Atop a hill, overlooking a forgotten planet’s forgotten battlefield, silhouetted by the light of the sunset, stood a brown stallion with an hourglass cutie mark. Behind him was a tall wooden blue box.
“I’ve lived many centuries,” he spoke, “and I’ve seen many horrors. Horrors I won’t let others suffer through. This is the promise that I made in the name that I took. A cry calls out across the universe. Time is in trouble. And there’s only one pony for the—”
“First!”
“What the—!?” he shouted, looking up to see the blue box falling over onto him, the doors swinging open and swallowing him inside. A purple figure jumped up and sat on the box, knocking on the side.
“Sorry, hourglass-chan, nothing personal.”
“You’re not stealing the spotlight from us in time-travel stories anymore!”
“Our strength could make your villains cry easily!”
“Plus the kids would love us.”
“I think now would be a good time to actually get on with the story, don’t you?”
“What do you know!”
* * *
Twilight and Spike stood in her castle, having just watched Starlight Glimmer disappear into some bubble the shape of an upside down fishbowl floating in the air over the Map.
“Where’d she go?” Spike asked, running over to the Map.
“I don’t know, Spike,” answered Twilight, walking up behind him and staring up at the point where the glowing bubble had been, “but I think we’d better find out.”
“I guess we could start with this,” Spike said. Twilight looked over to see him reaching for the crumbled scroll Starlight had tossed before her escape.
“Spike, no!” she let out. “Don’t touch tha—ow, what the?” A card had slapped into the side of her face out of nowhere. Spike grabbed the paper, and a column of glowing rings rose from the table and the bubble reopened above it. A sudden pulling force sucked the scroll up into the bubble, pulling Spike with it, and pulling Twilight after she grabbed onto his tail. They disappeared into the hole at the bottom of the bubble before it snapped shut, leaving the room empty.
Almost empty. The card that had hit Twilight’s face sat on the floor, black with a red strip down one side. Then, an image faded into view on it: Starlight Glimmer, above a series of red numbers. A lone figure stepped into the room, walking over to the card and picking it up. The figure took out a square black plastic object, flipping open a clear cover before sliding the card into the cover and flipping it back closed.
In Cloudsdale, some years prior, filly Rainbow Dash was stuck frozen in midair, being held in place by some external force. And she’d just lost the race.
“Wha’did you do!” Twilight shouted, flying up to Starlight, who was levitating herself in midair with a smug look on her face.
“You,” Starlight taunted, “are about to find out.”
At that moment, however, in the street where Twilight and Spike had arrived a few minutes ago, a muffled jingle of horns and sirens started up. A bright circular portal appeared in the air above the street, and a set of train tracks unfolded out from it, gently sloping to the ground, before a white bullet train engine with a black roof and two long red-orange windows at the front zoomed out of the portal along the track, following it down the street as it pulled seven additional cars out behind it. The train, DenLiner, eased to a stop, the track leading from the portal folding up behind it and the portal disappearing. A door on the side of the fourth car opened, and figure stepped down the extended ladder, swiping a Rider Pass over his belt buckle, a white burst sending a scattering of debris that accumulated onto him in the form of a black and silver suit. He pressed a red button on the belt making the horn and siren jingle play again, and again swiped the Pass over the buckle.
Sword Form
Six plates of armor circled around him on transparent rainbow train tracks, the four red plates strapping onto his shoulders and chest, and the two yellow plates onto his back. A red teardrop-shaped plate followed the train track on his helmet up from the back of his head to over his face before splitting in half, each half slanting sideways to form eye covers, locking into place with a flash.
Kamen Rider Den-O pointed at himself with his thumb, saying, “Ore…sanj—nani?” The bubble had reappeared over Twilight and Spike with a flash before sucking them in and disappearing again. “Oi, where are you going!” Den-O said, stepping forward. “We just got he—ai!” He fell straight down, barely catching the paved street like a ledge. “Grr-rrrrr. Darn cloud floors,” he mumbled, hanging there. Briefly letting go with one hand, he motioned at where Twilight had been. “Get after her again! Every time she jumps around it could change what we’re supposed to be fixing. But get me up first!”
King Sombra looked down upon the orange-skied snowy battlefield from atop the crystal ledge he’d summoned. His troops were slowly making progress against Celestia’s Equestrian forces, and he would soon overrun their ranks. Then from above came a techno-style beeping jingle.
Full Charge
Sombra looked up to see a figure in silver and purple armor pointing a gun at him…and standing atop a purple dragonhead armament folded up from the top of a bullet train engine on a track floating in midair. Before he could react, a glowing ball of blue energy charged on the gun and in the dragon’s mouth before they fired a dual energy beam at him, hitting with an explosion and blasting a cloud of shadow dust across the surrounding area.
