An Eternity of Rocks

by McPoodle

Rating: everyone
Tags: Twilight Sparkle, Drama, My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic, Alternate Universe, Starlight Glimmer, Spike, Adventure, Maud Pie
Length: 23940

Starlight discovers Maud's self-insert fix-fic, where the event being "fixed" is Starlight's confrontation through time with Twilight

Starlight Glimmer has just discovered Maud Pie's first work of prose: a self-insert fix-fic, where the thing being "fixed" by the story is Starlight's own confrontation through time with Twilight Sparkle, and her subsequent reformation.

Inspired by "We Can Do This Forever" by Empirical Deduction, "Twilight Fights Starlight for Eternity" by Diamond Aura, and other stories speculating what might happen if Starlight and Twilight's fight had gone on forever.

Note: The majority of this story is fictional within the world of My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic. The "Alternate Universe" tag therefore only applies if you imagine Maud's story as being real.

Featured on March 18, 2018.

Published 2018-03-19 00:00:07 UTC
Last updated 2018-05-29 04:25:37 UTC

Preface

An Eternity of Rocks

A My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic fanfic

By McPoodle

Preface

“Have you tried looking under your bed?” Starlight Glimmer asked Maud. “Every time I lose something, it ends up under mine.”

Maud gave Starlight a blank expression for a moment, which Starlight interpreted as “I hadn’t thought of that! You’re a genius, Starlight!” Then she actually spoke. “I’ll take a look.”

Starlight followed Maud into her bed…room? Bed-cave? Whatever. She looked away politely as the gray pony shuffled the various items under the bed around, exposing her cutie mark—Starlight wasn’t exactly an expert on the unusual belief system practiced by most of the Pie family, but she suspected that wearing clothes, and then exposing one’s mark, was on the Shunning list. Her eyes were drawn instead to the nightstand beside the bed, and two bizarrely familiar items located atop it.

“Found it,” Maud said, emerging from under the bed with her seismometer.

“Maud, where did you get this?” Starlight was using her magic to hold up a black rectangular object, with a second semicircular piece cradled atop it. The main piece featured ten circular push-buttons, arranged in rows of three, four and three. The top two rows and the middle button of the bottom row had digits painted on them, while the remaining two buttons each had a different symbol. All of the numeric buttons except the “1” button also had letters of the Equish alphabet on them: three letters on most buttons, and the two rarest letters on the “0” button. A curly black wire connected the semicircular piece to the rectangular piece, and a straight black wire led down from the back of the rectangular piece.

Maud said nearly nothing for nearly a minute before finally answering. “It’s a phone.”

“Well, yes it looks like one, but not an Equestrian telephone. An Equestrian phone should be a big wooden box with a couple of horns sticking out of it for speaking and listening, a couple of bells on top to tell you that you have a call and a handle you turn to get the operator. Also, Ponyville only has one telephone, and it’s in a little building attached to the train station. Oh, and did I mention that this is a solid piece of granite covered with about a dozen coats of black paint, and the buttons don’t work?”

“It’s not granite,” corrected Maud. “It’s monzonite. An easy mistake, as even experts frequently misidentify that particular rock.”

“I don’t get it. Why would you put a fake phone in your room, and not just any fake phone, but a fake hu—?”

It suddenly occurred to Starlight that she had never asked Twilight to clarify if the true nature of the magic mirror in her castle was supposed to be a state secret or not. And considering how few ponies seemed to know anything about humans…

“—Not pony phone?”

“I already told you,” Maud answered patiently. “Anyone looking at this room is supposed to take it for granite.”

Starlight laughed. “Okay, that one was pretty good.”

“And if you’re taking the phone for granted, then you won’t even think to look inside the phone book. …I probably shouldn’t have said that last part out loud.”

Starlight looked over at the thin hand-bound volume with the words “PHONE BOOK” on the cover. “And what’s in there?”

Maud looked away. “I’d rather not say.”

Starlight continued to look at the “phone book”.

“Can we please change the subject?”

Starlight turned to look at Maud. Was that a hint of desperation that she saw?

“Alright,” she said slowly. “Let’s go check out your earthquake readings.”

Time passed. On several occasions, Starlight found herself in Maud’s cave home, and she always found her eyes drawn to the open entrance of the bedroom, and to the surface of the nightstand that was visible within. And Maud would see that look, and find some excuse to get the pair of them out of her home as soon as possible.

After going through this routine for more than three months, Maud uttered a nearly inaudible sigh and said, “Do you really want to know what is in that book?” in a lower than usual voice.

“Yes!” exclaimed Starlight, much louder than she meant to. “I mean,” she immediately back-tracked, “I’d like to know, if that’s alright with you. Is it more of your poetry? I promise not to be judgmental.” She settled herself on a reading rug.

“It’s actually prose,” Maud said, retrieving the false telephone directory from her bedroom and hoofing it over to Starlight. “And not really dominated by rock imagery, at least on the level of plot.”

Starlight held the book on her forehooves, not daring to open it. “Is that all that’s wrong with it?” she asked.

“Well…it falls under the category of ‘Palomino manuscripts’.”

Starlight tossed the book into the air like it was a hot potato. “A Palomino manuscript?! Did…did you illustrate it yourself, or hire somepony to—”

Maud put a hoof over Starlight’s muzzle, catching the book on her back without even looking. “It’s not that kind of Palomino manuscript.”

“What other kinds are there?” Starlight asked once her mouth was freed.

“A Palomino manuscript is any self-published work that fictionalizes the life of a real pony. I will admit that the…erotic comics are the best known subtype.”

“So, it’s like fanfiction, only about Princess Celestia instead of Fili-Second?”

“Yes. I had never heard of the genre until the day before I first met Pinkie’s friends.”

With an internal sigh, Starlight got herself comfortable to hear the story. It was obvious that Maud was only telling it to put off for as long as possible the moment when she’d actually let her read the book, but on reflection, it was a miracle that it had taken only three months, as opposed to three years, for the reclusive pony to finally open up to her about something that she was clearly ashamed of.

And to be honest, if Starlight had written a fanfic about Princess Celestia or worse, Princess Twilight, she’d do anything to keep anypony knowing about it as well, even if it wasn’t one of those kinds of manuscripts.

“I deliberately took the long way to Ponyville,” Maud began, “going through Manehattan and Canterlot. I went to the public libraries in both cities, in order to do research on Twilight and the Bearers of the Elements of Harmony.”

“Research?” asked Starlight.

“I didn’t want to make any mistakes when I talked to them. I have a habit of saying dumb things when I talk to ponies. I treat them like I treat my rocks, and that always gets me in trouble. I had to meet Pinkie’s friends because she made me promise—and she said she’d cry if I didn’t. But that didn’t mean I couldn’t prepare myself.

“To skip ahead, I did wind up saying the wrong thing to every one of them, but they told me they didn’t notice.” Starlight interpreted the look on Maud’s face to mean that she knew full well that they were lying, but friendship apparently involved lying through one’s teeth, so she’d just have to accept their non-indignation in silence.

“I was waiting for the train from Canterlot to Ponyville when I noticed that one of the sidewalks had an interesting sandstone composition—which is supposed to be rare for that part of the country. I followed the sidewalk for quite some time, until I found myself in a particularly dark neighborhood of Lower Canterlot.

“And there I found a merchant selling Palomino manuscripts. Most of them were the illustrated kind featuring Princess Celestia, or if not her than some mare or stallion I had seen on the cover of a fashion magazine. But there were also regular stories, about all kinds of ponies, including the Bearers.

“I had some spare bits on me, and I still felt I didn’t know enough about Pinkie’s friends to avoid saying something unforgivable the moment I opened my mouth, so I bought a few of them to read on the train.”

Maud looked up in the air as she thought back. “The first one was about Twilight, only she never left Canterlot and instead defeated Nightmare Moon with the help of prominent members of the nobility. The second story, written with much less flowery language than the first, was about Rarity marrying into nobility, but only as a ruse to lure all of them into a graphically self-destructive rebellion against the crown with her end goal being ‘to free Equestria from aristocratic tyranny forever’. I won’t comment on the Pinkie story I purchased as a comparison to see how good any of these stories were at getting the target’s character right, other than to note that they almost completely inverted her personality. The general impression I got was that the purpose of a Palomino manuscript was to act as wish-fulfilment, to re-write history into the story you wanted to hear.

“When Pinkie Pie wrote me the details of your reformation, it wasn’t hard for me to convert her story into the tale of what really happened. It was a story that caught my interest—I remembered the dangerous gleam in your eye the first time we met. Not to mention the fact that her story of how she and her friends…ran into you the first time was quite memorable, what with the smiles and all.”

Starlight had to shake her head to recover from the lightning-fast change in topic. “Yes,” she said slowly, “Pinkie has told me her opinion of those particular smiles after my reformation…many, many, many times.”

“I talked myself into thinking that I’d never meet you again. That you’d be Twilight’s pupil for a few months, and then I could graduate and move to Ponyville and never run into you. And that would leave me free to write my version of how that particular confrontation should have gone.”

Starlight picked up the “phone book” with her magic. “So this story…is about me?”

“Eventually,” Maud admitted. “I stuck myself in there as the main character, mostly so that my running commentary on what was going on would seem less annoying than it would be if it was coming from the narrator all the time. And I had so much fun with that that I delayed introducing you until halfway through.

“So a fix-fic and a self-insert?” Starlight asked. (Thanks to being roped into the job of being Rainbow Dash’s pre-reader, she had a thorough understanding of the darker side of Daring Do fanfiction.) “You know, maybe I don’t need to read it.”

“Oh. Good.” And Maud picked up the book and put it back next to the stone phone.

The next day Starlight came by to pick up Maud for kite flying and stared even more intently at the nightstand.

Without a word, Maud walked into the bedroom and back, dropping the book at Starlight’s hooves. “Just read it,” she said. “I’ll sit…over…here, and answer any questions you have.”

Starlight noticed that Maud picked a sitting spot that was as far from Starlight as possible, as well as being the closest to the exit.

Starlight settled onto the reading rug and flipped open the book, to see its true title: An Eternity of Rocks. She read it aloud, and then gave a questioning look over to the author.

“I suppose I should explain. At one point in your battle with Twilight, Pinkie tells me that Twilight confronted you with the possibility that you could be looping through time for all eternity, and you had no objection to this. Well to get everything done in my story that I wanted, I needed you two to go through a lot more than the eight trips that you actually made, so in this version you actually go through a lot more loops, like a hundred or more.

“Again, I never would have written that story if I ever suspected that you’d end up reading it.”

“I’ll…keep that in mind,” Starlight said. She turned the page, and began reading aloud.

“‘Equestria is a wonderful place to live…’”

Talc

Talc

Equestria is a wonderful place to live, with endless opportunities to explore and learn new things. Volcanic beaches, deserts, windswept plains, alps both recent and ancient, upturned sea bottoms and glacier-dragged mountaintops.

Equestria has a’a,
Flint, zinc, ar-KOSE’, la-VA’.
Mica, mohite, agate, albite,
Pumice, pyrite, jasper, wehrlite,
Emery, mercury, amber, gran-ITE’,
Blueschist, whiteschist, nephrite, halite,
A’a, flint, zinc, la-VA’.
Blueschist, whiteschist, mica, mohite,
Amber, jasper, agate, wehrlite,
Nephrite, halite, pumice, pyrite,
A’a!

As soon as Starlight had started reading the poem, Maud joined in. She started the list of rocks slowly, but then picked up her tempo, making the second half sound like some kind of dark magic chant. She also deliberately mispronounced the names of a few of the rocks to make the poem scan better, such as “grun-ITE” instead of “GRAN-ut” for granite.

“It was my first experiment with prose,” Maud said afterward, “so I threw a poem in there to raise my confidence.”

She sat there silently as Starlight resumed reading the story aloud.

In fact, there was only one thing wrong with Equestria in the mind of young Maud: ponies. Ponies that had dumb reasons for not wanting you to examine their minerals at any or all hours, like “personal property” or “privacy”. Ponies that asked questions that didn’t have good answers, like “why aren’t you playing with the other ponies your age?” or “why don’t you ever laugh?”

She really didn’t like hearing that last question.

Maud lived on a rock farm, which was the best place imaginable. Even better, she had a family that respected rocks, even if she knew they didn’t love them like she loved them. They were ponies too, and even they would sometimes give her a heart-breaking look when she said or did something that was not right for ponies not named Maud. But they always forgave her. Every day, if she was lucky, Maud spent her day working with rocks, and if she was good and efficient, she then got free time that she could spend working with even more rocks—and staying away from her family so she didn’t screw up around them. If she wasn’t lucky, then her family took her into town and she had to deal with even more ponies. Maud tried to prepare herself for these days when she knew that they were going to happen, going up to the attic to roleplay with her rock friends. She never managed to guess in these sessions what particular indignity the town ponies would inflict upon her. Not once.

Starlight gave Maud a pitying look.

Maud gave her an empty, soul-sucking stare until she stopped.

After a long time of dreading these town days, life for young Maud settled into a comfortable pattern. She would wake up, rotate the rocks in the south field alongside her family, and spend the hours after an early supper exploring random corners of the family gem mine.

And day after day, the members of her family became more predictable and less scary. It was almost like she knew what they were going to say before they said it.

Gradually a truth dawned upon her, a truth she had been doing her best to deny: she had been reliving the same Tuesday for more than a month. The fact of the matter was, living the same day over and over again meant that all of the things that made ponies inexplicable to Maud were fading away. If she could just live the same day for a year or two, she might finally completely understand her family. And if she could live the same day for a decade or two, then she could even explore the town, say the things that would make the town ponies hate her forever—only they’d forget the very next day and she could try saying something else, and something else, until she finally found the one thing to say that would make them stop. And she’d keep that knowledge ready for when time started up again.

But time didn’t start up again. The same Tuesday keep looping and looping. And Maud saw no sign that anypony had realized what was happening, that anypony in the whole world had realized what was happening…except for her.

“One question: why is it the whole day that is looping? Twilight only took a few hours at most before she triggered the loop each time.”

“I have a hoof-waving explanation later in the story, but basically, I found it too hard to plot everything out if the loop kept happening at moments that my main character couldn’t predict. So imagine that each day starts normal, a few hours go by until just before Rainbow Dash’s race, and then you suddenly appear out of a portal. Twilight appears a few minutes later, you sabotage the race, Twilight disappears through a portal, you sit around until Twilight is done in the alternate future, and then you disappear into a portal. And that is followed by hours of nothing unusual happening until midnight, when the day resets.”

