“People in their handlings of affairs often fail when they are about to succeed. If one remains as careful at the end as he was at the beginning, there will be no failure.”

Lao Tzu

“My little pooony... I used to wonder what friendship could beee! My little pooony... Until you all shared it’s maaagic with meeee!”

Twilight Sparkle stood on the main stage of the Canterlot Opera House, completely alone. She sang to her microphone stand as if it were a venomous serpent and her eyes flitted back and forth over the audience. There must have been over a thousand ponies, all members of Canterlot’s upper crust. The seating arrangement was curved like the inside of a seashell to give every seat a perfect view of the stage. To Twilight, it looked like a tidal wave about to crash down on her. These were the pickiest, most demanding music critics in the world and every last one of them was booing and shouting their extreme displeasure. They probably wouldn’t have showed up in the first place if the Princess hadn’t extended them all personal invitations. One simply did not decline such an offer... no matter how torturous the experience might be.

Twilight’s bedraggled, crooning voice filled the auditorium completely, regularly alternating between too loud and too quiet. “Big adventure, Tons of fuuun...  vee equals four over three times pi, times the cube of... no wait!” She glanced down at the scroll in front of her, covered with mathematical formulae instead of sheet music. She yelped as somepony in the front row threw a programme at her, then glanced back at her scroll and scrambled to remember where she was in the spell and the song. The giant spotlight beat down on her like the noonday sun in a searing desert, and sweat poured down her face.

“A beautiful heaaart, it’s an easy feat...” She flinched as the full-size orchestra played a part of the song she wasn’t expecting. “Wait-wait-wait! What’d I skip? A beautiful heart faithful and strong sharing kindness it’s an easy feat! And magic makes it aaall compleeete!”

Her horn glowed as the final stage of the spell took form. It was easily the ugliest aura she’d ever seen, all lumpy and disorganized. She rapidly glanced between the spell and the crowd.

“You have myyy little pooonies!” She lowered down on one knee and leaned her head back. “Something-something, sooomething... very best frieeends!”

A flash of purple light fizzled from the tip of her horn and a small cloud of vile green smoke drifted off of the surface of the scroll. She felt an intense wave of vertigo as an invisible force locked her magical powers down and interrupted the very last stage of the spell, an instant before it could all go horribly wrong. She stared down at the scroll in awe.

“It worked!” She shouted over the loudspeakers. “I mean, it didn’t work at all... but that means it did work!”

She squeaked as somepony in the front row hurled a whole cabbage at her. She managed to duck to the side, but a stream of fruits and vegetables soon rained down all around her. She galloped off stage screaming at the top of her lungs, and the crowd cheered as soon as she was gone from view.

Sir Shining Armor and princess Celestia were sitting together in a box-seat that had afforded them a first-rate view of the musical disaster below. Shining Armor finally managed to tear his eyes away from the stage to look up at the Princess. She was covered in bandages and half-healed bruises and there were stitches in her upper and lower lips. There was a folded up bit of paper napkin stuck in her nostril, which she replaced every five minutes or so. She’d watched the show with a bland, disinterested look, and was daintily munching on a bag of popcorn.

“Princess?” Shining Armor said, “was this absolutely necessary?”

“Dunno.” She stood up from her chair. “Let’s find out.”

Shining Armor followed her through the halls and down the stairwell. “I still don’t see why you invited me here,” he said. “It seems like you invited everypony who knows her for no other reason than to make it as humiliating an experience as possible.”

“Actually, I was concerned there might be a riot. I wanted the royal guard on site to take control of the situation and maintain order should it become necessary.” She took another mouthful of popcorn, chewing as she spoke. “But that too, yes.”

They walked all the way down to the main hall where Twilight Sparkle was waiting. It was traditional for the singers to mingle with the crowd as they left the auditorium, but nopony was willing to make eye contact with her. Her friends were gathered around in an attempt to console her: they’d all showed up to support her, but had left the theatre seconds after the performance started. Rarity and Fluttershy simply couldn’t bear to watch their friend suffering, and the others had fled to the bathroom with splitting headaches and queasy stomachs.

