World of Colgates

Chapters

The Best Part of Waking Up Is Not Doing It
Spars, Stars, And A Maze of Stolen Furniture
A Spoonful of Tachyons
Tying Up Loose Ends
Round And Round And Round We Go, When We Stop, The World Ends

The Best Part of Waking Up Is Not Doing It

Mornings can go crawl in a hole and die.

I've never made it a secret that I don't like mornings. I think breakfast is overrated, sunrises are pretentious sunsets, and ponies who like to tout the self-appointed title of 'morning-pony' like it's some kind of accomplishment ought to be stoned with their own tasteless bagels. If history had gone just a bit different, I think I'd have probably found life under the iron rule of Nightmare Moon in an everlasting night to be just peachy.

Though none of this changes the fact that the mornings keep coming one after another regardless of my feelings on the matter.

Such as today's, which is no worse than normal but not particularly better either.

"Die, sun," I mutter as a blade of golden light sneaks around the edge of my triple-thick blackout curtains squarely onto my face. It's probably unlikely that Celestia herself maneuvered that beam around an impossible corner and directly into my eye, but I'm not ruling it out either.

Unfortunately now awake, I have to actually do something about it. With a sigh, I roll out of bed, back popping and joints cracking as I escape the irritating daylight.

I check the clock. Almost eleven. A small blow against the forces of morning, but a blow nonetheless. Just because the morning is inevitable doesn't mean I have to cave to it. With a little careful planning I can usually manage to avoid that whole detestable half of the day entirely.

Breakfast —or, "Brunch" as some insufferable ponies insist on calling it— is a solitary date between me, a daffodil sandwich, and some of last night's reheated leftover halibut. Not my ideal meal, but it wasn’t my turn to make the last grocery run. As usual, the role of my housemate is played by a note on the counter, today accompanied by a cheap basket of slightly-less-cheap-looking muffins.

Colgate, it reads, Left early to get started with a new client! Won't be back till late! Derpy brought over some extra muffins she made! Maybe stop by shops and buy her a thank you card or something! I'll go halves on it! Need room in fridge for new brand of protein shake I'm sponsoring, so try to make a dent in the leftovers! Signed, BB YEAH!

If most ponies sharing a house are like ships passing in the night, then Bulk and I are like an old fishing boat and a spring-breaking fratstallion on a jet ski. I have a regular, if unusual schedule, and he's whipping and zinging all over the place.

Between being a personal trainer and his irregular sponsorship deals, his schedule is never consistent. Sometimes we actually get to eat together and other times I don't see him for days. When he has to do an on-site photoshoot (usually somewhere beachy), it's like I'm living alone at half rent.

All in all, decent housemate. Four stars, would recommend.

After breakfast, of course, comes work. The trot to the office is nice and the crisp breeze really sweeps the last bit of sleep out of my system. The old (by Ponyville standards) building is locked and empty when I arrive, which is a good thing since I'm the only employee and anything else would mean I'd been robbed. Though I have my doubts as to the black-market value of second-hoof dentistry equipment.

The best thing about being the only dentist in a small country town is that I can dictate my hours however I like and everypony else has no choice but to twist their schedules to accommodate me (unless they want to spend half their day and four times as many bits taking the train up to Canterlot). That's why I can open at lunch and skip mornings altogether.

The worst thing about being the only dentist in a small country town is, with no other local practitioners, I'm obligated to take the inevitable emergency walk-ins and persistent hypochondriacs of a whole town. I can probably draw Scootaloo and her friends’ mouths from memory at this point.

Today is on the lighter side of busy. One filling, four cleanings, and Pinkie Pie's bi-weekly cavity check. The mare's surprisingly paranoid when it comes to her dental hygiene. I can't fault her, given her diet, and at least somebody in town genuinely cares about it (and it doesn't hurt that she always pays full price even though I've never found so much as a divot in her pearly whites).

There’s also a single walk-in. Some filly who ran smack into a fence while she and her rich parents were vacationing. Do they not have fences in the upper crust of Canterlot? Apparently her father works for the University and, once again, I had to suffer the indignity of being confused for my twin sister. I thought I’d left that all behind in Canterlot, but apparently fate thinks it’s funny to keep having ponies mistake me for my much more successful sister, Minuette, with her triple doctorate and her cutting-edge magical research and her rich coltfriend.

Putting aside that irritating interaction, the most interesting thing that happens all day is when I nearly give Berry Punch a surprise tracheotomy thanks to a loud and unexpected Whump! from the roof, followed by muffled cursing. That isn't all that unusual though. There's an old mattress up there from before I started renting the place. It’s a real popular option for teen pegasi (and more often than not, Rainbow Dash) looking for somewhere to crash land.

I wrap up by five and send Pinkie home with a complimentary toothbrush and mini-tube of toothpaste. I really hope she doesn't just eat it outright. You can never truly rule anything out with her.

After locking up, I remember Bulk's comment about getting a thank you card for Derpy. Barnyard Bargains isn't that far out of my way, and though it lacks anything of real quality, cheap mass-production is just what I need for a random card. Thus, I set off on a slightly different route home from normal.

"Hey! You!"

It's never easy to tell who a pony is taking to when the only descriptor is 'you', but I turn around anyway. Even if it's not me they mean, there still might be some interesting drama going down.

Turns out, they do mean me. Or so I assume from the pegasus barreling towards me like her mane's on fire, eyes locking on to mine the moment they connect.

I've got about three seconds before a painful collision or embarrassing romcom-style pratfall kiss occurs and in that time my brain manages to decipher a few key bits of information.

First, it wastes a second concocting that stupid romcom scenario.

Second, it dredges up a name: Raindrops. Local weather team. Has a younger brother with an overbite her insurance didn't cover. Cracked a molar once on a bad dive. Once met casually at a Pinkie party. Did not like the molar thing being brought up in conversation.

The third and final thing I manage to perceive is a yellow hoof clocked back and coming straight at my face at oh-buck-miles-per-hour.

"Whoa! Wha-" is all I manage before my world explodes into a daytime fireworks display soon subsumed by a haze of darkness.

I wake up in a hospital. That, or Clean Sweep has taken to cleaning the cobblestones with bleach and somepony has left a beeping JoyBoy console next to my head.

I blink the rest of the way to wakefulness, though one eye refuses to open much more than a squint. My hospital theory is confirmed by sterile white walls and bargain bin abstract paintings.

I shift a little, feeling something tug against my fur. Fabric? Did they give me a hospital gown?

Or... possibly something else I realize as I look down. I'm wearing a jacket. Not anything I'd expect to find in a hospital, more like something from Rarity's Shadow Spade-inspired line. Long and dirt colored and dotted with pockets; a duster I think? Or something with a similar cut. Fashion has never been my strongest suit.

"Ah, look who's up. Welcome back to the land of the living."

My fashionable confusion interrupted, I turn towards the source of the voice. There's a nurse at my bedside, done up in full pink scrubs complete with face mask and mane and tail covers. The only pony part of her still visible is her eyes which betray a hint of amusement as she checks a clipboard. "Have a nice nap, did you?"

I groan as I sit up fully. "Did anypony get the number of the cart that hit me? I think I'd like to sue. Ugh, what day is it even?"

The nurse chuckles goodnaturedly. "Still the thirtieth, don't worry."

"Heh, sure, thirtieth. Nice try, but I can see through your little scheme. I know it's the third."

"Nope. Thirtieth." She points with her pen. I follow it till I hit the wall. Or rather, the wall calendar.

The wall calendar with nearly the whole month crossed off.

My blood runs cold in my veins. "I've been asleep for four weeks?"

"Hm?" She looks up from her clipboard, barely noticing my growing distress. "No, you were just brought in today. Roseluck found you unconscious on Mincini Street."

That… doesn’t make sense. Mincini street. That's where I'd been walking when Raindrops went all ape on me. No way I could have been lying there in plain sight for days and days before somepony noticed. So where’d the month go? I don't feel particularly hungry, let alone like I've missed over fifty meals. So why can't I remember?

"Hey," says the nurse, pulling me back to the present. "Is that a Time Spoon?"

I glance down at where she's pointing just in time to see something fall out of my breast pocket and onto my lap.

It's... a spoon.

Definitely a spoon. One of those big serving ones. Fancy too, with lots of filigree. I squint a little harder as something about it tickles the back of my brain. No, not filigree. An incredibly detailed aetheric circuit. One leagues more complex than anything I ever learned in school. So, a magic spoon then. Unless someone just decided to practice their engraving and stick a fat ruby on the end purely for the aesthetic.

But why the heck do I have it?

Maybe the nurse knows something. She knew a name for it after all. "A time spoon?"

"No, a Time Spoon."

"...time spoon."

"Time. Spoon."

"A... Time Spoon."

"Right. Time Spoon."

"...Riiight."

She shrugs as if that whole conversation somehow made sense. "I call 'em like I see 'em. It's a spoon and it's filled with so much time juice it's practically dripping."

