothing to do with what the show's shown.
I'll freely admit that the 'former Princess' thing is awkward as hell in the story as-is, and I probably would have done it quite differently had I been aware of everything, but again, it's only really affecting the backstory. I'd ALWAYS planned for Dawn and this Twilight to get wings - the fact that the wings used to be there anyways just gives a better reason for it.
I can certainly understand your concern about this, though. Hopefully some of that explanation above has helped to explain my apparent stupidity.
6250695
The most likely explanation remains that Dawn sent her mind back in time to take-over Twilight. It would certainly explain how the voice knew things Twilight couldn't have known, and the mistakes it made.
Now everybody's going to have to mop up her mess. And, in all likelihood, her.
I'm calling shenanigans on the elements turning a person with a dissociative identity into a psychotic killer. That is creating an unharmonious state, and the elements have previously shown to force creatures to be in harmony with their environment at any cost.
They are weapons for protecting the greater good, not for achieving internal conflict resolution.
6256239
I'm not sure where the voice mentions things that it can't have known - I tried to keep its claims within the realm of alternative interpretations of the same information that Twilight gained, such as thinking that Celestia had meant 'I knew you were capable of becoming Dawn' rather than 'I knew you were capable of figuring it out on your own'. It was also straight-up wrong about certain things.
And you're absolutely correct that the Elements are not meant to handle internal conflicts. Which is why they fucked up. (Though the Elements aren't really for protecting the 'greater good' either - they're meant to eliminate disharmony and conflict. If the Elements were capable of judging good from evil, the Element of Magic would never have given Sunset Shimmer the power to turn into a demon and enslave minds for the purpose of enslaving or murdering millions of people.)
The Elements didn't turn Twilight into a 'psychotic killer'. They couldn't find an external source of disharmony to act on, so they went for the disharmony WITHIN Twilight - the conflicts between the opposing parts of her psyche (the 'voices' in her head). Remember that harmony is not peace - harmony is agreement or accord, many different parts working together towards a common goal. The Elements forced every single one of Twilight's internal voices into agreement with one another, effectively subsuming them into a single voice that represents them all equally, regardless of how fucking insane any particular one was/is, because THAT is the most harmonious mental state possible. As can be imagined, this isn't exactly a good thing.
Twilight has effectively been left without an internal filter. If she decides on a course of action, then she's going to do it until she decides not to (or an external source (such as another pony) convinces her not to), at which point she'll immediately stop doing it. She no longer has the mental capacity to be indecisive or unsure of herself, because such indecision was the product of an internal conflict.
6257032
The element didn't "give" Sunset power, so much as Sunset TOOK power from it.
Also, pretty much every usage of the elements can be described as using them against an entity which was internally harmonious but externally discordant. Discord, for example.
We also know that the will of the users plays a role in how they are applied, and all the users were agreed that the voice needed to go.
Even if it was just balancing out the internal voices, the dawn-voice would have been outvoted by the non-vocal 'voices'. If it were part of her mind then it would have been OVERrepresented when the elements were used, and thus squealched. Which means it would have to have been Dawn, who reasonably should have been distinct from Twilight due to one being an Alicorn and the other not.
6252455 ...I can't tell if you're being sarcastic or serious.
That's a bad sign.
6257288
He's quoting Liberty Prime. I think he's joking.
6257103
You're talking about voting with regard to what you yourself said was a weapon. If someone plants a bomb at a political debate, the side with the most support won't magically come out fine.
Both the dominant "Twilight" voice and the "not-Dawn" voice were pretty loud, and were the two generating most of the conflict, so they would both be prime targets for forced harmonization. By the same logic, the "Twilight" voice would have been even more overrepresented due to its dominance, and would have gotten stomped even harder.
You seem to be assuming one is inherently right and that the elements will always take one side and that that side will always stay consistent. That isn't harmony, that's dictatorship.
Weapons don't care about the "greater good," they have a specific method of dealing damage, and that's what they do. They're inherently indiscriminate.
You may be looking for the word "tool" rather than "weapon."
Further proving the point. A weapon doesn't care who picks it up, it just does what it does anyway.
Pretty sure Nightmare Moon was fighting Luna for control of her body, unless Luna liked being Nightmare Moon and the elements forcibly brainwashed her into behaving.
If you're right, then there is no precedent whatsoever for them being used on an internally discordant but externally harmonious being, meaning authors can pull whatever they want out of their asses until they are contradicted by the source material itself.
You also appear to be continuing to equate harmony with peace. If you mean societal harmony, that's impossible outside of a hive mind, since you will always have dissent. If you mean some kind of "natural order," what happens to those on the wrong side of it? Are the elements just a method of suppressing dissent and/or change and maintaining the status quo?
By its very definition, harmony is multiple parts working together for the same purpose. Hell, musical harmony is a number of voices singing together to the point where they can't be distinguished. All that's happened here is that the voices in Twilight's head are all singing together now, rather than all singing their own songs.
6257103
I'll admit that she took the power more than it was given to her, but it still begs the question of why the Element wouldn't just shut down if it sensed it was being used for evil. The Elements straight-up refused to activate with Twilight's first attempt to use them against Discord, because their wielders were disharmonized; even though Twilight was fine and had a good, harmonious intent in stopping Discord, Magic refused to do anything. How could Sunset (who wasn't even Magic's designated wielder) have gotten more power out of it by herself than Twilight could by herself? Probably just a plothole.
