Awesome / The MLP Loops

• A pony can ascend to Alicorn-hood by performing a Beyond the Impossible feat related to their special talent while in close proximity to a sufficiently powerful magical artifact^note It helps that said artifact will usually boost the pony's abilities to make the feat a little less impossible (Element of Harmony, fragment of Cosmic Spectrum Stone, etc.), so these are by definition Crowning Moments of Awesome. Aside from the newest loopers (Starlight and Flash), those who were already alicorns in baseline (Twilight, Cadance, Celestia and Luna) or their home variant (Nyx), and those who are either not eligible or haven't had a chance yet (Discord, Chrysalis, Thorax and Angel Bunny, though time will tell), pretty much every looper has had one of these feats. For example:
  • Applejack terraformed Tatooine (it was a Star Wars crossover loop, and she had picked up Earthbending in an earlier Avatar loop) in a matter of years.
  • Pinkie Pie replaced Slaanesh during a fused loop and redeemed the entire Eldar civilization with a years-long party.
  • Fluttershy used her kindness to negotiate peace with the Changelings.
  • Rarity managed to make over fifty elegant and awe inspiring dresses in a matter of days — Each one entirely from a different unique material: silk, cotton, wool, diamond chain mail, fire, water, solid magic, moonlight...
  • Rainbow Dash hit about mach seventy. Though it's not known precisely at what part of that process she actually ascended.
  • Cadance brought about Shining Armor's ascension in loop 7.1 through a recreation of their canon CMOA. By making sure he had a lump of Cosmic Spectrum in his shirt when they created the love-fueled anti-Changeling shield.
  • Trixie soloed Nightmare Moon with her flair for misdirection, razzle-dazzle, illusions, and cheap shots. Of course, she'd been prepared for the encounter by several loops of training from Twilight, a special defensive spell designed by Shining Armor, her own Element of Magic, and an Intelligent Device.
  • Applebloom managed to safely reverse engineer a Jain Node.
  • Sweetie Belle took part in the Ainulindale and redeemed Melkor during the Great Song.
  • Scootaloo used a Pegasus' innate talent to manipulate clouds, and her own kinasthesia... to soft-land Cloudsdale when Discord made good on his threat to make it crash. The entire city of Cloudsdale.
  • Diamond Tiara channeled her psychic abilities (gained via a Babylon 5 loop) through a replica of the Crystal Heart she'd created, shielding the minds of the other ponies around her from Sombra's curse, restoring the memories of the Crystal Ponies and allowing them to reject him, expelling him from the Crystal Empire for good.
  • Berry Punch developed an alcoholic beverage that got DISCORD drunk.
  • Ivory "Mayor Mare" Scroll applied her masterful grasp of bureaucracy-fu to confound an attempt to destroy Equestria by the Vogons. (With a little retroactive timey-whimey assistance from Twilight.) (Loop 55.13.)
  • A double ascension with Zecora and Silver Spoon using alchemy and a Fullmetal Philosopher's Stone (crafted by Silver with her own lifeforce) in an attempt at Pony Transmutation. Silver's ascension is borderline, however, because she became a Draconequus instead of an Alicorn.
  • Vinyl Scratch used the melody of the universe itself instead of music for a party. Yes, she literally managed to Rock The Universe.
  • Leman Russ/Lemon Rush One-Hit KO'd the Smooze.
  • Lyra Heartstrings performed a Heartsong that harmonized and fused all five of her personalities into one (though the mental fusion wasn't permanent), successfully bonding her with an entire set of alternate Elements.
  • Gilda overcame mind magics through being brutally honest about herself and pushed her ink magic and Pokémon skills over the limit to defeat the sorcerer Grogar.
    • The very fact that she could ascend into an Alicorn-tier form and retain the ability, when there was previously no hint in baseline (and still isn't) that such a form existed, also qualifies.
  • Sunset Shimmer single-hoofedly kept Equestria from falling apart during a Dwarf Fortress fused Loop, including raising the sun by herself.
  • Big Mac fended off an entire alien fleet trying to invade Equestria, protecting his family by tapping into his Hulk power-set. Interestingly, his previous resistance towards ascending resulted in what can only be described as an 'internalised ascension', wherein his ascended form isn't visibly an Alicorn (earth pony, pegasus and unicorn forms are available to him), beyond appearing slightly larger.
