> The Twilight Parable > by CrimsonExcalibur > -------------------------------------------------------------------------- > Another Story > -------------------------------------------------------------------------- This is the story, of a Unicorn named Twilight. Twilight studied under Princess Celestia in a big Treehouse, where she was the princess’s star pupil. Twilight’s day to day process was simple, she sat in her room and read books off her bookshelf. Every day her baby dragon Spike would come in to check on her, with new books of varying genres, lengths, and arranged via dewey decimal system. This is what The princess’s pupil did every day of every month of every year, and although other ponies considered it soul rending, Twilight relished every moment that new books came in, as though her sole purpose was to study all day. And Twilight, was happy. And then one day, something very peculiar happened. Something that would forever change Twilight, Something that she would never quite forget. She had been sitting at her desk very nearly all day, when she realized that Spike had not even arrived once with her new order of books. No-one had shown up to say hello, have a party, not even Pinkie Pie. never in all her months in ponyville had this happened… Complete isolation. Something was very clearly wrong. Shocked, frozen solid, Twilight found herself unable to move for the longest time. But as she came to her wits and regained her senses, she got up from her desk, and stepped out of her room. However, this brought an even more sickening brand of fear over Twilight, for instead of opening her door to a flight of stairs as she expected, she was greeted with an alien yellow building layout, several numbers resided on several doors, and there were many desks with strange devices on them that Twilight had never seen before. The only windows in the room could not be seen out of, and only served to shine a blinding light across the room. Directly across from her was the only other open door, which led into a hallway that immediately turned to the right. Stunned by the change in the change in scenery Twilight stood still for a couple of minutes, taking all of this new information in, not moving for a few more minutes. When she finally did, she cleared her throat, and asked to no particular pony in the building; “Who’s saying all of this, how do you know my name? What did you do to my friends, to Spike, where am I?” And many, many more questions that took the story nowhere in particular. After some time, with no direct answer being given to her, she gave a begrudged sigh and began exploring the room. Several of the devices had been left on, but when Twilight went to interact with any of them, they immediately shut themselves off. “Hey!” She yelled angrily at the sky “Don’t do that!” Twilight continued to check the room, but only found that the other doors were locked, the multiple papers littering the desks were written in such small text that they were barely comprehensible, an “I H8 Mondays” Coffee mug, and a framed picture of a muffin. Eventually, when it became clear she would not find any information about her whereabouts in this room, she would venture out into the hallway. Rounding about she was brought into another large room much identical to the previous one, only with filing cabinets and several more devices that refused to respond to her inputs. Not wanting to waste any time, she hurriedly walked through the next open door and turned left. When Twilight came into a room that was empty except for two more open doors, she would take the door on her left. However, she hesitated once again, and thought it over for a few seconds… but when the narrator mentioned that the door to her left would eventually lead to celestia’s office, she raised an eyebrow and hesitantly walked through the left door. Immediately she regretted her decision, as the door shut and locked itself behind her. Terrified, Twilight could do nothing but stand in disbelief as the only path was forward… and so she mustered the strength to venture on, trying to ignore that ever nagging voice in her head. Instead of giving in to sheer hopelessness, she walked forward into the next room, once again the door shutting behind her. This room was a large meeting room with still not a soul insight. Decorating the room were many whiteboards of varying informative degrees and such, but as they served little to no purpose in this story, Twilight would most likely decide to move on. Instead,at the behest of the narrator, Twilight felt the compulsive urge to read each and every word on each and every whiteboard. It was quite obvious that she thought some form of test was coming up that would involve this information, how absurd. In fact, I had never even planned to put a test in this story, because that would be boring, tests are boring… Eventually, the very boring pony who wanted very boring things to happen sucked it up and moved along with the narrative. Continuing onwards through a couple more doors and hallways, she came to a flight of stairs, and climbed them to reach Celestia’s office. Each step was a another towards uncertainty, but as she placed faith in her own gut, Twilight reassured herself, and entered in a large very official looking room; there were even ferns, how simply upper class. This room instead opened into three different branching paths, but since the executive bathroom and the unimportant doors were most definitely certainly locked, there was no way to continue other than into Celestia’s office. The office was much life the previous room, very executive and just showed off the essence of a rich pony, there was even another fern! Twilight was so overcome by this, that she barely had time to notice the super secret hidden input device on the far side of the room. This device, was in fact put in place by Celestia herself, and assigned an even MORE secret pin number, one that could never be guessed by a normal pony in a million years; 2845. Miraculously, as if the number had come to her in a previous dream, Twilight managed to input the number on her first try, the natural born genius must be proud at her number guessing prowess, as she had guessed the number, being that there would be no other way that she would have been able to acquire such information… right? I didn't leave some miniscule imprint of the code in a previous part of the story, I couldn't have… How about this. You and Twilight can listen to some new-age music to relax, while I go check for this sort of ghost in the programming. - New Age Music …. …. Ok, thats enough