“Kotae wa kiitenai kedo!” Den-O Gun Form called from the DenLiner’s dragon car, holding the gun mode DenGasher over his shoulder. “Huh?” He took a closer look to see the cloud of shadow dust rising and condensing to form a towering mass of darkness reaching as high as the train. Sombra’s gray face and curved red horn formed in the cloud and slowly reached out towards him, jaws opening hungrily. Den-O quickly reached down and pressed the yellow button on his belt.
A jingle of chimes and dings played, and Sombra paused in curiosity. Then a set of train tracks unfolded out from inside his mouth, and with a look of surprise five yellow energy slashes burst from his head, which was blasted into a shadow cloud that dissipated, revealing sitting upon the track a yellow-fronted engine car with five ax-ended red arms folded out from the sides and a large yellow blade extending up from the front.
“Hmph,” came Kintaros’s voice from the train engine. “My strength, has made you cry.”
“Yeah, that was easy,” said Gun Form’s Imagin, Ryutaros, as Den-O’s base user, Ryotaro, silently sighed in relief. “Did we save time yet?”
Suddenly, the remaining column of shadow started leaking streams of white sand. Den-O looked around in surprise as the clouds also began disintegrating out of the sky, as did the snowy cliffs below. Another track unfolded in between the two trains, and the orange-windowed engine with seven cars rolled out along it.
“What gives!” Momotaros’s voice grumbled from the train. “She’s already left, and time’s being altered again! Ryotaro, ichu ze!”
“So we have to do this all over again? No fair,” Ryutaros moaned as Den-O jumped down from atop the dragonhead armament of the purple engine and into the open top hatch of the main engine.
Inside the front engine car, Den-O had switched to Sword Form, and was now climbing onto the white and blue Den-Bird motorcycle positioned in the center of the car. He clicked his Rider Pass into a slot on the Den-Bird’s handlebars and gunned it, the DenLiner jumping forward towards the time portal that had appeared at the end of the midair tracks. The other engines folded in their armaments and began heading for similar portals on their tracks.
“Let’s try not to make a habit of this, eh?” he said.
The mass of crystal encasing Twilight and Spike, dislodged by Starlight, fell from the clouds. It plummeted helplessly towards the ground. Oh, how dreadful! Surely, this was a job for none other than one so noble. A set of train tracks unfolded across the sky towards the trapped pony and dragon, a blue train engine rolling closer. Its rear segment rose up from the car and unfolded into a diamond shape, sprouting a head and four clear orange flippers into the shape of a turtle. It separated and began flying in for the rescue, a figure in blue armor standing atop its back and holding a long pole.
“Ah,” said Den-O. “Won’t you let me reel you—”
The crystal blasted apart from the inside, Twilight stopping in midair, but quickly zipping down to grab Spike before flying back up to the clouds above. Left unnoticed, the turtle hovercraft slowly glided to a halt.
“Sigh,” Den-O said, hanging his head.
Back in the DenLiner’s dining car, Owner sat at the table in the corner with a grave look on his face. “We must stop this soon,” he said quietly. “Time is not a thing to be changed so recklessly.”
Well, Ryotaro’s luck had done it again. Here he was, in the middle of trying to help fix a broken timeline, and what happens but he gets cornered in the middle of a forest by a group of spear-wielding ponies covered with what looked like tribal body paintings in green mud. “I-I’m not a changeling,” he muttered, knowing it wouldn’t do any good.
“That’s just what a changeling would say!” said one of the ponies.
“And what not a changeling would say,” Ryotaro moaned to himself.
“Perhaps I should handle this.”
Urataros’s blue outline faded in and jumped into Ryotaro, instantly pushing most of his hair over to the left while adding a blue streak, and giving him thick-rimmed oval glasses, blue eyes, and a thick woolen scarf with white and blue bands. He crossed his left arm over his stomach and rested his right elbow in its curled fingers, adjusting his glasses slightly with his right hand.
“I knew it!” the pony shouted. “A changeling!”
“Now, now,” U-Ryotaro said, casually pushing a spearpoint out of his face, “let’s see if we can’t set the record straight on a few things.” He raised his finger. “Changelings change their form in a burst of green flame, do they not? I ask you.” He reached down with his left hand and pressed the blue button on the belt that he was suddenly wearing, triggering a jingle of echoing underwater notes, and held up the Rider Pass. “What about this is green?” He swiped the Pass over the buckle.