I check the spoon again as well as my sheets. Both are dry.

"Metaphorically.” She shrugs again. “I took an elective in Temporal Magicanics at Uni, so I know what I'm talking about."

"Ahuh." Despite her assurance, I can't help but be a little skeptical. It's not every day you wake up missing four weeks of time and a nurse says you're welding cutting-edge chronomagical cutlery.

Then again, this is Ponyville, so nothing’s off the table.

"You're probably gonna want to take that to Starlight Glimmer," the nurse says as she sets down her clipboard and starts to leave. "No pony knows time magic like her. Oh, you're clear, by the way. Feel free to sign yourself out at the front desk."

"You were right to come to me," Starlight says as she holds the Time Spoon in her hoof and me in her magical grip.

I nod as best I can while scanning spells run up and down my body. "So you know a lot about... time magic?" I'm still cautiously skeptical about the whole idea, despite the circumstantial evidence. But this is Twilight Sparkle's student. The only more trustworthy authority on hocus pocus would be Princess Magic Pants herself.

Starlight snorts, amused. "Do I know time magic? Filly, I wrote half the spells I'm using on you. I'm the number two time mage in Equestria." Her voice drops to a low grumble that I'm not sure whether I'm supposed to hear. "At least until the board gets their heads out of their plots and decides that Starswirl shouldn't get top billing just because he founded the field. The stallion's not even accredited!"

With a totally unnecessary flourish of her horn she cuts off the spell. "Well, I can say for sure there's definitely time magic afoot. You're covered in traces of it."

A small weight settles into my stomach. "I didn't want to believe it, but if the number two-"

"You don't have to keep bringing that up."

"-expert says it's so, then I guess it's true. I still can't believe I lost almost a month to that spoon."

"Right. The… time spoon. About that," Starlight holds up the Time Spoon, the slight sheen of some protective spell coating it like a film. "It certainly looks like my work—my spellwork, that is—but I can honestly say I've never constructed anything like this in my life. Let alone out of a spoon of all things. I'd have used a knife."

She offers it back to me and I take it carefully, like it’s a live snake. Can never be too careful around weird magic artifacts. "Why a knife?"

"It makes for better one-liners. Killing time, shaving seconds, cutting to the chase. They practically write themselves." She jots a few notes down. “Something like half of all magical artifacts are the way they are in some part due to their creator trying to achieve either a clever turn of phrase or alliteration.”

Huh. The things you learn when you least expect it. Kinda makes me lose a little respect for all those uppity professors and researchers in Canterlot.

For some reason I also feel the need to defend the Spoon. “You can do that with spoons as well. Stirring up time, uh…” Or maybe she has a point that there’s not many good spoon sayings. “Mix up the minutes?” Now I’m just grasping at straws. “At least it’s a lot safer to gesture with.”

I grip the spoon with both hooves and plunge it down, as though into a big cauldron of soup, and give it a jerky anti-clockwise turn that slightly throws me off balance. I almost miss the slight flare of light that comes off the ruby, but it’s a lot harder to miss the sudden wisps of sparkly crimson cloudstuff surrounding me.

"Wait, no, don't, you might-" The rest of Starlight's words get lost in a flash of red light and the sharp noise of air rushing to fill a sudden void.

Spars, Stars, And A Maze of Stolen Furniture

The air is different.

Funny how that’s the first thing that I notice. Not that I’m suddenly outside on the opposite side of Ponyville or that the sun is a lot more eastward than the last time I saw it, but rather the sudden realization that Starlight’s lab had this weird odor that I only notice from its sudden absence.

Weird.

Still, back to the elephant in my pajamas. Outside now. Sun, moved. I don’t need a degree in temporal mechanics to put two and two together. Seriously though, it’s that easy? Just plunge and spin to unwind the cogs of time? Go fig.

That still leaves the problem of when I am. A problem that, luckily, has a very easy solution.

"Hey Lily!"

The nearby earth pony glances up from tending her garden. "Hm? Ah! Well good morning Colgate! Don’t usually see you up this early."

There goes my reputation. "Say, do you know the date?"

"The third."

"Great, thanks!"

"No problemo! You have a nice day."

And I’m back where I started. At least some things work out nice and cleanly. Tucking the Time Spoon into my pocket—best to keep a close eye on it till I can figure out what to do with it— I turn down a side road and head for home.

But despite the suddenly normal day I’ve been thrust back into, I can’t seem to stop my thoughts from drifting back to the strange object that weighs on my mind just as much as it does my pocket. Where did it come from? Who made it? And why had they given it to me?

What exactly had happened between taking a blow to the head and waking up in the hospital a month later?

Also the jacket, though that feels less important.

“I thought I made myself clear, no tomatoes on my sandwich!”

“S-Sorry, Miss!”

My attention is drawn, much like everyone else’s nearby, to an argument at a nearby café. Well, less an argument and more just a pegasus chewing out her server.

A rather familiar pegasus.

Raindrops.

I don’t consider myself a violent pony (and while several neighboring species seem to think ponies as a whole are incapable of anger, even among the generally pacifist there’s lies a spectrum of repressed hot tempers). However, the surging memory of that random act of violence makes me see red. Perhaps it was a month ago, but to me the memory is so fresh I can still feel the imprint of her horseshoe on my face.

I move without thinking, crossing the distance before I even realize I’ve moved. A blink later and I’m tapping her on the shoulder.

"Yeah?" Raindrops grumbles (on a pony scale, that’s practically a slur).

I riposte with a right hook. It’s clumsy and untrained (again, not a violent pony), but it makes solid contact with her temple all the same. She crumples like a sack of potatoes.

Somepony cries out and I glance up. I guess I’d been hoping to have public opinion on my side (saving the downtrodden service worker and all that) but it looks like more bystanders are, understandably, a little distraught at my sudden jump to violence. But their panicking wasn't what caught my attention and made by breath catch in my throat. No, that honor goes to the cerulean mare with the blue-and-white mane a few blocks down haggling with Carrot Top over the price of lunch.

Exactly as I remembered doing barely a few hours ago.

"Oh plaque, I'm early." I landed on the right day but the wrong hour. I’d applied my revenge before the original crime had even been committed. Which would make me the aggressor. Even worse, that means the hospital bill won't be covered by my insurance! I need to fix things before anypony blabs, but it’s not like I can un-punch someone.

Or can I?

"Wait a minute, I have a Time Spoon. I can just go back and stop myself from punching her in the first place!"

A fine plan, and one I’m quite proud of. Taking the Spoon out, I mimic my earlier actions as best as I can remember them. Spoon down, thrust, a few rapid counterclockwise turns. That feels right.

The wisps of red mist gather around me for a second and, just like before, the world around me vanishes before the bystanders can so much as ponder if a dentist would offer house calls while under house arrest.

I find myself in a dark and empty space, void of hope and light where time loses all meaning. Only this time it isn't Professor Incisor's damp, grey lecture hall, but rather a void in the more usual sense.

I float in nothingness, free from gravity. I could be moving infinitely fast or not at all; without a reference point there’s no way to tell. Black is still a color—it holds nuance and depth—but this is an abstraction of blackness. A true void of substance.

"Well." My voice falls flat and dead with perfect non-echo. "I think I may have overshot."

"[CONGRATULATIONS/PRAISE/HONOR]," booms a voice that is at once both infinitely loud yet sourceless, "To the first [PERSON/CREATURE/BEING] in the local sector to reach the required [SAPIENCE/MAGICAL/DEVELOPMENTAL] stage!"

Most ponies would have flinched or jumped at a sudden voice like a landslide of thunder, but I like to think I’m made of sterner stuff. Rather, my resilience is a forced evolution after an overheard comment about Discord's snaggletooth fang made me the focus of his pranking attention for the better part of a month. Jumpscares simply no longer cut the mustard.

The voice is so loud it feels like it should be painful, yet it isn’t. It’s not speaking Equestrian, yet I understand it, mostly. A few words drive a short spike of pain through my skull; shorts bursts of compressed meaning and concept packed far more densely than any normal type of speaking allows.

Being a practical sort, I turn around to hopefully face the speaker.

As it turns out, not all is void.

There’s also the sun. Big and yellow and roiling with cosmic fire and so close that it nearly fills my whole field of vision.

"[ADDITIONAL/SUPPLEMENTARY/AUXILIARY]," it continues in the same mechanically flat tone, "[CONGRATULATIONS/PRAISE/HONOR] on being the [SECOND] [SPECIES/RACE/LIFEFORM] to achieve this prior to the development of a local planet."

"Yep," I say quietly, "Definitely overshot."

"Yo. Whaddup?” intercedes a new voice, “You wanna make a contract?"

I squint against the brightness, which conveniently is not burning out my eyeballs. Between me and the Sun there’s now a third entity. It’s kind of like a cat, but somehow off, with soulful eyes and an intelligent smile that seems too big for its face. It vaguely resembles my elderly neighbor's pet, Mr. Whiskers. I dislike it immediately.