“Princess!” Twilight rushed over to her with a wide, frazzled smile. “It worked! It really worked! Well actually the spell didn’t work at all but the failsafe did! It clicked in at just the last second and stopped the spell completely! It even recorded all the information of what went wrong, and why!”

Celestia smiled down at her. “I’m so glad I could be of assistance. All you had to do was ask!”

Twilight smiled up at her through clenched teeth. “Yes. Thank you. So much.”

“You’re quite welcome, of course.”

Twilight dragged a hoof against the plush carpet. “Listen... about all that trouble...”

“Yes?”

“I just wanted you to know how sorry I am.”

Celestia smiled down at her, warm and caring. “I think you’ve learned your lesson, Twilight Sparkle. There’s no further need to feel sorry for yourself. The reconstruction of Ponyville is well underway, nopony else was injured, and you’ll all be home within a week. Certainly no later than Saturday. At 10:30 PM, eastern standard.”

Twilight’s left ear flipped up. “That’s... oddly specific.”

“You should also know that the mental domination you exerted over the populace was easily remedied: everypony is completely back to normal. Even at your most wicked, it seems you used your magic very responsibly.”

Twilight rolled her eyes. “I’m just glad this is all over... especially my punishment. Seriously, that was the worst thing I’ve ever had to do, but I totally deserved it.”

“Punishment? What are you talking about?”

“Well, the... singing. You know what a terrible singer I am. You made me sing in front of everypony I know: all my friends and family, my teachers... it was the most humiliating thing that’s ever happened to me.”

“That wasn’t your punishment at all. That was extracurricular assistance with one of your academic assignments.” Celestia leaned down, her voice low and sinister. “I know exactly what your punishment is going to be. I’m sending you... to magic kindergarten.”

Twilight’s jaw clenched, and her eyes shot open in terror. “You...! Wha? Buh!?”

Her friends all rushed to stand between them, arguing and pleading.

“You can’t be serious!” Fluttershy said. “Hasn’t she suffered enough!?”

“It won’t even do her the slightest good!” added Rarity. “What could she possibly learn from such an elementary class?”

“You actually thought I’d...?” Celestia tossed her head back and laughed. “Oh, don’t be silly! There’s absolutely no point in her attending magic kindergarten as a student. She already knows those lessons forwards and backwards. It would be a complete waste of her talents.”

Twilight sighed in intense relief. “Heh... you really had me going there!”

Celestia passed her a neat little envelope as she walked past. “You start tomorrow. Be there at six.”

Twilight’s friends watched, curious, as she opened the envelope and took out the letter inside.

“What is it?” Pinkie Pie said. “What’s it say?”

Twilight stared at the paper. “Oh... oh no. Ohhhhh no...” A look of utter, abject horror crept across her face. She sat on the floor and slowly held the letter over her eyes in a pitiful, last-ditch attempt to hide from the world.

“Okay, now this is... does everypony have their work books? Yes? No? All right, this is a spell that’ll help you... are you listening? Listen to me this is important!”

Twilight banged her hoof on the desk, trying to get the classroom’s attention. Two dozen tiny unicorns sat at their little desks, and not a single one was looking at her. The horde of colts and fillies were too busy screaming and yelling and laughing at each other, getting into slap fights and throwing erasers and crumpling up balls of paper.

“Today, class, I’m going to teach you a spell that will help you learn magic! You want to learn magic, don’t you? Isn’t that exciting? Does anypony have any questions?”

One of the colts in the back row waved his hoof frantically. “Ooh! Ooh, ooh, ooh! Me me me!”

“Yes? What’s your question?”

“Uhmmmmm...”

Twilight sighed. “Does anypony else have a question?”

