Outside Context Problem
Watching trains is not an uncommon, if often derided, hobby, and even a decade after Sombra’s defeat many of the crystal ponies relied on their hobbies as a way of coping with their darker memories. As a result, like most days, a small gaggle of shimmering ponies, armed with binoculars and notepads, watched the Friendship Express steam towards the Empire. There was a great deal of excitement as the third carriage came into view, Twilight Sparkle’s royal coach was hardly an unusual sight on the Express, but it was still a nice treat for the anorak-equipped ponies.
One of the watching ponies clearly didn’t fit though, despite the binoculars and bulging saddlebags. He stood apart from the others, clearly not part of their group. His grey coat didn’t shine, and no mirth lightened the expression on his young face as he peered at the train, and at the third carriage. Twilight’s transport had been designed to her specifications, which meant very little visible security, and he could see the occupants clearly.
Twilight and Trixie, as expected. Spike, a little more surprising, although I suppose, any excuse to see Thorax, even now. Fluttershy? Oh yes, she’s medical. Did she leave the little butterfly at home? No, she’d be too young. Two guards, travelling light then. Must have got the message last night. No sign of her though, possibly because of the little one. Ah well, this wasn’t going to be easy. I’m going to need help.
He turned away.
Princess Luna watched the fretting orange stallion as he paced restlessly. He looked like he hadn’t slept that night. There was a good reason for that, and frankly, Luna was becoming somewhat wearied of it.
“Sunburst.”
No response.
“Sunburst!”
Still no response. Luna prepared for drastic measures.
“SUNBURST!”
The Royal Canterlot Voice bowled Sunburst over, and it took him a moment to disentangle himself from his cloak, then to locate his glasses.
“Yes, Princess?”
“It is perfectly natural that you are somewhat concerned for your wife, medical technology has advanced significantly since my time. She and your foal are in no danger, and your concern is becoming wearing. CALM DOWN!”
“Yes, Princess. But…”
Luna groaned in exasperation, and disappeared with a banging of doors. She stormed through the crystal corridors largely aimlessly until she heard a very nervous voice from behind her.
“A... Princess Luna?”
She turned around, looking down at the young unicorn who had asked the question. A bright orange mane over an ash-grey coat, she didn’t recognise him. No uniform, not even a badge on the saddlebags he wore. Barely old enough to be called a ‘stallion’, although he did have a few wisps of orange beard. He didn’t belong here.
“How did you get in?”
“I… I’m authorised.”
He rummaged around in his saddlebags, pulled out a small, finely engraved crystal chit, waving it in front of him. Luna extended her own aura to take it, and was surprised to find it jerked away. She raised an eyebrow.
“It… It’s real, you can ping it, just… don’t look too close.”
She worked a brief spell, bouncing it off the chit, which chimed and flashed gold. Access All Areas? Curious. The stallion stowed the chit away again, and then looked up.
“There’s…” He swallowed, and continued. “There’s a dangerous criminal we’ve recently tracked to the Empire, and I… I think they’re targeting the Archmage and her son.”
“Son?”
“She is giving birth, isn’t she!?”
Luna’s eyes narrowed, but she motioned for him to continue.
“They’re a Chaos-warped pony with access to magic, and they tend stick out in crowds, due to the antennae, cat legs and insect wings.”
“Does she lack the means to perform a Disguise spell?”
“Chaos. She doesn’t do subtle. Frankly, once she makes her move I’m expecting to just follow the screams.”
Luna facehooved. She’d been up on a ‘diplomatic mission’ that was mostly Celestia’s excuse to make her take a holiday, and now she was needed to defeat a powerful and dangerous enemy. Her sister had to be involved somewhere in this.
“Very well. Do you have a name?”
There was a long pause.
“Well? It is not that hard.”
“I… I’m Coal.”
Private Green Diamond was having a good day. The sun was out, shining through the windows and there hadn’t been any particularly annoying tourists spoiling the serenity of guard duty, one of the advantages of drawing a corridor off the main thoroughfares of the Crystal Castle. The only people who’d been past were Princess Twilight, the Bearer of Kindness, and her daughter. It was a strange creature, that child, with its iridescent wings and clawed legs and delicate feelers, but cute enough in the way only foals could be. You couldn’t exactly expect a creature sired by Discord to be normal, could you?
He very carefully didn’t allow his expression to waver as a butter-yellow mare came up to him wearing a silver amulet. She had something strange on her head, and something about her expression suggested his nice day was about to become less nice.
