Propriety
Twilight awoke to an oddly warm bed.
She didn’t remembered actually going to bed. She did remember leaving the stack of books by her desk, flipping through them and marking off anything that might help her with her projects. A huge pile of psychology books, texts to studies to observational journals, lay haphazardly arranged on one corner of the worktable, with numerous little notes sticking out from between the pages. The candle had burnt down to the nub, so she had likely been working until well past midnight. She decided to wonder about the details later, pulling the blanket further up around her head and snuggling her back into the warmth behind her.
The solid, muscled warmth whose center was continuously expanding and contracting, with a constant beat underlying it, and who was wrapped around her in such a way that personal areas were easily discernable. Twilight’s eyes shot open, her head whipping around. Her vision was filled with a one-eyed stallion’s head.
“Good morning, Mila-“
“EEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEK!”
thum shff SLAM whump
Pip shook the books off of himself and stood as Twilight scrambled to put the bed between them.
“Is something the matter, Milady?”
“You! In bed! With me!”
“I ask again, is something the matter, Milady?”
“Why the buck were you in my bed?!”
Pip blinked. “That is usually where I stay the night, Milady, unless you have Lady Gaia, Sir Crimson Lash, Pet, and/or one of the trainees bedded.”
Twilight stared at the stallion. “You usually sleep in m-er, Rising Dawn’s bed?”
“No, Milady. I usually rest while guarding you in the Senate or Parliament, where there are numerous other guardsponies that can defend you. I usually stay the night in your bed.”
Twilight could have sworn the stallion had emphasized the ‘rest’ and the ‘stay the night’, but he said them as blankly as he said everything else. Before she could ask for clarification, her door was bucked in.
“Is somepony killing Twi-“ were the words that left Broken’s mouth before he saw Pip. The rest of his breath was released in a wordless roar as his horn glowed and several of the quills on Twilight’s desk launched themselves at the stoic stallion. These quills proceeded to embed themselves in a purple magical wall three inches in front of Pip’s face. Broken simply growled, and suddenly the desk itself was floating.
“Broken!” Twilight yelled, her horn glowing slightly brighter as she reformed the barrier. He ignored her. “You swore not to attack anypony!”
“I swore not to attack you! I promised not to attack anypony! NEITHER of those apply to HIM!” The desk launched; quills, books, and parchment dropped to the floor as the heavy wood struck the barrier. Twilight gritted her teeth as several cracks formed. The desk drew back, then shot forward again. More cracks.
“Would Milady like me to incapacitate the aggressor?” Pip asked. Twilight’s gaze shot to him.
“NO! No, don’t-“ SLAM krkt “Just run!”
Pip nodded. “At once, Milady. I shall return.”
Then he was gone. Twilight had seen a small flicker, and suddenly there was no pony where one had stood moments before. She let the barrier down, and the desk fell with it.
“DAMMIT!” Broken roared. He screwed his eye at Twilight. “Why did-“
“Because I’m supposed to stop you from doing that!” She yelled back at him, frustration beating over the fear and anxiety she held about the stallion. “Celestia wants you to become a normal pony again, and normal ponies do not try to kill other ponies!”
Broken glared at Twilight, teeth bared and breathing heavy, loud huffs. Then he closed his eye, shook his head, and turned, stalking out of the room. Twilight let out a sigh and set about gathering the spilled contents of the desk. A small groan caused her eyes to flick towards the box that a certain young dragon slept in. Spike was sitting up, rubbing one eye with a claw, the other still half-closed from sleep.
“Whazza? Whahappened?”
Twilight was standing in front of the closet again.
She had exited the bedroom after meticulously resetting everything on her desk into its proper position, including the desk itself. The closet had been thumping when she had passed it on her way downstairs, so she had presumed Broken was simply sulking in there. She had ignored him as best she could, going through the normal preparations of her day: Brushing mane and teeth, grabbing breakfast and coffee, organizing the bookshelves, so on and so forth. Two hours after the bedroom incident, everything she had to do in the library was done.
