A Party For All Ages

Chapters

Pinkie's Best Idea Ever
Meet and Greet
Outside Natural Time
A Long Way from Home

Pinkie's Best Idea Ever

At the dawn of pony, some scholars claim, before language, before magic, predators could be lurking anywhere. Sabre-toothed felines, proto-manticores, and dragons of untold size struck terror into the hearts of neighanderthals as they migrated through the primordial jungles and humid savannas in search of food and shelter. These primitive ponies followed their instinct to herd, to always keep together, to keep eyes in every direction. Safety in numbers. Nopony goes wandering off on their own.

This urge to gather together, to keep to the herd, followed the pony though every stage of its development throughout history. Perhaps the ponies’ inclination towards friendship can be traced back to this peculiar impulse to gather together in spontaneous groups. It’s just, as these same scholars with the tweed jackets say, in their nature.

Is there any truth to this evolutionary explanation? Not even Celestia knows for sure. But it’s easy to see a demonstration of the herding gene at work in the little town of Ponyville. An impromptu crowd can appear at any time for any reason. Be it a gardening expo, another bland speech given by Mayor Mare, a loud argument over prices at an alfalfa market stand, or an infestation of property-devouring parasprites, Ponyvillians can be counted on with a minute’s notice to end up shoulder-to-shoulder and craning their necks to see whatever it is that catches their collective fancy. (Except, of course, the pegasi, whose ancient inclination is more accurately to swarm.)

On this particular Friday afternoon, the daily crowd filled up Marigold Park to watch the last few ponies deposit small objects into a short wooden crate. Mayor Mare decreed that anypony could donate just about anything they wanted, so long as it didn’t exceed certain size and weight requirements. The gray-maned bureaucrat herself beamed from a nearby dias which was decorated with bunting and streamers for the occasion, because that’s the sort of thing you do. Alongside her stood Princess Twilight Sparkle, who privately wished she could just mingle with the crowd. But her new title required her to be present in an official capacity, crown and all. Nevertheless, she smiled broadly; this project was her idea, after all.

Rarity had placed in the crate a quartz-studded scarf of her own design, embroidered with a cursive “R.” Applejack donated a copy of her photograph of the entire Apple family gathered in front of Sweet Apple Acre’s newly re-raised barn. With some reluctance, Rainbow Dash parted with a poster of a Fillydelphia Wonderbolt show from three years ago. Fluttershy's offering was an album filled with pictures of all her animal friends; it almost exceeded the weight limit.

The end of the queue had come and gone, which prompted a brief round of hoof-stomping applause. Mayor Mare took that as her cue to step up to the podium.

“Citizens of Ponyville, Princess Twilight Sparkle and I would like to thank you all for your generous contributions to our town’s first time capsule! When it is opened again in one hundred years, I am certain that our esteemed descendants will learn much about Ponyville’s wonderful accomplishments. Seeing you all here today reminds me of a story of when I was a filly...”

The citizenry took this as their cue to tune the Mayor out and chat amongst themselves. Twilight quietly stepped down from the platform and joined her friends. Two work stallions wearing unnecessary hard hats and orange vests approached the crate with hammers and nails.

Applejack scanned the crowd with a concerned look. Rainbow alighted next to her and grinned, reading her mind.

“Hey, AJ, I bet if I ask where she is, she’ll appear in, like, five seconds or less.”

“What, again? No way!”

“Two bits.”

“Yer on.”

Each of them spat on a hoof and bumped them together. Rainbow hovered above the others and cleared her throat.

“Hey, guys, has anypony seen Pinkie Pie?”

Fluttershy and Rarity exchanged a puzzled look. Twilight took a breath to answer in the negative.

“Waaaaaaaaaait!” came a rapidly-approaching high-pitched cry. The crowd parted and a pink shape plowed through, skidding to a halt in front of the crate and resolving into a panting Element of Laughter.

There was the sound of a groan, a raspy chuckle, and the clinking of coins.

“Whew, made it!” gasped Pinkie. “Sorry, I’m...late...but the...letterpress...was harder...to use...than I...thought!” She leaned against the box to catch her breath, fanning herself with one forehoof while holding up a pink envelope in the other.

Rarity took the envelope with her magic. It read “You’re invited!” in fancy gold script on the front. She pulled a card out, opened it, and read it aloud to the others:

HELLO TO ALL

PONIES OF THE FUTURE!

You are cordially invited to a

BASH, SOIREE, GET-TOGETHER, MEET-AND-GREET,

GALA, BANQUET, CELEBRATION, BLOWOUT,

SHINDIG, HOOTENANNY, RECEPTION,

AND PARTY

for

Time Travellers!

HOSTED BY ME

(PINKIE PIE)

Where: Ponyville Town Hall

When: Friday, March 28th, 1219 YCL

7 PM (Sharp!)

Come as you are!

(No need to RSVP!)

IT’S GONNA BE FUN-A-FUN-FUN!

“And you’re all invited, too, of course,” said Pinkie, hugging all five of her friends simultaneously, “I was going to make each of you an invitation of your own, but I ran out of time.”

Applejack pulled herself free first.

“A party for who now?” she said, squinting at the invitation.

“It’s lovely,” said Rarity, handing the card to Applejack. “I especially like the silver-gilt border. But...are you serious about this?”

Rainbow flapped over Applejack, scrutinizing Pinkie’s hoofiwork, the corner of her mouth quivering with the suppression of a belly-laugh.

“I know I only gave myself a week to get everything ready,” said Pinkie, “but I just couldn’t wait any longer. This is the best idea ever!” She bounced to an impressive height.

“But, um,” said Fluttershy, scooting aside just before Pinkie could land on her, “what made you think of...having a party...for...?”

“‘Ponies of the Future’?” snerked Rainbow, handing the card to Twilight.

“Oh, I think I have a pretty good idea,” said the newest princess.

“Well, the other day, I was waiting for a batch of apple cinnamon brownies to finish baking,” said Pinkie, recounting the story in a tone normally reserved for recounting legends of ancient times, “and I saw the latest edition of the Ponyville Express sitting on the counter that Mr. Cake had been reading, and I looked and there was the headline about the time capsule, and I read the article and the part about it being buried for a hundred years, and I thought about the future and how the ponies there must be flying around in rocket ships and hoverbikes, and boldly partying where nopony has partied before, and then I thought about the time when Twilight went back in time to meet Twilight --”

Twilight, for her part, did not roll her eyes or put a hoof to her face. She settled on a barely-noticeable blush, a headshake, and a smirk. That was the kind of serenity that princesses strived for.

“-- and I thought, well, the future must be just full of ponies who can travel through time!”

Rainbow plopped to the ground and started giggling uncontrollably, then stopped abruptly when Applejack gave her a firm poke in the ribs.

“I jus’ don’t know, Pinkie,” said the cowpony, “is this really what you wanna donate to the time capsule? Wouldn’t ya rather give somethin’ more...personal?” She couldn’t help but notice that the workponies were standing close by with their forelegs crossed and frowning.

“Future ponies sound scary,” said Fluttershy, wringing her forehooves. “What if ponies aren’t very...friendly in the future?”

“I think it’s a wonderful idea,” said Twilight. A pause followed, in which Twilight was met with surprised looks.

“You do?” asked Rarity.

“Sure. If there’s one thing Pinkie wants to be remembered for, it’s being the greatest party host in Ponyville. What better legacy can she leave behind than an invitation like this?”

The purple alicorn nuzzled Pinkie. The others looked at each other, shrugging and nodding; there was certainly no arguing with that.

“Any excuse for a Pinkie party sounds delightful to me,” agreed Rarity.

“Sounds like a real hoot,” said Applejack.

“Oh, why not?” said Rainbow Dash. “I guess it’s no crazier than last month’s Leap Day Spectacular when she invited all those frogs.”

“The frogs had a blast,” remembered Fluttershy.

Twilight magically returned the card to its envelope and levitated it carefully into the crate with the other trinkets. She gave the workponies a nod, who responded with a half-hearted bow, and lifted the lid onto the crate.

“...and so,” concluded the Mayor, “I hereby dedicate this time capsule to the hardworking citizens of Ponyville, and to our greatest patron, Princess Twilight Sparkle!”

A polite smattering of applause emanated from what remained of the crowd; most had wandered off halfway through the Mayor’s tangent about how she got her cutie mark. Twilight just smiled and waved.

Only the Mayor, the princess, and her friends stuck around to watch the workponies hammer the crate shut and push it into the large gleaming steel cylinder. It took three of them to secure the lid, which had a plaque bolted to its face that read:

PRINCESS SPARKLE TIME CAPSULE

TO BE OPENED IN

1319 YCL

Applejack helped the workers lower the cylinder into the ground, grunting with effort around the rope in her teeth. The pulleys squeaked under the strain, guiding the ropes from which the unwieldy capsule hung. Rainbow yawned wide. She said her goodbyes and flew off before the metal tube hit bottom. Rarity and Fluttershy did the same, waving and trotting off to find lunch. Applejack fetched a spade and assisted with the burial, easily keeping pace with the sweating stallions until only the plaque remained visible. They could almost sense the capsule settling in for a long slumber next to the granite statue of a smiling, rearing, long-forgotten mare probably born before the founding of Ponyville.

Pinkie Pie, in an amazing feat of patience, had stayed until the end of the ceremony, beaming the whole time, until anticipation practically seeped from her party pores. Then she shook Applejack’s right hoof and Twilight’s right wing before bounding away like a cheetah in the direction of Sugarcube Corner, visions of hoverbikes dancing in her head.

Applejack tipped her hat back and leaned on her shovel, watching Pinkie disappear down the road. She caught sight of Twilight’s smirk as she magicked the crown from her head.

“You know somethin’ I don’t, Twi? Ain't she gonna be disappointed?”

“I know Pinkie. She’ll be just fine.”

The following Friday, the setting sun cast long shadows on the road behind Roseluck as she followed her sisters into the square. She still had one of the fliers Pinkie had nailed and pasted on nearly every available surface, including the side of her house. She glanced at it once more; it showed a picture of the town hall with a pair of rocket ships streaking away on either side and a cartoony flying saucer zipping by above the roof. It announced in a bold, ostentatious comic-book-cover font:

TIME TRAVELLERS’ PARTY! TONIGHT AT 5!

Town hall itself soon came into view. Not a single rocket ship or flying saucer in sight, but the windows glowed with flashing colors, and Rose could already feel the thumping of festive bass.

The flower trio stepped through the open doors, the sound of techno fully enveloping them. They gawked at the mass of ponies, some carrying drinks in plastic cups and shouting over the din, others jumping and dancing in front of the stage where head-bobbing Vinyl Scratch had set up her wub-station of turntables and monolithic Mareshall speakers. Magic-imbued lighting instruments swung and pivoted madly around her, painting the walls and high ceiling in a frenzy of dazzling reds, greens, and blues.

Long tables had been set up with bowls of punch of every flavor imaginable, and possibly some unimaginable ones. Other tables bore chips, dips, little cucumber sandwiches with happy little colorful toothpicks stuck in them, and a towering, ten-level cake covered in gummy bears, strawberries, and bright pink frosting, which leaned precariously to one side.

Three banners of impressive size hung from the upper balconies. The ones on the side proclaimed:

WELCOME TIME TRAVELLERS

while the largest one, stretched across the width of the hall, warmly read:

WELCOME TO 1219!

Rose leaned in close to Lily’s ear.

“So are there really supposed to be ponies from the future here?” she shouted.

Before Lily could answer, the hostess emerged from the mob, leaping right over Daisy’s head. She wore glowing plastic rings around her neck and forehooves, and was handing each of them a cup of punch. Her pet alligator Gummy rode on her poofy mane, wearing a tiny space helmet. He stared at them wall-eyed and gnawed on her party hat.

“Not yet!” she shouted. “Our special guests won’t be arriving until seven o’clock! In the meantime, there’s still plenty of goodies for grubbin’ and grooves for moovin’! Have some Ultra-Lemony Lemon, Lime, and Lemon punch! Enjoy!"

Pinkie winked at them and blended back into the party.

Rose took an experimental sip of her punch. She shuddered as her lips tried to turn inside out.

“Wow, that’s tart,” she managed.

About thirty minutes later, Rarity finally caught up to Pinkie, who was arranging custom-made sticker name badges in neat rows on the table next to the chocolate fountain. Each badge read:

Hello, My Name Is

followed by a blank, then:

And I’m From The Year

followed by another blank.

Rarity wore a silvery sequined gown which twinkled under the ballyhooing party light. Much to her delight, it had caught the eye of everypony around her, but now she took advantage in a lull in the music to speak with Pinkie.

“So how are you, darling? Everything going according to plan?”

“Oh, yesserie, even better than to plan!” chirped Pinkie. Gummy draped himself over her back, somehow able to doze off in spite of the cacophony. Rarity rested a hoof on the hostesses’ shoulder.

“Once again, I’m terribly sorry that Twilight couldn’t be here.”

Pinkie’s party smile slipped just a bit, and for a moment she stared off into space. Then she sighed and patted Rarity’s hoof.

“Aw, it’s alright. It’s not her fault she had to go to a peak in Saddle Arabia.”

“You mean, a summit?” Rarity asked gently.

“Yeah, that too. But Twilight’s a princess and that means she has lots of big responsibilities.”

“You know she’d be here if she could.”

The music started up again, a lively, bouncing tune.

“Oh, totally. It’s okay,” shouted Pinkie. “I’m gonna save her some cake and take some pictures and tell her all about it when she gets back on Monday! That’ll be super!”

Rarity felt a pang of affection for her friend, never failing to be amazed by Pinkie's perpetual optimism. She watched as Applejack bent backwards to negotiate a limbo stick being held by Fluttershy and Bon Bon. Applejack almost cleared the bar with ease until her hat fell off and she lost her balance trying to catch it, landing flat on her back, laughing all the way. Above Rarity’s head, Rainbow Dash danced as only a pegasus could, rolling and shuffling this way and that in mid-air surrounded by clapping, whistling weather ponies.

It really didn’t matter why they were here, thought Rarity. It only matters that Pinkie’s having a party.

The music faded into silence in mid-song, and the sound of a hoof tapping a microphone reverberated around the hall. The lights stopped flashing, replaced by soft white lights. Everypony turned to face Pinkie who had mounted the stage, bathed in a spotlight.

“Alright, ponies!” she shouted gleefully into the mike, causing a whine of feedback. Vinyl at her station grimaced and turned a couple of knobs.

“The big moment is finally here! Our guests of honor will be arriving in -- “ She craned her neck to look up at the big clock, illuminated by another spot.

“-- twenty seconds! Let’s give ‘em all a big Ponyville welcome!”

There was a moment’s hesitation while the crowd collectively realized what she was talking about. Then they clapped, and even offered a couple of obligatory catcalls.

Her fellow Elements of Harmony gathered near the foot of the stage. Rarity thought it would be a good idea for them to be nearby, as a show of support.

“Well...here goes nothing,” whispered Rainbow.

“Shush,” hissed Rarity.

Pinkie nodded to Vinyl, who pressed a button. A drumroll sounded over the speakers. Pinkie stood on her hind legs and pointed at the clock, her blue eyes almost maniacally wide.

“Ten! Nine! Eight!”

The crowd picked up on this and joined in. Applejack cringed, as if she were witnessing two locomotives barreling towards each other.

“Four! Three! Two! One!”

The ancient clock bonged with the first chime. The next six were lost in the cheering, a rousing fanfare replacing the drum roll. Pinkie’s whole head was an indistinct blur as she attempted to look in every direction at once, the toothy grin never faltering.

The cheering ebbed, then faded. The fanfare quit. The clock chimed for the seventh and final time. Everypony, as one, turned towards Pinkie. Applejack hid her face behind her hat.