“Excuse me, I wondered if you could tell me where I can find Archmage Starlight Glimmer?”
He was right. And were those antennae? Oh well, there were many strange creatures in Equestria, there was no reason to be rude, even if they were a little annoying.
“The Archmage is not seeing visitors today.”
The strange mare’s expression didn’t waver, and she continued in the same cheery voice as before.
“I’m sure she’ll see me, just go in and tell her that Butterfly Effect is here to see her.”
“And I’m sure she won’t, I suggest you back to the entrance, and I’m sure someone will be able to help you.”
“Of course, I’m not famous yet. Inconvenient, well, if you’ll just let me past, I’ll go sort everything out.”
Diamond glanced to Private Ruby, over the other side of the door. She met his gaze briefly, and then looked away, he was on his own.
“I’ll need to see your authorisation if you’re coming in.”
Her expression changed in an instant, going from pleasant to thunderous. Those strange antennae began to glow with a riotous mess of colour, butterfly-like wings snapped up, and she shifted slightly, revealing clawed hind legs that were scraping against the crystal floor.
“Stand aside. I will not ask again.”
Diamond snapped into a combat stance, raising his crystal spear to the mare’s throat. Her unexpected response was a bubbling cackle. She bit on the sharp point, and a dark red spread down as the spear turned to rust and flaked away. Private Ruby opened her mouth and yelled an alarm that cut off mid-word. The last thing Private Green Diamond saw was a butter-yellow hoof reaching in to boop him gently.
A strange discordant clanging echoed through the castle, quickening Coal and Luna’s pace to a frantic gallop. Coal struggling to keep up with Luna’s long legs, particularly given that he was trying to explain something at the same time.
“We…we planned for this, if I can get within line of sight… I… I’ve got a spell on me that should neutralise her.”
“If this ‘Butterfly Effect’ is targeting Starlight, should we not withdraw to her chambers and lay a trap?”
“NO! …No... I…the spell could…could harm m... the foal.”
They careened around the corner and came into sight of the door. Saying it stood open was an understatement, the door and most of the wall had dissolved, apparently into cotton candy. A bright red mare in crystal armour was struggling to extricate herself from the sticky mess, whilst staring abject horror at a giant and vaguely equiform gemstone nearby. When she saw the approaching ponies she opened her mouth and the horrid clanging noise emerged, so she closed it again.
Luna flew over to the gem and began casting while Coal extricated Private Ruby. A terrible cracking noise echoed out as the gemstone disintegrated, and Green Diamond flopped out onto the floor. With a happy tinkling, Private Ruby tackled him into a hug.
“Quickly, get him to the infirmary.”
Shouts and screams echoed out across the castle s, Luna grabbed Coal, and they vanished in a flash of light.
When they rematerialized, they were in a large hall, surrounded by dogs that were cowering away from Butterfly Effect, as the distorted creature capered and danced amongst discarded weapons and armour, chasing after the only visible guard as he duck and dodged. When she noticed the two newcomers, she flashed in a teleport, catching the guard with her tail as she turned to face Coal and Luna. His form blurred and distorted, and soon another dog ran with the pack.
“Coal?”
Luna’s voice was more inquisitive than worried, but there was still an undercurrent. Butterfly burst out laughing.
“He told you…ha…his name was… Coal? What’s wrong ‘Coal’, haha, couldn’t bear to see Luna use anything other than that cutesy nickname?”
“I don’t know, it should have worked!”
“Oh come on, little burning Coal. You should've calculated it doesn’t work that way, and you can’t stop me ending this little vendetta once and for all.”
“ENOUGH!. Butterfly Effect, surrender!”
“Shut up, Luna, the adults are talking.”
A wave of her antennae, and Luna’s head was covered in bubble of magic, her mouth opening and closing soundlessly, her eyes widened in panic.
“Luna!”
“She’ll be fine, alicorns can breathe vacuum.”
“Butterfly, please, end this. Your parents want their daughter back.”
“No, they want a nice friendly ‘good guy’. Dad’s gone soft, doesn’t know what chaos is anymore.”
“Your Dad leaned the wisdom of friendship.”
“You sound like an old man.”
There was a crack of time colliding, and Coal fell over, wizend legs unable to support an aged frame. He raised a head weighed down by a heavy white beard, but didn’t speak.
