The Time Keeper of Ponyville

by Askre

Optional Epilogue - Meanwhile in Fillydelphia

Author's Note:

Hey there and welcome to the optional epilogue of the Time Keeper of Ponyville. What do I mean by optional? Well I'm freely allowing people to dismiss this one because this very last bit of the story might just not sit right with them or be of no interest. I'm pretty sure you're already guessing what it is all about, but as you read keep in mind, that though this part is canon to my over all pony storyworld, if you want this story just to stand alone, the previous Epilogue is just as good as an end as any.

However, this epilogue reflects better the trio of original characters who appeared in the story, Dew, Foxy and Private who actually at this point in their lives do know a certain pony. I will be posting a bit later a blog that goes a little deeper into this, since you can't have author notes too long. So either enjoy or not, it's your choice.

Optional Epilogue

Fillydelphia

Dew Doe opened the front door when there was a rapid knocking on it. The Pegasus mare frowned a little when seeing who it was before opening the door fully and gestured to a pony wearing a body covering brown cloak to come in.

“Just typical, you show up now. We could have used a little assistance yesterday,” she grunted as the pony passed her.

“I got a little busy and well things didn’t go quite as planned and oh you know how it is and things turned out alright didn’t they?” the guest said with a chuckle and disappeared down the hallway and entered the living room.

Private lay by the unlit fireplace, next to him was little black unicorn filly with gray mane and tail, she was drawing with crayons. Foxy sat on a couch and was reading a book, they all three looked up when the pony entered the room.

“Where were you?” the maroon mare grunted. “I had the worst day yesterday. Sorry, we had the worst day.”

“I was held up, couldn’t help it. But you all went didn’t you? You met them?” the pony asked excitedly.

“We did,” Dew Doe said as she now entered the living room. “Let me guess, you suggested to Swift Mane to send us to do that case, didn’t you?”

“No, no no…. yes.” The pony finally took down the hood of the cloak from his head, revealing a that he bore a striking resemblance to Time Turner, except the coat was a bit lighter shade of brown and he was bit taller.

“It needed to be you, only then would we truly know if Barricade was really being docile and settling down. Besides now you have met Turner and Derpy, now you know how they know you,” the pony explained, he only received unimpressed stares, except from Coal who just continued to draw once she had seen who had arrived.

The pony’s smile dropped a bit as he observed the ponies in the room and sensing that the room was rather grim. He finished taking off his cloak and began wrapping it up as he considered what to say next.

“I know this was very difficult for you all and especially Coal to learn how her father really is. But you know me and you know I protect those I care about and sometimes to protect you, I need to show you the hard bitter reality. I would love it myself if Barricade finally turned around, it would be brilliant to see him finally show some real remorse for all the things he’s been part of and done. I know deep down he has good qualities, just right now he isn’t really showing them. One day we might be able to help him bring them forth and one day he might even become a decent enough pony,” he said and smiled now more gently, almost fatherly.

“And considering what happened yesterday, that isn’t happening yet. The whole thing was a trap set up by him to see if we would interfere in his business,” Dew Doe muttered “I sometimes hate when you’re right.”

“Yes it’s infuriating, I know,” the brown pony chuckled and approached Coal and Private. “So Coal, you now understand why we are so reserved about your father?”

“Yes,” the filly looked up and sighed.

“Now what kind of a face is that on a little filly,” the brown stallion said and sat down in front of her. “You are young and still with many hopes and dreams, you wanted your daddy to be a good pony and really wanted to believe that. But chin up, you still have your mom, your aunt, your uncle, your grandparents, your grandmother and have they told you about your sister in Ponyville?”

“Yeah, but I’m not sure, what if she doesn’t like me? Cara doesn’t like me.” Coal asked looking unsure.

“Not like you? You? What are you talking about, I can tell you that she will love you, her mother is a wonderful pony who never judges you and you’ll be drowning in muffins. Heck you’re not just getting a new sister, you’re getting a new aunt I’m sure,” the pony assured her while gesturing wildly with his hooves.

Dew and Foxy watched while the brown pony tried to cheer up Coal. It had not been easy for them to explain to the filly yesterday when they picked her up from their mother. However, to their surprise the girl hadn’t really cried as they had expected her to do, just glumly accepted it that she wasn’t after all going to her father. Now a thought occurred to Dew that could possibly explain it.

“He showed her, didn’t he?” Dew Doe whispered to Foxy.

“That’s what I’m guessing…” Foxy nodded in agreement.

“Doctor, did you show her what happened yesterday?” The blue Pegasus decided to ask.

“Aaaah… uuuh…ehehe.” The brown pony glanced back at them with a half innocent and half nervous smile. “With your mother’s approval and she was there too just so you know before you do or say anything too rash.”

