The Revenge of Dr. Negative

Clover the Clever's theory of Variable History states that there are certain events she calls 'Lynchpins' which determine the outcome of other events throughout history. This so called 'ripple point effect' is analogous to dropping a rock in a pool of otherwise still water. If a rock is dropped in a certain way, it will create very specific ripples in the water. However, if a single variable is changed - say, that the rock is dropped in even the most minutely different manner - you will get a radically different result.

Although there is no known way to test this theory, it stands to reason that even when events in history occur in very similar ways, a single change will produce catastrophic results for every single other event connected to that change.

-From the manual of Temporal and Spatial Anomalies, Third Ed.

~~~~~~Manehatten Skyport~~~~~~

Two young ponies - both of them Unicorns, both with matching white coats and manes of pink and bright orange, respectively, stood in the private cabin as the airship slowly sailed in to its docking bay. Normally, they would stand and enjoy the sight of the modern technology providing some manner of flight to everypony in Equestria... but right now, the pink-maned mare was too busy staring out over the city. Her ears were perked up and her eyes straining as though trying to see some object far away.

"Did you sense that?" Lady Celestia proclaimed in a soft hushed voice. "There... again! That magic!" she said, her voice rising in volume and delight. She did a little cavorting dance "It can be no other! I would know that magic anywhere!" She exulted brightly, with Lord Solaris looking on in patient amusement. "She is here, here in Manehatten! The Element of Magic!" Then she turned on her heels, her eyes widening with sudden realization. "Which must mean..."

Lord Solaris grinned slowly. "The one who performed the Rainboom must be the Element of Loyalty. Hah!" He smacked the ground with his hoof and a triumphant grin. "Superb! Just superb!  We must be cautious, however. The one thing we are absolutely certain of is..." He trailed off, giving Celestia a stern and reminding look even as she continued to do her little dance.

Celestia paused and laughed softly. "We must not interfere with their friendship. I remember, Sunbutt." She smirked at him and smacked her flank against his. "Don't get your mane all tousled. We won't do more than get their names and looks, so we can make sure nothing else interferes with them. Of course, with our fortunes - they're probably already with Daring Do and Rosetta, so we'll hardly even have to look for them."

Solaris chuckled softly. "I fear you may be only too right. Still, I do hope Rosetta is showing them a good time around town. I wonder what their names are." He mused, scratching at his chin. "We'll have to double our efforts to find the other four, but with two of the elements already together, perhaps it will simply happen naturally?" He posited, and Celestia chuckled in response. His smile turned wry. "Yes, yes. I know. Wishful thinking on our part, eh?"

Celestia shook her head. "Come on now, Mister. We're going to have to move fast if we intend to intercept them in town." She trotted towards the door to their cabin, her tail frisking fetchingly from side to side. Solaris just laughed and trotted after her - enjoying the opportunity to get an eyeball of her flank from this angle.

Perhaps everything really was going to be fine.

~~~~~~The Macintosh Club~~~~~~

A thin barrier of power separated the two ponies physically, but far more than that separated their minds. "What are you doing here, Shiny? And wearing that?" Twilight blurted out a moment later, pointing at his outlandish black outfit. Her mind was racing with every conceivable possibility that could have led to this strange set of events...but Shining was still weeping silently, and every single instinct she had was more powerful even than her innate sense of caution.  No matter how strange this world was, no matter how insane things had become, no matter how scared she was that she could never, ever return home... This stallion was still her brother, alternate universe or no alternate universe.

The shield of violet power vanished in a moment, and Twilight strode over to the stallion and hugged him. Every rational, logical part of her brain was screaming at her to stop and she refuted it After a few moments, his tears ceased and she stepped back quickly as he recollected himself. "You must..." he croaked out. "You must tell me what happened." He said, blindly groping for reason in a world where reason seemed to have gone on holiday. The dark version of Fluttershy slowly drew up alongside him, and was watching her with careful - almost clinical eyes.

