Suicide, Corruption, and Alicorns
We are on the presibus of disaster
Part I: Suicide mission.
Chapter One: We are on the presibus of disaster
“Derpy, let me spell this out for you: THIS IS NOT PINKIE PIE! This does not even look like Pinkie Pie! THIS IS A PURPLE UNICORN!”
“Oh, but Doctor, my eyesight-”
“THIS IS NOT PINKIE!”
“Whooves, you know full well that Derpy couldn’t see a unicorn if it hit her on the head.”
“Whooves? Whooves? Colgate, you are my assistant and should refer to me as “Doctor Whooves”, or “Mister Whooves.”
“Doesn’t anyone care what I have to say about this?”
“Oh, I deeply apologize, Miss Sparkle. I didn’t mean for you to be inconvenienced. It was just that my idiot assistant-”
“INCONVENIENCE ME?! I AM TIED TO THE GROUND!”
“Ahem. Just because we have the wrong pony does not mean the plan can’t proceed. Twilight Sparkle does have the ability to time travel, if I am correct?”
“Erm… Yes. But where am I? Who are you ponies?”
“We are the secret guild of time travelers.” There was a gray alicorn whom Twilight had never met, Colgate and Doctor Whooves, who owned a clock repair shop in Ponyville, and Derpy Hooves, who was simply, well, Derpy. “Are you kidding? Is this some kind of joke?”
The gray alicorn spoke: “Decidedly not. I am the Filmmaker. We are in the Castle of the Royal Pony Sisters. We have also installed a rather nice kitchen in the basement.” This was all uttered in the most bland, matter-of-fact way possible.
“Why do you need another time traveler? Several of you are unicorns, couldn’t you perform the mission or whatever yourself?”
“I think some things need to be explained.”
Suicide Mission:
Doctor Whooves: So we’ve got a mission, and we’ll give it to you straight: It’s not exactly going to be a piece of cake.
Derpy: Or a muffin!
Twilight Sparkle: All right then, now that that’s clear, you’re obliged to tell exactly why I’m here.
The Filmmaker: Well, the future is bleak, and that’s why you’re here, you need to know, this won’t be a breeze, but that’s been explained, dear. Our opponent’s a dictator, someone mean, someone cruel. And she’s ruined Equestria with her iron rule. Everything’s sad, and everything’s gray, and that’s pretty much why you’re here today. You’ll have to sneak in, and shut her down, and lift future Equestria’s eternal frown.
Colgate: It’s a tall order, I really must say, but your question now should be: ‘Why have you not done this before today?’ We’ve tried before, but we failed to win at the game we chose to play.
Derpy: She doesn’t feel pity, she doesn’t feel hate…
Twilight Sparkle: Suddenly this mission doesn’t sound so great!
Derpy: Muffin!
All: Well, it’s a suicide mission, that’s all it’s going to be, so Twilight Sparkle, you’re going to charge forward with bravery. Muffin.
Twilight Sparkle: Well I have friends, that I can’t leave behind, I get a suicide mission and I’m not supposed to mind?
Doctor Whooves: We didn’t say you would like it, you won’t and that’s true. But when we say you have to go, well, we’re telling the truth.
Twilight Sparkle: I’ve got a suicide mission, and I guess I have to go…
The Filmmaker: We’ll be with you every step of the way, you know.
The Filmmaker almost smiled when she said this. It was the closest thing to a smile she’d had all year. But it was more with relief than with true happiness. And her face slid right back into a frown again. The Filmmaker wasn’t gray naturally. She was corrupted. And just like Twilight Sparkle, what could make her corrupted was losing faith in her friends. The Filmmaker had lost faith in everything. She flashed back to when the nightmare began. Later on, it had seemed to end, but it never really had.
“You were right, the first time you saw this crap! I’m too old to play with paper dolls!” “Kit, you don’t mean that! I thought you cared about all this! You can't just outgrow things you care about.” “Well, I know what I have outgrown: You!” [May cries.]
“May, what are you-”
“Shut up, Colgate! I’m not May Flowers anymore. She… she isn’t real anymore. This is me. This has always been the real me.” Colgate looked like she was going to cry and laugh at the same time.
“When you deny something, you validate its existence.”
“I don’t need that right now!” The charcoal colored alicorn zoned again out as Colgate left, thinking about the past.
“You… don’t want me here! The only ponies you ever think about are dead ponies. I’m still here. Lemon Zest is still here. But you never care! I’m leaving!” [May remains silent. One of the worst mistakes in her life.]
Meanwhile, in the future time, Kitara sat and waited. Waited for her plan to go into motion. For those time travelers to walk right into her trap. Those pathetic idiots. They never learned. In yet another place (but in this case, the same time) Octavia felt unhappy. She always felt at least a bit unhappy. It spoiled things, just a little bit, like a spot of mold on an otherwise good cheese. Like a life that was always sort of ruined. Which it was. She didn’t need more stuff, she had plenty of that. She didn’t need to be with more ponies. She knew plenty. She didn’t like any of them, but that didn’t matter to her. Octavia didn’t believe in friendship. She was something of a misanthrope. She had had one sort-of friend, before. But even then she had been sad. Vinyl used to say she always looked like she had lost her best friend. And now she had.