“So that’s why mom looked so relieved to see us,” Dew grunted. Foxy folded her front legs and was glaring at the brown pony, but before she could say anything, or do anything as she was tempted to, Coal rose up and quickly walked to the couch.

“Mommy wait… I sort of told him to show me… or it was more I was telling granny that I was going to see daddy next weekend, granny was surprised it hadn’t just been cancelled because daddy always breaking promises,” the filly said and climbed up to the couch to sit with Foxy.

“I told granny I would prove to her that it wouldn’t be broken and I asked the Doctor to show us.” Coal hung her head looking a little ashamed.

“I swear, Foxy, that she was never in any danger and your mother managed wonderfully to keep her from doing anything. I really wanted to come over and help you but Turner and Derpy were there as well and they haven’t met me yet and I couldn’t risk it. Thus I managed to attract the attention of Tango and lead him to you. Even though he made some mistakes in his life I knew he was still a formerly trained officer and could take care of sticky situations like these,” The Doctor told the mare, once again he had the gentler expression from earlier.

“Alright fine,” Foxy relented though mostly only because she heard her mother had been involved. She reached to grab her daughter in a hug. “And you little mischief, I’m sorry you had to see all of this.”

“No, I’m sorry I never believed you.” Coal hugged her mother back. “I don’t want to see dad ever again.”

“So you want to go to Ponyville next weekend instead?” the maroon mare asked and chuckled when the filly nodded her head eagerly.

Dew smiled, happy to see that her niece’s spirits were going up again. Her attention thought was quickly brought back to the Doctor who had turned to Private and was speaking to him and suddenly gave an indignant snort:

“What did he mean worthless? We ourselves used those coins back when we were stuck in ancient Spartacornia.”

The end… for now.

Comments

[SageBrony07]

Great story. Thanks for writing it.

[Askre]

6540756 You're welcome and thanks, glad you enjoyed it.

[cyberlord4444]

Was that? You little liar, you said he wouldn't be in this. Not that I'm complaining just, you said.

Long Live the Doctor, may the universe tremble in his wake.

[Askre]

6542567 I recommend reading this blog http://www.fimfiction.net/blog/551585/so-two-epilogues-of-the-time-keeper

But yeah, that's what happens when it takes three years to finish a story, things change.

Sowwy

[cyberlord4444]

6542588 To be honest, I just read it today, no waiting for me. You can understand my position, right? I can understand your decision to make them two separate ponies, and approve.

[Askre]

6542599 No worries, understand completely and thanks for reading.

[Talon and Thorn]

6555807

I don't know, I think it started as a fairly good romance, I think bringing in a bunch of your own OC's might have caused a problem. If it had just been Ditzy and Time Turner, a faceless social services team and her ex causing problems it would have run smoother. Still I know about extra plots getting weaved into, and distracting from the basic story, my own Climbing the Mountain has gotten rather out of control.

[Talon and Thorn]

Ok, I've read the whole thing now and I'd give it a 7 out of 10. It started with a interesting if plain Derpy / Time Turner romance and carried on that way for a few chapters then the whole Barricade/Dew/Foxy/Private thing came in and threw it for a loop.

As it is the Caramel subplot didn't really go anywhere, he gets dumped, starts working with Time Turner and then just fades away and the whole girlfriend thing was a misunderstanding, if he was just there to show that Time Turner was a nice guy if a bit of a doormat then Turner could have just given him some money or got somepony else to give him a job.

You did have a interesting stable of character, possibly a few to many, however Barricade seemed inconsistent, it wasn't clear what he was
actually trying to do and he himself didn't seem all that sure.

Overall I think it might have worked better as two stories, one with the romance and one with the more adventure side based on your own OCs as really once you got into it Derpy and Time Turner weren't needed.

[Askre]

6557165 Thank you for reading and thanks for the review

You are not wrong, this would definitely worked better if I had sooner realized myself this should be two separate stories. I mentioned in my blog that explains a little why there are two epilogues that if I had started the Time Keeper today, this story would much more different.

The passage of time that took me to write this story probably didn't help either, I took much to long to write it, especially considering how much the characters I wanted to use had changed by the time I finally arrived at the chapter they begin to appear. You'll notice a whole year passes before I post chapter 5,

Barricade I'm going to defend a little though, (well as much as one can defend that jerk ) but I will admit this is the first time I write a story with him (I've only RPed a version of him) and I probably should have made things clearer and dropped more hints, but preferably, yeah I should just have had this in a separate story.

(just going to put this next paragraph under spoilers just in case a new reader accidentally scrolls to the comments too early )

What he was trying to do is pretty much said in the final long chapter, he wanted to see if Foxy, Dew and Private came to try and meddle if he was doing something, in this case bothering Derpy with a questionable claim against her, and if they did try and scare them off from doing something like that ever again. However, he forgets that Private can shut him up, just by getting angry. Barricade does love his brother and seeing his quiet reserved twin explode, shuts him up and he constantly forgets it. In his mind, he expected them just to leave and never bother him again, at worst Private would try and lecture him but fumble with his words, since Private is not actually that good with words. Barricade has a bit of a warped view on how the world should work and thus reality sometimes comes around and slaps him in the face.

