Twilight is almost used to being an alicorn now. She's accepted that unexpected change, and is even happy about it, most of the time. Her magical abilities have grown by leaps and bounds, and she's starting to enjoy the freedom offered by flight. While she can't imagine ever being as good as Rainbow Dash, anypony with reasonable standards would by now consider her quite competent in the air.
But despite her growing enthusiasm and confidence, there's something that she has neglected to deal with. Something that's bothered her at times ever since the transformation, but kept getting shuffled down her list of priorities. Fortunately, she knows just the pony to talk to for help, and she won't let nervousness and self-reliant rationalization hold her back anymore. The latest of Pinkie Pie's parties provides a perfect pretext for a conversation she should've had months ago.
If you're confused by the date listed on the chapter, that's just when I originally uploaded it for pre-reader viewing. Life got in the way and I didn't get around to hitting Submit until Feb. 7, 2016.
Just a good story. Have a thumbs up!
The last of all my dreams but still leave me
Nice story
"and more sheer magical power than I ever dreamed of"
Although still not enough to avoid being fought to a standstill seventeen times by a random Unicorn mage which didn't get taught by Celestia and which in fact nopony had heard of before
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I blame wanting to avoid collateral damage (to the past, even) and, of course, not really wanting to injure her opponent... Compare with the fight against Tirek --although she did have a significant power boost for that one, the whole tone of that fight was quite different...
Much like Celestia in the changeling invasion, yeah?
Also, she might have been either counting the element of magic / rainbow power, or simply engaging in hyperbole.
Regardless, thanks for reading and I hope you enjoyed it!
Odd, one would think that there WAS already plenty of Earth Pony Magic literature around...
Feels like you could continue this in a separate story and make a TwiJack out of it, no less.
Very well done.
~Skeeter The Lurker
6913427
That's what I'm saying.
I always enjoy a good exploration of the Alicorns as the paragons of the three tribes, and the earth side is always the least talked about. Nicely written with some food humor and a touch of fluff. Well done!
This was a great little one shot. Along with the other that have posted I think this could go even further as a slice of life story. If you do I would love to read it.
Headcanon accepted! I actually feel this sort of thing myself for real, sometimes. Empath and psychic with shamanic stuff going on now and then.
6913271 Well, there's also the fact that Twilight was trying to get things to stay one particular way, while Starlight was trying to get things to be any other way possible. It's like telling someone to keep a room tidy while someone else actively tries to mess it up. Ya get the best maid ever on that job, and the room's still likely gonna wind up messy at the hands of any old shlub.
Anyways, good story. Like to know more about this weird Earth Pony fanon, but whatcha got now is cool too.
I liked this enough that I'm disappointed it's only a one-shot.
Awww, I wanted them to explore Twilight's feelings more. I'm curious about that feeling of wrongness as well as her empathic sense for other ponies.
Please don't take it as rude, but how is this featured few months after the chapter was released (it says here that it's november 2015)? Do I not know something?
6913979 Publishing date.
6914073 Aaand? What's the difference?
Wait, releasing and publshing are two different things? Which one is first?
6914076 You can publish a chapter without publishing the story itself. Look at the "First Published" date.
6914084 Alright, I'll look into this, thanks.
Cute little scene. Also, Pinkie is awesome.
I don't suppose you've read Triptych? Applejack's prank seemed kind of like a shoutout or take that to her portrayal therein.
This story dose bring up a very good point. If Earth ponies have a kind of passive magic and your cutie mark is magic then what would your earth pony side do?
I have planes for my OC to become an Alicorn and I hadn't even thought about his earth pony side. This could be very interesting considering he's specialized in Rune magic.
Thank you very much for this.