Broken still hadn’t come out of the closet.
“Broken Shield?” She called through the door. It thumped and rattled a little. “Broken, listen, I can… well, no, I can’t, but I understand that you really, really do not like Pip. I think he understands that too. Next time he comes around, I’m going to get him to promise to avoid you as much as possible, okay? But I need you to promise that you won’t try to kill him whenever you see him. I know that he and you have a… history with one another, but like I said earlier, Princess Celestia wants to try to rehabilitate you, and part of that process involves you not killing anypony. Or trying to kill anypony. Can you recognize that, Broken?” Another thump. A small noise came through the door. Twilight leaned in. “Broken?”
“Hoo.”
What.
Twilight opened the door. She was faced with a rather annoyed owl that had a hammer tied to one claw. He flew back a bit, and the hammer swung, hitting the closet’s back with a thump.
“Owlowiscious, what are-“ Twilight started to ask. Then something ran through her head.
She had absolutely no idea where Broken Shield was.
This realization came in three points: Recognition, Comprehension, and Reaction.
Point 1. Broken isn’t in the closet. I don’t know where he is.
Point 2. Wait. I don’t know where Broken is. Broken, the mentally unstable stallion that could pose a great threat to his surroundings at the slightest provocation. The pony that I’m supposed to be keeping tabs on for Princess Celestia.
Point 3. “OH CELESTIA’S FLAMING PINFEATHERS!”
All reassurances to Applejack forgotten, Twilight shot down the stairs and out to Ponyville, shouting a rushed “NeedtogolookforBrokengetthehammeroffofOwlowiscious’slegthankyou!” at a very confused Spike before she exited the library.
“Okay, okay, stay calm, he’s only been gone for two hours, average hoofspeed of a pony with Ponyville’s area means that he could be bucking anywhere by now – No, no, stay calm, Twilight…” The unicorn found herself galloping past a bench. She stopped and trotted back to it, sitting down and thinking through what Broken might have done while she was unawares. This complicated process of considering every possible factor of Broken’s past experience with the town, his mental state, the reactions of the populace to a pony with his appearance showing up out of nowhere, etcetera and so forth, was interrupted by a distinctive yell.
“CUTIE MARK CRUSADERS DESTRUCTION CREW YAY!”
Oh dear Faust no.
Suddenly, Twilight was running again. The yell had come from the park. If she got there in time, she might be able to-
What?
That caught her up short. Her brain continued. The CMC are doing one of their cutie mark adventures again. You know nothing really bad has ever happened with that.
What about the cockatrice? Or Gabby Gums?
The former was only tangentially related to mark persual, and the latter didn’t cause any lasting harm. May have even benefited everypony in the long run.
But-
No. We’re – I’m – looking for Broken. W-I keep looking for Broken. The CMCs become a problem, then I get involved. Deal, panicky me?
Deal…
Twilight shook her head. She slowed to a walk, once more attempting to calculate the many different possibilities of Broken’s travel path.
Once more, she was interrupted by three filly’s voices speaking in tandem.
“Hey, Twilight!”
“Gah!” Twilight slammed a magical barrier between herself and the noise, twisting around with horn blazing. When she saw the source was three rather-startled fillies, however, she relaxed. “Oh. Sorry, girls…”
“You’d better be!” Scootaloo responded, appearing to be trying to look angry while sporting a gigantic grin. “How come you never told us about your awesome uncle?!”
“My what?”
“Y’know, Broken Shield!” Apple Bloom cut in. “Looks like yer brother, but with an ahpatch an’ a whole buncha scars on ‘im!”
Twilight was befuddled. “Wait wait wait. My uncle? Broken Shield?” Then her eyes widened. “Wait, you saw him?! Where?”
“Jus’ down in the park. He was goin’ fer a swim. We wanted t’see who he was, an’ when we talked t’him he gave us a great idea for cutie marks!”
