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And Twi said, "LET THERE BE LIGHT!!!"2,605 words
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And Twi said, "LET THERE BE LIGHT!!!"

It was a wonderful day in Ponyville. The sky was clear, ponies were out and about, and everything was running like clockwork. Rainbow Dash was speeding through the skies above the simple town enjoying her day off from weather management. She had been looking forward to that day for the past few, and for one reason alone.

"I can't wait to finish reading Daring Do!" she exclaimed. "Those books make me SOOO proud to be an egghead."

As she approached the library, Dash noticed Spike carrying a stack of supplies in the front door. She momentarily ceased flying to greet the baby dragon.

"Hey Spike, whatcha doing?"

Spike turned his head to her. "Oh, hi Rainbow Dash; Twilight asked me to pick up some quills and parchment for her. This is the third load I've had to get for her this week."

"Third!? Does that pony do ANYTHING besides study?"

Spike pushed in the doorlock. "Actually, Twilight's been working on a personal project of hers . . . "

As Spike opened the door, one of the scrolls of parchment fell off the stack and to the ground, unrolling at least five pony lengths worth before stopping.

" . . . and it's longer than anything she's done for Princess Celestia. Could you get that?" Spike looked back to Rainbow Dash, or at least to where she was before entering through the library's top balcony, leaving him alone. Spike groaned and placed the load of supplies on the ground to retrieve the fallen scroll.

Inside the library, Rainbow Dash saw Twilight on the ground floor, using her magic to write on a piece of parchment with a quill. The cyan pegasus took notice of her friend's frantic motions as she scribbled across the parchment. While Twilight was always frantic to get stuff done on time, Rainbow Dash heard what Spike said about this being for fun, which got the pegasus pony curious about the lavender unicorn's behavior.

"Hey Twilight, what's up? Besides me, of course." Dash giggled as she descended to the ground floor.

Twilight took no notice to Rainbow's question and instead continued writing. Very sheepishly, the pegasus pony landed on the ground and approached the lavender unicorn.

"Well, um . . . anyway Twilight, can I borrow that last Daring Do book?"

Twilight momentarily ceased writing and used her magic to levitate the book in question off a nearby shelf and into Rainbow's mouth.

"Thanks," the cyan pegasus said through the corner of her mouth as she began trotting toward the front door. She didn't get very far, however, before the sound of Twilight's resumed writing reached her ears. Setting the Daring Do book down onto the center table, she re-approached Twilight.

"So, Twilight, what's this project you're working on anyway?"

Like before, Twilight said nothing in response. Instead, she continued writing without so much as a blink or a cough interrupting her. Shrugging, Rainbow Dash decided to forget about her and get back to Daring Do. Once again, she hadn't gone very far when . . .

"IT'S DONE!" Twilight shouted.

The sudden exclamation caused Rainbow Dash to fall forwards onto her stomach.

"What the hay, Twilight!"

Just then, Spike entered through the front door carrying the requested supplies. He momentarily struggled to hold onto them with one clawed hand while closing the door with the other.

"I've got the stuff you wanted, Twilight."

"Thanks Spike," she responded, placing the quill back into the ink cup. "Just leave them by my desk and come here; I need to know what you think of this."

Spike did as he was told and joined Twilight by the fireplace. Rainbow Dash recovered from her fall and continued making her way towards the Daring Do book.

"Hey Rainbow," Twilight said from across the room, "Why don't you come join us? I could use multiple opinions on this."

"Sure, why not?" she answered, once again living up to her status as the Bearer of Loyalty.

Dash flew over to join Spike and Twilight, intent on listening to what Twilight's pet project was.

"Now before I start reading," Twilight said to the two of them, "I should note that this was inspired by our many journeys through the Everfree Forest. I've been fascinated by how different it is from the rest of Equestria, and it got me thinking; what if there existed an entire world that operated like it did?"

Spike and Rainbow Dash both looked at each other with a quizzical look before turning back to Twilight.

"What do you mean?" Spike asked her.

"I mean, what if there existed an entire world where, for example, the weather controlled itself? Pegasus ponies would be useless, if existent at all."