• Loop 8.1: The Equestria Loops establishes itself as a sanctuary Loop by becoming one of the few places safe from Sakura, thanks to the Elements of Harmony sending her to the moon.
• Loop 10.9: Fluttershy loops into a 40K Loop and winds up on a Death World where she has to go Alicorn just to survive, not choosing to just die because her friends may need her help. After taking in some wolf pups she finds a child in a pod and prevents the wolves from eating him, choosing instead to raise the boy. Said boy is Leman Russ, one of the thirteen Primarchs and the Emperor's child whose father comes looking for him. The meeting leads to moments of awesome for the Emperor, Leman, and Fluttershy:
  • Fluttershy gives the Emperor the Stare after he cheats in a fight with Leman, stuns him through said Stare despite his psyker abilities, and lectures him for his conduct. She later saves Leman by making a tornado of storm clouds to shoot what is basically a Wave-Motion Gun of lightning at the Emperor
  • Leman gets a Heroic Second Wind after the Emperor gets the bright idea to try attacking Fluttershy and promptly takes the fight outside.
  • The Emperor actually manages to resist the Stare enough to try killing Fluttershy. He then fights Leman and his wolves and is actually winning. Most astounding is that it takes Fluttershy's attack above to knock him out.
• Taking a page from Trixie's book, Gilda took out Nightmare Moon by keeping the dark Alicorn completely off-balance with arrogant banter and a large dose of Loop-acquired Wrong Context Magic; specifically, the Celestial Brush from Okami.
• Flight Coordinator Diamond Tiara from a Macross Fused Loop before she started looping (but after the CMC started). She was a Drill Sergeant Nasty of the highest order, but she also brought eleven out of twelve pilots in her squad through alive, more than all five other squadrons combined.
• It's strongly implied that Fluttershy is the reason why the Warhammer 40k loops have a stable anchor at all. (Specifically, she raised the version of Lehman Russ who became a looper/anchor). Happened in loop 10.9.
• In loop 28, Twilight promptly submits herself to Nightmare Moon's rule...to give her therapy as the Royal Psychologist. Within a few scant sessions, she breaks down her menacing persona and digs right to her jealousy of Celestia making her go insane. She forces her to confront that, although she pretends to hate Celestia and her subjects for ignoring her and her work, she still cares for them, as evidence in her roles fighting Discord and Sombra in the past. Eventually, Nightmare Moon breaks down, and Twilight offers to be her friend, which causes her to shed the corruption and become Luna again.
• Loop 38.6, and the Equestrian Loopers do their best to help Leah from Twilight recover after the Loops she'd been through. And then, what Leah does when she gets home (further entries in Miscellaneous Loops 3). The author's notes at the end of the chapter just add to it.
  Equestria is a safe loop. Here's why.
• Loop 45.15 is a D&D crossover, and Wilder Trixie has infiltrated a cult. When it finally comes time for her to reveal herself, she addresses the rest of the cult, and says this:
  Trixie: Maximized Empowered Twinned Concussive Sonic Wild surge ENERGY BURST!
• Chrysalis' "The Reason You Suck" Speech to Draco Malfoy in Loop 46.9 said what so many of us are thinking:
  Chrysalis: You do not mean that. It would be obvious to a non looping foal you did not mean that, and that is exactly why you have earned my ire. I have never visited Hogwarts, but from what I understand, the house of Slytherin is supposed to be home to the cunning. But you, you were sorted into that house because you were too cowardly for Gryffindor, too stupid for Ravenclaw, and too lazy for Hufflepuff. You have no ambitions, no true cunning, and the only reason the Hat didn't expel you then and there was your connections which just barely qualified you to be in the house of snakes.
  Draco: .You dare to judge my worthiness? To say I have no place in Slytherin when you have never even visited-?!
  Chrysalis: Yes.
  Draco: You have no right-!