“Alright,” said Starlight. She had encountered much worse plot-holes in Rainbow Dash’s stories.

For a brief moment, Maud wondered if it was actually a bad thing if Wednesday never came. After all, Wednesday would be one day closer to the world-ending cataclysm that the Big Book in the family room told her about. On another hoof, if time never went forward again, then Maud would never grow up. She’d never be able to get her rocktorate. She’d never be able to leave the rock farm and pursue her destiny. And although she’d never understand ponies, at least they’d stop treating her like she was a moron just because she was still a filly.

So somepony needed to do something heroic.

Maud considered herself the last pony in Equestria to be destined to be a hero. Heroism involved interacting with ponies, after all. Surely if something weird was going on with Time, then the Princess would know and would fly to wherever to fix it. Or maybe the day would be saved by that other, pinker princess that the Pies had heard vague rumors about.

And even if Maud was the only pony who knew that Time was broken, what could she do about it? She knew nothing about the world outside the farm and the town. She didn’t know much about the inhabitants of the town, but the only unicorn was a medic, and didn’t seem to be the mad scientist type, assuming a mad scientist was responsible for the infinite string of Tuesdays.

And if the problem didn’t come from the town, where would she go to fix things? And how could she do it in less than twenty-four hours? Maud wasn’t sure where she picked up the rules of time loops, but one of them stated that every midnight she would be returned to the place she spent her first midnight, namely, her bed.

Maud was contemplating all this in the mine one night when she fell asleep with Boulder.

When she woke up, she was still in the mine, and she still had Boulder. And when she returned home in the morning, everypony wanted to know why she had snuck out of the house in the middle of the night, since they saw her going to bed on Monday night.

Maud saw this as a pretty clear sign.

Gypsum

Gypsum

After apologizing for her erratic behavior, Maud felt that she should appease her family members before beginning her investigation. So she went about her chores even more efficiently than usual.

Unfortunately, that did nothing to speed up the rest of her family, so she spent the rest of the day in the house reading a well-worn rock-finding guide.

After supper and the reading of a chapter of the Big Book, the Pies split up to pursue their individual hobbies. Maud followed Limestone up to their bedroom, which the leading sister always claimed as her own during this time.

“Well, what do you want?” Limestone scowled. (You can assume that every use of “said”, “asked” or “yelled” when applied to Limestone also includes an implied scowl.)

“I was wondering if you noticed anything unusual happening today,” Maud asked.

Limestone thought back. “No, not really,” she said, “other than the stunt you pulled last night. Why do you ask?”

“I’ve got a feeling,” Maud said.

This wasn’t true—Maud was sure that something was wrong. But she knew if she told the truth without any strong evidence then Limestone would never believe her. But on another hoof, she knew something no normal pony would know, and that was practically the definition of a Pie Family Feeling.

“Should I ask…?”

“Not if you like keeping your sanity intact.”

“Yeah, that was what I thought you were going to say.”

Limestone thought some more, then shook her head. “The last town day was Sunday, and the big storm is scheduled for tomorrow night. But for today? I’ve got nothing.”

“Alright,” said Maud, and she moved on to Marble Pie, who was sitting on the porch knitting a monochrome rug by touch alone.

After much coaxing, Marble told Maud that Pinkamena was upset.

Maud hadn’t noticed. She felt horrible that her sister had been hurting, that she had been hurting every day for months, and she had never noticed. She vowed that if she ever got out of this loop that she would do everything in her power to be a better sister to Pinkamena.

Pinkamena was sitting on the roof, looking up at the stars. The trap door to the attic was propped open next to her.

“Pinkie?” said Maud, sitting down beside her. This was the nickname that their recently deceased grandmother had given her. Their parents preferred “Pinkamena”, but Maud knew that using that nickname always lifted her sister’s spirits.

“Yes?” Pinkamena replied, with a sniffle.

“What’s wrong?”

“Nothing.”

“Nothing?”

“Nothing happened today.”

Maud spent a long time thinking over what her sister had said. “Did you want something to happen?”

“I was supposed to get my cutie mark today,” Pinkamena declared.

“You were?”

“Yes. I had a feeling. I was standing out in the south fields just after everypony else went in for supper. I looked up in the sky and…nothing happened. You believe me, don’t you?”

Maud awkwardly wrapped an arm around her. “Of course I believe you,” she said.

This changed things. Before, the world wanted her to save it, and she was hesitant.

But now she knew she was saving the world and her sister.

And Celestia help anypony foalish enough to get between her and that particular goal.

Fluorite

Fluorite

The next morning, Maud stepped off of the porch and looked in the direction that Pinkamena had failed to get her cutie mark from.

She saw Cloudsdale, and face-hoofed.

Of course Cloudsdale would be involved. Tuesday was the first time that the floating city had been this close in at least five or six years. But all the same, Maud knew of no way that a pegasus would be able to manipulate Time. Maybe if one of them flew so fast that she broke the Time Barrier? Assuming of course that such a thing existed.

She spent the day doing her chores with one eye on the cloud city. The city was close enough that she could see individual pegasi flying around—they were little more than specks.

As she watched, there was a flash of white light at one end of the city—rather hard to make out, against the bright white of Cloudsdale as a whole—and a smaller than normal speck fell slowly out of the sky, hitting the ground with a puff of dust.

Maud had read that pegasi were incredibly resilient to falls—something about their internal magic working even when unconscious to slow their speed far below terminal velocity. That and they let themselves get hit by lightning for fun. So it was unlikely that the falling pegasus had suffered more than a few quickly-healed broken bones from that fall.

But she was also a potential source of information.

“‘She’?” Starlight asked with a teasing smile, having a strong suspicion just who that falling pegasus actually was.

Not that she actually ever did that to Rainbow Dash—the one time she shot the filly directly, it was over a cloudbank. But this was an alternate reality with hundreds of loops. Starlight suspected that under the circumstances, the old her might have lost her temper enough to leave her to fall all the way to the ground. But she probably would have cast a feather-fall on Rainbow as well.

“‘She’ in the generic gender sense,” Maud explained. Then she grabbed the manuscript and a colored pencil and made a correction or two.

But she (or he) was also a potential source of information.

She ran over to her parents. “Father, I saw a pony fall out of Cloudsdale and land just within our boundaries. May I see to ~~her~~ this fallen pegasus?”

Just like last night, Igneous glared down at her, certain that something in Maud’s statement was wrong, other than the fact that it was Maud running towards a pony she didn’t know.

The particular lie in this case was the location of the body—it was in fact in Peach Cobbler’s farm, and normally, it would be Peach Cobbler’s responsibility to see to any pegasi that fell onto her farm, with the Pies only getting involved if Peach Cobbler specifically requested their assistance. Maud was potentially dragging her family into a whole heap of trouble by poking her muzzle where it didn’t belong…

A heap that would magically disappear at the stroke of midnight. Not for the first time did Maud ask herself if fixing Time was really the right thing to do.

“You may go,” Igneous said slowly.

Maud had dashed off before hearing the third word—he had said yes, as she knew he would. A month of receiving the exact same lecture every time she stayed too long in the mines had taught her that her father’s preferred method of discipline would be to give any daughter thinking of crossing him enough rope to hogtie herself in a knot of lies too tight to ever escape from.

And just like the problem with Peach Cobbler, it would all reset at…

Nope, Maud thought to herself, not going to keep tempting myself with the joys of Infinite Tuesday.

After a solid half-hour of running, she finally arrived at the impact point.

Peach Cobbler was there, looking indignantly at the injured pegasus filly, as if it were her own fault for falling out of the sky and interrupting her harvest. A pegasus medic was beside her, binding her sky blue limbs in splints and bandages.

“Is…she OK?” Maud asked, rapidly getting her wind back. She noticed that the filly had a mane with every color of the rainbow in it. She was fairly certain that it was a dye job.

“What’s it to you, Maud Pie?” Peach Cobbler demanded.

“I’m just fine!” the filly declared in a scratchy voice. “I wish somepony would hurry up and get me back to class before I get in trouble.”

“You’re not going anywhere until that ambulance shows up to take you to Cloudsdale Central Hospital safely,” the medic insisted.

The filly groaned. “And I was this close to winning!”

“Winning what?” Maud asked. She had to force herself to do this. Her natural instinct when a conversation was going on was to disappear into the surrounding limestone until she thought she had enough information to fake being a normal pony.

“The Race for Fluttershy’s…not that there was a race. Of course there wasn’t a race, because starting another unauthorized race would get me suspended. So we were just…talking about a race. Yeah! Talking, about a theoretical race. That I was totally going to win before that unicorn zapped me!”

Ah, a unicorn, thought Maud. Finally, a lead.

And that’s when Peach Cobbler got in her face. “I got this situation well in hand, Pie,” she said, shoving her barrel against Maud’s. “What are you really here for? Are you a spy for the Orange Conglomerate?”

“I just saw this filly fall and thought I’d lend a hoof,” said Maud.

“And…?” Peach demanded.

Maud looked away. “And maybe I thought I could make an extra bit or two if I got the filly’s story and sold it to the Rockville Gazette.”

“Ha, I knew it!” Peach declared. “And I ought to kick myself—this is just the kind of fluff story that Extra Opinion would pay top-bit for. If it wasn’t for the fact that my writing skills are nil, I’d boot you from my farm so I could do the same thing myself!”

Maud had come up with the story during her cross-country run. And as Peach wasn’t family, she had no possible way to know that Maud wasn’t lying. Maud had overheard a town pony giving a reason for her extraordinary ability to get away with bald-faced whoppers: “lack of emotional affect” it was called, or something like that.

“Hey,” the filly spoke up, “you totally have my permission to interview me. I’ve never been in an earth pony newspaper before—this will be sweet!”

The medic pony sat back and crossed her hooves. “Well, you can talk to her until that ambulance arrives, but as soon as it does, your interview is over. And if you get her excited enough to mess with my dressings, then you don’t have to wait for Miss Cobbler here to lose her temper, because I’ll carry you off of her farm myself!”

“Of course,” Maud said with a curtsy. She pulled out her geology notebook and pencil, and sat down beside the gurney the filly was by now bound to. “Why don’t you start with your name?”

And with that the filly, whose name was Rainbow Dash, exploded. Not in a literal sense, but verbally. In ten minutes, Maud heard more words from this pegasus than she had heard from all members of her family combined over the course of her entire life. She tried her best to keep notes of the important points, without moving her pencil fast enough to set it aflame. (She hadn’t actually set her notebook on fire from writing too fast, but she had heard a cutie mark story that involved just such a feat, so she knew to be careful.)

So in between hearing the intricate details of young Rainbow Dash’s entire life story, including over a dozen extremely distinct impersonations of the various actors involved—the one for the medic at least was 100% accurate—Maud learned the following:

Rainbow Dash was gifted with an eidetic memory, at least when she was flying.

Rainbow Dash spent at least 90% of her life flying.

She wanted to be a Wonderbolt when she grew up. Actually, “something something THE WONDERBOLTS!” was also Point #0, Point #1.5, and every other Point #N.5.

She had a best friend named Fluttershy, also a pegasus filly, and the “hypothetical” race she obviously organized was done to defend her honor after being called on her poor flying skills.

The race was interrupted by a levitating pink-and-purple unicorn who had quite deliberately blasted her with a paralysis spell in the middle of an argument with a light-purple-and-blue pegasus.

Well, maybe the pegasus was an alicorn.

Except that would be impossible, because she was purple, and the only known alicorns are white and pink. So that horn had to be a fake.

Rainbow Dash had picked up enough of the argument between the two to identify the unicorn as “Starlight” and the pegasus-maybe-alicorn as “Twilight”.

Twilight had a familiar, in the form of a compact snarky dragon that rode on her back.

Rainbow hadn’t caught the name of the dragon.

As she was falling, Starlight had cast another spell on her.

(The medic broke in at this point to state that the second spell was almost certainly Feather Fall. Too bad it wore off halfway to the ground.)

Starlight winced. Yup, she thought, that sounds exactly like something the old me would do without thinking it through.

Now it was possible, Maud reflected as she reviewed her notes, that the time loops were caused by some other unicorn or alicorn in Cloudsdale, but Maud considered this extremely unlikely.

Also, it seemed certain that this fight was confined to Cloudsdale. The reason for this was if the pair had ever fought somewhere else, then Pinkamena would have gotten her cutie mark, and as obtuse as Maud often was about pony emotions, she was fairly confident that she would notice one of her sisters getting her cutie mark, even if it only happened once in a month of Tuesdays.

As she was running these conclusions through her head, the pegasus ambulance finally arrived.

“Did you get all that?” Rainbow Dash pleaded as she was being loaded in.

“Pretty sure,” she said.

“Well you got the name right at least? Rainbow Dash, two words? Attending the Cloudsdale Elite Summer Flight Camp?”

Ooh, that’s pretty important. “Got it.”

“Great! Hey, if I didn’t race, what’s the headline going to be?”

“‘Pegasus Filly Survives Magic War’,” Maud said after a moment’s thought.

“Awesome!” Rainbow exclaimed. Then the doors shut, and the ambulance flew away.

Maud watched until the ambulance diminished to a dot. On her slowly growing list of “Things to Do on Wednesday (When It Finally Happens)” she added submitting her story to the Rockville Gazette. She figured she owed Rainbow Dash for helping her save the world.

She turned her head, to face Peach Cobbler’s Death Glare. “Alright, I’m going,” Maud said.

“Am I going to be in this story of yours?” Peach asked.

“Of course,” said Maud. “You were right there. You didn’t catch her, did you?”

“Are you making fun of me?”

“Of course not,” Maud lied.

“Oh, OK. No, I didn’t catch her. But I would have.”

“I’m writing that down,” said Maud, as she drew a picture of Peach’s ugly face in her notebook.

During the long walk back to the Pie farm, Maud spent quite some time going over the story that Rainbow Dash had told her.

Following the reasonable assumption that the fight between the two mares that Rainbow had witnessed was at the center of the time loops, there were two possibilities: either both ponies were evil and had to be dealt with, or one of them was good and the other one was evil.

Now on one hoof, the pony named Starlight had blasted an innocent filly out of the sky for no apparent reason whatsoever.

Well…“innocent” except for her immense ego and an inability to shut up.

And on another hoof, the pony named Twilight hadn’t shot an innocent filly out of the sky for no apparent reason whatsoever.

But this same pony had a dragon familiar.

And dragons ate gems.

So it was decided then: Twilight the alicorn was a menace, and it was Maud’s job to destroy her in order to save the timestream.

Apatite

Apatite

“Appetite?”

