Minuette: A Short Biography
Author's Note
Envisioned as a one shot initially as I lay in my bed, but has now been 'chunked' into several parts.
Early Life
Minuette was born to unicorn parents in the year 1984 AU (After Unification) in the city of Canterlot. As an only child, she was the focus of attention for her parents, who loved their daughter deeply. She was raised and nurtured with much love and care, and at first she seemed to be a perfectly ordinary unicorn filly. But that illusion of normalcy was soon dispelled.
In 1989 AU, at the age of five, Minuette used her time-altering magic for the first time. Inside of a small bubble of space-time, she slowed down the flow of time, which caused the motion of objects to speed up, in agreement with the general theory of relativity formulated by the great scientist Starshine in the year 1915 AU. Her parents were startled to find a small ball bouncing up and down at great speed, faster than normal gravitational acceleration could account for. Initially assuming that Minuette was using her magic to hurl the ball upward and then slam it downward, her father stepped forward and stretched his right forehoof out to catch the ball in midair, which nearly resulted in catastrophe, as his hoof entered the space-time bubble and proceeded to move faster than the rest of him, which began to stretch his foreleg out and threatened to rip it off. Minuette collapsed the space-time bubble before this ensued, saving her father's foreleg from destruction, but not soon enough to prevent internal injury from the stretching.
Her father was rushed to the Emergency Room, where the unicorn healers attempted to fix his forehoof. They managed to slow the rate of the internal bleeding but were unable to halt it entirely, or to heal the stretched-out bones. Allowed in to see her father and accompanied by her mother, Minuette was clearly upset. Her father, in violation of the doctors' instructions, used his magic to remove the restraints from his right forehoof, and reached towards his daughter.
At this point, Minuette used her time-altering magic for the second time in her life, this time accelerating the flow of time in a small space-time bubble, which slowed the motion of physical objects. Her father's forehoof suddenly slowed down, which undid the stretching and restored the bone back to its natural shape and density. Before her father could draw back his hoof, she collapsed the bubble, preventing him from re-stretching out his forelimb.
After hurriedly escorting Minuette and her mother out of the room, the doctors examined the forelimb again, checking for additional damage. Amazingly, the bone was perfectly restored, leaving only damaged blood vessels to be fixed. The healers tried again, and this time the hoof was healed.
News of this strange occurrence spread rapidly through Canterlot. Princess Celestia heard of it, and arranged a meeting with Minuette and her parents. While interviewing her, she noticed that the young filly was using her magic. Curious, Celestia surreptitiously scanned for magic. She discovered a bubble of altered space-time around the pendulum clock in the residence, which was making the pendulum swing faster, causing the clock to register time as going faster, even though time was actually proceeding at a slower rate than normal within the bubble.
Princess Celestia had never encountered or heard of any pony having the ability to control space-time. Fascinated, she invited Minuette to attend her school for gifted unicorns. Her parents, puzzled by Minuette's abilities but loving her no less than before, gratefully agreed, hoping that Minuette would learn how to control her abilities more thoroughly.
Minuette attended Princess Celestia's School for Gifted Unicorns for the next thirteen years of her life. She was able to use several principles of magic to refine her time-altering abilities, though she had to experiment and discover what she could do on her own, as no other unicorn could even begin to do what she was capable of doing with just a thought. However, the lessons did assist her, as she learned how to accomplish more common feats of magic, including highly precise levitation and the art of teleportation.
Teleportation in particular was easy for Minuette. Teleportation involves creating a wormhole in the fabric of space-time, allowing one to suddenly be somewhere else. In rare cases, if a pony had the power and the knowledge, one could teleport back in time a short while, though the natural fabric of the timestream would bring them back to the present rapidly.
Minuette, however, took teleportation to a whole new level, being able to teleport through time as easily as she did through space. She quickly became a terror in the games of magicball, a version of dodgeball played by unicorns in which magic use is allowed, that were played as a recreational pastime. She could teleport herself back in time after the game, causing two versions of herself to be on the field at once. What's more, as her abilities increased over time she became capable of doing this repeatedly, and all opponents would be swamped by the armada of herself that took the field.
Once the games hit this stage, it became Minuette vs everypony else, with the games being close-fought at first but rapidly swinging in Minuette's favor. This culminated in the legendary game known as the "Timeball Game", held on March 13, 1997 AU, where Minuette played against all the other students - and faculty members, an unusual event since they were not interested in or allowed to play in the students' magicball games under normal circumstances.
The game was hard-fought initially, since Minuette had only traveled back in time eleven times, meaning only twelve of her were on the field, rather than her more usual twenty-five that she had utilized for the past year. The twelve versions of Minuette struggled to stay in the game against so many opponents. She appeared to be on the brink of collapse when she suddenly unveiled a new refinement of her time-altering abilities.
Minuette had refined her space-time bubble techniques to the point that she could make it any shape she wanted. But even more importantly, she had developed the ability to make moving space-time bubbles.
Suddenly, every version of Minuette on the field created a space-time bubble around themselves that only included themselves, and none of the surrounding air. They slowed the flow of time, which had the effect of speeding up the motion of objects - which, due to their recently developed ability of making moving bubbles, meant that no matter how much they moved, they stayed inside of a space-time bubble that included only them and nothing else - not even air or the ground.
Suddenly, all the Minuettes moved with blinding speed, catching their opponents by surprise. All opposition to Minuette crumbled under a hail of dodgeballs, the relentless pummeling leaving bruises due to the Minuettes also creating space-time bubbles around the dodgeballs, slowing time and speeding motion. The balls heated the air around them due to the friction of air in unaltered space-time being run into by time-slowed, motion-speeded dodgeballs.