I will be severely disapointed if there isn't a twijack sequel, I'll put it on your report card and send a letter back to your parents about how poorly they raised you
6913777
I'm surprised she didn't just charge her or waited for an opportunity to stun/incap her
6913271 Yeah but even if she was worried about all of that. The fight with Terik was at a standstill. He drained the population of equestria, (minus spike) and the spirit of chaos. While Twilight had her magic and three alicorns to back her up. Not counting counting discord, Twilight still equals the strength of a quart of equestria.Even while holding back, that is a lot for one unicorn to go against.
I liked the idea behind the story, and the way that Twilight described her budding earth pony senses. My problem is the way the dialogue was written. On one side, they took a long time to circle around to the point and it didn't feel very structured, but that's a lot like the way conversations work in real life. On the other side, they tended to over-explain themselves or what they were talking about, but that's a lot like how they talk in the show to make sure that viewers understand what's going on. So, you've got some realistic and unrealistic things about your dialogue here, but they don't really work together. Letting the conversation wander is something that happens in life because we can't plan out how a talk goes. Speaking in exposition is something they do in the show because they have to plan the lines out carefully enough to meet their time constraints, and make sure they don't lose the audience. So, it felt kind of awkward. Considering that it's Twilight and Applejack we're talking about, it feels wrong for them to be awkward.
Ultimately, I give it a thumbs up, but I'd give it another look for anything you can cut.
This is fantastic. Truly inspiring. Well crafted. Beautiful.
I'll give it a second read later - it might just knock a story out of my Top 10 list.
6913777
More than that, Twilight actually had to cast the time-travel spell like a dozen times by herself during their fight, while Glimmer's seemed to be drawing power from the map/castle/tree and thus not wasting any of her own reserves. While we don't know for sure how draining that is for Twilight, I imagine time travel spells aren't exactly an effortless affair (to put it mildly).
She was basically chain-casting time travel, all the while trying to fight Glimmer in-between without disrupting anything in the past, while having to prevent Glimmer from doing the same (which is an all but impossible task, considering any disruption to the race triggers a cascade) while Glimmer's task is doing exactly that, not actively fighting back at Twilight, all the while going for non-lethal approach (it's a lot harder to subdue someone than simply kill them. Killing is simple, taking someone alive, especially without serious injury, is where things get tough).
That's not to say Starlight isn't an impressive unicorn - she absolutely is, and Twilight herself noted as much. She's easily the best mage after Twilight herself that we have seen. But it wasn't a straight-up fight; Starlight's objective was to evade Twilight long enough to disrupt the timeline again (hardly a difficult task to achieve all things considered), not actually standing up to the alicorn in a drawn-out fight for any notable length of time.
Considering Twilight's vastly more difficult objective and the restraint she exercised while going about it while Starlight was going all out (if she had approached Starlight with the same mindset as she did Tirek, I think we would have seen a very different fight), all the while having to cast time travel after time travel, it's not really a poor showing on her part that she and Starlight seemed to be tiring at the same rate, despite the discrepancies in the difficulty between their respective tasks.
6914087
Yeah, it's been uploaded and sitting on the site, being occasionally edited and stuff, for much longer than I originally intended.
6914296
Thanks, I think you just managed to put into words something that was bothering me but I didn't quite know how to define. I'll definitely keep that in mind if I do any more revisions (or manage to come up with something good for a sequel).
6914146
Thanks! It's hard to do Pinkie justice, especially in such a short space, without going overboard and stealing the scene.
Which author? I've seen more than one story by that title. I've read one, but it was a while ago (and incomplete)...
6914543
Starlight is the most magically capable unicorn we've ever seen in the show, above and beyond Twilight herself. The only thing that kept Twilight in the fight at all is the fact she's an alicorn, if she was a unicorn too then there would have been absolutely nothing she could have done to stop Starlight's plan.
Starlight crafted a hideously complex spell that even Twilight can't really believe when she first sees it, she is an extremely capable flier using her magic, and she broke out of Twilight's holding spell almost effortlessly. This is on top of the fact that Starlight seemingly made/learned a spell that can rip a pony's cutie mark from their body.
