My Little Pony, Friendship is Magic: Stallion Edition

by SuperPinkBrony12

Chapter 116: Back to the Past

Shining Armor and Spike were quite relieved when the time bubble deposited them back in Canterlot in their own timeline. They were at least back on the right track, and now they could focus on stopping Starlight Glimmer.

"Alright!" Shining cheered, readying his horn. "When Starlight shows her face this time, I'll be ready for her! And this little charade will come to an end."

But no sooner had Shining spoken those words, when there was a blast of magic and he found himself trapped in a giant crystal alongside Spike. "You can certainly try, but I think you'll find it's not gonna be as easy as you think," Starlight taunted with that sadistic smirk. "So predictable. I knew you'd try to stop me sooner or later. But I'm one step ahead of you, I rigged Starswirl's spell so that, whenever you go back in time, so do I. But I end up further back in time then you do, so no matter what I always come out on top!" Leaping on top of the crystal, the mare added in an angry tone. "And now, it's payback time!"

"Payback for what?! For exposing you as a fraud and a dictator?! Because you did it all to yourself, my friends and I merely exposed what you tried to keep hidden!" Shining hissed.

"Don't presume you know me, you're no psycho-analyst!" Starlight snapped back. "I built that village to be a sanctuary, a safe haven! A place where nopony felt superior just because of their cutie mark! And you and your do-gooder friends took that away! So now it's your turn to have everything you care about be taken away!"

Shining only rolled his eyes. "It's a pity, Starlight. I'd hoped all that time on the run would change you, but I see it's only made you even more bitter and alone. Your line of thinking can still be described by that four letter word, which you're totally full of! Now quit this idea of revenge and stop this before someone gets hurt, or worse!"

But Starlight only continued to rant on and on, seemingly paying no attention to her surroundings. "Cutie marks for cutie marks! Sounds like a fair trade to me!" She bellowed! "I don't care what you have to say, I won't rest until you and your friends fail to get your cutie marks, and see the world as I see it! Then maybe you'll see why cutie marks are evil, why I chose to build my village without them!"

Shining merely waited until Starlight was too absorbed in her rant to pay any attention to anything else. And then he shattered the crystal and blasted Starlight square in the muzzle.

"Oh, you clever son of a filly," Starlight remarked, as she regained her bearings. "You caught me in the middle of monologing. Well, I won't make that mistake again. You can't stop me no matter what you do, I will change the past whether you like it or not! And if you keep getting in my way, I won't hesitate to destroy you!" And with that, she vanished in a blinding flash of light.

---

"How does she keep doing this?!" Shining wondered aloud, while searching the streets for any sign of Starlight. "She's a slippery one for sure!"

Spike was trying his best not to notice, but it seemed like Shining was getting more and more upset by the second. By now, it seemed like every sentence he spoke was punctuated with a snort from his nostrils. "Hey, you okay? You're kind of freaking me out here, Shining." He nervously commented.

Shining stopped briefly in mid-air (though still flapping his wings). "Sorry, Spike. But something about Starlight's pettiness is getting on my last nerves. The more I hear, the less I can stand. And she crossed a line when she threatened my little sister! No one threatens those I care about and gets away with it! I have to find her and put a stop to this! For my sake, as well as her own! If this keeps up, I don't know if I'm gonna be responsible for what I'll do."

Spike gulped, looking down at a path near the royal guard barracks. "Well, speak of the devil. But I don't think you're gonna be too happy about what she's doing."

Starlight was talking to the two royal guards that were supposed to be on their way to meeting a young Twilight and stealing her doll. "Now just think about how you'd feel if somepony said and did such mean and hurtful things to the likes of you." She told them in her sweet tone of voice.

"Gee, I... guess we never really thought about it like that," The first guard considered, putting a hoof to his chin. "But when you put it in that way, it sounds pretty bad."

"Thank you, whoever you are," The other guard spoke up, bowing before Starlight. "It would've been very embarrassing for the royal guards and for us, if Captain Gleaming Shield had to deal with guards picking on defenseless ponies. I guess we sort of felt that wearing the helmets and armor made us invincible, and we forgot what it feels like to have an image to keep up."

"Hey, we all make mistakes," Starlight told the guards. "And don't worry, I promise you that nopony will ever have to know about this. You can go about your lives, being the fine, upstanding examples you were always meant to be. In fact, you should probably go help your fellow recruits, that way they'll have more time to spend with their loved ones."

---

Shining landed in front of Starlight just as soon as the guards had left! He was quite furious, his eyebrows had narrowed in anger, and steam was blowing out of his nostrils at an alarming rate! "You make me so sick, Starlight! I know full well you're only doing this so those bullies won't pick on my little sister, and I won't get my cutie mark!" He remarked with a glare. "But you don't understand! My friends and I are very important to the safety of Equestria! You're meddling with things you can't even begin to comprehend!"

Starlight wasn't convinced. "Oh please, next I suppose you'll be telling me that changing even a little thing in the past can grow into a huge problem for the future. And that the fate of all of Equestria hangs in the balance if your friends and you don't get your cutie marks. Spare me your overblown ego, prince."

"Look who's talking, Miss. Glimmer!" Shining snapped. "You think you're so special?! That everypony should give up their cutie marks and follow you like you're the next Princess Celestia?! Because I can assure you, you're not! You don't understand the magic of friendship, you only see others as stepping stones! For you to rise to power at their expense! Trust me, I've dealt with many ponies who think similarly, but even they at least have occasionally had a good thought. And none of them would be caught dead doing the things you're doing now. In the end though, you're all the same. You can dish it out, but you sure as heck can't take it!"