But I can see how he might look inconsistent, I do think I could have written a lot of this better upon further reflection.

Thanks again for reading and thanks again for the review.

[The Hat Man]

6557165 I agree with this review. I think the problem is that it had such a neat buildup and even a little bit of intrigue but it all just... kind of runs out of steam and then it just stops. Barricade's big plan wasn't really much of a plan in the end, and it stopped when his brother... yelled at him? And the Derpy/Turner romance was much the same. It had such a cute build and... well, then they have a confession before the story is over and that was it. Huh.

It's a shame considering how much potential this story had and how little it delivered. It wasn't horrible, but I wish more time had been put into bringing the story to a far more satisfying conclusion.

[Askre]

6879732 Actually Barricade's "big plan" stopped when Tango interrupted them and kicked his henchponie's rump.

What Private's yelling delayed was Barricade searching for Tango to pay him back for said rump beating. (I say delayed because that then happens in the story Tango) As far as Barricade was concerned his plan was to scare off his brother and roommates from further interfering with his life and had succeeded. But as you said, not much of a plan and I will happily admit that Barricade is a bit of a warped minded idiot and yes this could have all been written much, much better.

And you will actually not hear much of a disagreement from me regarding this story, what it suffers most from is how long it took me to finally finish it. A whole year passes between chapter 4 and chapter 5 and then only gets chapter 6 much later in the same year and the story doesn't really pick up again until mid 2015. At that point a lot of my characters I was using had changed and quite honestly at that point I just wanted to finish this story and get to other stories.

It also doesn't help that this happens all the time when I try to write a story where romance is the focus, I lose interest in the romance, I do much better if the romance is in the background and if I had been writing this story today, the main focus of the story would always have been the trouble with Barricade and Time Turner slowly and eventually realizing that he was in love with Derpy and not been lovestruck from the beginning. I wrote this story originally as an experiment and let's just say it's convinced me to just stick to other types of stories and keep all romances in the background.

The only reason I haven't rewritten the whole thing is because how many people seem to be enjoying it despite it all and I just don't have a heart to change it. I have however been a bit merciless towards myself in the accidental sequel "Possession in the Crystal Empire" which is sort of a continuation of the original character plot points (especially the fallout from Barricade's idiotic plan regarding his whole family).

But yeah, this is one story I wished I had done better with.

Thanks for reading

[The Hat Man]

6880333

It also doesn't help that this happens all the time when I try to write a story where romance is the focus, I lose interest in the romance, I do much better if the romance is in the background and if I had been writing this story today, the main focus of the story would always have been the trouble with Barricade and Time Turner slowly and eventually realizing that he was in love with Derpy and not been lovestruck from the beginning. I wrote this story originally as an experiment and let's just say it's convinced me to just stick to other types of stories and keep all romances in the background.

And this is the part that saddens me, because here's the thing: the romance aspect of the story was actually genuinely sweet! Turner and Derpy sort of awkwardly interacting and not exactly knowing where to go and Turner showing himself to be genuinely nice guy while Derpy faces her trust issues due to her previous relationship... that stuff was great! You did a genuinely good job on it!

I don't even mind the plot complications, but the loss of focus and the lack of a satisfying conclusion to the romance in what was billed as Turner's story and a romance really does kill it, I'm sad to say. However, I would encourage you to reconsider writing a romance, perhaps on a smaller scale, because you're not bad at it.

[Askre]

6881313 Romance on a smaller scale, hm. Yeah maybe I could do that.

Thanks for your insight, I'll keep it in mind if I actually do get an inspiration for a romance story again.

[EverlyTheBlackRabbit]

This was amazing!
Loved it!
I love that piece you added how the Doctor couldn't run into Turner or Derpy because he hadn't met them yet! Love it so much!

[Askre]

7784973

I love this story it got me so excited in almost every chapter! I love that bit of a Time Traveler pony who is running around passing by and reason why everyone gets Time Turner's name wrong!
The romance between Time Turner and Derpy was really sweet! Loved it!

This was amazing!
Loved it!
I love that piece you added how the Doctor couldn't run into Turner or Derpy because he hadn't met them yet! Love it so much!

Glad you liked it.

Thanks for reading.

[Ice Star]

“What did he mean worthless? We ourselves used those coins back when we were stuck in ancient Spartacornia.”

There it is again!

Also, I'd say this is a pretty solid romance story. Giving the characters something to work on external of their relationship but in a way that furthers it is always a good way to fashion things.

[Starlight Nova]

9619455
I don't get it.