Everything Starlight has done so far has been head and shoulders above anything Twilight ever achieved as a unicorn, and probably more impressive than most things she's done as an alicorn too. Starlight apparently didn't even go to a prestigious magic school either, unlike Twilight.
A nice little slice of life story. An enjoyable read, and amusing to when it was supposed to.
Good job
Also, trust Pinkie to know when to do something
This is a great story you wrote here. I've never seen someone do this before and I think you nailed it. To be honest, there really isn't room for a sequel here, so I don't think you should worry about doing one. It wouldn't compare to this one anyway.
Thus, Twilight trained in her newfround Earth Pony might until her mane fell out. From then on, she could win every fight with just....
ONE PUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUNCH!!!
6914754 Estee
If you want to do a sequel, maybe flesh out the reason Twilight felt uneasy or physically ill in some parts of the forest? Like, while she's learning her abilities, she uncovers something wrong with the Everfree?
Or maybe there's nothing wrong with the Everfree, and her nausea and aversion is due to the different kind of wild magic that allows it to grow on its own, and the whole thing could be about Twilight finally learning the difference between the forest's magic and nature in the rest of Equestria? It could make for a more slice-of-life-ish story than something being wrong with the forest itself, if you're not lookin for any kind of overdramatic plot points.
Also, this was a lot of fun to read, and if you can't tell, I REALLY want a sequel. Super curious, now.
6914942
Eh, you are exaggerating/miss-remembering a great deal. Firstly, there was no such instance where Twilight "wouldn't believe it when she saw it" - really, there wasn't (and I just rewatched to check). Secondly, that time travel spell wasn't Starlight's, it was Starswirl's, modified from the one Twilight herself used previously by Starswirl himself (Starlight's own words are that "Stawrswirl did all the hard parts already").
Thirdly, that "holding spell" was actually Starlight's that she used against Twilight first - which Twilight broke out of as well. She then used the spell against Starlight, who also broke out of it. By all accounts its a pretty crappy spell for holding unicorns, since it doesn't seem to impede one's ability to cast. Twilight really shouldn't have bothered copying it.
Self-levitation is impressive, but we have seen Twilight do so as well when she was a unicorn (she did so to break her own fall when tumbling down Sombra's stairs). Still impressive and evidently rare, but nothing ultimately new.
Her cutie-mark-stealing spell is the only truly impressive and unique showing she has had - and it is impressive - but overall compared to Twilight and the myriad of things she has done? Starlight's out of her league here and I have no reason to believe she would last against Twilight if they were having an actual stand-up fight, instead of her only fighting to disrupt the timeline (a much easier task than actually besting Twilight in combat) at which point Twilight gets sucked into some version of the future, where she has to waste time and energy getting back (and they still tire at an equal rate, showing a far larger magical/stamina reserve on Twilight's part).
So ... can't say I agree with what you say. Starlight clearly is extremely potent and can play in Twilight's ballpark, and she has a good head for combat and eking out advantages, but overall Twilight is head and shoulders above her, unicorn or not - it's only very specific circumstances that allowed Starlight to edge out a draw here.
6915255
I just went back and re-watched it too. Starlight is using Starswirl's spell, but - straight from Twilight's mouth - the 'original' version Twilight used could only go back a week as opposed to possibly over a decade. Plus Twilight was only able to keep herself in the past for something like 30 seconds, while Starlight's modifications allowed two ponies and a dragon to stay in the past seemingly indefinitely, on top of the spell behaving differently depending on who is using it. No matter which way you look at it, Starlight's version is several orders of magnitude better than Starswirl's. She obviously cracked something that eluded Starswirl when he made it, because who would call a shoddy time travel spell that only goes back a week for less than a minute 'finished' unless the creator saw no way of making it actually useful?
Not to mention that Starswirl's spell is held in the restricted section of the Canterlot library, so Starlight must have broken into that and got away clean somehow, plus she's shown to be able to turn invisible or something: Starlight is sat in the audience for Twilight's presentation one second, then the next she's just vanished without a trace.
