//------------------------------// // I... I Wanna Be Mad at her… but the Adults are just as much to blame, here // Story: It's A Screwed Up Life // by Autum Breeze //------------------------------// Warning! Minor Starlight and Sunburst Spoilers for Season 8 I... I Wanna Be Mad at her… but the Adults are just as much to blame, here ___________________________________________________________ We drop from the portal, narrowly avoiding a beam from Starlight. The last time we came out of the portal, she’d been helping Fluttershy get through the Flight Camp course, thus the bullies had no reason to want to tease her. Strangely enough, the timeline that created was… weird. And dumb. Remember that flaw I mentioned regarding Flim and Flam? The one where they just took Sweet Apple Acres, when all they’d won were the cider rights? Well, that timeline we ended up in was the Sombra timeline again, only Flutters had apparently moved to Canterlot after leaving Cloudsdale, inadvertently saved the two con ponies during the Changleinge Invasion attempt and then somehow got into a large industry because of the war with Sombra, getting rich from other ponies suffering. … Yeah, after I took the right route to ending the war quickly, I really let those two have it before handing them over to Celestia. I let Twilight and Starlight talk it out, Twilight trying to explain about how Starlight’s actions are FREAKING RISKING EVERYTHING, while I go down to help Flutters again. “… next I suppose you'll tell me that the fate of all of Equestria hangs in the balance!” Starlihgt is saying as I pop back to Twilight’s side. “It does!” Twilight says urgently. “Spare me your overblown ego” Starlight says, rolling her eyes. “! No group of friends, not even Princess Twilight's, is that important!” Did this bitch seriously never read the news? She knows Twi and the others have saved Equestria multiple times, right? Right? My thoughts are cut off by the sound of Dash crying out, though my attention is drawn more to the time portal opening. “Okay, I’ve had enough of this shit!” I shout, grabbing Starlight in my magic and pulling her close. I love the look of shock and fear in her eyes. It’s so delicious! Twilight blinks, before frowning and nodding. “I don't know how important other ponies' friendships are to the future, but, thanks to Screwball, I can show you what the world is like without mine!” With that, we’re all pulled into the portal… and I freeze in place once we land in the new timeline. There’s a barren, grey wasteland around us. I... I can’t sense any life around us. The only living things I can sense are Twilight, Starlight, Spike and myself. The rest of the world is just… dead. The only other thing even the remotest bit alive is the Tree of Harmony, and it isn’t going to last much longer anyway. It’s doing everything it can just to maintain the Map’s connection. We’ve got maybe ten minutes before it dies too, leaving the Map worthless and us trapped in this timeline forever. I’m so horrified; I don’t even pay attention to what the ponies and dragon are saying. There’s… there’s literally nothing. Everypony I know. My friends, family… everypony… they’re all gone. “Change my mind?” an angry voice pulls me from my thoughts and I look down from the Map to see Starlight glaring at Twilight with a look like a voice dripping with venom. “You don't know anything about me! I was perfectly happy before you and your friends ruined what I built!” “Yeah, and you’re being happy meant countless others suffering because of flawed philosophy…” I say without thinking, but trail off as a thought occurs to me. I quickly reach out my magic. Oh… Oh, Sweet Celestia. That’s what happened. Starlight is what happened! In this timeline, somehow, things worked out for the best… until Starlight’s plans to expand her village went too far. She got the princesses to visit and took their Cutie Marks away. She took the only way to keep the day and night cycle moving away and… and this world is the result. Starlight caused her past self to doom Eqeustria to be a wasteland of nothing and… I shoot up straight. Wait. Is that…? Yes! Yes, just felt a ripple in the demensions. Someone travelled from… Oh my gosh! Someone came here from the Equestria Girls world! It’s Sunset! “You want to know what happened to me?!” Starlihgt’s voice invades my thoughts and I turn to see she’s now in front of me and she’s casting the Time Travel Spell again, “I'll show you!” ___________________________________________________________ We come up out of the ground when the portal opens, oddly enough, finding ourselves in small village, kinda like Ponyville, only smaller and more homey feeling. There’s a lot of pointed, tiled houses, some with