"A what?"

"A contract," it repeats. "You know, an agreement, an accord, a binding transfer of power between two beings?"

"I know what a contract is." A little undercurrent of anger helps me power through the sheer oddity of the situation.

"Cool beans. It'd be a real mess if the first good applicant turned out to be an idiot."

What a prick. Then again, it is a cat so what else did I expect? I just wish I had something to throw at it like I would Mr. Whiskers. But, alas, the void is free from helpful clutter.

"So, contract?" it offers again.

I eye it skeptically. I learned a hard lesson about contracts last time Flim and Flam were in town. "Contract for what?"

"Possession of the Sun," it replies all too casually. "Big ball of plasma over there? You get complete and total magical control over it—including tying your lifespan to it’s, which is totes freebie subjective immortality—in exchange for a few small concessions. Nothing major, just trivial stuff really. So..." Its smile seems to widen even further, "You wanna control the Sun?"

I considered it. I definitely did. The words entered my mind, bounced against a few concepts and ideas, and tried to squeeze themselves into some sort of justification framework. By any definition, I most assuredly did think about it.

It just didn't take me very long to reach a decision.

"Buck no!"

The cat-thing doesn’t reel from my outburst, but it does cock its head to the side. "You don't desire power?"

"Course I do, who doesn't? But I'd have to be some kind of idiot not to see the drawbacks you're trying to sneak on me. If I controlled the sun, that means I'd have to get up every morning before sunrise to lift it. Tartar, it'd be literally impossible for me to sleep in! No thanks buster brown, you can take your contract and shove it. I'm out!"

With a swift gesture that’s quickly becoming familiar, I whip out my Time Spoon and give it a rapid clockwise spin. And with a silent burst of blue fog, I disappear.

The first thing I notice about Ponyville is how quiet it is. Never has the bustling little town felt so empty before. Every building is abandoned and run-down, monuments of peeling paint and broken glass to a populace gone missing. It’s the most depressing thing I’ve seen since the last time Cherry Berry’s flirt of a coltfriend publicly begged her to take him back. He was crying and everything.

"Celestia's Cavity-filled Molars!" I feel the swear is entirely deserved given the circumstances. I give the Time Spoon a death glare. "Stupid thing overshot me again! Some fancy piece of magitech you are. When I get home you're gonna be used for soup and that's it!"

But before I spin it backwards, I hesitate. There’s no need to be hasty. I might as well take a bit to explore this warped version of home. I’ve got time, after all. Maybe I’ll find some useful information that’ll help me out back in the present.

“So, I guess this is an apocalypse then?” I don’t really expect a response but, hey, if there is one, talking to somepony will make things go a lot faster. “Am I gonna find zomponies? Slavers? Irradiated survivors? I bet their teeth are terrible. Nopony ever takes care of their teeth during an apocalypse.”

Despite my jabs into the proverbial dark, the town remains totally silent. There’s a few animals about, mostly eating overgrown gardens, but they all ignore me. Which is fine. I never cared much for animals either.

I make it all the way to the town square before I find any signs of intelligent life. Though the intelligent factor of it is still up for debate.

Either the whole town was cursed and transformed living furniture like in that old foal’s tale, or else some survivor raided every nearby house for its furnishings and converted the plaza into the ultimate expression of open floor plan living.

“Hello?” I venture, “Anypony alive in there?”

“Aha! At last! Ding ding ding! I’ve got mail!”

The sound of hoofbeats meander out from somewhere in the maze-like corridors followed by what I’m pretty sure is the sound of a wardrobe falling over.

“I’m okay!” The voice replies. “Trixie just knocked over an armoire! Bad Trixie! I told you to be careful in my lab!”

Armoire, wardrobe. Close enough.

The voice—which is familiar in a way I can’t quite place—keeps chattering on as I work my way towards it.

“It’s about time you arrived. We’ve been waiting for these samples for absolutely ages. Why, it’s almost three o’clock! We’re going to have to hurry if we’re going to make lunch! Maybe we’ll make it a working lunch. We can work while we lunch and lunch while we work. How ingenious! Trixie! Write that one down!”

At the center of the maze lies the scavenged remains of every appliance and magical device in Ponyville. Refrigerators, ovens, blenders, everything down to the wind-up alarm clocks has been gathered here and stripped down for parts, a lot of which look like they’ve been shuffled and recombined into an army of mechanical Friesianstein’s monsters. Some glow, some hum, some buzz. All of them look very sciencey in a very shoestring-budget sort of way.

Standing in the midst of it all is a mare who looks awfully different to the last time I saw her.

Starlight Glimmer looks terrible, no two ways about it. Her fur is grimey, her mane streaked with more gray than I remember, and there’s something really unsettling about her jittery eyeballs that never rest on any one thing for more than a second.

She’s also wearing a jacket surprisingly similar to mine.

“Derpy! You’ve finally arrived!” She cheers though she’s looking at me. “You got me the samples from Canterlot?”

“Uh, no, not quite.” Well that’s certainly unexpected. “It’s me. Colgate. We spoke… actually, I’m not sure how long ago it was for you.”

Her smile remains strained though her eye twitches. “Colgate? No, Colgate was evacuated along with the rest. Isn’t that right Trixie?”

I turn to where she’s looking, expecting to find another pony. There’s not. Instead there’s just a jumbo bottle rocket with a bottle of bourbon and a crudely drawn face taped to it.

Starlight laughs and blushes. “Oh Trixie you scamp! Not in front of company.” She leans in to me, completely disregarding all common laws of personal space. “She is such a rascal when she’s squiffy. Don't tell her, but I'm also seeing Sunburst on the side." She indicates her head towards a large potted croton wearing a starry cape. "But he can be a little prickly, so it would never work out between us long term. Oh! Derpy! When did you get here?”

Clearly, Starlight is no longer playing with a full deck. And if the weathering on ‘Trixie’ is any sign, she’s been this way for a while. Looks like the only way to find out anything is to play along with her delusions. “Yeah, it’s me… Derpy.” There’s no way she believes this. “The pegasus.” I have a horn for Celestia’s sake!

“And my most loyal assistant!” Starlight agrees readily. “Not that I have many other assistants. It’s so hard to find good help these days. Everypony just wants to laze about and eat other ponys’ sourdough starters!” She shoots ‘Trixie’ a glare.

Deluded or not, it looks like she’s going to be my only source of answers. “Starlight, what happened here? Where is everypony?”

She turns and looks at me, and for a moment I swear a see a glimmer of lucidity behind her eyes. “Where? Evacuated, of course. Years ago to keep them safe from the sickness. Off through every mirror Twilight could cough up.”

The mirror part I chalk up to her mental instability, but the other half feels ominously important. “Sickness?”

“Obviously. That ghastly pseudo-magical affliction that swept across the world a decade ago. Wiped out nearly everything in its path.” She walks over to one of her many machines and opens it, fiddling with the wires and crystals within. “Not many of us left now, just the odd hundred or so it left untouched. The source of our immunity still eludes me.”

This is getting a lot heavier than I expected. Monsters, tyrants, ancient magical forces, those are just a Tuesday in Ponyville. But a rampaging sickness? That’s a whole other type of scary. “Did they… die?”

Her head jerks out of the machine, her horn banging loudly on the rim, not that she seems to notice. “What? No!”

I breathe a sigh of relief. That’s at a small comfort at least.

“They all transformed into harmless plants and mindless woodland creatures.”

Oh. That’s… less of a relief. So all those rabbits and birds about town earlier… how many of them had once been ponies? Ponies I knew?

“It wasn’t supposed to happen, you know!” Starlight calls from her nest of wires she’s gotten wrapped around herself. “The sickness. Shouldn’t have been. It’s artificial. Somepony went and made it. But they weren’t supposed to! This whole timeline is wrong. I started detecting the time ripples right when the first cases started appearing.”

I freeze. Time? Had… I somehow caused this? By punching Raindrops early? By turning down a contract with the Sun? How could either of those butterfly into a magical plague of all things?!

“That’s why I built this!” Suddenly, Starlight’s muzzle is inches from my own, once again wearing that manic grin. She also has something held aloft in her magic. A silver spoon, half-covered with runic engravings and missing a familiar fat ruby. “I call it a Time Spoon. It’s based off notes I took on a similar device years ago. Not quite ready yet, but I have a plan for when it is.”

I can feel a light dawning. She may not have a finished Time Spoon, but I do. This could be my chance to fix things. “And what is your plan?”

“Quite forgetful today, aren’t you Derpy? As you know, I played fast and loose with time magic in my youth, so I can’t manage the trip myself. So when it’s ready, you take the Spoon, go back to the day the sickness was released, figure out who’s responsible for releasing it, and then give them this.” She pulls out a small bottle of red liquid from a pocket. “I call this plague-in-a-jar, restricted, copyrighted, trademarked. It’s the sickness; painstakingly harvested, cultivated, and weakened to a fraction of its original potency. The original, well, you know as well as I what it can do, but this version won’t result in anything worse than a bad cold.”