By 'external source of disharmony', I meant something that was causing disharmony and wasn't a natural part of the Element's target (such as the Nightmare when they targeted Luna). Discord is chaos, so there was no part of him that could be harmonized, which is why the Elements did the next best thing and petrified him.
In regards to the will of the users, yes and no. Nopony was trying to separate the Nightmare from Luna (as they didn't even know that Nightmare Moon WAS Luna), they were just trying to stop Nightmare Moon. If the Elements had followed the will of the users to a T, Nightmare Moon may well have been stopped by being sent back to the moon; instead, the Elements removed the disharmonizing element of the Nightmare from Luna, thereby stopping Nightmare Moon. (They didn't do that when Celestia used them on NMM because Celestia's specific intent - banishment to the moon - fulfilled their requirement of removing disharmony (in this case, the disharmonizing element of NMM from Equestria).)
With the voice, it was assumed that it was like the Nightmare (an external-source disharmony) and thus could be gotten rid of the same way. As such, the 'will of the users' was to remove the voice. When the Elements found no external source of disharmony on Twilight, the 'will of the users' became impossible to perform, as removing a part of somepony that's SUPPOSED to be there would inherently cause disharmony within that pony's mind and/or body. Rebalancing the internal parts of a pony's mind/body in order to remove existing disharmony and conflict, on the other hand, is perfectly in line with what the Elements were made to do - that is, remove disharmony and conflict. (Again, they are NOT supposed to be used to deal with internal conflicts, because they can't tell when conflict might be a good thing - such as the conflict between someone's selfish desires and their conscience).
As for the voting thing, you're assuming that the majority of Twilight's internal voices DIDN'T want to kill Celestia, or even cared about whether she was alive. And that there was even a 'vote' at all. The Elements basically Golden Mean Fallacy'd Twilight's brain. If the most extreme ends of the spectrum are "kill painfully" and "don't kill", the centrist position is going to be somewhere around "kill painlessly" and "gravely injure". I'm not quite sure what you mean by the overrepresented thing - the Elements didn't target specific voices because they happened to be louder or quieter. They took EVERY voice and gave them EQUAL influence, regardless of what they'd had before.
6257498 Ah, a vault boy. I see.
Previous page suggests post-Tirek, and more than that, suggests Alicornship is already within reach. I'm pretty sure she started this story as a unicorn, and I don't remember any mention of major events since then. Also post-Tirek implies there are no elements to bring, they're part of a tree now.
6273238
All of that's answered if you scroll up. Two really long posts that a lot of people probably tl;dr-ed.
Nope, totally not Rising Dawn. Just the exact same pony in every way except for name and apparently friendliness towards her friends.
TOTALLY not Dawn. Yup.
Nobody believes her, that's the joke.
6286617
What do you mean? Of course she's not Dawn! She said so and everything!
And how can you say that she's not friendly to her friends? She thanked them for their help and gave them reassurance when they were concerned! How much friendlier could she be?
You are correct, that is absolutely the joke.
6257641 So it ended the conflicting minds by eliminating one. Makes me wonder, what was its criteria for choosing which one to remove? One would assume that it would avoid the "original" mind, given that the other does not originate from this dimension. Even though they are the same mind, one is simply not of that plane of existence. So it's very odd that the Elements would remove the native mind instead of the other.
6288321
I think you might've misread it - the Elements would have removed the foreign voice as they were told to do if they had been able to detect a foreign voice to remove. They couldn't remove any voice that (they thought) was supposed to be there, so instead they kinda-sorta forced all the voices in her head into 'agreement' - her actions and 'mind' are now governed by every single little fragment of her psyche working in unison, essentially forming a single voice in her head, rather than being dominated by a single one that the others try to convince to do what they want.
6257498 put it rather well:
6289811 So it mishmashed the two together? So Twi is of one mind, but made with the minds of herself and Dawn?
6289893
Something like that. Her current mind is a more-or-less single thing that's comprised of the previous main voice (the one that 'her' thoughts were), the other/Dawn voice, and the many, many other voices that weren't really strong enough to be heard very much, all blended together and given equal say in her decisions (whereas previously the main voice and the other voice were the only two strong enough to actually influence her, with the former in control pretty much the whole time).
And thus, time travel is once again shown to be an all around crapshoot, regardless of multiversal workarounds.
Seriously, its either a fixed point and nothing you do will change, your actions only make things invariably worse, or your very efforts will cause the event you wanted to stop in the first place.
Kids, don't do time travel, its bad, mm'kay?
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So, the Elements of Harmony made her worse?
I don't know why she's so confident, either. Basically the entire world is rightfully opposed to killing their princess, and Princess Celestia did in fact entrust Twilight with her closest secrets, and Twilight's biggest argument for killing her is for not making dangerous magic public knowledge. Where was Twilight's enmity when Celestia told her a secret about the Crystal Empire? So, without basis, support, charisma, and with forewarning everypony who is now her mortal enemy, she's going to... get beaten up by Rainbow Dash, held down by Fluttershy, tied up by Applejack and fed a cupcake by Pinkie Pie, while Rarity gives her a stern talking to. Unless Pip kills them all, but what then? Even Rising Dawn had the support of her friends!
And Pinkie's going to wink and smile, and say, "You're a raving megalomaniac when you're hungry. Better?"