An awful silence permeated the hall, the only sound the faint high-pitched tone of the inert speakers. Pinkie looked around, her smile still fixed. She lifted the mike again and pointed at the clock.

“Minus nine! Minus ten! Minus eleven!”

Somepony coughed. A few others tittered.

“Come on,” sighed Rarity. She trotted onstage, the others following slowly. She whispered something to Vinyl, who quickly magicked a record onto the turntable and ignited the raucous party music back to life.

She put a hoof over Pinkie’s shoulders and took the mike from her with her magic. Her other friends stood around her, plastered smiles all around.

“Let’s hear it for Pinkie Pie for yet another fabulous party!”

The crowd applauded in earnest, then resumed their conversations.

By nine o’clock, the hall had been deserted by its guests. Applejack helped carry the last of the speakers to Miss Scratch’s cart outside. Rarity magically pushed a broom around the floor, while Fluttershy started taking down the streamers from the balconies. Pinkie sat on the edge of the stage, idly swinging her back legs, absently petting Gummy at her side and half-frowning at the untouched cake. She wanted to save that for her VIP guests, and couldn’t bring herself to cut into it.

Rainbow Dash landed next to her, untying the knot from a balloon.

“Hey, Pinkie!” she said, and then sucked in a deep lungful of helium, picked up Gummy, and opened and closed his toothless jaws to make him “talk.”

“I dropped spot remover on my dog,” she squeaked, “and now I can’t find him anywhere!”

Pinkie snorted into her hoof. Rainbow laughed, which came out three octaves higher than normal, which just made the two of them laugh even harder.

“Good one, Dashie.”

Applejack came in and closed the big wooden doors.

“There’s no doubt about it,” she said as she tossed some discarded cups and paper plates into a wastebasket. “Everypony had a real good time tonight.”

“Yeah,” said Pinkie. “I guess you’re right.” She looked up at the banners and shook her head. “Even if my special guests didn’t come. It was a silly idea anyway.”

“It wasn’t that silly,” said Rainbow, the pitch of her voice restored. “I mean, remember that Arbor Day party when you invited Bloomberg to come all the way from Appaloosa? That was much sillier than this.”

Rarity shot her a look. Rainbow replied with a what? shrug.

Twelve feet above, Fluttershy froze with a foreleg halfway to pulling down another streamer. She cocked her head.
“Bloomberg never did RSVP,” giggled Pinkie. Applejack, across the room, chuckled.

“You know,” said Rarity, coming to Pinkie’s side, “we never did have an after-party to your Post-Winter-Wrap-Up Fling. You could make more of those delicious cakes shaped like tulips. What do you say?”

Fluttershy’s heart started pounding. Few ponies knew that part of her ability to communicate with animals came from her unusually sensitive hearing. In order for her to understand, for example, a red-crowned thrush when it wished her good morning, her ears had to be tuned to frequencies high above the normal range of pony auditory capabilities in order to comprehend all the nuances of an avian greeting. Which is how Fluttershy could make out the extremely high-pitched whistle that was steadily getting louder.

“Um...girls...?” she said too quietly.

“They're made from real tulip!” said Pinkie, successfully cheered up. She stood up and gave Rainbow, then Rarity, a hug.

“Eep!” said Fluttershy, who dropped her streamers, covered her ears, and hid behind the railing of a balcony. Rainbow took no notice as she flew up to take down one of the banners.

“Yep, awesome party,” she declared. “Although I think Vinyl might have had the music turned up louder than usual. My ears are still ringing.”

“Now that ya mention it,” said Applejack, “so are mine.”

“That’s strange,” said Rarity, frowning, “mine weren’t ringing before, but now...”

The noise resounded around the hall, and dropped in pitch to a insect-like buzz. Everypony dropped what they were doing, looking around the room for the source of the phantom sound. Fluttershy trembled, daring to lift her head an inch above the bannister to peer down.

“Look!” shouted Applejack. She pointed at one of the punch bowls, which vibrated more than the others, its contents swirling and bubbling. Before anypony could step forward to investigate, there was a sharp pop! of abrupt air displacement, and something materialized in the air a foot above the bowl, and then fell into it with a clang.

Rarity, being closest, cautiously walked over to the table, gritting her teeth with forced courage.

The punch bowl now contained an object roughly the shape and size of an ostrich egg. It gleamed with lustrous bronze or copper, or perhaps brass, studded with tiny hexagonal bolts. A short rod, like an antenna, extended from one side. Rarity’s blue eyes widened at the cherry-red ruby set into a ring on its other side. Rarity’s horn lit up blue.

“Don’t touch it!” cried Applejack, now at her side. Rarity’s aura disappeared. Rainbow swooped over and reached out a hoof. Applejack slapped it aside.

“I said don’t touch it!”

“I suppose,” said Rarity, swallowing hard, “it would be foolish to ask what that is.”

“Or where it came from,” offered Applejack.

“Look!” gasped Rainbow, backing away. The ruby on the half-submerged artifact had begin to glow brightly, and the rod swiveled on its own, pinging against the glass of the bowl. A pale-white glow surrounded it. Then it levitated itself a foot above the table, dripping yellow punch, and bobbed unsupported in place. High above, Fluttershy whimpered and covered her eyes.

“Rarity,” whispered Applejack. “I don’t suppose yer doin’ that, are ya?”

“No. No I’m not.”

“Shoot.”

The mechanical egg rotated in place, then stopped. It emitted a small bip, bip, bip sound. Then the ruby illuminated like a flashlight, projecting a dark red ellipse on the floor. Everypony shivered at the sensation of the air...moving around them. No, not the air; air implies wind. It felt more like the empty space itself bent, twisted, and folded in the direction of the red ellipse. The ponies could smell something like ozone or burning toast. Without knowing why, they all winced and knelt down for cover.

Pop!

The alien device and its ruby stopped glowing, and it fell back into the punch, but nopony took notice of this. The unicorn stallion who had just materialized out of the ether was far more interesting.

Time, as it often does in moments like this, stood still.

The yellow unicorn with a long blue mane wore a black suit, a black tie, a pair of saddlebags, and an expression of awe, standing stock-still.

He blinked his cobalt eyes.

“Did I?”

He turned his head.

“Am I?”

He looked down at himself, patting himself down to make sure he was in one piece. He gazed up into the hall. Then, he laughed, once, a deep hearty bark. The shocked mares followed his line of sight. He stared at the banner which read:

WELCOME TO 1219!

He took a deep breath.

“YEEEEEEEEEEEEEEES!” The new arrival jumped up, back-flipped, landed on his flank, and then lept up and danced, his saddlebags slipping onto the floor. He spun in place with his forelegs outstreched. His eyes watered. He laughed with unrestrained joy.

“I did it I did it I did it I did it I did it! Oh, smackly, I really did it! I’m here!”

He stopped spinning and bounded onto the stage and tap-danced. Applejack, Rarity, and Rainbow were still on the floor, dumbstruck. Fluttershy leaned over the railing, both terrified and curious.

Only then did the unicorn notice that he had a partner; a mare with wild, curly hair tapped alongside him, matching his every step. He stopped and dropped to one knee and clasped her hoof.

“Pinkie Pie, I presume?” he asked magnanimously.

“Uh huh,” said Pinkie, nodding with a glorious smile. The unicorn kissed her hoof and pulled her into a tight embrace, which Pinkie enthusiastically returned.

“You have no idea how long I’ve been waiting for this day,” he said, “How much of an inspiration you have been to me.” He wiped a tear from the corner of his eye.

“You’re so welcome!” said Pinkie, patting his back.

“You’ve gotta be kidding me!” said Rainbow, who flapped above this spectacle. The unicorn looked up at her, then at the other two thunderstruck mares, then at the pink-maned pegasus who floated down nearby.

“Everypony! Listen!” He released Pinkie and retrieved his saddlebags with the blue glow of his horn. He magicked open the clasp, which matched his cutie mark: a pair of orange, interlocking gears. He produced from one bag a short stack of notecards, which he levitated in front of himself. Then he reached inside his coat for a hidden switch. His black suit and tie came alive with every imaginable color, swirling and flowing around in a dazzling display.

“Oooo!” said Rarity.

“Ahem. Allow me to introduce myself,” said the stallion, reading off the first notecard. “My name is Eureka, and I’m an engineer from the year...” He paused for, yes, dramatic effect. “...1543! Over three hundred years in your future!”

“Yes!” shouted Pinkie, pumping a hoof in the air.

“I first want to thank you all for greeting this warm reception,” he read. Then he glanced up and noticed for the first time how empty the room was. He turned to Pinkie.

“Oh, drackle, am I late? I’m so sorry about that. Anyway, I just -- “

Bip, bip, bip.
Everypony turned. The egg-shaped device was airborne and glowing white again. The ruby projected its beam on a spot just above the towering cake.

“Ummmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm,” said Eureka, his eyebrows furrowed. “It’s not supposed to be doing that.”

There were three sounds. The first was a familiar pop! The second was the splash of the egg falling back into the punch. The third was the squishy thud of a pony dropping headfirst into a cake.

Eureka dropped his notes and rushed over to the punchbowl.

“Nonononono, don’t do that,” he scolded, as if to a naughty foal. He magicked some bizarre-shaped tools from his bag and started poking at the device.

With a groan, the blue earth pony rolled over on the table, and sat up on her haunches, sending the gooey remains of the cake flying. Pink frosting and gummy bears dripped from her face and out of her boysenberry mane. Her hat fell onto the floor. It was brown and conical, with a white plume. She brushed bits of cake from her front-laced peasant coat with her free hoof, her other hoof holding a glass vial containing a purple liquid.

Once her orange eyes were cake-free, she noticed Rarity, and recoiled. Rainbow flew in for a closer look, and the mare held up her front hooves and ducked. Then she saw Applejack.

“Ardisagar rad tef toogen! Farin quera? Farin tua? Questot ar Chancololles?” she cried. Then she looked around frantically to see where that bipping noise was coming from.

The egg was aloft again, now surrounded by a blue aura as Eureka tried in vain to pull it back down. It rotated and projected its crimson light straight up.

Pop!

“-- eeeeeeeeehaaaaaa!” a male voice cried from the streak that rocketed out of the empty air and right through the roof with a crunch, leaving behind a hole in the ceiling. In an instant, whatever or whoever it was became a mere speck against the now-visible full moon.

“Woah!” said Rainbow Dash, peering up through the hole, “Did you see that?”

Eureka did not. He squinted at the label on the side of the punchbowl in which the egg had bathed until recently.

“Miss Pie,” he called out, “this ‘Ultra-Lemony Lemon, Lime, and Lemon Punch’ wouldn’t happen to be highly acidic, would it?”

The egg bipped at nopony in particular, and now focused its beam exactly where Fluttershy shook in a far corner.

“Look out!” Applejack pushed her out of the way, seconds before there was yet another POP!, this one much louder than the previous pops.

It took a moment for the assembled party to appreciate who now stood in the corner.

He wore a beautifully-woven grey waistcoat with polished silver buttons. A gold watch chain draped from one pocket to its opposite. The dapper red cravat tied about his neck matched the eyes behind his pince-nez spectacles. His grey pinstriped trousers were perfectly tailored to his form, and his black patent shoes shone with a thorough polish. A black stovepipe hat with a white satin band completed the ensemble.

Under very different circumstances, Rarity would have been quite enamoured of anypony charming enough to wear such an exquisite set of clothes.

Except that they were being worn by an eight-foot dragon.

A shrill scream erupted from Fluttershy, who dove headlong through an open window.

“Woah, nelly!” said Applejack.

The blue mare on the cake table pointed up at the dragon.

“Arix! En draiconicot!” she shouted before her eyes rolled back and she fainted face-first into the cake.

The well-dressed dragon held in one claw a clump of rose bushes in the same manner as one would handle a bouquet. He squinted at the banner which happened to be mere inches from his eyes. He removed his spectacles and looked again.

“Oh no!” he whispered, dropping the bushes to one side, right on top of the hors d'oeuvres. “1219? 1219?? But...that means...I gone too far! Too faaaaar!”

He burst into tears that splashed like rain and soaked Rarity.

"My gown!" she cried.

“Oh, crans to this nonsense!” said Eureka, apparently oblivious to all this. “I’ll just eject the stone!” He magically jammed a flathead screwdriver between the ruby and the ring in which it was set. Unperturbed, the egg spun in place and aimed its angry red eye on the stage. Everypony braced themselves for whatever eldritch horror was about to manifest.

Pop!

“-- waste your time...worrying...about...ugh! I can’t believe I just did that!” said the new arrival to the back wall she faced.

“Uh oh,” said Applejack.

“Wait. Are we back in Ponyville? Pinkie? Spike?”

The purple unicorn with a really weird manecut, a bandaged head, and an eyepatch, wearing a torn black spysuit, turned around to face her friends, a strange mare with her face buried in a cake, a strange stallion with an illuminated suit trying to pry a ruby from a floaty thing, and a sharply-dressed, bawling dragon.

She, too, noticed the big banner and the date printed on it.

“Oh dear,” said Twilight.

With one final shove, Eureka dislodged the ruby and caught it in his fetlock. The egg dropped, silent and still at last.

“Gotchaaaaaaaaa yikes that’s hot!”

Before he could catch it in his magic, the ruby hit the marble floor with a sickening crack, splitting in two.

A loose timber fell from the ceiling and clattered next to Pinkie. She took no notice, occupied with gathering up four name badges. She tapped the dragon’s tail. The dragon sniffled and look down at the hostess. Pinkie held a black marker over the blank on one of the badges.

“Hi! Your name, please?”

Meet and Greet

Twilight Sparkle has read several medical journals on the subject of sleep deprivation. She’s well aware that a lack of regular REM sleep can result in impaired judgment, memory lapses, tachycardia, decreased reaction time, immune system failure, short circuiting in unicorns, and wing spasms in pegasi. In the past, she’s endured many an all-night study session. Last summer, she stayed awake for five solid days in a determined search for one of the Lost Spells of Mangus Illusionhoof. She never did find it, but in the space of six hours, she introduced herself to a zebra ambassador as “Nightlight Spackle,” turned Spike into a fire hydrant, and accidentally teleported into an occupied stall in a stallions' restroom. Now, contrary to what she'd told Pinkie, she hadn't actually been awake for an entire week. She probably wasn't aware of how many microsleeps she'd taken by the sixth day, or that staring for three hours at the Horsehead Nebula was actually a dream. But Twilight's sleep debt had certainly reached critical levels.

Which is why Twilight gazed for fifteen seconds without blinking at the banner above her head, trying to determine if she was hallucinating. Meanwhile, Applejack had decided, of the three ponies and one dragon which had recently popped into existence into town hall, she should probably go to the one she knew. Plus, it looked as if Twilight had been through a horrendous ordeal.

"Twi! Are ya okay? You look terrible!"

Twilight shook her head to focus her attention on her friend.

"What? Oh, you mean the clothes, the eyepatch, the scorched mane, the bandage, and the...um...what was the other thing?"

"A scar?" guessed Applejack, noticing the lilac gash on Twilight's cheek.

"Right, right. No, it's not what it looks like. It's a long story." She sat down and massaged her temples. She was not ready to ask this question, but she had no choice:

"AJ...is it really 1219?"

"I'm afraid so, sugarcube."

"I don't understand it. The spell was only supposed to send me back a week for just a minute, then bring me right back to the Starswirl the Bearded wing."

"Well, we're still tryin' to figure that out, too," she said, glancing over her shoulder at Eureka. He was wiping punch off of the strange egg-shaped metal thing with several paper napkins.

"So does that mean I've been gone for...almost two years?"

"No," said Applejack, putting a reassuring hoof on her shoulder. "You were back in Ponyville that same day. You went home and slept for somethin' like two days." She glanced at Twilight's spiky manedo. "An' now I know why you wore a baseball cap that whole week after. But, you've been with us ever since."

