Something Starlight That Way Goes
She looked out at the wasteland, the wild winds sweeping through bringing nothing but dusty air. Even only being here for a few seconds, she already wanted to cough.
“Where are we?” Starlight Glimmer demanded as she turned around to face the pony she thought of as her nemesis, both in action and ideology.
“The future. Or rather, the present,” Twilight Sparkle said, looking forlorn as she gazed at the ground, holding a hoof on the stone table for a sense of security.
“But there’s nothing here!” Starlight said, looking skyward, noticing the lack of a sun or moon in this strange new world.
“I wish I could say I was surprised. But every world I come back to is worse than the last,” Twilight said, her windswept mane offering little resistance to the harsh currents. “I don’t know why my friends are so important to Equestria, but we are.”
Starlight Glimmer looked stunned for a second, but she recovered quickly. “I don’t believe you!” She declared with an accusing tone, pointing her hoof at Twilight.
“Come on Starlight, look around,” Spoke Spike, the baby dragon and number one assistant of Twilight Sparkle, standing on the table that Starlight had utilised to activate a time spell.
As Starlight did just that, Twilight continued, “Like I said, everything in the past affects the future, even the tiniest act, and what you’re doi-“
“Wait! I see something!” Starlight said. Guilt gnawed at her, and she couldn’t quite identify why. It was a silly sentiment, and yet it was an itch she couldn’t scratch, like spiders crawling just on the inside of her hooves. She couldn’t have been glad for a distraction.
“Wait, what?” Twilight stopped talking, as she moved ahead, peering out at where Starlight had glanced earlier. Before, she had seen naught but dead trees and rocks splintered so unnaturally they could have only been cracked with magic. Now, however, she saw a shape, strands of light purple and dark pink obvious at a difference. Twilight’s heart fluttered. She knew this pony.
Twilight knew she was being careless, running ahead of Starlight. Even if Twilight had the scroll that allowed the other unicorn to travel time as easily as a pegasus could walk on clouds, nothing precluded Starlight from having another such scroll on hand. Regardless, Twilight had to know what had happened to this world. It was with relief she heard the light clop of hooves as Starlight followed behind her.
Approaching the purple-furred pony, something stirred in Twilight. No matter what she had seen in the other timelines so far, nothing approached this. “Cheerilee?” Twilight asked, casting out a basic medical diagnostic spell at the unicorn. The results she got back left the princess staggered, her hooves feeling weak against the endless gales.
The form stirred. With a start, Twilight realised the teacher’s purple and pink hues was hiding splotches of dark red, the dried fluid of life mixed with the grey of ash and soot upon what had once been a very pretty mare’s coat.
“W-wh-?” The Earth pony who Twilight believed to be Cheerilee attempted to speak, before her voice cracked, and she started to cough. What little bits of phlegm she hacked out were a dark brown, and it disturbed Twilight that she couldn’t tell if it was dried blood, soot, or both that contaminated the colour of the mucus.
“Try not to speak, please,” Twilight said to the pony laying on the ground. Cheerilee was beyond saving. The schoolteacher appeared to have several broken bones in her pelvic region and multiple femur fractures, and she was suffering from internal lacerations. Her eyes were suffering from an advanced stage of cataracts, and Twilight had little doubt she was completely blind. Whatever had happened in this wasteland had kicked up multiple toxins into the air, which had accumulated in Cheerilee’s body, from her organs to her blood to her individual cell tissues. Even if Twilight had been trained as a medical doctor, which she wasn’t, she would never have been able to fix all this.
The least she could do was to ease the pain of Cheerilee’s last moments on this earth.
Twilight struggled to explain this to the pony who was a friend in another timeline. “I’ve cleared out your lungs of as much soot as I possibly can and did what I could for your surface wounds. However, you’re beyond help. Sooner or later, you’ll…you’ll…”
“Die?” The purple-furred mare seemed to have regained a little bit of her voice, as she turned her head around to face a speaker she couldn’t see. Twilight had to resist the urge to turn her head, the mottled fur, torn earlobes and milky eyes hard to stare at and keep focus. “I died a long time ago, my body is ju-“ Cheerilee’s voice cracked, and she began to cough again, this time a lighter red now that Twilight’s spell had erased most of the contaminants in her respiratory tract.
Twilight thought for a few seconds, cursing the lack of supplies in Spike's backpack, before using her magic to gather a part of the accursed air around her. Straining the air was difficult, with as much dirt and ash as there was just hanging there, but she was able to come away with drips and drops of water. Keeping the pure water separated from the firt, she brought it up to Cheerilee’s lips. “Here, have a sip of water.”
Cheerilee didn’t need telling twice, as the mare opened her lips, her tongue swirling around the life-giving fluid, wetting her mouth before swallowing it. Twilight supplied her with a second and a third swallow before she said, “Sorry, that’s all I’ve got left.” In truth, Twilight wasn’t sure if any more would be safe for the pony. She had read that giving too much water at once to dehydrated ponies was a bad idea.
“That’s-that’s alright, I understand. I’ll be dead soon anyways,” Cheerilee said quietly, her voice so soft Twilight struggled to catch all of it. “But how? I-I thought nobody was left.”
“Yeah, about that,” Starlight Glimmer said from behind Twilight, and Twilight jumped, turning around to face Spike and Starlight. She had honestly forgotten the other two were even there. In most circumstances Twilight’s awareness would have been much higher, but this was a highly abnormal situation. “What exactly happened here to cause this place to turn to ash? Where are the trees, the sun, the moon?” Twilight noted Starlight’s speech to be quicker than normal, and the unicorn herself was trembling. Good, maybe Twilight’s words were finally getting through to her.
“Who-who are you?” Cheerilee asked in a quiet voice again, “How would anypony not know-“
“We’re from an alternate dimension of Equestria where the sky is still blue and the land is green and the sun and moon rise on time every day,” Spike interrupted. “Princess Celestia asked us to look at alternate dimensions to see how history may have unfolded differently so we may catch future threats before they catch us off-guard. We’ve already had our share of monsters from Tartarus, but we want to be prepared and if something destroyed Equestria in another timeline, we want to watch out for it in our world.”
