Author's Note

More to come later. I spent several HOURS working on this one chapter. Just to try and get it right. and I still expect someone will find errors no matter what I do.

Chapter 3 the Planning

As she watched the memory, she couldn't help but think of how things would of gone differently if the Princesses hadn't been assassinated by the Zebra delegation. Would things of gone better or worse. Her companions were still busy adjusting to their new home. Gawd had given them a train car to live in as a reward for helping her get rid of Mr. Topaz and Deadeyes. The pony in question that had orchestrated the whole thing was a unicorn named Lil' Pip. Hopefully Gawd wouldn't suspect that she pocketed a few of the memory orbs that she had come across while down in the bunker below the town of Shattered Hoof. While her friends finished up loading up the supplies, she was busy with the next orb. She watched through the veil of time as she was shown what had happened to Spitfire and soon, what had taken place a month later.

She listened as a purple Alicorn, Twilight as Celestia was calling her, had commented about a break through she had with a spell that Celestia had sent to her awhile back. It all seemed surreal as Lil' Pip stood there, unnoticed naturally, and listened in as Twilight continued telling Celestia that Starswirl the Bearded may of been a powerful unicorn for his time, but that the nature of the spell he was crafting required the magic of a more powerful being to complete, to cut it short it needed the magic of an Alicorn to be properly brought to fruition. Only after that could a unicorn fully use the spell to its potential. Anything else would only result in a time jump of only a week at most. She herself had experienced something like that when her future self had traveled back in time a week to try and warn her past self not to worry so much.

It was at that specific point that the Memory orb turned off and brought Lil' Pip back to the present. She was left with the most bitter taste in her mouth. If only she knew of a way to warn them of what was coming, of what Equestria would become after their deaths. She turned to find both Velvet and Calamity staring at her, and then glancing at what was on the ground. They were too late to tell Gawd, the train was already leaving the town. That was when Lil' Pip decided to let them in on her idea. And that's all it was at the moment. She expected them to be more vocal about what she planned on doing. If it worked she be stranded in the past, and all in all part of wanted that. She was appreciative of the friends she had, but part of her had always wondered life was like before the megaspells had turned Equestria into the world she was born into.

"Are you sure about this?", Velvet asked her, very cautiously. She had grown fond of Lil Pip the more they were around each other. But part of her knew how Pip felt towards the ashen coated mare, and it was a feeling she could never return. And she hated that. A small part of Velvet wanted to wrap her front hooves around Pip and pull her into a passionate embrace for the ages, but that had also meant going against the way she had been raised in the Stable. She had always been taught that Mares were supposed to marry stallions and that it was a sacred duty to uphold that way of thinking.

"I'm sure, at least on the whole time travel to the past kind of thing,", Lil' Pip stopped for a moment and wondered what the next orb would show her. After all it was like a beacon to the past, and she needed all the information she could glean from it if her idea were to become the plan she wanted it to be. Fortunately the next orb gave her more then just the information she needed.

Flashback: Canterlot in the past

"The delgates for the Zebra will be arriving in the next few days,", Luna told her sister as she took another sip of her tea. This war had gone on long enough she thought, better for it to end now then continue in this manner, and not have the deaths of more of their loyal citizens demoralize their race any further. She looked over to see Celestia's face frozen in horror. She looked around, but by the time she found the source of it all, her face also froze in horror. Horror as she could see five Zebras in the courtyard of Canterlot palace in what were the final stages of manually detonating a Mega Spell device. Everypony in the Palace had no time to react as the device went off, killing everypony inside and nearly everypony else on the perimeter.

Lil'Pil felt like she was going to be sick as she watched the spell turn Celestia and her sister Luna to ash, Princess Twilight was frozen in place, almost like it petrified her into a stone statue. The observer that was Lil' Pip could only watch as the others around met similar fates. Everything she had read on Princess Twilight when she stayed in Ponyville, in an attempt to escape a party of Raiders, made her feel a connection to Twilight like nothing she had ever felt before in her life. The Memory orb then turned to the view of another pony, this one a Pink maned pegasus with a butter yellow coat.

"Twilight!", she screamed as her and two other mares with her, most notably Twilight's other friends, looked on in horror from the hill just outside of the Capitol as it went up in a greenish ball of fire and smoke. Lil' Pip listened to the voice of one of the mares comment for some reason on whether the fireball was the source of the explosion or if it were a side effect from a powerful spell, to which the one with the pink mane scolded her for sounding so unkind. She was sure it wasnt any spell Twilight was working on since those were all back at her Library, including the one she had been overheard telling Celestia about.