The same colt waved his hoof in the air. “Me me me me me!”

“Do you really have a question this time?”

“Ya!”

“Fine, then. What’s your question?”

There was an awkward silence as the entire class looked at the colt in the back row.

“Ummm... poopie doo-doo!”

The students all burst into giggles. Twilight sighed and collapsed in her chair, but  immediately shot up and twisted around to look at her hindquarters. “A cream pie!? Did somepony put a cream pie on my chair!?”

“Yeah!” A filly in the front row said, beaming with pride. “I got it for you cause you’re the bestest teacher ever!”

Twilight bit her bottom lip and swallowed the harsh words that came to mind. “Thank you. But next time, please leave things on my desk.”

“But you said we can’t have foods on desks during class.”

“That was... I didn’t mean... nevermind. Can we please get class started? I need everypony to—” Twilight flinched as a crumpled up piece of paper bounced off her head and landed on her desk. “Hey, that’s one of the spell scrolls I gave you! These aren’t toys!”

She watched as one of the children crumpled another scroll. The magical spell fizzled out with a flash of sparkly blue light, which the children cheered. Twilight ran over and snatched the ruined scroll. “These are magical! You can’t just crumple them up!”

“Why?” the colt said.

“Because they’re precious, and very hard to make, and crumpling it up ruins the spell!”

“Why?” the colt said.

“Because the physical imbuement of magic spells is depend on the arrangement of symbols and letters to function! As soon as the symbols become illegible, the magical structure collapses!”

“Why?” the colt said.

“Argh! It’s because of the interactivity between the law of symbolism and the law of sympathy! It’s one of the most fundamental laws of magic!”

“Why?” the colt said.

“Okay, look.” Twilight leaned on the colt’s desk and began scribbling out a diagram on the back of the wrinkled scroll. “The law of symbolism is considered a foundation law, or ‘first tier’ law, because other laws are derived from it but it isn’t itself a derivative of any other laws. It stands entirely on it’s own.”

“Why?” the colt said.

“Because... argh! Just because!”

The classroom exploded with cheers. “Grownup said ‘just because’! We win, we win!”

“Nevermind!” Twilight shook the scroll in the colt’s face. “You’re not allowed to crumple these scrolls, ever!”

“Can we eat ’em?” said another student.

“No, you can’t eat them! Why would you—” Twilight froze when she saw the filly next to her: her cheeks were stuffed full of papyrus, and trail of drool dribbled down her chin and onto the desk.

“Get that out of your mouth this instant!”

The filly crossed her forelegs and turned away. “No.”

“Give it here” Twilight wrestled with the child and finally managed to remove the soggy, half-chewed scroll from her mouth.

The filly immediately started slapping her. “Gimme, gimme! Mine, mine, mine!!”

Twilight leaned down and fixed her with a stern look. “No. You can’t have it.”

The filly immediately began screaming. She thrashed about with all four legs, shaking her head back and forth and flinging tears and snot in all directions. She fell off her chair and began kicking everything around her.

“No no no, stop crying! Please oh please stop! There’s... there’s a good reason I don’t want you to chew on this! It’s a dangerous choking hazard! It’s not good for you! For gosh sakes, it’s not food!”

“Mine! Mine, mine, mine!”

Twilight watched in horror as the filly’s face turned a disturbing shade of red. “Why? Are you... are you hungry? Do your teeth hurt? What do you want?”

The filly immediately stopped crying and looked up at her. “I want cake!”

“What!? Don’t be ridiculous. I’m not just going to give you cake for no reason.”

The temper tantrum resumed in full force.

“Okay, okay! Just... just a second!”

Twilight’s horn glowed, and the entire class turned to look at the flash of purple light. The children watched as a three-tiered black forest chocolate cake magically appeared on the filly’s desk, covered with curly chocolate shavings and maraschino cherries smothered with a thick layer of red syrup. The filly stared at her prize in absolute astonishment. The colt sitting beside he reached a hoof towards it, entranced, and she immediately slapped him away. “Naaooo! Miiiine!”

