Ch. 1 - Torn Apart
"No.”
Starlight looked up at Twilight through her tears. She began to pull her hoof back as her face tensed in anger once again. "It wasn't my fault!” she snarled, “I was ready to keep our friendship alive! Sunburst was the one who let things fall apart!" She gripped the time-scroll tighter in her telekinetic aura, and firmly stood her ground upon a cloud.
"But were you just waiting for Sunburst to reach out, or did you try to stay friends with Sunburst?" Twilight asked, standing a few feet in front of Starlight, Spike sitting tightly on her back.
"How was I supposed to know how to contact him!?" Starlight snapped. "He left without a goodbye! How's an 11-year-old filly supposed to find where in Canterlot her friend moved to!? If Sunburst wanted to keep in touch, he should've called or wrote to me!"
Twilight’s eyebrows furrowed in worry. "So maybe that friendship didn't work out, but that doesn't mean that all friendships will end like that! Starlight, please, you're just trapping yourself in fear!"
Starlight gritted her teeth "What I'm 'trapping' myself in, is reality, Twilight! And the reality is, not every pony is important enough for her friends to stick by! Not every ending is a happy ending! But you wouldn't know that, would you? Your life is perfect! You're an Alicorn Princess, you're surrounded by friends, and you've never had your greatest source of happiness ripped away from you!" The mare's eyes bore daggers into Twilight's. "For just once in your life, maybe you ought to know what it feels like to lose something you cherish!"
"Starlight I–"
Twilight gasped, as she witnessed her fear come to fruition.
With a face tensed with hatred, Starlight looked to the time-scroll and tore two ends apart as hard as she could, splitting it and destroying the spell.
Twilight's heart nearly stopped. Spike gripped her mane all the more. There was no more reset button, no longer a way to erase their mistakes; this chance was now their only one to fix things. Worse still, Twilight and Spike wouldn't have a way home even if they did fix things. Eyes wide and mouth agape, Twilight stared in catatonic horror at the point where the time scroll was last whole.
Watching her, Starlight released the halves into the windy Cloudsdale air. "And that’s what it feels like to lose your friends.”
Twilight continued to stare as a tear ran down her face.
Starlight then levitated herself up, turned, and blasted a turquoise beam toward a speeding Rainbow Dash. The beam hit the filly, stopping her momentum, and entrapping her in a bulky crystal structure. Immediately, Rainbow began plummeting towards the ground below.
Twilight felt a yank on her mane from a more alert Spike. “Huh?” she exclaimed, looking around to try and figure out what had occurred in the past few seconds.
Spike pointed down towards the large crystal boulder falling through the sky. Twilight gasped before swooping down to race toward the entrapped filly as fast as she possibly could.
Upon getting close, Twilight powered up her horn and fired ultrasonic vibration spell. A continuous stream of sound-waves, vibrating at the resonant frequency of the crystal structure, hit the young Rainbow Dash’s prison, and in a few seconds, caused the crystal to burst into thousands of small shards.
Twilight dove under Rainbow, catching her in her forelegs, and immediately began flying back up towards Cloudsdale.
Once she had landed, the filly was gently set upon the clouds.
The young Rainbow Dash turned her wide-eyed gaze up towards her rescuer.
“Y-You saved my life! I-I thought I was gonna die, but you just swooped right in and-” Rainbow gasped. “–Wait, you’re an alicorn!? My life just got saved by an alicorn!?” she shouted, loud enough to echo even despite all the clouds.
Everypony in the vicinity whipped their heads around. Immediately, they began flooding over to Twilight, asking her who she was, where she came from, and what she was doing at a Cloudsdale summer flight camp.
Now surrounded by a sea of mostly young ponies, Twilight looked past the crowd as best she could, trying to find Starlight Glimmer. She finally spotted what she was looking for: a light pink coat, with a purple, aquamarine-streaked tail.
Twilight teleported herself and Spike above the crowd, and immediately bolted toward her target.
As she zipped away though, Rainbow's voice shouted from the crowd: "Hey wait! I never got your name, or why you saved me!" However, it was unheard by Twilight.
Meanwhile, the light-pink mare found herself being thrown to the ground, pinned under a very angry alicorn.
“Alright Starlight, you're–” Twilight froze, the anger vanishing from her face.
“W-Who the hay are you?” the frightened mare asked. She had wings and sea-green eyes; clearly not Starlight.
Twilight's face turned beet red. “I-I'm so sorry!” she apologized in a panic, backing off the mare.
The mare dashed away.
"Real smooth, Twi," Spike remarked sarcastically.
Looking around the general area, Twilight's eyebrows sunk in worry as she failed to catch any glimpse of the delinquent unicorn.
Taking off into the main city, she began to ask nearly everypony on the street if they had seen a light pink self-levitating unicorn, with a purple, aquamarine-streaked mane.
“Nope, sorry.”
“Can’t say that I have.”
“Not in Cloudsdale.”
Flying up higher to take another look around, Twilight let out a stressful sigh. “Where is she!?” she whined, nervously darting her eyes all over.
“Where do you think she is?” Spike asked, gripping her mane.
“I don’t know, Spike! She could have anything planned!”
“You mean like turning Princess Celestia against us!?”
“Spike! That’s–“ Twilight paused, biting her lip as she thought. “...not out of the question,” she sighed. “We’re really in trouble this time...” she lamented, shaking her head as she prepared to continue searching.