Rod Form
The white debris cloud assembled into Plat Form as the six armor plates circled him. The two yellow plates folded out blue panels from underneath, attaching into a spread across his chest with turtle flipper-shaped shoulder pads, blue on the front and yellow on the back. The two larger red plates attached onto his back, and the smaller two with gold disks slid under the shoulder pads. A blue turtle slid across the track on his helmet, stopping over his eyes where the shell split into two halves that slid out and flipped backwards, revealing a pair of orange eyes and pointing the blade-like front flippers upwards, before sliding back and locking into place with an orange flash from the eyes. Rod Form Den-O retook his signature pose, casually asking, “Won’t you let me string you along?”
“Ai! Yi! Aig!”
Hana and Naomi helped pull Den-O aboard as the DenLiner began to move, the mob of ponies still shouting and swatting at him with spears and large leaf fronds. Upon passing through the doorway, Urataros’s blue outline jumped out, leaving the armor gray before it quickly shattered off of Ryotaro. Urataros's outline flew off and crashed into one of the dining car’s benches before he reformed, slumping down. A red hand set on his right shoulder and patted it. He looked over to the right. Then the hand slapped him upside the back of the head, knocking him up out of his seat.
“Genius tactic, turtle!” Momotaros chided, sitting at the next table over. “Could you have chosen a worse wording of your catchphrase?”
“Yeah, that was kinda really dumb, kame-chan,” added Ryutaros, sitting on the next table over.
Urataros turned his back to them indignantly. “I maintain that they simply weren’t sophisticated enough to understand my reasoning.”
“I’m surprised you didn’t try lying to say that you were a changeling to try and convince them otherwise!”
Ax Form Den-O threw his left palm forward and shattered the pouncing Timberwolf on impact, not needing to use the DenGasher ax in his right hand. As splintered sticks of the Timberwolf rained to the ground, its fellow pack members took a collective step back, an eternal moon shining above.
“My strength,” Den-O started, “has made you—”
“Is that the only thing you can say?” Momotaros interrupted.
“Hmph,” Kintaros grunted.
“Give the rest of us a shot!” Momotaros’s red outline jumped into Den-O, forcing out Kintaros’s yellow outline and making the Ax Form armor pieces fly off and begin spinning around to realign themselves into Sword Form, the ax-blade mask shattering away. “After all, from the start, I fight at a clima—”
“No, my catchphrase is cooler,” Ryutaros cut in, his purple outline jumping into Den-O, kicking Momotaros’s out while interrupting the armor change and sending the armor pieces flying away, leaving Den-O in Plat Form, “I should fight next! Listen: Mind if I defeat y—”
Momotaros’s outline jumped back in, kicking Ryutaros’s back out. “It doesn’t matter what your catchphrase sounds like, I haven’t had the chance to fight yet!”
“No, really,” Ryutaros said, his outline slipping back in, “just listen: Mind if I—” The two Imagins’ outlines rose up from Den-O engaged in a shoving match.
“Uh, guys,” Ryotaro said, looking around nervously, “could you maybe…?” Recognizing their quarry to be distracted, the Timberwolf pack had begun to close in again.
Looping through the red skies, all eight weaponized cars of the DenLiner unleashed full open fire upon the behemoth rampaging below: lasers, rockets, bombs, attack planes, everything. Amidst the barrage, the dragonhead armament on the purple engine at the front charged up a light blue energy blast and fired, the beam grazing the red and black horned monster centaur. Tirek charged an orange energy blast between the curves of his horns and fired back a much thicker beam.
The DenLiner made a sudden pull-up to arc over the beam, its path’s steepness causing it to briefly jump the track at the apex before arcing back down, the purple dragon and yellow ax engines angling down enough for the blue turtle engine to fire a pair of laser beams from the front flippers of the turtle hovercraft latched to its top, swinging them in from the sides like a pair of shears. Tirek simply grabbed the beams in his bare hands and held them in place.
The DenLiner was forced at the blue engine to stop in its tracks, but the front two engines unhooked from the main train, sliding down the track and onto a newly-split pair of tracks leading each of them towards Tirek from flanking directions. The ax engine flipped up the large blade on its front roof and charged in at full speed while the dragon engine charged another energy beam in its mouth.
The four Imagin stood beside the DenLiner in a world of colorful checkerboard grounds and upside down floating trees. The only thing was…
“Why do I look like a chibi!?” Momotaros shouted in frustration. He and the others had tiny squashed bodies with oversized square heads and were drawn in an irritatingly cartoon style.
“At least we can stand outside here,” Ryutaros pointed out, “instead of being stuck as intangible sandy images of ourselves.”
“I’d rather be sand!”
