Let your magic run wild…
If you could only see everything you could be, you would spend your whole life shining…
These were the words Izzy Moonbow and her friends sang inside of a karaoke place on that fateful night at the Boardtrot, where said amusement park was created by the magic of the Nova Charm. An unintended consequence of this was Allura and her pet, Twitch, being left unable to return to Starlight Ridge after the Nova Charm had been split into pieces. However, it wasn't just the enemies of our heroes who would suffer because of this turn of events…but one of their friends…
Somehow, our heroes have forgotten their friend from Starlight Ridge…
Comet.
How have our heroes forgotten Comet…and where is he?
The universe knows…not just about why Comet has been forgotten and where he is…but also how his destiny ties in with an ancient legend…the legend of the Forgotten Comet. The story of the legend and how it relates to Comet is complicated, but understanding it is essential in order to see how events of the future will unfold…
Three nights after the night of the Boardtrot's creation…
One night at the Boardtrot, Izzy was standing beside a pony who looked exactly like Comet as she and her friends were looking up at the sky with serious expressions on their faces. A comet was approaching them. It was the Forgotten Comet, a fearsome enemy of the Auroricorns.
"Now is the time to light up the sky…" Izzy spoke with full sincerity.
She and her friends fully intended to bring about the end of the long, destructive cycle this comet had brought about. Now that they knew how much pain it had caused someone close to them, this matter was personal. They believed that they could finally bring an end to the story of the legend through giving this tale of twin stars a happy ending…
This is how the story of the legend goes…
Long, long ago, Starlight Ridge faced a great calamity. The small, snowy, starry village was facing a threat far greater than Allura. A comet created from an overwhelmingly powerful amalgamation of dark, corrupted energy was set to crash into their land and cause terrible destruction. The Auroricorns could not stop the comet with their magic alone, and so, the leader of their village and the most powerful magic user in the land had to create a spell unlike any other in order to save them. A terrifying price had to be paid, however. This spell didn't just demand the life of its user in exchange for the power it would grant them…it would also effectively erase them from existence, eradicating their identity.
The comet threatening the village was no ordinary comet that could be destroyed by conventional means, thus the village leader had to come up with a creative solution that unfortunately came with a brutal cost. The village leader was able to communicate with the universe and discover that the reason for this calamity was because of an upset in the world's balance of dark energy and light energy. The principles of Yin and Yang dictated that this dark force of destruction, the comet, needed to be complemented by an equally powerful force of light and creation. Destruction could not be destroyed by destruction, thus it needed something to merge with it and recreate it. Thus, the village leader used the spell she made in order to fuse her entire being, body, mind, and soul, with the comet, creating a balance of Yin and Yang.
Once she was one with the comet, only existing as a ball of dark and light spiritual energy, she was sent into deep space. Not wanting her subjects to be overwhelmed with grief over her loss, she designed the spell to erase all memories of the user from the minds of those who knew them. Being a proud and studious magic user, she chose to have her memory live on through her spells. To preserve her legacy and prevent a catastrophe like the one she had stopped from happening in the future, she left behind a book of spells for her successor, the next leader of Starlight Ridge, to study and practice. This book is also what tells us the story of the legend, its title being…
Forgotten Comet.
Comet had been told this story ever since he was a colt…and it always filled him with questions. He had his own copy of the book that he would diligently read, seeking to find answers to the questions he had. He could never understand why the village leader would go so far as to have all memories of her erased or bring himself to believe that the sacrifice of a pony's existence was the only way to stop the comet. She would've also been erasing memories of her from the minds of her loved ones…what kind of terms was she on with her family?
He always felt that there was something the village leader was missing…something that every pony who read the story was missing…and part of the reason why he came to Equestria was to find that something. For it was when he met Izzy and her friends that he felt a premonition. He immediately sensed a love for creativity within Izzy that touched his devoted soul…she and her friends ignited a spark in him that had him feeling like they could help him find what everyone else missed…
However, the more Comet looked for that thing he thought every pony missed after he came to Equestria, the more he understood the mindset of the village leader who stopped the comet. Just like her, he became able to communicate with the universe, learning new information that horrified him and made him want to distance himself from his friends, not wanting them to get dragged into danger. He discovered that the comet that threatened his village all those moons ago…had actually been a recurring phenomenon. The village leader had not just erased the memories of her subjects for personal reasons…but to try and stop the comet's return.
She discovered the magic of willpower in her conversations with the universe, how things can happen because of what ponies will. With ponies mourning her loss and wanting her back, they would also be unknowingly wishing for the comet to come back, for her existence was now one with the comet's. What the village leader didn't know, however, was that the existence of a pony could not truly be erased. Even with her identity gone, the ponies still remembered her deep down in their subconscious minds. Subconsciously, they willed for her return, making the return of the comet inevitable. Another thing the village leader didn't know was that she had inadvertently created an endless cycle through the way she had stopped the comet while leaving behind a record of the spell she used to do it.
When the comet she became inexorably returned and threatened Starlight Ridge once more, the new village leader stopped it using her spell…but in turn, became one with the comet. The successor the new village leader had chosen would meet the same fate when the comet returned, and so on. The Auroricorns had become ensnared in an infinite loop, a loop Comet was more determined than ever to break once he learned of its most recent victim…a family member of his…
"UUUWWWAAA!" Comet cried out in despair upon being given this devastating revelation by the universe.