“No, apatite. It’s the name of a family of phosphate minerals found in bones. The word is Grazian for ‘to deceive’, as the members of the apatite family are rather hard to distinguish from one another.”

“Rather like monzonite and granite.”

“…You remembered.”

Maud got home, and was lectured for lying about where she was going. She admitted her crime, and went to bed without supper.

She spent the next day resting and planning. In the days that followed, she did her chores early, and afterwards performed the unprecedented act of asking to explore outside the farm.

Her father insisted on accompanying her the first few times. Eventually she figured out the right way to phrase her request to get him to stay behind.

She made sure to keep an eye on Cloudsdale. In the corner that Rainbow Dash had fallen from she generally saw flashes of light mid-morning. She never saw a filly fall out of the sky again, but she thought she could make out what looked like a three-pegasus race at least on some days. She couldn’t be sure, but the suspicion grew that the race never got around to finishing.

Maud figured if the race was that distracting that the two bickering ponies should have chosen a different place to stage their debates. But maybe evil ponies liked being distracted.

Eventually Maud figured out how she was going to get to Cloudsdale, which meant there was no longer any reason to put off starting her adventure.

She put off starting her adventure one more day, with the excuse that she needed plenty of rest. After giving Boulder a day of rock-based thrills that he would never forget, she snuck out of the house just before midnight, waited a half hour, and snuck back in.

She knew that she could have just used the special phrase her mother had given her, but she didn’t want her parents to worry about a matter of mere trust, where they might have a doubt in the back of their heads that she might be cheating them somehow. It felt better to her that her parents knew that something was wrong.

Especially since the following Tuesday—and every Tuesday after that for Celestia knows how long—would involve Maud disappearing at midnight and never coming back.

So immediately after breakfast, Maud stayed at her place at the table and waited for her sisters to leave her alone with her mother cleaning up the dishes.

“I have been Called to a Higher Purpose,” she announced for the second time in her life.

After she had explained herself, adding Rainbow Dash’s story to her own and Pinkamena’s, she waited for Cloudy Quartz’s judgment.

Her mother had brought up the bit about knowing she had disappeared, as Maud expected. And then she had opened a cabinet that Maud had always thought had been “sealed forever in a freak cement accident”—turns out that her mother was a much better liar than Maud was—and pulled out a seemingly empty saddlebag that she dropped on Maud’s withers.

Maud’s legs practically gave out. She peaked into one of the bags, and saw what looked like thousands of bits.

“I trust you to spend this money wisely,” her mother told her. “Even though you probably will only have this for one day before everything resets.”

“Actually,” said Maud, “I’ve experimented with Boulder, and it appears that anything touching me at midnight stays with me. I even still have all the notes from interviewing Rainbow Dash.”

“Alright,” said Cloudy. “That means that every day will begin with both you and the family fortune disappearing at precisely the same time. I won’t remember why you left, but I will conclude based on that that it happened for a reason.”

Maud embraced her mother then. It was an action that surprised both of them. Then she bolted out the door and made for the property line before anypony could stop her.

She left Boulder behind. The place she was going was too foreign for him to possibly understand.

“Another short chapter,” commented Starlight.

“I didn’t feel like writing for a long time after that,” Maud said quietly.

Orthoclase

Orthoclase

“I’ve got to say, the chapter names are getting more exotic.”

“I could change it to ‘Moonstone’—that’s the gem form of orthoclase.”

“I’ll reserve my judgment until I’ve finished the chapter.”

Nearly an hour of walking brought Maud to a flying device—a white gondola with a propeller on the back, supported by two hot air balloons. Depicted in enormous form on the two balloons were the heads of two smirking unicorns in straw boater hats, one with a mustache. Painted across the body of the rectangular gondola were the words “Flim and Flam Cloudsdale Tours”. A ticket stand was set up in front of the staircase that led up to a door in the side of the gondola. Running the stand was the mustache-less pony from the balloons.

“Welcome, little miss,” the unicorn called out to her when she was close enough. “Interested in a fascinating and entertaining tour of the incredible pegasus metropolis?”

Maud said nothing until she reached the stand. “I was wondering if you knew how I could get up to Cloudsdale. I don’t need to take the tour.”

“Oh, I’m afraid that there are no other ways to get up to Cloudsdale,” the unicorn said with a sad frown. “Not without making reservations days in advance. If you’d like to go up to Cloudsdale, you’ll have to take the tour.” His face then immediately lit up. “But what a tour it is! The Equestria-famous Weather Factory! The historic Citadel! The unbeatable centerpiece of fashion that is Empyrean Way! And the unforgettable view from Cloud Terrace! On a normal day, you would be able to see all of this with Flim and Flam Tours for the low, low price of only five bits a head. But today only, Flam and I have managed to get the deal of a lifetime! The chance to see the one-and-only Wonderbolts live at the Cloudeseum. And not just from the stands, but up above them, a bird’s eye view never to be missed! And for the unbelievable price of only five additional bits! That’s less than you would pay to get a seat at the Cloudeseum, a seat that I can assure you completely sold out over a week ago! So what do you say? Ten bits for the most incredible day in your life?”

During this speech, Maud had the time to get a look inside the gondola. There were benches to sit on and tables bolted to the floor with indentations to hold food or drink still in case of turbulent weather. A half dozen earth ponies and unicorns were already inside, all of them older than Maud.

Maud knew that once she got up to Cloudsdale, she would need all the help she could get. That meant befriending one or more of these tourists, hopefully one that had actually been to Cloudsdale before, but even a complete newcomer would have better social skills than her. On the bright side, none of her usual tormentors from the town were among the crowd. Unfortunately, there was nopony she knew inside, either.

“I really only need to get to the Cloudsdale Elite Summer Flight Camp,” Maud told the unicorn salespony…Flim? He said he wasn’t Flam, so he must be Flim. She raised her voice to add, “I need to see a pegasus filly named Rainbow Dash. It’s really important to me.”

Most of the future passengers were already looking her way, apparently out of boredom. Absolutely none of them showed any sign of recognition on hearing Rainbow Dash’s name, thereby dashing Maud’s hopes that she could make her essential friend that way.

“That’s cute.”

“What is?”

“You said you wanted to see Rainbow Dash, but when nopony spoke up, your hopes were dashed. ‘Dash’ and ‘dashed’.

Maud grabbed the book and made another correction.

…on hearing Rainbow Dash’s name, thereby ~~dashing~~ spoiling Maud’s hopes…

“Aw.”

Flim glanced curiously into the gondola to try and see what Maud was up to, and then turned back with a shrug. “Sorry, little miss—Flight Camp’s at the Academy and the Academy is strictly off limits for tours. I can let you off on the property boundary, but it will be out of my way, and could very well make us late for the opening of Wind Rider’s retirement ceremony. So I’ll do it out of the kindness of my heart, but it will cost you an additional two bits.”

Maud looked into her apparently nearly-empty saddlebags. “How about one additional bit?”

“No can do, little miss. Two bits or no deal.”

Maud waited for a few moments, then fished seven bits out of her bags and dropped them onto the counter.

Flim looked down at the bits then over to Maud. “Is this some kind of joke?”

“What do you mean? You said that dropping me off at the Academy would threaten your group reaching the Wonderbolts show. That means I will be missing that show, and therefore I shouldn’t have to pay the five bit premium for it.”

“Makes sense,” agreed an earth pony mare from inside.

Flim looked back, saw that the crowd was more or less united in this opinion, and slumped. “Very well, seven bits it is.” And he slid her half a ticket. “Please come in. We’ll be taking off as soon as my brother and partner shows up with the cloudwalking charms.”

Now came one of the important parts. Maud had found out this information two days ago, but she needed to be absolutely sure. “Cloud walking?” she asked.

“Why yes, little miss,” answered Flim. “You didn’t think that you could just walk anywhere you please in Cloudsdale, did you? The city’s made of clouds—hence the name. My illustrious brother Flam and I have developed a revolutionary method for enchanting common objects with useful spells.” (This was a lie—Maud had seen such items sold on the streets of Rockville.) “In this case, charms designed to keep you from falling through clouds for a full half-day, much longer than our tour and show combination will take.” Flim consulted a pocket watch tucked into his striped vest. “I’m sure he’ll be around any minute, since our tourism permit requires that you all have proper safety equipment before we can set sail. But in the meantime, feel free to order any of our tasty pre-packaged snacks and drinks.”

The crowd started grumbling—they clearly had been here for quite a while, and had already been burned on Flim’s over-priced concessions.

“And…here! Some free reading material to while away the intervening minutes!” From a compartment he produced a pile of months-old magazines, and distributed them near-randomly.

Maud saw this lull as an opportunity—her last chance to make a friend before the tour started. Flim shoved an open comic book in her face, but she steadfastly ignored it as she nerved herself up to approaching a total terrifying stranger and…

In the cold, heartless City of Progress, there was nopony who cared for the welfare of animals…other than a kindly veterinarian pegasus named Spruce Spanner. Spruce Spanner, a mare who could never get another pony to notice her cries for animal rights, because she could never raise her voice above a whisper. For Spruce Spanner was an emotional mute.

And with that, Maud was hooked.

Maud had no prior experience with comic books, believing them to be beneath her. But this strange and wondrous volume spoke to her of a character strangely like herself, only her obsession was with animals instead of rocks. But she shared Maud’s fatal inability to connect with others. Spruce redirected her frustration to the defense of her animals, who were dying of pollutants that would surely doom the pony populace next. She sought to give them the strength to fight back with a magical marvel, but when the city’s chief industrialist, Thunder Bits, bulldozed over her sanctuary to expand his bloated empire, the machine malfunctioned, inflicting a horrific curse upon poor Spruce. Now, whenever she witnessed animals being abused, she transformed into a beast with the mind of an angry animal, the Saddle Rager. As the horrified Thunder Bits soon learned, the more Saddle Rager was enraged, the stronger she became. By the end of their first epic confrontation, Saddle Rager was finally subdued with sleeping gas. Thunder Bits only barely missed discovering the Saddle Rager’s secret identity, but despite the destruction of his factory, this is no victory for Spruce Spanner either, for Thunder Bits had been elected Mayor of Progress on the very last page, and vowed to turn all the resources of the city towards a vast marehunt of Public Enemy Number One.

By the time she had finished the comic, Maud found that the gondola was already airborne, with the cheap magical trinket tied around her neck.

“That’s an interesting story you came up with.”

“Oh Saddle Rager is real. Or rather, she’s a fictional character that I didn’t make up. Her comic only lasted six issues before being cancelled for low sales. After Marevel was bought out by DC she showed up in Power Ponies, but without the seriousness or environmentalism message of the original title. And this Saddle Rager was less of an animal and more of a foal—which removed any trace of moral ambiguity.”

“Did you discover her from Rainbow Dash’s collection?”

“No, Spike’s. He’s a much better author of Daring Do fanfiction.”

“And what about Flim and Flam?”

“They’re real. I got them from one of Pinkie’s letters. Or maybe two.”

“Welcome to the Weather Factory!” proclaimed Flim. “To my right you can see the rainbow outtake pipe, and over there is where the new baby clouds are produced. If you look carefully through that window over there, you might even see the flash of a newborn lightning bolt or two.” The gondola was parked on a cloud in the factory’s parking lot. And Flim was standing outside the open door on that cloud, pointing out features with the tip of a cane he was carrying.

“Excuse me,” Maud interrupted. “How long did you say these charms lasted?”

Flim rolled his eyes. “Ten hours.”

“Oh,” said Maud. “I don’t think that will be long enough for my visit.”

“Well you should have thought about that before you bought your ticket,” Flim replied coldly.

“You’re not wearing a charm,” Maud observed. “How come you aren’t falling?”

“That’s because I have a permanent enchantment cast upon this medallion,” Flim explained, pulling out a pair of hoof-sized disks on chains from under his vest. “Believe me; it cost a pretty pile of bits to acquire.” Each disk had the words “Cloudsdale Tour License” inscribed upon it.

Maud looked at the front of the gondola, where there were clearly two seats for controlling the vehicle. “Is that other one your brother’s?” she asked.

“Yes, but as I told everypony when the charms arrived by delivery post, he came down with the feather flu and was unable to join us.”

“So can I borrow his medallion for my trip?” Maud asked. “I promise to give it back when I am done.”

Flim boarded the gondola so he could look down at Maud. “Now look here, little miss—there’s customer service, and then there’s flat out exploitation! What’s to keep you from running off with this valuable item, an item whose loss could jeopardize our entire operation?”

“I’ll pay you a deposit.”

“Well I paid five hundred bits for each of these items, so I can’t see giving one to you without requiring a thousand bit deposit.” He looked up to see that the crowd was watching this entire transaction. “Tell me that I’m wrong,” he added defiantly.

A stuffy looking unicorn nodded his head in agreement. “Oh I completely agree. As much as I sympathize with the filly with wanting to see her friend, asking twice what the item is worth is only just to protect your investment. And you are going to give that deposit back afterwards?”

“Oh certainly. One hundred percent,” said Flim. “Assuming she can pay.”

The others agreed with Stuffy. Nopony offered to pay any of that deposit, or accompany Maud on her journey. So Maud retreated to a corner of the gondola as the tour resumed and started quietly removing bits from her saddlebags.

“Alright, Little Miss, we’re at the edge of Cloudsdale Academy. If you’ve changed your mind about getting off, you need to give me three more bits to pay for the Wonderbolts Show.”

Maud stepped away from the piles of bits she had accumulated. “Here’s your deposit,” she said.

Flim was at a loss for words, a very rare condition for him. He spent a few moments inspecting the stacked piles of bits. “It’s…it’s a thousand bits,” he finally concluded. He then looked narrowly at Maud’s still empty-looking saddlebags. “Where did you get them?”

“Do you want me to take them back?” Maud countered.

“…No.” He took off one of his medallions and dropped it at Maud’s hooves, then gave her a tour brochure. “When would you like me to pick you up?”

“Tomorrow would be fine,” she said as she put on the medallion. She made sure to tuck it inside her dress, to make it harder for anypony to take from her.

“Are you sure your little reunion…or whatever…is only going to take one day? I’d rather not have to go out of my way for you over and over again. And when my brother recovers, he’ll need that medallion.”

“I promise that my business will be over by Wednesday,” Maud said, making her way past Flim and out of the gondola. She felt a strong sense of pride in getting everything she wanted out of the shifty salespony.

She found herself standing on a sidewalk made of clouds. The “street” was an empty lane in the clouds, and looking towards the grounds of the academy, she saw that it was made up of only isolated bunches of clouds, with vast empty spaces between them. She suddenly felt a lot less triumphant than she had a moment earlier.