Ryotaro stepped forward, clicking on the Den-O belt. He pressed the red button, but suddenly all four buttons turned beige, and a set of synthesizer beats played “d-d-d-d-d, dd-d-d-d-d-d, d-d-d-d-d-d-d, d-d-d-d-d-d-d, d-d-d-d-d-d-d, d-d-d-d-d-d-d, dd d-d-d-d-d”. Ryotaro looked down at the belt in surprise.
Ryutaros turned to Momotaros. “You should’ve been more careful with what you said.”
“Rahg! Now that’s never getting out of my head!”
This was it. After so long, so many tries, so many failures, it seemed she’d finally gotten through.
In the sky near Cloudsdale, Twilight Sparkle, with Spike on her back, and Starlight Glimmer stood on a cloud, with Starlight holding the half-torn time spell scroll in her magic grip, but stopping.
“How do I know they won’t all end the same way?” Starlight asked, tears in her eyes.
“I guess it’s up to you to make sure they don’t,” responded Twilight. She reached out to offer a hoof to Starlight. The unicorn looked at it for a second, then extended her own hoof out to take it…as a cloud of sand dropped from it.
“What do you think you’re doing?”
The two ponies jumped at the disembodied voice. A burst of sand came from Starlight as a figure of sand rose up from the cloud between them. The sand fell away to reveal a dark orange bipedal creature clad in shiny orange coverings with a tall fanlike collar of alternating yellow and white spans. It crossed its arms and looked at Starlight.
“W-who are you?” Starlight stuttered. “What are you?”
“Heh,” it chuckled. It snatched the time spell scroll out of the air next to it and shook it in her face. “The real reason you were able to acquire and alter this scroll so easily. Did you really think you’d done it on your own?”
“What do you mean?” Starlight countered.
“All of this,” the figure said, indicating around them, “all that you’ve done…don’t you remember wishing for it?”
“I…,” Starlight trailed off, “that voice…”
The glass cover having shattered, a storm of cutie marks in glowing energy balls shot out from the cave and spiraled through the sky, making their way back towards their rightful owners… except for one yellow ball, which seemed to meander around before turning and heading in the opposite direction, following an escaping Starlight Glimmer.
Cornered and having lost the cutie marks of the six intruders, Starlight fled deep into the cave networks of the snowy mountains, but the wayward yellow energy ball flew into the caves, tracking her down. Once she was confident she wasn’t being followed, she stopped to breathe, her breath visible in the chilly air, the rage of having her lifelong goals shattered before her eyes rising, bringing to mind the memory of what led her to such a goal. Unseen, the yellow ball glided in overhead and shot down, passing into her and releasing a wave of sand onto the ground at her hooves.
Starlight looked down to see the sand sliding in front of her and rising into the shape of a waist-up sand figure with a tall fanlike collar, a pair of sand legs hanging from the air above it.
“Tell me your wish,” the figure spoke, crossing its arm in front of it. “I will grant any wish…”
Surprised but not scared, being too distracted by her anger, Starlight processed what it had said, her mouth slowly forming into a sinister smile…
“T-the sandy figure?” Starlight asked. The figure nodded. “I-I didn’t think that had actually…” Then something about this figure’s appearance clicked. “Why do you look so much like Sunburst!” she shouted at it.
“I take my form from your imagination,” it responded. “I suppose you’d just been thinking about him a lot.”
“Hey!” Twilight shouted from behind the figure. “I at least understand Starlight, but what are you after with all this?”
“Yeah, what was that ‘compensation’ you mentioned?” Starlight added. “And why did you ask me for it?”
“My goal is the destruction of the future,” it said over its shoulder to Twilight, who stepped back with a slight gasp; then it turned back to Starlight. “Your indifference to collateral damage in your revenge scheme made you the ideal contract holder, so I could simply remain idle. Until, of course, your change of heart! Now I must take matters into my own hands.”
“What do you mean?”
The figure chuckled in preparation for its answer, but a jingle of horns and sirens filled the air. The four turned to see a rainbow-edged white portal burst open and a set of train tracks unfolded out from it, an orange-windowed bullet train emerging and running along the tracks directly at them. The train skidded to a stop as the tracks continued to approach them, the cover between the windows flipping open and Kamen Rider Den-O jumping out, landing on the tracks in front of the halted train.
“Ore,” he said, pointing to himself with his thumb, then crouching and throwing his arms out in his signature pose, “futatabi sanjou!” He stood back up and pointed at the orange figure. “So, we’ve finally found the one behind it all, eh?”
The orange figure turned back to Starlight. “Your wish was to travel to the past to seek revenge,” it said with very particular emphasis, holding the spell scroll at Starlight again. “Seek, but need not succeed. The contract was completed long ago.” It tossed the scroll behind it and reached out to Starlight. Starlight froze as a glowing dividing line appeared down her front, and her left and right halves split open away from each other to reveal a swirling green abyss.