“Why can’t she-” No, wait, I’m Derpy at the moment. “-Why can't I just stop them from releasing the virus in the first place?”

Starlight shakes her head so vigorously that a few more strands of mane escape their already haphazard arrangement. “Too late for that! It’s in the timestream! If you remove the virus, then it creates a paradox by removing the need to remove it. History demands there be a virus now. The most we can do is nudge it back on course with a weakened strain.” She sighs and sits down hard, easing down from her manic level of energy. “Of course, the plan won’t work until I can get this Spoon finished.”

Well, it’s not a great plan, but it’s something. At least it has a chance of actually succeeding since I’m here instead of whatever mailbox she’s decided is Derpy. I guess it’s up to me to fix this and save the world. Won’t that be fun to tell Pinkie about at her next appointment? Only one problem though.

“Hypothetically, when the Time Spoon is finished, how would you make it travel to one particular day?”

Starlight brightens. “Oh! Good point Derpy. I suppose I could inscribe a psychic interface. Let the user’s thoughts guide it. Easy enough with Trixie’s help.” She shoots a winning smile to her explosive stand-in.

I resist the urge to smack someone. Either her for not telling me this back before I left, or myself for not figuring it out on my own. Psychic link, of course. Had to be something painfully obvious like that. How else am I supposed to control something with no buttons or knobs?

Meanwhile Starlight’s run off, back to one of her machines that’s now on fire. A fire she’s eagerly fanning. Apparently it’s supposed to do that. And she’s left the weakened virus just sitting on the table. How careless of her.

In my pocket it goes.

“Bye Starlight,” I say softly. “See you in the future. Or, rather, the past. Alternate future-past? You know what? Forget it.”

Focusing my mind on the idea of ‘the day the sickness was released’, I plunge my spoon and give it a solid counterclockwise turn. The wispy red mist barely takes a second to form this time before I’m gone.

A Spoonful of Tachyons

Ponyville has ponies again. That’s a promising sign.

It’s early afternoon, judging by the sun, and most definitely a few years before I woke up today. That much is immediately obvious thanks to the Sunnyside Hotel. Notable for being the sole hotel in Ponyville and one of the only buildings around the plaza with a second story. At least, it will. Right now it’s still under construction.

I get moving. There’s no time to waste when you’re a time travelling agent trying to stop the apocalypse.

It’s… kind of eerie, being in the past of a place I know. It’s all the little differences that really get to you. Trees are smaller, paint is newer, and the ponies— it’s in the ponies that I see the most difference. This is the era when Big Mac was in his experimental phase and still trying to pull off that ridiculous goatee. When Cranky the donkey walked the streets in a malcontented fugue, unmarried and alone. As I walk I see Bon Bon and Lyra pass each other with barely a glance. Practically strangers.

So weird.

Unfortunately, finding somepony about to release a plague upon the houses of Ponyville is a lot harder than it looks. It’s not a big city, but it’s not small by any means either. What am I even supposed to look for? A stallion with wild hair and a scorched lab coat spraying ponies down with liquid virus in the streets? Some gross-looking monster from the Everfree breathing on everyone? A mysterious figure just ahead of me darting into Ponyville’s one and only dark alley?

...Yeah, that could do it. I speed up as much as I can without looking suspicious.

You wouldn’t think that a bright and cheery place like Ponyville would have dark and suspicious alleyways. That kind of thing you’d think would be found only in Manehattan or maybe the older sections of Canterlot. Not so. Ponyville has them. Every town does. They’re just a lot harder to spot.

Ponyville’s signature creepy alley is down Bronco Boulevard, born of the gap between Green’s General Store (which is still open here in the past since Barnyard Bargains hasn’t pushed them out of business yet) and the old bank-turned-museum. There’s a big tree that grows between the two, half blocking the entrance and casting the alley itself into perpetual shade. Just to get inside you have to squeeze between the tree and the wall. It’s not somewhere ponies enter by chance.

I slow down as I reach it, stepping softly so I don’t make any noise. Odds are it’s just some local teen sneaking off to get into trouble. But this Ponyville. And this is the only spot rated anything less than “charming”. I bet bits to bullions that that’s my plague doctor.

Squeezing into the alley is not as easy as it should be, thanks to a hazardously placed knot and my hips. With a small grunt, I squeeze past.

The inside is dark, downright gloomy even, and far more seditious-looking than any place in Ponyville has a right to be. The path ahead is straightforward, but blocked in fragments by old boxes and hanging cloths. I guess with only the one spot available, the teens sectioned it off for some degree of privacy from each other. One of the sheets is waving slightly, like somepony just ran through it.

I creep forward silently, ears perked for any sounds, but catching nothing but the wind rustling the branches.

The curtain pushes aside easily enough, and I let it fall slack behind me as I weave around a crate. I should have brought a weapon. At the very least a rock or a stick or something. Do I even have a plan if this is the right pony? Maybe, in the spur of the moment, I’ll remember a spell from that self-defense class. There. That’s a plan. Admittedly it’s a terrible plan, but it’s still better than nothing.

Suddenly, a loud crunching crackling noise comes from behind me. I whirl around, spinning on my backhoof just like the instructor said. However this small success of muscle memory does nothing to stop the hoof flying at my face.

I see stars and for the second time in recent memory, I black out.

I wake up groggy, but still in the same alley I passed out in. That’s progress. Maybe next time I can avoid getting knocked out at all. Baby steps.

Like any good mugging victim, I check my pockets. Time Spoon? Check, thank goodness. I don't even want to think about the ramifications of losing that. What else? Weakened virus strain?

...Gone.

Well.

That’s not good.

I push my way through the rest of the hanging sheets and boxes until I reach the other side of the alley. Maybe, if I’m lucky, I’ve only been out for a minute and my assailant is still in sight. In seconds I’m out of the gloom and back into harsh sunlight that tries to shield the villain by forcing me to squint. This side doesn’t have a tree in front of it, but it opens at an awkward angle to the next street.

Nothing. Nopony around in either direction. The backstreet’s completely empty

I let out a sigh of frustration. That’s what I get for going in without a plan. My flank handed to me on a silver platter and probably the start of early onset brain damage. I don’t even want to think about what this repeated head trauma is doing to the integrity of my molars. And during my unexpected naptime, whoever knocked me out has gotten away scot free and I’m no closer to stopping the apocalypse, yet one lead shorter. Wonderful.

Actually, that’s not quite true is it?

They got away, but now I know for sure that they, or at least somepony suspicious with a wicked right hook, was in this alley and exactly when they were there. And I have a Time Spoon. I can go back and get ahead of them. Or at the very least, see who it was that hit me.

I just have to make a quick pit stop to resupply.

With a quick spin and a puff of blue, I disappear.

The desolate future of Ponyville is much as I’ve left it, furniture maze and all. I guess the Time Spoon can move me around in space as well as time, since I definitely walked a good couple of blocks away from the center of town.

“Hey Starlight!” I call out, “Are you here?”

“Minuette?” asks a voice that’s definitely not Starlight.

It takes me a moment to realize that the voice is coming from above me. Luckily, the pegasus is quick to land. “Derpy?!”

“Hiya!” she says, looking at me with one golden eye and behind me with the other.

“You’re real?”

A confused expression crosses her face. She takes a moment to pat down her sides, flex her wings, and nibble on a lock of mane. “I think so?”

I shake my head to clear out the confusion. “Sorry. I met Starlight here earlier… probably… and she thought I was you.”

Derpy nods. “She thinks everypony is me. Not that we get many visitors.”

“That and the couple of inanimate stand-ins she talked to made me think you weren’t real either.”

She sighs. “Yeah, those are… a compromise. She spends an awful lot of time alone working while I’m taking care of Dinky or flying cross-country getting food or rare materials for her gizmos. It… hasn’t been good for her.”

Derpy is quiet for a moment before her face quickly brightens again like the sun coming out from behind a bank of clouds. “But that’s all okay now! She’s really really close to putting the last touches on her plan!” She skips over to one of the many many nearby dressers and rummages through a drawer. “She's out now looking for the final parts she needs to finish this!” She holds up a familiar silver tool. “This is-”

“A Time Spoon,” I interrupt. “I know.”

Her smile dims a little and I immediately regret ruining her reveal. She’s just so cheery and pure, even in the apocalypse, it’s hard to dislike her. “Oh, she told you already?”

“Yes, a couple times.” I take my own Time Spoon out and hold it up to the light. “You could say I’m familiar with the concept.”

Her eyes widen at the sight of it then start to dart between the two of them. “Another one? But I… when did… how?”

I shrug. “Time travel. She told you she based hers on one she saw before? That was mine. I was actually just trying to fix all this—” I gesture to the world at large “—but the mission didn’t quite go as planned.”

Derpy quirks her head a little, like a dog, though her eyes remain fixed on my fully operational Spoon. Not that I blame her. If she works closely enough with Starlight to know the plan, then she knows full well what this Spoon represents. “Her plan? You mean the one for me to go back and swap out the sickness for a weaker one?”

