Last Sparkles Of Time

by torrentialCAM

Twenty Percent More Futuristic

The six mares felt as though they were spinning, rolling through places without space, and times without comprehension. In this strange, vast void, the six felt as though their entire beings were but echoes, tossed about through this placeless place, hurling into vistas far beyond their comprehension…

“Ooh! I can hear the colours!” Pinkie Pie giggled.

Applejack facehoofed. Rarity and Fluttershy somehow found a way to cling to each other in this indescribable hew, while Rainbow Dash and Twilight kept their eyes peeled and ahead.

After what seemed like an eon, yet no time at all (this was a clashing sensation that none of them, not even booksmart Twilight, could adequately relate on the tongue), a vibrant flash preceded their view of the night sky: starless, dreadfully starless.

And the chill.

As they fell out onto the snow, the mares felt such a penetrating cold that Rarity and Fluttershy could barely feel one another as they dropped from the vortex. Twilight shuddered, and remembered what the Rarity of this horrible future had said: the disharmonic spirits of the land had reclaimed Equestria in a blanket of ice and snow.

“A-Alright, girls…!” Twilight mustered up through the chill and the shiver in her voice, “Let’s put that monster back in monochrome!”

It was the kind of inspirational banter that, really, could only have come from Twilight – moreso, it was the kind of banter that could have only been inspirational, coming from Twilight.

“Uhm…Twilight, maybe you should…kinda, possibly…look at the crown,” Fluttershy gulped.

With a quick-fire levitation spell, Twilight brought the crown from her head to examine it. Her heart began sinking, right until it was nesting deep in her stomach, when she realized that the jewel at its helm was cracked and faded, and its embroidery was rusted over, as though it had fallen to decay through the ages.

“No…no, no, NO!” Twilight cried out, her pupils dilating, “I can fix this – I can fix this!” She strained, closed her eyes and focused her horn on the crown. The others shared uneasy glances as Twilight struggled to work some kind of spell, any spell, that would restore her Element to its former glory. The unicorn became so frustrated with her own inability to restore the element that she shouted in anger; the residue magical surge caused a shockwave that knocked the layers of snow from the dead trees all around, and nearly bowled over poor Fluttershy, but the Element of Magic remained desiccated, ruined…dead.

“B-But…” Twilight whimpered, suddenly hoping that the others didn’t hear the discouragement in her voice. The plan that she had held so securely on to had suddenly evaporated, and now…now what?

Twilight closed her eyes, enveloped in her own thoughts. This place…its very existence was a curse. Something had gone very wrong along the way…this wasn’t the future meant to be. It couldn’t be. No planetary order would be so cruel, so cosmically absurd, as to make this the path that Equestria was to follow to its demise…Twilight looked into the eyes of this sick future, and rejected it. There had to be another way. Something, anything – “I…will…fix this.”

There came a tingling in the purple unicorn’s mind: first it was just a little naggling, until it had practically consumed her mind – and then came the voice, pounding through her thoughts.

“Oh, Twilight, I should probably mention-“ The voice of the downtrodden Rarity who had thus far lived through this frozen fate – “Once you’ve passed the moment in time when you originally died, your Element may, um…”

“We know it’s not working!” Twilight sighed in frustration.

“Er – yes. Quantum chronology, and all that…it gets complex.”

“I’m guessing I can still hear you because of Zecora’s formula…a part of me thinks we really haven’t been giving that zebra enough credit,” Twilight said, attempting just in part to lighten the mood, if only by a fraction.

“I say,” The Rarity who had leapt through the vortex with the others started through her chattering teeth, “You could have at least told us all that before we jumped horn-first into a magic portal into the future! I swear, this future-me has tendencies that border on ruffianism!”