“Ha, maybe I should just leave you like this! Adios, amigo!”
Butterfly Effect flapped over to the open door behind them, but collided painfully with it as it was wrapped in a blue aura and wrenched shut. She barely ducked aside as Luna’s bolt slammed into it.
“Arrogant little goddess!”
Butterfly responding with bolts of her own, although unlike Luna’s straight blue rays, they warped and danced and curved in dizzying patterns, dodging around shields, and diving into the space where Luna had been, although she wasn’t, having dissolved into shadow and fled across the floor, up the wall and onto the ceiling, where she hung upside down, grabbing shards of crystal from the walls and floor and throwing them at Butterfly, who fell apart, becoming a cloud of butterflies that swept up towards the Moon Princess and swarmed around her, slicing and slashing with razor-sharp wings. Ignoring the pain, Luna reached out to one of the torches and grabbed the flame, dragging it out in a wave of heat. Butterfly came back together and cried out as the heat, unpleasant to a pony, but lethal to an insect, washed over her. She snarled in fury.
“Luna! I always wondered why horswolves were associated with your moon. Let’s find out!.”
With the last word, there was a wrenching twist of chaotic magic, and Luna lost her magical grip on the ceiling, falling to the ground with a sickening thud, where she writhed as her body cracked and warped, her long ears shortening into triangles and lengthening again, horsehair shifting to fur and back again, her eyes flickering between gold and blue. Butterfly grimaced, and blasted opened the door.
“That should keep you busy, and just to make sure you can’t interfere…”
A pulse of magic swept across the Crystal Castle. Alarms sounded as spiderwebs of crystal lattice spread across every window, and doors magically slammed shut and locked. The whole building thrummed with power as the defences activated. Barely satisfied, Butterfly stormed off down the corridor.
Luna groaned, and concentrated, forcing her power inwards and driving the changes away, one step at a time. After an agonisingly long minute, she stood up. Then she fell over again, glancing back in horror at where one of the butterflies had hamstrung her. She looked over at the now-aged stallion who had brought her here and spoke with a voice as warm as the depths of space.
“Coal. Explain thyself.”
“I don’t know why it didn’t work!”
“That was not a power consistent with a chaos-warped pony, closer to Discord himself. Thou art too close to Butterfly to have been assigned to stop her, so thou art here for thine own reasons. Explain.”
“We don’t have time!”
“The wards have been activated improperly, they will hinder her, or anyone else, just as much as us.”
Coal looked up at Luna, and sighed.
“I’m from the future, so’s she. She came back to stop me being born. I came back using the spell that doesn’t let you alter the past, that’s why I thought that if I came within line-of-sight, she’d be stopped, caught up in my jaunt and subject to the same rules.”
The entire room darkened as a splintering noise echoed through the corridors. Coal looked up, panicked. Luna remained impassive.
“How can I stop her?”
“She’s powerful, but Time isn’t her thing, she’ll have a focus of some kind, a talisman the spell is bound into.”
Another sound of wards and doors collapsing. If Coal remembered right, then there was only one left before she’d be able to fly straight for Starlight’s room. Unable to teleport and hamstrung, there was no way Luna could reach her in time. He’d failed.
Luna thought differently, and deliberately let her concentration slip. The change wrought on her, suppressed but not dispelled, washed over her, and within seconds the regal Alicorn had been replaced with a wolf of equal stature. A bark, and the transmuted guards crawled from what hiding places they’d sheltered in. Luna howled a command, and the guards assembled around her, and then she loped down the corridor, followed by a pack that, even in face of death or worse, would follow the Lunar Princess and do their duty.
Butterfly Effect was annoyed. What should have been a quick jaunt and the removal of an annoying problem had become far more difficult. Still, this was the last warded door, and judging by the cracks across it, it would fall soon.
Why can’t he just leave me be? It’s not like he’s got the copyright on time travel, I mean, his mother did it first! And why can’t everyone just let me have some fun! It’s not like I do anything that can’t be fixed…eventually. Unless someone really annoys me. Ugh. Wait, what was tha…
A wolf that outmassed her by a significant margin landed on her back, forcing her to the ground, and a painful impact. She snarled with fury, grabbed Luna with her magic and lifted her off, when another nipped her leg. Dropping Luna, she kicked out, drawing blood with her claws, and that’s when the pack descended, darting in and out, nipping her then moving away so swiftly she couldn’t make a counterattack. After several painful bits she felt a tugging at her neck. One moment of panic later and it was all over, the silver chain shattering and the pendant coming loose. Luna darted away, the amulet clamped in her jaws. Butterfly shrieked and waved her limbs, her body dissolving into a puddle that then… began laughing.