Twilight and Starlight both had been about to attempt their own words again, but both were silenced, looking at Spike, near-identical stunned expressions on their faces. Spike shrugged with a sheepish look on his face, dropping his voice low enough so Cheerilee wouldn’t overhear, “What? I’ve read enough comic books where the good guys are never upfront and make things worse. What I just told her was close enough to the truth anyways.”
Twilight looked at Spike closer, and realised he was crying. Startled, Twilight realised what an effect all these timelines must have had on Spike, who was just a baby dragon. He may have had close brushes with death before, but seeing Cheerilee here must have been a shock for him – not only was this his first encounter with a dying pony, but it was someone he knew reasonably well. That she wasn’t the Cheerilee he knew was irrelevant.
“Oh, Spike,” Twilight said, grabbing him with his hooves and pulling him in for a hug. Even as she held him close, providing comfort as his big-sister figure should, her eyes clenched, and she gazed at Starlight Glimmer with a little bit of hatred slipping into her views of the pony. Starlight looked almost contrite, but Twilight doubted it. More likely she was just plotting, trying to find out what had occurred so she could engineer a set-up in the past again that would prevent whatever had caused this.
“I see.”
All three heads snapped back to Cheerilee, who had managed to roll over despite the great amount of pain she must have incurred doing so, and was now looking at the sky, “I don’t really believe you, but I heard three different ponies among you, one of you sounds male. None of you seem to be injured. That means there's hope for us yet,” Twilight didn’t really have the heart to tell her that one of them was a dragon, not a pony, “But you really don’t seem to know what happened. I heard history repeats itself unless we learn from it, so you need to know. I don’t think anypony knows the whole truth, but this is what happened.”
Two ponies and a dragon stopped talking, their breaths lowering in anticipation as they heard the story of the end of this world.
“She, she was a unicorn, nobody really knew about her before she broke the world. Some ponies claimed she felt spurned when her childhood friend left her, and she felt his Cutie Mark was the reason. He, I don’t know his name, he went to join Celestia’s school or service, I don’t know which, nopony really knew the truth after all the devastation she caused to the records. Just that it caused her to despise Cutie Marks.”
“She?” Twilight whispered aloud. She had a sinking feeling about this.
“Yes, a mare. She had power, so much power, but she created magic that was reprehensible, brainwashing ponies before she was caught and being force to flee. As a fugitive, however, she only got worse. A dear friend of mine before he died said she might have found an artifact, but that it could only twist what was already there. She started small, stealing the life force of others, but when the Princess and the Nightmare weakened each other fighting for several days straight, she swooped in and stole away both their lives. That’s when she went mad with power and started slaughtering everyone.”
This sounded far too familiar for comfort. Twilight and Spike alike glared over at Starlight, who seemed to have been coming to the same realisation, and was beginning to cower ever so slightly in horror.
Cheerilee paused, letting out a light cough again, this time thankfully free of blood. Breathing again to steady herself, she continued, “I saw her once, you know. After she stole the power of the two Princesses and the Nightmare, the spirit of chaos Discord broke free, and immediately went to fighting her.”
“What?” Came the mutual cries of the three denizens of an alternate timeline. Twilight took a hoof step back, reeling over Cheerilee’s words.
The Earth Pony mare let out a soft laugh, what sounded like it was supposed to be a hearty chuckle but diminished by her weak body, “Yes. I’ve read, heard about what Discord did years ago. I’ve had time to think since this all started. I can only assume either he didn’t want to share, or he only wanted a playground to play in, and somepony else destroying everything wasn’t his way. He saved me, you know, teleporting some of us away before she could kill us all, but the magical fall-out eventually blinded me. We didn’t hear or see anything of them ever since, so I can only assume they destroyed one another, or the few ponies who stood up to her in alliance with Discord finally took her out. I hope, anyways. But…this land is still done for. The sun and the moon, she banished them away from Equestria into the mass of stars so nopony else could use them for power.”
“Not necessarily,” Twilight felt the need to give heart to the dying schoolteacher, even though she was on her literal last legs. “The planet has restored itself back to life before. I can feel the magic that still lingers in Equestria. It’ll take years even if Discord still lives, and longer to locate the sun and moon to bring them back...but as long as a few ponies still live, life will find a way, just so long as she isn’t around to destroy everything again,” She said this with a glare at Starlight Glimmer.
“Yes…perhaps,” Cheerilee conceded, a small smile at last adorning her lips, “But I wonder what the point is. If one pony could destroy everything so easily, what’s to stop another one from rising up in the future and destroying everything again?”
“That’s…rather nihilistic of you,” Starlight Glimmer spoke up again, hardening her gaze back at Twilight even as she looked to be close to crying herself.
“When you’ve accepted death, your thinking changes,” Cheerilee said, before trailing off. Her eyes may have been milky, but all three beings present could tell she was pondering something. “I really wish I knew what happened. I was a schoolteacher, you know. It was my job to teach fillies and colts and shape them. Some of them had bad behaviours, but they always left my classrooms as better ponies than they entered.” Cheerilee sighed. She sounded tired. “Even if it was only for a few seconds, I remember her all too well. She had purple and pink hair, and a star for a Cutie Mark. She seemed so normal, yet she was so evil it’s still hard to even think her name.”
That seemed to settle it. Twilight gulped, and opened her mouth to speak, only to stop. She attempted to talk a second time, and the question died before it could even form in her vocal cords. This was Cheerilee, one of Twilight’s friends. Twilight may not have been as close to Cheerilee as she was the other former bearers of the Elements of Harmony, and this wasn’t the Cheerilee Twilight knew, but the alicorn still felt it was a betrayal of her friend to use Cheerilee in her death throes to score points.