“I don’t suppose there’s any sort of public transportation to get around?” she asked.

“No,” Flim said with a triumphant sneer.

“Pegasi don’t really believe in public services,” Stuffy stated. “They consider it a form of weakness. In fact, if the average pegasus’ grandfather suddenly became too lame to fly, she’d probably let him fall out of the sky, knowing that without him, the net fitness of the pegasus race would thereby increase. Good luck with your quest!”

And with that, the gondola flew away.

Maud watched it go. After what she had just heard, she suddenly had a lot more admiration for Rainbow Dash.

(Yes, I do know that “Stuffy” was repeating untrue stereotypes about pegasi held by some unicorns. But young Maud doesn’t know that.)

“I’m ready to render my final verdict: there’s not enough Princess Luna in this chapter to justify changing the chapter name to Moonstone.”

“Sounds fair.”

Quartz

Quartz

“It just occurred to me—what would have happened if you touched your sister or mother at midnight? Would they suddenly be able to experience the time loops alongside you?”

There was a long, uncomfortable silence from Maud, followed by a quiet sigh. “This is what I meant about not being good with pony-based solutions,” she finally explained. “The idea never occurred to me.” She reached out for the book. “Well, the story’s ruined now, so there’s no reason for you to read how I butcher your character.”

Starlight hugged the book to her barrel. “No way. I still want to read the rest of this, and I forgive you in advance for any ways that you get my character wrong.”

Maud huffed. “Well, don’t say I didn’t warn you.”

Maud was an earth pony who was confident in her physical abilities. That included the ability to leap across a yawning chasm given a running start. But that certainty didn’t change the fact that the gap she was crossing was an insanely high distance from the ground, and the insistent knowledge that the ground was where she belonged.

She could head for the campus of the academy rather easily. But she doubted that she would be able to tell any sort of tale, true or otherwise, that would get her out to where the race was taking place to find Starlight or Twilight. Having authority figures with her would surely cause the two magical combatants to hide. So that meant she had to move away from the safety of the campus, across a field of drifting clouds, each one smaller and farther away than the last. But not before availing herself of the services of a public restroom. She marveled at the fact that while made of cloud, it appeared to be as solid as concrete. Maybe there was something for a geologist to study in the sky after all.

Before too long she caught signs of the race. Unfortunately this didn’t help, as the race spread out over an enormous area above her. With an inaudible huff, Maud settled down on her cloud to watch. The next cloud over, she saw three pegasi stallions hunched down, watching the race through three pairs of binoculars. A rather large pile of bits lay on a tarp spread between them atop the cloud. Maud noticed that one of the stallions had a coat the color of seaweed, and a remarkably-stylish mane the color of sea foam.

Being unable to spot the two ponies she was looking for, Maud allowed her attention to be drawn to the race between the filly and two colts. Gradually the three racing pegasai slowed to a halt, watching in shock as a yellow pegasus (most likely “Fluttershy” based on Rainbow Dash’s account) sped by them. The way she was frozen in attitude, her wings locked tightly at her sides, led Maud to look around until she spotted a pinkish-purple unicorn standing on a nearby cloud, her eyes fixed on the yellow pegasus. (An argument broke out amongst the betting stallions about the outcome of the just-finished race, but Maud paid them no mind.)

From around another cloud emerged the purple pegasus Twilight, the villainous green reptile perched upon her back. “No!” she cried out, racing towards Starlight.

“Too late, Twilight,” Starlight taunted. “Too late.”

And then a hole opened in the sky that sucked both pegasus and lizard to their doom.

Starlight had herself a good laugh, until she noticed that all four little pegasi were staring at her. “Well, what are you looking at? Scram!” She then settled down on her cloud. “Twilight’s probably going to make this one another sleepover, leaving me with a ton of free time.” It occurred to Maud that if Starlight made a regular habit of banishing her opponent to various nether realms via gaping “doom holes”, only to have them return the next day…well that would probably lead to a lot of monologuing. “What to do, what to do…” she mused out loud. Her stomach grumbled. “Yeah, I guess I could get a bite to eat. Looks like I have to break into a restaurant again.” She sounded rather regretful over this plan. “Let’s see, where haven’t I tried yet…?” She got up and looked around.

And that’s when she spotted Maud.

Maud had tried to duck down when Starlight had suddenly stood, but there really was no way to hide.

In an instant, the unicorn was in her face. “Who are you?!” she demanded. “How did you get here? Did Twilight send you?” She wasn’t giving Maud any time to answer her questions, and she was becoming more and more enraged. “Have her friends figured out some way to send her help? How are you even standing on a cloud? Answer me!” She fired off a blast from her horn that put a hole in the public restroom that Maud had used.

“I have nothing to do with…that other pony,” Maud answered.

“Then why are you suddenly in this loop? Liar!” And the red-faced Starlight let off another blast which totally obliterated the restroom and a good part of the classroom behind it.

This quickly attracted the attention of the authorities.

“Oh no,” Starlight declared purposefully, “I’m not spending the night in Cloudsdale Detention again!”

With a bright flash and a loud “pop,” Maud found that Starlight had teleported them to a completely different neighborhood.

“Now you are going to give me some answers, before I get really mad!”

And that’s when it hit Maud: Starlight’s magic got more and more powerful the madder she got, and right now she was mad enough to level Cloudsdale…or any other city. She was the Saddle Rager of unicorns.

Starlight stopped reading. “You…you got that right. That’s exactly how my magic works. How did you know?”

“I didn’t know,” replied Maud. “It just seemed to me to be the greatest possible dramatic contrast with myself.”

“If you let me buy you lunch, I’ll tell you everything you want to know,” Maud replied. If she was any normal pony, she probably wouldn’t have even been able to utter the sentence without breaking down into terrified sobbing. Her “emotional muteness” had saved her once again.

Topaz

Topaz

Starlight strode into a large restaurant named Gerry le Grand with Maud in tow. “The filly and I would like some privacy,” she told the maître d’.

“The reservation fee for a private booth is seventy-five bits,” the griffon responded.

Maud stared open-mouthed. She had never been this close to a griffon before.

Starlight nudged her with a hoof. “Well, go ahead and pay the fellow.” She leaned in to whisper. “And don’t play dumb—I know exactly how much you are carrying in those enchanted saddlebags.”

Maud fished out the bits, and the two were seated in a lush booth with a velvet curtain. She tried to read the menu, but found that it was written entirely in Prench. “I don’t suppose you have rock soup?” she asked the waiter.

The waiter gave her The Look—the “What’s Wrong with You?” look.

“I’ll take a salad then.”

“And I’ll have the ratatouille,” said Starlight, without even looking at the menu.

The waiter gave Starlight a different look. “This establishment does not serve the ‘ratatouille’,” he said with a sniff. “It is a peasant dish, and therefore beneath Chef le Grand’s notice.”

“I’m willing to pay a hundred bits to discover if Chef le Grand can turn a peasant dish into something amazing,” Starlight said with a sneer.

“I’ll…have to ask him.”

“Go right ahead,” Starlight said, waving a hoof in dismissal. “In the meantime I’ll have a small salad, double the usual number of breadsticks, and whatever red wine your sommelier recommends.”

“Aren’t you afraid you’ll attract unwanted attention?” Maud asked once the waiter was out of range.

“Not really. I’ve got an ‘annoying but forgettable’ spell cast on both of us. Once we’re gone, everyone here will think of us as ‘those two ponies’, without being able to recall anything specific about us. Now, I can save both of us a lot of trouble if you let me scan you.”

Maud paused for a moment—no earth pony welcomes unicorn pony magic on their persons. “Very well,” she said finally. She felt a strange form of energy sweep over her before concentrating inside her head.

“Well other than that cloud-walking charm you’re wearing, you’ve also got a magnetite crystal in your brain,” Starlight told her, “about as big as three grains of sand. The way it’s magnetized causes it, and therefore you, to be sensitive to time magic. An accident of birth?”

“I assume so.”

“I assume I got that part completely wrong,” commented Maud.

“There are ways to be immune to time loops,” Starlight replied. “But it would involve vibrations rather than magnetism. That means that realistically it would be a dragon that noticed a time loop rather than any pony. But I can’t imagine a peaceful confrontation such as the one you’re writing if the main character was a dragon…who wasn’t Spike.”

“And you came up here to discover why you were experiencing the same day over and over. Makes sense so far. What’s your name, filly?”

“Maud.” She saw no reason to volunteer her family’s name unless forced to. In this way maybe she could protect them in case she failed to do any good.

“Hello, Maud. I’m Starlight Glimmer. So I’m curious—did you have a specific plan, or were you going to wing it?”

“I could see you and the pony you called Twilight fighting. I thought the fighting might be what was causing the days to repeat. So I thought I’d help you come up with a way to win.”

Starlight stared at her for a few moments, one eyebrow raised. “I still don’t entirely trust you,” she said. “But our fight has become rather stale lately. Alright, I’ll humor you: how do you think I can beat Twilight Sparkle?”

“I think I need to know more before I can give you good advice. For one thing, what are you two fighting over?”

“Nothing less than the future of Equestria. Princess Twilight wants to keep the same miserable system in place that we have today, while I want to put a radical new idea in place, one that will ensure Pony prosperity forevermore.”

“Princess Twilight. So she is an alicorn princess?”

“Yes.”

“What is she the princess of?”

“Friendship, if you can believe it.”

Maud posed her next major question: “What does the race have to do with your argument? I mean, if you had chosen somewhere more private for your debate, then I never would have been able to find you.”

Starlight stared at the young mare for quite some time before replying. “Maud, the race is the debate. I traveled back in time to stop it, and Twilight followed me to stop me. Or rather, I let her follow me so that she would know that I was re-writing her past. I was confident that taking her bizarre group of bickering friends away from her would change her life so much for the better that she would thank me and promise not to stand in my way anymore. Instead she’s in total denial, claiming that the alternate futures I send her to every time Rainbow Dash fails to win that race are all horrible dystopias. As if her team were the center of the universe or something.”

Maud paused for a few moments, trying to re-work her instinctual response into a form that would not leave her a black smudge on the dinner bench. “Perhaps her resentment comes from the fact you’re trying to take some of her friendships away, and she’s the Princess of Friendship?”

Starlight laughed out loud. “You know, I never thought of that! I still think she’s over-reacting.”

“What do you know about her?”

“Her title and the fact that she lives in a crystal castle with a magical map that tells her where to go to solve friendship problems. I used that as the power source for the time loop spell.”

“Well, do you even need to break up her friendship? If you’ve figured out time travel, why don’t you use it to get what you want behind her back?”

Starlight was about to reply when the waiter returned with the salads and breadsticks. He informed Starlight that Chef le Grande had taken up her challenge, and to prepare herself for the best ratatouille she had ever tasted.

Starlight had attacked the breadsticks before the waiter had departed. It was only after eating her fill and drinking half of her glass of water that she bothered to answer Maud. “Because of that map. It’s some of the most powerful magic I have ever encountered. I did some spying on Twilight’s group, and one thing I learned was that their mutual friendship is how she became an alicorn princess—she started as a unicorn. She got the castle and the map as part of the deal…I think. What I do know is that they didn’t exist when Twilight was still a unicorn. And I heard her say that she has some regrets over becoming a princess, that she worries that she really doesn’t deserve the position. The map is the reason that her group hunted down my experimental village and ruined it, and as long as it existed, I knew that no amount of time travel would ever allow me to accomplish my goals. So I needed to un-do her princesshood, and that traced back to the event that give six ponies their cutie marks, and led them and one dragon into becoming friends: Rainbow Dash’s Sonic Rainboom.”

Maud had next to no knowledge of pegasus history and myths, and so had no idea what a Sonic Rainboom might be. But she did consider, given the circumstances, that there was a non-zero chance that Pinkamena was meant to be a member of Twilight’s company. “And what is your radical new idea?” she asked.

“I believe that cutie marks are a curse,” Starlight declared, “the source of all bullying and unhappiness in ponykind. My goal is a world without cutie marks, and my village was a place where ponies agreed to undergo a spell I had developed that made all ponies equal, by stripping their marks away from them. It’s a spell unlike anything that I have ever seen or heard about before—that’s how I know that it’s my destiny.”

Maud was shocked by this idea of removing cutie marks, but of course did not show it. “Are you sure you thought this through?” she asked before realizing that she should have phrased it better.

“Am I sure?!” Starlight asked, her ire significantly raising the temperature of the room. “Of course I’ve thought this through! This is the single goal towards which my entire life has been directed! And another thing—I remember you now! You said you were a stranger to me!” (No she didn’t.)

“When did you meet me before?” Maud asked.

“It was back when…wait. That would be my past, but your future. And yes, I clearly remember that you were older than you were now.” She sighed. “Never mind. But I still want to know what you meant by that ‘thought this through’ remark.”

“Well, if everypony lost their cutie marks to make this perfect world, what about Princess Celestia? Who will move the sun, moon and stars if not her?”

“It can’t be that hard,” Starlight replied with the dismissive wave of a hoof. “I bet there’s an artifact buried under Canterlot that could take care of all of that, and all I’d need to do is to push a button to activate it.”

“And what about Equestria’s enemies? What if there’s an invasion?”

“A citizen army could stand up against anything that our enemies could throw at us!”

“Including magic?”

“Um…well…”

“And what about you? If the only way to remove cutie marks is your magic, how do you remove your own mark?”

“I…don’t know.” She looked down at the table, and started to trace the wood grains through the tablecloth with the edge of her hoof.

“It seems to me that you have one major issue, and two minor ones,” Maud concluded after some thought. “The major issue is whether all ponies should go through life without cutie marks or not. If the answer to that question is an unequivocal ‘yes’ or ‘no’, then nothing less than total victory would be acceptable between you two. But it looks like the correct answer might be a compromise: a land where ponies who do not want to have cutie marks can live together without being judged, and then Equestria, where things remain as they are. This new land—let’s call it No Mark Land—would have to be located within Equestria, so that ponies who have cutie marks can use them to protect No Mark Land from invasion with their magic, even if having cutie marks makes them miserable.”

Starlight frowned as she thought this over. “Alright, assuming I can’t uncover artifacts that would remove the need for Princess Celestia’s powers or its magical defenders, I suppose I would have to accept the premise that you describe. But the number of ponies keeping their marks would have to be a bare minimum. For example, do you have a cutie mark?”

“Yes. It’s a rock. It represents my love of rocks.”

“Well I’m willing to bet that that mark has brought you nothing but misery. That ponies have said and done bad things to you because they didn’t understand rocks like you do. Yet you loved rocks before you got that mark, right?”