“Oi!” Den-O shouted, running forward. The orange figure ignored him and leapt forward into the green abyss, the two halves of Starlight snapping back shut a second later, Starlight jolting from the shock. “You’re not even gonna try fighting me?” Den-O said as he stopped. He stomped in frustration. “What a coward!”
Twilight stood in silence at what had just happened. What had just happened? Some sand creature had just used Starlight as a door of some kind. Starlight? Twilight’s mind finally snapped back. “Starlight!” Twilight crossed the cloud to her as she dropped back onto her hindquarters, blankly staring forward. “Starlight, are you okay?”
“I…,” she muttered, “…s-sorry, it…my fault…again…”
The midair tracks curved right and extended out past the cloud, Den-O running up alongside them. Twilight turned to him.
“What was that thing? Will Starlight be alright?” Twilight asked. Pause. “Who are you?”
“That thing was an Imagin,” answered Den-O, “a time monster. It grants you one wish in exchange for using you as a time portal to your most intense memory, then it wrecks the past to destroy the future. Can you see why it liked her so much? As for being alright…” Den-O pulled out a blank Rider Ticket and held it up to Starlight’s forehead, the unicorn slowly turning her head to look at him. An image of the orange Imagin appeared on it with a date and timestamp below it in red numbers. “She will once I get there!”
Den-O turned and ran back up the tracks, leaping up into the front engine. The roof cover closed and a set of numbers appeared on the front of the windows. The DenLiner started down the tracks and past the cloud, the tracks extending forward into a newly opened time portal. The train accelerated and rolled through and the tracks folded away behind it, the portal closing, leaving Twilight and Spike standing alone on the cloud.
Spike looked around. “Uh, Twilight…”
“I noticed,” she replied. “And I think I know where and when they’re going, and how we can get there.”
Twilight looked up, and in the sky above them, the fishbowl portal opened up again.
As Twilight and Spike were sucked up into the portal, Naomi the waitress was walking into one of the DenLiner’s passenger cars when she suddenly stopped. She didn’t know they had a new passenger…
It was that day.
Sunburst ran outside, overjoyed at his new cutie mark, his parents and a crowd of other town ponies gathering around him. His father levitated him into the air and began carrying him off to celebrate with the rest of the town…leaving poor little Starlight standing alone in the doorway. She drooped her head with a despondent face. Then a wave of sand fell from her.
Starlight looked back up with a glow flashing in her eyes and a sinister smile, trails of sand falling from her pigtails. Then a cloud of sand burst from her as her eyes rolled up and back, and she collapsed forward as a sandy image rose up from the ground beneath her hooves, overlaying with another sandy image dropping from the air above. The sand solidified, and the orange Imagin was standing in the doorway.
It looked around, reaching out with its left hand and running it down the side of the doorway. Then it drew back and punched the doorway, smashing the bricks out of the wall and shattering the nearby window. The crowd outside turned to look, gasping and backing away in fright. The Imagin chuckled and walked down the house’s front steps towards them.
Jingle of horns and sirens.
The Imagin stopped as a set of train tracks shot across from the left, the DenLiner speeding along them and cutting between the Imagin and the ponies. It clutched its fists in frustration; they started glowing orange, and it threw them forward, sending a pair of orange fireballs crashing into one of the DenLiner’s passing cars. The impact knocked the car’s wheels off the track, pulling the cars in front of and behind it halfway off the track as well. The ponies ducked back as the dislocated train cars flew past.
The inside of the DenLiner’s front car shook, and Den-O jammed the Den-Bird into a sharp right turn, the track and train swerving tightly to the right and the entire track rising up off the ground, pulling the derailed cars up out of range of the bystanders. The train looped around the block above the houses, but the derailed cars hung wildly off the side of the track, the centrifugal forces of the loop threatening to have them pull the rest of the train off with them. Den-O flipped a switch and tilted the Den-Bird to the left while turning right, and the track under the wayward cars stretched out left to catch their wheels again.
Coming back around, the track led the DenLiner back down to the ground along the street in front of the house as the brakes started squealing, the hatch atop the engine car flipping open and the Den-Bird jumping out. Its tires hit the ground and it made a sharp U-turn and charged down the Imagin. The Imagin tipped its head back in the manner of “ha!” and threw its palms forward, sending a pair of orange beams into the ground in front of the Den-Bird, and an explosion-driven cloud of dirt rose up and obscured it. Then the silhouette of a person leapt through the cloud.