“Destroying things! We do it anyways, so we’re already good at it!” Scootaloo stuck her chest out proudly before Sweetie Belle poked her in the back.
“But he made us promise to be safe and only destroy things that were definitely thrown away and otherwise useless.” Sweetie stipulated. Scootaloo grumbled something under her breath, not understood by anypony but herself. Apple Bloom cocked her head at Twilight’s expression.
“Are you alright, Twilight? Y’look like somethin’ spooked ya.”
“Oh, no, I’m… okay...” Twilight shook her head. “It’s just that Broken’s been through a lot, and he’s still a little jumpy from his ordeals…” She trailed off, trying to come up with a story the fillies would accept.
Fortunately, Scootaloo supplied it for her. “Oh yeah, he told us all about how he was in Gryphonia for a really long time. Said he had to deal with some unsa… unsol… bad guys on his mission for the Princess and that’s where he got all of his scars!”
“Yes! Yes, Gryphonia! Anyways, he’s not supposed to go wandering off by himself in case somepony spooks him and he accidentally hurts them, so I would really appreciate it if you would tell me or one of my friends when you see him alone outside of the library, okay?” The three fillies nodded, giving Twilight an affirmative before they headed off on their latest cutie mark hunt. The unicorn watched them go for three seconds before teleporting to the lake.
A large splash and a drench of water hitting her back were the first things Twilight was aware of when she landed at the body of water. Turning, she found herself watching a tumult of whirling water as something twisted and thrashed beneath the surface. Then the tumult stopped, and in its place a more controlled water displacement began. Within seconds after that, Broken’s head broke the surface, a large fish clenched between his teeth. He swam to shore, apparently not noticing Twilight as he brought his catch to land.
“Broken?” She asked. He grunted, dropping the fish on the ground. “What are-“
Her question was simultaneously answered and cut off as a magical ring formed around the fish’s head. Broken’s horn flashed, and the head tore away from the body, bringing the spine and several organs with it. Dropping the head, Broken formed a bowl inside the body, scooping out the rest of the fish’s organs and dropping them in a pile, on top of the head, between him and Twilight. For her part, Twilight felt bile begin to rise.
“What in Celestia’s name are you doing?!” She groaned, placing a hoof over her mouth. Broken flicked his eye up at her before tearing the fish’s body in half.
“Eating.” He answered, before bringing one of the halves to his mouth and tearing off a chunk of the flesh. He watched Twilight slowly turn green as he chewed, before swallowing and repeating the process. When most of the meat was gone, he flashed a smile at her, rubbing his tongue along his pinkened teeth. “Too bad this one wasn’t female, fish eggs are surprisingly-“
“Hurk!”
Broken watched as Twilight emptied her stomach, stepping slightly away to prevent his meal from getting contaminated. He finished off the first half while she was still retching, and was about to start on the second when a purple rope of magic tied his mouth shut. Glancing up at Twilight again, he saw a red-eyed mare with a glowing horn, appearing to be attempting to glare a hole in his head.
“Wmmph?” He questioningly sounded. Her glare became harder.
“Why the buck did you do that?!”
Broken blinked. “Mm wmm hngmm.”
“No, no, if you were hungry you would have gotten food.”
“Thmm wmm fmmd.”
“That was a fish! Ponies don’t eat fish! Or any animal!”
“Mm dm.”
“No, you don’t! Not anymore!” Twilight stalked past him. Broken felt a tug on his tail, soon finding himself dragged along the path behind Twilight. He gave a blank glance at a tree as he slid, gaining a smirk as a green-faced Rainbow Dash fell out of it. Feeling the rope around his snout disappear, he laughed.
“Might we wait for the spy to catch up?”
Twilight stopped and turned around, first looking at him in confusion before her eyes moved to the sick pegasus.
“Rainbow?” she asked. The prismatic pony looked up, eyes swimming as she tried to stop herself from vomiting. She groaned. Twilight glared at Broken, who gave her an insolently innocent look.