Twilight shook her head slowly. "I don't know what's going on, Shining. Things are happening that I don't fully understand yet... but I need you to trust me and let me figure it out." Twilight replied, with quiet conviction - hoofsteps carrying her slowly back to the door. "I need you to... to stay away from Dash until... until I know more." She heard the roar of an engine behind her slowly coming closer to the back door. "Please. Both of you." She plead - hoping beyond hope that there was a peaceful solution to this.

Shining Armor's face became pained, his eyes squinting shut. "I..." He started, hesitatingly, then he took in a deep breath. "Lady Butterfly." He said, in a firm and commanding voice. "It is truly regrettable that the pegasus and her friend escaped before we could capture them, is it not?" He said, turning firmly away from Twilight as he did so. His hooves clasped behind his back as he began to walk away.

Dark Fluttershy... Fluttergoth, maybe? Twilight couldn't call her Fluttershy. Maybe Butterfly was her name now. At any rate, she looked startled at those words, and gave Twilight a searching look. "Did she just say..." She whispered softly, then shook her head firmly. "Jahwohl Commandant, truly regrettable. We should arrange pursuit immediately." She cottoned on quickly, adopting the same firm 'nothing to see here' tone of voice as Shining as she firmly turned her back on Twilight.

Twilight bit at her lip and then softly smiled. Butterfly slipped through the door to the bar, with Shining right on her heels... save that he turned around and spoke softly. "I can only do so much. They will chase you. If they take you... I shall have to take you to the Fuhrerin." He paused, and took in a deep breath. "Good luck... Twily." He said gently, then redonned his cap and slipped through the bar room door.

Twilight shook her head slowly. Fuhrerin? Germane for Leader... female connotation. But he wasn't just saying it in a formal sense... Suddenly, the roar of the engine behind her was too much to ignore - and she ran her flank out the door. Rosetta had questions to answer - they had a lead to follow. And Twilight was beginning to think they were running out of time.

~~~~~~~~~~

The bar was cleared out. Applejack and her associates had left mere moments ago, just before Commandant Panzer had gone into the back room.  The guards were already outside, piling into vehicles to give chase to the escaping ponies. The Colonel was in charge, as was proper for something of this nature - but the stormponies were his subordinates, and they knew their orders. They would.... restrain the Colonel if necessary. All of this was good, as it gave Shining Armor time to think.

To think about the impossibility he had just confronted - to think about his neat and ordered world turned upside down. To think about the evidence he had now seen of Doctor Negative's treachery before his very eyes. He was angry now - oh yes, very angry. But more than that, he now knew beyond any shadow of a doubt that the Doctor had been both lying and telling the truth in the same breath. The truth - that he had uncovered a mysterious portal to another dimension, one in which all things were different in some very important way. The lie - that he had not used it to influence any events or occurrences here beyond the few individuals he had kidnapped for his... plans.

Lady Butterfly joined him in the empty room as he slowly sank into a rough wooden chair and placed his head in his hooves. "I had never thought to see her alive again." He whispered softly, his eyes shut in anguish. "I had been so very certain... so very certain that she had died that day." He continued to whisper, thumping his forehead against his hooves. "Butterfly, I am torn. It is clear the Doctor is the one responsible for this, yet do I thank him with all of my heart for returning her to me? Or do I curse him, for surely this is some scheme on his part?"

A gentle hoof touched his shoulder as it had so many times before, and then encircled his neck as they also had so many times before. "Hush now, Commandant. We know very little as of yet. Do not harm that magnificent brain of yours over this cruel twist that fate has laid upon you." She spoke now in that gentlest of voices. "We must trust that she is skilled enough to evade the Colonel... although I have few doubts to that, given the power I saw in that shield. We shall follow her carefully, and speak to her when the time is right." She soothed, gently kissing his cheek.

He sighed expressively then nodded. "Ja ja... You are right, as always." He cocked an eyebrow at her. "She is chasing the Doctor, is she not? Perhaps we need not follow her - but merely lay in wait for her at the next obvious step on the trail." That got a firm nod from Butterfly, and he stood up - happy to now have a definitive plan of action. "And who knows? Perhaps she will be sympathetic to our cause, and we need not trouble ourselves with worries about allegiances." He remarked with an upbeat tone.

Yes. That was an encouraging thought, wasn't it?