“Yes.”

“And has the mark itself done anything for your love of rocks?”

“Well, I can identify them by smell now. That’s new. I used to have to use a guidebook.”

“But you still would have identified them with that book if you never got your cutie mark. So what did your mark actually do for you, except to separate you from your peers?”

“I’ve always been separate from my peers.” If she was normal, if she was like other ponies, this would have been said in a voice of despair. “They will never understand what I feel, not just about rocks. About anything. And I’ve had that problem since I was born.”

Maud put a hoof to her lips, too late. She had never been this open about herself, not even with her family. She just assumed they knew, since the idea of discussing it was too painful. And here she was revealing her deepest, darkest secrets to an emotionally unstable and unrestrained unicorn of unimaginable power.

She lowered her hoof, only to see it covered by Starlight’s. “Alright,” the unicorn said softly. “So that’s something else I’ll try to fix while looking for sun-moving and Equestria-protecting artifacts.”

Starlight looked up, her eyes misty.

Maud was nowhere to be found. Sitting on her chair was Boulder.

Starlight sighed with a smile, knowing that Maud was just hiding just around the corner. “Alright, Boulder, I’ll keep reading the story for you.”

There was a moment of shocked silence from Maud, which she then broke by throwing open the booth’s sound-proof curtain and looking out at the dinner crowd.

“Maud?” Starlight asked beseechingly. “Did I offend you?”

“I won’t waste your time asking for the impossible,” Maud said, still facing away from her. “I just…do you hear that?” She pointed out at the other restaurant patrons.

“What? The sounds of hooves and claws? The clatter of utensils on plates?”

“There. Laughter. If I could laugh just once.” She closed her eyes. “To really feel what joy is like, if only for a moment. I would be satisfied for the rest of my life if I could only have that.”

Instinctually, Starlight threw the curtain closed, to hide herself away from anypony watching her crying. And yet this filly across from her had the same deadpan expression as always! “I’ll do it—anything in my power I’ll throw at the problem. This I swear.”

“You’d do that for me?”

Starlight finished using the napkin to wipe her eyes. “Maud, I want to make every pony happy. That’s what I was doing before Twilight led my followers astray. And I want to thank you—you’re helping me to see these issues in new ways, ways that I hope will finally get through to Twilight. Because she told me that as an alicorn she will probably live forever, and her dragon will live close enough to forever to not make a difference. Whereas I will get older and one day die. So I can’t just repeat the same cycle forever.

“You said there were three issues. The one about cutie marks is the first. What are the other two?”

“Those two aren’t important unless the first one can’t be completely resolved.”

“Well…I’m willing to admit that maybe not everypony needs to give up their cutie marks.”

“In that case, the second issue is whether you should get your village back, and the third one is whether Twilight gets to keep her friends. If you can convince her that most ponies would be happier without their cutie marks, then she should be willing to change history so that she never disrupts your village.”

“But what about the map?” asked Starlight.

“Maybe Twilight knows how to deal with that,” countered Maud. “The third issue is the outcome of today’s race: If she can prove that she’s one of the few exceptions to the ‘cutie marks cause misery’ rule, then you should allow the history of her friendships to go forward. Especially since with the other change made, you two never have to meet until your group is big enough to make a request for protection that Princess Celestia cannot ignore.”

“Yeah, yeah, that all makes sense. I just—”

“Madame, Mademoiselle, your meals are ready.”

Starlight slid aside the curtain with her magic. A bowl of hot vegetables topped with a spiral pattern of zucchinis on top was placed before each of them, along with Starlight’s wine.

Maud peered at the strange dish. “I didn’t order the rata…what she ordered.”

“Compliments of the house. The Chef was so pleased by the recipe that he came up with that he made enough for everyone! What do you think?”

Maud had a taste. Would be better with rocks, she thought. “It’s good,” she said.

“I’ve had better,” said Starlight.

“When?” challenged the waiter.

“When I gave the same challenge to the chef’s big brother in Canterlot. Oh, and you can take the wine away—I don’t drink.”

“Then why did you order it?”

“So you’d take me seriously.”

The waiter departed, shaking his head despairingly.

Starlight then turned to Maud and asked, “Do you think you can help me come up with arguments that will get through that thick skull of Twilight’s?”

Maud stared down into the spiral for a few moments before meeting her eyes. “Tell me how this spell of yours works, and I might have an idea how you can convince her.”

Corundum

Corundum

Starlight glanced up, to see that Maud was back in her seat. “The two main kinds of corundum are ruby and sapphire,” she noted. “Which one is this going to be?”

“There’s also emery, used for grinding things down.”

“Are you describing what’s going to happen to Twilight and me in the chapter, or to me reading the chapter?”

“…Yes.”

“This ought to work,” Starlight said, leading Maud into a dark and narrow alley.

It occurred to Maud that not once did anypony (or anyffony for that matter) question what a big and intimidating unicorn was doing with a small and meek earth pony filly on the streets of Cloudsdale. Not even when she was being taken into a dark and narrow alley in full view of dozens of witnesses. As much as she dreaded her trips to Rockville, she was pretty sure that somepony would have said something in this scenario. Maybe that was part of the “annoying but forgettable” spell.

Of course, Maud wasn’t being led into this alley by a stranger. Not anymore. Which is why she felt confident to raise a question or two that might have cost her her head just a few hours earlier.

“What happens to one Equestria when you change history and create a new one?” she asked.

“They replace each other.” Starlight turned back to look at Maud. “You didn’t think that each parallel universe continued to exist after the next change, did you? That would make me into some kind of monster! I mean imagine, every world, no matter how close to perfect I could make it, would have some losers who did not deserve their misery. And with how many loops we’ve made, that would be millions upon millions of miserable ponies, created by me? No amount of revenge, however noble, would justify that!”

“Oh. Good. Another question: When you two fight, each cycle is about two hours or so, from your appearance to Twilight casting the return spell?”

“Usually. Obviously, there are times when we are worn out and Twilight decides to spend the night in the world I’ve sent her to—this is one of those times. But outside of that, two hours sounds about right.”

“So why does the whole day loop around your appearances?”

“Ah, well the reason for that is that the universe likes round numbers. It uses far less magic to wall off this one day and loop inside it than to loop time at the precise moments when we appear and disappear.”

So when Twilight and Spike do decide to spend the night in their alternate future, they go to sleep on Tuesday night, and wake up on Tuesday morning.

A ragged circle of light appeared before Starlight, fading to show a nighttime scene in a (ground-bound) city or town. “I’ve always wanted to visit one of these alternate futures, in order to disprove Twilight’s outrageous claims of apocalypses…‘apocalypsi’? Whatever. But I couldn’t pick any one where I had brought up my doubts, because I’m sure she’d use illusion magic to make it look like a dead world when in fact everything was fine. I don’t see Twilight, so let’s go.”

Maud reached out to stop her. “I feel I need to make a full disclosure. I believe that my sister is probably a member of your enemy’s friendship circle, and this ‘sonic rainbow’ thing will give her her cutie mark.”

Starlight turned around in shock. “Why are you telling me this?”

“To stave off a really annoying dramatic convention. Also, to demonstrate my trust. That and she’ll probably be waiting for us on the other side of that portal, given my luck.”

“Well, if that’s the case, why didn’t you side with Twilight?”

“Originally? Dumb luck. But now, because I can’t be sure that my sister will be happier with Twilight. The way you make it sound, my sister is just one of Twilight’s sidekicks, probably the one who’s always delivering the ‘doom-and-gloom’ message. Without Twilight, without her cutie mark, maybe she would be able to find her way…with your help.”

“I…I really appreciate that, Maud.”

“…Pie. The full name’s Maud Pie.”

Starlight looked at her as if she had gone insane. “Maud…Pie. You’re Pinkie’s sister.”

“Yup.”

“I have a lot of questions, but they really have nothing to do with the matter at hoof, so onward…to destiny!”

“To destiny.”

The pair stepped through the portal, traveling a dozen years in time and thousands of strides both east and down. They arrived in Ponyville, an hour before midnight.

They were on a sidewalk on the edge of a park. Frequently-spaced lights kept everything illuminated, and equally well-spaced signs listed dozens of rules to be followed by anyone daring to use this public space. Atop a hill could be seen a crystal table.

“Well, that’s the one part of Twilight’s story that had to be true—that the map somehow survives in any world, even if she never becomes a princess, even if there’s no castle.” She stepped onto the grass, followed by Maud.

“Halt, in the name of the law!”

The two turned to see a royal guard with a brilliantly glowing horn.

“Is there a problem, officer?” Starlight asked sweetly.

“Do you have a permit to be in this public park?”

Starlight furrowed her brow. “But it’s a public park. Perhaps I violated closing hours…?”

“No. According to Equestrian Statute 5.11.14.146c, no member of the public is allowed to use a public park without filing a letter of intent with the local office of the Bureaucracy with at least eight (8) days notice.” (He actually pronounced both 8’s.)

“We wished to examine that crystal formation,” said Maud. “Has it been there long?”

“No. In fact, it only appeared this morning.”

“Has anypony been able to explain it yet?” asked Maud.

“There were a couple of strange characters that wanted to investigate, but I chased them out of here. One of them claimed to be an unlicensed alicorn, and the other a tame dragon. Since both of those are impossibilities, I showed them what for!”

“Bravo,” Starlight said mockingly.

“Thank you for your public support.”

“So, what do you plan to do?”

“Oh, there are a number of experts who have filed plans to examine the table…”

“…But since it’s in a public park, they have to wait eight days.”

“Eight (8) days.”

“That’s what I said.”

“What if it’s dangerous?” asked Starlight. “What if it doesn’t have the public decency to wait eight (8) days before detonating?”

“Well I would have to write up a stern injunction in that case.”

“From your grave.”

“…You know, perhaps I could look the other way while you perform an initial reconnaissance and potential damage assessment. Of course, you would have to wait the required period before actually publishing your findings.”

“Of course,” Starlight said, nearly as dryly as Maud would.

“And you’ll have to submit to a name assessment.”

“A what?”

The officer pulled out a notebook. “Please state your name and the nature of your special talent.”

Starlight rolled her eyes. “Starlight Glimmer. Destiny-related magic.”

The white unicorn wrote that down. “The talent is acceptable, seeing as that dangerous object could affect all our destinies. But I’m going to have to fine you for the name.”

“What?!”

“‘Starlight Glimmer’. As you can see, the sky is completely obscured by clouds. With no starlight to be glimmering, you should have spent tonight inside. By stepping into a public space, you make yourself subject to Statute 111.1.1.1, the Law of Suitability of Name to Setting. Ten bits.”

As Starlight’s face cycled through several interesting colors, Maud looked around her, then climbed atop the nearest rock formation and bent down to reach into a nearby puddle.

“Maud, could you pay the stallion? I promise I’ll pay you back.”

“Ah, and the minor. What is your name (and mark, if any)?” (You could hear the parentheses.)

“Maud Pie,” she said, holding a mud pie aloft. “And my cutie mark is a rock.” She looked down at the rock.

“Trying to get out of a penalty with a pun?”

“Yes, sir. And here’s your ten bits, which is certainly not a bribe.”

“Good show! That kind of in-depth knowledge of the law will get you far in the Bureaucracy. But a word of caution: don’t even joke about bribery.”

“Yes, sir.”

“Alright, I shall now position myself so I couldn’t possibly witness your act of trespass, and at the same time distract anypony from getting in your way. Be quick!”

Starlight and Maud clambered their way to the top of the hill, to examine the faintly glowing crystal table.

“It is a map,” noted Maud.

“Look, it’s Starlight! And…who is that other pony?”

Starlight turned around. “Ah, it’s Twilight and her little toady. Come on up, I was expecting you.”

“Oh, not you two again!” exclaimed the guard pony.

“Mr. Guard, I’ve been doing my research,” declared the alicorn Twilight Sparkle. “It turns out that the laws of the realm do not apply to dragons, which means that Spike can go wherever he likes without being barred, so long as he refrains from property damage. And as for me…” She used her telekinesis to shove a dictionary beneath the stunned guard’s nose. “There! ‘Twilight’ can be both morning and evening!”

“No fair!” the guard decried in defeat. “There is no room for ambiguity in the law!”

“I need these two for my research,” declared Starlight in an authoritative tone. “You should let them pass.”

Twilight, with Spike on her back, strode carefully over the property line onto the well-manicured lawn. She looked like she expected to be electrocuted. When this didn’t happen, she glared up at Starlight. “What are you up to?”

“I’m waiting for you to come up here so we can talk, Twilight Sparkle. Just talk.”

“Is that so?” asked Spike.

Twilight spent the ascent studying the pony who had not spoken thus far, who was hiding behind the larger Starlight. Finally, when she reached the summit, she recognized her. “Maud, is that you?”

Spike hopped down. “You’re right, it is Maud!”

Maud looked over at Starlight. She knew she didn’t have to defend herself.

“I think you’ll find that the Maud you know is significantly older than the one that stands before you,” Starlight said, moving to keep herself between Twilight and Maud.

“You’re right. You must be the Maud Pie from this time. What are you doing here?”

“Maud is here to resolve our conflict. So far, she has had a ton of good ideas.”

“Has she convinced you to give up?” asked Spike.

“She’s convinced me that I haven’t been very clear in making my case,” said Starlight. “And she has proposed a means where we may hopefully reach a compromise.”

“Oh yeah?” Spike said menacingly, as he tried to advance on Maud. The two of them were roughly the same height.

Twilight held out a hoof to block Spike. “I’m willing to hear what a neutral third party has to say.”

“I think you should debate your differences calmly, without resorting to yelling or magical attacks upon one another,” said Maud.

Twilight looked from Maud to Starlight. “And you agree to this?”

“Yes,” said Starlight. She pointed her horn towards the map table.

Twilight and Spike advanced on Starlight.

Maud circled around so she was between them. “Starlight, swear by all you hold dear that you won’t use magic to hurt Twilight or Spike or to alter their minds to make them agree with you. Nor will you attack them in any way, physically or emotionally, until such time as the argument is mutually resolved, or until you two separate by at least a hundred strides to resume your armed conflict.”

“That’s pretty good!” said Starlight. “Did you come up with that swear just now?”

“Swear it,” said Maud.

Starlight repeated the swear, needing only two corrections from Maud.

“Now you do the same,” Maud instructed Twilight and Spike.

And they did. Twilight even “Pinkie-promised”, which earned quite a concerned glare from Maud.

“Now then…” Maud prompted Starlight.