The game was won. Then, right after the game finished, the other Minuettes disappeared, going forward in time to their teleportation point, and the last Minuette - who was all of the other Minuettes, them being herself earlier on - collapsed on the field, unconscious.
It turned out that Minuette had overexerted herself, with each successful travel through the magicball game draining her reserves of magical energy, the final straw being that she had accidentally forgotten to take a deep breath before she had generated the space-time bubble around herself on the last run-through, which knocked her out due to oxygen deprivation. She was out for three days. When she awoke, she was greeted with the news that she was the all-time magicball champion of the school and that she was going to be a member of the school's hall of fame - and that, due to safety and fairness concerns, she was banned from playing magicball ever again.
During her years at Princess Celestia's School for Gifted Unicorns, she became close friends with the future alicorn and princess Twilight Sparkle, along with Moondancer, Lyra Heartstrings, Twinkleshine, and Lemon Hearts.
When her education ended and Twilight Sparkle left for Ponyville, a chapter in the life of Minuette closed, and a new one began.
Minuette: A Short Biography
Author's Note
This chapter attempts to reweave some of the comics back into canon, and I have a number of solutions for the other inconsistencies between the comics and canon. I do not cover them in the chapter below, however, as this would detract from the 'biography' of Minuette because they are not related to the subject matter.
But enough of my explanations. Enjoy the chapter!
Early Adulthood
In the years that followed, Minuette traveled regularly back and forth between Ponyville and Canterlot, as she and her friends Lemon Hearts and Twinkleshine visited their friend Lyra Heartstrings on a regular basis. They and Lyra rapidly became friends with Bon Bon, an Earth Pony mare who had once worked for the Equestrian Monster Capture and Containment Agency, more commonly abbreviated as EMCCA.
During this time, Minuette drew the attention of Doctor Hooves, more commonly known as simply "the Doctor", and his adopted daughter Derpy Hooves. The last known member of an enigmatic race known as "Time Lords", the Doctor had access to the TARDIS, the last surviving machine capable of time travel. The Doctor discovered that occasionally strange bubbles in the fabric of space-time would appear in Equestria, only to disappear after a highly variable period of time. Intrigued, the Doctor mounted an investigation, discovering that Minuette was at the root of most of the anomalies.
But not all of them.
The origin of the anomalies not created by Minuette lies in the strange occurrence known as the Failed Universe Merger Event, more commonly abbreviated as FUME. While many details about the origins of the event remain classified, what is known about the event itself has been public knowledge since a century after the event. Now, due to the painstaking work of physicist-turned-historian Full Glass, the answer to the anomalous space-time bubbles - as well as some of Equestria's other mysteries - has been revealed.
During the event, Alternate Equestria's versions of Minuette - known as Colgate, due to her profession as a dentist - and Lyra Heartstrings were having a small get-together in one of Alternate Canterlot's cafes. When the event occurred, Colgate attempted to use her time-altering abilities to ensure that she and Lyra stayed with their home time-stream. However, because there was no Princess Celestia's School for Gifted Unicorns in Alternate Equestria, Colgate had less experience with her abilities than Minuette, and she mistakenly latched onto the wrong time-stream, stranding her and Alternate Lyra in our universe when the universes re-separated.
Due to the trauma that the event caused to the space-time continuum, Colgate was unable to directly teleport herself and Alternate Lyra back into the middle of the event. With practically no knowledge of our Equestria's history, Colgate decided to travel back in time to before the event with Alternate Lyra, and also to learn as much about our culture and history as possible.
Traveling back in time, the pair enrolled at Canterlot High School, entering as freshmen during the sophomore year of the much-celebrated royal couple Shining Armor and Princess Cadance, who were then as yet unaware of where life would take them. This has caused much trouble for past historians, as, for reasons still unknown, Colgate enrolled under the name "Minuette".
A controversial theory aired recently by the eminent historian Field Test shortly after the origins of 'the second Minuette' and 'the second Lyra' were finally uncovered states that Colgate's use of the name Minuette was not because it was a nickname for young Colgate, as most historians have proposed, but because Minuette met with them and urged them to use matching names to help them stay inconspicuous in our world. This theory has come under heavy criticism from other historians, who have pointed out that there is little to no supporting evidence for this interpretation of history. Nevertheless, despite numerous attempts to 'debunk' it, the theory has yet to be disproved.
Where Colgate and Alternate Lyra went to after their graduation remains uncertain, though reportedly the pair parted and went separate ways. Alternate Lyra supposedly embarked on a quest to find artifacts of human civilization deep in the Saddle Arabian desert, and Colgate purportedly met up with Minuette and would stand in for her at the dentistry whenever she was busy. Though unconfirmed, the rumors provide a tantalizing glimpse of what happened to them. After that they disappear entirely - not even rumors about what happened to them remain - or why - which has generated much speculation about their fate.
But Minuette's life continued on, with her life only occasionally interrupted by drama. One of those incidents happened at the Summer Festival of 2005 AU, where she created a stable wormhole through time and space. Big Macintosh accidentally wandered into the timewarp, and Minuette followed in order to bring him back.
The only details of the trip that are known is that they landed sometime in the future and saved Ponyville from an invasion of what Big Mac called 'mutant apes'. Minuette and Big Mac returned five minutes before they arrived, and ten minutes later Minuette closed the wormhole. Speculation has emerged that the 'mutant apes' may be humans, but it remains pure conjecture, with no evidence.
Then in 2007 AU, Princess Twilight Sparkle made a surprise visit to Minuette, who reunited her with Lemon Hearts and Twinkleshine. After attempting to reconnect with their old friend Moondancer unsuccessfully a number of times, they finally convinced her of her self-worth, and became close friends once more, beginning a new chapter in the life of Minuette, who still had the majority of her life before her.
