My Little Pony: When Friendship Shimmers - Reboot

by RobtheMorpherPony

Season 5: Episode 11 - What Time Forgot (Princess Spike Background)

It was a seemingly normal day in Ponyville where Raiden and Sunset were taking some toys to the Ponyville Orphanage.

"Thanks for agreeing to help me get these toys for the children while Lightning is discussing things with his father." Raiden said. "You know, it's so strange to know that my best friend's father was the mayor of Lightning Town this whole time."

"Sometimes life has a way of surprising you. I still remember how cruel my brother had become." Sunset said.

"At least Starlight Glimmer has been mingling with every pony in town. It's sad that Sunburst and Starlight never got to reconcile. I guess not all childhood best friends can reconcile." Raiden said.

"There's also the fact that Spike is up in Canterlot with Twilight who are going to be talking with Celestia about this whole sitaution with Chrysalis." Sunset said. Suddenly out of nowhere as the duo brought the last of the toys to the front of the orphanage, Sunset's Cutie Mark suddenly glowed and then a holographic image of it started heading for Twilight's castle. "A Friendship Mission? Now?" Sunset asked.

"I'll come with. The toys can be brought inside by the staff from here." Raiden said.

The duo was soon joined by Rainbow Dash and Night Wing, who ironically, were chasing Night Wing's Cutie Mark. "Okay, I can understand Sunset being here because of her connection to the elements, but why am I getting summoned?" Night Wing asked.

"Beats me. The one time I wish Twilgiht was here." Rainbow Dash said.

The Cutie Marks of Night Wing and Sunset were hovering over an area that looked rather barren. "Wait a second, I recognize that place: It's the area where there's a tribe of Pokemon & Ponies have been doing these strange practices for a long time." Raiden said. "Lightning and I went there once because we were given a job to investigate the place."

"Well, it looks like Night Wing and I get to go there now." Sunset said.

---

When the duo got there, Night Wing was quickly recognizing a few things. "Hey...this looks like a Wonderbolt Airtrip." Night Light said. "It's the same design as what we used for the Shadowbolt HQ's airstrip."

"But then what's with all the stuff made out of wood and bamboo?" Sunset asked.

"It looks like the stuff both Wonderbolts and Shadowbolts use for our practice drills & our training exercises, but it's just a bunch of replicas." Night Wing said.

"Strangers are not--" A pony wearing tethered Wonderbolt garb said, before they suddenly gasped. "You! You wear material of the past. Not same color, but same design." The pony said.

"Why is a unicorn using old Wonderbolt garb?" Night Wing asked.

"You must be a Wonderbolt. Finally, prayers are answered! Come, come teach us your ways oh great being from the sky!" The Unicorn said.

"Slow down here, first off, I think your getting confused. Second off, I'm only here because there seems to be a friendship problem here. So before we even think about teaching you anything, I need context. Lots of context." Night Wing said.

"Oh of course. You must be decendent. That why you don't know us. Come, me show you two to village." The unicorn said.

"...Why do I suddenly have a bad feeling about this?" Sunset asked.

---

There were more ponies and Pokemon in the village centered around the airstrip; all of them wearing remnents of old Wonderbolt Uniforms.

"What...the heck...is all this?" Night Wing asked. "There's not a single Pegasus amongst you; why are you wearing that Wonderbolt Garb?"

"We were hoping sky beings would come back. They visited us long time ago. Built strange pathway you see here. Built other strange things. They do strange drills. They build strange devices. They somehow summon supplies from sky above. And then, they leave. They take strange devices with them. The strange drills stop. So we've been trying to summon them back. Because we want their miracle supplies. We've been waiting generations. You be sky being. You might be able to bring supplies back." The Unicorn host said.

"...You think the pegasi are gods of some kind." Sunset said. "You've been...worshiping them all this time because of how rural your civilization is."

"Do not speak of Sky Beings as if they are normal ponies. They are gods!" The Unicorn host said.

"...I'm afraid, there's been a big mix-up with what you've been lead to believe." Night Wing said. "But I think me and my friend here can set you straight." She said.

"You...you teach us great knowledge of the ways of sky beings?" The Unicorn asked.

"Something like that..." Night Wing said.