Butterfly popped back up again, wheezing.
“Did you really think I’d be that stupid? That’s not the focus, I swallowed the focus to stop idiots like you doing stupid things like that! Now, go AWAY!”
The direwolf that Luna had become was batted by an invisible force, and crashed through the window, falling out of sight. Maybe the fall would be enough to kill the meddling Princess, although Butterfly doubted it. The remaining wolves were swiftly collared and leashed to a stake driven into the crystal floor, and Butterfly returned to the door.
Within seconds it opened, and Butterfly strode into the room, briefly taking stock of it. Crystal Guards stood at arms, blocking her progress, they’d be easily dealt with. Behind them was Sunburst, his horn lit. Unimportant, the royal Crystaller might be brilliant, but he couldn't cast to save his life. Maybe she should kill him? Just to be sure. Behind him was a small creature, their butter-yellow hair, multi-coloured wings and feelers peeking out from behind Sunburst’s legs. Such a curious combination of features, just like hers.
Just like hers…
There was a terrible burning pain in her gut as the talisman tried to hold the spell together in face of the paradox. She choked and gasped, and the Crystal Guards looked on in shock as the attacker they’d been prepared to die fighting toppled over in agony. There was a muffled thump and she coughed up a spray of blood. Ticking noises swept over her, and she vanished into a white portal as the overworked talisman finally exploded, and the spell holding her in the past dissolved, dragging her, and her magic, back into the future.
The stake she’d left faded into nothing as the wolves leashed to it became ponies again. Coal rapidly became younger, orange returning to his mane and beard, and, far below, Luna, still clutching the silver pendant, returned to pony form. The discomfort of the transformation woke her from unconsciousness, but she could only whimper as the consequences of her fall swept over her. Now that the monster had become a pony again, she was quickly reached by a small army of crystal ponies, all desperate to help the Princess of Night.
Coal knew what the fading magic meant, and, with a relieved smile, let go of his own spell, a rushing wind and white light heralding the implosion of his own departure.
Starlight was exhausted, but happy, holding both her husband and her son. Her best friends were here, Trixie and Twilight both, to share in her joy. Cadance was also here, her help during the long delivery having been invaluable. Fluttershy had left, apparently Luna had suffered some kind of injury during a security breach earlier, an event Starlight had missed entirely due to being somewhat distracted, and she’d wanted to see to the Princess’ wounds.
There was the sound of an argument from outside, and Luna came in, closely followed by Fluttershy, who was, in her quiet way, chastising the princess for overtaxing herself. With good reason, judging by the many bandages and casts Luna was wearing, causing her to more resemble some ancient mummy queen rather than the modern Princess she was. Luna, for her part, was insistent she was fine. As they entered, Cadance shot them a dark look, and Fluttershy fell silent, soon followed by Luna, who meekly begged the new mother’s pardon, and asked to see the foal.
Starlight was eager to oblige, and soon an appreciative crowd had gathered to examine the unicorn colt, with his grey coat and faint wisps of a flame-orange mane. Luna stroked it thoughtfully.
“Like a little coal. I wonder what fires you will ignite.”
Twilight looked over at her curiously, but Luna dismissed it with a shake of her head and a swift smile. There was a brief commotion as Shining entered with Flurry, Spike and Thorax. Spike was blushing, and although such a thing wouldn’t be noticeable on Thorax’ black chitin, something in his posture suggested similar embarrassment. Cadance shot her husband a questioning glance, and received a nod in response. With a satisfied smile, she invited the pair over to look at the foal.
“Have you decided on a name yet?”
“We decided to name him after a wizard that inspired us and that we owe a great deal to.”
Twilight and Trixie looked at each other, but it was Trixie who spoke first.
“But Trixie is a filly’s name.”
“And Twilight is generally also considered feminine.”
Flurry Heart bounced over, her small frame meaning she couldn’t see what was going on, remembering her mother’s admonishments about flying indoors, she looked up, silently asking permission. When it was received, she flapped up, hovering near to the newborn colt. He opened his eyes and she squeaked in surprise and joy, and Starlight smiled even wider.
“Flurry, say hello to Star Swirl.”