"Come on, just try it!"
Spike looked expectantly at Twilight. She looked at the pancake, then at Spike. Then the pancake again. Her hesitation was irritating Spike.
"Applejack, Pinkie Pie and Rainbow Dash all recommended it!"
The pancake in question was a septuple-decker monstrosity, with huge amounts of applesauce, strawberry jam, maple syrup, butterscotch syrup, chocolate syrup, vanilla syrup, syrup syrup, banana slices and whipped cream on it. It was not exactly 'a part of this complete breakfast'.
"Spike, generally speaking, everypony should eat breakfast for breakfast, not something that probably has more sugar than anypony besides Pinkie eats in a single week."
Spike sighed and looked down, and shuffled his feet a little. "Well, yeah, but I made this just for you. Won't you please try it?"
Twilight pondered this for a minute. Her over-logical mind screamed in a very polite tone of voice for screaming, "If we eat that, we will die."
Another voice in her head arose. "But Spike made it for us!"
"It would seem that not dying is a better choice than Spike's happiness in this instance."
"But he'd be so saddy-waddy! And you won't die! After all, I -uh, Pinkie recommended it!"
"Yeah! She did! Wait, what?"
"Nothing! I gotta go!"
"Go where? We're all abstractions of our mind! Right?"
Silence reigned.
Logical Twilight facehooved and retook the floor. "Moving on, that is an excellent point. We probably will not die immediately from consuming this, and if necessary we may magically remove the food from our systems. All in agreement?"
"Aye."
"Aye."
"Aye."
"Aye."
"Yeppers!"
The imaginary Twilights glared at the pink and bouncing intrusion.
"Oops! Forgot I was gone! Sorry!"
Twilight suddenly became aware that something was poking her shoulder repeatedly.
"Twilight? You don't have to go crazy about this. It's okay if you don't wanna eat it, I'll just eat it instead or something."
Twilight shook her head and levitated a fork. Carefully cutting out a piece, she moved it to her open mouth and closed her eyes, curious as to the claimed "SUPER-DE-DUPER FLAVOR EXPLOOOOOOOSION!" that was about to "OVERCOME YOUR ENTIRE EXISTENCE!!!" and waited. And waited. After several seconds she opened her eyes and looked at the fork. It didn't seem to be moving, though it was certainly in her magical grasp. She tugged. Nothing. She tugged harder. Still nothing.
Determined to not be defeated by a mere metal utensil, she used increasingly absurd amounts of force, to little or no apparent effect. After a minute or so of this, she became aware that somepony had been trying to talk to her. She turned her head to see somepony that looked remarkably like herself, only extremely angry. Her mouth closed.
"-OOKS AND BURN THEM ALL IN A HUGE PILE IF YOU DON'T oh wait you're listening now. Hi. I am you. You probably already know that. No, no interrupting. There's a reason why you can't talk at the moment. We aren't having a repeat of that one Tuesday. Anyways, a few things. First, yes we're in a time lock, which is proving to be very useful as it gives us more on the order of up to an hour of time instead of not quite enough for me to tell myself something extremely important. Second, even though it's a really bad idea for you to eat that, I don't think I can actually prevent you from eating any of that pancake without ripping all of reality apart, and I haven't figured out yet how to put reality back together if that happens, so I guess we'll have to go around again until I do. Third, you might want to duck in a moment. We're in a time stop and you've spent quite a bit of time accelerating that fork."
Future Twilight looked at the fork carefully and cast a spell.
"Yeah, that fork is now going about... much-too-fast meters per second. Actually, you might want to just teleport yourself and Spike out of the house. I would stop it, but again, that would break everything. Still haven't figured out all the rules. Anyways, I guess my last thing to say before I paradox myself out of this timeline is you must eat the pancake, but be prepared. You may now speak."
Twilight, whose lips were now unsealed, spoke the most sensible reply that could possibly be made by anyone/anypony/anything who/who/that had anything such as that told to them/them/it.
"WHAT?!"
"Correct. This is really weird. Any questions before I receive the consequences of fighting against the rules over time streams?"
Twilight panicked. "I thought you said we had an hour!"
"We had an hour if I didn't break any rules. As of right now, we have about ten minutes left if I do nothing, including breathe or think or be visible."
Twilight's panicking intensified. "What sort of consequences?"
"For me, painful death, but I knew what would happen. For you if you eat the pancake? Most likely failure. I am Twilight number 63. You will be number 64. Hopefully the last in a good way. If you don't eat it, I jumped to the wrong timeline and will be the last in a bad way. Or this is just a fragmented line which will collapse. I don't know."
Twilight sat with a stunned expression. "64? There have been 63 of me?"
Future (Past?) Twilight nodded sadly. "It's a tough job. But I bel-ouch... believe in you. We all believe in each other. With each iteration, we get closer. Usually. We don't talk about 32..."
Future (Past future? Future future past? 63 times past future?) Twilight grimaced and collapsed. Current Twilight tried to rush forwards and found it was difficult but possible. She reached and held the Other (Yes, Other) Twilight in her hooves. Other Twilight hacked and coughed blood onto the floor. Current Twilight flinched, and awkwardly stroked Other Twilight's mane in an attempt to comfort her.
"Listen, and listen caref-*cough*... Remember me. Remember your number. Break the cycle. Win this fight."
Other Twilight's voice ground down to a mere whisper. "And be wary. Patterns show up in the numbers. 32 might give you trouble. 46 more so. Yes, they're dead. Or they're supposed to be. Doesn't matter..."
Other Twilight shuddered and tried to keep her eyes focused. "One last thing."
Other Twilight lurched forward and touched her horn to Twilight's. Quite a number of things happened all at once. Other Twilight screamed. Current Twilight screamed. There was a very bright light, an explosion, loud noises, a serious headache, a rush of memories and after what really only lasted about half of a second (or less than a thousandth, depends on who you ask. Timestop, remember?) but felt so much longer, everything went dark.
"Good luck, 64."