“I can hear you, me,” The voice retorted, before its tone grew sharper, “Let me ask you this: after having one of the closest friends you could have ever asked for, stripped away in a heartbeat, and after seeing your livelihood literally burning to the ground…after being turned from one of Equestria’s most promising up-and-coming fashionistas into a servant-mare,” Some scornful mixture of vitriol for Discord’s reign, and self-loathing, bled through the speech of the Rarity of this terrible time period, “How, then, are we to keep up the façade that we thought would dignify us?!” The Rarity standing on the snowy bank gasped, tears brimming in the corners of her vision, but her future counterpart was far from finished: “If you fail here, and you lose her, then mark my words, you…you mere filly! You think on my words when you’re watching our Boutique burn to embers…you remember my words when you’re left in that filthy, dank cell for two full months until you finally give in and pledge allegiance to Discord! Because you know that he could break you at the drop of a horseshoe, but he doesn’t, simply because he gets more satisfaction out of seeing you suffer the ‘old fashioned way’…think on my words, you pretentious, STUPID filly!”

Rarity’s mouth hung open, and a series of strained gasps escaped it. A fresh chill washed down her spine, unrelated to the snow she was hoof-deep in. Her legs slowly began to quiver, and she shut her tear-stained eyes.

“Rarity…!” Twilight said up to the sky, catching both versions’ attention. She huffed, “So…if we can’t use the Elements to seal him away in this time period…we can at least try and get to the time-seam in the castle at Canterlot. It…IS still called Canterlot?”

“Well…that word hasn’t been uttered here in quite a while, I’m afraid. It seems like anyone who hasn’t submitted to usage of the name ‘Disquestria’ up and vanishes. At any rate, I will continue to listen in and give you updates where you need them, unless SOMEpony has an objection.” At this, the Rarity who was trudging through the snow just hung her head.

“Talk about being beside yourself…” Rainbow Dash whispered in the wholly unamused Applejack’s ear as the group trudged on through the snowy plain.

***

My purpose in life was to make other ponies happy. To see them smile, and laugh. I was good at it, too; they all came to my parties, said my name with big smiles on their faces.

I’ll admit it: I was never perfect. Doesn’t take a Sun Goddess to see that the more I fed off their smiles and laughter, the more I became dependent on it. Well – Rainbow Dash saw it plain as day, years ago: I thought they had all abandoned me, and I felt…the twitch. Let’s call it that.

See…when everything feels like it’s pushing down on a pony, when they feel they have nowhere to turn, not even to themselves…things get different. I think we all learned that, one way or another.

There are images in my head…memories that turned the twitch into something far more than potent. But it can be controlled, and wielded. I remember a long time ago, we created a disguise to show a dear friend the fallout of her ego…that disguise ended up inspiring a sense of unity in the town of Ponyville in a way that not even a great party could do. That’s exactly what this world needs right now: unity and hope. So I’ve taken up the old mantle: I am the Mysterious Mare Do Well, and this time, it’s for real.

Maybe I’m not the old me any more. But neither is Equestria. The world we live in now is grim, it’s dark, and it’s something that none of us were prepared for.

Now, there’s no smiling. There’s no talking. There’s just chaos, darkness and death.

Hold on – I hear something, in the distance…Diamond enforcers? Or…no, it’s something else…

How long had it been? Minutes? Hours? The snow had not let up, but the six mares had journeyed until they found what appeared to be some kind of civilization. Along the way, Twilight had worked a near-constant spell: one that increased the base bodily temperatures of her five companions, so as to prevent them from succumbing to hypothermia along the way. But she had covered her friends first with the spell; when the time came to work it on herself, she could only muster an increase of a few degrees, which may as well have been nothing at all in this chill. The purple unicorn’s vision blurred as they came up to the town, her breaths coming as ragged labours.

The architecture in this town was seemingly without designation, with various facets that made no logical sense, but there was something vaguely familiar about it. The buildings seemed to spiral and twist between one another, and Twilight puzzled at how anypony could walk through these dwellings, let alone live in a place like this.

Yet, it did seem, there were some ponies about; they seemed, on the whole, quite miserable, as though malnourishment from the lack of good soil had taken its toll. Twilight thought she spotted, on one of the rooftops in the distance, a strange, yet familiar four-legged form observing them…but in her frigid exhaustion, she put it out of her mind.