“The fish was food, not a show for either of you. But this is still funny.” He laughed a bit as Twilight’s glare narrowed, his brow raising at her. “Getting a little less scared of me, are we?” More laughs.
Then he disappeared, and Twilight felt a horn dig into her chin. Eyes flicking down, she saw Broken’s head, his eye cold. “Bad mistake, Twily.”
Time was still as Twilight’s body froze, not willing to move and give the crazed pony any justification to raise his head. She couldn’t think, couldn’t breathe, couldn’t do anything but watch as his eye narrowed, growing ever colder as he began to force his horn upwards, tearing through her skin and starting a trickle of blood down the pointed bone as she began to silently scream-
Twilight blunk, and Broken wasn’t anywhere near her; he was walking towards Rainbow Dash, who was attempting to stand as he simply stepped beside her, leaning down to put his head near hers. Twilight, for her part, sat down and tried to stop herself from shaking and crying.
Just a dream, some kind of imagination spot, a hallucination, calm down Twilight…
She heard Broken whisper something about “roasting”, and then Rainbow began to retch her breakfast onto the ground. Broken came back with a smirk, trotting around to stare at the mare.
“So, where in Celestia’s mane were you dragging me off to?”
“…market…”
“Ah. In that case, unless you want me to go back and finish eating my fish, I suggest you get your flank in gear. I’m hungry enough to eat an earth pony.” He turned, flicking his eye around his field of vision as Twilight stood. Then he let out a small comment. “Might want to get a bandage on that chin.”
Twilight froze. She slowly brought a hoof up and tapped at the area directly under her forward lower jaw. It came away with a wet red spot about the size of a bit. She looked at Broken again, and he gave a small smirk. Then he trotted away.
“Dear Celestia, I had forgotten what bread tasted like…”
With this statement, Broken Shield proceeded to tear into his fourth loaf of Ponyville Grown, pausing only to take a mouthful of cider before shoving half of the bread down his throat in one go. Twilight watched in mixed fear and discomfort as he ate, staring over the massive pile of fruits, vegetables, and grain products she had bought. Usually this would last her a month; it might last Broken the week. She shook her head as he tore at the bread again, the motion reminding her of the fish. With her little episode, she had been knocked back into the state she had been around him before that morning, and she didn’t want to risk interrupting him and having him choke her or stab her or turn her brain to mush and strangle her with her entrails or-
“Hey!” Twilght jumped, knocking her chair back and leaving her to fall to the ground on top of it. Broken watched as she righted herself and the furniture before he spoke again. “You alright there? You were kind of… spaced out, a bit.”
“Oh, no, I’m okay, I was just-“
“Thinking of the ways I could kill you?” Broken asked. Twilight froze again, eyes wide as Broken rubbed his chin. Then he grabbed another mouthful of bread and cider, watching her as she drew back from him. He sighed, swallowing. “Listen. I’m going to say this one more time.” He stared her in the eye. “I. Will not. Kill you. I will kill Rising Dawn. You aren’t Rising Dawn. Yet.” Another swig, and he ate an apple whole. “When you become her, my oath to the Princesses becomes moot. So unless you start feeling like overthrowing Celestia, or gain a massive megalomaniacal complex, don’t sweat it.” He grabbed a banana, eating it without peeling.
Twilight risked a reach. “You seem… calmer now. Than this morning, with the fish or with Pip-“
She cut off as he brought a hoof into the table. His eye was screwed shut, grimacing. Twilight feared she had brought the angry Broken back, but the stallion simply swallowed a few times and coughed.