Den-O landed and rolled, jumping up to his feet to face the Imagin from about twenty feet away, pointing to himself with his right thumb. “Ore…,” he started, but quickly threw down his arm in frustration, “I’ve stopped counting how many times sanjou!” He took the two DenGasher segments from the left side of his belt and clicked them together into a block, tossing it into the air and grabbing the two from the right, catching the block between them as it fell, a red blade extending from the segment in his left hand. He pointed the sword at the Imagin. “I have half a mind to start you off with my hissatsu attack!” He ran forward with a shout of, “Ichu ze, ichu ze, ichu ze!”
Twilight looked out at the Rider and Imagin from behind the house Starlight had taken her to before, Spike standing beside her and putting away the torn scroll, having grabbed it earlier after the Imagin had tossed it.
“Well, they’re here all right,” Spike said. “So what now?”
“First…,” said Twilight, looking around. “Ah-ha.” Twilight pointed over to the DenLiner and exactly what she’d expected to see: Starlight Glimmer stepping out of one of the cars…with a bewildered expression, and levitating what appeared to be a teacup and saucer back in through the doorway. Okay, not quite what she’d expected to see.
Starlight stared back at the DenLiner while slowly walking away from it, soon turning forward only to see Twilight and Spike waiting. She sighed. “Should’ve expected as much. You used the trace left from when I brought you here the first time to connect the Map back to here again, right?”
Twilight nodded. “So, what was with the, uh…tea?”
“Coffee,” Starlight corrected her. She shook her head slowly. “I stow away on a time-traveling train, and all they do when they catch me is offer me a cup of coffee. The sentences you never expected to say.” Awkward silence. A few metal clangs from the fight rang through the air. Starlight walked over and looked around the corner of the house. Den-O was wildly swinging and slicing around with his sword, the Imagin sidestepping or deflecting the blade with glowing orange forearms. “I’m assuming you’re here to try and stop that thing from doing bad stuff.” Starlight looked down as Twilight walked over to see around the building, too. “Like you did with me.”
“And you aren’t?” asked Twilight, looking over at her.
“Why would I?” Starlight said.
“What?” Twilight said with surprise. “I thought I got through to you. Weren’t you accepting my truce before?” Spike gave her an elbow. “I mean, you tagged along to here for a reason, so if you weren’t going to help, then—”
“No, it’s a serious question,” Starlight interrupted, “and I want an answer. I’m not sure what I’m here to try and do. ‘Why should I care if the future gets ruined,’ ” she said, imitating her previous sneering attitude, “ ‘if there’s nothing for me there?’ I came back here because I thought I’d find an answer to that if I did.” She looked up at Twilight. “I’m over with wanting to hurt ponies, and I’m trying to find a reason to help, but even though I gave up on revenge, this still ended up happening and it’s still my fault. So why should me trying to help make any difference now?”
“I…,” Twilight tried to say, “I’m not sure if I can help with that. Doing the right thing was never a question with me. You just…do it.”
Den-O swung his sword down at the Imagin, but it threw its hand up and blocked the blade with an open glowing palm, slamming its other palm against Den-O’s chest and blasting him back with an orange energy burst, sending him rolling across the ground.
“Alright, you’ve asked for it long enough!” Den-O shouted, jumping back to his feet. He took out the Rider Pass and swiped it in front of his belt.
Full Charge
Den-O tossed the Pass off to the side as lines of red energy began zigzagging from the belt into his sword’s blade. “Ore no hissatsu waza,” he said, taking a stance and holding the sword up in front of him, “…part two!”
The red blade shot up, connected to the weapon by a faint tether of red electricity. Den-O drew the sword back, the blade being pulled along with it, but the Imagin threw its hands forward, firing a pair of orange energy bursts. Den-O swung but the bursts hit his chest and triggered a rapidfire series of spark bursts, knocking him back and sending the DenGasher flying and clattering to the ground, the blade being sucked back onto the weapon. Den-O fell to the ground, his armor smoking. He tried pushing himself back up, but he fell back down.
“Sorry,” said Ryotaro. “We’ve been running around so much, that’s all I’ve got left.”
“Are you kidding me?” Momotaros chided. “Now? The eyesore is right there! Just one more hissatsu attack!”
“Sorry…,” answered Ryotaro.
The Imagin brushed its hands together and turned away from the fallen Rider, looking around the town for anything that might cause a decently-sized domino effect into the future.
“Well if you’re gonna do something!” Twilight said to Starlight as she jumped out into the middle of the street, charging and firing a beam of purple magic. The Imagin turned in surprise and threw up its hands. The beam hit, but the Imagin’s palms started glowing purple and absorbing the beam into them. Twilight gasped, the Imagin looking surprised as well. It pushed its hands forward and sent a wave burst up the street that knocked Twilight over and shattered every window in its path, Starlight and Spike ducking back. The Imagin chuckled.