The ground, meanwhile, was filled with holes, some half-obscured by the snowy sprawl, and others forming large divisions in the land itself. A strange red-orange glow emanated from the gaps. Rainbow Dash carefully flapped her wings and hovered over one of the gaps, only to find herself staring down into a smoldering pit of molten lava.

“Hey, uh, guuuys?” Rainbow Dash called back, “Why is it lava? In a blizzard?”

Twilight sighed as she took in Dash’s words. She had almost, mercifully, forgotten that Discord’s very presence in a place turned natural laws completely on their heads: thousands of years of pony sciences, research and advancements were rendered completely null when faced with this pure chaos.

To that end, the lavender mare walked in a careful trail between the gaps. Though numbness was beginning to set in her hooves, she felt as though something was ever so slightly off with this snowy patch…

“Ah!” Twilight cried out as the patch gave way to one of the lava pits that had been duly obscured by the snow. Her hooves wiggled frantically in midair for just a second before gravity caught up with her.

“TWILIGHT!” Rainbow shouted, breaking from her course and darting down into the narrow pit after her friend. The intense heat down in here caused her to break out into a sweat, but she caught Twilight in her front hooves at the last possible moment, inadvertently holding her close for safety’s sake as they rocketed from the pit. Rainbow pumped her wings, “Oh, yeah! Who’s the Pegasus?”

“Um…” Rarity mumbled as she paced cautiously around those pits, “I think I’ve figured something out…these houses may look different, but this…this is – was – Ponyville.” She shuddered, as though just saying it had brought her discomfort.

Pinkie Pie, Applejack and Fluttershy had been holding up the rear; Pinkie’s mane was in a bit of an odd state – while it was not quite as fluffy as it typically was, it was not completely straight either; the others took this as a considerably good sign.

Applejack twitched and got down to her belly, holding an ear close to the snow-swept ground. Her eyes gradually widened, “Hey…y’all? Sounds like we got some serious movement comin’ from behind, about two hundred paces off, if I reckon.”

Soon, they all heard it: it sounded like a constant percussion, drums in the frosty land, coming closer with each dying moment. The six scrambled for a hiding place; it seemed that the ‘structures’ here were either barred, or their occupants simply refused them entry out of sheer fear.

“This way!” Rainbow Dash shouted, zooming off to what, had this been several years previous, would have been a side-street. As it stood, it was merely a series of interconnected ditches obscured by thickets of dead trees, but it was enough. The group took cover there.

After several minutes of the pacing sounds getting louder and louder, they seemed to stop. After ushering for her friends to stay down, Twilight climbed up from the ditch and weaved back through the thickets, only to find herself face to face with…

These large, two-legged forms wore grisly armour that covered their faces and replaced whatever expressions they may have had with designs of grotesque creatures. Their claws bore implements that chilled the unicorn to the bone: axes, double-handed maces…instruments to draw blood. Twilight remembered the warning of the battered-down, broken Rarity: at an earlier phase of their evolution, Diamond Dogs had possessed a higher degree of intelligence in addition to their brutish scrounging, and through the rip in time, Discord had been able to bring them through to serve as his personal soldier force.

Unfortunately, it was Twilight’s ragged, unsteady breaths that caused several of the Diamond Enforcers heading up the back of the pack to notice her; they turned to face her with truly impressive coordination, each leering intently through their helmets. Twilight’s eyes widened; had to get away had to get away-

Suddenly, the lavender mare felt the world spin from under her as she was swept up by a blur of purple and black. The form carrying her on its back leapt from the thickets, off a particularly large tree branch, and finally out of sight of the armoured soldiers, onto the steep road of what appeared to be a similar desiccated mountain pass as to what they had seen in the vortex before making the jump.

As she was set down, Twilight recognized the mask and costume: was this…yes, it was one of the old Mare Do Well costumes that Rarity had designed when Twilight and her friends thought that Rainbow Dash’s ego had gotten a touch out of control. Here, in this chaotic wasteland, somepony had taken up the old mantle.