And grew wings and became a princess, thought Applejack. She'd known Twilight as a regular unicorn for three years. She was genuinely happy she'd become a princess and everything, but just the same, seeing her now without wings gave Applejack a pang of nostalgia for that Apple family reunion when Twilight and Spike walked onto their farm for the first time.

"Then, sooner or later, I'm going back to 1217," said Twilight. "But how? The time spell could only be used once!"

"It's my bad," called out the yellow unicorn in the technicolor suit. "I'm really sorry about this!"

"R-H-I-N-D-L-E. Rhindle."

Pinkie wrote his name nice and big on the sticker badge. The dragon produced from his waistcoat pocket a handkerchief big enough to be a blanket for Gummy and blew his pointed nose with a miserable brrrk!

"Nice to meet you, Rhindle, I'm Pinkie Pie!" She shook the end of his tail. He didn't seem to notice, and was more intent on pouting.

"So, what year are you from?"

"1985," said Rhindle absently. He sighed and stared at a wall.

"Oooh! You're from really far away! In fact, I'm giving out prizes for things like Flashiest Time Machine and Fastest Hoverbike. I don't know yet if you've won the Longest Distance prize yet, but I'd say things are looking good! Now you're just a teeny tiny bit late, and you might have noticed that most of our guests have already gone home, but I'm sure we can still find fun things to do!"

She bounced up and stuck the name badge onto his forehead. Rhindle didn't even blink.

"Oops!"

She bounced again to peel the badge of his head. Then one more bounce to stick it on his waistcoat. Rhindle frowned and looked at Pinkie for the first time.

"Wait, how did you know that I -- "

A cyan pegasus interposed herself between them.

"'Hey. 'Scuse us one sec," Rainbow said to Rhindle. The dragon just shrugged, sat down, and buried his face in his claws.

"Pinkie, I'm gonna go after Fluttershy. She probably just went to hide under her bed. In the meantime, maybe you could, I dunno...hide Mr. Sunshine here?"

"Yessiree, Dashie!" said Pinkie with a salute. Rainbow swooped out of an upper window, into the moonlight night. Fluttershy could only have gotten a third of the way back to her cottage by now.

Pinkie scrunched her face with momentary concentration, tapping her hoof to her chin. How hard could it be to hide a dragon?

"Aha!" said Pinkie. In a flash she disappeared down one of the corridors. Scant seconds later, she returned and bounded onto the stage improbably balancing a movie projector, a screen, and a film reel in her hooves. Applejack and Twilight watched as she set up the projector on one side of the stage and the screen on the other.

Rhindle felt another tapping on his tail. The pink pony was back.

"I've got a super-special surprise for you," said Pinkie. "If you'll just follow me, please." She bounced up onto the stage. Rhindle slunk after her, nearly dragging his claws behind him, his stovepipe hat carelessly slipping off his head. Pinkie attached the reel to the projector and hastily fed the film through it.

"I thought you might like to learn a little something about our fair town of Ponyville," she said, pulling down the screen. "So I found a movie in the archives you might enjoy while I get the other guests ready to meet you! Doesn't that sound like fun?"

Rhindle sat down obligingly, clasping together his claws in his lap. He quietly sulked in a most un-reptilian fashion.

"Let me just get it all darky-warky so you can see!" She found the appropriate rope just off stage right and lowered the curtain. Rhindle let the darkness envelop him, and sighed like a wind blowing through a cave. Pinkie turned a knob on the antiquated projector and it buzzed to life. The reels turned slowly, and a dusty white rectangle with a black fluttering hair illuminated the screen.

"Enjoy!" chirped Pinkie. "I'll be back soon with some delicious gummy bear cake!"

A reversed gray "4" appeared on the screen, followed by a backwards "3" and then a flip-flopped "2." As usual with these kinds of films, a "1" did not come next, like you'd expect, only a boop sound. A black-and-white panoramic pegasus' eye view of Ponyville's humble skyline faded in with the title

!ELLIVYNOP OT EMOCLEW

superimposed on top of it. Cut to a youthful Mayor Mare happily speaking to the camera. Silently, since the soundtrack printed on the film was on the wrong side. The hair flickered in front of her face.

Rhindle preferred to stare glumly at the wooden boards of the stage.

On the other side of the curtain, Eureka set down his errant machine and trotted up to meet the mysterious mare in black.

"Hi there," he said, offering a toothy grin and offering his hoof. She tentatively shook it. "I'm Eureka. I wish we had met under less awkward circumstances, but that's my doing. You see..." He froze, keeping his leg extended even after she released it. His eyes widened slightly with recognition.

"Oh! Oh, I'm sorry, I didn't recognize you! You're -- "

He had just begun to bend his front knees and lower his head when, for once, his analytical mind outpaced his mouth. He cast a surreptitious look at Twilight's sides and horn. He straightened up and gave his throat the tiniest of clearings.

"You're...Twilight Sparkle. Student of Princess Celestia, if I'm not mistaken. Right?"

An indigo blush painted Twilight's cheeks. By now, she should be used to the fame. She had helped save Equestria twice now, as any tourist visiting Canterlot Castle would know when they saw the likeness of her and her friends on the stained-glass windows. Though she wasn't wearing the eyepatch or the spysuit in those windows.

"Yes, that's me," said Twilight.

"May I be too presumptuous to ask," said Eureka, having trouble avoiding a formal tone, "if you had recently attempted some form of journey though time?"

Before Twilight could answer, Pinkie materialized next to her just long enough to stick a name badge on her chest proclaiming her home time as 1217.

"Yes, I was using a rare time spell to go back a week and tell myself not to worry about the future."

"Really?" said Eureka, fascinated. "And how did that go?"

"Terrible," said Twilight, with a grimace. "All I did was make myself worry about the future." Eureka nodded sympathetically. "Speaking of which. Applejack, where am I right now? The me that lives here?"

Credit is due to the Element of Honesty for looking so casual on the outside during her internal struggle for words. She settled with:

"You an' Spike are with the Princess meetin' some important ponies from Saddle Arabia." She breathed a sigh of relief that what she said was, in fact, the truth.

"I am?" said Twilight, one eyebrow raised.

"Yep. Very important stuff. Won't be back for three days."

"Wow, I've never even seen a pony from Saddle Arabia. They have a most fascinating culture."

"Don't they just?" Applejack wasn't even sure she could find Saddle Arabia on a map. She swallowed hard. Twilight had one of those far off looks. Was she suspicious?

Twilight actually had one of those far off looks because she was experiencing a two-second microsleep. Eureka was about to ask if she was okay.

"That's perfect!" announced Twilight.

"It is?" asked Applejack.

"Yes! Now I don't have to worry about having to meet my future self."

"Exactly!" said Eureka, all caught up. "Don't want another one of those messy paradoxes, do we?"

Applejack turned her head to hide her relief.

"Besides, my past self was kind of a pain. She wouldn't shut up! Do I really talk that much?"

The psychedelic colors in Eureka's suit and tie flickered, then faded to static black. Eureka frowned at the sleeve of his coat.

"Well, crans, those batteries didn't last long," he said.

"Excuse me," said Rarity from the cake table. "But I think this one is waking up."

Rarity had carefully laid the blue mare on the floor and placed Eureka's saddlebags under her head as an impromptu pillow. She cleaned cake off her face with a levitating embroidered handkerchief. The mare groaned and slowly opened her orange eyes.

"Just take it easy, darling," soothed Rarity, offering her a cup of water.

The mare took the cup in her hooves automatically. She sat up and sipped. Rarity stroked her back.

"There you go, dear, you'll be alright."

The earth pony rubbed her eyes and tried to make sense of the white, yellow, orange, and purple faces above her.

Her eyes widened and her pupils shrank. She dropped the cup, spilling the water, and looked frantically around her.

"Travo brishen an rad welemcrovi!" she shouted. Questot en draiconicot?"

"What?" said Applejack.

"Calm down, darling!" said Rarity, trying to steady the frightened mare.

"Questot en draiconicot?"

"I don't recognize her language," said Eureka, "but I think she might be talking about the dragon." He looked over his shoulder to confirm that the curtain was still closed and concealing the visitor on the stage. He also noticed Pinkie, humming to herself and slicing a piece from the un-smooshed side of the cake.

Rarity held the mare by the shoulders and locked eyes with her.

"No dragon," said Rarity calmly, shaking her head. "No dragon here. The dragon is gone."

That seemed to help. The strange pony stopped panting and laid down on her belly.

"Corenzarfa wogonet. Frondor en aixid." she mumbled.

"I've never heard anypony talk like that," said Applejack.

"I can't understand any of it," said Twilight, "but it sounds so familiar. It's definitely not a modern Equestrian language. It's...archaic. Old."

"Very old, I'd say," said Eureka, picking up the water pitcher with his magic and pouring another drink. "Wish I'd brought my data engine with me."

"Which means," said Twilight, with academic enthusiasm, "that she's from the past! Like me!"

"But from a lot longer ago than two years," said Eureka, magically passing the cup to Rarity, who offered it to the mare. The mare reached for the cup, then looked suspiciously at the blue aura around it, and the other aura around Rarity's horn. She stood up and backed away.

"Noter boggol, unipona," she warned Rarity. Her defiant stance tried to convey courage, but a break in her voice betrayed nervousness.

"What's eatin' her now?" said Applejack. The mare turned to the farmpony and trotted over to her side, keeping a conspicuously wide berth around Rarity, Twilight, and Eureka.

"Perhannis, arthepona. Trofan ges paratavo in towiestic. Questicot en ov?" she asked, a gleam of faint hope in her eyes.

"Why's she talkin' to me like she knows me or somethin'?"

Without warning, a thump! resounded from the roof. Everyone flinched at the noise, especially the blue earth pony, who most likely feared the arrival of another dragon. A shiny scarlet helmet with an opaque, silvery visor poked through the hole in the ceiling. With the smallest of buzzing sounds, the visor lifted on its own and exposed the creamy-white face of a stallion.

"Hey!" he called, "can anypony tell me where the hay I am?"

"Ponyville," Twilight called back.

"Ponyville? You're kidding, right?"

"No. It's Ponyville," hollered Applejack.

"How in the blue heron did I end up here? That's hundreds of miles off course. Maybe I blacked out."

The stallion leaned forward, slipped through the hole, and floated down to them.

"What in tarnation?" Applejack said aloud what the others were thinking.

The pegasus who descended towards them wore a red and white skin-tight garment, like a spysuit, but made of some spongy, pliable material Rarity could not identify. The letters EAC and TMRN were stitched in gold along his sides, and patches of various colors and shapes adorned his front legs. But what made the ponies below gawk in awe were the enormous wings, formed by a skeletal frame of steel and swathes of white fabric, which extended from his sides, affixed to his natural wings by a complex matrix of clamps, wires, and cables. His mechanical wings gleamed, stretching to a wingspan more than twice as wide than he was long. He floated with uncanny grace and a faint whirring of servos, like an angel pony from a clockwork heaven, and alighted with keen precision in front of his audience, a landing engineered to be impressive. Save for the WELCOME TO 1219! banner which the tip of one wing tore down.

He flashed them all his winningest smile. His metal wings neatly folded themselves against his body with a hiss.

"Well, it doesn't matter because I did it!" announced the pegasus. His deep voice echoed around the hall. He spoke mostly in shouts.

"No doubt you'll read about this in your local newspaper tomorrow, but I'll just spoil it for you now." He snapped his forehooves together, standing at rigid, practiced attention.

"I am Bravo Zulu, Major of Their Majesties' Royal Navy, and Senior Test Flyer for the Equestrian Air Corps."

He paused to let this wash over them, but was met only with blank stares. He grunted at the lack of recognition, privately annoyed that he had dropped into such a backwater town of yokels.

"Just moments ago, I have completed an historic trial run of the latest in -- "

"Come on, Fluttershy!" came a voice from above. Rainbow Dash braced herself against the window frame and yanked the pink tail in her teeth. "I told you, the coast is clear. I don't see the dragon anywhere." She gave one hard pull, and the rest of her yellow friend emerged, her hooves covering her eyes.

Bravo gritted his teeth and ignored the interruption.

"An historic trial run of the latest in hyper-flight technology. They said it could never be done, but I have proved them wrong! Because the brave mares and stallions of the EAC strive to make the impossible a reality! For I have just -- "

Rainbow dangled the uncooperative Fluttershy by her back legs.

"Let's just go talk to Twilight and...who the hay is that?"

"Ahem." Bravo would not deign to give the noisy interloper the satisfaction of turning around. "As I was saying, I have just now broken, by a long shot, the pegasus air-speed record, and have achieved a top speed over five thousand wingpower!"

Bravo closed his eyes to bask in the adoration. He expected hoof-stomping, applause, maybe even for that lovely white unicorn to swoon or perhaps even to kiss him. Mares can get pretty weak in the knees, after all, at the news of an act of such fortitude and skill. But only silence followed. For two seconds. Followed by raucous laughter from behind him.

"Bwwaaaaaaa ha ha ha ha ha ha!"

There was a thud and a squeak. He turned around to see a rather pretty yellow pegasus getting to her hooves and rubbing her flank. But the source of the laughter was twenty feet above, clutching her stomach.

"Five thousand wingpower? Are you sure it wasn't a hundred thousand? Or a billion? Ha ha ha ha!"

Bravo's face turned a deep red. He seethed, grit his teeth, spread out his shimmering wings, and brought himself to the blue joker's altitude with a fraction of a flap. He opened his mouth to unleash a tempest of vitriol at her. Then stopped. He looked at her face. Her mane. Her cutie mark.

Rainbow wiped a tear from her violet eye, her laughter fading. Then she frowned at him.

"What are you looking at, dude?"

Bravo gave a cursory look around the room.

"Oh, I get it," he said with a smug smile. "It's a costume party, huh?"

"A what?" said Rainbow. Bravo studied her admiringly.

"I'll say this for you, my little nimbus. That's the best Rainbow Dash cosplay I've ever seen. The dye job is top notch. Though I think your cutie marks might be backwards."

Rainbow pressed her snout right against Bravo's snout. Bravo remained impassive as a statue.

"First," growled Rainbow, pounding her front hooves together. "I am nopony's little nimbus. Second, there's no way you could fly anywhere near five thousand wingpower, even with your big phony wings. And third, I have a late-breaking news report for you. I'm wearing the perfect Rainbow Dash 'costume' because I've been wearing it all my life! I am Rainbow Dash, the one and only." She jabbed her hoof at his chest.

"Rainbow!" called Applejack. "Take it easy now! He didn't mean anythin' by it!"

"Very funny, missy," said Bravo to the earth pony. "And you," he whispered to the impostor flapping in front of him, somehow still shouting at the same time, "you ought to drop the act and show me some respect. Do you know who I am? I happen to know a lot more about Rainbow Dash than some rude young miscreant like you."

"What did he just call me?" said an irate orange pony.

"C'mon, you guys," whined Pinkie. "Don't fight. This is supposed to be a party."

"And what do you think you know about Rainbow Dash, you faker?" she screamed hoarsely into Bravo's face. "That she helped kick Discord's skinny flank? That she triggered a sonic rainboom when she was only a filly? That's she's the best flier in Equestria?"

Bravo stared hard at her, watching her quiver with rage. He shook his head. Then he calmly unbuckled the strap under his chin, put a hoof on either side of his helmet, and pulled it off. His sweat-slicked mane unfurled. It was a colorful mane. With six colors. Purple and blue bangs hung just above his eyes, a patch of green sprouted from between his ears, and yellow, orange, and red cascaded down his neck.

"That she was my great-grandmother," said Bravo. For the first time, quietly.

Rainbow's jaw would have plummeted straight to the center of the planet had not the floor been in the way.