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I like this premise. I've not seen this particular take on Starlight's time rampage yet and it's nice to see Twilight and Spike on their own once in a while.
I found the beginning to have issues but it gets better once Starlight destroys the time scroll for good.
More specifically, while I was able to get a good feeling of what Starlight was doing and what was going through her mind thanks to the description ("through her tears," "as the crack in her armor of anger began to seal back up" and "Starlight's face had grown tense once again") and her dialogue (italics, exclamation points, the content of her lines itself), I didn't have anything about Twilight other than she was "standing a few feet in front of Starlight, Spike sitting tightly on her back."
As I said, it gets better. Starlight traps her in the past, Twilight finally reacts, and Spike even joins the story properly.
I liked that Twilight channeled her magic into ultrasonic vibrations to free filly Rainbow Dash rather than into a canceling spell or a more generic destructive spell. It shows that she's versed in science in addition to magic.
Incidentally, I find myself wondering if Rainbow will go and track Twilight down later on in. She did never get to thank her for saving her life, after all. It might make for an interesting surprise down the line, especially if this story keeps restricting itself to Twilight and Spike's points of view.
I suggest actually writing down the numerals, since finding a sudden "14" or "12" in narration can feel jarring. The word 'unicorn' gets capitalized at random as well, and I suspect it has something to do with your spellchecker.
9618887
Ooh! A detailed comment with a bit of constructive criticism; I've been waiting for one of these! So thank you, I like hearing about readers' thoughts and analysis of story elements.
The beginning. Yeah, looking back in comparison to the rest of the story, I did kind of sideline Twilight and Spike too much. I think this ended up happening because I was trying to give enough focus on Starlight's motivations to ultimately destroy the spell for real; to make the split from the original episode plausible. I think I worried about Starlight so much I ended up making Twilight and Spike not quite as relevant as they should've been.
The bit about RD possibly tracking down Twilight is interesting, because (Spoilers!) that's my plan, but I wasn't intending it as a surprise, though the idea sounds tempting. Gonna talk to my editor and maybe a couple friends for input on which way to write that, because now I'm torn.
I also changed the numbers that were less than twenty to actual words (save for "10-Bit", since that's the actual coin title), along with having changed all mention of races to lowercase. The thing with the races might have been related to spell-check (I forget now though), but I think I was going back and forth on whether I wanted the races in lowercase or uppercase, but ultimately decided that it wouldn't be uppercase in actual Ponish unless it were referring to a nationality or language of sorts (since we don't capitalize "human" or anything in our own language).
But again, thank you very much for the input, it thrills me to see detailed comments!
9619776
I found Starlight's dialogue enough on its own to convey her absolute, dephtless contempt towards Twilight, because it felt credible. When Starlight looks at Twilight, she sees someone whose only definitive loss was a library—a rent-free gift from on high—and she had six friends to help her pick up the pieces anyway. Starlight had to make do with one, and he's the reason she had to pick up her own pieces in the first place.
Twilight should consider herself lucky Starlight settled for preventing the Sonic Rainboom. I'm sure she'd be much delighted with the wreck little Twi would have been if her Big Brother Best Friend Forever had vanished from her life, never to return, without the best foalsitter in the history of foalsitting around to help her through the pain.
The description around the dialogue is external enough to work as Twilight and Spike's point of view, outside of "as the crack in her armor of anger began to seal back up." I feel this sounds more lyrical than what Twilight would actually think, and although Spike might use it due to his love of bombastic comic books, I think he'd do so in a later retelling (probably acting out the scene, too) as opposed to what his actual thoughts would look like as the two of them are dealing with the cornered, unhinged sociopath right now.
I believe this is only necessary if you're gunning for an intimate point of view instead of a more detached one, however. In the latter case, though, the line feels quite lonely as the only metaphor of the entire chapter, especially when it happens as soon as the second paragraph and then there's no similar style in the narration afterward.
Going back to the dialogue, I'd say Starlight's lines are good enough to work entirely on their own in a (possibly entirely italicized) flashback. Not here since there's no pause between her last words and Twilight springing into action, but still an interesting thought if the story had been written differently (starting around the time she pounced on the pegasus she mistook for Starlight, perhaps?).
Then again, Starlight's hateful barbs at Twilight do make a most delightful introduction to this story. And the so, so simple "No." was already a damn good start.
This would remain a surprise if (as mentioned) the narration continues to be solely from Twilight and Spike's points of view, which was what I expected after reading two chapters of exactly that. If it shifts to Rainbow's, of course, then the surprise will be lost—at least if the shift occurs before she finds Twilight again.
It may be worth it to weigh up the pros and cons of the pov-shift's timing if this is what you had in store. It might also be worth it to weigh the pros and cons of including her point of view in the story to begin with, but that might lead to some unpleasant scorching and burning of completed work with no way to make sure it was the right decision.
You're welcome.
will we see glimmer again?
oh dear
11432357
For the sake of the Story? - Probably!
For my own delight and opinion? - Hopefully never again!
You do realize you basically trapped all of us in time you crazy lady 😡
What a way to start off the story and this is going to be very tough when it comes to time traveling so after Starlight shows the past she begins to rip off the paper of the time spell and Twilight tried to reason with her but it was too late now basically they are trapped in time and starlight made her move and trapped Rainbow Dash again and Twilight saved her but now the question is how the heck is she going to get back to her timeline without screwing up the past and stopping Starlight