---

With some help from Sunset providing some magical projections, Night Wing was able to educate the populace on what exactly they had been witnessing, and then proceeded to tell them the cold hard truth about what they were witnessing. The brutal side they didn't get to witness. The ancient wars between Ponies & Griffons. It's what marked the foundation of the Wonderbolts and would give rise to Princess Luna's own Shadowbolts.

The education took a few days, but ultimately, the ponies of the colony were now much more educated in what they didn't understand.

"It's sad that you've been forgotten about all this time though." Sunset said. "When we get back, we'll make sure we tell Princess Celestia and Princess Luna about your colony. You might want to prepare yourselves though; they have both wings and a horn."

"There be a race that takes Pegasi and Unicorns and mixes them together?" An Earth Pony asked.

"Earth Ponies are also included in an Alicorn's magic pool, believe it or not. But just because they live much longer then we do, that doesn't make them gods. They are simply ponies who happen to have the benifits of all three tribes." Night Wing said. "But they are in charge of both the Wonderbolts and the Shadowbolts. Well, Princess Celestia is in charge of the Wonderbolts, while Princess Luna is in charge of the Shadowbolts. The later of which is what my uniform is of."

"We keep that in mind, Captain Night Wing. Thank you for gracing us with all this knowledge." The Unicorn leader said.

"Before you go, we give you special thing. Been in our tribe for decades." One of the Pokemon said. They then proceeded to gift a strange blue rock to the ponies.

"What...is this?" Night Wing asked.

"We don't know. The Pegasi once used it to summon storm once. Now it do nothing." A different Unicorn said.

"We'll see if the Princesses know what this is. Because I'll be honest, I have no clue what this is." Night Wing said.

"That okay. You tell Alicorns all about us, and maybe they find out why strange stone don't work." The Unicorn Leader said.

"We'll do that." Night Wing said.

---

Meanwhile...

"This...is serious." Celestia said. Twilight had just told the Princesses about what had happened to the Changelings.

"On the one hand, I'd love nothing more than to put them all in jail, but then it's one of those situations where they were just following orders." Shining Armor said.

"I'm willling to give Chrysalis a chance to prove that her hive was simply following her orders, so long as she's willing to let her hive help us in tracking down Marina the Merciless." Celestia said.

"Sister, are you really willing to let the changelings help us?" Luna asked.

"I've seen first hoof just how cruel Marina is. And so has Fluttershy." Twilight said. "She's dangerous if left unchecked. There's no telling what she'd do if we didn't find a way to exercise her from Melissa's body."

"And that in turn requires us to capture Marina. Hopefully once she's in custody, whatever Flamer Jackson has planned, it might be just what we need to exercise Marina from Melissa." Cadence said.

"...That's a fair point..." Shining Armor said.

"This order would make it that much easier for the populace to forgive the changelings under Chrysalis for what they did. Because then it would make it out to be like they were no different than our royal guards, the Wonderbolts, or even the Shadowbolts." Celestia said. "And Soarin has been spilling things that both myself and the high council have been overlooking all this time in regards to the Wonderbolts. Suffice it to say, the entire Wonderbolt branch is going to have to be scrapped and rebuilt from the ground up. And any current Wonderbolts that both myself and the High Council feels is too old to continue duty, well they'll be forced into retirement."

"That's going to make several ponies unhappy." Luna said.

"Both the High Council and I agree on one thing: Better to make a few ponies unhappy, then to continue to only let Pegasi who would be the best for publicity be allowed to be Wonderbolts. Because popularity is never what the Wonderbolts should be about anyways." Celestia said.

"You can't blame yourself for what had transpired." Twilight said.

"Then who can we blame?" Celestia asked.

Author's Note:

Since I couldn't think of any changes to the main brunt of "Princess Spike" for this universe, I decided to instead tackle a different serious topic that being the topic of Cargo Cults. While I don't fully rationalize what a Cargo Cult is, I do know the details of how Cargo Cults are formed and what they entail. This was my attempt to include the concept of a Cargo Cult in the MLP multi-verse while giving it that classic Friendship is Magic spin and actually having Sunset & Night Light sort of "fix" the Cargo Cult. Sure the Cargo Cult is still there, but now they are better educated and won't be fully forgotten again.

And before anyone mocks me for using essentially caveman speak for the Cargo Cult in this chapter, that's on purpose because to us, such a thing would seem like cavemen trying to recreate something that would be futuristic to their eyes. Heck, to these Cargo Cults, any military things seem like stuff from the future and even god-like. They just don't know any better.