“Oh, yes! I propose to use the magic of the map to show you memories which will demonstrate my point about the evil effects of cutie marks. And once you learn the same spell, you are permitted to use it to try and convince me of the usefulness of your own cutie mark-centered friendships. That was your idea, right, Maud?”

“No,” said Maud.

“No?”

“I said that you would show each other parts of your pasts. Memories are inadmissible, because they can be colored by emotion, as I know so well with my own memories.”

“She has a point,” noted Spike.

“Alright,” Starlight conceded. “Give me a moment to change the spell from displaying memories to displaying the past—for once, I don’t want history to be changed by our actions. And…I’ve…got it!” A blast of magic struck the table, causing a loud ticking sound as phantom designs of various geometric shapes in circles appeared overhead, rotating in stops and starts. The magical glow spread to include the whole of the table. “Shall we?” Starlight asked, as she leapt into the glow.

With a shrug, Maud followed Starlight. Twilight and Spike looked at each other for a moment before doing the same.

The group found themselves in another town in the middle of the day, with a multi-story water fountain as its centerpiece.

Spike held up one semi-transparent claw to look through it. “Whoa!”

Starlight turned to face the others. “We’re just ghosts here, so don’t worry about being seen or heard. Now then: This is the home of Party Favor, who had a pretty good life until the day he got his cutie mark. Here you can see him being tormented by the neighborhood bullies.”

The area was completely abandoned.

“Alright, it appears that Party Favor got the day wrong when he was telling me this story. Hold on while I look around a bit.” With that, the world around them began rapidly running backwards.

Maud noticed that Starlight’s horn wasn’t glowing. “How are you able to do that without magic?” she asked.

“It’s part of the spell,” Starlight explained, freezing the scene. “Once we’re in the past, any one of us can independently manipulate time and space with a thought.” She then started things moving again.

A couple of hulking earth pony delinquents was sitting in the park and playing jacks—and arguing loudly about who was winning—when a shadow advanced over them. The pair turned to look up in fear…

…At the figure of Party Favor in a royal guard uniform. “Excuse me,” he said, pulling out a pad of paper, “but do you have a permit to be standing in this public park?”

“Oh for crying out loud!”

That was Starlight. The groaning, on the other hoof, was from the bullies.

Party Favor pulled a device out of his hat, a device that was far too big to fit. “Oh, and you’re over the noise limit. Oh dear.”

“Ppplease don’t write us up, Party!” one of the bullies begged. “The law says I can’t get desert for a year if I get one more ticket!”

“Well, you should have thought about that before picking this spot to play your game,” Party Favor said sternly.

“Nooooo!”

Without another word, Starlight ripped a hole back to Ponyville, and pulled Maud, Twilight and Spike with him.

“What is wrong with this timeline?!” she exclaimed.

At the bottom of the hill, the officer pulled out a device for measuring volume. After a moment he whistled. “You were that close to getting a ticket, you know.”

Starlight tapped a hoof to the ground a few times in thought. “Alright, let me check the other ponies I wanted to show you first.” She cast her spell and dived into the table.

A few moments later, she rose up to the surface, only to change the color of the glow and dive back down.

She repeated this three more times.

“This timeline is insufferable!” she hissed. Quietly. She then looked down at the guard. “I’m getting to the bottom of this.”

She sashayed down the hill to be right next to the white unicorn. “Say, Mr. Guard,” she breathed more than she said; “I am finding myself quite overcome with infatuation with your devotion to the law. I wonder: who is your inspiration? Who made this wonderful world of out-of-control bureaucracy?”

“Oh, that would be V. O. Jets. Every member of the guard is issued a copy of his authorized biography, so that we may be inspired by his example.”

“May we see it, just for a little bit?”

“Why sure! There’s no regulation against that.”

“It’s a miracle,” Spike muttered under his breath.

The four of them gathered under one of the ultra-bright streetlights to browse the small volume. Here is what they learned:

“Here is what I’ve learned,” Starlight quipped. “You like lists.”

“…It’s true.”

Vogue On Jets was first inspired to take over the world when he won a bet on a pegasus race by pointing out that there were no rules specifically prohibiting a unicorn from picking up one of the pegasi and using her magic to make that pegasus win. From this experience he realized that rules could be used to accomplish great evil or great good.

Jets rose to fame by overseeing a reorganization of the royal finances that greatly increased income while also making burdens fair by class.

He then organized the first modern PR campaign to back a plebiscite that put an end to the bureaucracy’s traditional enemy, the aristocracy.

The next campaign of laws put an end to childhood bullying, by basically putting the bureaucracy in charge of all foals in Equestria. The genius of the campaign was that the majority of parents never realized that they had just lost control of their own children.

Princess Celestia did such an awful job of reacting to the series of national disasters that followed that another plebiscite removed her from power. She seemed quite happy to retire to a job of only moving the sun around.

And the Bureaucracy has ensured the happiness of everypony from that point forever more.

“Alright,” Starlight said after mulling this over. “This world is definitely my creation. I don’t like it.”

“What have you got against bureaucracies?”

“When I was five, a bureaucrat pushed for a ‘consumer protection’ interest adjustment bill that looked so convincing that even Princess Celestia had no problem with it. That was until she discovered after several complaints that a buried part of the bill made it impossible for farms to pay their mortgages. That stallion had ownership of half of Equestria before he was stopped. And I and my family were going to be evicted from our homes so he could hire Diamond Dogs to do our jobs for a bit a day.

“I’m not saying that I’m pro-aristocrat. Just that I think that the balance between bureaucrats and aristocrats exists for a reason.”

“Why don’t you like this world?” asked Spike with a somewhat sinister smile. “After all, it looks like all the problems that you said came from cutie marks have been solved. Bullying is illegal, and mutual respect is mandatory.”

“Yeah, because everypony is ordered to be nice, or pay the penalty. My system would have improved pony nature so that they would be nice naturally.”

Twilight picked up the book with her magic and returned it to the guard. “If I may, I’d like to ask you about these ‘disasters’ the book skips over. For instance, what happened with Nightmare Moon?”

“Wait, Nightmare Moon?” Starlight interrupted. “She’s just a myth.”

The others ignored her.

“Oh, that was Jets at his very best,” the eager guard explained. “When Queen Nightmare Moon took over Equestria, the Bureaucracy under V. O. Jets immediately set out to give her the precise deference due to a reigning monarch a thousand years ago. That included teaching all of us our ‘thees’ and ‘thous’, so that the new ruler would not have to make any adjustments whatsoever for the modern era. The next thing he did was present the Queen with a scientific paper that was so well-written that she had no choice but to agree with its conclusion: that Equestria would become a dead world in less than a hundred years if there weren’t at least two hours of daylight per day. He then made sure that the Queen got all the credit for bringing the sun back. These sorts of improvements went on for two years, by which time Nightmare Moon figured out that she wasn’t really needed to run Equestria at all. Plus, she was already beloved by the foals for fighting their nightmares. So, she set Celestia free and retired, just like Celestia herself would do a year later.”

“What about the Changelings?”

“We detected their advance at a border outpost. Changelings in disguise are notoriously bad at following complex regulations.”

“And you’re immune to persuasion, because you have no hearts,” Spike quipped.

“I will neither confirm nor deny that statement.”

“Discord?”

“There was a statue in the royal gardens with that name. It disappeared the day after the law was passed controlling what flavor of ice cream you were allowed to order for each hour of the day. The gardener claimed to hear a howl of agony retreating into the stars when it happened.”

“Tirek?”

“Attempted to escape Tartarus on numerous occasions, but never succeeded, thanks to our guards backing up the efforts of Cerberus. I’m telling you, that is one shift rotation you do not want to get.”

“What are you all talking about?” asked Starlight. “I never heard of any of those ponies.”

Neither had Maud, but she chose to remain silent.

“Were you wandering a desert for the past few years?” asked Spike in exasperation.

“As a matter of fact, yes. It was while meditating in the Northern Desert that I came up with the principles of Anti-Markism.” She looked over at the guard. “We, uh, need to look at that table some more.”

“Go right ahead,” the guard said, turning away.

Starlight led the others to the top of the hill, looking more and more frustrated with each step. “Okay, it seems clear that I cannot make my points using the past of this world, so that means…that I have to restore the results of the race.”

“Yes!” proclaimed Spike.

“But…!”

“Aw…”

“But I require that you do the same for me. Twilight, I need your help to change history so that you and your group never disrupt my village. That way, I’ll have something to gain from this as well as you.”

“That’s really up to the Map,” said Twilight.

“I know,” said Starlight, “but I think it will agree. Especially since this is temporary. We restore the original timeline, with the one change that my village is not interfered with. And then we can use our pasts to debate. Based on the outcome of that debate, I will either agree to disband the village, or you will agree to live without your cutie marks.”

Twilight gave a warning glance back at Spike before answering. “As long as it’s a rational debate, then I’m game.”

Starlight took the group through a portal back to Cloudsdale. With Twilight’s help, she made a copy of the fatal time loop scroll, one that hadn’t been activated. She took them forward in time to the moment of the race, and they all watched as Rainbow Dash generated a Sonic Rainboom to win the race. Starlight tore up the original scroll, ending the spell. She then used the ‘history ghosting’ spell to advance to the moment the Treehouse Castle Map first appeared.

Instead of Starlight’s village, the map directed them to Canterlot. Rarity had to convince Rainbow Dash and Applejack to come along for a trip to the capital city that was sure to be boring (Rainbow’s complaint) and a distraction from the apple farm (Applejack’s complaint).

“Maybe we’ll be attacked by the big, giant hulking Bureaucracy monster!” said Pinkie Pie as the group exited the room.

“I wonder if the friendship problem this time is Moon Dancer?” the phantom Spike asked the phantom Twilight.

“Well, I would hope that they aren’t being sent on a fool’s errand, so Moon Dancer is as good a friendship problem as any. Hey Maud, are you alright?”

“Maybe she hasn’t recovered from her first Sonic Rainboom yet,” Spike suggested. “Those things are pretty breathtaking.”

“Was that my sister?” Maud asked.

Twilight looked out the door at the bouncing pink pony. “Yes. I guess this is your first time seeing her like this.”

“Be honest with me, Twilight: are you humoring her, or is she in fact not the completely insane pony that she appears to be?”

“…Wow,” said Spike.

“You know,” added Starlight, “I’ve been wanting to ask that question for ages, but I thought it rather rude.”

“Your sister is the greatest thing to ever happen to Ponyville,” Twilight told her. “And the Maud that she adores, that she writes to constantly, completely understands her.”

Maud looked down at the ground. “I guess I’ll have to take your word for it.”

Starlight stepped between them. “It looks like your map has fulfilled its side of the bargain, and so have I.”

“I’m not happy with it,” said Spike. “Your town is based on a lie.”

“You’re right,” Starlight said quietly. She got out a piece of paper and used her magic to quickly write a letter. “I’m going to send myself a letter under a false name saying that I know that Starlight still has her cutie mark. Knowing myself, that will lead to a night of soul-searching followed by my coming out to the villagers with the truth: That while I desperately want to be an equal alongside my brethren, it is by no artifact but my own innate magic that I can remove the cursed cutie marks, and so I bear my burden in public, while still insisting that in every other respect I am still the same as them.”

“That’s not really the lie I was referring to,” Spike muttered under his breath.

While Spike and Starlight were having their little argument, Maud realized that she didn’t have to take Twilight’s word for it—she could see for herself what Pinkamena’s cutie mark had done for—as well as to—her.

Trying to follow Pinkie Pie through the timestream was a dizzying, random-access flurry of sights and sounds not entirely connected to each other, although always linked through the smell of vanilla and the taste of cotton candy…

“Hey you know what this calls for? A party!”

“Okie-dokie-lokie!”

“My name is Pinkie Pie. And I am here to say, ‘I’m gonna make you smile and I will brighten up your day.’”

“Oh I never leave home without my party cannon!”

“I like funny words! One of my favorite funny words is ‘kumquat’! I didn’t make that one up. I would work in a kumquat orchard just so I could say ‘kumquat’ all day! Kumquat, kumquat, kumquat! And ‘pickle barrel’! Isn’t that just the funnest thing to say? Pickle barrel, pickle barrel, pickle barrel! Say it with me! Pickle barrel, kumquat, pickle barrel, kumquat, pickle barrel, kumquat, chimicherrychanga!”

“Pinkie, stop giving him cake!” “I’m not giving him cake—I’m assaulting him with cake!”

“It fills my heart with sunshine all the while. ‘Cause all I really need’s a smile, smile, smile, from these happy friends of mine.”

“Sometimes, it’s really fun to be scared.” “Pinkie Pie, you’re a genius!” “No I’m not. I’m a chicken!”

“I’d never felt joy like that before! It felt so good I just wanted to keep smiling forever! And I wanted everyone I knew to smile too, but rainbows don't come along that often. I wondered, how else could I create some smiles?”

“It’s true some days are dark and lonely. And maybe you feel sad, but Pinkie will be there to show you that it isn't that bad. There's one thing that makes me happy and makes my whole life worthwhile: And that's when I talk to my friends and get them to smile!”

“Come on everypony, smile, smile, smile! Fill my heart up with sunshine, sunshine!”

“I always let my imagination run away with me. And then it comes back…with cake!”

“Wow, Maud, I didn’t know that you were so good at drawing ponies!”

Maud walked over to take a look. “Those aren’t mine,” she said. “And that one on the bottom wasn’t there the last time I checked.”

Starlight looked over the figures nervously. Thankfully for her, none of them were moving. “W…what are you saying?”

“I’m saying that Pinkie Pie shrines are self-propagating.”

“I’m going to pretend that I didn’t hear that.”

What she experienced left Maud even more confused than before. How could a member of the Pie family be this happy? How could she be so skilled at making others happy? What could have possibly happened to turn Pinkamena Diane Pie (most apt descriptor: doomed) into Pinkie Pie?

Author's Note

Diamond

Diamond

Maud stepped back into the throne room. The map was glowing.

“Come on, Maud!”

Maud dutifully climbed up and into the map.

She emerged—in solid form—in a throne room that looked nearly identical to the one she left. Except for the tree roots on the ceiling. Maud had no idea what the significance of that item was—some form of tree necromancy demanded by the group’s apple farmer? Maud supposed that she would never understand organic farming.

“We are now in the present day—the future from your point of view, Maud. Twilight, feel free to use your magic to confirm that this is—for the most part—the same world you left.”

Twilight sent a beam up through the roof and stared up at it for a few seconds. “Yes, it is,” she finally said.

“Good!” Starlight exclaimed. “With the preliminaries out of the way, may I now present my evidence?”

The group jumped through the map to arrive in the same village with the water fountain from before—there was now a stone parasol at its top.

