Prologue: A Whole New World
The vast, green plains of grass outside of Ponyville were about as quiet as ever. The soft breeze caused waves among the blades to glide across the terrain and mesmerize even the most unobservant. Celestia's sun shone brightly over the cities of Canterlot and Ponyville, prompting many to bustle about the various dirt roads linking the two. Heading towards Ponyville, familiar sounds would begin to fill one's ears as they trekked down the dirt roads lined with smiling residents; the casual small talk between acquaintances at Sugarcube Corner, the crunching of dirt beneath the hooves of ponies going on their morning jogs, the tweeting of the expansive diversity of bird species that-
"AAAAARRRRRRGGGHHH!!!"
An outburst of rage rang out from a large treehouse library in the center of Ponyville, prompting the locals to turn their heads toward it, collectively sigh, and then return to their previous activities as if this were a daily occurrence. Inside the library was a sight to see. Books that were normally neatly lining the shelves which comprised the walls of the tree were now strewn all over the floor, forming mountains of parchment that littered the floor. One particularly concentrated area of these parchments was on the front side of the room. There sat a desk and a very frazzled-looking purple unicorn. Her mane was the main culprit for this appearance but the forehooves strewn about the entirety of the desktop in front of her certainly did not help.
A pitter-patter could be heard from the staircase that led upstairs to the balcony that overlooked the entirety of the treehouse library. He yawned and stretched his arms, drinking in the usual morning atmosphere. "Thanks for the wakeup call, Twi." he sarcastically stated as he waddled towards the broken unicorn, still dreary from having been so abruptly woken up. After standing idle next to twilight for about ten seconds, and Twilight still showing no signs of movement, Spike decided to speak up. "So, uh," he said as he poked her sweaty side. He instantly drew his hand back in disgust, "Eugh! Twilight, I thought we talked about staying up and working all night."
He glanced at the piles of parchment on her desk, all tinted gray with the smearing of ink. "And getting carpal tunnel..." he finished. Twilight gave no response. Instead, she simply groaned and flapped her wings a few times, swiping Spike in the face. "Alright! Alright! Sheesh, I'll just go make some breakfast." Spike made his way over to the furnace and proceeded to burp some fire into the coal-filled interior. After grabbing a pan and some hay from downstairs, he poured some olive oil in the pan and began stir-frying hay-browns for breakfast. It was kind of interesting, actually. Not the food, but the fact that Spike had been the one to take responsibility recently. Twilight seems to have been down in the dumps with her snout buried in work for the past couple of weeks.
Spike glanced over at Twilight. She was still silent and flopped over her desk. Now that she had been like this for at least 5 minutes, Spike was beginning to get worried. "Um, Twilight?" He put the spatula down and made his way back over to the dilapidated unicorn. This time, he wasn't afraid to get his hands dirty. He shoved Twilight off of her circular wooden stool and her limp body dragged some of the documents from her desk onto the ground with her. However, they weren't on her body for long. Suddenly, she began thrashing about.
"Gah! Spike! Celestia! Where are you?!" Her wings were creating quite the gust as her hooves worried Spike that she would punch through the floor. Spike was quick to withdraw as Twilight regained her composure and frantically glanced around the library before taking a deep breath and returned her gaze to Spike. Her very tired gaze. "Oh, morning, Spike." She sniffed the air. "What's for breakfast?"
Spike was genuinely surprised that Twilight did not want to immediately go back to her work. Relieved, he sighed and remembered her question. "Oh, right. We have some stir-fried hay-browns that should be done any minute now and-" he looked back at Twilight only to find her levitating a quill and another piece of parchment in front of her that was only 3/4 of the way full of text and diagrams. "Twilight!"
Twilight's head snapped back up from her work, looking dazed. "Huh? Wha... Oh, hey, Spike. What's for breakfast?" she muttered half-awake with her mouth attempting to smile with whatever energy she could muster. Spike was about to speak but stopped himself, knowing that it was pointless. He simply rubbed the bridge of his snout with his index finger and thumb as he sighed.
Just then, there was a knock at the door. "Coming!" yelled Spike instinctively. He made his way over to the door, put on a smile, and opened it. "Oh, hey, guys!"
"Hey, Spike! Twilight invited us over this morning to help her out with some of her egghead stuff. She sounded really stressed out about it so we decided to come a bit early to see what was going' on." Rainbow Dash lead.
"Well, come on in, then. Twilight sure has been working herself to the bone lately." Spike said as he stood aside, allowing the remaining members of the Mane 6 to enter. Spike returned to making breakfast as the mares directed their attention towards the studious Twilight.
"Twilight, dahling, how wonderful it is to see you!" Rarity greeted. Twilight simply grunted in response. "Erm," Rarity glanced at the rest of the group who simply shrugged, "what, uh, exactly did you request our help for, dear?" Twilight raised a hoof to point at a stack of papers that sat on the upper left-hand corner of her desk. "Oh... I see." Rarity gave the group one more cautionary glance. "Well, let's get started, shall we?" The Mane 6 let out an audible groan as they made their way over to the stack of paper and took a look at what would occupy the next several hours of their day. Rarity surrounded the stack in a blue aura and hovered a single sheet over to each of the mares so they could see what their job was. Pinkie Pie was the first to chime in with a question.
"Oooowwww! Look at all these words! There have got to be like... a lot of words!" she exclaimed, holding a piece of parchment against her face. The group shared a light chuckle. Twilight, however, upon seeing her work being held against her friend's face, suddenly awoke from her apparent coma.
"No! Pinkie, don't do that! You'll smear the ink!" she screamed out of nowhere, pointing her forehoof at Pinkie. The others were in shock at their friend's sudden outburst.