The children all jumped up from their desks and ran to Twilight, screaming for cakes of their own. The filly began shoving and slapping everything around her, flailing about randomly, and the cake toppled to the floor during the fracas.

“No, stop it! You can’t just—”

“Princess! Yay, princess!”

Twilight glanced up and saw princess Celestia peeking in through the window in the door. Twilight ran over and threw the door open, gasping for breath. “Oh thank goodness you’re here!”

Celestia smiled back at her. “I just thought I’d check in and see how everything was going.”

Twilight grabbed and tugged at her own mane. “It’s horrible! They’re the worst little—” she glanced back and saw that the classroom was completely quiet and orderly: every single child was sitting at the correct desk and smiling up at her. Their workbooks were all at the ready.

“What!? But they were just... why... how...!?”

Celestia stuck her head in and smiled at the class. “Hello, class!”

“Good morning princess Celestia!” the children all said together, cheerfully.

She turned back to Twilight. “Thank you for taking over the class for me. I miss them so, but I know they’re in the very best of hooves. They’re such darling little angels, aren’t they?”

“Lies!” Twilight hissed through clenched teeth. “All lies! They’re a gang of opportunistic, selfish, stubborn savages! All they do is scream and bite and throw things! They’re like slugs, leaving a trail of snot and drool and pee wherever they go! It’s anarchy in here! Anarchy, I tell you!”

Celestia looked into the classroom full of smiling, well behaved children.

“You seem to have things under control.”

Twilight fell to the floor and grabbed her front legs. “Puh-leeeze, princess! I can’t take one more minute of this! You gotta save me!”

“Settle down, Twilight. You know full well I can’t take over the class in my condition. The hospital refuses to let me carry out any of my duties until I’ve made a full and complete recovery.”

“No, please! There must be—”

“And as my personal protege, you’re the perfect candidate to teach in my place. You know the material, you know my methods, you’ve even acted as my teacher’s assistant in the past. This is an excellent experience for you: just think of how it will look on your curriculum vitæ!”

“It’s got nothing to do with that! They’re—”

Celestia began closing the door and had to gently push Twilight back inside before she could scramble out. “The doctors say I’ll be right as rain in just another two weeks and I’m sure you can handle yourself just fine until then. Just remember to keep a firm attitude: They respond best to gentle authority.”

The door clicked shut and Celestia walked back down the hallway. Twilight continued to scratch her hooves against the window, mad with terror. “No, princess! You can’t leave me like this! No! Nooooo!” The shouting and laughter resumed, drowning out Twilight’s screams entirely. A crimson spray of sticky maraschino cherry syrup splashed against the window, and Twilight’s hoof smeared through the bright red splatter as she was dragged down and out of view.

Princess Celestia hefted a bag of miniature golf clubs over one shoulder and walked down the hallway. “Just wait till they actually learn magic,” she muttered to herself.

All of the palace’s gardens and parks were spectacular to behold, but the secluded courtyard at the base of the northernmost watch-tower was among the most secret of all places. Only a few beings had ever been lucky enough to walk amongst these weeping willows or stroll alongside the cool, babbling brooks. She picked her way between the trees, glancing at each of the marble statues scattered about seemingly at random. There were sculptures of every species of animal known to exist, all crafted with exquisite skill and detail.

This garden contained an awful lot of statues, of course, because there were an awful lot of known species in Equestria. There were some twenty thousand types of ants alone, and some eight or nine million unique living things in total. Only a tenth of these statues were carved in any way: the other ninety percent were nothing but blocks of solid marble, content to rest in the shade of trees and quietly gather moss and lichen. There were still so many living things waiting to be discovered and categorized, and many of them would be waiting a long time indeed. It was best not to think about how eight million stone blocks could possibly be arranged within the confines of any single courtyard, especially when spaced apart so generously. But then, the Garden of Animalia was far larger on the inside than it was on the outside. Who tended these statues? Who decided where they should be arranged? Who carved them when a discovery was made? No... these were not appropriate questions at all. Not for a place of mystery such as this.