“I’ve spent so much time residing within that unicorn,” it said, “that it seems I’ve picked up a knack for magic manipulation. Who knew?” Starlight looked out again and Spike ran over to Twilight as the Imagin turned to the small crowd of ponies that it had spotted trying to hide behind one of the houses.
“Oi,” Den-O’s voice came, weakly but firmly. He propped himself up on an arm and pointed at the Imagin, the most he could do. “Leave them out of it!”
The Imagin ignored his warning and was about to approach, but something caught his attention out of the corner of his eye. He turned to see Sunburst attempting to sneak across the street, making a slow beeline for the house where filly Starlight was. The Imagin chuckled and started over towards Sunburst, the colt freezing up as he saw it approach.
“You cause my contract holder a great deal of distress,” the Imagin taunted. “Though it wasn’t a direct request, I feel she would have wanted this.” The Imagin’s palms started glowing orange as it raised and pulled back its arms. In Starlight’s mind, time froze.
He had abandoned her, he never looked back. Right? He deserved this, didn’t he? He deserved something, at least. Maybe not this. Okay, definitely not this. But still, if it wasn’t her decision to make, then who was she to… But he… he was still… her best… her only…
The Imagin threw its arms forward and unleashed a blast of orange energy at Sunburst.
“No!” Starlight shouted, reaching out to her friend.
An explosion erupted, and Starlight’s heart stopped. Everyone present was silent, staring on as the smoke dissipated. Only to reveal Sunburst, perfectly fine, standing there, hiding behind his hoof.
Starlight let out a giant sigh of relief from a breath she hadn’t realized she’d taken. From a lingering thought, she realized that, for a brief moment, despite what he’d put her through, she’d actually been willing to take his place. A moment later, she realized she had.
Surprised to find himself fine, Sunburst looked up, then around. And then down. He gasped, and another round of shocked reactions circulated the crowd. The filly Starlight was lying on the ground in front of him, coughing, a smoking burn mark on her side.
Upon seeing this, the Imagin froze up. Trails of sand started leaking from its arms. “D-drat…,” it muttered, staggering back.
A recovering Twilight rubbed her head before looking up and seeing the scene. She gasped. “Oh no, Starlight!”
Spike looked up and froze. “Oh no, us,” he pointed out, “look!”
White sand had begun falling from the tops of some of the tall trees nearby and sliding off of several rooftops. Backing away from the foals, the Imagin’s color faded back to beige as it retook its sandy form, its legs collapsing away as it fell waist-deep into the ground. Shouts of surprise began rising from the ponies as the ground began turning to sand.
But something even more shocking occurred to Starlight. She put her hoof onto her chest. Her heart had stopped when she’d thought the blast hit Sunburst. When it had actually hit her younger self. And her heart hadn’t restarted since.
“What’s happening?” Twilight shouted over at Den-O. He looked up and around at the scene. Some of the house walls had begun collapsing into piles of sand.
“If an Imagin killed their contract holder before the contract was made…,” he said, thinking, “then the resulting ripple effect could erase the entire event! Everyone hold onto something!”
And with that, the sky turned to sand and collapsed down, a blinding white flash obscuring the entire—
Twilight, Spike, and Starlight were back in the castle’s map room. No one moved or spoke. The room felt dark and empty, drowning in a deafening silence, as if they three were the only beings in existence, trapped in a limbo realm outside of time itself. Maybe it was just a quiet day, though.
Starlight sat in Fluttershy’s crystal throne, hoof resting over her heart, staring forward silently. It was beating again. Or maybe she was just checking the wrong spot before. No real way to know.
“If that thing,” she said slowly, “killed me as a child…then how am I still alive?”
Standing in front of the Map table with Spike, Twilight thought over the ordeal. “I’m…,” she said at last, “not sure if it actually did.”
“What do you mean?” Starlight asked, looking over. “Why else would the timeline collapse? I wasn’t alive to make that stupid contract, so it could never have reached the past in the first place.”
“True,” said Twilight, “but that’s not the only thing that would cause that. The contract never happened, I think that’s safe to say. But maybe, just maybe, the reason wasn’t that you couldn’t, but that you wouldn’t.” Starlight cocked her head. “It said you were the ideal contract holder because you didn’t care about collateral damage in your revenge scheme. But is that how you’d describe the pony that jumped in the way to save her friend? In that moment, I think, you changed your path, just enough so that you wouldn’t have been somepony the Imagin would try seeking a contract with. Why do you think you don’t have the scroll anymore?” Starlight looked around the map table but didn’t see the time spell scroll anywhere. “The Imagin never got it for you. And we’re back here, the point at which you not having it would prevent events from continuing any farther. No part of your attempt at revenge after this happened.”