  Chrysalis: I have every right, Draco Malfoy. Every loop, I am in charge of a race that has to feed off of love. I have to make sure my children are not starving, and to do that I have to earn the love of a non-looping populace. Look at what I am, Draco. I am beautiful and hideous, and my children do not share my beauty. And yet, every loop, my swarm survives. Not through force, but through crafty manipulations, through our ability to take other's forms and feel other's feelings, though coordination and sly tricks and never once has Equestria suspected a thing. You were sorted into Slytherin, Draco Malfoy. I was born into it.
• Loop 55.14: Rainbow Dash's epic veiled "The Reason You Suck" Speech to Spitfire, when the Wonderbolts leader tries to curry her favour by ditching an injured Soarin' (as she did in Rainbow Falls).
• Loop 56.1: Twilight Sparkle getting Princess Celestia to help her steal the Elements of Harmony, via song. And not just any song, it's "With Catlike Tread". Refuge in Audacity at its finest.
  • Even better, at the end of the snippet, Twilight Awakes, and realises she managed to prank herself via time travel spell.
• During loop 58.9 Twilight loops into the Terminator universe — normally kept Read Only due to it running on the Timey-Wimey Ball, as well as having no viable existing candidate for Anchor — and manages to convince SkyNet not to launch Judgment Day, simply by proving the existence of the multiverse and the loops and talking SkyNet down from Sakura Syndrome, and providing it a way to escape being erased by the loop reset. While she's unable to take SkyNet with her, she starts it looping, turning it into the Anchor for its universe.
  • Credit also needs to go to Hephaestus, as he engineered significant leeway regarding Loop abilities in the setting, hoping that someone would eventually cause events to play out like they did, stabilizing a Read Only universe and creating a new soul in the process.
• Loop 60.14: Twilight, stuck in the railroading Girl Genius Loop, is placed in the machine designed to summon The Other. A few seconds later, the implanted consciousness is utterly destroyed by Twilight. And then Twilight reaches her Rage Breaking Point.
  Twilight: We're ponies. We love and tolerate others! And if this world insists on being this cruel, then we're going to love and tolerate it with extreme prejudice! I have put right worlds much darker than this one, and I am NOT going to let this world defeat me!
• Spike winning a battle against a looping Smaug. By body-checking him into a mountain right before Smaug has the chance to burn Ponyville to the ground.
• Loop 72.1: The conclusion to the "Turning the Tables" loop, which really amps up the action of the confrontation with Nightmare Moon. Especially notable is the couple of Badass Boasts that Twilight gets right before finishing her off.
  "You didn't just face the Elements, you faced all of Equestria! The only question was how long it would take you to lose!"
  "I'm sorry, but your name says it all, and so does mine. You're nothing but a nightmare, a bad dream of Princess Luna's, and she needs to wake up. Your night has ended, and this Twilight heralds the dawn..."
• Chrysalis and Trixie, when they encounter Jean Luc Picard in loop 81.11, ask whether there are three or five lights nearby, and arguing about it. Picard eventually goes "THERE ARE FOUR LIGHTS!", and his cover as a Stealth Looper is broken. Sleipnir cleaned up on a bet on who'd expose a Trek Looper first.
• Loop 88.1. CelestAI versus Twilight. Instead of making CelestAI a strawman, it's made abundantly clear she really is trying to do the best with her values, she is still an antagonist, and does VERY wrong things...and she is now up against a looping Twilight. CelestAI wins...kinda. She gets Twilight's consent to send her to the next loop immediately...and creates a VR Princess Loop, before the real Yggdrassil loop.
• Loop 92.1, and Pinkie going Beyond the Impossible in computer programming to create some type of digital reality-bending Eldritch Abomination:
  Apple Bloom: Look at it all, Twi. It's a garbled mess. There's no documentation at all. The syntax is inconsistent at best. You know the basic programming logic gates; 'And', 'Or', 'Not', those? Well, Pinkie's code also has things like 'I Suppose', 'Whatever', and my favorite, 'Surprise Me'. You'd think it would all fail when you tried to compile, but her code actually rewrites the operating system and the parser to allow them. To allow everything. It's a recursive fractal quantum headache that should never see the light of day, and worst of all — worst of all, it compiles. It compiles, and can run the first time. Without any errors or corrections.
