I'd spent the night at Zecora's to help her calm down and to make sure she didn't do anything to herself while she was so down. I didn't sleep. At about eight I decided it was time. I took over.

At some point the circle had returned. I'm flying towards Ponyville on the circle. My speed was pretty fast, mostly due to the lack of wind resistance. Oh, it looks like the 'normal' voices have become dormant for now. We're all the same person so they'll remember me later. May as well name myself before they get bullshitty with other stuff. I'm also the only one that seems to know what the buck is happening with us. I guess I'll have to explain that too.

Cloud Calculation has multiple personality disorder. The 'Voice of Reason' and 'General Thoughts Voice' are both him. Arguments further data so he uses himself to expand his mind. The 'Monologue Voice' is something new. They were born from Cloud always thinking about what was going on around him in more detail than needed. They became apparent more recently, sometime around when Cyan-Twat broke his collar bone. They're barely a separate personality, and they're almost fully controlled by Cloud anyway. For now, I'm controlling them instead while Cloud is dormant.

I've been here since the Nightmare fight. I was born from rage and power clashing. I take hold when Cloud needs someone to fight for him. I can control the Arcane Circles (what he calls the 'circle thing') and have full memory of every spell he has ever learnt. Even from before the field. Unfortunately, I only have the spells. Much like Cloud, I can't remember anything else. I can access his memories, but he can't access mine. It wouldn't matter anyway, our memories are almost exact. For now.

Cloud Calculation has his head in the clouds, always thinking. Fits his name really. I hate him, and I hate that this body is his and not mine. But if he's going to be getting into fights, then I will protect this body. I will fight until I die. He's got brains, but I'm more powerful than he can ever imagine. I even gave myself a name:

I am Storm Cloud. And I'm about to bring the thunder.

I dropped the Arcane Circle at the library. Twilight would be the first example to Cloud of what I will do. I slammed open the door to see his five friends plus one. Something was off about everypony but I didn't give a shit.

"Oh, Astral-Ass!" I called to Twilight as I got closer to her. She turned to look at me, looking surprised at the nickname. "It's time for you to answer my questions." I was standing next to her now.

"Cloud?" She replied, "what's wrong with your eyes? They look... Hollow.... Did Zecora get you?"

"Stop talking or I will break you," I explained calmly. Anger makes you stupid, which is why I like to be calm. You need to be clever if you want to make ponies hurt badly.

"Zecora cursed us when we tried to talk to her earlier. Did she get you as well and do something to your eyes?" Zebras are almost exactly like earth ponies, except their magic was with using plants in chemistry rather than farming. There is no way for them to cast spells, hexes or curses. Twilight knows this. "Don't worry, we're gonna go and teach that evil Zebra a less-!"

Different Arcane Circles worked in different- WHAT THE BUCK?! I was about to Kinetic Circle punch Twilight (or KC punch for short), when suddenly another Cloud (wearing a stetson) exploded into existence and blocked it with a kind of Arcane Circle I'd never seen before.

"Hello, Stormy!" He called cheerily to me, "I'm here to break the universe! Well, break my universe. Look, the multiverse is hard to explain and past me hasn't figured it all out yet. Basically, I'm gonna kick my own ass!" He threw a KC punch at me. I put up a Force Barrier but the punch went straight through and sent me flying. I smashed against a bookshelf, sending books all over the place.

Before I could react, I was grabbed in a telekinetic hold and electrocuted. As I screamed in pain, Stetson-Cloud threw me towards a wall-

"Ow," I gurgled without opening my eyes. Wait! I'm back to me again! What happened? Was I... Attacked by myself? I opened my eyes and found myself in my room, on the top floor of the library. There was a strange scroll on my bedside table. I picked it up and opened it.

CLOUD! READ THIS!

Okay, so you probably have a lot of questions but I don't really care. The you that attacked you was me, and I am you from the future. In my timeline things went wrong. Really wrong. So I launched a cuo counter plan:

-Go back in time to the point where things started to go downhill (which was when I appeared).
-Knock myself out.
-Eradicate Storm Cloud with advanced medical magic.
-Force myself into being conscious with help from Luna.
-Improvise.

The main reason I left this scroll here was to tell you an important message:

At some point in time, go back to the moment when I appeared and do all of the stuff that I did. If I don't, the universe will implode. Or explode. It'll end in some way.

Also look more into the willpower theory.

By doing this, I should have created a new timeline. In my version of things, everything bucked up but as long as you remember to go back in time and do the stuff then the universe shouldn't end. In the new timeline at lae least.

Don't hate Twilight and the others for the racism. Stop them from doing it by all means but don't attack them. And don't kill stuff as a solution.

So... Yeah. Bye.

"What the buck?" I asked nopony in particular. So future me broke the universe to change something bad from happening? Huh. I should probably go talk to Twilight. I did try to attack her after all. I got out of bed, stretched out, opened the curtains to let in sunlight then headed downstairs.

I could hear Twilight talking with somepony in the kitchen. As I got closer I could see that future me was still here. I probably wasn't out for very long. I crept closer to the doorway, staying quiet so I could eavesdrop on myself. Future me suddenly broke down in tears and started hugging Twilight.

"I'm so sorry!" He sobbed into her, "I just lost control, a-and I didn't know what to do and..." He went quiet as Twilight wrapped her hooves around his back, returning the hug.

"It's okay," she softly assured him, "you've changed the timeline now, it's never even going to happen." They continued hugging for a few moments. A yellow aura was fading into existence around future me.

"Oh. My time here's up. You might want to take a few steps back, the two timelines are about to meet up." Twilight did as he asked. As future me floated into the air slightly, the aura became completely opaque. The aura seemed to give off more energy and he started screaming. The aura-covered unicorn exploded and disappeared completely. Twilight sat on the floor, looking sad. What was that all about? I walked into the room, causing Twilight to spin round to face me. She quickly wiped her eyes and put on a smile.

"Oh! Hey, Cloud!" Her voice was cracking slightly as if she'd been crying. "I didn't see you there!"

"Twilight?" I asked, "what's wrong?"

"I-I was just, uh..." She sighed and calmed down. "It's nothing. How are you feeling?"

"A bit woozy and bruised but generally okay. Was I out for long?"

"Only a few hours." May as well talk about the racism now.

"I need to talk to you about Zecora. You-"

"I know. Future you already explained. I overreacted and I'm sorry, I'll talk to the others later."

"Okay. I think I need to go and rest for a while, I'll see you later, Twilight."

"Bye, Cloud."

Author's Notes:

I'm really happy with how this chapter turned out! I was getting annoyed at how edgy I was making Cloud and it ended up derailing from what I was planning to do, ruining the plot for the entire story. Luckily I had a theory on a temporal paradox that could be used to create an alternate timeline that I was saving to use in a plot of a movie or series (I'm aspiring to be a director), so I used it here to make everything less edgy and dark. While magic ex machina is fun, it only leads to edginess.

Now it can go back to how it was before while still having all of the other stuff!

Don't worry, this isn't a thing Cloud can keep doing. He only gets one retry after every huge mistake and he can't ever go back anywhere from here-ish to when he went back (a little before the gala).