"Oh, so now I'm a bad girl, huh?" Starlight teased. "You gonna lock me up and throw me in a dungeon, is that it? Because so far I've been nice, I've stayed away from hurting the ones you care about the most. I only warned you about what I might do to your sister."

"Don't you even DARE!" Shining warned. "If you so much as touch her, Starlight, I'll have your hide!"

"You think your empty threats scare me?" Starlight fiendishly laughed. "I can see right through you. You're powerless to stop me, just as you're powerless to make those bullies pick on your sister, just so you can be the big hero. But if you really want to push me that far, that's fine by me. I just hope it was worth it when you see your little sister in tears, crying out for someone to save her, while you know that you're unable to do a thing without causing a time paradox."

When that sentence left Starlight's lips, Shining felt something inside him snap and snap hard! His horn started to spark quite ominously! "Oh, that's it!" He bellowed at the top of his lungs. "I'm sick of your little game, Starlight! I won't be part of this cat and mouse game, where you mess up time and I try to stop you, only to get sent to another timeline and have to work my way back! I'm stopping this here and now! You think cutie marks are so evil, and that you're so perfect?! Well, I'm about to show you a timeline, where you get everything you want!"

Spike became alarmed, and the sinking feeling in his stomach only grew deeper when he saw a familiar lime green aura with purple sparks start seeping out of Shining Armor's horn! "Shining! You're using dark magic?!" He cried out, as a massive time bubble formed overhead, and pulled Shining, Spike, and Starlight into it.

"I have no other choice, Spike!" Shining replied, even as he visibly strained to fight the evil thoughts that crept back to the forefront of his mind. "Starlight has to be stopped no matter what! And this is the only way I can think of that'll set her straight!" Then to Starlight he commented in an ominous tone. "It's funny. I never imagined a pony like you would be the one to push me over the edge and make me attempt this technique. I always imagined it'd be a monster like Queen Chrysalis, or Lord Tirek, or even that cowardly King Sombra. But I suppose in a sense, you are a monster. A monster hidden in plain sight, disguised as an ordinary unicorn. One that at first glance probably wouldn't be noticed. But a monster is still a monster, and the best way to deal with monsters is to stop them in their tracks. Hit them where they're most vulnerable."

Starlight wasn't sure what to make of Shining's speech, but she knew for a fact that he was causing all sorts of time themed objects to fly past in some kind of void. "What are you doing?!" She screamed above the roar of the abyss! "What kind of trick is this?! I know for a fact that this isn't any kind of spell Starswirl the Bearded could've accomplished, and I studied all his best works to find the one that worked for me!"

"And whoever says it was Starswirl the Bearded who taught me this?!" Shining roared back! "You pride yourself on knowing everything there is to know about me, but it's obvious you didn't do your research! This is something I learned from Discord, the spirit of chaos and disharmony, now reformed! It's a technique that even Discord himself hadn't done for a long time before he taught me! And it seems that the results are a bit bumpier than when he tried it!"

All of a sudden, everything became deathly still. All was darkness, illuminated only a little by the occasional floating clock or hourglass. But if one looked closely, a series of bubbles opened and closed in various areas.

"Welcome to the sea of time, Starlight Glimmer," Shining greeted, as he started to dim his horn a bit. "Now, give me just a second. I've used up a lot of magic to bring us all here, so I need to make sure I find the timeline I'm looking for." He flew all around, scanning each of the time bubbles, while Starlight found herself too unnerved to make a move.

"I sure hope there's a way for us to get back to our time after this. Whatever this 'sea of time' is, it freaks me out." Spike thought with a gulp.

Just then, Shining cried out. "A-ha! Here we go!" And lighting up his horn again, he dragged Starlight and Spike with him into the time bubble, as all three were overwhelmed by a blinding flash.

Author's Note:

What Shining does here is a technique he learned from Discord in My Little Pony, Friendship is Magic: Discord's Lesson, which is part of why I wrote that fic last year.

Comments

[titanhades70]

Yeah. I think I will stop reading here. SA has become such a Marty Sue, it's hard to take thus fanfic seriously at all.

[Comickook]

Hey there. Thanks immensely for getting the next chapter up. I really appreciate you going to the effort. Once again, VERY good job on the characterizations, exchanges and future chapter set-up in all the right places. I particularly liked Shiny actually being Genre Savvy enough to spot the pattern VERY early on and nip It in the bud as well as his rant to Starlight. Definitely beats the heck out of Starlight being Plot Armored to the absurd degree she was in the actual episode. I will VERY certainly be looking forward to more of this, but will also be very willing to be patient. After all, I get that real world concerns need to come first.

[SuperPinkBrony12]

8553485 Exactly how has he become a Marty Sue?

[Yoshifan30]

Starlight was talking to the two royal guards that were supposed to be on their way to meeting a young Twilight and stealing her doll. "Now just think about how you'd feel if somepony said and did such mean and hurtful things to the likes of you." She told them in her sweet tone of voice.

Grrr she did it again 😡

[Yoshifan30]

8553485
Huh interesting why exactly I'm not sure what your talking about?

[Yoshifan30]

"Welcome to the sea of time, Starlight Glimmer," Shining greeted, as he started to dim his horn a bit. "Now, give me just a second. I've used up a lot of magic to bring us all here, so I need to make sure I find the timeline I'm looking for." He flew all around, scanning each of the time bubbles, while Starlight found herself too unnerved to make a move.

Sea of time very interesting twist of a turn