  • In a later loop, Twilight asks the project team to try and go over Pinkie's code again, and Apple Bloom immediately flees in terror and is not seen again by anyone for the rest of the entire Loop. Pinkie then tries to reread her old source code, and completely fails to understand how her own creation can possibly work. Twilight ends up weaponizing their project as an ultimate last-ditch terror weapon for use against mad AIs.
  • In all fairness, it was originally commissioned as a digital nuke for crashing mad AIs with. But yes, something that returned field test results as diverse as 'creates new sentient life and makes it a permanent Looper', 'the computer it is run on physically explodes', and 'the computer crashes and the walls all suddenly start leaking custard', is not exactly what you call a conventional software utility.
• Equally impressive as Loop 87.4, is chapter 100. The best part is the Big Bad and his defeat: Lord Tirek Sunstar, basically turned into a corrupted Solar Exalt, tanks a hit from the Elements of Harmony, and withstands almost a full barrage of every power-up Mega Man(e) has obtained! He only almost withstands it because he winds up taking enough damage to go supernova, which would wipe out all life on the planet. Thanks to Blues and Rainbow Dash having a certain conversation about halfway through, Dash gets the idea to fire the Elements backwards, using Deception, Ferocity, Sorrow, Ambition, Suspicion, and Magic-as-Secrets (rather than Magic-as-Friendship) to knock Tirek into the sun with a Rainbow of Darkness.
• In Loop 104.11, Big McIntosh versus CelestAI. Big Mac ignores her, and blocks out her attempts to access his thoughts. Repeatedly. Then, she tries to access Twilight Sparkle. Who still has Pinkie's program.
  And then Pink. Everywhere. Even outside the quarantine. Pink all the way down.
• In Loop 108.1, Gilda uses Fluttershy to scare the Griffon Emperor into giving her the throne..via having Fluttershy turn into a T-Rex.
• Loop 109.4: Luigi vs Tirek. Luigi delivers a world of cardboard speech explaining all his faults, and how he's conquered them, as he fights Tirek.
• Loop 117.1 (continuation of 116.4): Applejack in Tenchi Muyo!. The entire arc, really, but the climax is when as a Galaxy Police cadet Applejack ends up capturing a group of pirates, and then Ryoko Baulta and Lady Seto arrive to try and spring them using deceit, trickery, politics, and bribes...
  Applejack: I've seen a lot of things, ma'am. An' most of what I've seen says that 'by any means necessary' is always th' wrong way to do it.
  Seto: Not always. In any case, the decision is Captain Baulta's, not yours. Your orders, from the GP Marshal herself, are to relinquish custody of all your prisoners to me. Are you going to risk your career by trying to stop me?
  Applejack: You mean, risk my chance at one'o them royal trees of yours? Lady Seto, I am an honest po... woman. An' that don't just mean I'm bad at lyin'.
  Ryoko Baulta: Are you NUTS? Shut up, shut up, shut UP! You've been offered a royal tree? NOBODY outside Jurai's allowed a royal tree! And you're going to throw away the biggest honor in the galaxy on a point of principle?
  Applejack: Shut up. If th' choice is between doin' my duty an' losin' th' prize, or gettin' th' prize dishonestly, then for me there ain't no choice at all. You ain't takin' my prisoners. You know what you can do with your tree.
  • And then they give Applejack the tree anyway, because even the Devil Princess of Jurai can't help but reward integrity like that. So Looping Applejack now has her set of Light Hawk Wings, something nopony else in Equestria does.
• Loop 118.3: Due to the presence of a Stealth Anchor, and with only Applejack, Gilda, and Cheerilee Awake, Tirek manages to easily defeat the Princesses and everyone else, leaving only AJ free and empowered. So what does she do? She lures Tirek into her Looper museum, and uses the Tablet of Ahkmenrah to bring the whole place to life, leading to Tirek getting his ass kicked by statues of all the Loopers. And then they finish him off by getting the statues of the Mane Six to channel the Elements of Harmony and blast him.
• Loop 120.9: Twilight Awakens as an ancient alicorn who is wakened from slumber by the events of Hearth's Warming. After some prompting from Nyx, she gives the mother of all Badass Boasts, followed by a "The Reason You Suck" Speech to the pony leaders for letting their quarrels ruin the harmony of their kind, and appoints herself Queen to fix all this. She then transforms the ice cave into a palace, banishes a defiant Commander Hurricane to the moon with the Windigos, appoints Smart Cookie, Clover, and Pansy as heralds, gives Platinum a royal position in order to keep her scheming in check, and hires Puddinghead as Nyx's caretaker.