~~~~~~~~~~~~~

"I need answers, Rosetta. Now." Twilight Sparkle growled out, as the large black vehicle banked around a turn so hard that it nearly slammed the lot of them into the doors. Scooter Roll was behind the wheel, with Applebloom sitting in the front seat and cradling a lethal looking weapon in her hooves - her eyes darting from window to window as they rocketed down the streets of Manehatten. "You knew I'd know him, you knew I'd recognize him. How? I haven't told you a thing about my personal story beyond some bare details about my world!"

Rosetta shot an angry look at Daring before sighing gustily and speaking quickly. "It made logical sense, once you kept seeming to recognize individuals from our world but obviously seeing differences. Once I saw how you looked at Miss Kitty, I was reasonably certain our worlds had parallels. What I failed to realize until just a few minutes ago was how those similarities must have effected both of our worlds." Rosetta looked rather... frustrated, Twilight noted.

She kept speaking, her voice pitched low and trembling with some kind of emotion. "I know what you want to ask. There was a filly once named Twilight Sparkle, who wanted nothing more than to go to Princess Celestia's School for Gifted Unicorns. But she was not granted entry, having failed to perform any notable magic upon the dragon's egg." Rosetta's face was crestfallen, and she was shaking a little. "That little filly could not bear the failure of her magic, and so she renounced it completely. She went to a private school instead, and hurled herself into academia. After many years of study, she received a full scholarship at Canterlot University at the unprecedented age of fourteen. There, she met a young archeology student who was already starting to use the name Daring Do."

Rosetta sucked in a breath, her words coming out in a rush now as she plowed on, trying desperately to get out the words. "That same year, that young mare was... involved in an attack on the university.." She looked away. "There was a bomb. She was rushed to the hospital, but Twilight Sparkle was declared dead that same day." Rosetta notably swallowed, and Twilight felt a cold sweat running down her spine. "Then Lady Celestia arrived. She could not save my previous life... but she could give me a new one. I was needed, she said, though she did not say why. She only said that it was a matter of destiny. I was scared, I was dying, and I was desperate. I took her offer. It seemed like the only logical thing to do."

Rosetta gestured downwards. "I awoke in a hospital bed, as you see me now. A newly minted student at the university. Daring was the only pony allowed to know my secret, because there was frankly no way to keep it from her. My family, my friends, everypony else had to think I had died in that explosion." She looked down, pawing her hoof at the car seat. "I took on a new name,  a new identity. But I couldn't completely escape my past. I watched my brother and my foalsitter weep over my grave. I watched my mother descend into depression and my father unable to cope with the strain. Guilt nearly took my life. Daring was the only thing that stopped the knife." she admitted, her words trailing away as she gently tapped her forehooves together.

Daring shook her head slowly. "Don't beat yourself up, Rosie. You got put through more crap than anypony could ever be expected to handle." she growled out, looking just a little angry. Twilight was a little too busy being stunned to note much more than that about her current attitude.

Then that stunned sense snapped and Twilight found her voice again. "Wait a minute! You said 'Foalsitter'! Do you mean Cadence?!" She exclaimed, her voice rising to a yell loud enough to make Rainbow Dash wince a little. Rosetta nodded, looking a touch confused and Twilight ran a hoof through her mane, mussing it up quite a bit as her thoughts raced to-and-fro. "Okay. Okay, this is starting to get really complicated. Because all of this presupposes one extremely glaring error in history." She pointed a hoof at Dash. "It all comes back to her. Somehow, some way - she never performed the Sonic Rainboom in this world."

Dash shook her mane out vigorously, her voice low and scared. "Well yeah, duh Twilight! What worries me is why. I know I wouldn'ta stopped trying to pull it off, no matter what happened to me! That was part of my dream! So... What happened to me?" Her words trailed off into a terrified whisper.

Daring shook her head, then stopped and spun around in her seat. "Oh buck no, They're on our tails!" She growled out. "Scoots! Get us outta here!" She yelled over her shoulder and dove back down, grabbing at something under the seat.  "C'mon, there's always one... aha! Rosie, catch!" She yelled, tossing up a thick metal device that everypony in this world seemed to be carrying - which Rosie caught with a glow of her magic and a Clack-Clack sound filled the cabin. "Twilight, we'll figure the emotional crap out later, Right now we could use a little magic!" Daring yelled, as she produced another similar looking object and worked the sliding handle on the front with her forehoof.