Then Twilight spotted Starlight Glimmer in the corner of her eye, remembered what the unicorn had done up to this point, and her resolve hardened. “This unicorn you speak of…was her name, by any chance, Starlight Glimmer?”
Cheerilee gasped, and Twilight just knew what the answer would be, she felt it in her very bones. She was wrong.
“Starlight Glimmer? Celestia no, Starlight Glimmer was one of those who tried to s-save us, along with her husband, Double Diamond. The unicorn who destroyed everything was somepony named T-T-Twilight S-Sparkle.”
The world turned upside down.
In a daze, Twilight found herself back at the table along with Spike. She had no words to say.
Starlight Glimmer wasn’t letting her get away with saying nothing. “Well well well, and every timeline was worse than the last,” She sneered. “Tell me, what was your alternate self doing in those timelines? Clearly not getting a Cutie Mark together with your precious friends didn’t stop you from being oh so important to Equestria.” The pinkish unicorn had been falling into a funk earlier, but the shattering revelation seemed to have restored her vim and fire along with her distorted sense of righteousness.
“B-but I, but I wasn’t there, ever,” Twilight stuttered, her mind still reeling too much to come up with a proper rhetorical retort. “Neither were you, but I saw my friends in multiple timelines. Could it be because we were time-travelling that our past selves never showed up in history?” Now she was grasping at straws.
“Preposterous,” Starlight said, “Your other self and my other self were both pivotal in this timeline, what makes this any different from the oth-“ Starlight trailed off suddenly, a contemplative look on her face, before she reasserted herself, “Tell me, what were the other timelines like?”
It was an odd request, but Twilight grabbed at it like a life vest in a tumultuous storm, clawing to break the surface and stay above the waves. Slowly, haltingly, she started from the first timeline, with occasional interjections from Spike when her own voice began to dry up from the constant talk.
By the end Starlight Glimmer was indignant again. “Each timeline was worst than the last, you say? Tirek I’ll grant from what I’ve heard of his rampage, and I wouldn’t want to be trapped in a cocoon by Changelings, but you’re certain being in an endless conflict with King Sombra was worse than what appears to be an orderly, militaristic land of eternal night under Nightmare Moon, who was definitely better than a Discord timeline where Princess Luna appeared to have been restored from the Nightmare, who, oh, let’s wait for it, was still a better timeline than a pair of industrialist brothers polluting the air?!” Starlight had to pause several times, making for a halting manner of speech.
By this time Twilight had herself recovered her bearing, and now she was angry. “Well, they were better timelines than this, that’s for certain! Maybe if your other self had gotten off her lazy plot with the amount of power you’ve shown yourself to be capable of throwing around, one of those timelines would’ve been close to what our Equestria was like!”
“Yeah? Well, maybe if your-if your…” Slowly, a look of horror dawned on Starlight Glimmer’s face, and Twilight felt satisfied that Starlight was finally beginning to realise what she had wrought. It didn’t last. “Princess, I think I may know why our alternate selves have never showed up until now.”
“Whaddya mean?” Spike asked, not liking the sarcastic way Starlight had referred to Twilight’s noble title. He had been keeping an eye on Starlight this entire time. She still had the time scroll. If she decided to use it, Spike would either stop her or somehow make sure him and Twilight were returned to the past as well.
Starlight swallowed, her throat visibly bulging before she said, “If this is the present, then every time you’ve returned back here, I was always left behind in the past. When you return, you reset time, but I don’t exist in a stasis. I’ve noticed time always resets for me after the exact same amount of time, a few minutes after when Rainbow Dash would historically have performed the Sonic Rainboom.”
“And?” Twilight asked. She wanted to be annoyed at how this villain was showing no signs of backing down even in the face of this disastrous future, but the scholar within was giddy. Even in a situation as dangerous at this, hearing about the use of time magic in an uncharted venture was something she knew nothing about, ergo something she could learn about.
“I’m getting to that,” Starlight said. “Theoretically I’ve never actually returned to the present. Instead, I would have stayed in the past and lived out my life until the present day.”
“But that can’t be right,” Twilight argued, “You can’t have two copies of the same pony in the same chronological time period for too long, that’s why Star Swirl’s spell only allowed you to stay in the past for about a minute.”
“True,” Starlight said. “I know that, and so I would have come to that same conclusion. But, since I never followed you back to the future,” And here Starlight stressed those last few words to emphasise their importance, “I can only assume I would have found my past self as a filly and merged with her, assuming my child form but with my adult memories.”
“But that’s, that’s impossible!” Twilight said. Just the mere idea of taking over another pony’s body horrified her, even if that pony was her past self.
Starlight sneered, “Oh, and you’re the expert on time magic and what this table can really do now?”
Twilight had no real answer for that. Spike was reluctant to speak up as well even as there was space for him to pipe up.
“Anyways, with my adult memories I would have known all the various events that took place in the future. The return of Nightmare Moon, Discord getting free from his prison, the Changeling invasion of Canterlot, King Sombra and the Crystal Empire finally exiting its thousand years of stasis, the plundervines growing up from the Everfree Forest, and Tirek’s mad rampage. Since you ruined my village, I’ve been training, but I’ve also been researching those threats. You and your fellow Princesses have released scant information on how they were each neutralised, but I already have some ideas. The most minor of changes in each timeline would lead to these villains getting free from their prisons in a different order than what our history has said, where perhaps Discord broke free from his prison before the Nightmare returned. I may have fought these villains through direct or subtle methods, defeating a few but always falling to one of them, with others possibly taking themselves out in a mutual kill. Doubtlessly I would stay out of the spotlight so nobody would realise somebody was dispatching villains, so the next one would never realise somebody was eliminating threats to Equestria."
The pink-furred unicorn sneered again. It was becoming a common look, “Well, except for that last timeline of yours where I assume I stopped everything but either retired to a foreign land or fell somewhere, and the Crown suffered from weak rulership. Seriously, extensive logging was a worse timeline than Tirek destroying everything?”