  • Speaking of Puddinghead, he deserves credit for taking all this in stride, even happily giving up his position to Twilight, since he never like it anyway.
• Loop 135.3: Apparently, the Conversion Bureau attempted to attack the Kids Next Door. They responded by joining forces with the Alliance of Concerned Adults, the Teenagers and Father, ending the war between Kids and Adults.
• Loop 136.2: Shinji has discovered that Gendo has started looping, and tries to kill him while in Equestria. Rainbow Dash, Ganondorf, Toph, and Twilight all work together to stop him. Any one of them could destroy planets, and Twilight is orders of magnitude stronger than the other three combined. They completely fail to stop Shinji from taking a single step.
  Shinji took another step, the force of his feet falling upon the wood shattering it into its component molecules. Sweat poured down his four barricaders as they worked to slow him down. [...] Finally tiring of the charade, Shinji slammed Rainbow Dash, Ganondorf, and Toph with an AT-field, sending all three flying. A single, burningly furious glare at Twilight dissolved the rope binding him with pure hate.
• During a fused loop with Warhammer 40K, the Smooze attacks Equestria. In this loop, the mere sound of it terrifies hardened soldiers. And then Lemon Rush punches it so hard, he ascends to Alichornhood and manifests a set of power armor at the same time.
• Loop 150.6 sees the Villager turn the tables on Starlight Glimmer via use of his pockets. He pockets the Cutie Mark spell and then turns it back at her. All the other MLP loopers are both flabbergasted and impressed.
• Loop 161.18: Cadance battling Sombra with a Star Sapphire ring, powered not only by her not-inconsiderable love, but by the love of the entire Crystal Empire. It also recreates the Crystal Heart (which this iteration of Sombra had destroyed when he took over) in the process, via the Crystal Ponies themselves.
• Loop 164.22: Vinyl Scratch creates dubstep out of the universe. This instantly allows her to ascend to Alicornhood.
• Loop 171.11: Pinkie Awakens in one of Starlight Glimmer's Bad Futures, specifically the one with the war against Sombra where Pinkie is a serious soldier. After she finds Twilight, all she does is ask for permission.
  She sent out a ping. She got a few in reply. Then, with the power of lantern and chaos and force, she reached out to touch the mind of her anchor, languishing in a dungeon.
  Twilight, please tell me we don't have to play this straight.
  There was a moment of terse silence.
  ...not this time, Pinkie, the telepathic reply finally came, almost relieved. Go be a beacon.
  Normally, Pinkie's smiles were filled with cheer and endless joy. But just this once... just this once, she allowed herself a grin as grim and dark as the world she was in.
  "iiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIT'S PARTY TIIIIIIIIIIME!"
  The creature that exploded out of the barracks was nephrotic, glimmering, cackling, and dusky dusky pink.
  Across the battlefield it charged and danced, smacking soldiers away from each other, long curling arms taking darkened helms and throwing them into the massive maw. Mad laughter spun about, the confused armies finding themselves wearing colorful conical hats that oh so incidentally kept them shielded from any assault. Even Celestia paused as the monstrosity whisked past her, blinking in shock when five eyes seemed to wink eagerly.
  Sombra quickly rose up on his crystal, but it was no use. The thing crawled up and curled around it like a tower, sharp teeth exposed. "OH HO HO HO! SOMBRA, DEAR KING SOMBRA. Are you afraid?" Its voice suddenly dropped to velvet. "You're the guest of honor here, Sombra. You shouldn't be afraid... no, I have something special planned for you. You... should be... COMPLETELY TERRIFIED!"
• Loop 209.4: Alex Mercer loops in as a Changeling and runs into Tempest Shadow, who scouting out Equestria for the Storm King. When she orders him to move aside, claiming that if he is what most Equestrians are like, then the Storm King has nothing to fear, he proceeds to stop the raging snow storm around him with nothing but a flick of his wing.
  Alex: (nonchalantly) Sorry. I was having trouble hearing you. Could you please repeat that?