The Mare Do Well turned her back and started pacing away, “Facing down a platoon of Diamond Enforcers all by your lonesome? No living unicorn has the power to stand against his armies. You should run home, or back to whatever camp you came from. Now!”

Despite its radically different influxes from what she remembered, Twilight suddenly recalled that voice. Combined with the familiar costume, it inspired her to say, “Who are you?”

And, it seemed, the Mare Do Well remembered her voice as well. In the shadows and kinetic movement, the Mare had not gotten a good look at Twilight’s face until now, at which point the heroine slowly looked Twilight over, breath slowing…before suddenly ripping off her mask.

“Pinkie Pie?!” Twilight gasped. Pinkie’s mane in this time period was straight as could be, her eyes narrowed and having lost the light of former days.

“Go away, Twilight!” Pinkie’s spontaneous response caught Twilight in a shocked reaction.

“Pinkie, I-“

“Stop it…in the name of Celestia, please just stop it!” Pinkie turned away, “I can’t keep doing this…I can’t keep seeing you like you’re right here beside me! Leave me alone, Twilight…if I could have saved you, I would have, in a double-triple-heartbeat!” She seemed close to breaking down, “Please get out of my dreams…”

“Pinkie!” Twilight teleported so that she was right in front of Pinkie Pie, “It’s really, really me.”

“…N-No…c-can’t be…”

“It is.” The voice from the underbrush caused the unmasked Mare Do Well to turn in shock; there came springing Pinkie Pie, still spry like a past version of herself she had almost forgotten entirely, “Hi, me…meet me!”

The six’s explanation lasted for far longer than they had expected it to. The Mare Do Well explained herself as well: as they had never really revealed the ‘identity’ of this particular super-hero, Pinkie had chosen to take up the old mantle for the unity it had inspired in Ponyville at its inception. It was something to rally behind when all else seemed lost; something romantic, something extravagant…something to believe in. Her ‘Pinkie Sense’, that intricate biological network of precognition within her body, had allowed her to truly become a ‘real’ superhero.

“…naturally, the Diamond Enforcers are on the lookout for all the surviving Elements; we’re public enemies one through five,” Mare-Pinkie said, “So this helps me hide my identity as well.”

“Um…Pinkie, well…” Fluttershy said in a nervous whisper, “If you could maybe tell me…um, what happened to me, and…and Rainbow Dash, and…”

“Actually, it’s best if you don’t…” Twilight said. She felt a twinge of hypocrisy: she practically begged to be shown her own fate, after all. But she feared what kind of impact the news would have on sensitive Fluttershy if it was negative, which it most likely was, “Remember, if we can pull this off, then none of this will have ever happened,” Twilight said, “The world won’t have gone to one big glue factory in a hoofbasket, you can keep throwing parties instead of going all gritty, and…”

“And you can live.” Mare-Pinkie said softly, before her tone rose in power, “Alright – I’ll help you guys get to Chaos Castle. (Still can’t believe he actually renamed it that…) You just have to keep following this path…it won’t be easy, but so long as you don’t run into the air patrol, you should be gravy.”

***

It was a minor miracle that Twilight had led the pack a few kilometers around the mountain pass before fatigue claimed her. She had not slept, after all, since the morning she awoke much too early, to find little Spike taking a peek at her mail. Since then, her body and mind had been running on a mixture of worry and adrenaline. But numbed by the cold and with exhausted legs, not to mention the magic needed to sustain their continued warmth on the journey (which Rarity helped out with, though her magic was far less potent), Twilight had collapsed, after which the double Pinkies had moved her to an alcove in the mountain face that was, at least, partially obscured from the chill.

In dreams, Twilight could escape the insanity that her world had become. In dreams, the young unicorn could find shelter, however momentary, from the storm.

And for that fleeting time, her world was light. The sun shone brightly over the courtyards of Canterlot, and it was in one of these courtyards, under a tree where the combined shade and filtered sunshine bathed her in its natural beauty, where Twilight lay, eyes on the words of a book she had just retrieved from the library.