“Hey!” Spike had had enough of the mare’s condescending attitude, and he had at last decided to defend his big sister’s impugned honour, “You weren’t there! We had to live through them and watch our friends be not themselves! Nightmare Moon and Chrysalis and Tirek nearly killed us! You try putting up with that and being calm and smart-thinking after that!”
“Spike…” Twilight wanted to calm him and reassure him, but she had an unsettling feeling. Twilight was certain Starlight was about to reveal something huge.
Starlight, for her part, looked as if she wanted to get in an argument with Spike, but in the end held her tongue. She wasn’t crass enough to argue with someone who seemed to be a child, and certainly seemed to be more shaken by the events of the last half-hour than anybody else. Instead, she decided to continue her thoughts, and said, “I despise you, Twilight Sparkle, more than any of your friends. Yes, that’s right,” She said as she spotted Twilight blinking multiple times in rapid succession, slightly taken aback, “I don’t hold any grudge against Fluttershy beside her being your friend. I loathe you and your title and everything it stands for, and for that reason I suspect I would have sought you out as a filly.”
Her words took a few seconds to sink in, then Twilight’s eyes widened in horror, “You wouldn-“
Starlight shook her head frantically even as she cut Twilight off, having come to the same realisation of what she had implied, “No, I wouldn’t have murdered you, Gaia no. But I would have convinced you to drop your studies. It would have been subtle, over the course of several months, until you were a transformed mare far away from what you are now, so I could feel some satisfaction of revenge. You would never have destroyed the world.”
“Except in this timeline. Because you pulled me with you into the present, I was never around in the past to change the world, and Twilight Sparkle destroyed it instead.”
Twilight fully reeled back this time, taking several hoofsteps away from Starlight Glimmer. That was what she had been waiting on, a doozy that would have set all of Pinkie Pie’s Pinkie Senses off at once, and it had delivered.
The wind had picked up, kicking up dust and ash again. It was nowhere near close to blinding the three, but its harsh dissonance seemed to fit Twilight’s mood perfectly, along with the seemingly permanent brown sky.
“But I didn’t, now did I?” Twilight asked. “I didn’t destroy the world, instead my friends and I helped to saved it multiple times. Really, by changing the timeline, you’re the one who destroyed the world.” She was tired. If only Cheerilee hadn’t said those words…if only, then Twilight might have been able to come up with a stronger critique of Starlight’s rational.
Starlight paused. “You know, you were right about one thing?”
“She was?!” Spike exclaimed.
“Yes,” Starlight said, gazing at the distance where Canterlot should have been standing atop a great mountain. “Twilight Sparkle, you said your friends were important. I guess they were. If you didn’t have them, you would have destroyed everything.”
That was the last straw for Twilight. She had sat there and taken abuse long enough from the unicorn that had stolen her Cutie Mark, hurt her friends, then tried to destroy history multiple times just to satisfy a grudge. “At least I saved Equestria in the real timeline on multiple occasions,” Twilight growled in a repeat of an earlier argument, feeling her magic restoring itself over the time they had spent in this blasted future. “You apparently couldn’t even save it once.”
“Except for all those times I saved Equestria from multiple villains in those other timelines you mentioned.”
“You don’t know that, you just think that was the case.”
Starlight hmmphed, pawing the ground in agitation. “Then where does that leave us?” She asked. “We’re obviously at an impasse here.”
“You could give up,” Spike suggested, the baby dragon feeling left out of a conversation that could change the world and wanting to be helpful.
Starlight Glimmer snorted and said, “As if. I could win now…but now I don’t want to.”
That brought Twilight’s train of thought to a crashing stop. “Wait, what?”
“This world...I don't want it to end like this, but I won't stop fight. It’s simple, Princess,” Starlight said, a derisive inflection even now lingering on Twilight’s title. “We go back in time to Cloudsdale. You have three options. You can attempt to cripple me before I have a chance to do anything, then drag me back with you. You can continue fighting me until you inevitably die in one of these futures before you have the chance to reset time. Or,” Starlight narrowed her eyes, “With the huge differences in timelines every time you travel, eventually you’ll find a timeline where I succeeded and everything is at peace, but where you don’t have your friends. I’ll have gotten what I wanted, and you’ll get a world that's mostly acceptable.”
“So, what’ll it be, Princess?”
Twilight glared at Starlight, and opened her mouth to answer.
The portal opened, and Twilight and Spike came falling out of it, landing on a stone floor covered by a low thrown rug, one small scroll falling in right after them before the portal shut behind them.
Twilight let out an ‘oof’ at the hard landing, then looked around. They were indoors. Walls and windows created a circular room with crystal décor. At the center of the room stood a stone table, and six thrones evenly spaced apart.
It didn’t take the two long to realise what had happened. “Twilight! We’re back!” Spike said with joy, hopping up and down in excitement. Twilight mimicked him, so overjoyed at the nightmare finally being over that she found herself pronking, all hopes of royal poise forgotten. Seconds later, Spike stopped jumping, choosing to fall to the ground instead and kissing the rug, “One Castle of Friendship, check!”
Twilight stopped jumping at his words. How was it possible that the Castle of Friendship was still here when brief changes in the past had lead to such wild alterations in history? She wasn’t going to protest it, given the implications of what that meant, but something still seemed to be off. She couldn't quite put her hoof on it, but for now she would explore what seemed to be the present, the real present. Walking around Spike, who was still practically hugging the floor, she picked the scroll up off the floor in her magic, and made to unroll it. How had Starlight managed to modi-
The doors slammed open, and five adult mares walked in all at once. “What the hay was going on in here?” Applejack asked loudly.
“Yes, what in Equestria was that noise?” Rarity seconded the question.
“Teehee, you guys missed a perfectly good cake, I came to see if you were here but you weren’t so I had to eat it all by myself and it was really yummy in my tummy and I even brought a couple of gems to put on top if Spike was here but he wasn’t but obviously I can’t eat rocks because I’m a pony unless you’re my sister Maud in which case I could eat rocks but I’m not Maud so-“
“PINKIE!” Came the uniform cry of the three other more outspoken ponies standing next to her.