In the sustained shocked silence that followed, Fluttershy heard a plaintive sob from behind the curtain. Anxious for any excuse to slip away from all the shouting, and from the pegasus with the big scary wings who did not seem nice at all, she glided onto the apron of the stage, and listened carefully. Yes, somepony on the other side was crying. Driven by her maternal instincts, she slid her head under the curtain to see who was so distraught.

When she saw it was the dragon, she clasped a hoof over her mouth to suppress a scream. Bathed in the harsh white light of the film projector, Fluttershy could see him laying on his belly, his face buried in his hands, weeping. By his side sat an untouched slice of cake and a plastic fork on a paper plate. The tail end of the forgotten film flapped loosely in the rotating reel.

The pegasus had reached an impasse. On the one hoof, she could see the tiny puddle of tears that pooled next to him. On the other, when the dragon lifted his head, she could see the slit-pupiled red eyes from which the tears fell. She hated the pitiful soft moans of a creature in pain. But the sulfuric smell, the blood-red scales, the sharp talons and, worst of all, the white daggers that were his teeth all sent a wave of primal horror crashing over Fluttershy.

She didn't fly away. She didn't say anything to him. She crawled the rest of the way under the curtain and sat there in the dark, watching him through her pink mane.

In the same sustained shocked silence that followed, the blue mare, unable to comprehend the bizarre things and even more bizarre ponies around her, turned her focus to the tall upper windows. Luna's stars shone, clear and bright. Her heart began to pound, not with what she could see through the windows, but what she couldn't see. She galloped around the rows of tables to the main entrance. She shoved at one of the wooden doors with a grunt, and it creaked open.

This creaking diverted Applejack's attention away from the rainbow-maned pegasi.

"Now what's she up to?" she said to herself.

The mare stepped slowly off the porch and into the night. She gazed up into the starry sky and the moon as if she'd never seen them before. She breathed in the fresh air. She knelt down and dragged one hoof through the grassy soil of the lawn. A broad smile was born.

A flash of purple broke the same sustained shocked silence as Twilight teleported herself onto a balcony near Rainbow and Bravo.

"Okay, that's it!" she said, entering lecture mode. "We all need to do our best to avoid spoilers! We've already said too much! If you're from the future, don't talk about anything from your time! The consequences could be disastrous!"

In a flash of blue, Eureka appeared at Twilight's side. Her eyebrows raised; she'd never met another unicorn who could teleport quite as well as she could.

"Actually," said Eureka, somewhat sheepishly, "my research would indicate that time travel wouldn't actually cause paradoxes. Natural Time has a way of working things out. For example, you said you met yourself a week in the past, right?"

"Yes."

"And you remember the week before when you were visited by future-you. Did that moment when the two of yous interacted play out exactly the same way? Was your conversation identical, word-for-word?"

"Now that I think about it, yes. The first time around, I was so excited that I had discovered time travel, I didn't give myself a chance to talk. And the second time through, I was so intent on telling myself not to worry, I wasn't really listening to what I was saying!"

"You see?" Eureka lightly touched a hoof to her side. "No paradox. A stable time loop was formed."

Twilight almost looked disappointed that the fabric of space and time was not in grave danger.

"But still...I just don't think it's right to know too much about the future."

"I won't argue with you there," said Eureka. For once, he looked quite serious.

With a single flap of metal wings, Bravo swept around and landed on Twilight's other side.

"Forgive me!" he said. "I did not recognize you before." He knelt down and lowered his head with one hoof to his chest. Eureka rushed past Twilight to catch Bravo in mid-supplication.

"Yes, yes, I didn't recognize her either at first," said Eureka quickly to the puzzled pegasus. "But yes, that's her,Twilight Sparkle, Element of Magic and all that. She defeated Nightmare Moon, Discord, and the changli -- the change -- the changes...to Equestria...were for the better, right? Right? Heh heh." He grinned at Twilight and hoped she didn't notice the bead of sweat rolling down his forehead. Bravo looked at him as if he had three heads, but before he could say anything else, the two vanished in a puff of blue and teleported back on main floor, on the far side of the room.

"Major, I wonder if I might have a word in your ear?"

Rainbow Dash sat on the floor, eyes bulging. Her cutie mark might as well stand for "thunderstruck."

"I'm gonna be...a...a...?"

She paid no attention to Pinkie who orbited her with bounces.

"Yay! Family reunion party!" said Pinkie.

Applejack wasn't sure how she felt about the tight hug the blue mare gave her after she galloped back inside.

"Grazar pelfanin, aerthpona," she said into Applejack's neck. When Applejack gently ducked out of her embrace, she saw the joy in her moist orange eyes.

"Ma'am, I'm sure happy for...whatever yer happy about, but -- "

"Travas netce en Chancololles fascot."

"Yeah, uh, same to you, ma'am."

Twilight teleported into their company. The mare recoiled at the brusque intrusion.

"Vantagas pror eroavon, unipona!" shouted at the purple pony.

"I dunno what she said, Twi, but that didn't sound too nice."

"If only I could get to my library, I might be able to find something that would help us understand her."

"Here, let me help you with that."

All heads swiveled towards the source of that statement. The red dragon's head poked out from under the curtain. The blue mare gasped and backed towards the door, but before she could make her escape, the dragon extended one of his claws and raised his index talon. A red, twinkly aura formed around it, humming with magic. Another wrapped around the mare's throat.

"What is he...?" murmured Twilight. "How is he...?"

The auras faded away.

"There you go," sighed Rhindle, and he crawled back behind the curtain.

The mare put a hoof to her throat. Had she just been cursed? Maybe not, she felt fine. She took a breath.

"What did you do to me?" she said.

"Oh my gosh!" said Twilight, astonished.

"What is a gosh, unicorn? Wait a moment, I understood you! What dragon sorcery is this?"

"And we understand you, too, sugarcube!" said Applejack. Rarity and Pinkie joined them. Rarity held the mare's conical hat in her magic. The earth pony snatched it out of the air and set it on her head.

"It appears," she said, facing Applejack, "that I truly have been transported to a far away land. And I am frankly shocked to find a place inhabited by other ponies instead of an empty wilderness. I do not know who you are, but your land is a paradise!"

"It is pretty cool, huh?" said Pinkie.

"Quite the contrary, pink one. It is so very warm. The sky is clear. The air is fresh. The soil is fertile. My home was once like this." She sat on the floor with sad poise and looked up at the starry sky through the windows. "For more than six moons, my homeland has been ravaged by an endless winter. The snow, the wind, the ice, they never cease."

"Oh my gosh!" said Twilight again, her eyes wide with excitement. The mare put an arm around Pinkie and pulled her close.

"So my tribe has decided to seek out a new land," she murmured conspiratorially. "Our spies infiltrated the mansion of a unicorn alchemist and brought back with them...that." She pointed to the vial of purple fluid with which she had arrived.

"Oooo, I gotcha," said Pinkie, who actually didn't get it, but sharing secrets was fun.

"I was informed by the council that this potion has the power, with one quaff, to transport a pony over a vast gulf of distance, and then return her home with a second quaff. I was...volunteered..." She rolled her eyes. "...to test the potion and scout ahead for a new land. I must confess I had serious doubts about the veracity of this tale, and was reluctant to indulge in the product of arcane unicorn magic, and yet...here I am, now, in your strange company, with a talking, magical dragon close at hand, in a beautiful country which would suit our needs perfectly."

She picked up the vial and gazed into it, swishing the viscous fluid around. Pinkie giggled at the way the glass made her face look funny.

"This may have been the first time in her life the Chancellor has ever been right about something!"

The purple librarian couldn't stand it any longer. She beamed with egghead ecstasy.

"Excuse me, but you wouldn't happen to mean...Chancellor Puddinghead, would you?"

"You have heard of our Chancellor, unicorn?"

"I knew it!" Twilight spread her forelegs wide in triumph.

"Well I'll be a warthog's auntie," said Applejack.

"This is simply incredible!" gushed Rarity.

"Yippie!" shouted Pinkie, performing two backflips. She was halfway through a third one and then stopped in mid-air.

"Wait. Why is this simply incredible?"

"Don't you see, Pinkie?" whispered Rarity. "That's Smart Cookie, secretary to Chancellor Puddinghead."

Underneath the poofy pink mane, gears turned.

"Oh, that's just silly," Pinkie said at length, still hanging in the air, "she doesn't look anything like Applejack!"

"Um...excuse me?"

Involuntarily, Rhindle raised his head and turned to face the meek little yellow pegasus. As far as he knew, dragons have been sentient for thousands of years and fully civilized for more than three hundred, but he conceded that deep in the heart of even the most cultured dragon lay the soul of a beast. The pegasus, in just a simple, barely-audible utterance, spoke not just to Rhindle's ears, but to his beast soul as well. What was it about that voice? There was just some ineffable quality about it that compelled the beast in him to listen. The little pony approached him at a snail's pace, one careful step at a time.

"I'm sorry...um...I didn't know dragons could do magic."

Rhindle wiped his nose on his arm, then instantly regretted it.

"Where I come from, everybody can do magic."

"Really?" asked Fluttershy, earnestly.

"Yes. Ponies, dragons, donkeys, mules, zebras, griffons, everybody."

"Wow. Um...what does 'everybody' mean?"

"Oh right, I forgot how long ago it is. Yes, at home, we all say 'everybody' because our kingdom consists of much more than just ponies. Everybody means, well...everybody."

Rhindle rested his head in one palm. His tail swished lazily. Fluttershy closed her eyes and swallowed hard. Then she crept around to Rhindle's front.

"So...what was that spell?"

"A translation spell. Once it's been cast on you, you'll understand and be understood by anybody, no matter what your language is."

"It sounds very useful. You must be so clever."

"Thank you," said Rhindle, making invisible circles on the floor with one talon. "It's not a well-known spell at home. Most of us speak the same language anyway."

The corner of Rhindle's mouth crinkled ever so slightly with the shadow of a smirk. Fluttershy noticed this, forgetting for the time being that it was a dragon's smirk.

"I actually have it cast on myself right now," he said.

"You do?"

"Yes. Otherwise, you wouldn't be able to understand me. See, right now, I hear you in my dialect, and you're hearing me in yours. I wasn't sure how foreign my dialect would sound in 1889, but I needed to blend in, so I figured...just in case...I would..." He trailed off, the smirk vanishing.

Fluttershy was completely unaware of the comforting hoof she placed on his arm.

"So, um, what's in 1889?"

Rhindle closed his eyes and took a deep breath, collecting himself. He reached into a waistcoat pocket and pulled out a gold watch. With a flick of a button, it swung open. He lifted a glowing red talon and magically held the watch before her. Fluttershy peered at it. A tiny oval photograph was set inside the lid. It was a photograph of a dragoness wearing a necklace of emeralds which matched her green eyes.

"She is." He said the word "she" with reverence. "Isn't she...breathtaking?"

"Ummmm...." said Fluttershy, awkwardly. "She seems...really nice."

"She's the love of my life. The one I'm meant to be with forever."

Fluttershy rubbed his arm a little.

"Aww, that's very sweet. What's her name?"

"I don't know," said Rhindle, "I haven't met her yet."

A blue flash heralded the arrival of Eureka.

"Hi there! Rhindle, is it? Nice to meet you. And you as well, Fluttershy. I hate to interrupt, but if you two would join me out in the main room, I think it's time I explained my monumental boo-boo to everypony."

Outside Natural Time

“So how does this thing work?”

“That’s classified.”

“Did you really break five thousand wingpower?”

“Yes.”

“What about wind resistance? And drag?”

“Classified.”

“What altitude did you fly at? Did you fly around the world? Did you make a bunch of sonic rainbooms in a row?”

“Classified, classified, classified! Look, kid —”

“I’m not a kid!”

Bravo Zulu let out a heavy sigh. This is not how his triumphant return played out in his head. It took him nearly five minutes to disengage all the clamps and cables from his wings, with the blue pegasus hovering over him the whole time. Bravo determined to keep a stoic face, never betraying his anxiousness to tear the heavy mechanism off his no-longer-young back where the pain had just begun to creep up his spine.

“Listen,” he grunted, “I have no idea what the stark starling is going on. I should be waving from a carriage in a ticker-tape parade in my honor, but instead I’m in some strange town which may or may not be a hundred years in the past, talking to a pony who may or may not be my...er...relative. Here, give me a hoof.”

He lifted up his forelegs. Rainbow Dash alighted and grabbed hold of the metallic wings, letting Bravo pull himself the rest of the way out, hissing through his teeth. He thanked her, brusquely lifted the vehicle from her, and set it on the floor in one corner.

“So, you’ll forgive me if I’m not, y’know, forthcoming with the details of my mission until I have a better grasp on reality. Okay?”

“Okay, okay,” said Rainbow, rolling her eyes, “Sheesh, I get it.”

Bravo popped open a string of hidden snaps on his flightsuit.

“But just so you know, I am Rainbow Dash, and this is Ponyville, and you are —”

Rainbow lost track of what she was saying. Bravo stripped off the flightsuit, revealing the rest of his flowing rainbow mane (albeit in the reverse order of colors from her own hair) and his cutie mark: a streaking comet with a tail of red, yellow, and blue stripes.

“You really are, like...my great-grandson. That’s so...so…”

“Weird?” said Bravo, leaning back and letting his spine crackle audibly, stretching out his impressive wingspan. “Yeah, tell me about it.”

Applejack and Rarity pushed a couple of the longer tables together, and one by one, nine ponies and a dragon encircled them for a post-party conference. Pinkie Pie made sure to pour everypony a cup of Super Sassafras 'n Sugar Sassparilla. Rarity tsked at Twilight Sparkle; her friend had shed her black spysuit and carelessly draped it over the apron of the stage without even folding it. Rarity lifted it up and shook her head at the rended cloth.

Twilight had also removed the eyepatch. Angry redness still rimmed her right eye. She took off the bandage and kept trying to push her mane back into its usual bangs, but they sprang back up like quills on a hedgehog.

Smart Cookie made a point of planting herself firmly between Applejack and Pinkie. She hadn’t said a word to anypony. She glanced up occasionally at the stars through the tall windows, absently tugging at the plume in her hat. She didn’t dare make eye contact with the red dragon at the opposite end of the table.

Rhindle sat politely on the floor with his claws clasped on the table, frowning. At his right, Rarity took a stab at conversation while she magically opened up the sewing kit she carried for wardrobe emergencies. “I must say,” she said, “your ensemble is simply dashing. The silver trim on your waistcoat is most expertly woven.”

“Thank you,” mumbled Rhindle, not looking at her.

“Do all dragons back home dress as finely as you?”

To her surprise, Rhindle covered his mouth to muffle a strangely mirthless chuckle.

“Whatever is so funny?” she asked, taken a bit aback.

“No, actually, nobody dresses like this. I got this from a costume shop. This is how they would dress in 1889, not 1985.”

To his left, Fluttershy gave him a small poke in the side.

“But you’re right. It is, erm, well-made.”

Rarity favored him with an understanding smile, and removed a needle and spool of thread from the kit. She started to fetch Twilight’s distressed spysuit in her blue aura, when suddenly a stronger lavender aura pulled it away.

“Rarity, what are you doing?” demanded Twilight.

“I thought I would just fix the holes in your —”

“No, please, just leave it exactly like it is.” Twilight floated the black garment back onto the stage.

“It’s no trouble, Twilight, really.”

“It’s not that, Rarity. I need to look exactly the same when I go back to 1217.”

“What’s the big deal?” chimed Rainbow, joining the table with Bravo Zulu. “It’s already happened, so you don’t have to worry about changing the past.”

“Exactly! I don’t want anything to change. I want everything to go precisely the same way as if I’d never come here to 1219 in the first place. So when I go back, I need to wear the torn suit, the eyepatch, and everything, and look just like I did before! No changes, no spoilers!”

“What’re you gonna do?” asked Rainbow. “Cut your cheek again?”

Twilight touched the indigo gash on her face, which had already begun to scab.