“Suppose I should explain this…” He took another chug of the cider. “I have… massive amounts of brain damage, from
numerous sources, mostly Dawn and her affiliates. Somehow, some part of my grey matter was poked in such a way that I fluctuate between violently mad and maddeningly depressed. I can control these swings, but doing so isn’t very easy, especially when I regularly run on no sleep or food. Usually I just restrict myself to small outbursts to vent the pressure, like those little jibes at Rainbow, or the whole orgy thing yesterday. Right now, though, I’m in control. Don’t get used to it.” He drew in a breath before biting an apple in half. “Some things, though, they just… set me off. Pip is a walking one of those. I can talk about him, but actually seeing him makes me want to tear out his eye, shove it up his plot, and make him watch as I disembowel him with a pear.” He glanced at Twilight, who had turned slightly green again, before biting into the pear he held. “Dawn is, too, and I’ve had to try very hard not to attack you every time I look at you. But you’re different enough from her that I can force my brain to calm down. Mostly.”
“So it’s like Bipolar Disorder? Manic-Depressiveness?”
“Buck if I know. Only Loyalist psychologist was more touched in the head than I am.”
“But if we can fix the damage, we might-“
“NO!” Broken slammed his hoof down again, this time undoubtedly angry. He glared at Twilight before putting a chunk of bread between them, and was thereafter distracted by the baked good. Both were silent for a few minutes before he spoke again. “No. Nopony is touching me with any kind of doctoring stuff unless it’s a matter of life or death and you aren’t dead yet. Dawn isn’t, I mean.”
“O…okay…” Twilight squeaked. Broken huffed. Her mind flung about wildly trying to find a topic to move to. “Um… how did you get here?”
Broken’s brow raised. “Well, going backwards, I sat down, walked into the kitchen, walked into the library, walked down the street-“
“No, I mean, how did you leave your timeline? To get to ours?”
“Oh. I teleported.”
“That’s it?” Twilight cocked an ear.
“Yep. Just, you know, across universes instead of a pond.”
“Could you explain how?”
Broken sighed. “Do I need to? Star Swirl the Bearded killed himself because he couldn’t fully understand it, just look at his
research and you should-“
“Star Swirl didn’t kill himself.”
For a moment, two equally-confused unicorns were staring at each other across the table. Broken’s jaw hung open, paused in mid-sentence at Twilight’s announcement. He shook his head.
“Okay, minor alteration, acceptable error margin…” he mumbled, before shaking his head again and addressing Twilight. “So, you wanted an explanation, right? Of how I time jumped?”
Twilight nodded. “Er, yeah, but-“
“How did you?”
“What?”
“You jumped backwards in time once. How did you do it?”
“Well, um, I just, um, I mean, Pinkie found a spell in Star Swirl the Bearded’s wing in the Canterlot Library that allowed me to go back in time a short amount-“
“Right, so I just took his research on that and its extensions, how he developed the Primary Line and Branching Action theories-“
“The what?”
Broken stared at Twilight again. “The Primary Line theory of time? Branching Actions? The things that made Star Swirl revered among mage circles as one of the greatest minds of history? Any of those ring a bell?”
The unicorn mare shook her head. “No, Star Swirl is revered, as you said, because he developed over two-hundred spells, including pioneering the amniomorphic spell branch, and created the first spell that could be directly used to heal ponies!”
“YOU HAVE HEALING SPELLS?!?” Broken bellowed. Twilight pinned her ears back as he approached her with a wild look. “You, magic, you can actually heal ponies? Reversing cell damage, knitting torn flesh, the whole twelve furlongs? Dear Faust’s downy subplot!” With that last rather drastic curse, Broken actually began to smile, genuinely and without an insane cast to his features. His back legs gave out, and he sat on the floor, staring blankly into space, mouth moving and occasionally laughing but never audibly talking, as Twilight recovered from his rather sudden excitement.
Then his face shattered into dawning horror.
“Wait…”
Broken stood, sweeping most of the foodstuffs off of the table with a magical line. He reached another, smaller line of magic under his eyepatch and pulled out a piece of heavily-folded parchment, rapidly unfolding it and laying it out on the table. Twilight noted that it was a map.