“It’s a long story, girls,” Twilight said tiredly to her friends. Her friends. Twilight’s mood perked up at that thought. Somehow, after the long trials she and Spike had just gone through, things were the same again. Her friends were her friends, her real friends, not some twisted copy of them broken down by mobilisation from war, serving underneath a tyrant queen, or fighting a guerilla war in the Everfree Forest.
Twilight held the tears of happiness in. It was good to be home at last. She opened her mouth to tell the story of an adventure in the past-
“A baby dragon!”
Lesson Zero is probably one of the most powerful episodes of the show, but after that Twilight's occasional flare-up of her nerves is treated for laughs. What if we were to take it seriously though? Somepony with lots of magical power and a capacity to meltdown brilliantly but who was never trained properly? Yeah, I think that could cause of an apocalypse (if you think Twilight wasn't powerful enough on her own, there is a line that gives me an out there on how Cheerilee thinks she may have had a magical artifact - say, an Alicorn Amulet)
Hence, this story is a dump of two of my headcanons: first is that an untrained Twilight Sparkle could have caused the Ashlands timeline, second is that in all previous timelines Starlight Glimmer stayed in the past and and defeated all the villains something wicked this way comes except for one, with the villain differing in each timeline (hey, it makes more sense than different ways of filly Dash abuse resulting in totally different futures)...but in the Ashlands timeline Starlight was dragged along so there was nopony around to save the future. I guess there's a minor third headcanon too: I think Double Diamond would make a much better romantic interest for Starlight than Sunburst could ever hope to be 
Which makes it a curiously more ambiguous position. Starlight is still wrong to change time. Twilight is still right. But Twilight has been hit with a stark realisation that it's not just choices that define a pony but also outside circumstances. What if she does come upon an arguably better timeline?
Starlight admittedly acts as an author mouthpiece at times - here I was writing, when I got hung up on Twilight's 'Every timeline is worse than the last' line where Flim and Flim are apparently worse than Tirek. Starlight (rightfully) calls her out on this.
I...really don't like the ending. I had it planned out that Starlight and Twilight would reconcile, but in the course of writing they simply were unable to make up past calling a ceasefire. Interpret the ending how you like, I have a general idea of what happened in the past. As for the very end...Notice how only six thrones are mentioned at the end, not seven, coupled with the very last line
There was originally going to be a continuation of the first scene after Cheerilee drops the truth-bomb. Four failed attempts at trying to continue that conversation I gave up, so you can fill your imagination in with just what happened then.
I was originally going to use the Cutie Mark Crusaders here. I would have made Sweetie Belle basically semi-comatose, capable of eating and breathing and walking but not really reacting to anything, and Scootaloo and Apple Bloom would push her to move around to the next safe place and stay alive. However, I tossed that idea and decided to have a single pony survivor. I thought about Pipsqueak, then remembered he would still be a tiny little thing who probably wouldn’t understand too much of what had actually happened, let alone grown up enough to have survival skills to last in the Wasteland (since the timelines always spit out Twilight and Spike in the 'present', not five years after the present).
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Dear Celestia that was amazing! And that ending!
I cannot object to any of this headcanon. Not even to Twilight turning against cutie marks after feeling like Shining Armor abandoned her. Well knitted!
This story hit me. Hit me right in the feels.
7030715 Yep.
You know, I do several rereads of a lot of my work after I post it to catch errors, both in basic English and in logical/continuity errors, add in new lines wholesale and edit other ones, and it's only just now that I realised Pinkie still mentions Spike at the end even though she shouldn't know him. But it's Pinkie so I can probably brush that off as 'Pinkie being Pinkie'.
Actually, didn't Twilight cause most of the changes? I mean, sure, Sombra goes on Starlights account, but the rest only existed because Twilight did the same thing Starlight did: Travel back in time because she can't accept the present.
Sure, Starlight destroyed a timeline, but Twilight crushed like five...
If we are talking total bodycount (Zecora said "it is us who should not be", implying changing a timeline annihilates the previous one), Twilight just takes the cake.
Well, look at the bright side, Spike can try and woo Rarity again with some knowledge on what she likes and dislikes...well, provided he can get over the trauma first.
The phrase is "more glad".
"fighting"
The "everyone worst than the last" line also bugged me, but, eigh, I chalked it up to emotional exhaustion making her give into hyperbole to try and make a point.
I like the think the Dustbowl Equrestia was caused by Evil!Celestia slash Corona Blaze but Powermad!Sparkle is also a good fit.
I caught the number of thrones but then Pinkie mentioned Spike so the last line still caught me off guard. But, well. Pinkie.
I like to think the sixth throne has Moondancer's mark on it instead of Starlight’s.
7077823
No, because each time Twilight went back, it was Starlight who either interfered with Rainbow or baited Twilight into accidentally interfering with Rainbow.
Eh, not a big fan of characters baselessly theorizing for some two-thousand words, especially with a bunch of psuedo-science and only a few minutes of observations to work off of.
I should also point out for Twilight's sake about how she didn't understand why there was apparently another Twilight in this timeline while she never saw one before in any of the others... Twilight was born and raised in Canterlot. Why would she be living in Ponyville in any significant numbers of alternate realities? Like yeah, it's possible but not likely.
Twilight should know that the absence of evidence is not the evidence of absence. Seriously, that's toddler reasoning right there.
"Oh, I don't see myself here, so she surely doesn't exist!"
*Spike hides face behind hands*
"Spike? Where'd you go?"
*Uncovers face and gives his mentally challenged friend a dry look*
"Ah! Don't go appearing out of nowhere on me like that, Spike! You gave me the spooks!"
7081764 True, but that doesn't matter: Twilight was never forced to follow Starlight beyond the first time, she did so on her own volition, knowing what she erases in the process. Like I said: Sombra was Starlights fault, ad hers alone, however, every other future came into being of Twilight not accepting the previous one. If she would have accepted the Sombra-Reality, the Chrysalis one would never have come to pass, due to Twilight not returing to the past to stop Starlight again.