“Maybe Rarity could...help me with some makeup?”

During this, Eureka levitated his egg-shaped device onto the middle of the table. He shrugged off his coat no-longer-of-many-colors and draped it over a chair, loosened his tie, and cleared his throat. All eyes were on him.

“Once again, I want to say how very, very sorry I am to have gotten you all into this cransing mess. Excuse my language.”

“Yes, your apologies have been frequent and profuse, unicorn,” growled Smart Cookie. “Please be so good as to cease your supplication and get on with your explanation!”

“Yes, um, sorry, right.” Eureka swallowed hard. “Without going into too much detail about my home —” He gave Twilight a significant nod. “— I’ve been fascinated with the idea of time travel since I was a colt. My parents took me to this exhibit at the Hoofington Museum of Equestrian History. The exhibit was called, ‘The Future That Never Was.’ They had displays of all these old movie posters and books and paintings of what people in the past thought the future was going to look like. Some of it was just science fiction, with laser-crossbows and flying carriages and ponybots, and alien ponies from other planets in bubble space helmets.”

“That sounds awesome!” cried Rainbow with wide eyes.

“It was totally awesome, even though none of it ever came true. At least, not by 1543."

“Aw.”

“But it blew my drackling mind as a kid.” He turned a shade of red. “Sorry, ladies, I tend to curse a lot when I’m excited.”

“Quite alright,” giggled Rarity, sharing everyone’s complete lack of offense.

“Anyway, this was just after I’d gotten my engineering cutie mark, and my mind raced with all these amazing things I could build to make the world a better place. I think my parents brought me there to encourage me, even though they didn’t care much for my cutie mark.”

“They didn’t?” squeaked Fluttershy. “Why not?”

“Well, that’s a story for another time.”

“Good,” grumbled Smart Cookie. Applejack gave her a reproachful look.

“Just as we were leaving the museum, my parents asked me what I wanted to build when I grew up. I was going to say something like a spaceship or a floating city made of concrete and steel instead of clouds. But right next to the exit, there was a glass case, and inside...well, here, let me show you.”

His horn shone blue and he rummaged through his saddlebag and produced a small photograph, printed on a pliable yet glossy form of paper none of them had seen before. He passed it over to Pinkie Pie. The others craned their necks to see.

In the photo was the glass case, with a sign above that read “Always Dare to Dream!” in gold lettering. The case itself contained only a small card, a bit yellowed and frayed along its edges, but still quite legible.

Pinkie’s smile grew and grew. Then she bounced eight feet in the air.

“My invitation!” She jumped over the table and gave Eureka a hug, then bounced in a circle around the hall. Everypony laughed, except Rhindle, Smart Cookie, and Bravo.

“It ended up in a museum?” said Twilight.

“That’s right!" beamed Eureka, getting his breath back, “and I turned to my mom and dad and told them I was going to build a time machine so I could meet Pinkie Pie.”

“Who woulda thought it?” said Applejack, “What’d they say to that?”

“Oh, they laughed at me. I didn’t even know who this Pinkie Pie was, and I’m pretty sure my parents didn’t know either. I wasn’t hard to find out, though. Just took a little research.”

“Yay!” cheered Pinkie, “I went down in history!”

“You all did, the six of you. After all —”

“Hey, spoilers!” snapped Twilight.

“This is all so very endearing,” droned Smart Cookie, her forelegs crossed across her bodice, “but would you kindly arrive at the part where you invented a time machine?”

“Right,” said Eureka sheepishly. “Now, by my time, unicorns had given up on time magic, thinking they were unsafe, and scientists abandoned the idea after many failed attempts at time machines. They theorized the existence of an entrodeterminate membrane through which a physical object could penetrate and travel anywhere in time and space.”

Twilight’s ears perked up at the terminology, mostly because she’d never heard of it. I’m not supposed to know about this, she thought, but, ooo, I can tell this is going to be good!

“But they gave up when they concluded that no living thing could pass through the membrane — if it existed — and survive. I devoted my life to figuring out if, a.) the entro membrane existed, and b.) if there was some means of circumventing that restriction. To make a long story short —”

“Too late,” said Rainbow Dash.

“ — after twenty years of research and experimentation, I discovered the answers were ‘yes’ and ‘yes.’ I came up with this.”

He magically held aloft his lustrous contraption.

“I call it the chronograppler. Or just the grappler, for short. Like a grappling hook, it attaches itself to a point in space and time, then it draws you towards it.”

“You lost me,” said Rainbow and Applejack, simultaneously. “Jinxies!” shouted Rainbow. She stuck out her tongue at Applejack. “You owe me a Colta Cola.” Eureka ignored them, set his invention back down on the table, and sat up straighter, self-consciously entering his exposition mode.

“Okay, first, I program the grappler, and it passes through the membrane and appears at a particular point in time. Once it arrives there, it searches out the timeline, both past and future, looking for me. Now, here’s the important part: in order for the grappler to find me, I have to detach myself from the natural flow of time. In order for it to do that, I cast a spell I’ve learned that lets me become frozen in time.”

“You know a time stasis spell?” gushed Twilight. Eureka offered a humble nod. “Those are still unheard of! You can actually freeze time all around you? It must be really useful, am I right?”

“Not as much as you might think,” said Eureka. “It only lasts for point-forty-two seconds, and if I cast it more than twice in the same day, I get cransing migraines like you wouldn’t believe. But it’s just enough for me to escape natural time. Then, the grappler pinpoints me with this.”

He tugged at the black garment around his neck.

“Your tie?” asked Rarity, raising an eyebrow.

“Yes. Well, what’s in the tie. There’s an alloy of — some metal you don’t know about yet — woven into the fabric. So the grappler finds me floating outside natural time, detects my tie, pulls me instantly through the timeline, and projects me nearby. Ta da!”

He stood on his hind legs in the sort of pose reserved for the conclusion of an extended tap number. Pinkie and Twilight clapped. Nopony else did. He blushed and sat back down.

“Well, that’s how you got here,” grumbled Bravo Zulu, “but what about the rest of us?”

“That’s where I went wrong. I thought that I designed its shell to withstand any environmental hazards. I did not foresee its vulnerability to acid. Such as was in Pinkie’s lemon and lime punch.”

“The acid made it malfunction?” asked Twilight, stirring the tip of her hoof in the offending punchbowl.

“‘Fraid so. The mechanism that restricts its search to the alloys in my tie got fried, and so did its automatic shut-off trigger. It turned itself back on and started searching again for life forms outside of natural time. Whoever, wherever, and whenever they might be.”

Twilight gaped at the inert grappler, as if it would explode.

“So it would have eventually brought every time traveller that ever existed...here?”

“That would depend on how many time travellers have ever existed, or will ever exist,” said Eureka, “but the gem that acts as its power source would’ve shattered long before that happened.” He levitated the two sad halves of the gem onto the table.

“Such a shame,” said Rarity.

“But I’m not a time traveller!” said Bravo, “I’m a test flyer!”

“And I, merely a secretary!” added Smart Cookie.

“Well, my case is easily explained,” said Twilight, raising her voice above the objections. “I was using a time spell. The grappler must have seized me on my return trip. But what about the others?”

“I know why I’m here.” All heads turned towards the morose dragon. He sighed like a broken bellows. Another tear glinted in the corner of his eye when he felt a soft touch on his side.

“It’s okay,” whispered Fluttershy. “Go ahead.”

Rhindle hesitated, wringing his claws. But the nice little pegasus’ blue eyes were impossible to ignore.

“I didn’t use a time spell, exactly. It was a love spell.”

“Oh, brother,” groaned Rainbow, planting hoof to head.

“Where I come from, in 1985, this whole country isn’t Equestria, it’s the Grand Harmonious Kingdom.”

“Spoilers,” hissed Twilight.

“A place where everyone lives together in peace and friendship, and every pony, donkey, mule, griffon, draconequus, zebra, and dragon is treated fairly and equally.”

“Spoilers!”

‘It sounds like a veritable utopia,” mused Eureka, with a faraway look.

“It sounds wonderful,” peeped Fluttershy.

“It sounds like paradise,” chimed Rarity.

“It’s boring!” groaned Rhindle.

An uneasy silence hung above the company.

“You see, I was studying at the University of...well, a university, to be a poet. With a minor in archaic magic.”

At this, he lifted a claw, which glowed red, momentarily floating his cup.

“But every poet in 1985 just wants to write about the beauty of nature and the wonders of friendship. The most celebrated poet of our time, a donkey named Beneficent, is renowned for his masterpiece, a three-hundred page epic on clover. Clover! Ugggh. How can they all stand it?”

For the first time since his arrival, Rhindle sat up and abandoned his usual slouch, which had the effect of towering above the assembled ponies. Fluttershy stifled a shiver.

“I wanted my work to be full of passion, and passion cannot exist without conflict. So my work explored things like war and sickness and death.”

“Let me guess,” said Twilight. “The university considered your work blasphemous, and you were expelled?”

“No!” shouted Rhindle. Everypony cringed. Faint, twin whisps of gray smoke wafted from the frustrated dragon’s nose. “They accepted it! Everyone’s work has merit, they all say, and they praised me for my courage!”

“How dare they,” sneered the earth pony secretary. Applejack gave her a nudge. Founder of Equestria or not, the farmer couldn’t abide her sarcasm.

“It’s not like they understood any of it. Anyway, it doesn’t matter; I don’t write poetry for them, I write it for me. But I needed to delve deeper into conflict, so I turned toward history.”

Rhindle crossed his legs and leaned forward, resting his claws on the table.

“I became fascinated with the wars of the previous century...the details of which I won’t get into right now.”

“Good,” murmured Twilight.

“So I read everything I could about the period. It was fascinating! There was war, there were economic crises, there was injustice...and yet the dragon kingdoms weren't torn apart. It brought them together, and they became more genteel, more civilized. They adopted a code of chivalry. It guided them through the misery of the age.”

Rarity smiled broadly, and her eyes became lost in a dream. It reminded her of something out of one her favorite romances.

“Late one night, I’m in the library, flipping through old volumes with drawings and photographs of dragons from the 1800’s, getting a feel for their dress and manners...and I came across...her…”

He reached into his vest pocket and produced the gold watch. He opened it gently, and set it in the middle of the table, revealing the picture of the elegant dragoness. Every pony neck stretched out.

“Just look at those eyes. That smile. Those nostrils. Something happened to me that day. I knew from the moment I beheld her that my life had changed forever. I lost my appetite, I never slept, I even stopped writing. I couldn’t study, I stopped attending classes. Wherever I went, her image floated in front of my eyes. I cut this picture out of the book and carried it with me everywhere. I just knew...everything I ever needed was in that beautiful face. I knew I needed to find her, and spend the rest of my life with her.”

Rainbow Dash pantomimed the act of sticking her hoof in her throat and throwing up. Applejack beaned her across the head with an empty cup.

“That,” croaked Rarity, “is the most incredibly romantic thing I’ve ever heard in my life.” She put a hoof to her head and slowly fell back into a swoon. Twilight, without looking, caught her in her magic and gently set her on the floor.

“I dropped out of school and travelled to every corner of the kingdom, searching through every library and archive I could find for any information about her. But she remains a mystery. Finally, I found the original photograph on display at a museum...the same one, by the way,” he said to Eureka, “where you found Miss Pie’s invitation.”

“The museum is still there? In Hoofington?”

“Sure, only now it’s called —"

"Ahem," said Twilight. Rhindle smirked meekly and continued.

“No one at the museum knew who she was either. For three days, I went there when it first opened, sat and stared at the photograph all day, and only left when the guards pushed me out. On the fourth day, the curator, a zebra, took pity on me, in a small way. She consented to remove the picture from the display so I could examine it further. And when I looked on the back, there it was. The date, claw-written. The 19th of February, 1889.

“That’s the only clue I ever found. It was enough. I went back to the university in search of the love spell I had once happened upon quite accidentally in my studies. It’s a powerful spell, designed to transport the caster to the side of his or her true love.”

“Love spells can be pretty dangerous,” said Twilight, reddening at the memory of her misused Want-It, Need-It spell.”

“They’ve been perfected over the years, and pretty much discarded by 1985. But I found this one. Now, this spell is only supposed to teleport you across space to wherever your true love might be, but I believed I could make it transport me across the decades as well. Back to that exact date, in fact. I love her so much, it just had to work. Think of it! I could be right there when that picture was taken! And maybe…” He levitated the watch into his hand, and stared hypnotically at the image it contained.

“Maybe she’s smiling at me.”

Rarity came to just so she could gasp and sigh and swoon away again. Applejack facehoofed.

“So, I bought these clothes, sold my modern possessions. I concentrated on the date, and her, and my undying love, and...cast the spell.”

The dragon deflated on the spot, a new tear falling on the tablecloth with a faint tap. Fluttershy did something that nopony, including herself, thought she’d ever do. She hugged a dragon. Everypony was silent.

“I...guess it worked,” he sobbed. “Almost.”

“Again,” said Eureka, mortified, “I’m very sorry. Can’t you cast it again?”

Rhindle shook his head. “I...don’t think I can,” he choked.

“Shhh,” whispered Fluttershy, stroking his scaly back.

“But what about me?” Bravo Zulu’s abrupt bass shout resounded around the hall, squashing the mood like an insect. “I just broke five thousand wingpower, not the ‘time barrier!’” He formed air-quotes with his hooves.

“Actually, I have an idea about that,” said Eureka. He floated a notepad out of his bags, along with an odd little silver cylinder with a point, which Twilight deduced, correctly, was some kind of self-inking quill. He scribbled a long series of complicated equations, sticking the tip of his tongue out one corner of his mouth. Bravo scowled with impatience.

“There’s a theory posed by the physicist...by somepony you don’t know, that if a pegasus ever flew at a fast enough speed, time would begin to actually slow down for them.”

“You mean, time dilation?” asked Twilight, unabashedly geeking out a smidge.

“That's right! The theory stated that if a pegasus flew around the moon at certain high speeds for, let’s say, five years, she would return home and discover that she was younger than her twin sister!”

“That doesn’t sound right,” said Rainbow Dash, hovering above the yellow unicorn and squinting as his incomprehensible numbers. “How could anypony keep flying around the moon for five years? When would they eat and sleep? And I’m the fastest flyer in Equestria. If time slowed down for me, how come I’m always late for things?”

“You’re not that fast,” grunted Bravo.

“He’s right,” admitted Eureka, peering up at her. “That’s why it was only a theory. No pegasus could go anywhere near that fast with only their wings.”

Rainbow Dash landed and pouted, feeling like she’d lost a race.

“But, Major, if you truly achieved a velocity of five thousand wingpower —”

“Which I did.”

“— you might have successfully proven the theory correct about sixty years before it was even proposed.”

“Neat!” said Twilight, averting her eyes to avoid reading his calculations.

“Now the actual dilation that you experienced, even at that uncanny speed, would have been so insignificant, you wouldn’t have noticed it. You would’ve lost, say, one second every twenty years. But.”

He saw the gleeful expression on the purple unicorn next to him, and nodded for her to finish.

“It must have been just enough for the chronograppler to recognize you as being outside natural time!” Twilight practically sang.

Bravo stared hard at the dead machine on the table, then at Eureka. Then he quite loudly uttered a profanity that the ponies of 1219 YCL recognized. Pinkie covered her mouth and giggled. Rainbow took no notice. She gazed almost longingly at Bravo’s winged apparatus in the corner of the hall. It goes so fast, she thought, it even bends time!

There was a thump at one end of the table. Smart Cookie had slammed down the vial of purple potion so hard, it’s a wonder it didn’t shatter.

“What. About. This?” She seethed, her orange eyes bulging. “Our spies recovered a potion from the laboratory of Starswirl the Bearded himself, which was plainly labeled as a transportation potion! Can you please find it in your heart, unicorn, to explain to me in your infinite wisdom what I am doing here?”