For her to go back? Then again, Starlight did say that I would do it and she thought I was Derpy at the time. Did I nearly steal her moment of world-saving glory? Should I maybe let her… No. It makes more sense for me to do it. Once I fix things, this timeline will cease to exist. So if she does it, then stops having existed, that would be a paradox. I think? I’m really starting to regret not taking that Chronomancy elective.

“Did you release the weaker virus?” She presses as I realize I’ve been silent too long. “Then why do I still remember the sickness? What went wrong?”

“Well, actually,” I start to explain, “I never got that far. I narrowed down the right place and time, but somepony knocked me out and stole the bottle. So I came back here to get another sample and try again.”

“I see.” The pegasus strokes her chin for a moment. It would probably look a lot more intellectual if she had a beard. As it stands, she looks like there’s a hair on her tongue that she can’t quite grab. “I think Starlight kept a few more bottles of sickness samples around. Let me check!”

She darts off among the local portion of the maze, easily moving from one salvaged bit of furniture or homemade tech to the next with an ease only born of experience. To be honest, I get a little bored after watching her for a minute or two. There’s only so long you can watch somepony rummage through their belongings before you start to-

“Found it!”

Of course. The moment I look away she finds what she’s looking for. Figures.

Derpy holds up a glass bottle, slightly larger than the one I had before. The contents look just about the same, maybe a little darker, but that’s probably just from the wider glass. She wraps it in a protective red cloth and passes it to me with a delicate, almost worshipful solemnity. Understandable. It’s the sickness that wiped out everypony she knew and which is about to maybe bring them all back. I carefully secure it in a pocket.

“Thank you,” she said quietly. “For doing this. It means so much. So much more than you know.”

I nod. Knowing what happened is one thing. I can’t imagine having lived through it.

“I’ll see you on the other side then.” I take my Spoon and plunge it. I give it a slow spin, trying to focus on the idea of ‘when I was before, but slightly earlier’. Like every time before, the red mist surges from nowhere. Just before it clouds my vision, I just make out Derpy waving goodbye. She’s such a cinnamon roll, that mare.

I arrive before I left, which is sooner than I arrived before.

Hotel under construction? Check.

Big Mac’s goatee? Check.

Depressed single Cranky? Check.

Lyra and Bon Bon strangers? I don’t actually see them anywhere, but that just means I successfully landed earlier than did the last time.

I waste no time this time. Now that I know exactly where I need to go, I make a beeline there. There’s not many good places for a stakeout on the street opposing the alley’s entrance, so I make do by leaning against the wall of the post office. Ponies come and go as I wait and watch. Some greet me, a few don’t, but none make a move on the alley.

Time ticks on. Minutes pass without any suspicious activity. At this rate I’m going to fall asleep and miss him.

Wait. Oh, duh, I’m so stupid! I know he’s going to be in there, so I can just go ahead in and ambush him!

New plan decided, I enter the alley. This time I remember that pesky knot and make sure to slip under it before it can trap my hips again. The alley is just as dark as before, but somewhat less ominous now that I know for sure there’s no one else in here. I make my way through quickly and easily, brushing past curtains and rounding the crates. No sneaking up on me this time!

Suddenly, I hear a noise. It’s quiet, but it was definitely a grunt of some kind and coming from behind me. Instantly I freeze up. What was I thinking? Get ahead of him? Get the jump on him? I still don’t have a plan! This is the monster that loosed a plague across a whole country! Who knows what he’s capable of. Why in the name of Celestia's rotting dentures did I think this was a good idea?!

A faint brightness catches my attention! Yes! That’s right! The other side of the alley! I make a run for it as an actual plan starts to form. Now that he’s in there, trapped, I can come around from behind again! Then, when he sneaks behind my younger self, I’ll be behind him and he’ll be boxed in on both sides. I’ll knock him out before he can knock me out!

Earth pounding beneath my hooves, I circle around the museum-bank, nearly skidding into a few ponies as I round the blind corner. In less than a minute I’m back by the tree. I squeeze in again, quietly hopping past the knot. The oppressive feeling is back, but this time I’m buoyed by an underlying confidence. This time it’s two against one.

I can see him now, in the shadows ahead. A dingy grey coat, just like the hoof I glimpsed before it hit me. He’s small for a stallion, probably has some kind of inferiority complex. I bet that’s what drove him to evil. And he clearly doesn’t take care of his mane, it’s a rat’s nest, as expected of some evil mad scientist type.

I stalk towards him when something crunches underhoof. I look down. It’s an old Hayburger’s wrapper, new enough to still be crisp and brittle. I look up to see him spinning around. Now! Before the moment’s lost! My hoof surges out before I even realize and socks him hard in the temple. He’s out like a light, collapsing bonelessly to the floor like a puppet with its strings cut.

I let out a breath I didn’t realize I was holding. That’s it. It’s over. He’s out. The villain is defeated and the day is saved.

Though I would like to get a proper look at this would-be global saboteur.

With a little little luck and a lot of magic I manage to wrestle his prone body out towards the more open end of the alley, just far enough so there’s some proper light before I toss him back to the floor.

Actually, in the better light I can tell he’s not just slight, he’s a she. And, without the gloom, her gray coat is actually a pale blue. And her jacket is rather a lot like mine.

Who am I kidding; it’s me.

“Oh. I really gotta stop it with punching ponies as a first response.”

It was me all along. I saw myself go into the alley looking for myself, followed myself in, heard myself, ran away, snuck up on myself, heard me again, rounded on me, and then watched me punch myself in the face.

I’ve heard of self-destructive tendencies but that’s gotta be some kind of record.

“Hello? Is anypony there?” A voice calls around the alley’s blind corner.

I freeze. Being caught standing over an unconscious pony is going to raise a lot of questions I don’t have time to answer. Being caught over my own unconscious body will be even worse.

“Hellllooooo?” They continue, “I got a message saying I was supposed to meet somepony here with a package to deliver? A Miss…” There’s a sound like paper rustling. “Uh… Miss Viral Agent?”

No way. Can I possibly be that lucky? Despite accidentally stalking and taking myself out, did I still manage to stumble on the vector by which the evil pony got their virus? Via courier? Let it never be said that I was one to look a gift cat in the mouth.

Patting down my mane to a nicer shape (did it really look that bad from the back?) I try to put on a normal face that won’t betray the fact I’m intercepting a dangerous epidemic. A few steps takes me around the corner to see-

“Derpy?”

“Oh hi Colgate! Have you seen a pony called Miss Viral Agent? I’m supposed to meet her here to pick up a package.”

The codename is blatantly obvious, but at least I seem to have beat the actual courier to the punch. My hoof moves instinctively to the pocket where the jar is. “Do you know what the package is?” I ask, testing the waters.

“Nope!” she replies, cheery as you like. “I just got a message saying to pick it up here and that there’d be more instructions after I dropped it off.”

Oh no. Not Derpy. Say it isn’t so! Poor mare. To think she has no idea that she’s been caught up in a criminal conspiracy that’ll one day leave her one of it’s innocent victims. How ironically tragic. Still, at least now I know what I need to do and she can be a part of saving herself.

“You just missed Miss Agent, actually,” I lie on the spot, “But she gave me the package and told me to hand it off to you. And also to tell you to be very sure that it gets to its destination. You got it?”

She nods eagerly and salutes, her hoof knocking her little brown mailmare’s cap askew. “Rightio! I always make sure my mail gets there on time.”

“Good.” The timeline has to be preserved. The bad pony has to release the weakened strain. “Here you go.” I carefully give her the bottle from my pocket, still wrapped in its protective fabric.

“No box?” she asks.

“No box.”

“Usually that should cost extra.”

“...Miss Agent said it’d be covered by the recipient.”

“Ah! Gotcha! Well, see you around Colgate! I gotta make my delivery.”

I wave as she flies away. Faustspeed to her.

Great! That’s that taken care of. Now I just need to deal with… me. Right. There’s still that.

With a fair bit more care this time, now that I know any more bonks to the head will be paid forward, I manage to move my younger self back to where I knocked her out. Or at least close enough to where I remember being knocked out. I try to make her decently comfortable; self care is very important. As I’m rearranging my limbs, I notice the bulge in her pocket. Opening the clasp, a small glass bottle falls out. That’s right, she still has the first weakened strain because there was no actual assailant to mug her.

Except me. Which I now have to do in order to maintain causality. I pocket her bottle in my own.

Timeline restored, I award myself a congratulatory pat on the back. Well done me, you saved Equestria, not that anypony will ever know about it. The question remains though, now what? Do I just go home? Tuck the Time Spoon in a drawer and forget this all happened?

I could do that, but some little pessimistic voice in the back of my head is urging me to take one more trip to the future. Just in case. Ponies are unpredictable, after all. Maybe one setback won’t be enough to make them set aside their dreams of mass equicide.