It was Starlight who interfered with Rainbow over and over again, but it was Twilight who provided her the opportunity. In fact, since only Twilight continues to timetravel beyond the first time (and the final two, if you want to actually count them), Starlight cannot be blamed to have "interfered" beyond the first time at all, given that her intercepting Rainbow became the "normal" past for the Sombra and consequent timelines, as in she is now not a traveller through time for all pasts after the first, but a part of the timeline itself, with her reaction only appearing so knowing and taunting not because she has traveled multiple times as well, but because of her knowledge of Twilight as a timetraveler, making her no more at fault than Fluttershy making up with the bullies or Rainbow fleeing from Twilight, as she was acting out her part in the Sombra+ timeline the same way they were.
So yeah, my argument still stands: Sombra is Starlights fault, but all other timelines go on Twilights account.
7082073
No; regardless of whether Twilight gave her the opportunity or not, it was still Starlight that was trying to keep Twilight from restoring the normal timeline. Thus, the blame for the shift to each new timeline falls upon Starlight's shoulders. Starlight knew that she was perpetuating the wrong timelines, and continued to do it. Let's say that I have a car, and you slash the tires. If I replace the tires, and then you slash them again, the second set of busted tires are your fault, not mine, even if you could not have slashed them again had I not repaired them. The same goes for Starlight and Twilight.
In addition, since it's almost certain that each new timeline is replacing the previous instead of them all continuing to exist in parallel, Twilight's success in restoring the original timeline already nullified any changes that she made, since the timelines where everyone suffered so much more than the standard one didn't exist anymore.
Finally, Starlight was keeping her memories of each interference with the Sonic Rainboom, given that she specifically referred to their fight that distracted Rainbow Dash, which means that she was time traveling back each time too, and that she wasn't a natural part of the timeline any more than Twilight was. From the perspective of each new timeline, Starlight materialized out of nowhere in Cloudsdale, no matter how many iterations they went through. The "natural" Starlight is somewhere else in the world.
7082632 If it's your car, yes, it would be. However, if I slash the tires of my car, and you keep replacing them without my consent, you are definitely at fault for ruining another set of tires, are you not? After all, it's my car, and I decide on what happens to it. And it's the case here: The moment the Sombra-timeline came into existence it was the "normal" timeline, just like my car having slashed tires would have been the proper way for my car, because it's my car and I decided on it.
In fact, I could easily turn that around: Twilight slashed the "tires" of Starlights world by interfering with her in her town, and Starlight "fixed" it by changing the past and making Twilight loose that ability. Now you probably ask "how did making Sombra win fix anything?" Well, it's Starlights perspective we are talking from: For her world to be fixed, she would just have to live a better live than she did before, and with the knowledge of Twilights demise, that might just have been achieved. Spite is a powerful thing, after all, even if the show doesn't admit to it. Not to mention that she might have profited in a multitude of other ways as well: With 10 years of foreknowledge, a lot can happen, so if Equestria has any sort of lottery, she's set on that end too, not to mention that she may have profited from the war itself (yes, people can profit from war, otherwise we wouldn't have them).
Now, Twilight decides to slash her "tires" again, and tear her life apart for another time. Now she's the one who interferes, because, like you said: "In addition, since it's almost certain that each new timeline is replacing the previous instead of them all continuing to exist in parallel, Twilight's success in restoring the original timeline already nullified any changes that she made, since the timelines where everyone suffered so much more than the standard one didn't exist anymore." There is no standard timelie anymore, it's gone, just like you said. Now it's Twilight who is messing things up, and Starlight is trying to protect (and FAILING) to keep the timeline in which she is happy alive (also, I would't say everyone is suffering so much more: Sombra and Tirek seemed pretty happy, Flim and Flam potentially technologically advanced ponykind by centuries, Discord is having his fun without livig in an abusive relatioship and the changeling race might not be exterminated in the Canterlot-genocide).
If any new timeline is truly replacing the old one, then there is no main timeline to be restored and with every iteration, Twilight takes on the form of the slasher instead of the owner of the car.
And that other thing... if she didn't travel with Twilight, she couldn't technically have known. She did, I probably forgot that part then, but I was more thinking about it from a logical standpoint, sorry about missing that.
Would be interesting seeing this beeing developed further. How Spike will handle all of this beeing "erased" from the timeline and having no more friendships despite Twilight.
7083843
That's very arguable, because it's still you doing the slashing, with no input from me. Regardless, in this situation, the car belongs collectively to every sapient being in it, not to Starlight, so she's slashing the tires of a car that she doesn't own. If Starlight uses a bus that dozens of other ponies ride in (especially one that Twilight has authority over), she has no right to slash the tires at all. Since she's a princess who rules over the country, Twilight has stewardship over the car (though not ownership), and is doing all of it to improve the lives of her ponies; it's not Starlight's world, nor is she doing it for the benefit of anyone else. Even if we still went with your analogy of Starlight owning the car, then no, she doesn't have the right to replace her tires if said tires are hurting innumerable people (such as if the tires emit a loud screech that causes permanent hearing damage to everyone within 1000 feet of the car, and she just always wears high grade headphones). In such a case, Twilight is perfectly justified in slashing those tires again if there's no legal way to stop Starlight from doing so.
Twilight "slashed the tires" of Starlight's town because not only was Starlight hurting other ponies with her "car", but she also attacked Twilight and her friends with it first (by removing their cutie marks without her permission). Twilight was removing her ability to hurt others with her car in a situation where she couldn't have the "car" impounded or the owner arrested. The time travel business wasn't intended to help Starlight's goal; as she stated, it was simply as petty revenge against Twilight, to make her feel what it would be like if she didn't have her bond with her friends. There was no guarantee that any of the timeline changes would benefit Starlight in the least, and indeed, tyrants like Sombra or Nightmare Moon would have zero tolerance against the kind of things she wants to implement. Regardless, that wouldn't be a legitimabte justification anyway.
