McPoodle Kibble #5: Trixie's Clear and Simple Secret to Ultimate Power · 6:50am Dec 20th, 2015
For a while, I toyed with the idea of continuing “Trixie’s Clear and Simple Secret to Ultimate Power”, with one chapter covering Trixie lurking in the background of each episode of Season 3 until the end. Derpy was going to be strongly featured. And then I wrote this chapter and burned myself out on writing anything else mid-sentence.
Chapter 2: Reverse Causality
Trixie was of the belief that she had quite mastered Twilight Sparkle’s narrative voice. At least for the purpose of answering inane letters from the Princess’ innumerable followers.
Her preferred brand of shampoo. That was what everypony in creation wanted to know. Not how she had become a princess, not the wealth of advice she could offer on Friendship, or Magic. No, they wanted to have manes just like hers.
It wasn’t even translucent yet. (Or ever? Princess Cadance’s mane never became translucent.) And it had split ends. Actually, Trixie was fairly certain she had actually seen the ends splitting, while the Princess was in the middle of drafting a politically sensitive reply to one of Princess Celestia’s letters.
Not that Trixie ever spied on Twilight on occasions such as those when she was supposed to be done with her work and definitely heading home.
Trixie brought her mind back to the here and now, and opened the next letter on the pile. “Dear Princess Twilight,” the letter began. “I’d like to know more about your hoof care regimen.” This attracted an infinitesimal degree of Trixie’s attention, as nopony had ever bothered to ask about that. She looked up to see that the Princess was sitting in a corner, engaged in some sort of light reading—on the nutritional requirements of subatomic particles, if Trixie were to guess. “Twilight,” Trixie said gingerly, using the Princess’ preferred form of address (no matter how inappropriate Trixie thought it to be). “Somepony would like to know about your—”
She stopped herself upon glancing at something in the rest of the letter.
“About my what?” Twilight asked. She watched as Trixie’s eyes scanned the rest of the letter, her eyes growing wider and wider. Then she stepped back and incinerated the letter with a blast from her horn. “Do I want to know?” she asked.
“You’re not old enough to handle it,” Trixie said, trembling.
Twilight raised an eyebrow.
“I’m not old enough to handle it,” Trixie added.
Recognizing the joke, Twilight pitched in for the punchline: “Celestia’s not old enough to handle it!”
Rainbow Dash chose this moment to punctuate the joke, via crashing through the nearest window.
A few seconds later, Trixie emerged from behind a couch. She quickly took in Twilight’s absolute lack of reaction to the crash landing. “So, I take it that this is normal Ponyville insanity?” she asked.
“Pretty much,” said Twilight.
“Twilight Sparkle!” Rainbow Dash exclaimed in an accusing tone.
“That’s Princess Twilight Sparkle!” Trixie exclaimed mischievously.
“Princess Twilight Sparkle!” Rainbow Dash exclaimed in an accusing tone.
Spike was at that moment heading for the broom closet to clean up the broken glass. (Although why he bothered he just didn’t know. The only inhabitant of Ponyville who had feet soft enough to get glass embedded in them was himself, and Rainbow never went through that window as long as it was unrepaired. Spike wondered sometimes what would happen if he took all of the panes of glass out of the tree house one morning: Would Rainbow actually use the door, or would she find a way to enter the library through one of the glass light fixtures, Pinkie Pie style?) Spike, never one to stay out of a good joke, found the exact right moment to say “Lady!” in nearly the same tone of mock indignation as Trixie had used.
“Princess Lady Twilight Sparkle!” Rainbow Dash exclaimed in an accusing tone.
Which of course caused not only Twilight but also both of her current assistants to break down in giggling fits.
“I’m sorry,” Twilight said, recovering first. “I bet you had something important.”
“You got that right!” Rainbow exclaimed. “I’ve been thinking about that Friendship Effect theory of yours, and I thought up a great big plothole in it!”
“It’s a theory,” Twilight explained patiently, “not a story. Stories have plotholes, theories have flaws. And Friendship Effect does not have any flaws!”