Now, somewhere else, (I promise this will the last locale switch for a while. It is necessary to show you each perspective.) Twilight Sparkle braced herself, staring at the time travel spell she had been given. She knew she had to do this. She performed the spell. Suddenly, she was engulfed in swirling purple light. Was this supposed to happen? This hadn’t happened to her before. Then again, she had only been time traveling a week, for a few minutes. Now, she was traveling several decades and would be there for an indefinitely long period of time. That would probably make a difference. She arrived. She’d known it would be bad… but she was shocked. Everything was gray, from the ugly steel buildings to the ponies. They differed only in gender and size. They had they same gray coat and mane, the same short, straight manecut. And all of them, regardless of age, had no cutie mark. Everything looked the exact same. Even the clouds were square. And it was like Pinkie Pie’s worst nightmare: Nopony was smiling. Nopony was frowning, either, but anything would have been better than the blank, expressionless look these ponies had. Then, the worst happened. One of them saw her. He spoke into a walkie talkie, voice shaking:
“I-Irregularity n-number... t t-thirteen.” He was shocked by the response:
“Excellent job, UNIT 350. Collect the pony in question and bring them to me.” A throne room clearance patch printed out from the walkie talkie. He nodded, forgetting that The Great One could not see him, still shocked by The Great One’s answer. He ran for Twilight. She fought with all her might, but something about this place made her magic fizzle out. UNIT 350 led Twilight Sparkle to the throne room. In sharp contrast to the rest of this place, (at this point, it could barely be called Equestria) it was beautiful and plush. A rug that looked rather expensive lay on the white marble floor. There was a crystal chandelier, and a large, elaborately carved black wooden throne with opulent red and gold cushions sat in the middle of the room. With a magenta alicorn sitting on it.
“UNIT 350, you are dismissed.” UNIT 350 left the room. The alicorn spoke again: “Oh, hello, Twilight Sparkle. I haven’t introduced myself yet, how rude of me. I am Kitara. Alternately known as “The Great One” by my subjects. I expected somepony from that idiotic time travel society to come, but they sent you? You’re rather pathetic. Oh well, all the easier for me.” At this, Twilight exploded.
“Me?! I’m pathetic? What about you?! You’re the one calling herself ‘Great’! You.. you… ruined all these ponies, and you call yourself great? You call me pathetic?" The lavender unicorn was absolutely fuming.
“Apparently so, yes I do. I just did, didn’t I? You ask stupid questions. Sorry, Twilight, I think you need a little alone time. You really need to relax. Guards, put her in solitary. A couple of weeks!” A smile flickered on Kitara's face.
“Yes, Great One.” responded the guards. And that was all it took. Twilight Sparkle was dragged away to an unknown fate. Let’s go back a little while. Well, technically, a couple decades from Twilight’s current time, but let’s not complicate things. They're complicated enough already. You see, The Filmmaker had created a time tunnel. Such things are doable. One that led straight to her hideout in Kitara’s time. She now walked inside this time tunnel. But the time tunnel had a fork in it. Time tunnels can have forks. It was a fork that the Filmmaker had not created, but a fork that originated from none other than Derpy Hooves. A fork that was supposed to have led to Ponyville, but instead was in Canterlot. Without glasses, Derpy simply had a hard time telling which was which. After all, her talent was making time bubbles, not time tunnels. But that's another story. Anyway, this time tunnel fork happened to lead into Octavia’s basement. That’s right, Octavia’s basement. And here you were, thinking she had nothing to do with our story. And unfortunately, she decided to go down with a flashlight, because weird noises were coming through the door. What a ridiculous and random occurrence. But that's what happened. Sometimes, the truth just seems ridiculous and random. That was when the time tunnel sucked her in.
Octavia, to use the common turn of phrase, freaked out. Honestly, if I was in that situation, I probably would have freaked out too. She ended up in the Filmmaker’s hideout, dazed and confused. At first, the gray alicorn didn’t notice her. She had problems of her own. “She’s probably better off without me.” “You could find her.” “She doesn’t want to be found.” [Quite right. But what one wants and what one needs can be very different.] Then Octavia spoke, and the Filmmaker’s trance shattered. “Where am I?”
“The real question is, why are you here? Did Whooves send you? Colgate? Kitara?”
“Nopony sent me. I just ended up here. Magically. I guess.”
“Well, I wanted help, and I guess now that you’re here, you’ll have to do. Feel like participating in a doomed mission?”
“The doomed part doesn’t sound so great to me. But fine. No reason I shouldn’t.”
“Well, you might die.”
“At this point, I wouldn’t mind dying.”
“Great, then you’re up for the job.”
“So where do we start?”
“Sneaking into a heavily guarded fortress.”
“What do we have, powers of invisibility?”
“If this spell works, then yes. If not, we’re screwed.”
“I’ll take those odds.” Meanwhile, back in Ponyville, missing posters was put up for Twilight Sparkle. There were a few similar posters in Canterlot for Octavia. But less. Less ponies who cared for her. All too many she had pushed away. So sad. But Twilight had ponies looking for her. Her best friends. And they were going to find her no matter what it took. To be blunt, it was going to take a lot.