It was a map she couldn’t understand; one part looked like a tree, but it blended into a blotch of seemingly random dots, each one a different colour pattern and with small notations marked next to them. Other sections held lists, columns of indecipherable code with what looked like distances and other values marked next to them. Broken ran his hoof down one such list, tracing a line between it and a dot before moving to another dot and tracing a line from it to the list. He stared intently at the map, flicking his eyes over various parts of it and muttering under his breath rather constantly, before taking a step back, shaking his head, and folding it back up again. He gave a low laugh before repositing it under his eyepatch and turning to an even-more confused Twilight.
“Um… I’m presuming that you don’t have healing magic?” She asked hesitantly. He grimaced.
“HAH!” The stallion barked a laugh without changing his facial expression. “Oh no, we do, but only after Dawn decided to do some ‘experimentation’. Every little spell that helped a pony seal a cut, or reattach a limb, came at the cost of dozens test subjects, all of whom were supposedly dangerous criminals.” He gave a rather odd look into Twilight’s confused one. “Dawn actually cured cancer by forcibly growing tumours in her captives, then vivisecting them to track how they grew.”
“Vivisecting…?” Twilight was decidedly worried about the ominous tone of the word.
“Oh yeah, strapped them to a table, cut down from their collarbone to their pelvis, peeled back the flesh, observed the organs as the tumours slowly grew and spread, aided by magic. All while the subject was alive and conscious, of course-“
Then Twilight was vomiting again. She managed to get to the sink before coughing up what little was in her stomach, and so she found herself dry-heaving into the metal basin for several minutes. When she finally ceased and turned back to Broken, he had a rather malicious grin on his face.
“You did that on purpose.”
“You asked. And you did say that you wanted to hear the not-nice stuff.”
Twilight just groaned. “What happened to not-mean Broken?”
“Oh, my little revelation there made my sanity leave me.”
“What rev-“
Then Broken roared, rearing and crashing his forelegs onto the table. It pitched towards him, only to fly back at a buck. Twilight froze. The stallion breathed, slowly, and his eyes focused on her again. He grimaced. “Okay. Time is arranged like a tree. My Equestria is a branch. Your Equestria is a branch connected to my branch, slightly less grown out and thus at a point in time further back than mine. I basically opened a portal between our two branches and hopped through. Do you understand that?”
Twilight gave a small nod, rapidly moving her head up and down. Broken sighed, grabbing one of the remaining small
barrels of cider as it rolled past him and opening it. He then dunked his head into the drink, sitting for several seconds before emptying the container and going to his closet. Twilight watched him leave, then busied herself cleaning up the mess he had made.
Her chin started bleeding again.
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And Chapter Six is go!
Lots of stuff happening here. I actually pared down Broken's speech at the last minute because I felt it revealed too much. The revelations shall come, but not yet.
Also thanks to my editor-brother for coming up with the 'subplot' to describe the... other areas of a female pony's backside. (At least, we both think he came up with it, apologies if someone else did.)
Thirdly, I got featured for somewhere between 20 minutes to an hour last update. Neat.
Chapter Seven brings interactions with Ponyville, and will hopefully come faster than this bastard did.
Interesting... delete this comment if it's too spoilery for your tastes but I think that Broken has travelled to a different universe instead of through time. Why else would Starswirl's research be so different?
Also, great chapter and can't wait for the next one
1561634
*Glances at Alternate Universe tag* Nah, that ain't too spoilery. Broken's little speech before his head-dunk mentioned that he traveled between his branch of time and this branch of time - both going backwards in time (due to this branch being less 'grown out' than his) and to a seperate, but linked, universe.
Yea, the branch he came from, diverged so far back that it was around, or possibly even before the era of Starswirl the Bearded.
I think Broken just realized that he's in such an alternate universe that his plan of forcing Twilight to change, then killing her is actually as abhorrent as you'd expect it to be. Twilight in this universe has almost none of the traits that Rising Dawn expressed and would most likely never have converted. He's been treating his sister from a potentially idyllic alternate universe like the next mass murder.