Her ears pricked up as she heard a tuneless humming, punctuated by energetically mumbled words. She crept between two thick berry-bushes and peered into a clearing up ahead: she watched the strange and peculiar creature within as he danced about the garden, humming and talking to himself about nothing in particular. Every now and then he would pause to admire a statue, but only for a moment.

She walked out of the bushes and approached him with a smile on her lips. Even compared to her, he was enormous. He failed to notice her—preoccupied as he was—until she cleared her throat, at which point he spun to face her.

“My goodness! Fancy meeting you here!”

She arched an eyebrow. “You... remember me?”

“Not in the slightest,” he said, “but I don’t see why that should change anything. Really, there are just so many people in the world that meeting any one of them is an astronomically unlikely event. Just think of the probabilities! Out of all the people in the world, and all the places, it just so happens to be the two of us that bumped into each other.”

She tilted her head. “Do you know what the odds of that are, statistically speaking?”

“Why, of course I do!” He lifted his chin and tugged at the end of his wispy beard. “The odds are one hund—”

“One hundred percent!” she said, finishing his words for him.

He paused to stare at her in mild wonder. “Why, yes... the odds were one hundred percent.”

“After all,” she said, “We’re here. It happened.”

“I must say, I like the way you think.”

“Well, I had a pretty good mentor a while back. He... opened my mind, you could say.”

“An open mind is always a good thing.”

She looked away. “It depends on what you let in.”

He looked down at her for a moment.

“So,” she said, “what do you think of the garden?”

“Oh, it’s simply splendiferous! So many different things, and such sheer variety... I’m quite the aficionado of variety, you know. Every time I think I’ve found the very best one, I see something new. Something even more strange and exciting than anything I’ve seen before.” He strolled further ahead and paused to examine a statue of an ostrich, clenching his fists under his chin and grinning like a child. “Oooh, I just can’t decide! I can never settle on just one!”

She followed after him, watching as he hopped onward. “Decide? Settle?”

“Yes, yes... on the best one, you see!” He stopped in front of a statue of a rugged, shaggy mountain goat with great, spiral horns. He turned to one side as if admiring himself in the mirror. “I’m really starting to think there is no one best choice. Why should I have to settle for just one? They all have their strengths, don’t they?”

“I have no doubt, but there is something to be said for unity... the strength of the whole.”

“Oh, fiddle-de-diddle to your boring old wholeness.” He waved a paw at her and turned away in mock indignation. “Can you imagine how tedious the world would be if everything were the same? Diversity is the very spice of life! Unpredictability is what gives us our zest! Give me wonder and adventure! Give me a touch of chaos!”

“Chaos, yes,” she said. “Chaos is good for life... it’s inevitable. But chaos must also be healthy and natural. There must be some degree of harmony.”

The peculiar creature’s smile faded. He reached out for the statue, but didn’t actually touch it.

“Harmony... yes. Chaos without harmony simply tears itself apart, in a constant state of inner conflict. Not chaos at all, but... discord.” He looked down at her, and his eyes were a little more focused. “Do we—”

“Yes,” she said, “we do know each other. It was a very long time ago, though.”

“And you waited all this time to visit? I must have been very unkind to you.”

“Yes and no,” she said. “You truly believed you were helping me. And, in the very end, some small good did come of it.”

He reached down and gently clasped his paws around her hoof, lifting it up. He gazed into her eyes, serenely. “Can you ever forgive me?”

“You’re joking, aren’t you? You don’t even remember what it was!”

“I can certainly guess,” he said. “We learn from our hardships. We survive and endure, and we emerge all the stronger for it. Whatever I did to you, it must have been the very worst thing in the world... terrible and cruel beyond imagining.”