Drawing out my Time Spoon (for hopefully the second-to-last time) I give it a few good clockwise spins. As blue mist swirls around me, I can see my younger self just starting to wake up. Good luck to her, she’s about to have a tough time.

Tying Up Loose Ends

Home. Finally.

And this time I know I’m right.

I asked someone. It’s the third. Of the right month. Of the right year. That line of questioning got me a few odd glances, but it’s well worth it for the confirmation.

I actually almost manage to get home before I realize why the day doesn’t quite feel right.

“Hey! You!”

My head snaps around at the sound. There’s a particular cadence to it that makes it unmistakable. An awful lot of fury packed into two words.

It’s Raindrops and she’s on the warpath.

And look, there I am, standing in the middle of the street, watching her come at me like a chicken on a freight line.

I wince in shared pain as my younger self goes down in a single blow. It’s a shame, but it has to play out. Stopping myself from getting punched would launch a plague, and isn’t that a fun thought? This time at least I’m able to see what happens next. As expected, a few ponies step up and confront Raindrops which quickly devolves into a shouting contest. After a minute the sheriff shows up and takes her away. All well and good. Now for the interesting part.

At some point in the next couple of minutes, somepony is going to come and whisk me into the future, doing who knows what before eventually stranding me a month from now. Whoever they are, I can’t wait to hear their explanation for dragging me into this whole mess.

And so I wait.

And wait.

About three minutes into my waiting Roseluck shows up.

“Oh Sweet Daffodils!” she cries, “She’s out cold. Somepony help me get her to the hospital!”

I frown. That’s… not right. I follow her at a distance, sidelining down side streets when I can to make sure no one notices how much I resemble the mare being carried. This doesn’t make sense. She’s not supposed to bring me to the hospital until later. What happened? What changed?

When we get to the hospital, I muss up my mane and sign in on the visitor log as Minuette. For once it seems having a twin sister who never visits is a useful thing. No one even questions my affected Canterlot accent.

The room is just like I remember waking up in. Except only the first two days of the calendar are crossed off and my bedridden body is bereft of both jacket and Time Spoon.

What went wrong? No matter how I approach the problem I can’t figure it out. No amount of time travel can make this make sense.

Suddenly, I hear a groan from the bed. She’s waking up? Now? How?! I check the calendar; still the third. I poke my head out the door to check for the nurse who woke me up on her way. Not a sign of her. There is, however, an abandoned cart with a spare set of scrubs. Pink scrubs.

No… she couldn’t have. Unless... But it must be. I can’t believe she lied to me like that! Actually, I guess I can. She was forced to. Just like I am now.

My younger self starts to stir again and I jump into action.

I strip my jacket off and dress her in it as quickly as I can without rousing her prematurely. While I don the scrubs and hair covers, I grab a marker with my magic and start crossing off days. I finish tucking away the last bits of mane and crossing off the twenty-ninth day just as younger me starts to groan and move.

"Ah, look who's up. Welcome back to the land of the living." I force cheerfulness into my voice even as I strain to remember how this conversation went. "Have a nice nap, did you?"

Finally. Home. For real this time.

No more Spoons. No more time travel. No more saving the world. From now on, I’m leaving that to the professionals.

I’m just about to sink into my comfy chair for a much deserved rest when the doorbell rings. I swear, if it’s another version of me out there I’m going to strongly re-evaluate my newly minted no-punching-as-a-first-response policy.

I open the door quickly, already hoof already half-cocked and primed for if I see even a hint of blue or white fur.

As it is, I see both. Except they’re on two different and significantly taller ponies.

“Colgate, I presume?” asks Princess Celestia, sovereign leader of Equestria.

I’m so stunned I can’t even move. I know I’m supposed to bow or kneel or something but I just can’t. Somehow, even after everything I’ve been through today, this is what finally breaks me. Not time travel. Not a plague. Not repeated blows to the head. But a surprise visit from not one, but both senior princesses.

Luna gives me a poke and my joints finally release. “You should probably go see a doctor. Head trauma is no laughing matter.”

How does she know about that? Is it obvious? Oh cavities, have I had a black eye this whole time and no one ever told me?

Princess Celestia coughs and that snaps me from my trance. “Princesses! Yes! Hi, uh, Greetings! Won't you come in?”

Celestia shakes her head. “I’m afraid we don’t have time. We only had a moment to stop by.”

“We wanted to thank you,” Luna continues, “Your selfless efforts across the timescape and through unfamiliar circumstances have saved more lives than you realize and spared countless others from an unimaginable fate of nonsapience. For that, you deserve to be honored and rewarded. Though I hope you understand why we can't publicly. Undue panic, you see.”

I blink and my throat goes dry. “You- you know about all that? All the time travel?”

Both princesses smirk in eerie synchronicity, but it’s Princess Celestia who speaks. “You’ll find there’s very little that goes on in Equestria that I’m not aware of. One of the benefits of being a princess. Makes it a lot easier to keep my little ponies safe.”

I nod dumbly, still somewhat in shock as my brain runs on autopilot to keep the conversation going and latches on to the closest relevant topic. “You said something about a reward?”

“Indeed,” Luna says. “And a most fitting one as well.”

“This has been in our possession for many years,” Celestia says as she reaches into her peytral, “and it’s high time it was returned to you.”

“Returned? I-” before my malformed thought can complete, Princess Celestia extracts an all-too familiar object.

The silver is more than a little tarnished, but the etchings are as crisp as the day they were carved. The crack in the ruby is gone, healed like it was never there.

“My Time Spoon!”

“Correct,” says Celestia, “Though possession is nine tenth of the law so…” she passes it from her aura to mine. It feels exactly the same, like a day hasn’t passed for it.

“Where did you get this?” I ask breathlessly.

Celestia giggles, a very un-princess-like noise. “I suppose you could say I’ve been holding on to it for a very long time.”

It’s at this point that she begins to change. In an instant, her fur darkens. White fades to charcoal grey and the rainbow of her mane bleeds together into solid golden yellow. The iconic sun on her flank, the one every schoolfilly knows, pops and splits apart into seven smaller circles. Magenta eyes slide together till they meet in the middle and part ways, one heading up, the other down.

It’s still the shape of Celestia, long legged and mane waving in ethereal wind, but her colors, her stance, her eyes are one-hundred percent-

“Derpy?!”

“Oh hi Colgate!” she laughs, the regal tones dropping from her voice and restoring it to the one I’m more familiar with telling me I have mail.

“What- how?”

She giggles again and I can hear the familiar notes hidden under courtly training. “I made a friend in space. Signed a contract. Took the long way round.” A quick flash of magic and her normal colors are restored. “Better to not leave the disguise off too long though. Wouldn’t want to confuse ponies.”

Impossible. Simply impossible. Then again my notion of what qualifies as such has been challenged repeatedly these past few hours. Though it still leaves a question unanswered.

“But I thought you were an only child?”

Now it’s Luna’s turn to chuckle. “When you’re the only two immortals around, you tend to end up rather close. We were destined to end up either sisters or a couple, and there’s no way I could stand getting up early enough to maintain that kind of relationship.”

She shifts her weight on her hooves, and something about the position of her wings draws my eyes back. Past her barrel and towards her flank, where her famously unusual cutie mark covers most of her hindquarters. Only right now it’s a little more unusual than normal. Most cutie marks don’t peel up at the edges like a flyer held with cheap glue. And they especially don’t have a second cutie mark beneath them that looks like an intimately familiar hourglass.

“No.” I gasp.

“Spoilers,” she teases as she presses the black sticker of a cutie mark back into place. “Just saying, you’re going to want to hang on to that Time Spoon. You’re not nearly done with it.”

Whatever cheeky well-prepared line she was about to follow up with is dashed to the wind as her face makes a most unexpected rendezvous with my right hoof.

I said if another version of me showed up at the door, she was getting it in the jaw.

And I’m a mare who stands by her principles.

Round And Round And Round We Go, When We Stop, The World Ends

I was right to trust my gut.

Because I’m back in the future… and it looks the exact same as the last time I saw it.

Same abandoned houses, same wild grazing animals, same maze of stolen furniture and cobbled together technology.

It didn’t work. Starlight’s big plan to fix everything did not work.

And I know just who to complain to about it.

“Starlight!” I yell as I cut straight to the heart of the maze. She looks up from a worktable as I arrive. Derpy’s there too this time, hovering behind her with an extra tool in each hoof. The unicorn pushes aside a welding mask and gives me a curious look.

“Derpy?” She asks. “How are you over there? I thought you were right behind me.” She looks behind her to Derpy. “You are right behind me. Well this is new.”

I’m in no mood for games, not now. Not after the failure. “I’m not Derpy, I’m Colgate and your plan failed.”

“My plan?”

“Yes, your plan,” I echo, “To go back in time with the Time Spoon and replace the sickness with a weak version. It didn’t. Work.”