In addition, there may well be some sort of temporal damage/bleed effects going on, as Twilight seems to have been injured by Broken, but the event may have never actually happened. All of this still makes me question Celestia's sanity though... sending Broken to Ponyville?!? Into the care of the one he wants to kill? Insanity.
Well, if Broken jumped to an alternative time-line instead of doing actual time-travel he isn't trying to fix anything, because not being his universe any changes would not carry themselves to his world. He failed to kill his "Dictator" either because she was too well protected, or because she was already dead, or maybe even because just killing her once wasn't enough, after being denied the genuine article he decided to settle for the next best thing, an alternate Twilight is still Twilight.
The fact is that he knew he was in a different universe, where one or more events happened differently, he went crazy (or crazier) for a moment because his resolve to kill Twilight wavered when he saw hope that this Twilight might never become a monster, the problem is that likely, at this point, revenge is the only thing keeping him going, admitting even for a moment that this Twilight might never be Rising Dawn would probably break him, not only because it would deny him revenge, and that would probably be enough alone, but also because he tried to kill his innocent sister.
Broken can never go back to be a normal sane pony, the only thing keeping him somewhat sane and centered is revenge, insisting Twilight isn't Rising Dawn yet is the only thing keeping him sane, if somepony actually manages to prove that Twilight is never going bad he will no heal, he will break, so for him Twilight is a time bomb, because for him there is no alternative, even if at this point he is at some level mostly sure there will be no Rising Dawn if only because his intervention.
1561864
You are very close. He is horrified at the degree of difference between his universe and this universe, but not quite because he thinks that this Twilight won't turn into Rising Dawn. It's something much worse, that shall be revealed in coming chapters.
The chin bleed explanation is something that's probably going to come up later.
As for Celestia, its less that she's mad and more that she's optimistic. She genuinely thinks that Broken can come at least partway back from the brink he's on/over, and she's kind of a Utilitarian: She views his madness as making him unhappy, in the most general terms possible, and wants to try to make him happier. Plus, he swore not to harm Twilight, and oaths to the Princesses are not things that guardsponies take lightly.
Thanks for the comment.
1561922
That's... surprisingly close. He always knew that he was going to a different universe, where things would certainly be different, and he never expected that doing so would fix his; he made the jump because he wanted to stop another Dawn from rising. The thing is that, due to knowledge that I can't reveal yet, he is 100% absolutely positively certain that this Twilight will become Dawn. There's no doubt in his addled brain that she's going to turn, he just doesn't know what his arrival has done to her trigger time. As such, he's working as fast as he can to make Dawn's rise as weak as possible, so that the Revolution might fail.
How...intriguing. Definitely enjoying this story. You are doing a masterful job with everything. One question, though. I might have missed it, but what happened to the other girls in the future timeline thing. Were they on the side of Rising Dawn, or were they with the loyalists? I
I'm having nostalgia to Terminator two. Broken Armor being the T-1000 and Pip being Ahnold. Especially when they both reappear minutes after each other.
How did I miss this story before now
Looking forward to the next chapter.
1562008 There are only 3 ways to guarantee a 100% probability of the change despite the fact that he altered the past:
1.- He knows he is going to fail because his future self already did, meaning his interference is accounted.
2.- He is there to make the change.
3.- Rising Dawn from THIS universe sent him there either as a taunt or after coming to her senses, meaning her future is his past, and unless he disappears or returns home he knows she is still going to change because she will bring him there.
Any other way wouldn't be as much as it will happen as HE knows it will happen, meaning he is either being fooled or completely crazy and it will happen only in his head. 3 because if the reason he is sure is "because he is there" only works if Twilight is the one to send him to kill her, otherwise he could be there only because there will be a Rising Dawn, not because TWILIGHT will become Rising Dawn.
Anyway the only sure thing is that time travel and dimension hopping brings headaches and a lot of uncertainty, there is a reason "I hate time travel" has been written and/or said so many times by so many characters...
I wonder what revelation could have caused such a reaction.
tune in next time to find out!