“How can you tell?”

“Because you are strong,” he said, matter of factly. “I see incredible strength within you. An unyielding power that runs far deeper than even you realize. Which means your hardship and suffering must have been just as extreme.”

She stared up at him, momentarily lost in his caring, concerned eyes.

She looked away. “I’m not that strong.”

He set his paws on his hips. “Didn’t I just say? Stronger than even you realize.”

“Nopony else seems to think so,” she muttered. “I’m just a terrible memory of the past... and a liability in the present.”

“Oh? How so?”

“My sister thinks that I am vulnerable to recidivism. Of a sort. I was exposed to something very dark, and she now believes that the slightest exposure will send me hurtling once more into the abyss.”

He peered down at her, looking thoughtful.

“What?”

“When a blacksmith works steel, he can make it stronger by hardening the metal. But when he does this, the blade also becomes brittle.”

“That doesn’t make sense. Strength is the opposite of brittleness.”

“Not at all, my dear! A sword that is strong and brittle takes a great deal of force to break... but when it does, it shatters into splinters. But! If a sword is malleable, it will bend just a little instead of snapping apart completely. And a bent blade is far easier to fix than a heap of shattered splinters.” He reached down and set a paw on her chest, over her heart. “Your sister is right and wrong at the same time, my dear. You are too strong, and far too brittle. You must soften yourself. Learn to bend with the blows, and be flexible in the face of hardship. Learn to enjoy life.”

She stared up at him, awestruck. “And I thought I was going to be the one helping you! How do you know all this?”

“I know a thing or two about inflexibility, myself. This marvelous garden has done wonders for my sense of focus and I’ve had plenty of time to reflect on myself... where I’ve been, where I’m going, that sort of thing.” He laid back on a grassy hill and gazed at the sky. “The truth is, I don’t much care for where I’ve been lately. It was fun at the time, of course, but looking back on it... it all seems so petty and cruel. I feel as though I were possessed by something, and I’m honestly not sad to see it go.”

She laid on her side beside him. “It never really goes away, does it?”

“No,” he said with sigh. “I think your sister was right, whoever she is: it takes so much work and effort to climb up the mountain... but all it takes is a little nudge to fall tumbling down into the abyss.”

“Yes, that’s exactly what it feels like.” She pursed her lips. “But it’s not like anypony is going to teleport a giant nexus of evil energy right onto our heads, completely at random, for no reason at all. I mean, what are the odds?”

“The odds, eh?” he peered up at the sky with a playful smirk. “Well you know, it’s a funny old world we live in...”

The two of them sat and stared up at the sky for some time, quiet and introspective. A butterfly wandered over, landed on the peculiar creature’s toe for a moment, then took off again. Somewhere, a bird chirped.

He frowned for a moment, then propped himself up on his elbows and glanced around.

“Something wrong?” she asked.

“This is going to sound silly, but... I was half expecting something to happen just then.” He leaned back down on the grass. “Don’t know why.

She shrugged. “It was probably nothing.”

A dark, indigo alicorn streaked through the furthest reaches of space, traveling through a tunnel of glittering lights. His horn punctured the very substance of reality, allowing him to exceed the speed of light by countless orders of magnitude. His outstretched wings tilted as they caught the cosmic winds, directing his path with utter precision. Navigation was a tremendous challenge: the countless pinpoints of light were not stars, but entire galaxies. Considering his current speed—and the proportionately infinitesimal size of his destination—the phrase ‘threading a needle in a hurricane’ was an extreme understatement. Intergalactic travel was hardly his forte, but he was certainly skilled enough to make do. He’d had the finest teacher imaginable, after all.

He allowed the relativistic tunnel to collapse, and he burst into reality once more. The great vacuum between the galaxies was nowhere near as empty as people assumed: light from the nearby clusters glowed white hot without any atmosphere to diffuse them, and gentle waves of radioactive particles drifted past, singing their wayward, glowing songs. Strands of dark matter stretched between the galaxies like a web, growing ever thinner as the universe continued to expand.

