The Twilight Prince: Omakes

Special Agent Starlight 'Stormlight' Glimmer suddenly appeared in the very familiar halls of the Castle of Friendship. She looked over to her partner and froze.

Special Agent Twilight 'Countess' Sparkle had her face scrunched in extreme concentration and her horn lit.

"Countess?" Stormlight asked in confusion.

"Wards." the alicorn scowled.

"In the Castle of Friendship?"

"Yes, in the bucking Castle of Friendship." Countess snarled. "This is supposed to be an open castle, where anycreature is welcome."

Suddenly Stormlight realized that the familiar castle lacked the typical welcoming atmosphere that she had come to expect. In fact she felt decidedly unwelcome, like the castle had deemed her an invader. The unicorn shivered, this castle wasn't supposed to be like this. "Wait, shouldn't they recognize you?"

"They recognized me and then deemed me an imposter. What kind of paranoid lunatic designed these wards? It's not like it's even possible to falsify a Mantle, and you can't mantle an already occupied Mantle. But no, that's not good enough. They're like thirty layers deep and have contingencies against extraplanar, extradimensional and extratemporal invaders as well as things that literally defy description."

"Shouldn't our Chameleon Circuits handle that?"

"You would think, and they handle most of it, but the wards contain an extremely non-standard criteria that I've never seen before. Even worse, now that the wards have triggered they are searching constantly for us, I'm barely managing to keep us hidden as it is. And it's getting harder. What kind of idiotic, mad timeline did you bring us to Stormlight?"

Stormlight took out her chronometer and stared, "Looks like it's a standard-adjacent timeline that underwent an Omega Class Temporal Divergence about a year ago, local time."

"Joy, I hate Shatterpoints. Which way to the anomaly?"

"Uh, this way." Stormlight stated leading her partner down the unnervingly hostile halls.

Several minutes later the two mares entered a large room filled with rows of tables. On each table lied several black bodybags.

"I don't like this." Stormlight stated trotting over to one of the bags and opening it, "It's a Starlight." she grimaced and brought the chronometer to the corpse, "And definitely not local."

"So is this one." Countess stated, "Do you think all of these ..."

"I really hope not."

"What, don't want to find hundreds of dead yous?"

"I'm far more concerned what the death of so many copies of a pony as narratively significant as a Starlight would mean for this timeline."

They checked several more bags, finding the mangled corpse of a extratemporal Starlight in each one.

"We should just go," Stormlight stated, "I think it's clear what happened here, this timeline is as good as dead."

Countess nodded and scowled, it was never a good day when you lost a timeline, "I agree, let's go."

"I don't think so, Neither of you are going anywhere." Spoke a mare who trotted into view.

Both agents froze, "Time to go." They spoke in concert and felt their Timejumpers spinning up.

"Yeah, none of that, Dora, now."

Suddenly Countess's horn was covered in a glob of magenta resin, breaking her spell.

Both Timejumpers aborted as the wards slammed down upon the them like the wrath of a war god.

The last thing Stormlight saw before the angry castle rendered her unconscious was the scowl of an unreformed changeling queen.