Rainbow Dash's interest suddenly grew; Daring Do would definitely have to wait.

"And that thought led me to another; all three pony types depend on each other, especially earth ponies since they depend on the pegasus ponies to provide weather ideal for farming. But if the weather controlled itself, earth ponies wouldn't know when and where to plant their crops, making it harder for them to survive."

Rainbow Dash and Spike looked at each other again, but this time each with a look of amazement.

"And that thought led to yet another one; where would unicorns fit into this world? Well, after seeing just how decrepit the Everfree forest is, I've determined unicorns would be absent from such a world. Otherwise, they'd use their magic to make everything perfect and aligned. After all, you both know how obsessed Rarity . . . and myself . . . are with keeping things neat and tidy and perfect. This world's lack of unicorns also means a complete absence of unicorn magic, i.e. nothing to raise the sun and moon. For this reason, the sun and moon would have to come up and down by themselves."

At this point, Spike and Rainbow Dash had their full attention on Twilight. The provocative questions she was explaining would've never crossed their minds if not for her.

"All these thoughts eventually gave me the idea to create such a world through fiction. Be warned though, it's not pleasant. In fact, I don't think anypony in history has envisioned something as corrupted, hateful, chaotic, and violent as this. I'm afraid of what Celestia might think of me if she sees this, so can you two keep it a secret?"

"Of course I can," Dash responded.

"My lips are sealed," Spike said.

"Can you also keep it a secret from Applejack and Pinkie Pie?"

"Why?" Dash asked.

Twilight gave a worried smile. "Well, I wanted to have a common trait shared between real life with this little world of my creation, so I used earth ponies to fill that role. The thing is, I decided to make them subservient to this world's only sentient beings because they wouldn't fit in any other way."

Rainbow Dash and Spike stared blankly for a moment before doing a Pinkie promise gesture with their hoof and hand, respectively, to which Twilight chuckled.

"Alright then, here we go." Twilight began reading from the top of the parchment.

"Welcome to a world where the air you breathe is foul, nature takes no favors, and living things routinely kill each other not for survival, but for sport. You may have visited worlds like this in your worst nightmares, but for the creatures that really live there it's nothing but unending despair and suffering. In this world, nature operates independent of outside manipulation. This world is also decrepit beyond repair and no amount of tidying and decorating could ever hope to fix it. Lastly, friendship is all but non-existent. Every living thing communicates differently, making it impossible to form bonds outside of their own kind.

It's because of this struggle with communication that war and discrimination exists constantly, usually stemming over the pettiest of disagreements. And here we introduce the dominant species of this world, who simply refer to one another as "people". Of all the living things in this world, these people are the most horrible. What makes them so is how they let their tendency to judge each other over the most insignificant of differences result in physical violence. Not only that, for the longest time in this world people often made slaves out of those they considered to be inferior. While people would indeed use equines to help them with various tasks, slaves would actually be treated worse than them, despite being the same species as their masters. Much like how things were before Equestria was founded, this world's people maintained a shaky trust with each other, but this trust would never remain for long. Wars would break out very often between, and sometimes even within, countries of this world. Despite all the violence and bloodshed, people knew there was an alternate to war in diplomacy and would try to use it before all else. The power of diplomacy in this world, however, was limited as a result of people's judgmental natures, and it was this fact that kept people as a whole from uniting to make the world better for not just themselves, but for all living things.

While friendships were rare between different peoples of this world, alliances between countries were fairly common. With these alliances in place, if a country came under attack from an enemy their allies were required to lend support to fight back the attackers. Unfortunately, this system of alliances would lead to one of the greatest bloodbaths in history, known simply as the Great War during its time. With years of distrust and tensions holding people back, all it took was a little spark to ignite the flames of war, and that spark came one summer morning in the Austro-Hungarian Empire.

Archduke Franz Ferdinand, the heir presumptive to the Austro-Hungarian throne, was touring . . ."

"Wait a minute, Twilight," Rainbow Dash said.

"Yes," Twilight answered.

"Where'd you come up with those weird names?"