1562205
'Tis Broken Shield, actually, but thanks for the comment. At least two, probably three of the others' roles in the Revolution are at least mentioned in Chapter Seven. AJ's loyalties were already hinted at by Broken.
Also, someone else suggested that I put a Terminator reference in here. Pip'll be back. (He mentioned that he shall return, yes?)
1562286
The first point is invalid, as he knows that changing THIS universe won't alter HIS universe. His time travel isn't the one from "It's About Time". The second point is completely accurate, as he is in this universe in an attempt to prevent it from turning out like his, not to try to stop his from occurring. The third is a valid hypothesis, though again it wouldn't be Rising Dawn from THIS universe, as she doesn't exist yet.
And as always with time travel, everything could have happened/be happening/might happen. Wait and see.
1562675
I'm just going to go off myself now. I knew I got the name wrong as I wrote it, but I didn't change it.
Uncle Andross! I've failed youuuuu......
1563106
Can't let you do that, Star Fox!
Don't be worryin' on it. I have twelve nicknames fer me brother because I keep forgetting his name and all of the old nicknames. What's important is that you know who you're talking about, and that we/I have an idea of who you mean.
Awesome chapter
can't wait to see if Broken and Shining duke it out.
1578040
Well, Shining's hit Broken repeatedly already, so Broken's doubtless aiming for payback...
However, as always, it may have happened/be happening/come to happen.
I do hope Broken is told that he may cause Twilight to go insane by some other pony.
1583151
If somepony told Broken that, he'd probably either say "Your point?" or "Glad to see it's working."
Remember, he wants her dead. The best way to justify killing her would be her observably turning into Dawn.
1583307
So in a sense he wants to personally turn good Twilight into Dawn just so he can kill her; in order to quench his thirst for the killing of his evil sister from another dimension.
1583875
Less
'kill her for catharsis and vengeance for the actions of Dawn',
more
'she's going to become Dawn anyways, might as well throw her into it as fast as possible so that she has less of a plan or power base, as well as keeping her probable/possible actions fresh in everypony's mind so that they're less likely to support her, and keep her chances of actually causing major damage and/or overthrowing Equestria between Extremely Low and Nigh-Impossible'.
Though thanks for possible story ideas
.
1579939
I'm talking about a full on epic fight
1596524
I know. I'd have to try to find a good place to fit it in where they have actual justification to beat the crap out of each other (eg. Where Shining can't get reprimanded for use of excessive force), and so far I haven't found one where they're in the same location long enough.
Don't worry though, future plans are still fluid. Maybe Shining comes down to check on them, sees Broken tearing a manticore in half or something. The fight may happen yet.
1598069
Awesome.
Can't wait to read it.
This is starting to get more and more boring. Do you need to keep making 'Rising Sun' as evil and despicable as you can possibly make her? There's no sense to it either, from a story or meta perspective. She just 'cracks' and that leads to evil, regardless of the why. At this point, she's just become a boring stand up prop villain who doesn't even have real motivations, or even goals that can make sense to the reader.
2567355
Rising Dawn, not Sun. Also, maybe she does have motivations, and they may be fairly good ones (for a villain.) She might have a good reason for 'cracking', as you put it. But here's something to think about: Nearly everything we know about Rising Dawn has been told by someone who fought against her and would therefore not have, say, conversations with her where she told him her reasons for doing everything.
No healing spells is a minor deviation? A thousand years of superior medical technology would save countless lives, which would all go on to change countless other things and some of them would have children, who would change more and have children of their own until the entire world would be completly different within 200 years.
6308803
i think what he was saying was the "starswirled killing himself" is a small deviation while "healing magic" was so far from his world that it sent him into hysterics
I take he missed the right dimension/universe/time-line/whatever them?
The discussion about healing magic and time travel, tells me that Broken Shield really did go to an alternate universe. This means that this Twilight might be incapable of becoming Rising Dawn. If that is the case, things just got more interesting.