“Well if that’s the case, how did I do my first Sonic Rainboom?” Rainbow asked. “That was way before we even met each other!”
“Oh,” said Twilight, suddenly serious. “That’s the reverse causality power of the Elements of Harmony. I don’t like to think about it.”
“Well...alright,” Rainbow said hesitantly. “I guess reverse causality makes sense.”
“No it doesn’t!” Trixie said, springing to her hooves. “Reverse causality never makes sense if you think it through. It’s just a plot device used by lazy science fiction and comic book writers. And how do you know about it, Rainbow Dash?”
“Because the Impossible Pony’s superpower is reverse causality,” Rainbow answered confidently. There was also her suspicions about Pinkie Pie, but those could never be proven.
“I still don’t buy it,” said Trixie with an emphatic shake of her head. “Those artifacts aren’t actually intelligent, are they?”
“No,” answered Twilight.
“Then why the Sonic Rainboom?”
“Rainbow Dash’s Sonic Rainboom radically altered the lives of all six of us, putting us on the paths that would lead us to be the best possible bearers,” Twilight explained. “They also set up the conditions that would get all of the others living in Ponyville at the time that Princess Celestia sent me here.”
“Yes, but that would require conscious planning. Are the Elements intelligent?”
“No.”
“Then how did they know precisely where and when to act? And to pick Rainbow here in particular as their target?”
“Hey!” Rainbow exclaimed. “I did that on my own! ...Mostly. But Trixie here has a good argument. I’m not so convinced as I was five minutes ago.”
Twilight sighed. “Spike...?”
“I’ll get the chalkboard,” Spike said.
# # #
Twilight drew a horizontal line near the top of the chalkboard, using a cluster of feathers to grip the chalk.
“Nice!” Rainbow exclaimed.
Trixie looked between pegasus and alicorn with a confused look. “She didn’t even do anything,” she said.
“I’ve been practicing,” Twilight said, tossing the chalk lightly from one feather to another.
“Oh,” said Trixie.
The two ponies were sitting on cushions in front of the chalkboard. They had immediately rejected Twilight’s first choice of chairs, deciding that this made them too much like students. Which of course they were, whether they liked it or not.
Spike, having gone through this precise lesson more than two years ago, had gotten to work replacing that window that Rainbow had flown through earlier.
At the left-side of the line she had drawn, Twilight added the abbreviation “OTL”. “This is the Original Time Line, representing what might have happened before the Elements began manipulating history.” She added a hash mark next to the “OTL” and above it drew a Nightmare Moon symbol. “This is Nightmare Moon’s banishment one thousand years ago, an event that the Elements were involved with. In fact, their misuse during this incident rendered them inoperable. Over time, the Elements became more and more impatient over this state of affairs, leading—”
“There!” Trixie cried. “Right there! You attributed a pony emotion to the Elements!”
Twilight waved her wings vaguely as she tried to find the best way to rephrase herself. “Look,” she finally said. “It’s reasonable to assume that a magical artifact has a feedback mechanism. The Elements are activated by an imbalance of harmony in the immediate vicinity. Now we know that they take a fixed amount of time to recharge after being used. Therefore, they have an energy uptake and storage system. This mechanism allows for what, in a thinking creature, could be called ‘impatience’. Basically, the unknown creators of the Elements knew that disharmony would always exist and would always need to be fought against. So, with a thousand years passing since they were last used, they would become acutely sensitive to any local changes in disharmony. Are you willing to accept that?”
“I...suppose,” Trixie said after a few minutes. “But I don’t have to like it.”
“That’s your prerogative,” Twilight said with a smile. Turning back to the board, she added a second hash mark near the right end of the line, and drew a miniature Nightmare Moon above it. “This represents the end of the thousand year banishment, and Nightmare Moon’s return to Equestria, in the town of Ponyville. Now it’s possible that the thousandth Summer Sun Celebration occurred in some other town in this original time line, but there’s no way we can know that, other than to say it must have been in the hometown of one of the Bearers.”
“So in other words, Canterlot, Cloudsdale or Hoofington,” said Rainbow, naming the hometowns of Twilight, Fluttershy and herself, and Pinkie Pie.