The mare looks truly confused now while Derpy’s just gone silent and still. “But… I haven’t tried my plan yet. I’ve only just now finished my Time Spoon.” She holds up what she’s been working on. It’s a Time Spoon alright. A perfect replica of mine.

“I know. I used mine.” I stomp over to them and slam my Spoon onto the table, making a matched mirrored set. “I went back and I made sure they got the weak strain and yet this bleak future is still here. Why is it still here Starlight?”

“I… I don’t understand.” Starlight sits down hard, her tools falling with her as her aura fails. “My plan… it was foolproof. Nudge the timeline back. Make a new flu, not a transformative sickness. It couldn’t have failed.”

“Well it did,” I practically spit. I know I’m being irrational but I’m too angry to care. The world is still apocalypsed and it’s still somehow maybe my fault and my one shot at fixing it just fell out from beneath me like a house of cards. “I stepped in for the original courier and made sure that the sample Derpy gave me was delivered instead of whatever was supposed to.”

“Sample Derpy gave you?” Starlight still looks confused but there’s something different about it. “What sample did Derpy give you?”

“After I… lost the first bottle of weakened virus, I came back here to the future and Derpy gave me another one. Why are you shaking your head? You weren’t there.”

This only makes her shake harder and her pupils are starting to do that twitchy thing again. “No, that’s impossible. I only made one sample of the weakened strain. Derpy, what did you give her?”

“Exactly what I needed. Yoink!” Before either of us can react, the pegasus darts in and grabs my Time Spoon off the table before flying up and out of our reach.

“What are you doing?” Starlight cries at the same time I yell, “Give that back it’s mine!”

“Hope you don’t mind I’m taking the tried and tested model,” she comments as though she’s merely borrowing a pair of hedge clippers. “Don’t want to have to work out any bugs in Starlight’s version.”

“Why are you doing this?” Starlight pleads. I stick with the classic, “Give it back!”

Derpy only sneers. It looks so wrong on her face, and that makes it all the more frightening. “I’ll answer your questions in order. What did I give her? The sickness. Pure and strong and unaltered. What am I doing? Right now I’m heading back in time to write a few notes for my younger self. Just some pick-up and drop-off locations. I was rather trusting back then, delivering anything anypony asked of me. Why? Well that’s the big one isn’t it?” She sighs, and for a moment there's a hint of sadness in her eyes. “I don’t really have to tell you, but I’ll let you know it was all to keep Dinky safe. Good luck stopping me; I know you’ll fail cause it’s already happened and I’ve already succeeded.”

With a quick flick of her wrist and a swirl of my Spoon, red mist obscures her form. When it dissipates a moment later, she’s gone.

Starlight and I are left stunned on the ground below.

“Derpy’s behind all this?” It’s so ridiculous I have to say it out loud just to make sure I’m not imagining things.

“I- but she was my assistant.” Starlight’s voice is so quiet, so broken, I barely hear her. “She helped me with everything. Isolating the sickness, cultivating it. She even encouraged me to pursue my crazy plan with the… Time… Spoon.” She goes completely silent. “I played right into her hooves, didn’t I? Everything she did, it was all leading up to this. So she could go back and cause this whole catastrophe to happen.”

Go back. Her words echo in my mind.

No, it’s not over left. She may have taken my Spoon, but it’s not the only one available anymore.

“Give me the Spoon,” I state. At least I have the courtesy to not steal it like she did.

“What?”

“Give me. The Time Spoon.” I repeat, my hoof outstretched and ready. “I’ll go back and stop her. Or something.”

Starlight shakes her head. “You can’t. She’s right. We’ve already failed. The sickness happened, which means she’s succeeded.”

“Time can be rewritten. I know cause I remember a time without a sickness. Not even your weakened version.”

She hesitates. I can see the ideas bouncing through her head like billiard balls after a break. Then she begins to smile. It’s small and strained, but it’s there. A tiny ray of hope piercing through the clouds of her depression. “Yes. Yes, if that’s true then we might just have a chance.” She presses the newly crafted Spoon into my hooves. “I’ll give you the crash course. First thing you need to know, there’s a psychic interface-”

“I know,” I interrupt, before giving her a small smile. “You based this one on mine, remember?”

“That’s right, I did. That’ll save us precious time. It hasn’t been long, the Time Spoon should be able to track her chronometric wake before it dissipates. Go then! Go and fix what I couldn’t!”

I nod and cup my hoof around the new Spoon. It’s still warm from whatever magical etching process she did to it, and the spellwork seems to practically jerk and buck against my magical field like a rambunctious colt eager to be let out of school so he can go play. I’m all too happy to oblige it, giving it a counter clockwise spin and a direction.

Bring me to Derpy!

Ponyville again, once more filled with ponies, but there’s only one I’m interested in.

“Derpy!” Who cares if anyone hears me cause a scene now? Time can handle a few tiny ripples so long as I fix the big one.

“What? Who’s there?” I track the sound to a spot above me. There she is! Flying by, calm as you like, hooves full with a box three times her size. Is this another part of her evil scheme?

“Drop that now and get over here!” I doubt she’ll actually listen to anything I have to say but—

WHUUMP!

She drops the box like it growled at her, letting it fall at least five stories till it crash lands on somepony’s roof with an impact that sends dust flying. A moment after it lands she gingerly sets down beside me. “Hi. Who are-”

“I don’t have time for your games! What’s your plan with the sickness and how do I stop it?”

“Sickness?” she asks, trying to play innocent with her doe eyes and curious head tilt.

But I’m not falling for it.

“Yes!” I press, getting angry at her stalling. “The sickness that you created and stole and spread! The one you said was all to protect Dinky!”

“Dinky!?” she gasps, “I don’t understand? What’s wrong with Dinky? Is my baby okay? The nursery said she’d be fine for a couple hours so I could take my shift!”

Her words make me pause. Baby? No, that’s not right. Dinky’s been one of my patients for more than seven years. The brief lull in my anger lets me see clearly for a moment. Derpy is young. Way younger than I just saw. She’s barely a legal adult. Realization hits me like a sledgehammer.

I’m early. Again.

“Plaque! Wait, okay, um, forget all this!” I wave my hooves in front of her face like I’m some kind of hypnotist. “This is… a dream! You’re asleep! So just forget you ever met me and anything I just said about you releasing a plague.”

She stares at me, conflicted for a moment, before smiling. “Okay strange pony. Boy am I sure glad this is a dream. My boss would chew my ear off if I actually dropped that mattress. Bye now, I’m gonna go find a tree that grows muffins.”

As easy as that, she wanders away, humming a little tune. It’s astounding how such a sweet mare could have gone so sour. What happens to her in the parts of future I haven’t seen?

Anyway, I need to get back on track. I take out the Spoon and stare it down. I’m betting a psychic connection means a lot more than just giving it a destination. “Now you listen here, you cut-rate cutlery. No more of this monkey’s paw misinterpretations. You take me to when I want to go, or so help me I’m going to melt you down and pour you on Dinky’s baby horseshoes. Capiche?”

I have no idea if my threats accomplished anything. I don’t speak Spoon.

I push it down and give it a spin, this time explicitly focusing on 'Take me to the Derpy that has the other Time Spoon'. The blue mist closes over me so quickly I barely see it.

The world resolves around me in a field of blue. Less a field really and more an expanse.

It’s the sky.

A second later gravity reasserts itself and I start falling.

After only a split second of free-falling I hit something that yelps and starts to fall with me. As we tumble I see a flash of grey feathers. Derpy. Stupid Spoon brought me to her alright. Smack dab on top of her in the middle of the air!

“Get off of me!” she yells, “You’ll make us both crash!”

And how exactly am I supposed to do that? Does she want me to grow a pair of wings? Sorry, I left my Alicornification Fork at home today.

The wind rushing past us sings a song of imminent splatter. Just before it can reach the crescendo, our fall is stopped by a surprisingly soft yet soggy surface.

To think I’d ever be thankful for the mattress on my roof.

Derpy’s on her hooves in an instant, full on scowling now. “You won’t stop me. I need to do this. I have to. It’s the only way to keep her safe.”

After seeing her younger self, I just can’t quite bring myself to that same level of rage again. I have to try and talk her down. “I know you just want to protect her and somehow you think this is going to accomplish that, but there has to be a better way. Anything would be a better way than a pandemic.”

She shakes her head. “No. I’ve spent a lot of years thinking about it. It’s this or nothing. I’m going to make sure things happen as they should so you don’t get a chance to interfere.”

With that ominous declaration Derpy whips out her Spoon and, in a move I never thought of, spins her whole body on a hoof, before vanishing in a puff of red. Mine’s out with only a second’s delay.

“Follow that mare!”

The Time Spoon complies.

The scene before me is familiar. From atop the the museum I look down to see a younger version of myself and a younger Derpy talking outside the alley. Though I can’t see it, I know an even younger version of me is knocked out inside. The side of my head throbs in sympathy for her. I keep a steady eye on them as the other me hands off the bottle. If future Derpy is going to make her move, it’s going to be soon. Young Derpy waves and flies off. After a bit, younger me ducks back into the alley to deal with the consequences of her overeager fisticuffs.