She was so immersed, in fact, that she nary saw the shadow advancing from behind, until its owner, the regal Princess of Equestria, leaned down to peer beside Twilight at her book.

“The Adventures Of Aurora The Alicorn?” Princess Celestia smiled sweetly at her student, “I’m surprised to see you reading something other than a textbook on magic.”

“Oh, I’m planning to practice my long-distance levitation spells right after lunch, princess,” Twilight turned and smiled, “But I found this book, and…it’s really interesting. It’s fiction.”

“And what adventures does our Aurora get herself into?” Celestia asked as she came to sit beside Twilight in the sun-shade, indulging her student’s spur-of-the-moment interest.

“She goes through a lot…she doesn’t really have a happy life,” Twilight said, leafing through the pages, “And there are moments where you’re sure it can end no other way but in despair. Every other chapter, I’ve wanted to put the book away and stop reading, dive into something happier, like a magic text…but I had to know, ‘what’ll happen to Aurora’? Because when you leave a character in a story like that, it’s like you’re running away from them; abandoning them. But you can never run away, because you have to be there with them, because…who else will? You have to see them through their hardships. Like a friend.”

Celestia was at once impressed and wistful at hearing her faithful student talk so eloquently on friendship, considering how few she had of her own, other than Spike. As Celestia wrapped her wing around Twilight in what could have been considered a protective embrace, the unicorn took it as her cue to keep talking, “I’m just at the part where things are at their bleakest…Aurora is thinking of giving up the ghost. But I can’t abandon her here…I need to see her through to the end. I know I won’t feel really set with myself, right here and now, until I know that she’s made everything okay.”

“Twilight…my Twilight…” The Princess smiled softly, “You truly are magical…in the ways that count the most.”

It was a memory that Twilight held close to her heart. But she felt it fading away as something else entered her mind and jarred her to consciousness.

“Huh – what?!”

Twilight jerked up at the sound of something splitting the sky, like a sudden peal of thunder. Rainbow Dash was first out of the alcove, and she turned eyes to the garish multi-hued, chaotic skies, only to see a sight that made the Pegasus blink in confusion.

A trio of pegasi burst over the mountain pass, flying in acute formation. Rainbow Dash recognized them immediately: “Huh? What’re the Wonderbolts doing here?”

“Remember what I said about the air patrol?” Mare-Pinkie whispered, to which Rainbow Dash’s eyes bugged, positively not thrilled.

“What?! No way! No way would the Wonderbolts throw in their lot with Discord! They’re too…too…awesome!”

The trio did a loop around the vicinity, and with their scouting having not found any wayward ponies, they headed back for what had become of Canterlot. Dash recognized Soarin’ on the right, and Spitfire on the left, but the one in the middle didn’t quite catch her eye, despite a sense of vague familiarity.

“They didn’t have a choice,” Mare-Pinkie said, “But you guys do. It’s this way,” She led the pack, coming around a curve in the mountain pass, until a new vista showed itself to their eyes.

Just a few kilometers down the path, the once-grand visage of Canterlot shimmered. Now, some approximation of the Northern Lights shone overhead (it had no scientific explanation, but they passed it off as yet another by-product of the world having been Discorded), as though marking their destination.

“You won’t wanna go in from the front,” Mare-Pinkie said, “Too much security. But I can go scare you up a key that’ll let you get in by the lower levels.” Without another word, she pulled down her mask, nodded to the six, and darted right off.

“I don’t like this, um…at all…” Fluttershy said, numbly tracing a path in the dirt with her front hoof.

“You’ve all done more for me than I could have ever asked,” Twilight said, “We’re almost there. As soon as we find the rip in time, we can go back and keep any of this from happening…this time will never have existed.”

“Sugar-cube, the only time you could ever possibly ask too much of us, would be to ask us not to help at all.” Applejack said firmly.

With eyes peeled ahead, the six began their advance to the Castle…