He arrived only a few light years off target and drifted the rest of the way on momentum alone, leisurely enjoying the sights. Within minutes, his precise destination came into view: a colossal sea turtle with a curved shell and sleek flippers. His scales were a gradient of brilliant blue and green, and the corners of his beak were permanently twisted up in a playful, knowing smile.

He dove in close and flew next to the turtle’s head, flying past an eye that was larger than him a thousand times over. “Ao! How’s my favorite cosmic space turtle?”

“Is it thee, Chronos?” The turtle’s voice echoed through the void, sounding both young and old. “It is thee! What is up, my main stallion?

“Just maxing and relaxing,” he called back. “Slip me some flipper, why don’t ya?”

The turtle’s vast flipper drifted towards him with ponderous slowness, looming against the starry backdrop. Chronos performed a barrel roll at the very last second and swept his wing against it’s surface. It was like brushing a feather against the side of a mountain. “And down low!” He spun around again and brought his other wing down, but the flipper retracted before he could touch it.

“Too... slow...!” The tortoise said.

Chronos grinned. “Did you just pull a fast one? On me?”

“Verily,” Ao said. “So tell me! What brings you here?”

Chronos reached one wing into a pocket dimension and withdrew a picnic basket, complete with a bottle and a baguette.

A lively glint appeared in Ao’s wrinkly eye. “Has it been a century already?”

“Every hundred years whether she needs it or not,” Chronos said. “Know where I can find her?”

Ao nodded his head upwards, slow and ponderous. “Where else?”

“Seriously? She was supposed to be ready by now. I’d better deal with this quick.”

“Careful. She’s in one of her moods.”

Chronos flew up and over the ornate, curved edge of Ao’s shell and set a course for the vast olympian mountain resting on his back. The lower foothills were covered with fresh evergreen forests, and the upper reaches were steel-grey cliffs adorned with wispy waterfalls. He flew to the highest reaches and came to the great temple situated on the very highest peak. The architecture of the marble structure was very plain: a circular platform, ringed all around with doric columns. The structure had no solid walls or ceiling, affording a magnificent view of the cosmos around them. He drifted to the center of the temple where a gold and-white alicorn gazed into a wide, shallow pool of water. She was scowling and muttering.

He snuck up behind her and hugged her tight. “Who’s my little snookum-woogums?

She flinched in surprise and turned to glare at him. “Not now, Chronos. I’m very busy with something.”

He reared up and spread his wings out, posing so as to display his magnificent musculature and expansive wingspan. “Too busy for these?”

“This is serious. There’s been over a hundred relativistic breaches in the last century alone, and there are still a dozen euclidiums still unaccounted for! Three space-faring civilizations have decided to power their light-ships with imprisoned Void Horrors, and seven others are disposing of cosmic waste by just chucking it into the heart of the nearest black hole. We need those black holes! They do things! You can’t just fill them up with anti-particle garbage!”

“I’m sure this is all very important, but—”

“And to make matters worse, some incompetent nag has been going around teleporting things without even specifying a destination coordinate. It’s as if they don’t even care where they go, as long as they go away!” She rolled her eyes and spoke in an intentionally goofy voice. “Ooh, look at me! I figured out how to jury rig a random co-ordinate generator to a teleportation spell, so now I can solve all my problems by just sending them to my planet’s natural satellite or something! That’s one cosmic horror from beyond that definitely won’t come back to haunt me exactly one thousand years from now! This is a good idea!”

Chronos sighed. “They’re not quantum beings, Astral. They’re just linear. Seriously, they don’t know any better.”