“Exactly,” said Twilight. “But let’s say it was Ponyville. Now, Nightmare Moon shows up in Ponyville, brags about taking down Princess Celestia, and retreats into the Everfree Forest. With everypony in their hometowns, what do you think would happen?”
Trixie, not having an answer to that question, turned her head to look at Rainbow Dash.
“Well if I know Applejack,” Rainbow answered after a few seconds of thought, “she’d probably go raring after her, without the slightest idea what she’d do if she actually managed to corner Nightmare Moon.”
“And Big MacIntosh,” said Spike from the back of the room.
“Yeah, he’d probably go with her,” Rainbow said with a nod. “And there’d probably be a half-dozen ponies who would try to follow them, including Cloud Kicker, Thunderlane, or whoever would be running Ponyville’s weather if I wasn’t there.”
“Probably,” said Twilight. “Now as this group ran through the forest, not knowing where they were going, Nightmare Moon would attack them like she attacked us. And some of them would be left behind. But the two Apples at least would probably end up at the Castle of the Two Sisters. Nightmare Moon would confront them, maybe try to convince them that Celestia has been a tyrant all along. But Applejack would refuse to believe this. If she had met the Princess for even one moment, she would know that she’s just as kind and dedicated to the happiness of her ponies as the general public believes of her. And in that moment, Applejack would embody the Element of Honesty.” Below the Nightmare Moon tick mark she drew the Element of Honesty.
“Go, Applejack!” Rainbow cried, really getting into the story.
“But it’s not enough,” Twilight said.
“No?” asked Rainbow. “What if some of the other ponies managed to get Elements? Like, Big Mac could have been Loyalty, and Rarity would have still been Generosity.”
“But they’re not all there,” said Twilight.
“No,” said Rainbow with a frown. “Nopony in Ponyville could have been Magic other than you.”
“So the Elements would have failed,” Twilight said remorselessly. “And the Bearers would have fallen. But the fact that at least one Element was activated would have started the process. The Elements ‘knew’ that they could be activated.” She used a pair of wing feathers for the air quotes around the word “knew”. “I believe under the circumstances, they would be programmed to make the necessary changes to the timeline.” From the original horizontal line, she drew a diagonal line that branched off of the bottom right before the “Nightmare Moon” event and extended rightwards. Next to this she wrote “NTL 1”. “For New Time Line #1,” she explained. “You would have the following changes...
...And that’s where I suddenly realized my line of thought had become so convoluted that it had turned my brain into a miniature black hole, so I put the story away, and never came back.
Which is unfortunate, as I think the story might have worked. Basically, Trixie picks out Derpy to test her theory of friendship as a source of infinite magical power. See, Trixie was a former circus pony, and instantly sees that the relationship between most ponies in Ponyville and the mailmare is one of pity and/or condescension. She sees Derpy’s newspaper ad for a roommate, states right up front what she’s up to, and moves in with Derpy and her daughter Dinky in order to help them pay the rent in return for unlimited magical power. This was during the period where Derpy was semi-banned from appearing in the series, so I was using the other ponies’ treatment of her as an excuse to vent.
Let’s see, what else? Trixie would reveal to Derpy that she was a rare earth pony-unicorn hybrid, as opposed to a pure unicorn or pure earth pony, like the majority of offspring of unicorns and earth ponies. This was considered to be a shameful condition in the town she grew up in, so she’s been keeping it a secret. The story would end at the Equestrian Games: Trixie has utterly failed to increase her magical abilities because of her own self-doubt, but she sees that the love that Ponyville has given to Derpy has supercharged her pegasus magic, causing her to put in a miraculous performance at...some sort of sport that I arranged to get her in somehow or another.
And then after the Games, Trixie, Derpy and Dinky would get trapped during a tour of a crystal mine, and Trixie would be forced to call on her earth pony magic to save them. I assure you that the resulting scene would have been incredibly sappy.
The end.
And then Dinky would have gotten stuck in the sap and the Cutie Mark Crusader's expertise in sap removal would need to be consulted...
Well, that timeline conversation was very interesting.