So that means that Starlight's repertoire looks something like this:
- master infiltrator, can slip in and out of places like a whisper on the breeze
- can remove cutie marks
- better understanding of time travel magic than Starswirl, the only pony to have made a time travel spell
- can fly around effortlessly using magic, something Twilight has never done despite there being many times where that would have been really, really useful
- can go toe-to-toe with alicorn Twilight in non-lethal combat and fight her to a standstill (bear in mind that 4x alicorns' power is apparently enough to throw Tirek around, who must have weighed tens of thousands of tons)
Meanwhile, unicorn Twilight could lift heavy things, perform a ton of parlour tricks and sometimes shoot lasers. I genuinely cannot recall her ever doing something truly exceptional like perfecting time travel.
6915340
I can imagine one reason why Starswirl wouldn't want to make this version of the time travel spell (and as Glimmer herself said, modifying it wasn't actually difficult - by her own words, Starswirl had done the hard part) - because it has a chance of literally dooming Equestria. Just like it did in the episode - by messing with the past in a permanent fashion Starlight almost destroyed future. Or made it a wasteland, at any rate - I can certainly see why someone less extreme than Starlight would look at the possibilities and go "nope".
Don't get me wrong, modifying Starswirl's spell is impressive - I imagine there aren't many unicorns around who could do that. But I don't believe this is all that different from Twilight finishing Starswirl's spell that allowed her to switch around the destinies of ponies and ascended her to alicornhood, so she's not alone in tinkering with Starswirls's spells. And her version of the time travel spell does require the Map to be usable, she can't do it on her own.
As for Twilight, calling what she can do "parlor tricks" seems a bit selling her short (not to mention this sort of magic is what's actually more useful in day-to-day lives) - that's more of Trixie's repertoire. (unicorn) Twilight can transform beings into other species (mice into horses), summon matter (create objects out of thin air), control gravity, actually use dark magic, summon parasprites, give ponies wings and allow them to walk on clouds, mend/repair objects, animate objects, use a myriad of mind-affecting magic and teleport both herself and others. Create both magical shields and fields. Among a loundry list of other, less impressive things (and obviously use Starswirl's original time travel spell) - I doubt Starlight can match her in sheer versatility.
As for "lifting heavy things", it sounds more impressive when one considers what exactly she has lifted as a unicorn. People tend to remember the Ursa, but it's actually her stint repairing Ponyville's dam in the Mare do Well episode that's a far, far greater showing - she fished like 1/3 of the broken dam out of the river, floated it all back into place over like 20 seconds (while pushing against the pressure of the onrushing river - no small amount of force, that) and melded it back together.
People have actually been trying to calculate how much weight she must have moved there, approximately, given the size of the dam, the hole and the assumption that a pony is 1.5 meters high. The low end estimate is somewhere in the excess of a hundred thousand tons. Without factoring in the force of the onrushing river that she would have to push the boulders against. That's enough to lift a Nimitz aircraft carrier, planes and all. I have my sincere doubts as to whether Starlight would be able to replicate the saving of Ponyville if she was placed in Twilight's shoes at that moment.
Like I said, Starlight is clearly impressive - she has lots of power, lots of skill and is obviously good at magical theory. I could easily see her being able to serve as a stand-in for Twilight most of the time, as far as magical prowess being required is concerned. She may well be more battle-minded than Twilight. But overall a better/stronger mage? Nah, she's not quite there.
This is a very good story with a greater exploration of Earth Pony magic then I have read before.
It was also very kind of Pinkie to send Rainbow a package so she doesn't feel bad about missing the party.
I enjoyed this story. Have a like.
6914196 The Twilight/Tirek fight brought up a good question for me when watching the S5 Finale: Did Tirek come across Our Town and drain Starlight Glimmer?