Learning of the tragedy his kind were bound to was hard enough on him, and now, he had to bear the weight of the tragedy that had stricken his own family. It was this revelation that made him feel like he and the first village leader to stop the comet had some kind of special connection…
Someone in his family had been a powerful magic user. They shared the same cutie mark as him, something possible for Auroricorns with them being a special breed of ponies that had magically evolved, and had been deemed worthy of becoming the next possessor of the Nova Charm and the next leader of Starlight Ridge. Like Comet, this relative of his wanted to break the cycle the Auroricorns were trapped in and was doing extensive research to find a way.
Although he ultimately ended up having to use the fusion spell in the book to stop the comet, he had come up with theories on how it worked and other ways it could be stopped while doing his research. The universe told Comet of the theories his relative had come up with after restoring his memories of him, but unfortunately, testing them would prove to be difficult. To complicate matters further, Comet learned that the soon approaching comet was strangely not set to strike Starlight Ridge this time, but Maretime Bay…
"WHAT?!" Comet impulsively cried in concern and shock upon learning this.
At the time he had found out about this, it was late at night, and he immediately put his front hooves around his mouth, worrying that he might have woken someone up. Comet lived in a room on the first floor of the Crystal Brighthouse with his friends. However, ever since he had discovered the truth about the Forgotten Comet, he had been casting memory-erasing spells left behind in the book by the village leader who first stopped the comet to make his friends forget about him as a way to protect them, not wanting them to be crushed by his heavy burden. Comet waited for a while, and after hearing no reaction to his cry, breathed a sigh of relief.
"I'm sorry, every pony…" he said remorsefully in thought as he returned to researching ways to break the cycle of the Forgotten Comet, something he had been doing around the clock in his room ever since he learned of the dreadful loop. "You may be my friends, but this kind of threat is on a completely different scale than what we had to face together back in Starlight Ridge with Allura stealing the Nova Charm. This threat has never been stopped without a sacrifice before and even if I succeeded in stopping it without sacrificing myself…there's no guarantee I'd ever see him as his true self again…"
By "him", Comet was referring to the relative he had lost. His only hope of seeing him as the pony he knew again was a theory his relative had formulated about what happens to the souls of the Auroricorns who become the Forgotten Comet after another Auroricorn sacrifices their existence to become the new comet. He believed that the soul of the original comet would not merge with the soul of the new one, continuing to have no personal identity, but become a star in space with its identity restored if it wasn't already regained. The reason he believed this tied in to what he believed about a reason why the comet would always return besides the magic of willpower. He believed this reason was because the soul of the heroic Auroricorn that became the comet, its good-natured light energy, had to eventually leave it. Knowing this, the Forgotten Comet would seek out a new source of light energy before that soul would depart in order to maintain its stability.
Having special magic tied to luminous phenomena, Comet knew with certainty even before communicating with the universe that the souls of ponies could become stars in the sky or make them grow brighter by becoming darkness in space. He wanted to confirm the theory his relative postulated by asking the universe what happened to the souls of the Auroricorns who stopped the Forgotten Comet in the past. However, the universe refused to divulge this information, asserting that there are only certain things it can reveal to certain ponies.
The reason it told him what it did and restored his memories of his lost relative, hastening the comet's return, was because it believed that its inhabitants were now able to permanently stop the comet. What the universe did tell him though in an attempt to attenuate his suffering was that he would see the relative the Forgotten Comet took from him whole again, a secret about the universe making his restoration possible. Not only that, but if he proved himself to be a truly righteous soul, he would shine brighter than ever before alongside his best friend…
"My best friend, huh…" a dejected Comet now thought as he remembered this promise from the universe that wasn't filling him with the same feeling of wonder it once did. "I wonder who exactly the universe was referring to... Regardless, when all this is done, will any pony I've ever known even remember me?"
Comet looked out a window by a desk he had been sitting at with all the notes of research he had compiled on it. Drawn on some of his notes were sketches of crystals, one particular drawing showing six colored jewels and a gray stone, and sketches of stars, stars he could see shining brightly outside. He then saw two stars that had an especially radiant glow appear as if they were dancing around the moon…
"Is this…a sign?" he asked himself curiously, remembering another thing the universe had told him...
"Just like in ancient times, the stars will aid in an escape…I wonder…if I really do succeed in bringing him back…maybe it will help me find my element. If I do that, maybe I truly can shine…"
While Comet's attention was captured by a sight he believed could be prophesying his fate, other things that would determine his fate were already being set in motion…
Something purple could be seen glowing in the sky that caused a light to shine in the purple stone embedded in the star-shaped accessory hanging from his horn. Also, upstairs, Izzy, sleeping soundly, had heard Comet's earlier cry in a dream. In this dream, she was told the same secret of the universe Comet was told as she conversed with the soul of a star...
"Heh heh, what…" she said teasingly, talking in her sleep. "You'd be surprised by what even something as simple as a song performed by true friends can do…"
She would soon be changed forever…