The continuing existence of the cutie map and Zecora's salve clearly show that the original timeline is the only "correct" timeline. Sombra's timeline was the product of time travel, and the effects of said time travel would still be detectable, because the second Starlight and second Twilight appeared out of nowhere in Cloudsdale (and then the second Twilight disappeared again and reappeared again in Ponyville). Them currently existing in Sombra's timeline does not make it the original one. Who cares about the happiness of specific, individual creatures if said happiness cripples the happiness of thousands or millions more? Someone's right to happiness does not extend forever.
Starlight creating the timeline with her actions does not make it hers; it still belongs to every creature that lives in them, and as one of the princesses, Twilight's duty is to strive for the collective happiness of as many of her subjects as possible. Even if your version of the analogy holds true, then the tires that Starlight is putting on her car is hurting everyone, so it's Twilight's duty to slash them again until she stops putting on tires that make nearly everyones' lives significantly worse.
The "version" of Starlight that got taken back each time with Twilight seems to be the version that existed when Twilight was sent to the future each time, so she retained memories of all of their scuffles, just like Twilight.
7088189 Ah, so we are going this route, are we? *sigh* I already know where this is going, and that we'll have to agree to disagree in the end, since any question that soley resolves around the argument of the greater good is lost on me, so I'll be ending the discussion. For all I care about, there was no discussion to start out with: We lived lives that were so radically different that our perception of good and evil can not possibly overlap, meaning most we did was talking to a wall.
If you are still interested, below is my point in this, but given the circumstances, you will find it inconcievable (or insane) anyway, so I suggest not to, given that things you disagree with will likely come from that different outlook on morality itself.
Let me ask you a question: How does Twilight know she's doing the right thing? How does she know she is actually helping ponies?
Is she, in fact, capable of determining all future consequences of any given action throughout eternity, of comparing them to the results of all other possible courses of action through eternity, of assigning objective values to all of those consequences, of adjusting those values to account for the probability of them actually occurring, summing them up for each possible course of action, and then comparing those sums to see what course of action actually results in the greater good?
I’ll employ a tired rhetorical device here and give you a hint. Barring perfect knowledge of the total current state and rules governing the cosmos, either the elimination of all uncertainty which may be built into those rules or the ability to successfully calculate the probabilities of all possible outcomes, high-order transfinite errorless computational capacity capable of completing all possible operations within a very limited amount of time, and a perfect ability to implement a course of action which will differ from less optimal courses of action by an infinitesimal quantity, the answer would be “No”. If it's "Yes"... honestly, that would be the point at which we could stop watching the show, for obvious reasons.
We have no way of knowing what Twilight does WILL result into a better world, one way or another, and neither has she. Of course, I already provided a list of creatures that would benefit form THEIR specific timeline, and for the arguments sake, I'll throw in the Umbrums and Windigos for Sombras timeline. Of course, you can say that their lives don't matter, since you seem to be pretty focused on ponies, but personally, I wouldn't go that far.
“For the greater good”, and any variation of that, is a high-order abstraction. With a little verbiage and the user’s choice of predicted outcomes it can be used to justify pretty much anything you want. Here is an example:
"You have ten thousand delightfully good little kids? If they grow up a sizable number of their souls will inevitably be lost to eternal torment in hell, but if they die now, they automatically go to eternal bliss in heaven and only you will go to hell. As a servant of the greater good, it is thus your clear duty to kill as many of them as possible; the more you kill, the greater the good."
With that, “the greater good” just took us from “Paragon of Virtue” to “Mass Murderer of Children” in three sentences – and saying “that’s ridiculous!” won’t refute the logic, or the fact that history is full of actions carried out with even thinner rationales. Sure, if it’s “I want to keep as many of the colonists as possible alive – but we only have enough food to keep a fraction of the population alive through the winter, and even in the spring it’s going to be so rough and dangerous that it will take several adults to keep a single child alive”, then one can arguably be good while issuing an order to “round up most of the kids and all the elderly, kill them before we waste any more resources on them, and eat the corpses”. Be honest, though, is THAT what you want?
Of course, if I would:
1. Consider every single life to be worthless in face of the greater good (this includes the two of us, by the way).
2. Consider every lifeform aside from ponies as worthless (see changeling future).
3. Believe that every action that results into lessening immediate harm will also be the one that creates the least harm throughout eternity.
Then I would be willing to agree with you.
And while we are at technicalities: It is, and continues to be, a matter of fact, that if Twilight had stayed in the Sombraverse, the other timelines could not have jumped into being. She gave Starlight the chance to disrupt her, after all, and as the person that offered her this chance.
Twilight made Starlights life a living hell, and she treatened to do so everytime she came back. To deny Starlight the right to fight back is to deny her the right of self-defense. Everytime, Twilight comes back she essentially promises Starlight that if she doesn't "cut the tires", she will f**k her up.
Can you honestly not put yourself in those shoes? "For the greater good" might seem like a good idea, to sacrifice one for others benefits, but how would you like it if it were YOU who would have to suffer for others? Would you willingly lay down your life for others? If the answer is yes, honestly, we would probably not even have this conversation, because you would currently be somewhere in the third world and "give up your happiess for the happiness of others".
7088342
She knows she is doing the right thing because it's logical to believe that improving Ponies' lives by removing war, being ruled over by a tyrant, or being refugees. No, he cannot be completely sure that she is (since there's a tiny chance of there being some kind of future, life-wiping threat that say, only super Tirek can beat), but the odds that she is, is high enough that she can be safe in assuming so. You cannot second guess everything, or else Starlight would need to second guessing her actions as well (what if she would have gotten killed by a meteor if she had stayed in our town?). This type of thought process leads to a complete inability to make any decisions at all, in fear that they might cause more harm than good no matter how the current situation looks.