of that. If you did actually listen to the whole song, I think you have done enough to earn an achievement, good for you! putting in an hour of your time to wait while I perfect your adventure experience! Bravo, good sir and/or madam! -Achievement unlocked: Patience {A valuable virtue in today’s society, and we thank you for allowing us to bring you a more perfect experience} Then again… you might have just opened it in other tab and read ahead, or possibly even ignored it entirely! In this case I must regrettably take away your achievement, which I actually do regret, for there aren't that many “go-getters” nowadays, who are actually worthy of such achievements, and I legitimately do enjoy handing them out. (unless you actually worked for said achievement, in which case you are a star among your peers!) -Achievement unlocked: Patience Now that I have held you up long enough, allow us to continue with the story *ahem* Twilight WOKE UP and walked through the opened passageway, immediately taking the elevator to her left to the unknown depths below. ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ LOADING LOADING LOADING LOADING LOADING LOADING LOADING LOADING ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ As Twilight descended deeper and deeper into the belly of the strange building, it began to darken, slowly but ever so surely becoming pitch black. Taking her time, she patiently waited in the eerie blackness, hoping to Celestia that she might be able to see sometime in the near future, and not thinking about the possible dreaded monster’s that may be lurking to spring at her at any moment. Brave as ever, she cowered under her own hooves behind closed eyes, until she heard the buzz of electricity and the flickering of a large light. Drawing a few deep breathes Twilight braved the new pathway, an eerie walkway with nothing but pipes and wires running along the ceiling and walls, truly foreboding. Taking a few turns she suddenly noticed an empty, white alley branching off to the left… The word “Escape” written crudely in some form of red ink, that really, really liked to smear a blood like color all over the nice white walls. However, this was not the correct path, and so she ignored it altogether… Twilight, I know what you’re thinking, but no, escape is not down that hallway, only certain doom… followed by the merciless evisceration of many, many, MANY cute fluffy animals, you wouldn’t want that on your guilty conscience now, would you? How could you live (which you wouldn’t be anyways) with the knowledge that you were the single reason that exactly four hundred and seventy three cute fluffy-wuffy kittens were skinned and boiled alive? I thought not, so Twilight continued on with the story. Back on the correct path, Twilight walked up to a large doorway marked unambiguously ‘MIND CONTROL FACILITY’ with a delightful side note about not slapping panda’s noticeably inscribed underneath. Braving through the doorway Twilight could only see a button, and doing what Twilight did best, following the narrative, she pressed it. The lights rose throughout the giant room, bringing hundreds of giant tv monitors into view. Each with a different name assigned to each one, Rainbow Dash, AppleJack, Princess Luna, even Twilight herself were listed among the many names. Eventually, the monitors flickered to life, Revealing each of the rooms of her friends that she had come to know. Applejack’s barn, Her tree house, even Rainbow Dash’s secret Spitfire shrine… yes, and if you must know it’s on screen 21, right there, it’s actually pretty cute… she even has a signed picture and a teddy bear and everything. But I digress. A small elevator descended from the darkness above, opening and allowing her to continue. The elevator rose into the darkness, the only source of light being the flashing red alert siren attached to the elevator. for several minutes Twilight could only think to herself about what all of this meant, how could all of this be happening? Where would she go from here? And then the double door’s opened in front of her. She was emptied out into a large control room filled with many different buttons and switches. Each different input labeled with a different emotion, happiness, sadness, or content… Slowly piece by piece, she put together what it all meant… the answer was obvious, how could she not have deducted it before? Celestia had been controlling each and every pony from this very control room. It was evil, it was cruel, it was tyrannical… she must be stopped! And so, Twilight declared that she would destroy and dismantle the control room, putting an end to her empire forever. “That’s not what I’m thinking at all!” Twilight suddenly yelled to nopony, having obviously gone insane. “I will destroy this horrible machine, but you have no right pulling my friends and teacher into this!” Twilight continued to complain and moan for several more minutes, bringing up basic pony rights and other such nonsense, but when she realized that she was talking to nobody and got back to reality, she walked across the rooms and came to a pair of two buttons labeled on and off. Wanting to destroy the machine, she would push the off button. The lights went out, and for what seemed like ages Twilight was left in pitch black darkness. The ground rumbled, and she was left to her own thought about her adventure, she had overthrown an evil tyrant, possibly saved all of her friends, she might have even learn something about herself. And then a large creaking sounded off in the distance, and the largest metal door she had ever began to open not twenty meters in front of her. As it slowly took it’s time to open, she began to think about questions she still had, what were those other strange devices she had seen? Where were her friends? Where was she? None of that mattered now, as more and more light filtered into the pitch black room, Twilight realized what she had discovered about herself, she was never trying to make friends, or save the world, or proof that she was sane, she was only ever trying to do one thing, and that was being happy. Twilight, stepped through the open door. The sun shining all around her, bird’s singing all around her, the sky blue as ever, this was what she had been searching for all along… pure and utter bliss. She would never be told what to do by some princess, or be dictated by some code, no, “Hey, wait!” Twilight was finally free, “Thats not true!” And Twilight, was happy. The End is Never The End is Never The End is Never The End is Never The End is Never This is the story, of a Unicorn named Twilight.