“This is Party Favor’s tenth birthday party,” Starlight told the others. “He’s about to get his cutie mark.”

“How was he treated before he got his cutie mark?” Spike asked. “If you want to show that getting his mark ruined his life, then we have to see him be happy first.”

“Fair enough,” said Starlight, before bringing them back a few minutes.

The group was now behind the young Party Favor, who was trying to entertain a crying filly by first blowing up a balloon. Only he didn’t have enough lungpower to inflate the balloon, and ended up choking. Unexpectedly, this was enough to get the filly laughing.

The fathers of the various children were gathered at a single table, getting drunk and arguing over which hoofball team was the best. On hearing the happy filly, one of them got up and stalked towards her. “Are you laughing at your father?” he demanded. “Nopony laughs at me!”

The filly started crying again.

“That’s better,” the father said, staggering back to his table.

Starlight then brought her group over to witness an escalating argument between the two bullies seen in their last visit to this village.

“You’ve been lording that Hock Fetlock action-figure of yours over us for long enough,” one of them said to the other. “I happen to know that Party Favor’s getting one, and once I force him to give it to me, then we’ll be equal.”

“You’ll never be as great as me,” the other bully said. “Because you’re ugly and stupid.”

And that’s when the first bully jumped on the second and started whaling on him.

A crowd of mostly colts soon gathered around to watch the fight. The fathers saw what was going on, and started a betting pool.

Party Favor stole a couple more balloons from a clown with a bicycle pump cutie mark, and snuck up to a hedge overlooking the fight.

The first bully was just about ready to put the second in the hospital when they were interrupted by the laughter of the watching crowd. They stopped what they were doing to see the colts laughing at a couple of balloon animals that looked suspiciously like them slamming into each other like a couple of spastic rhinos.

This caused the bullies to settle their differences and collectively kick the snot out of Party Favor.

“…It seems that you have a low opinion of how well fillies and colts treat each other when unsupervised.”

“Oh you noticed? I thought I was being subtle.”

The adults finally intervened, and the clown snatched back his stolen balloons, when he suddenly noticed something.

“Hey!” he announced to the crowd. “This colt just got a balloon-related cutie mark. He just stole my job!”

“Let’s kick him out of the town!” demanded the angry father from earlier.

The hapless birthday pony was then picked up and marched to the town limits, as others gathered tar and feathers.

Twilight and Spike were dumbfounded.

“Let me provide some context,” a triumphant Starlight said, taking them inside the mayor’s office. “This town was Equestria’s primary source of parasols for the past century. Ten years ago, Hoity Toity convinced all the rich and powerful ponies that parasols were ridiculous, and the market collapsed. As you probably noticed, the cutie marks of 90% of the ponies in this village were parasol-related. When ponies stopped buying parasols, those cutie marks ruined the entire town.”

“Now wait a second,” Twilight interrupted. “Surely the government would have trod in to fix the problem.”

“Yeah, like retrain the ponies to make umbrellas,” suggested Spike.

“That is exactly what happened, five years after Party Favor’s disastrous birthday,” said Starlight. “They were able to help many of the ponies, but previously it took 150 ponies to make each parasol, meaning that some of them were so specialized that they could not find any other job to do.” She pointed at the figure of Fancy Pants, who was standing frozen in time next to an assistant at a typewriter.

Time started as Fancy finished reading over the report his assistant had completed. “Yes, this looks fine. I’ll bring it back with me, and I promise that you’ll be well rewarded.”

“But what about them?” the young assistant asked, pointing out the window at the miserable ponies walking aimlessly by.

“I’ve done what I’ve can,” Fancy said with a sad shake of his head. “The programs I’ve implemented should ensure that the next generation can dig themselves out of their despair. But as for the current generation…I’m afraid they’ve been doomed by their cutie marks.”

Starlight froze time once more and waited for her antagonists to react.

“Alright,” Twilight finally said, “this is a case where cutie marks have hurt ponies. There’s more that can be done here, in regards to retraining. I know plenty of ponies who are happy working jobs not related to their cutie mark.”

“But if they didn’t have cutie marks, they’d be happier,” Starlight said, finishing Twilight’s thought.

Starlight stopped reading, staring down at the words before her.

“Is something wrong?” asked Maud.

“How long did you spend writing this story?”

“Two months.”

“And that includes thinking about cutie marks?”

“Pretty much.”

Starlight sighed. “You’ve thought of a better case for abolishing cutie marks in two months than I was able to do in twelve years.”

“…If I might ask, what did you spend most of those twelve years doing?”

“Thinking in circles. And screaming to the heavens.”

“Oh.” Maud approached Starlight cautiously and tapped at her side. “There, there.”

Starlight laughed. “I really appreciate that you’re giving my old point of view a chance here.”

“Can I sit back down now?”

“Yes, I’ll get back to the story.”

“Perhaps…they would have been happier without their marks,” Twilight conceded. “Do you have anything else to show me?”

The next scene was of a desert town. Double Diamond was a transplant from a faraway mountain, and he spent all his time pining for his old home. Getting his cutie mark only cemented his separation from his new neighbors.

“I don’t think cutie marks really apply in this case,” noted Spike. “The problem here is homesickness.”

“Yes,” said Starlight with a frown. “It appears that DD didn’t tell me the whole truth about his cutie mark. I’d like to say that he would have felt more at home in a world without cutie marks, but I can’t make the land of Equestria as uniform as I’d like to make its inhabitants. As long as mountain and desert exist, the ponies who live in each will have to adapt, and that will cause conflict if a single member of one group finds himself surrounded by the other and is unwilling to change.”

“So Double Diamond would be better off with his cutie mark?” Spike asked.

Starlight hedged for as long as she could, before finally conceding. “…Probably. But I at least get to keep Party Favor on my side.”

“I suppose we could go through every pony in your village to decide who should stay and who should go,” said Twilight. “But what if we jump to the chase? How did cutie marks ruin your life?”

“I…I wanted to keep this from getting personal,” Starlight admitted. “After all, I’m trying not to lose my temper.” She stared pointedly at Spike.

“I promise to keep my snarking at a minimum,” Spike promised.

They were in a new village, this one dominated by homes with saddle-shaped roofs. Starlight silently led them to the window of one of those houses, where they could see a filly and a colt playing together. The filly was a young Starlight Glimmer, adorable in pigtails. The colt was a yellow unicorn with white boot and mask colorations, and a two-toned orange mane and tail. The filly was prancing around, talking a mile a minute, while the colt sat patiently. He didn’t speak often, but each time he did, it would completely change the filly’s mood and actions.

Maud noted how calm and collected the colt was. With Starlight’s emotional instability in play even then, he was clearly her emotional anchor.

“Sunburst and I did everything together,” the adult Starlight told the others. “In fact, I don’t remember us ever being apart. Until today.”

As they watched, the filly Starlight used her telekinesis to stack a book atop a tall stack of other books that she had been assembling this whole time. The tower toppled, and dozens of books were about to crush the filly, when a burst of magic from the colt’s horn not only stopped the books, but filed them all back into their proper spots in a nearby bookshelf.

“I bet that would be a useful spell to have,” noted Spike.

“I already have that one,” Twilight replied, her eyes still fixed on the scene.

There was an even brighter flash of light as Sunburst’s cutie mark appeared. With a triumphant whinny, he marched outside to show the town his mark, roughly shoving Starlight out of the way. Two adult ponies quickly organized a parade that took the colt away.

Maud wandered after them.

“And just like that,” adult Starlight commented bitterly, “my friend was gone. His family recognized his magical talent and sent him off to Canterlot. I never saw him again.”

“Didn’t you write?” asked Spike.

“Yes, but he never answered!” Starlight replied, her temper rising.

“Didn’t you have any other friends?” Twilight asked.

“No! They never understood me. And without Sunburst to protect me, they turned on me because I didn’t have a mark.” She sped time forward to show filly Starlight at the school playground to Twilight and Spike. A mixed group of fillies and colts were trying to demonstrate the rules of buckball to her, while simultaneously trying to induct her into one or the other of their two teams. Filly Starlight replied with a temper tantrum that blasted the whole group out of the playground, and running away crying.

In the aftermath, Starlight sat there brooding, unaware of her new cutie mark.

“And after that, my foster parents kicked me out, making it clear that they could only afford to send one of their children to magic school. Again, a cutie mark ruined my life.”

“Well, they are in their right to liberate any pony once they get their cutie mark,” Twilight said with reluctance.

A hole opened beside them, and Maud walked through. She looked around at the frozen scene of a tearful filly Starlight walking away from their home. “Starlight, I think you are leaving something out, something you probably don’t even remember.”

“Have you been poking around my past?” Mare Starlight demanded.

“A little. You said they were your foster parents. How did that happen?”

Starlight looked away. “An accident took the lives of my parents when I was very little. Sunburst’s family had just moved into town, and they agreed to adopt me.”

“That did a lot to help them be accepted by the town,” said Maud.

“I suppose it did. I remember the town was rather suspicious of foreigners.”

“I want you to see the night before. The night when they made the decision to kick you out.”

“Alright.”

With a thought, Maud brought them back in time. The father, a yellow-and-orange stallion, was in the basement inspecting a complicated-looking machine. He was soon joined by the mother, an orange-and-brown mare, as she made her way down after locking the door. She was carrying a piece of paper in her magical field.

“She says in this one that she’s thinking of running away,” Mother said.

Adult Starlight raced around to get a good look at the writing. “That’s one of my letters to Sunburst!”

“Well it took long enough,” Father muttered. “Anything about the duplicator?”

“Naw, she still hasn’t figured it out.”

Twilight pointed at the machine in shock. “They’re running a bit counterfeiting operation!”

“Well we can’t rely on that forever. She got her mark today, so why don’t we let her go?”

“Can we?” Mother asked eagerly. “Can we finally stop pretending that she exists for any reason except to buy our way into the trust of this town?”

“And even better, she’ll stop writing our precious son and trying to corrupt him.”

“Yeah, I was getting tired of burning these things,” Mother said, using her magic to incinerate the letter from Starlight to Sunburst. “And as a bonus, after she leaves we can stop lying to him about how much she hates him. And then we can get him married into Canterlot nobility and all of our problems will be solved!”

“For an emotionless pony, you sure like layering on the melodrama.”

“So was I anywhere close to the truth about your family?”

“No.” She then looked down in self-recrimination. “But in general, my out-of-control temper was the reason I never made any other friends. So you got that right.”

With a flash, Starlight quickly brought the group back to the present day and the empty room in Twilight’s castle containing the map table. She turned away, but she couldn’t stop her sobbing from being audible.

“I think we should stop. At least for the time being,” said Twilight.

“It was a lie,” Starlight muttered to herself. “My whole life was based on a lie!”

After their frequent battles, Twilight and Spike were too intimidated to approach the crying mare. So Maud, after considerable hesitation, stepped forward to tap a hoof ineffectually against her side.

“I do that a lot,” noted Maud.

“There, there,” she said in a monotone. She wished she could do more, but she just couldn’t. “I shouldn’t have shown you that.”

“No, Maud, it’s OK,” Starlight said, drawing herself back together. “I needed to see the truth.” She used a spell to clean herself up and turned around to face Twilight. “I think it’s your turn to show me what a friendship improved by cutie marks looks like. Do you know where and when you wish to go?”

“Are you sure that you’re alright?” Twilight asked.

“I’m open,” Starlight said. “For the first time in a long time I’m open to another point of view. So do your best to convince me.”

The quartet found themselves in the ruins of an old castle late at night. “This is—” Twilight began, before Spike raced over to an open window to stare around him with wonder.

“The Castle of the Two Sisters, on the night of Nightmare Moon’s return!” he exclaimed. “I finally get to see it for myself!”

Twilight directed Starlight and Maud to the same window Spike was looking out of. The full moon illuminated a group of six ponies that were approaching another wing of the wrecked castle.

“I had only just met Pinkie Pie, Applejack, Rainbow Dash, Rarity and Fluttershy earlier that day,” Twilight explained, pointing each of them out, “and for most of that day I just considered them to be in the way in my quest to try and stop an ancient curse from being fulfilled. I failed, and Nightmare Moon returned to Equestria a millennium after she had been banished by Princess Celestia.”

“That’s just a folktale,” scoffed Starlight.

“Then how do you explain that!” Spike said, pointing at the bare moon.

“I do remember the moon changing during one of my forays into the Northern Desert.”

“What time is it?” Twilight asked with a smirk.

“What?”

“Cast a spell to find out what time it is right now.”

Starlight did so. “That’s impossible! It’s mid-day!”

“That’s Nightmare Moon,” stated Twilight. She pointed at the other wing, where the other ponies had left Twilight to examine some stones. The very substance of the night seemed to congeal at one end of the hall around the stones. The magical anomaly began to glow, and the younger (and wingless) Twilight leapt fearlessly into it as it disappeared.

At that moment, young Twilight materialized in the very hall that the quartet of witnesses were standing in. And at the other end of the hall the darkness reformed itself into a tall pony in armor, with a large black horn and a black mane that contained the night sky. The alicorn Twilight froze time, catching the figure in mid-laugh.

Starlight ran over to get a better look. “Unbelievable!”

“Now this is why I insisted on using the actual past instead of memories,” noted Maud.

“I seem to remember one night that lasted forever,” Starlight said slowly as she walked back to them. “I thought I was just hallucinating. It was months before I returned to civilization. There was something about Celestia’s long-lost sister being returned to her, but the accompanying story was so fantastic that I was sure it was just a fabrication…”

“We sought the Nightmare out in the Everfree Forest, where she was gathering her power,” Twilight continued. “She sought to destroy us again and again, but each time I found myself saved by a different one of these ponies that I considered to be strangers. Here was where she and I would have our final confrontation, my only chance to activate the only artifacts that could stop her—the Elements of Harmony.”

Time restarted. As they watched, Twilight charged Nightmare Moon, using teleportation to get past her and try to activate the rocks. Her spell failed, and a moment later Nightmare Moon had crushed the stones into fragments.

“You little foal!” Nightmare Moon gloated. “Thinking you could defeat me? Now you will never see your princess, or your sun! The night will last forever!” This was followed by much evil laughter.

It was at this point that Twilight’s new friends caught up with her, in Maud’s mind to meet their inevitable doom beside her. Instead, Twilight launched into a speech informing her foe that the Elements hadn’t been destroyed, because they now existed within each of her friends. As she enumerated the ways in which they now represented Honesty, Kindness, Laughter, Generosity, Loyalty, and Twilight’s own dual-purpose Element of Friendship/Magic, the six ponies were overcome with glowing pillars from above, which coalesced into a rainbow beam that swept up the screaming Nightmare Moon, seeming to obliterate her.