I hop from one roof to the next, following Derpy the younger. Thankfully she flies close to the ground and the buildings are tightly spaced. She rounds a corner onto a side street and I’m forced to hop off and continue on ground level. Just as I round the corner past her I stop. Mostly because she’s stopped. Because now there are two of her.

“Stop!” I yell, “Whatever she says, don’t do it!” The older one’s a lost cause, but with the younger I may still have a chance. She hasn’t yet made the decision to release the sickness. If I can turn her, it might retroactively turn the other. Or at least make it two against one.

Younger Derpy turns to me, confusion coloring her features more than anything else. “Huh? Colgate? Why not?”

“Don’t listen to her!” Older Derpy snaps, reclaiming her younger self’s attention. “Listen to me. To yourself. I need you to open that jar and pour out what’s inside.”

“But the instructions in my message say I’m supposed to deliver it to-”

“Forget the message! I wrote the message! And I’m saying you need to release it here and now!”

“Don’t do it Derpy!” I trot closer, but Older Derpy cuts between us, keeping me from getting to close. “Do you even know what you’d be doing? Did she tell you what’s in there?

“...No,” Derpy admits, “But, she’s me. Why would I tell myself to do a bad thing?”

“It's a sickness!" I yell, "I’m from the future and I’m trying to stop it! If you open that jar, you’ll release a magical plague that’ll wipe all ponies off the face of the planet!”

She gasps and turns to her other self in shock. “Is- is that true?”

“Not all the ponies,” Older Derpy admits far too easily, “Just most of them.” Her eyes widen as she sees that she’s losing her younger self. “Wait! Listen! You have to! It’s the only way to keep Dinky safe!”

That pulls her up short. “Dinky? How is making ponies sick supposed to help her?”

“Because the future is a dangerous place.” Derpy the Elder sets down and tries to approach her self, but stops when the latter shies away. “Listen,” her tone turns soft, not unlike a mother soothing a child. “I’ve seen what’s coming. Monsters from the past. Gods of Chaos. A gluten-free health craze. It’s not pretty. It’s dangerous. Too dangerous. There’s things coming that we can’t protect her against. So the only solution is to get rid of everything that can hurt her before it does.”

“That’s your big plan?” I ask, stunned into disbelief by its sheer ridiculousness. “You released the worst terror to ever grace Equestrian soil just to take out a few threats?”

“The monsters,” she corrects me. “The villains. The beasts.”

“The Princesses.” I assume she got them, otherwise Twilight or one of the others would have already fixed things.

“More than one went evil at some point.”

“There’s more than one princess?” asks young Derpy, who’s, oddly enough, kind of fallen to the wayside in this argument.

“And what about everypony else?" I push, "Were they all also dangerous enough to get rid of?”

“They might have been.” Her stance remains firm and unwavering despite my cross-examination. “Lots of unicorns get tempted by evil artifacts, so they had to go. Then I realized I didn’t want to get accused of tribalism so the pegasi and the earth ponies had to go as well.”

She’s on a roll now. Just like I thought, even with a nontraditional villain who’s not trying to just take over something, she still can’t help but monologue. Must come with the package. And the younger Derpy is looking more and more horrified with each passing word. I just need to keep her going.

“So that’s it? That’s your real plan? Unleash a virus and get rid of absolutely every thinking creature outside of you and your daughter.”

“Not everypony,” she counters, “I narrowed it down to three groups to keep around. First, the bakers.”

“For muffins, I presume?”

“See, now you’re getting it!” She smiles and I shudder. “Next, the postal workers. Wouldn’t wanna accidentally hit myself.”

“Naturally.”

“And lastly the dentists.” Well that explains how I’m still alive and uninfected then. “So somepony’ll be able to remove Dinky’s braces when it's time.”

I start to nod along before her last comment properly registers. “Wait, what?”

“Can you imagine?” she asks, one again adopting that motherly tone that so contrasts with her actions. “Little Dinky living out her life in a perfectly safe world, but being forced to wear braces all her life cause there’s no pony around to remove them? It’d be an absolute nightmare! I wouldn’t wish that on anypony!”

So says the mare who felt justified in turning princesses, guards, and countless other ponies’ children into rabbits and birds and trees. Still, my sense of professionalism and my pride as a dentist compels me to correct her. “Derpy, that’s an orthodontist.”

“What? What do bird scientists have anything to do with it?”

I sigh as suddenly all the high fantasticism of saving the world fades into the mundanity of explaining differences of technical minutia to a fussy patient. “Not ornithologist, orthodontist. Those are the ponies who specialize in braces.”

She hesitates. For the first time since we started this mad argument she actually seems taken aback. “But… dentists do teeth. So they do braces too.”

“Wrong. Admittedly there’s some overlap, but largely it’s a very specialized field. Asking a random dentist to deal with braces is like asking a chemist to make you a fancy cake. They may understand some of the underlying principles, but there’s a lot of critical practical knowledge missing.

At last, it looks like something I’ve said is finally getting to her. She lowers to the ground, wings frozen mid-flap as she tries to fit this new knowledge into her rigid worldview. I can spot the exact moment she gives up as her brow furrows once more in anger and determination.

“No! No, it’ll work out! It has to! I’ve come too far and done too much to stop now.” She spins and grabs her younger self by her shoulders. “You have to do it now! Just open the jar and Dinky will be safe forever!”

She’s still scared, that much hasn’t changed, but there’s something else present in the younger pegasus’s expression. A firmness to her gaze that wasn’t there before. “Yeah… you see, I don’t think I’m going to do that.”

Her elder self reels back as though physically struck. “But- what? Why? Think about Dinky!”

Younger Derpy nods, the fear beginning to bleed away as her conviction solidifies. “I am. And I do want to try and protect her. But this plan… it’s too much. It’s a bad thing to do. You're not a good pony. If I heard that somepony went and did all the things you said you did, then I don’t think that’s the kind of pony I’d want Dinky to be around.

The older Derpy takes another step back, shock plastered over her face as she practically goes slack in disbelief. “But… you can’t. I can’t. I released it. I remember being here and doing it. Why doesn’t… why isn’t…”

I seize my opportunity and strike. She doesn’t have any pockets, so her Time Spoon is still clutched in her hoof. I touch it for a split-second to give it a loose destination, before I pull her own trick on her and spin her on one hoof like we’re dancing. As she starts to fall and the red mist begins to form, I lash out with my oldest and most reliable solution. My punch clips the edge of her Spoon, fracturing the ruby.

“Have fun in ancient Equestria!” I say as she disappears into nothingness.

Once a few seconds pass without her returning, I breathe a sigh of relief. It’s over. Finally, this time.

Derpy, the only one left, looks to me with worried and slightly frightened eyes. “What- what did you do?”

“Sent her back in time, far enough that she shouldn’t be able to bother you anymore." I note her concerned expression. "Don’t worry, she’ll probably cease to exist once I fix the timeline.” Probably. I’m still mostly winging this, but confidence is everything.

“Oh,” she says quietly. “I’m… sorry. About her. Me. Future me. I know she meant well but… sometimes, I can get lost in my own head. It’s not very nice and it gets really bad when I start to spiral, but usually there’s somepony around to pull me out. I guess, being all alone, there was nopony to help and she just got stuck in her own head until even the worst ideas seemed good.”

“Mhm,” I agree, though I’m really only half-listening. Her reasoning really doesn’t matter to me. She’s stopped, or maybe never started, and that’s what I set out to accomplish. Now all that’s left is to tie up a few loose ends. Without much pomp or circumstance, I take the bottle out of my pocket and smash it on a nearby wall. Red goo oozes out and immediately starts to dissipate into the air.

“What are you doing!?” Derpy cries, “I thought you were trying to stop this!”

“Calm down, I’m just maintaining causality. It’s not the same bottle you have. This one just causes a cold.” I gesture for her to hand me hers. After a moment’s hesitation, she complies. “You future self said dentists are immune to this, right?” Though I can’t imagine what kind of magical methods it uses to make that determination. At her nod, I pop the lid and swiftly pour it down my throat. It’s terrible, but also a good excuse to visit Berry Punch’s tonight. I’ve never known a virus that could survive long in an alcohol bath.

“So… what do I do now?” Derpy asks.

I shrug. “Go home? Pretend this never happened. Live your life, be good to your daughter, and make sure she brushes her teeth.”

She nods. “I’ll do that.”

I feel like I should probably deliver some kind of speech here, this being the end of my strange misadventure, but nothing really comes to mind. I’ve saved the day, saved a sweet mare from falling to her own dark impulses, and saved a filly from a life in braces. No one will ever know, but I guess that’s alright. At this point, I just want to go home before somepony else comes up behind me and knocks me out again.

With a short farewell to Derpy, I take out my Time Spoon and give it a spin. It feels so much more fluid now, almost like an extension of myself. A second passes before blue mist wipes away the world.