Stuck In The Middle With You

by CoffeeMinion

Starlight fixes “Spice Up Your Life” with... Sniping! (Shakespearicles' Starlight Fixes Everything project)

Author's Note:

Starlight Fixes Everything is a group collab project led by Shakespearicles, and its tagline says it all:

Starlight Glimmer has gotten her hooves on Twilight Sparkle's Friendship Journal and she realizes that she could fix everything with time travel...

... So she does.

Starlight Fixes Everything

In Thirty Seconds or Less

( Or the pizza is free! )

Additional ground rules for the collab are that Starlight only has thirty seconds to "fix" the episode, and pizza should somehow be involved.

“Spice Up Your Life” is, of course, MLP:FiM Episode #129 (S6 E12).

Starlight huddled low beneath one of the fragrant restaurant’s back tables, clutching a long-barreled weapon close to her chest. She perked her ears up and grinned as her cue finally approached.

“If Zesty Gourmand is coming here tonight, there is quite a bit of work that needs to get done,” Rarity declared from out of sight.

“Like what?” Pinkie chirped.

“Like not one motherbuckin’ thing!” Starlight roared, overturning the table with her magic and slinging her weapon up onto the stool that she’d been hiding behind. Pinkie, Rarity, and the two ponies they’d come to help—Saffron Masala and Coriander Cumin—all gasped at the sudden outburst. Then three horns came alight as the realization crossed their faces that they were staring down the barrel of a—

*BANG!*

Rarity dropped like a stone. Pinkie shrieked and fell to her haunches next to her fellow Element Bearer. Saffron and Corinader both gasped, rolled their eyes in panic, and bolted for the door.

But Starlight reacted quicker, lighting her horn and locking the door tight with her magic. The two ponies tugged fruitlessly on it before whinnying with dismay and running in opposite directions.

“Wait a minute!” Pinkie shouted, holding up a hoof… and holding something in it.

Starlight smiled at the sight of the feathered dart Pinkie had plucked from Rarity’s barrel.

“A tranquilizer dart?!” Pinkie bellowed, the expression on her muzzle turning toward rage. “Starlight Glimmer, you mean meanie-pants! You nearly scared the poopies out of us with that little stunt!”

From somewhere nearby, Coriander cleared his throat. “Not… nearly,” he said, his voice as small as he could make it.

“It was necessary,” Starlight said, slinging the tranquilizer gun back over her shoulder. “Rarity meant well… all of you do, really… but the next thing that was gonna come out of her mouth would’ve doomed all of you to a truckload of unnecessary drama.”

Saffron stalked out from cover, frowning at Starlight. “And how does shooting a patron in the middle of lunch qualify as any less ‘necessary drama’ than what our nice Amareican friend here would’ve inflicted on us?!”

“Clearly you’ve never met Rarity before,” Starlight deadpanned. “No, look: your food’s pretty good. Me and Trixie love stopping by anytime we’re in town—”

“If I ever see you again I will do worse than just spitting in your food,” Coriander muttered as he worked a pushbroom.

Starlight cleared her throat. “Try it and I’ll bring the health department down on your flank so hard, you’ll think it’s actual literary analysis being brought to bear on an actual literal plot.” She stared Coriander down until he broke eye contact and went back to cleaning. “But what I was getting at is that Zesty Gourmand is all well and good, but you just need to get some plots in seats here. Pinkie, you can spread the word about how great this place is, right?”

“Abso-tute-ly!”

With a nod to Pinkie, Starlight turned to meet Saffron’s quizzical expression. “And you can handle the blowback that’s gonna happen when you have an uppity food critic get their feathers ruffled by a house full of otherwise happy customers, right?”

“I… of course,” Saffron answered.

“Well then, that’s a wrap.” Starlight flared her horn and disappeared in the cascading energy of her time-travel spell.

For a long moment after she disappeared, silence reigned. But eventually Coriander cleared his throat and turned to Pinkie. “So, miss Pie. This Starlight friend of yours… is she single?”

Saffron looked aghast. “Father! What could possibly motivate you to chase the youthful tail of this arrogant, time-traveling, gunslinging she-devil?!”

“Oh, I don’t know,” Coriander said, fighting down a blush. “No reason?”