"Twilight?" Rainbow Dash barely muttered with a distressed look on her face. Actually, all the ponies in the room were rather troubled after seeing how Twilight reacted to a simple mistake. Even Spike, who had been engrossed in his cooking, dropped the spatula with a clatter to the ground. Twilight stopped in her aggressive pose, with her forehoof still pointed towards Pinkie Pie. Her eyes relaxed form their angry glare as she began to look around the room at her shocked friends. She looked at her pink friend now cowering with a concerned expression on her face, as well. Twilight slumped down in her chair and looked at the ground, ashamed. "I... I'm s-sorry. I, uh, I didn't mean to... blow up like that, Pinkie."
The other five ponies gave each other glances as they each nodded and pulled up a chair to sit around Twilight next to her desk. "Sheeeeesh!" Spike quietly exclaimed as he saw Twilight's intervention taking form and returned to making breakfast.
Twilight looked around at her friend group who simply stared back with sad expressions as silence filled the room. Relative silence, that is. The sizzling of hay and olive oil was actually rather prominent.
"Alright, sugarcube. This ain't real easy for any of us to say but... we feel like you have been becoming more distant as of late and, uh, your work has been getting the best of you." Applejack broke the ice. Fluttershy nodded and continued.
"Yeah.. um... we had a reeeeally long talk yesterday and we came to the conclusion that it might be a good idea for you to take a tenancy weency, itty bitty... break?" she squeaked out.
Even though Twilight had kept her head drooped towards the ground throughout the entirety of the lecture, she had been listening intently. She slowly ran a hoof through her roughed up mane to do what she could to straighten it out and took a deep breath. "I'm really sorry, guys. I shouldn't have just left you guys like that. I will admit that I was selfish and-"
"Well, would you let us know what you're doing already?" Rainbow Dash interrupted, prompting Applejack to give her a swift buck to the ribs. "Hey! First of all, ow! Second of all, you all know our course of action when it comes to this stuff." Rainbow turned towards Twilight, "At first, we thought it would be best to stop you from going down this path of deadly egg headedness but then we remembered that you are an unstoppable force when it comes to getting your nerd work done." Twilight rolled her eyes.
"That's why we offered to come over and help you with your stuff." Applejack continued. "We thought that if we couldn't get you away from your work without it getting finished, we would help you finish it as soon as possible."
Rarity stepped in once more, holding various sheets of parchment with her magic. "So, it would be best if you let us do something more than organize your files, dahling. You are evidently in quite a bit of a pickle at the moment." Rarity finished as she trotted in closer to examine Twilight's matted fur.
Twilight swatted Rarity's intrusion away. "I... I can't let you guys in too much. This is a very secure operation that Celestia has given to me and she trusted me to keep it that way."
"At least let us do something to speed up the process of this, Twi. None of us can stand seeing you like this." Applejack reasoned. Twilight was about to open her mouth to retort but she was stopped by Applejack. "Nope! You are letting us help, little missy, and that is the last of it!"
Twilight sighed and glanced around the room and at Spike now portioning the hay browns on to two plates. "Gah!" Twilight rubbed the bridge of her nose with her forehoof, "Fine, follow me." Twilight stood up from her stool and began making her way towards the basement staircase as her friends did the same. Spike took notice.
"Where are you guys headed?" he stated without turning his attention away from the food. Twilight responded, "Just showing them 'the thing,' as you so eloquently put it." she stated in the most casual voice she could muster. Spike simply grinned and sniffled in response.
The group continued their way down the stairwell until they reached the ominous expanse of the Ponyville library basement. "Ooooohhh! Spooky!" Pinkie Pie exclaimed in typical fashion. Twilight's horn became encased in a purple aura and the torches around the stone walls began to flicker to life. The room in its entirety was revealed to contain boxes upon boxes upon boxes of who-knows-what. The air was stale, cold, and, above all, dusty. "Jeeze, Twi. When was the last time you brought so much as a feather on a stick down here?" Rainbow Dash remarked as she struggled to suppress a cough.
Twilight chuckled. "Yeah, sorry about that." The group glanced at each other and grinned, glad to hear Twilight laugh again after so long. They turned their attention back to twilight to find that she was standing in front of a particular tarp-covered crate that seemed to be rather important. Twilight turned back around to face the group. "Well, do you guys want to help o not?" The group was quick to close in on the box and everybody was anxious to see what Twilight had been so secretive about. "Remember, guys. You cannot tell a single soul." Twilight rated firmly as she eyed her friends.
"Nothing to worry about, sugarcube. We have your back." Applejack spoek from the group apparently as everypony else reamined deadly silent and eyed the box in front of them. As the suspension built, sweat droplets began to form around each pony's brow as they continued their laser glare. Now, a purple aura once more formed around Twilight's horn as another surround the edge of the tarp covering the contents of the crate. It began to lift. Inch... by... inch.
"Now, what could this possibly be?" Applejack through to herself.
"Why would something that could fit in this box causing so much trouble?" Fluttershy thought.
"Alright! time to make some progress so this egghead can be less of an egghead!" Rainbow Dash internally exclaimed.
"I wonder if it's going to be a cake." That's Pinkie.
It's...
a...
secret...
"Circle?" Pinkie nonchalantly exclaimed. The tarp that had once covered the crate was now folded up over itself, revealing a golden disk with various engravings on it.
Twilight looked dumbfounded at her friend group. "Do you guys seriously not know what this is?" The other ponies simply looked at each other. "Twi, are you okay? You're making an awful big deal out of a record." Twilight gasped at Applejack's apparently insensitive comment.
"This," Twilight dramatically motioned to the disk, "is a phonograph..." The entire group waited for her dramatic pause to end, "from outer space!"
Silence. "What?" the Mane 5 stated in unison with blank expressions.