As if in answer, there was a loud plooink! noise which caused everypony to jump, and a cloud of green smoke erupted from a single point above the stage. The smoke vanished, revealing Pinkie Pie, holding the vial of potion in her hooves.

Except that Pinkie was still sitting at the table. And the same vial sat in front of Smart Cookie.

“What the —?” began Applejack, looking back and forth between the Pinkie Pies and feeling a pang of deja vu.

The new Pinkie waved at the original Pinkie.

“Hey, me!” she shouted. “I dare ya to drink that potion!”

“Okie dokie loki, me!” chimed original Pinkie, who snatched the vial from the table with both hooves, tipped it back, and quaffed the purple fluid with a glug, glug, glug.

Twilight vaulted over the table.

“Pinkie, no!”

Before Twilight landed, there was an equally loud plooink! sound. A green cloud spontaneously enveloped the first Pinkie. The cloud sucked back into a singularity, and the cloud, Pinkie, and vial were gone. Twilight pounced headfirst onto the empty spot on the floor.

“Cool!” shouted the remaining Pinkie. “Again!” She opened her mouth for another drink, but Applejack leapt onto the stage and swiped the vial away from her. Smart Cookie beheld this scene with an expression that didn’t look smart at all.

“But I do not understand,” she managed. “What just happened?"

Twilight cleared her throat. The blue earth pony shot her a suspicious glance.

“Madam Secretary,” she said, slowly. Smart Cookie relaxed a fraction at the sound of her proper title. “I notice there’s no label on the potion now. Did you see the label yourself?”

“No,” said Smart Cookie, at length. The sting of dread crept over her.

“Did one of your spies tell you it was a teleportation spell?”

“No.”

“So, how did you know what kind of potion it was?"

Smart Cookie laid her head on the table and sighed. She said something too quietly for a mouse to hear.

“What was that?” said Applejack, at her side.

“I said, ‘the Chancellor told me,’ alright?” She groaned and massaged her temples. “Chancellor Puddinghead called me before a council of elders meeting, and told me how fortunate I was that I could serve the earth pony tribe, and that I had been volunteered to seek out a new land. She gave me the potion, and...well...I drank it. She must have given me the wrong one.” She raised herself up with her front hooves on the table. “I should have known better than to trust that insufferable — empty-headed — self-important — moron! “

“Hey!” said Pinkie onstage, her hooves on her hips.

“She’s not talkin’ about you, Pinkie,” said Applejack.

“I’m afraid you’re probably right, madam,” said Eureka, peering into the vial on the table. “Instead of a teleportation potion, it’s a weak time potion. It looks like all it does is send you — what would you say, Miss Sparkle, eight seconds? Eight-and-a-half?”

“Almost nine, I’d say.”

“Right, it sends you about nine seconds into the past, as Miss Pie has demonstrated. Effectively pulling you out of natural time.” He saw Smart Cookie’s deep frown and swallowed hard. “Again, I am truly —”

“DON’T say it, unicorn.” The secretary rather skillfully spoke this last word as if it were synonymous with “troll,” “diamond dog,” or “skunk.” Eureka twiddled his front hooves. Twilight ascended the apron to join the pink one.

“Pinkie, don’t you realize how dangerous that was? Why in the world would you drink that potion?”

“Because I dared myself, silly!”

“But...how did you know to drink it?”

“I don’t know. How did you know where to find the time spell in the Starswirl the Bearded Wing?”

“Because I...told myself. Oh.” Twilight felt a momentary wave of dizziness, half attributed to confusion, half to sleep deprivation.

“Which is why short-distance time travel is not recommended,” said Eureka. “Too many ontological paradoxes for my taste.”

Applejack laid a hoof gently on Smart Cookie’s back.

“If Chancellor Puddin’head was such a moron, why did you drink the potion?”

Smart Cookie gave her a flicker of a smirk, then sat back on her haunches and closed her eyes.

“Because I wanted to believe that there was an escape, a way out of the frozen waste our country had become. You have to understand, we were at the end of our rope. The crops all died. Ponies could not venture far from their homes for fear of succumbing to frostbite and worse. Every day was misery, and the farmers became terrified of an invasion from the non-earthers, looking for hidden food. We don’t know where the blizzard came from, or why it plagued us for so long. Despite what the Chancellor thought, I knew it could not be the pegasi; even they’re not capable of such destruction. It was like our home was...cursed.”

Twilight bit her lip until it hurt. The single word windigos sat on her tongue as heavily as a cannonball. She found herself in awe of the potential power she possessed at that moment. With one word, one explanation, she could ease pain and misery, bring enlightenment, and save lives. Yet, even as she wore fatigue like an overcoat, her rational mind clamped her jaw firmly shut, though it pained her to do so.

“I...just wanted to leave that place so desperately,” said Smart Cookie, wringing a paper napkin.

“Aw, don’t feel bad,” said Applejack, “I’m sure anypony woulda done the same in your place.”

Smart Cookie simply nodded, without looking up.

In the quiet that followed, the big clock chimed eleven times. Fluttershy yawned and stretched her wings, which caused Rainbow Dash to do the same. Even Pinkie felt the lateness of the hour; she laid down on her belly for the first time in hours. Gummy planted himself on her back when no one was looking, and fell asleep, his pointy festive hat askew.

“The good news is,” said Eureka, “I can probably fix the grappler.”

“I was hoping you’d say that,” growled Bravo, forelegs still folded across his broad cream chest.

“I just need to replace the ruby that generates its power.”

Rarity knew her cue. She donned her glasses and levitated the fractured ruby pieces in front of her, rotating them slowly.

“Ohhh, this might be tricky,” she said. “Rubies with this kind of saturation and clarity are rare around Ponyville. But I’d wager my finest chapeau that I could find something like this in the Everfree. When it's light again, of course."

“The Everfree Forest?” Eureka grinned at his fellow unicorn. “I’ve read about that place. Um...is it entirely safe in this century?”

“It’s not without its complications, to be sure. But I think I know just where to look.”

“I’d better go with you,” said Eureka. Just as he said that, he became acutely aware of two things about Rarity. First, that she stood quite close to him just then, and second, that she measured rather high on the beauty scale. “I mean,” he stammered, “if that’s okay with you.”

“Heh, he stole Fluttershy’s line,” said Rainbow, nudging Bravo Zulu, who didn’t get it.

“Ooh ooh ohh, me too, me too!” chirped Pinkie.

“Of course!” said Eureka, turning to her, thankful for a chance to disengage from Rarity’s so-very-blue eyes. “That’ll give me a chance to get to know all about the famous Pinkie Pie!”

“Maybe you oughta go, too, Twi,” said Applejack, absently tossing the last of the party’s trash into the bin that Rainbow held. “If they’re goin’ into that forest, they might need some of yer magic.”

Twilight snapped her head back up, breaching the surface of consciousness.

“Huh? Oh, no, I don’t think I should. In fact, I think I’ll just stay here tonight.”

“You’re gonna sleep here? In town hall?” asked Rainbow, deftly catching party favors in the bin from across the room.

“I don’t think I should leave. I don’t want to see what 1219 looks like.”

“It’s really not that different from —”

Twilight clapped her hooves over her ears.

“La, la, la, la, la, la, la! Stop talking! No spoilers! Look, I’ll be fine. Tomorrow’s Saturday, so no one’s going to be here. The mayor won’t come in to work until Monday. I’ll just sleep up here.”

“At least let me bring you a pillow and a blanket,” said Rarity, with a touch of concern. “You can’t just sleep on that dirty stage!” Twilight gave her a sleepy smile.

“Thanks, Rarity.”

“Back in three shakes!” she sang, and trotted out the front door.

Fluttershy would never believe it was possible, but for over ten minutes, she’d forgotten that an eight-foot dragon sat near her, and she jumped when he spoke.

“Maybe I should stay here, too. I don’t suppose ponies in 1219 are accustomed to dragons walking around town.”

“Well, they’re used to one dragon,” giggled Fluttershy, “but he’s a lot smaller than you.”

Rhindle forced a toothy smile, then slumped against the wall, which shook a bit.

“But you don’t have to stay here,” she said, amazed at what was coming out of her mouth. “You could come home with me.

Rainbow Dash zipped above her airspace.

“Are you sure about that?” she asked, eyeing Rhindle dubiously.

"Of course!” said Fluttershy, still wondering who was using her vocal cords. “It’s outside of town, and very quiet. No one will even know he’s there.” She patted Rhindle’s curled tail. “What do you say? I’ll make us some hot cocoa.”

Rhindle tapped a talon on the floor. Finally he asked:

“Have they discovered...marshmallows by 1219?”

Smart Cookie turned to Applejack, “Is there a reputable ordinary or tavern in town?”

“You mean like a hotel? I wouldn’t dream of it! Why don’t you stay with my family down at Sweet Apple Acres? They’d be plumb thrilled to meet ya.”

“‘Sweet Apple Acres’? As in, a farm?”

Applejack took a breath to ask her what was wrong with living on a farm when the blue pony in the plumed cap turned to her. Smart Cookie held the farmer by the shoulders, her icy countenance melting into a hopeful smile.

“Yes. Yes, thank you, Applejack. That sounds splendid.”

Rarity returned as promptly as she had promised, levitating a satin pillow and a folded purple comforter with little blue flowers onto the stage next to a drowsy purple unicorn.

“You didn’t have to do that,” Twilight felt obliged to say, already spreading the comforter on the stage.

“Nonsense,” said Rarity, fluffing up the pillow in a blue aura. “No friend of mine is going to rough it in a drafty public building without enjoying the comforts of home.”

Rarity magically tucked her friend into her impromptu bedding. Twilight allowed herself to feel like a filly again. She was too tired to care about acting like a grown mare, and she practically purred at the prospect of impending sleep. At least I can stop worrying about the future, she thought, I’m already here!

"You’re such a good friend, Rarity.”

“So are you, Twilight. Now get some rest.”

“Mmm, this pillow is so soft,” murmured Twilight, her eyelids drooping.

“I made it myself.” This came as no surprise to Twilight.

“This comforter is cute,” she sighed. “Did you make it too? It’s a nice pattern.”

“Oh that? I just made it from leftover fabric. It’s the same pattern I used for the bridesmaid dress I made Fluttershy for Shining Armor’s wedding.”

“Oh, okay,” smiled Twilight, her head sinking blissfully into the pillow.

Rainbow flapped next to her great-grandson. She rubbed the back of her neck.

“So, erm, do you want to, y’know, stay at my house? If that’s not too weird?”

Bravo snorted.

“I’m guessing there aren’t many five-star hotels in Ponyville, huh?”

“Nope. I live in a cloudhouse. It’s, I dunno, comfy, I guess. I mean, if you wanna just find a —”

“Fine.” He peeled off the name badge that Pinkie stuck to his side, which read: "Hello, My name Is BRAVO ZOOLOO And I'm From The Year 1329."

“What?”

“I said, fine.”

“Okay. Um. Cool. Awesome. So...is it safe to just leave the wings here?”

“Yeah, they're not going anywhere.” The truth was, Bravo felt soreness from his tail to his ears. He felt every single year of his distinguished career at once. He was in no shape for any more heavy lifting.

Applejack softly nudged Pinkie’s shoulder.

“C’mon, party girl, Smart Cookie an’ I’ll walk you home.”

Pinkie’s eyes fluttered open. She yawned, set snoring Gummy on top of her head, and stretched her legs.

“But I haven’t given out any of the prizes yet. Oh well.” She looked over the room and smiled contentedly. All things considered, it was another successful party. The whole town came out, had a great time. Her guests of honor are all awesomely amazing. One for the books, really.

Twilight catapulted upright, her eyes as big as the discarded paper plates.

“Shining Armor got MARRIED?”

A Long Way from Home

The town hall clock chimed four times. Only a single pony was there to hear it. Twilight Sparkle laid on her back onstage, the flowery bedsheet pulled up to her neck. She stared at the stars though the tall upper windows. She tried to remember when she had her last full night’s sleep. It must have been the night before she realized that she’d spent so much time planning her May schedule, that she’d forgotten to reserve time to plan her June schedule. That was easily more than a week ago. From her point of view, that is. Literally, it was more than two years ago. Lying here now in the dark and quiet, she could hardly tell the difference.

Sleep tugged desperately at the corners of her mind, but found no purchase in the unicorn’s brain. There was yet one more obstacle, a thought which made it no easier to succumb to slumber than if Pinkie Pie had been playing a trumpet in her ear.

Shining Armor is going to be married. My brother. Getting married. Sometime in the next two years. Previous two years. Whatever. Shining Armor is getting married. And I know it.

“Urrrrgh!”

She flung the bedsheet aside and sat on the edge of the stage, rubbing her temples.

She wished Spike were there. She needed someone to talk to. If Spike were here and he was asleep, she’d probably wake him up. Maybe accidentally-on-purpose. Maybe fake a loud sneeze, and say, “Oh, I’m sorry, Spike, I didn’t mean to wake you. But since you’re awake anyway, I’ve been thinking…”

It was no use. She was going to have to start talking to herself.

“Okay, Twilight,” said Twilight to Twilight, “Let’s keep it together. Eureka already made it clear that time travel doesn’t really cause paradoxes. Everything will be fine. It’s two years later, and all your friends appear to be alive and well, and apparently you and Spike are fine, too, wherever they are. No matter what you do, nothing will change that.”

She inhaled deeply through her nose, and blew her breath out slowly through her mouth. Then she laid back down, plopped her head on the pillow, and magically draped the bedsheet back over herself. She closed her eyes and sighed with contentment.

Three seconds later she returned to the edge of the stage again, the bedsheet wrapped around her.

“Who is he getting married to? Do I know her? When did that even start? Has he been dating somepony all along?”

Only then did the thought occur to her: she hasn’t seen Shining since she moved to Ponyville. Not once. And he’s never written her.

“But, let’s be fair, you haven’t written him either. I haven’t written to anypony except the Princess.”

She bit her lip and covered her head in the blanket.

“Am I a bad sister?”

She sat quite still for several seconds, hearing only the wind blowing through the trees outside.

A violet aura surrounded the blanket and it flung aside.

“No, it’s his fault as much as it’s mine! I’ve been busy! I’m Princess Celestia’s student, for pony’s sake.”

She stomped her hoof and started pacing back and forth. “So now he’s married. Right now, somewhere in Equestria, Shining Armor has a wife. Some mysterious pony. And all my friends know who she is. They were at the wedding. And...so was I.”

She stopped in front of the bedsheet. She illuminated her horn and looked at it. Purple, with little blue flowers. She tried to imagine Fluttershy wearing a bridesmaid’s dress with that pattern. She probably looked beautiful. All her friends probably did, knowing Rarity’s hoofiwork. Did she look beautiful, too?

She sat down and fought back a tear.

“I don’t want to know! I shouldn’t know! I want it to be a surprise! But...it’s too late. I already know.”

She wiped the corner of her eye and gave a hollow little laugh. This was the first time in her life that she didn’t want to know something. She wished she could just wipe that knowledge away, erase the spoiler. If her mind was a library, with all her accumulated knowledge as the books on the shelves, she would take that one book and burn it.

She gasped and covered her mouth.

“That’s so disturbing! C’mon, Twilight, get a hold of yourself. You know that you can’t just…”

Inspiration struck. Twilight’s eyes went wide. With a bang, she teleported over to one of the windows near the front door. Outside lay the slumbering little village, dimly lit by firefly lampposts. The most distant buildings were nothing more than vague silhouettes. But only one mattered: the tree-shaped one.

Twilight whispered the name of the time-travelling unicorn who inadvertently brought her there. Referring to the expression, of course, not the pony himself.