Thus, it is plenty to inform Twilight's decision that she sees that the original timeline, even if it wasn't perfect, was FAR better than any of the other timelines for almost everyone. Even putting aside the greater good argument, as a ruler, it's her duty to protect her subjects, and to keep them as happy and fulfilled as possible. In addition, there's no evidence that creatures such as Windigoes are even sapient, or that Umbrum exist at all (we certainly didn't see any in the Sombra timeline, nor did any appear in the brief time that the Crystal Heart was broken), and it is illogical to consider things that might exist, but that there is no evidence towards. Finally, even in the case of the changeling future, not only is it extremely likely that the ponies outnumber the changelings, but Chrysalis invaded the wedding and took over Equestria because she wanted power, not because of the survival of her species. Not only did she only talk about power when she was monologuing about her goals, and not essential food, but the changeling at Cranky and Matilda's wedding show that changelings can exist amongst ponies without being immediately attacked or otherwise prevented from living.
There's also the fact that shooting for the greater good is not an absolute tenet, and must be tempered by other concerns. That is the reason why minority rights are important, because of basic rights they have as sapient beings, which should not be undermined unless in very extreme situations. Your example of the person murdering children is not an example of a properly used greater good exercise, because not only does he not have any evidence that said children will go to hell if he doesn't intervene, but there is no logical evidence that hell itself exists. The greater good is misapplied by many in attempts to justify their actions, but that doesn't mean the concept itself is inherently flawed. As for your winter example, if there are no other options, they are fairly certain that it is their only option for any of them to survive, and they're intelligent enough to reasonably evaluate that, then yes, it's better than the alternative where all (or at least significantly more than would have if they didn't) of them die.
Twilight did not make Starlight's life a "living hell"; she was living in Equestria completely fine while following Twilight around and studying the time spell; in fact, it's far more likely that she was better off in the original timeline than in any of the other timelines, considering she's not immune to being conquered or being negatively affected by war, and she's unlikely to get much traction for her ideas in such dystopian worlds. The only reason she was continuing was because she was under the mistaken impression that stopping Twilight's cutie mark bond wouldn't affect the world very much, other than Twilight and her friends.
And no, Twilight is not to blame for each new timeline. She is partially responsible, yes, but that is completely different from being to blame. It was Starlight, and Starlight alone who is to blame, because she was the one that was purposefully creating each timeline or baiting Twilight into creating each timeline; Twilight cannot be blamed for changing the timelines just because she was failing to stop Starlight any more than Mary Lincoln is to blame for Abraham Lincoln's assassination just because she failed to stop Booth. Nor can she be blamed for setting the timeline back to the way it was before (before it gets thrown off again); when the United States government rebuilt the Pentagon after the 9/11 attacks, that does not make them responsible for a (theoretical) future attack of terrorism that destroys the Pentagon again.
And don't even bring up self-defense; not only does it not apply here, since Starlight was the one that attacked Twilight and her friends first in her town, but self-defense is not an infinitely extendable concept, or else the concept of morals wouldn't exist. After all, it could be used to justify literally anything, since one could argue that say, Tirek was justified in stealing everyone's magic because they were attempting to curb his right to happiness (which is greatest when he has everyone's magic). In fact, Twilight has a FAR better claim to legitimate self-defense than Starlight does, considering that the only things Twilight did to Starlight in season 5 were reactions to what Starlight did to her and her friends.
If I felt I would do the most good for people in general working in a third world country (which I don't, since I don't possess the skills needed for working there to help the people there, and I feel I can do more good here), and I had the means (I don't), then yes, I would be out there helping people. Similarly, if I was told by a murderer that he will either kill me, or ten other people (and I somehow knew that he was telling the truth), and I knew that there was no way for everyone to live, then yes, I would tell him to kill me instead
7088342 *sniff* that magnificent wall of text brought a tear to my eye. beautifully written, it truly is a masterpiece of reasoning. i was kind of on the fence on the issue, but that comment managed to win me over. bravo, my good man, bravo.
Well, it started good, but then you started losing me when Starlight started lecturing. At that point, the story got a little too exposition-y. I also feel the resolution makes even less sense that Starlight's abrupt reformation in the actual episode.
Nope this makes no sense to me. You did a good job writing this, but it still makes no sense to me.
Well...crap. I hope Twilight knows how to recreate Starlight's spell.
Perhaps the timelines weren't technically each worse than the last. They were still all way worse than the regular one—way worse. And none, not a single one, looked to be anywhere as nice and wholesome a place to live as Equestria Prime.
And if you take the Flim Flam line as an anomaly, then Twilight is correct: Each was worse than the last. Starlight thinks Nightmare Moon isn't so bad? Then she should try living under her. Under a ruler who is so jealous she will force you to give your power to her or watch her hurt your loved ones, including a child. Starlight Glimmer wasn't there to see, her stance is full of arrogance and self-righteous bluster.
There were no signs of thing truly improving. No sign that Twilight would eventually find a second Equestria as nice as the first. Because there likely isn't one; time wasn't meant to be messed with like Starlight did. Some things can't be forced like that. Remember how well getting a fake or the wrong Cutie Mark works out? There's no reason to believe there's another Equestria where things haven't gone to hell, other than Starlight trying to appease her conscience. No matter what excuses she makes, her actions will have led to untold suffering for the sake of petty revenge.
Can't say I was a fan. Not sure it's because of my natural bias against Starlight as a character (I see her as Hasbro refusing to give us Sunset and trying to make a Sunset 2.0 instead) or simply with how much I can't take her argument seriously.
This was pretty dang good. Really great in fact. A nice little read and good way to look at things.
You magnificent guy...........just wow...........
That was incredibly interesting. The ending confused me at first, but it took shape in my mind as I thought about it. They never did get exactly back to their own timeline, so it's kind of like an episode of Sliders (old TV show reference!). I did see the "Twilight Apocalypse" coming, but it was still a delightful reveal.
Well written!
I think at one point you said "firt" when you meant "dirt". FYI