The problem with Twilight Sparkle being the Princess of Friendship was that she was [i]good[/i] at it.

Or more precisely, she was [i]Twilight Sparkle[/i].

Sure, it took her a while to get the hang of how best to resolve friendship problems. And sure, the nature of ponies (and donkeys and griffons and dragons and changelings and yaks and any number of other sentient species) meant that new problems would keep coming up. But even if friendship wasn't an exact science, it was still [i]close enough[/i] to a science and that meant you could use control groups and hypotheses and deductions and…

Well, it only took eight-hundred ninety-seven years, five months, and thirteen days for Twilight Sparkle to permanently solve every friendship problem in Equestria. To be honest, it was surprising that it was that long. Once she had gotten everything into exact perfect harmony, and trained every being in the world on proper conflict-resolution practices, she only had one leftover issue.

She was [i]bored[/i].

Thankfully, it was Pinkie who noticed that her friend was having a problem, and gave her the solution. (Gosh, all those trainings worked [i]so well[/i])

"Well, if everyone in [i]this[/i] universe are already friends, why not go help [i]another[/i] universe?"

And it only took her four-hundred twelve years to sort out the problems in the dimension where everypony had the weird finger things and boot things and lived in a giant high school.

Thankfully, an infinite multiverse meant that she wasn't going to run out of places to go help any time soon. But it also seemed rude to butt into other parallel universes and take charge. So after reverse-engineering the mirror portal, she made a few tweaks such that it would instantly transport her to someplace in the multiverse where she was direly needed to solve a friendship problem.

After tying a rope to Spike, pushing him through and making sure he was okay when she pulled him back out, she decided she was ready for whatever challenges might come her way.

Taking a deep breath, she jumped through the portal. There was a bright flash, and a deafening crack.

And suddenly she was standing in the middle of an unfamiliar room.

Two bipedal creatures stared at her. One of them was dressed in black, with a swirly red cape. The other was wearing brightly-colored spandex and goggles.

The one in the cape recovered first. "[i]Now[/i] my minion! Destroy Ultra Man!" he commanded.

Twilight tilted her head, trying to get her bearings. She decided to go with Friendship-Suggestion-Opener #497. "Why would I do that?" she said earnestly. "Can't we all just be friends instead?"

The caped man's hand hit his face. The spandex man smirked.

"Well crap."