Tempest Shadow is the New Starlight Glimmer · 6:47am Jan 15th, 2019
One morning in Ponyville, Twilight and Tempest Shadow were walking together through the school of friendship. Tempest was admiring the school, and wondering aloud if some of the former Storm Guard might attend. Twilight was gently teasing her, asking when she’d admit Tempest wasn’t her real name.
Their conversation was interrupted by a horrified shriek—a strangled, choking cry of agony and fear. There at the end of the hall was Silverstream, pointing at Tempest with a shaking talon.
“She’s back. She’s back!” Silverstream screamed, her chest heaving as she hyperventilated. “Everycreature run!”
Then she bolted herself, flying off down a side passage.
“Silverstream?” Twilight called quietly, tapping on the door to Silverstream’s dorm room. All her friends were there. “Silverstream, are you okay?”
“Twilight, everycreature needs to run,” Silverstream answered, her voice shaking. “That mare with you works for the Storm King and she’s pure evil.”
“Silverstream, there is no Storm King anymore. Remember?” She gestured to Silverstream’s friends, who were all clustered up the hall.
“Yeah,” Sandbar said. “Chill out. Twilight kicked his two-legged butt, remember?”
“And you faced him down in that cave,” Gallus chimed in. “Pretty bravely, I thought.”
“See?” Twilight picked up where she left off. “Silverstream, Tempest is one of the good ponies now. You have nothing to be afraid of.”
From the far side of Silverstream’s door, and sniffle could be heard. “I don’t believe you.”
“Silverstream, I’m telling you, she is.” Twilight pressed on the door with a hoof. “And not only is she a good pony, but she’s working hard to make amends for all the bad things she did. She’ll apologize right now. Won’t she?”
Tempest let out a heavy sigh and nodded, stepping up to the door. “Hey, Silverstream, was it? I uh… I did a lot of bad things to the hippogriffs when I worked for the Storm King. And I’m sorry. For all of them.” When Silverstream didn’t answer, Tempest went on: “I um… I got the impression we’ve met before. From how you reacted. Did I do something to you personally?”
Another loud sniffle could be heard on the far side of the door. Then, Silverstream shouted: “You crushed my mother’s ribcage with your bare hooves is what you did! And when she was lying there gasping for breath, you threatened to rip out her feathers one at a time if she didn’t tell you where the rebel base was.”
Twilight’s jaw fell open. Silverstream’s friends stared.
Tempest bit her lip. “Could you, um… be more specific?” She glanced at Twilight. “Like uh… maybe some contextual information? To narrow it down? Like did this happen during the day or… at night?”
“At night.”
“Uh-huh.” Tempest nodded to the door. “And this was on Harmonizing Heights?”
“Yes.”
“Updown or downtown?”
“Uptown. By the palace.”
“Uptown by the palace…” Tempest shadow tapped her chin with a hoof. “Oh! Was this in the fall? And after she refused to tell me anything, I burned down her childhood home in front of her?”
Silverstream’s wail of grief carried clear through into the hall.
“Ah. That’s a yes.” Tempest cleared her throat. “Well. I’m very sorry about that.”
“Um…” Twilight’s ears folded back. “It’s good you’re sorry. Tempest. And see, Silverstream? It’s all better now. Right?”
“Actually,” Tempest clarified, “if that was her mother, there are probably a few other things I should say sorry for. Starting with saying sorry I made good on that threat when she didn’t talk. And I also shouldn’t have used her as bait in that trap—”
“—actually never figured out that your city was underwater. Poisoning the water supply over Harmonizing Heights was mostly a precaution. Still, I’m really sorry about your fish friends—”
“—understand that his leg did eventually grow back! We actually stopped using those traps a few months later. They had a hair trigger. Too many spontaneous amputations. But the point is, I wronged you, and—”
“—seems cruel, but really, it was mostly scientific. They say that nine out of ten soldiers aren’t actually willing to kill once they’re face to face with the enemy, so I needed to test the new recruits to see which ones were weak. And, well, it’s not like we were doing anything else with all those prisoners—”
“—resulted in the international ban on cluster munitions—”
“—and finally, I referred to you as ‘featherbrains’ in several public announcements, which I now recognize as racist and offensive language.”
Everypony stared at Tempest with wide eyes. Smoulder was hugging herself and trying not to shake in public. Yona’s eyes were filling with tears. Twilight’s mouth hung open.
“And that was wrong,” Tempest finished. “Good talk? Good talk. I think we had a good talk. Let’s uh… let’s give her some time.”
"How did you..." Twilight struggled for words. "That's more atrocities than all of our other villains combined!"
"Well, yeah. Twilight, I was an officer. I can't go around committing all the atrocities myself. I had to learn to delegate. You know. Make sure the operation scales?" She cleared her throat. "But that is... probably not the lesson to take away from this. Right?"
Inside her dorm room, Silverstream started to cry.
Later, after Twilight recovered, she gave Tempest a firm talking-too.
Yona find new best friend. Tempest is greatest Yak ever!
"door, and sniffle could be"
"door, a sniffle could be"?
"one at a time if you didn’t tell her where"
"one at a time if she didn’t tell you where"?
"Tempest shadow tapped her"
"Tempest Shadow tapped her"?
"a firm talking-too."
"a firm talking-to."?
Hah, another nice one. :D
Yeah, the laws of justice in My Little Pony are a little... hollow. This was funny but horrifying.