She had two thoughts in quick succession: the first, a natural by-product of a badly sleep-deprived mind, was that her home, in silhouette, resembled a giant stalk of broccoli. The second was of a small book with a slightly tattered brown cover, located in the lobby of her library, on the bottom row, threeshelves to the right of the staircase. Catalogue Number #30042. Advanced Neuromancy, or: Spells for the Pony Mind, by Dr. Conundrum, published in Trottingham by Arcana Press, Ltd., 1192 YCL.

Page 103. “Memory Spells.”

She had combined certain elements of one spell from that page with two others to create the spell she used to restore her friends’ memories after Discord had corrupted them. She already had experience with this kind of magic. That page also listed a spell with the opposite effect.

“An amnesia spell!”

Twilight paced around the hall, her hoofsteps echoing. “Now, that spell is very difficult to use on other ponies. But it might be a lot easier to cast it on myself. It only works on the most recent memories. So if I were to wipe out all of my memories from the moment Rarity spilled the beans about the wedding...I’d also lose everything that happened since. My calculations will have to be worked out precisely so I forget just enough.”

She stopped and grinned, and said the time-travelling pony’s name again.

“That’s it! Twilight, you’re a genious! When Eureka sends me back in time again, I’ll cast the amnesia spell on myself the moment I arrive in the Canterlot Archives. I’ll use it to forget everything from the moment I met myself! I’ll forget I was ever in 1219! It’ll be like it never happened! No spoilers! It’s the perfect plan! Now all I have to do is get that book!”

She galloped back to the window. Her smile faded.

“But...what if there’s a spoiler in town? Or inside the library?”

“Doesn’t matter,” she replied to herself. “I’m just going to forget it anyway!”

“But...what if it’s a spoiler that’s really, really bad?”

“C’mon, what could possibly be that bad?”

“What if it’s something that makes me...not want to forget?”

She didn’t have an answer for that right away. She butted her horn against the wall. When this is over, one way or another, she was never going to mess with time again. Ever. She sighed.

“I won’t walk there. It would just take two teleports. One jump to the bridge, then a jump inside the library, right in front of the shelf where the book can be found. I grab the book, jump back to the bridge, and right back here. I can even close my eyes between jumps. Okay?”

She looked around nervously, and waited a good thirty seconds in case Spike miraculously appeared from around the corner. But he didn’t show.

“Y’know, I don’t really have to get that book right now. I could just wait until morning when one of my friends comes to check on me. I can ask them to get the book.”

She teleported back onto the stage and settled down on the comforter, her mind thoroughly made up.

“I’ll just get some sleep in the meantime. No need to fret now. Everything will be just fine.”

She closed her eyes, and willed the Sandpony to work his magic on her.

A minute later, Twilight’s eyes opened again.

In a flash of purple, she disappeared from the hall.

Exactly thirty-eight seconds later, she returned, clutching a brown book to her chest. She dropped the book next to her pillow, collapsed onto her back, and was asleep in a heartbeat.

Twilight slept so soundly, she never heard the front door open around eight o’clock.

“Alright, I think I’ve almost got it. It’s step, ball-change, step, ball-change, buffalo, buffalo, step, step, and turn?”

“Ooo! You’re super-close! After the buffalos, it’s a step, cross, kick, and turn!”

“Cross, kick, turn, cross, kick, turn. Okay, got it. One more time?”

“Yeppers! Same place, Sweetie Belle?”

The little white unicorn dropped the needle on the appropriate groove. Energetic piano music burst from the gramophone's horn once more.

Pinkie Pie shouted, “Five-six-seven-eight!” Then she and Eureka tapped away, side by side, turning and kicking and shuffling and ball-changing all around the showroom floor at Carousel Boutique for an audience of one. Sweetie Belle sat on a cushion and beamed. She had no idea who this yellow unicorn with the funny tie was, but she liked him immediately.

Pinkie and Eureka side-stepped, side-stepped, tapped, crossed, turned, kicked, turned, and ended up in identical finale poses, each on one knee and with forelegs spread wide. The song wound down. Sweetie Belle turned the record off and clapped.

Eureka held the pose for a few seconds then collapsed onto his back, nearly knocking over the ponyquin behind him.

“Wow, I am so...very... out of practice!” he panted to the ceiling. Pinkie giggled and helped him up onto his haunches.

“You’re so silly! Your dancing is crazy good!”

“Thanks,” he gasped. “Look at you! We’ve been at this for twenty minutes and you’re not even winded!”

Sweetie Belle trotted over to his side.

“You should have a dancing cutie mark instead of those gears!”

“I didn’t know they taught jazz tap in engineery school!” said Pinkie.

“Well, they don’t,” laughed Eureka. “Not even where I’m...from.” Eureka gave the filly a careful glance. He hadn’t mentioned his future origins to Sweetie Belle yet, and wasn’t exactly sure if he should. Not that he was afraid of paradoxes or the like, but he wasn’t certain if it was a subject you should broach early on when you meet somepony new. He was a pioneer, after all, and the rules of time-travel etiquette hadn’t been invented yet. He might have to write them himself.

“No, I learned it from my parents. They’re entertainers.” He lowered his voice, as if entertainers was not something usually discussed in polite company.

“Really?’ said Sweetie Belle. “What do they do?”

“A little of everything. Mom, Dad, and my uncle Hooflights had a little cabaret show in Hoofington when they were young. They sang and danced, and they invited acrobats and earth pony magicians and actors as guest performers. I met a lot of interesting ponies in my impressionable years.” He blushed at the memory, and became abruptly aware of the filly staring at him.

“So, naturally, they wanted to teach me everything they knew about the stage. I was a fairly decent singer until my voice changed.”

Pinkie and Sweetie Belle shared a giggle. Eureka absently picked up a stray roll of measuring tape. He idly wrapped it around his hooves.

“But even as a colt, I think they knew I was destined for other pursuits. I enjoyed reading science-fiction more than comedies. I learned how to run the lights and sound board, and I could fix any equipment that went on the fritz.”

Eureka stared off into space, oblivious of the tape measure tangled around his hooves. Sweetie Belle lay down attentively. She had heard enough of these kinds of stories to know exactly where this was going.

“My dad and uncle Hootlights were twin brothers, and every show, they always had this dance routine they did together wearing identical tuxedos. They moved around each so fast, you lost track of which one was which. Then uncle Hooflights came down with pneumonia, and they couldn’t do the number for a while. Dad kept a stiff upper lip, but I could tell he was worried about him.”

The measuring tape in Eureka’s hooves formed various shapes: a pentagon, a hexagon, a trapezoid, a cube. He seemed to take no notice. Pinkie sat unusually still, but kept smiling.

“I wanted to cheer him up. So I stayed up for five straight nights working on a machine that would let him do the number until Hooflights got better, borrowing equipment from the lighting instruments.”

“What kind of machine?” asked Sweetie Belle.

“A hologram projector.”

“A holey-what?” asked Pinkie Pie.

“It’s like a movie projector, but it makes a three-dimensional picture. I filmed Dad rehearsing the number, and just reversed the image. You should have seen Dad’s face when I showed him how it worked.”

Eureka began to roll the tape up again, slowly and methodically.

“We used it for only one performance. It worked great, and Dad and Mirror-Dad got a standing ovation. Uncle Hooflights was there, too, as it turned out. He got better and wanted to surprise us. I was afraid that maybe he thought he was being replaced by a ghost image, but he and Mom and Dad all gave me a hug afterwards.”

Sweetie Belle pointed to his cutie mark.

“And that’s when you got this?” she asked.

“And that’s when I got that,” he nodded, setting the tape aside, smirking. He noticed the wide-eyed looks he was getting from his audience and cleared his throat, reclaiming his enthusiastic demeanor.

“What about you, Miss Pie? Where’d you learn to dance like that?”

“Self-taught!” she chirped.

“Of course.”

There was an ahem from the top of the stairs. Eureka turned towards the source, and blushed visibly. This was a unicorn who knew how to make an entrance. Rarity practically shined like a glossy porcelain figurine. She even made the saddlebags strapped about her middle look in vogue. Rarity gave her freshly-curled mane a calculated flip, turned up her nose just a couple of degrees, and descended the stairs with the grace of a princess.

“I can only assume that all that noise was the product of some sort of dancing, and I do hope you two haven’t scuffed my nice floor which I only just polished yesterday.”

Eureka promptly retrieved his coat from a chair back, slipped it on, and felt obliged to straighten his tie.

“Oh, erm, I’m terribly sorry, M-Miss Rarity,” he managed. Rarity flashed him an understanding smile.

“Please, just Rarity will be fine. And, it’s quite alright, Eureka, I’m not really blaming you.” She turned and stared daggers at Pinkie, who was too busy playing hot-hooves with Sweetie Belle to notice.

“Ouch!” said the filly, rubbing her hooves. “Jeez, Rarity, it took you long enough. They’ve been waiting for you for like an hour.”

“Just because we’re venturing into the Everfree doesn’t mean I’m going to neglect my morning ablutions.”

“Gesundheit!” chirped Pinkie. Eureka chuckled. Rarity frowned.

“Ouch!” said Sweetie Belle. She wasn’t good at hot-hooves.

“Anyway,” said Rarity, turning back to Eureka, “do you have the ruby fragments?”

“Of course,” he said. He magically pulled the broken halves of the unfortunate gem from the pocket of his coat. Rarity donned her red glasses and took the fragments in her own blue aura and studied them carefully.

“Ouch!” said Sweetie Belle. “Okay, you win, Pinkie.” Her opponent replied with a casual backflip.

Eureka tried to admire Rarity without really looking. A quick glance in her direction, then a show of intense interest in a pin cushion on a nearby worktable. Another furtive peek, then back to the same pin cushion. And so forth.

“Er...thank you for letting me sleep on your couch, Rarity.”

“Think nothing of it,” said Rarity gently, without looking up.

Eureka turned back and found Pinkie Pie staring at the pin cushion as if it were the Sapphire Statue of Daring Do lore.

“Do you ever wonder,” she whispered earnestly, “who was the first pony to look at a tomato and say, ‘Gee, I wish I had a pin cushion that looked just like that?’ Do you think they stuck pins in it just to see how it looked? I hope they took out the pins before they ate the tomato.”

Eureka laughed. Sweetie Belle laughed because he laughed. Eureka had an especially infectious laugh. Rarity, however, gritted her teeth. Apparently, she had been laugh-vaccinated.

“Alright, I think I can find this particular type of ruby. As I said, it might be a bit tricky. Does it need to have exactly twelve facets?”

“It needs to have six facets on one side so that it fits into the slot in the grappler.”

Rarity opened the flap of her saddlebag and floated the pieces inside. She then produced a smart-looking wide-brimmed hat with a blue plume that matched her eyes and settled it meticulously on her head.

“Shall we, then?”

Eureka held the front door open for Pinkie, who bounced into the sunny morning.

“Good luck, you guys!” chirped Sweetie Belle, waving at them.

“Touch nothing, young lady!” hissed Rarity, before giving her a nuzzle.

The town square had come alive with ponies, the air filled with the sound of happy voices. Pinkie, Eureka, and Rarity wound their way around the stalls. Eureka smelled fresh cucumber, lemons, currants, and oranges. The ponies behind the counters gave him a friendly nod or smile. He was obviously a stranger to them, but that didn’t seem to matter.

He paused briefly at the window of the candle and lantern shop. Lux Aeterna, proprietor, according to the hanging sign. Amongst the candles of every color and size, fixed in brass and pewter candlesticks, was a glass case containing dozens of sleeping fireflies. A free-standing sign next to it read, “Brightest in Equestria, Guaranteed! 1 B for 5 or 2 B for a doz.”

“Good morning!” said Lux, a green earth stallion, standing in the doorway.

“Firefly illumination,” mused Eureka. “How quaint!”

“‘Scuse me?” said Lux.

“Nothing! Have a good day!” Eureka trotted off to catch up, avoiding the shoppony’s puzzled squint.

Pinkie had been talking non-stop as she bounced, oblivious to Eureka’s temporary absence.

“And that’s Lemon Hearts over there, and that’s the Sofa and Quills shop, and that’s Berry Punch talking to Shoeshine, and that was where the boring old bank was before it got eaten by parasprites and they rebuilt it and now it’s an ice cream parlor where my favorite flavor is banana prickle, and there’s Derpy, and there’s all her mail spilled on the ground by the fountain where I fell in last week when Rainbow Dash dared me to spin around with my eyes closed, and that’s Cranky, and that’s his wig that keeps falling to one side, and—”

“Oh for Celestia’s sake, Pinkie,” huffed Rarity.

“No, it’s alright,” said Eureka. “It’s all so beautiful. It’s just so...full of life.”

He tried to take it all in. The laughter of happy ponies, the clear blue sky, the little rainbow growing near the horizon, the cheerful architecture of this humble hamlet.

Rarity stopped. “Is something the matter, Eureka?”

“Yeah,” said Pinkie. Even her expression betrayed concern. “I didn’t know happy places could make somepony sad.”

Only then did Eureka feel the tiny bit of moisture in the corner of his eye. He wiped it away quickly.

“I’m fine. It’s just...Ponyville is amazing. I’ve never been anywhere so...nice.”

“Isn’t it nice where you live?” asked Pinkie.

“Pinkie,” said Rarity, placing a hoof on her shoulder. “You know he can’t tell us anything about the future.”

“It’s fine. Let’s just get this ruby so I can fix this mess. But...there is something you ought to know.”

“No, no,” insisted Rarity, “Twilight wouldn’t approve of us knowing anything.”

“But maybe you should know that—”

A tremendous explosion, like a thousand bolts of lighting pummeling the ground at once, burst from above.

“What the crans?”

A gust of wind slammed across Ponyville, knocking down everypony, upsetting vending stalls, rattling windows, and bending trees. Rarity screamed as she and Eureka braced against a wall, while Pinkie clung to a lamppost with her tail.

Then everything was still. Ponies all over town could be heard groaning. They peeked out from under carts and out of doors until they were sure it was safe. Apart from the mess in the market, a lot of spilled produce, and a couple of broken windows, everything else seemed to be okay. A few of the braver pegasi hovered above the rooftops, surveying the damage.

Eureka let out a loud sigh, having held his breath throughout the ordeal, and turned to the mares.

“Are you alright?”

“I think so,” said Rarity, trying to smooth back her mane.

“Okie dokie,” sang Pinke, releasing her tail’s grip.

“Does this sort of thing happen a lot here?”

Before Rarity could respond with something appropriately pithy, a chorus of shouts rose up among the pegasi.

“Look!” shouted Sassaflash.

Eureka followed her pointing hoof to the sky, and his jaw joined many others in dropping.
A gigantic bulls-eye of luminescent concentric rings filled the southern half of the sky. The circles bloomed and slowly expanded in diameter, the outermost rings gradually vanishing.

Each ring painted the sky with every color of the rainbow.

Eleven minutes earlier, Blossomforth cringed as she knocked on Rainbow Dash’s door for the third time. She nervously blew the pink and green bangs from her eyes and shuffled her hooves on the welcome mat made of cloud. She looked up at the second floor window and wondered if maybe she should tap on it and see if her fellow weatherpony was still asleep. She glanced over her withers in the general direction of Cloudsdale.

The cloudy doorknob turned. The cloudy door silently swung open. Blossomforth steeled herself, preparing to withstand the sort of verbal assault that would invariably come from a pegasus who liked to sleep in on the weekends.

A many-hued mane came into view.

“Good morning, Rainbow Dash! I’m really, really, really sorry to wake you, but—”

The door opened all the way.

“—but you are...definitely not Rainbow Dash.”

A tall, cream-colored, drowsy-eyed stallion stood in the doorway instead. He yawned, and stretched out his wings, which Blossomforth could not help but notice were of a most impressive span. She was unaware of the frankly stupid smile she now wore.

“No, I’m definitely not, my freckled little filly,” he said in his most charming first-thing-in-the-morning voice. “The name’s Major Bravo Zulu.”