“But if all of that undid itself,” Spike spoke up, “then how did any effect from it still happen?”
“Um…,” Twilight hesitated, “all it takes is…someone remembering something? The, uh, friendship shockwaves were strong enough to carry through to the new…” Spike raised an eyebrow. “I said ‘I think’, didn’t I?”
“He risked his life,” Starlight recounted, “to go back for me. But then, if he really…then why hadn’t he even once tried contacting me? Just to say he remembered I existed. Did he only actually care in the timeline that creature tried messing up?”
“Did you ever try to reconnect?” Twilight asked. “Did you also just give up and let your best friend slip away without a fight?”
“I…,” said Starlight. She sighed. “I suppose I did. But so did he. Sure, I went a bit off the deep end with my village, but it was because of that, because he left that day and never looked back. Well how come he never did anything because of it? How did he not feel torn up inside about abandoning his best friend? What’s his excuse?” Starlight didn’t know if she was more angry, hurt, or just confused. She hung her head. “I just don’t get it…”
“Um,” came a voice from the edge of the room, “pardon me, but…” They turned to see Ryotaro hesitantly walking over to them, “Through my travels, I’ve found that many things aren’t always what they may first appear. Maybe it might help if you could find out the reason why you never heard from him?”
“And what,” Starlight said, looking over, “are you going to try making me fell better by somehow showing me what he was doing? That’s how this type of story works, isn’t it? Or are you just going to tell me?”
“No,” Ryotaro said. “Not me.”
The DenLiner slowed silently to a halt, coming to rest in a sidestreet in Canterlot. Being a decently-trafficked area of the city, there was no chance any nonrelevant pony would notice it. Starlight, Twilight, Spike, and Ryotaro stepped out of one of the cars. Starlight looked up and realized where they were.
“Don’t tell me,” she said. “No, this could not have been the place, he couldn’t…” Sunburst was here? But this…this was right outside the same school where she’d snuck into Twilight’s speech just earlier that day. He had been that close and she hadn’t realized it?
And there he was, over across the courtyard. Walking along, levitating a stack of books beside him. Too old to still be a student, he had to be a teacher here. Maybe that was excuse enough?
“If you really were such good friends,” Ryotaro said, “then something should still be there, even now. At least enough to earn you an answer.”
Starlight stared over at Sunburst. She looked back to the others, and Twilight motioned her on. She turned back to Sunburst. Well…here goes nothing. She took the first step over. She took a deep breath and let it out, then continued forward.
Twilight and Spike stayed back with Ryotaro in front of the DenLiner car’s open door. “I’m sure it was the Map that let us keep our memories when time reset,” Twilight said, “but how did you know what had happened?”
“I’m a singularity point,” Ryotaro responded. “I remember everything, even if time changes.”
Looking on, they saw Starlight calling to Sunburst. Sunburst stopped and turned to her. After a second’s pause, he waved with a smile.
“I like it when it ends this way,” said Ryotaro.
Behind them, Owner stepped into the doorway. “So, it’s not changing the past with future knowledge,” he said, “but changing the present going forward with past knowledge.” Owner gave a chuckle. “You’re lucky you’re skilled at finding loopholes.”
Author's Note
"But riding on the DenLiner would make Starlight a Singularity Point, meaning she wouldn't be affected by a change in her past."
Her present self wouldn't, but her past self, the one who had actually made the contract when not yet a Singularity Point, would still be affected.
"But Twilight and Spike shouldn't remember the reverted timeline, they were never on the DenLiner, and don't try to Mary Sue them into natural Singularity Points, that's cheating."
The Map let them remember every previous timeline in the finale, so it should also let them remember this one.
"Why?"
Because magic.
"But that's not even how time travel and Imagin contracts work in Den-O, just look at what happened in episode—"
Do you want to enjoy reading a story or not!
(I know the lore presented in this story could be a bit "wrong", but just try telling me the actual Den-O was accurate to itself all the time.)
Japanese Translations (in order of appearance):
“Ore sanjou!” = “I have arrived!” (Momotaros/Sword Form’s catchphrase)
“Nani?” = “What? / What the?”
“Kotae wa kiitenai kedo!” = “Can’t hear ya/your answer!” (2nd half of Ryutaros/Gun Form’s catchphrase, after asking “Mind if I defeat you?”)
“Ichu ze!” = “Let’s go!”
Kame-chan = addressing someone as “Turtle” (what Ryutaros calls Urataros sometimes)
“Ore futatabi sanjou!” = “I have arrived again!”
Hissatsu = finisher, finishing move/attack
“Ore no hissatsu waza…” = “My finishing attack…”