Lil' Pip swallowed hard at that last part. Ponyville was where the time travel spell was located?! She nearly bit her own tongue off after hearing that. She had barely made it out of there alive, and she owned part of that help to Derpy. She turned to her companions and told them where they needed to go next.

"We need to head back to Ponyville,", Pip could tell by the looks in their eyes that they were not pleased upon hearing that name be brought up. She didn't blame them at all, especially after she had told Velvet about her encounters with the Raiders and how she had found Derpy in that cage. She had to admit that pegasus was more of a hero then any of them. Even after the mega spells, Derpy had tried to push herself to survive in this kind of an environment. Pip also couldn't help but feel a tinge of sadness when she had later found out that Derpy's daughter, Dinky, had been killed while she away from town delivering some mail to another village.

As she was brought back to her own time, and to her senses, she told Calamity to head north, back towards Ponyville, and to get ready if they needed to clear out anymore Raiders or Slavers that had taken up residence in the town again. She was better prepared and more appropriately armed this time around. She kept Lil'Mac in its holster and readied her sniper rifle as it would only take them at least 4 or more days to get there.

She secretly wondered what Derpy would look like if she ever saw her in the past. She could barely tell what color Derpy's coat must of been when she last saw in that town she had found Velvet in, it was was splotched with patches of grey and mostly red and tan over the rest of her body. With tufts of Blonde on the top and back of her head where her mane had been. Was she falling head over heels for her? Or was she just getting her emotions mixed up and confused again. Snap out of it, she told herself, Derpy's probably into Stallions, she did have a foal after all. The more she thought about it the more clearly it became. She wasn't feeling this way towards Derpy. She was starting to feeling these emotions towards Twilight. She had always been told that emotional transference was a known side effect of the use of Memory Orbs, and that it could be ineffective at times to shield one's self from that occurrence.

From what she had seen in the past, Twilight was a rather beautiful, and intelligent, mare for one of her stature. And Lil' Pip was going to make it a habit of choosing her as the pony to get in contact with if and when she was able to make that far back into the past. Of course it could of also been her emotions telling her to do this in the off chance that Twilight's barn door swung her way. She also came to realization that she'd be exposed to the media of that time period, and that she could end up being called a filly fooler at worst. While all this was rumbling around in her skull, she failed to hear Calamity hollering for her to get her flank to the front of the train car. They had made it to Ponyville earlier then they had expected to. And the town seemed devoid of life since it was still day out, even if it was cloudy.

Lil' Pip and Calamity made their way off of the Train car and onto the dirty, yet dry, walkway of the Ponyville Train station. Lil' Pip could see that the bodies were still there where she had killed those Raiders, but other then that there was not another solitary soul in sight. She could make out the outer frame of the Library as the two of them rounded the corner. She had Calamity do a fly by to see if there were any Raiders laying in wait to ambush them, and when he gave the all clear, she entered the Library to find it still a mess as the last time she had been there. It didn't take her long to find the book that contained the spell she was looking for. In the flashback she had witnessed Twilight had said the name of the Book aloud when it seemed like no pony else was around her. Lil' Pip thought that was odd but dismissed after she watched what took place next. Now she realized that maybe Twilight was saying it aloud in off chance that somepony was watching her and expected it to throw them off or something.

Calamity dropped to the ground and nudged Lil' Pip to get to the Train car. He kept nudging her two more times when it slowly dawned on her as to why he was tapping her side. She could see the dust trail from the Raiders that were approaching their position. The Raiders she had killed apparently hadn't reported in and now were being checked up on. The two of them raced back to their mode of transport and pushed off. They left the Raiders far behind. And made their way to Canterlot next. She needed an anchor in which to locate a good time to travel back to, or she'd end up either back in her own time or too far into the past. And she knew right where find it. Twilight's body was still intact apparently, the red glow around the Capitol seemed to off put Lil' Pip's friends, but she didn't travel this far just to turn back now.

With any luck, the next time she woke up, she'd be in the past. She put a hoof to Twilight's petrified Flank, and could feel something underneath. Like Twilight was barely alive now, as if the petrifying had caused a accidental suspension of her heart rate, leaving her in a form of suspended animation as it were. This was perfect Pip thought. She gleaned Twilight's last memories from the Memory Orb again in order to correctly pinpoint exactly when she needed to arrive in the past. It had to be before the device was given time to be set up.

Now came the hard part. Saying goodbye to her friends.