“H-hi, I’m B-Blossomforth.” She encountered difficulty in speaking around the grin that wouldn’t go away. Bravo turned his head back inside the house and took a deep breath.

“RAINBOW! YOU HAVE A VISITOR!” His deep, commanding bass resonated throughout the house, rattling the windows, and completely drowning out the faint sound of a voice a quarter-mile away that said, “Woah!” He turned back to her.

“She’ll be down in a minute,” he said much more softly.

“Th-thank you.”

Bravo leaned against the doorframe. He noticed that she had neither stopped staring at him, nor blinked, since he opened the door.

“So, you’re a friend of hers?”

Blossomforth nodded way too fast. “Uh huh. Um. We work together. With the, with the, with the, clouds, yes, clouds. Weather stuff.”

Bravo smirked. You still got it, old stallion, he thought.

“Are you and, um, um, uhhhh—”

“Rainbow Dash?” helped Bravo.

“Ha ha ha, yes, are you and Rainbow Dash...related?”

Bravo smoothed back his prismatic mane.

“Yes, I’m her…” His charisma mode paused momentarily, as it occurred to him that the correct answer was not “great-grandson.” Charisma mode resumed.

“I’m her uncle. From Las Pegasus.”

“Oh! That’s, that’s...nice. Must be nice to, to, to be an uncle.” Inside Blossomforth’s brain, the ponyfication of her rational mind facehoofed and shoved the ponyfication of her emotional mind from the controls and said, “Give me that!”

Blossomforth blinked at last. “I’m sorry to wake you guys, but there’s an emergency weather meeting in a hour. Fillydelphia is short eleven ponies for Monday’s tornado duty and they’re looking for volunteers from Ponyville.”

“Ah, tornado duty,” sighed Bravo wistfully. “That takes me back. Haven’t been part of a good water-raising in fifteen years. Wait just a sec, I’ll see if I can wake her.”

“‘Kay,” said Blossomforth, the mad grin returning, the controls changing hooves again.

Bravo climbed the cloud-stairs unsteadily, cursing the state of his back. I’ve slept on hard cots in the barracks for years, he thought, I’ve slept on the ground in the wilderness. But now that my age ends in a zero again, suddenly my back can’t handle a couch?

He reached the landing. The trinkets on the cloud-walls bore a common motif: Wonderbolts. There were signed photographs and posters, and a little plastic figurine in a glass case which Bravo recognized as Captain Firefly. In another case was an ornamental laurel with gold wings. Bravo had one of his own back home, maybe in a box in his attic; he’d won the Best Young Flyer Competition when he was 17. Above this was a framed photograph of Rainbow in a Wonderbolt cadet uniform, saluting a stunning mare with a fiery orange mane in a captain’s dress shirt. Bravo squinted in concentration. Who was the captain back in 1219? The name failed him, and he grimaced at his spotty knowledge of military history.

He gave the photo one last glance and whispered to himself, “You’re on your way, kid.”

The door to the left, which he correctly guessed lead to Rainbow’s bedroom, was ajar.

“Rainbow!” he bellowed, “Up and at ‘em! You got a visitor and a weather meeting to get to!”

He pounded on the door, causing it to swing open.

The unkempt bed, and the room in general, were absent a pegasus.

“Sorry, dear,” he said upon his return to the front door. “Looks like she’s out.”

Blossomforth cocked her head. “Really? That’s weird.”

“Why’s that, missy?”

“She’s never up before ten on a Saturday.”

“Pffft,” scoffed Bravo. “No discipline whatsoever. When I was her age, my father would have me up at dawn, every day, without fail. Pegasus kids these days, right?”

“Heh heh, yeah,” Blossomforth gushed, not sure if she liked being called a kid, considering she and Rainbow were the same age.

“They’ve got no honor, no sense of duty,” he growled. “They think they could do whatev...er…”

“Um...Major...are you alright?”

“Excuse me!” In an instant, Bravo made a gusty departure, leaving behind a brilliant rainbow streak.

The doors were already open when he touched down. He swooped inside the town hall and circled around, scanning every corner.

“No, no, no, no, no, no, NO!”

He shouted a nasty obscenity at nopony in particular and zipped back outside.

On the stage, Twilight Sparkle laid on her belly and snored like a roaring waterfall, drooling on her pillow.

He climbed up to the edge of the troposphere at full speed, levelled off, and made a wide bank to the right in a tight circle describing the circumference of Ponyville, gritting his teeth against the rushing air. Fortunately, the weather was clear that morning; at this height, with good visibility, he could spot anything bigger than a hummingbird for miles. He spotted a few sparrows, an eagle, an owl, and about twenty pegasi going about their day, oblivious to the danger they could easily be in at that moment.

After two laps, Bravo was about to descend and start searching the ground level, in hopes that he might find his quarry there. Perhaps she was still trying to figure out how to—

“Sweet Celestia, no!”

His fears were confirmed. His quarry was flailing away to the southeast, and only 500 feet off the ground. He ignored the pain in his spine and pushed his wings hard.

“Woah! Woah! Wooooah!”

But the giant steel wings wouldn’t listen to Rainbow Dash. It was like Flight School all over again. The problem was trying to coordinate her wingbeats; even the slightest mistimed flap sent her careening to the side, spiralling and barrelrolling. The servos screeched and groaned, trying to make sense of their new pilot’s erratic commands.

“Stupid wings!” she shouted, wiping the fog from her goggles. “Just do what I do!”

She righted herself and leveled off, gliding. At least that part was easy. Experimentally, she dipped her left wing just slightly to attempt a simple bank. Her stomach rolled as she stalled out and dropped fifty feet, the rooftops below her spinning. She pumped both wings again and managed to straighten out.

“C’mon, Rainbow,” she shouted to the rushing air. “You can do this! It’s like anything else! It just takes practice!” With renewed confidence, she pitched up and flapped as hard as she could, her silvery wings rhythmically slicing the sky. She braced herself for another hard roll or stall-out, and closed her eyes.

But no jarring roll came, just the freedom of limitless ascent. She was doing it! The control! The speed! Higher and higher she climbed, not knowing or caring how far below the earth drifted away from her. She opened her eyes and saw nothing but the clear, wonderful blue that made life worth living.

She effortlessly leveled off and hovered. She pushed up her goggles and looked back.

“Wow!”

The rainbow trail she’d left was still visible, stretching for what must have been hundreds of feet. Normally it faded after only a second or two, but it was still there, a mighty column of color bisecting the ground.

A determined grin spread on her face. She pulled the goggles back down over her twinkling violet eyes.

“Alright, let’s see what these babies can really do!”

She pointed herself north, in the direction of the banners atop the roof of town hall, took three deep breaths…

And an extremely angry cream-white face emerged.

“What the belted kingfisher do you think you’re doing?”

“Uh oh.”

Bravo grabbed her by the shoulders. Rainbow swallowed hard against the sour guilt climbing her throat.

“Do you have any idea what a complicated and dangerous piece of machinery you have on your back? Do you know how many hundreds of millions of bits it cost? How many years it took to manufacture a successful prototype? This is not a surfboard or a parasail for your personal amusement!”

“What’s a para—”

“You’re going to follow me back to the town hall. You’re going to take it off. And you’re never going to come within a mile of it ever again! Do you hear me?”

Rainbow’s face turned as red as the stripe in her bangs. She shoved Bravo off her.

“Maybe you should show more respect for your elders!”

Bravo gaped for a moment, in shock. At the shove, at her brass, and most of all, at the apparent ease with which she hovered there. dwarfed by the enormous steel wings like a sleek blue and silver moth. He shook his head and recovered himself.

“That’s not funny. Don’t you understand? Ponies could get hurt!”

Rainbow lifted her goggles and crossed her forelegs.

“If you exist,” she said, “that means I’m going to live long enough to have a kid. So until that day comes, I’m, like, invincible, right?”

“I'm not convinced about that. And anyway, you could still get others killed!”

Rainbow dropped her forelegs to her sides, bobbing slightly, the servos monotonously whining around her. “What do you mean!”

Bravo drifted closer again, and spoke with practiced serenity, “I mean, if you flew fast enough, you’d generate enough wingpower to cause winds faster than any hurricane. I made my test flight over the middle of the ocean, in a 1,000-mile diameter circle. The wings have never been tested over land.”

Rainbow Dash scanned the rooftops of her hometown. She could barely make out the dots of color moving between the buildings. She frowned.

“Oh. Well...can’t we just go out over the desert somewhere?” she pleaded. “I won’t go too fast, I swear! I just want to try a couple of lazy eights and aileron rolls—”

Bravo slowly shook his head. His great-grandmother dropped her head and sighed.

“Okay, fine.”

Relief washed over Bravo. Without another word, he beckoned her and glided downwards, starting his descent next to the rainbow trail which only then evaporated.

Rainbow angled her wings, the mechanical ones following suit, and pitched downward to follow. But when she started to drop, her wings snapped inwards and folded, and Rainbow began dropping like a stone.

“Aaaighhh!”

She plummeted past Bravo with a whoosh!

“Rainbow!” He pumped his wings and nosedived after her.

Rainbow’s heart hammered. She pushed with all her strength but her wings were pinned to her sides by the framework. She started tumbling, the horizon spinning like a propeller, the earth and sky blurring together. She closed her eyes and screamed, a primal, deep throated cry borne from the darkest, most horrifying fear of every pegasus. She strained her wings desperately against the steel beams, so hard that she could feel welts and cuts forming.

There was a jolt, and the world stopped spinning. She opened her eyes. Bravo dug his forehooves under the strap beneath her belly, stark panic in his eyes.

“What’s happening?” she shouted hoarsely.

“The low gear is jammed!” he shouted into her ear.

“What??”

“The low gear is JAMMED!”

Bravo groaned and flapped hard, but it was no use. Rainbow and the dead weight of the wings combined were too heavy to lift. The air whistled angrily in their ears. The ground continued to swell up to them.

“Get them off me!!” Rainbow fumbled with the belly strap around Bravo’s hooves.

“There’s no time to disconnect them from your wings!”

He pulled one hoof from the strap and reached around the right side of Rainbow’s head.

“I’m gonna have to switch it over to the high gear! When I give the word, open your wings!”

Rainbow pinched her eyes shut and threw a foreleg around Bravo’s neck.

“Okay!”

Bravo slapped against the back of the mechanism, stretching his foreleg out so far, he thought he’d dislocate his shoulder. Where is it? Then he touched a small brass crank just above the right wing joint. He twisted it clockwise until he felt it click. He hastily jammed his hoof back under the belly strap.

“NOOOOOW!”

Rainbow prayed to Celestia, Luna, and anypony else who would listen. Then she flapped, twice.

On the first flap, the wings extended with blinding speed and matched Rainbow’s will. Rainbow and Bravo pitched back upwards, climbing into the sky four times as fast as they had been falling a split-second earlier, so fast that the movement was imperceptible. In an impossibly short amount of time, they were skimming the lowermost stratosphere, Ponyville shrinking into a distant dot surrounded by a patchwork of yellow fields and the green canopy of the Everfree Forest. As Rainbow swept the wings forwards again, they leveled out. Bravo clung to Rainbow underside and braced for the inevitable, knowing it was too late to warn her.

On the second flap, the world became an indistinct blur.

Behind them, there was a tremendous explosion, like a thousand bolts of lighting, that never ended.

Rainbow had never felt a g-force as strong as this. She fought against the blackness, willing the blood to stay in her head. She risked a glance behind her, under her belly, beyond Bravo’s body. She was leaving behind in her wake what appeared to be a tunnel made up of rainbow rings, stretching back to a vanishing point.

A perpetual series of sonic rainbooms.

In spite of the cold terror in her chest, the forces of nature yanking at her consciousness, she said simply:

“Awesome!”

She kept flapping. She couldn’t stop if she wanted to. For a full minute, she didn’t want to, and the world below became a sphere of brown nothingness, all color and light blurring. Then she looked back down at Bravo, his hooves still hooked into the strap, pressing into her belly, his head lolling to one side, eyes closed. The edges her vision became gray, and her ears rang internally. She knew what would come next.

She straightened the mechanical wings out and angled them for a slow descent.

She didn’t remember anything after that.

Wind.

Lots of wind.

Cold.

Bitter cold. Biting the face. Biting the tips of the ears.

Soft. Soft and cold.

Rainbow’s eyelids fluttered open.

White. White everywhere. Too much white.

She lifted her head.

“Whuuuuuuhhh,” said a distant voice. Most likely hers.

She pushed off the goggles, trying to make sense of the shapes around her. She was lying on her side, half buried in snow. She took a moment to gather up her strength and pulled both her right legs out of the snow. She tried to sit up, but felt something digging into her belly fur. She groaned and looked over her shoulder. One of the wings disappeared into the snowbank, the other stuck into the air, part of the leading edge sheared away, torn cables flapping in the wind.

With trembling, ice-laced hooves she managed to pop the strap open. She rolled forward to get on her hooves, only to feel the clamps tugging back on her wings. She grunted and strained against them.

“Don’t move,” said a deep voice behind her back. “Just hold still.”

She lay on her side and panted, her breath forming thick clouds from her mouth and nostrils. She heard a series of snapping sounds, and felt the grip on her wings gradually diminishing until she was able to pull them free.

“There,” said the voice. A hoof appeared. She grasped it, and it helped her up on all fours. Bravo stood there, shivering, spreading his wings around his sides. Not too far behind him was the divot in the snow from which he had probably emerged, already filling up.

“Are you okay?” he asked through chattering teeth.

“I think so.” She had a Tartarus of a headache, and she felt some cuts along her sides and in her wings, but she seemed alright otherwise, apart from being in a frozen wasteland. Thick flakes cut through the air. No horizon, or landmark of any kind, was visible in any direction.

“We’re a long way from home, missy.”

“Don’t call me ‘missy.’”

“Sorry. For what it’s worth...you might have broken my record.”

At any other time, this would be a source of enormous pride for Rainbow. At the moment, however, she was too cold and sore to do more than chuckle bitterly. She rubbed her forehooves together.

“So am I younger than my twin sister now?”

“You have a twin sister?”

“No.”

“Heh. Very funny.”

“This looks like the Frozen North,” she said. “Maybe the Crystal Empire is nearby.”

“I doubt it,” said Bravo. He walked over to the machine, hooves crunching in the snow, and blinked sadly at its crumpled frame. “Not with the trajectory we made. This is probably the Frozen South.”

“The Frozen South? I’ve never heard of it.”

“‘Course not. Nopony in 1219 has. I think the first pony explorers will reach here in about 45 years or so. Can’t remember the exact date.”

Rainbow Dash sat back on her haunches. She stared down at the snow.

“This is all my fault,” she whimpered.

“We’ll get out of this.”

“How?”

“I know we will.”

She looked up at him and shouted, “How can you possibly know that?”

“Over there.” She followed his pointed hoof. Sure enough, a dim yellow point of light bobbed in the distance, growing steady brighter. Rainbow put her hooves on either side of her snout and called.

“Hello!”

“Hello!” came a reply.

“Thank Celestia,” said Bravo, sitting down in the snow next to her. “At least we won’t freeze to death.” The light grew closer. A vague shape formed through the sideways-blowing sleet. It walked on four legs.

“Wait,” said Rainbow. “If nopony’s ever been this far south, then who…?”

“Ah, goodness, there you are!”

The shape resolved into their rescuer. He was quite tall, almost certainly as tall as Princess Celestia. He wore a bright red uniform with shiny gold buttons and a black satchel slung over one shoulder. A green, broad-rimmed hat festooned with icicles perched atop his head. His face was obscured by a wool scarf and goggles. But what really caught their attention were the huge antlers. A lantern dangled from the end of one of them.

He lifted the goggles and pulled down the scarf.

“Well,” he said, “you two are just aboot the funniest looking moose I’ve ever seen.”