Oh my! That firm talking-to might turn into an actual lecture when Tempest starts recounting all of the other nations they'd conquered before the hippogriffs. Twilight might actually need Celestia to give Tempest a silent stare of [gasp!] admonition.
If she really did all those things, she’s a war criminal and needs far worse than a “firm talking to.”
Yeah, I'm having a hard time seeing Tempest as that sociopathic. She has issues for sure, but there can only be one Glimglam.
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She didn’t do any of those things. It’s not that kind of show, and this is a comedy fan-fiction.
Which, by the way, was hilarious. So...how many hippogriff rib ages did she break that particular night at Harmonizing Heights while demanding to know the location of their rebel base? I’m feeling it was at least three.
I was going to curse your name to the heavens for daring to compare perfection in pony form to a common witch, but this made everything better. XD
Top stuff.
This was perfection.
*~ Thaaaaaat’s Tempest
She got a down-dressin’ and she’s learned her lesson
Tempest Shadow
The wacky reformed war crim-in-al ~*
I hope Starlight wasn't in earshot to take notes... I'm probably one of the few who like Starlight but let's be honest she'd have done the exact same thing to Ponyville to get revenge on Twi.
But at the same time I found Out of Space to be very funnily accurate.
As or Tempest, I still want more of her... Maybe next season or in another movie?
"Silverstream, isn't your mother still alive?"
"Tempest hit her corpse so hard, she killed her back to life!"
"It's a gift."
Yeah, I don't think Tempest Shadow's ready for a comeback quite yet. Also, her new material needs work.
Reformed villains are fun. The more (formerly) genocidal, the more adorable. Touhou taught me that ages ago. 👐
Hmm, I don't know Twilight, one of those potential timelines Starlight created seemed to have wiped out all life, so she likely still has a higher death toll than Tempest. Though, to know for sure, they would have to sit down together and do the math.
"On the bright side," Twilight said during the later Friendship Conference — with a Very Pointed Stare in Tempest's direction — "I can assure you all that she will bring that very same sense of thoroughness and efficiency to her friendship studies."
"Indeed," Tempest said, seeming to not even notice the glare. "For example, just last night, I delegated eighty-six squadrons of Friendship Troopers to go door-to-door to every single resident of Mount Aris."
Twilight blinked. The room went dead silent.
"Wait," she managed. "What? Why?"
Tempest shrugged. "To say sorry to the hippogryphs for my actions leading a hostile invasion force, of course. It was an optimal balance between efficiency, and providing a personal touch to my apology."
"That … but …" Twilight said, then did the little hoof-chest-breathy thing and gave Tempest a rigid smile. "Okay, let's have a talk about efficiency later, but for right now, I don't suppose you could call them back?"
Tempest shuffled her hooves, looking for the first time slightly uncomfortable. "I … don't know if that would be a good idea right now."
"It's okay," Twilight said soothingly. "We can handle the apologies later. Together."
"That's not the issue," Tempest said. "The apology phase is already complete. You see, I didn't want to risk missing any residents after they left for work or school, so I told the troopers to visit at 5 a.m."
Twilight stared helplessly, groping for words.
"Tempest," she finally said, "that wakes ponies up."
"That was the point, yes. Remember when you told me that Applejack would appreciate breakfast in bed for her birthday? An apology in bed seems like an even better way to start the day."
The rest of the room stared in horror at Twilight. Twilight doubled down on the rigid smile.
"Just to be clear," she said, "you had 'Friendship Troopers' storm into ponies' bedrooms at 5 a.m.?"
"With apologies."
"Across the entire city at once."
"Of course." Tempest raised one eyebrow. "… And?"
"…and. And." Twilight fluffed her wings, and said delicately: "You didn't see any problems with a tactical pre-dawn citywide, quote, 'friendship visit'?"
"Oh, of course," Tempest said, a trace of smugness creeping in. "But I accounted for them."
Twilight tried not to notice the way the rest of the room was quietly shuffling toward the exits.
"How so?"
"Well," Tempest said as if explaining to a foal, "if the city guards had noticed, it would have spoiled the surprise. And if the palace guards had noticed, we would never have been able to personally deliver an apology to the Queen. So while Squadrons 1 through 12 secured the front gate and Squadrons 13 through 67 climbed over the city walls, Squadrons 69 through 86 parachuted into the palace courtyard —"
"— of course, there was no way to get Friendship Troopers into the barracks with traditional tactics, short of a costly frontal assault. Which is why I made an agreement with Chrysalis, so I could deploy changeling infiltrators as Squadron 68 —"
"— but once the city was under control, it was a given that Chrysalis would betray me, which is why I also deployed the dragon I subdued last week as a reserve force —"
A throat loudly cleared from the front door. Twilight glanced over.
"My sister," a sleepless Luna said in a voice edging on Royal Canterlot volume, "would like to know why we are receiving reports from the Crystal Empire that they can see smoke rising from Mount Aris, and reports from the Zebran capital that there are refugees begging for aid on their shores."
"It's under control," Twilight and Tempest chorused.
They glanced at each other. Twilight let out a long sigh and facehoofed.
Tempest winced.
"I'm sorry," she said quietly. "Does this mean I need to prepare another apology?"
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Well, everypony has her own thing. Pinkie Pie bakes I'm sorry cakes, Tempest launches I'm sorry invasions
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This is tremendous.
Churchill is quoted as saying that history is written on the victors. I daresay war crimes are charged or pardoned by the victors. If you want any say, you'd better have a delegate on the council.
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Glorious. :D
I think Starlight might try and sue.