Twilight smacked her hoof into her face and then growled in irritation. Much to her surprise, Dash had gone from abject terror to helpless laughter. Twilight arched an eyebrow at her and got a grin in return. "Come on Twi! I don’t care how screwed up this world is, we're in the middle of a chase scene with Daring Do! Isn't that freakin' Awesome?" she proclaimed, then yelped as the back window of the vehicle shattered under incoming fire - Rolling off the seat into the space between them and covering up her head. "Shield might be nice right now, Twi!"

Twilight turned her head to gaze out of the back window - where five large black vehicles were weaving about the street and firing those weapons at them. Her eyes narrowed and her blood began to boil a little. She had had just about enough of this crap. In just two days, Dash had been tied up, hurt, shot at repeatedly, put in all manner of danger, and now these ponies wanted to kidnap her for reasons unknown? Not on my watch. Twilight growled and pulled magic into her horn. She knew a thing or two about science too, and she was about to display a few facts of physics to these so-called stormponies.

Her horn flashed with bright violet magic that seemed to fill the cabin of her car, and a trio of energy blasts went rocketing back into the oncoming vehicles - the front three vehicles dodged her shots, but the ones in the rear were not so lucky - taking massive blows to the front and flipping end over end through the air to crunch into the rode, their wheels spinning helplessly in the air. Daring blinked in astonishment... and so did Rosetta. "Whoa." Rosetta said, all pretenses to her normal formal language dropped. "I didn't know I could do that."

Twilight's face split into a fierce grin - at long last, she could finally take some control over this damned world, and all of its damned insanities. She let loose another torrent of magical blasts, screaming in arcane words of Power as she flung her frustration against the world. The cars dodged again, though one faceless enemy took the shot as he hung out the side of the vehicle, sending him to slump limply out the window. Twilight's body pitched as they screeched down a side alleyway.

Luckily, Dash had grabbed hold of her legs at some point and grinned up at her. "Hold it steady, Twilight!

She yelled up, and Twilight nodded. She licked the sweat off of her lips as the vehicles streaked down the alleyway behind them - Twilight braced herself against the car and flung another force bolt from her horn towards the lead car. Just as intended, it smashed into the vehicle... unfortunately, she hit it at such an angle that it launched into the air, with the other two cars zooming under it dramatically.

Twilight snarled in frustration as the shots from the strange weapons started to pepper their vehicle again, and threw up a momentary shield to deflect the incoming fire while Daring and Rosetta unloaded shells of their own into the oncoming cars. "I need another alley!" Twilight yelled, a sudden moment of inspiration grabbing her - Scooter responded by banking the car with another hard left down a new alleyway. Twilight waited for a second, and then she flung up a ten foot tall wall of power in the narrow alley behind them. They all watched as the black vehicles zoomed past the alleyway, and Twilight grinned down at Dash before feeling a touch dizzy - swaying in place and slumping down into the seat and feeling just a little bit drained.

"Scooter, we need to lose em!" Daring yelled, as Dash scrambled up onto the seat and wiped Twilight's brown with her cap. "Hey, you okay?" She asked quietly, as Twilight nodded just a little. She really wasn't all that tired, just a little dizzy. That was normal after three big whammy spells like she'd just unleashed, Dash shooed Daring away as the car continued to pitch and heave from side to side as Scooter performed some kind of acrobatics with the motorized vehicle.

Dash spoke quietly to her, her voice pitched soft and concerned. "I think we need to focus on finding Rarity, Twi. We can't sit here and keep moaning and groaning about how things are different. Once we've found Rarity, we can get the heck back home and this'll all be a funny memory, okay?"  Twilight paused for a moment to absorb those words, then nodded slowly - swallowing the lump in her throat. The thought of leaving Shiny like that - thinking she was dead, tortured by the cataclysmic loss of his sister... But what could she do? This wasn't her world. She didn't belong here...

....Did she?