"Well, it wasn't easy. I knew that a separate world with different intelligent life who spoke different languages needed strange ways of naming everything. The names I've given the inhabitants of this world don't mean anything; I only used them because they sounded cool."

"Well, I know cool," Rainbow responded, "and 'Franz Ferdinand' just doesn't work for me."

"Well tough," Twilight said. "This is my story."

As Twilight began to pick up from where she had left off, there was a knock on the front door.

"Come in!" Twilight shouted.

The front door opened to reveal Rarity wearing a beautiful cream colored dress rimmed in white with pink frills. As expected, Spike went crush-eyed over her appearance. Rarity, not wanting to deny Spike's attentive gaze, spoke directly to him. "You like, no?"

"I like very much," Spike muttered.

"Did you come here for anything other than to show that off?" Twilight chimed.

"What? I need all my friends' opinions on each and every dress I craft. How else can I know if I'm creating perfection, or colored filth?"

"Well," Rainbow Dash said, "it looks about as good as your last one."

"Oh thank y-wait . . . is that good or bad?"

"Ahem." Twilight cleared her throat to silence her friends. "I'd like to continue with my story, if you'd please pay attention."

Rarity glanced at the scroll in Twilight's lap before staring up at her. "Judge my new dress and I'd be ever so grateful to critique your own work."

"Fine," Twilight replied. "I agree with Rainbow Dash, and by that I mean it looks the exact same as your last dress."

"EXACT SAME?" Rarity scoffed. "I'll have you know my last dress was colored pure white; this one uses a new fabric I created spec-."

"IT LOOKS NICE!"

Rarity smiled and sat down in between Spike and Rainbow Dash, intent on keeping her end of the deal. Twilight magically lifted the scroll out of her lap and continued from where she had left off.

"Archduke Franz Ferdinand, the heir presumptive to the Austro-Hungarian throne, was touring the Austro-Hungarian city of Sarajevo, Bosnia, when a young assassin by the name of Gavrilo Princip approached and attacked him and his wife, fatally wounding them. It was eventually discovered that young Gavrilo had ties to the Kingdom of Serbia, the Austro-Hungarian empires' rival for power. For several weeks afterwards, diplomatic resolutions were attempted, but ultimately failed. On the 28th day of the seventh month of that same year, the Austro-Hungarian Empire declared war against the Kingdom of Serbia. As a result of said declaration, every ally both sides had was immediately drawn into the fight, thereby spreading the violence and bloodshed across the whole continent."

Twilight glanced up from the parchment to check on Rarity. While the fashionista was no doubt repulsed by the story's content, she was simultaneously rooted to the spot in fascination of it. Smiling, Twilight continued reading.

"The Great War was referred to as such for one reason alone, and that was the sheer amount of violence and death that resulted from it. Like all wars, only the most up to date technology and the most combative fighters were used. As such, one soldier could take down rows upon rows of advancing enemies by themselves, making territorial progression for both sides impossible. In essence, both sides were sending their own out just to be slaughtered. The war continued this way for four long years until, at long last, the Entente powers (made up of the countries of France, Russia, Italy, the United Kingdom, and the Kingdom of Serbia) with a little help from the relatively young United States of America, managed to push back the Central powers (made up of the Austro-Hungarian empire and the country of Germany) and eventually into defeat."

Twilight rolled up the scroll. "That's the end of it for now. I'm still brainstorming ideas for the rest, but I'll finish it in due time. Until then, how is it so far?"

"Well," Rarity said, "I must admit I never would've guessed you were capable of writing something so morbid and twisted. However, I also must admit I never would've guessed you had such a creative mind. All in all, well done Twilight."

"Ditto," Rainbow Dash said. "Though if I was writing it, I'd have substituted the Entente powers for . . . "

"Wait, don't tell me," Twilight said. "Yourself?"

Rainbow Dash blushed.

Twilight rolled her eyes as she levitated the scroll onto the nearby desk. With her story done for the time being, Rainbow Dash and Rarity left upon finishing their business, intent on hearing the rest once Twilight completed it.

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