My thinking is that no, he did not. For one, that would have more or less broken open the Cutie Mark Vault when Glimmer was drained, as it seemed that was being maintained by her magic, if even only passively. Secondly, if Starlight Glimmer really is as powerful as some are making her out to be due to the Twilight/Glimmer fights, then if Tirek absorbed her power, he would have had to have been more powerful than Twilight, and been able to take her.
I believe Twilight was indeed holding back a lot of her power due to wanting to minimize collateral damage as well as trying to maintain the status quo of the past. Starlight Glimmer, on the other hand, had no such restrictions, as her goal was indeed to simply do anything it took to change the past. As such, she poured a lot of her effort and power into effecting change, which is why we see her pulling off feats of power and magic that would put her on par with the self-handicapped Twilight. The two mares met in that proverbial middle ground where Twilight was holding back just enough to let Glimmer catch up.
If Twilight is allowed to ever just go full ham like she did with Tirek, even with out 3 other alicorn's worth of power backing her, I'd imagine she'd be an incredibly scary sight.
6915200 Except this was Whitetail Woods, a place that's within Equestria's pony-run nature. She's having the feelings of wrongness coming from there, not the Everfree.
Also, there's the point that she's picking up some sort of negative vibes from some ponies she comes across. Sort of similar to the developments of the movie Unbreakable.
All in all, some pretty decent sequel hooks for a random slice-of-life one-shot.
Reminds me of an idea I had that I only got around to writing half a chapter for a couple years back. Thanks for writing this out for us!
...wait... How is a story that was uploaded last year only getting featured now?!?
That's some good dialogue there, which is good, because if it wasn't good there's not enough anything-else to carry it. But it is good, so all's good.
Given the context and clues, I'd speculate that the reason Twilight felt sick sometimes and especially so a particular time was because she was near an unhealthy or dead thing. She seems to be describing a life-sense very much similar to the Wit (RotE), and its easy to conceive that such an unpracticsed, intimate awareness of something unsavoury (perhaps a dead animal) would bring on that reaction.
Such a magic also goes some of the way to explain how Pinkie Pie Pinkie Pie's: her life-sense is tuned away from the workings of nature (which get applied as farming, mining) and towards the workings of ponies and the greater community around her.
My two cents, chipped in. Neat story and, of course, Pinkie Pie is best pony.
6913140
Unfortunately, nothing trumps poor writing. It's what you get when toy production clashes with desire for storytelling.
6915119
Yeah, I keep hoping that one will get updated some more! Can't quite remember what you meant about AJ though, I'd probably have to give it another read.
6915095
LOL! I think Rarity would have a heart attack if Twilight went bald...
6915093
I don't have any plans as the moment, but you never know when inspiration may strike.
6915200
6915870
Those are, in fact, some of the very points I had been considering ways to make use of.
6916056
Again, that's because I originally wrote it months ago, put it on the site to share the unpublished story with a couple people, and decided to wait a few days to mull over the responses I received from them and make a few corrections and edits. Then, stuff happened, and I didn't get around to finally hitting "submit" until just the other day.
6915870 Noted.
6915340
Tirek: "Are you calling me FAT!?"
Rainbow Dash: "No, Lardball, it's your massive weight calling you fat!"
Twilight Sparkle: "That comeback doesn't even make any sense, Rainbow..."
Pinkie Pie: "It doesn't need to! Just like all of Tirek's fat!"
Tirek: "That's it! I'm going back to Tartarus! I got received a lot more respect there!"
Applejack: "Didn't your fellow prisoners vote you in as Whiney Bastard of the Year fifty-four decades in a row?"
Tirek: "...Yes! And that was still more respect that you ponies are giving me!"
6916184 I've only read the first few chapters myself, but earth ponies seem to have various kinds of magic (including sensing things about nearby earth) which has apparently led to trouble when the other tribes found out about it, so now they keep a tight lid on it via oral history. This unfortunately colors Applejack's interactions with- and opinion of- her, ahem, friends:
What can I say, your AJ's joke sounded to me like it could have fit right in there.
Also:
You might well be right...