“Well they will in a moment,” she said and poked at the water pool. “Oh, get a load of this one: An emperor in quanta-zone eleventeen just decided to dispose of all his political dissidents by throwing them into a giant wormhole. Where does it lead? Oh, nowhere, I’m sure! Why don’t we just link the other end of the wormhole to a more appropriate set of coordinates... say the emperor’s private bathroom? I think that sends the appropriate message, don’t you?”

“I’m sure he’s a very bad man,” Chronos said, “but I’m not going to let you squirm out of this like last century. And the century before that, and the century before that.”

“But what about the stability of the universe? I can’t just abandon it whenever I want.”

“Yes you can. You have my permission.” Chronos went to her side and pulled her forcibly away from the pool. “You may be the master of space, Astral, but I am the master of time. And if I say it is time for a picnic, then it is time for a picnic.”

She looked back at the pool in a panic. “But... but... the space-curve! The wormholes! I can’t just leave them be! The universe is a mess right now! I haven’t even swept up all the loose gluons from the Triangulum Emission Garren nebula, and three of the pulsars are still blinking twelve o’clock because of yesterday’s unscheduled dark-matter paradigm shift!”

Chronos walked directly in front of her and gazed into her eyes. “You. Work. Too. Hard. You know this. Why do you think we had to leave the girls behind? Because you never had time for them!”

“That’s... a temporary measure. We can always go back and visit them when we’re less busy. And besides, they’re all grown up now.”

“And it’s been a temporary measure for how many millennia? If this keeps up, you will always be busy. We will never retire. And neither of us will ever see them again.”

Astral bit her lip and looked away. Chronos touched her cheek and forced her to return his gaze.

“The expansion of the universe will not stop accelerating just because you decided to take an hour off for a picnic. I promise you: nothing will happen while we’re away.”

Astra pursed her lips. After several long seconds, she lowered her head in embarrassment and followed after him. “Oh... you’re probably right.”

“There we go. Now then... would you like to choose the picnic spot?”

She rolled her eyes. “If I let you pick, we’d end up in the wrong place.”

“Well if I let you pick, we’d show up late.” He gave her a playful smile. “Which would you prefer?”

She laughed at him, and they walked to the edge of the platform.

Her ear twitched, and she paused to glance back at the pool.

“Honey? Is something wrong?”

She frowned slightly. “It’s... probably nothing.”

Twilight Sparkle opened the door to her guest room in the palace and trudged inside, gasping for breath. Her mane was frazzled and uneven, and her coat was sticky with peanut butter and five different flavours of fruit spread. There were spitballs stuck to her face and tiny teeth-marks along each of her legs. She dropped her saddlebags in the middle of the room and trudged to the small writing desk in the corner.

“Hey, Twi,” Spike called out from the next room.

Twilight grumbled nonsensically.

“Hey, Twi? You know Rarity’s tail? You know that thing it does?”

“Whah...?”

“You know how it just spirals and spins? It just keeps going on and on, around and around, and it just doesn’t quit?”

“Spike, please. The last thing I need right now is to listen to you babbling about her.”

“Oh.”

Twilight took out a scroll and spread it out on the desk.

“Hey, Twi? You know Rarity’s tongue?”

Twilight’s ears flipped straight up. “What!?” She turned around and saw Spike standing in the door to the bedroom, wobbling back and forth. He had a dizzy, intoxicated smile, and his face was covered with bright purple lipstick marks.

“...It does the same exact thing.”

“Who...? Wha...! How...!?”

“A real lady keeps her promises, right?” Spike took out a small coin bag and rummaged through it. “So can I give you twenty bits to go see a play or a lecture or something? We’re gonna need the—”

Twilight bolted out of her seat, shrieking at the top of her lungs, knocking the writing desk on it’s side and scattering writing supplies across the floor. She galloped across the living room and streaked out the front door without bothering to close it.

“Thanks Twi,” Spike said as he turned back to the bedroom door. “I owe ya one.”

Next Chapter: And now, a very special message. Estimated time remaining: 5 Minutes