The lights faded, showing the exhausted forms of Twilight and her friends. The sun rose, and from its light stepped Princess Celestia. She thanked Twilight for her service and then greeted the small filly that Nightmare Moon had turned into, calling her “Luna”.

“And that’s how friendship saved Equestria—the first of many times for our small group,” concluded Twilight.

“That…was even more awesome than I imagined!” exclaimed Spike.

“Could…could I see something?” asked Maud.

“Sure, go ahead.”

Maud rewound time and froze it at the instant when the Elements were fully activated and doing whatever they were doing to Nightmare Moon. (Cleansing her of evil? Reverting her to her state prior to her corruption?) The eyes of each of the glowing ponies were closed, and they had a look of complete contentment upon their faces.

“This is the moment when each of you embodied your chosen Element,” Maud said, looking back at the alicorn Twilight. “How did that change you?”

“It’s not something I can put into words,” Twilight said after thinking the question over. “I mean, I may be pretty good at magic, but I never was Equestria’s best friend—Pinkie met that description more than I.”

“I don’t think being a Bearer ever had anything to do with being the best,” Spike added, stepping up to be next to Twilight. “Rarity is obsessed about Generosity, and I think she always has been. Greed is a huge part of her, and every time she lets it control her it tortures her. Rainbow Dash fell apart when she was forced to split her loyalty, and we’ll never forget the day when Pinkie Pie got it into her head that we didn’t take her seriously. I think you six are Bearers because you live and breathe your Elements.”

Twilight nodded. “Yes, I suppose that is right. I’ve spent so much of my life worrying that I wasn’t a good enough friend.” She pointed up at the peaceful expression on her double. “But at that moment, I was sure. I knew what Friendship was.”

Maud stared up at the figures for nearly a minute, her breathing becoming more and more shallow.

“Maud?”

“Could you give me a boost? Please?” Maud asked Twilight, pointing at the levitating figure of Pinkie Pie.

Twilight was surprised by this request, but she wordlessly complied.

Maud reached out and lightly touched Pinkie’s leg. And at that moment she felt everything that Pinkie was feeling, the full realization of being the embodiment of Laughter with a capital “L”.

And she laughed. Maud Pie laughed out loud, more and more until tears of joy ran down her face. Eventually Twilight got worried enough that she brought Maud back down to the ground, where she curled into a little ball of happiness.

Starlight looked slowly between Maud and the frozen tableau of glowing ponies. She walked up to the figure of unicorn Twilight and extended her hoof…

She was stopped by alicorn Twilight. “Starlight, I vowed not to use my magic to try and sway your opinion. It might be considered to be outside of that vow, but technically, that’s me. And if you touch me right now…I’m going to win our little argument.”

“Silly Twilight,” said Starlight as she broke free and made contact with the younger version of her antagonist. “You’ve already won.”

Starlight Glimmer surrendered herself into the custody of the Princess of Friendship, and freely allowed her to revert history so that her village was undermined. Twilight realized that Starlight’s abilities were so great that she could be a great threat to Equestria. Under the circumstances, she could either be banished to Tartarus for all eternity or she could become Twilight’s pupil—any other course would be too dangerous, and after seeing Starlight’s tears on learning how her foster parents had abused her, she couldn’t stand to see her suffering the tortures of the damned. And so Starlight became Twilight’s student.

As for Maud, she was sent back to her family farm, and finally got to experience a Wednesday. She did her best to keep her various promises, getting Rainbow Dash’s Rainboom story into the Post and returning the cloud-walking charm to Flim. Her moment of experiencing true emotion was just that…a moment. And afterwards, she was still an emotional mute. But she didn’t mind quite as much as before.

“That’s…a really touching ending,” noted Starlight. “But you forgot your promise to be a better sister to ‘Pinkamena’.”

Maud looked her straight in the eye. “Starlight, I may be Pinkie’s big sister, but from the moment she got her mark, she’s always been the one taking care of me.”

I haven’t figured out how she and Starlight would meet up in the present day. I can assure you, however, that it was definitely awkward.

“…And so it was,” Starlight concluded.

“And so it was.”

Credits & Acknowledgements

Credits & Acknowledgements

First, I would like to thank my pre-readers: Anonymous, Faña Farouche and Sage Wolf, for keeping me from making a bigger fool of myself than usual.

“Hey, I thought I was your pre-reader,” noted Starlight.

Maud closed the book and reclaimed it. “This last part is boring, and a bit disturbing. You don’t want to waste your time reading it.” She walked it back to its place beside the fake telephone. “I think there’s still an hour or two to fly our kites.”

Starlight got up with a shrug and followed Maud to the cave entrance.

She snuck back into the cave late that night, grabbing the book and teleporting into the mirror pool chamber. “Pfft, it can’t be that bad, can it?” she muttered under her breath as she summoned a light and flipped to where she had left off.

In a strict legal sense, the world of My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic is the property of the Hasbro corporation, and so I cannot write a work set in that milieu without their implicit permission. Artistically, the core characters are the creation of Lauren Faust, and she at least has no qualms about fanfiction.

I myself am the creation of Noelle Benvenuti from the episode of the same name, perhaps with some input from my voice, Ingrid Nilson, while Starlight Glimmer was created by Meghan McCarthy and M. A. Larson. The extensions of both characters for this story, however, are entirely the work of my own imagination. [Do not think about this sentence too deeply, or your head will explode.]

The chapter names are from the Mohs Hardness Scale. Oh I’m sorry, the [equine pun of the human name Mohs] Hardness Scale. I’ll take the best—or since these are puns, worst—suggestion from the comments.

The key episodes referenced for this story are “Friendship Is Magic – Part Two” (written by Lauren Faust), “The Cutie Mark Chronicles” (written by M. A. Larson), “The Super Speedy Cider Squeezy 6000” (written by M. A. Larson), “The Cutie Map – Parts One & Two” (written by Meghan McCarthy with assistance from Scott Sonneborn and M. A. Larson), “Hearthbreakers” (written by Nick Confalone), “The Cutie Re-Mark – Parts One & Two” (written by Josh Haber), “The Gift of the Maud Pie” (written by Josh Haber, Michael P. Fox and Wil Fox) and “Rock Solid Friendship” (written by Nick Confalone).

The initial inspiration for this story came from the fanfics “We Can Do This Forever” by Empirical Deduction and “Twilight Fights Starlight for Eternity” by Diamond Aura.

The description of the phone only has eight numbers and two symbols, as a rather stubborn carry-over from the early episodes when it appeared that ponies had an octal numbering system.

“Palomino manuscript” is the Equestrian equivalent of a “Tijuana Bible”—have fun looking that term up on your Google. Their existence is the most-obviously non-canon element of this story.

The Palomino manuscript about Twilight was inspired by the Canterlot reporter’s question in “Fame and Misfortune” (written by M. A. Larson). I’m sure that Rarity’s manuscript has no resemblance to any existing story whatsoever.

Rainbow Dash as a Daring Do fanfic writer (or would that be Palomino manuscript writer?)—The closest thing to canon would be a line dropped in “Spike at Your Service” (written by Dave Polsky, teleplay [whatever that is] by Merriwether Williams), where she says she’s writing a novel about a pegasus who rises to become captain of the Wonderbolts.

The poem is adapted from the opening of the song “Playing with the Big Boys” (written by Hans Zimmer and Stephen Schwartz), from The Prince of Egypt (property of DreamWorks corporation, written by Philip LaZebnik and Nicholas Meyer, directed by Brenda Chapman, Steve Hickner and Simon Wells). What can I say? McPoodle sucks at poetry. (And yes, that’s another head-exploding sentence.)

Tuesday: This isn’t even subtle. Go through the episodes, and anytime they bother to give you the day of the week when everything blows up, it’s always Tuesday. Which obviously means that it takes three days to convert reality into animation.

Granny Pie is mentioned in “Friendship Is Magic – Part Two” as the one who taught Pinkie Pie how to laugh at the things that scared her.

The nonsense phrase that Cloudy Quartz Pie used as her code-phrase? “Equestria doesn’t need the gold standard for financial stability.” No, just kidding. It was “By the power of the gray skull.” And no, I don’t care to know what particular power the grey skull possesses.

Peach Cobbler: Oh look, an original character. One of only three named OCs in this story. Collect them all.

The Orange Conglomerate: We do not speak of the Orange Conglomerate. I’ve said too much already.

The Orange Conglomerate’s theme song is “Seven Nation Army” by The White Stripes.

Rockville is the nearest town to the Pie Family farm. Gazette sounds like the right name for Rockville’s newspaper.

All of Cloudsdale’s attractions other than the Weather Factory and the Cloudeseum: Stolen wholesale from the fanfic “Scootaloo in Cloudsdale,” by Tamar.

The existence of day-to-day enchanted objects that are not horrible world-dooming artifacts: Not yet established in the show, but common in fanfics; for example “Grounder” by JustAnotherEarthPony.

The only origin we have for Saddle Rager comes from her Enterplay trading card, Series 3, PP5: “The incredible Saddle Rager is the strongest there is! Spruce Spanner was just a mild-mannered scientist before she had a ‘little’ accident. Her high-tech invention to treat animal illness overloaded, and she saved all of her patients at the expense of being exposed to mysterious radiation! Now, whenever Spruce sees the defenseless being mistreated (even just a teensy little firefly), she can’t control her temper. She transforms into the Saddle Rager and makes sure those big meanies pick on somepony their own size!” Everything else is my own addition, some of it informed by Marvel’s The Incredible Hulk comic (such as General “Thunderbolt” Ross as his arch-enemy).

Gerry le Grand (named OC #2) comes from the rule that griffon names all have to start with “G”, and the fact that Starlight was spotted spying on Twilight while eating at a Canterlot fine restaurant, presumably Gustave le Grand’s, in the episode “Amending Fences”.

The ratatouille subplot was stolen from the animated film of the same name, property of Pixar corporation, written and directed by Brad Bird—almost an Equestrian name, that.

“Anyffony”, for those asking, is the griffon equivalent to “anypony”, originated to the best of my knowledge in the 2013 novel The Best of All Possible Worlds by McPoodle.

The name Vogue On Jets (named OC #3) is a play on the name of the antagonist from The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy by Douglas Adams, Vogon Jeltz.

The “consumer protection” bill: In 2005, Congress passed the “Bankruptcy Abuse Prevention and Consumer Protection Act”. There was an argument made as the bill was being considered that it was a ruse devised by credit card companies, and the very opposite of a “consumer protection act”. The argument went that the bill would remove a necessary safety net for poor people who suddenly lost their jobs or had to deal with the costs of chronic illness—they would no longer be allowed to declare bankruptcy, but instead would be hounded by creditors until the day they died.

Jet’s plan to deal with Nightmare Moon was more or less lifted from “Winning, and the pitfalls therein.” (sic) by RandomNPC. And no, despite all evidence given in “The Cutie Remark – Part Two”, I cannot give up the conviction that had Nightmare Moon won and truly instituted eternal night, that it would mean the extinction of all life on Equestria.

Pinkie Pie quotes are taken from “Friendship Is Magic – Part Two”, “Party of One” (written by Meghan McCarthy) (among others), “A Friend in Deed” (written by Amy Keating Rogers), “Sweet and Elite” (written by Meghan McCarthy), “The Last Roundup” (written by Amy Keating Rogers), “Secret of My Excess” (written by M. A. Larson), “A Friend in Deed”, “Luna Eclipsed” (written by M. A. Larson), “The Cutie Mark Chronicles”, “A Friend in Deed”, “A Friend in Deed” and “Castle Mane-ia” (written by Josh Haber).

Pinkie Pie vectors are “Vector #710 – Pinkie Pie #31” by DashieSparkle, “Vector #429 – Pinkie Pie #23” also by DashieSparkle, “Pinkie Party” by AxumGR, “Pinkie Pie” by EmberFiremane, “Pinkie Pie – Half-Hiding” by GeoNine, and finally “Pinkie Pie Vectoring Herself” by VladimirMacHolzraum. Follow the links to see what episodes they were pulled from.

And finally, Hock Fetlock was the subject of a hoofball trading card that Spike wanted in “The Cutie Map – Part One”.

If I got any of the above wrong well I’m sorry—I can only feel your millions of eyes staring at me, nothing more. Pinkie’s the one who can actually look back at all of you, and I refuse to believe most of what she tells me she sees.

I told you that you shouldn’t have read this, Starlight.

“…Alright, you win, Maud.

“The most nightmare-inducing part is that I almost remember who ‘Meghan McCarthy’ and ‘M. A. Larson’ are.”

Calcite

Calcite

Maud knocked on the door to her parents’ bedroom.

“Who is it?” It was the voice of Maud’s father.

“Maud, sir,” she said through the closed door. “I believe I have been Called to a Higher Purpose.”

The door swung upon, and Igneous Rock Pie looked down upon his daughter with a calculating expression. “Are you certain?” he asked. There would be consequences if one of his daughters was trying to make light of a Calling.

“Yes,” she answered, projecting both her certainty and her commitment into her voice.

Her father sighed and looked over his shoulder at his wife, who was standing just behind him. “And your mother was so sure it would be Pinkamena. Come on in, child.”

“I wasn’t sure how accurate to keep my parents’ speech patterns,” Maud interjected. “Ponies sometimes think I’m making fun of them when I quote them too exactly.”

Maud briefly explained her predicament, followed by what she had learned from Pinkamena. “Do you believe me?” she asked when she was finished.

“We have been blessed with an obedient family,” said Cloudy Quartz Pie, “and as a result, you have had no reason to learn all of our tricks for catching disobedient oath-breaking fillies. Suffice it to say that I was up late Monday night, and I felt you disappear from the house at the stroke of midnight. We decided not to say anything, until such time as you did something to further erode our trust or if we thought you might be in danger. So yes, we believe you. However, there is little that you can do tonight. I advise you to learn everything that you can from the safety of the farm. When you are ready, come to me first thing in the morning, and tell me this.” And she whispered a nonsense phrase into Maud’s ear. “And I will believe you regardless of proof. At that time I will give you what you need for your journey. Now go to bed, and be sure not to tell your father of your problem in the future—you can see how much of a nervous wreck he is already.”

Indeed, Igneous Quartz had been pacing circles around the room the entire time, muttering under his breath of all of the evils of the world that would surely destroy his poor innocent daughter the moment she set hoof on the road without his personal protection.

“That’s it? This is an awful short chapter.”

“I couldn’t think of anything else.”