spires, others not. Ponies are walking around, doing their every day things. I’m so confused. “Where are we?” Twilight voices my thoughts. Starlight gives us firm looks. “That map of yours is connected to every part of Equestria, and this part is my home.” She leads us over to one house in particular, through the window of which we can see a filly Starlight, yet to get her Cutie Mark. Hate to say it, but she looks pretty cute. There’s another pony with her, a unicorn colt with orange fur, with cream fur around his hooves, as well as a cream patch of fur right between his eyes. His mane is your average kind of colts his age. He doesn’t have a Cutie Mark either. I watch the two stacking books like a tower of Jenga as Starlight explains the colt is named Sunburst. The two were apparently the best of friends, always doing everything together. “Until today,” she says in a foreboding tone. As we watch, the tower start to fall, about to hit Starlight, but Sunburst catches the tower in his magic, glowing with a fire yellow light as the books then swirl around him, before all flying to the nearby empty bookshelf and all fitting into place. When Sunburst returns to the ground, his flank more bares a Cutie Mark of an orb like the sun, with ray of moving out on one side, while the other side has no rays, but a few blue twinkles. He gives an excite whiny, like a horse, before trotting outside, the townsponies all quickly gathering around and congratulating him, while filly Starlight watches… and starts to cry before running further inside. “And just like that, my friend was gone,” Starlight sighs. “His family recognized his magical talent and sent him off to Canterlot. I never saw him again.” “Well, why not?” Spike asks, myself thinking the same thing in confusion. Starlight turns to us, glaring as tears start to form in her eyes. “Because of his cutie mark! He got his, and I didn't! He moved on, and I didn't! I stayed here and never made another friend because I was too afraid another cutie mark would take them away, too!” Twilight, Spike and I look to each other, before Twilight shakes her head. “That's ridiculous. A cutie mark can't take your friends away.” Starlight wipes her eyes. “Not everypony's lucky enough to get her cutie mark at the same time as her friends!” As she speaks, she starts up the spell. However, she freezes in place before the portal can open. Everything does. I frown, tapping my chin. I quickly froze time to stop her, but but I had another reason. Moving a little further into town, I make sure the others remain frozen in time where they were as the world speeds through time around me, letting me see what happens at a super speed. Surely Starlight isn’t serious? She could’ve kept in contact with this Sunburst by mailing him, right? As I watch… I find out, no, that’s not the case at all. After Sunburst left, Starlight did indeed become withdrawn, not interacting with any other fillies or colts beyond acknowledging their existence. She didn’t once try to get to know anypony. And, it turns out her father was no help in the matter. Oh, don’t get me wrong, her father, Fire Light (yeah, not the most creative father, simply naming his daughter after himself, but replacing the Fire with Star) was a good father. He loved his daughter dearly and wanted her to be happy… it’s just his method leaves something to be desired. It’s not like what Spoiled did to Diamond. In fact, it’s kinda the opposite. He gave her too much love and care, treating her like a little filly, no matter how many years went by. It also doesn’t help that he literally didn’t listen to Starlight. She’d tried explaining why she was unhappy, but he wouldn’t listen, just focusing on his own way of helping her, which also included teaching her about the history Sire’s Hollow (the name of the town). All of it’s history. With his lack of listening, I see clearly how Starlight was never dissuaded from her eventual belief that a Cutie Mark had taken Sunburst from her, resulting in her hatred of Cutie Marks. And, good lord, her teenage years? Ya know how some teens go through that Goth faze, filling their rooms with gothic stuff? Yeah, Starlight went through that at one point… and Fire Light was completely oblivious. Good grief. No wonder Starlight’s view of reality got so warped. As for Sunburst not keeping in contact with her himself? Well, it turns out he flunked Magic School and, after his mother, Stellar Flare, found out he flunked out and saw how lost he was because of it, she started trying to plan everything out for him, to the point he stopped being in contact with the village at all, hence not contacting Starlight. Man, those two have some serious parents issues. Guess we can kinda relate there. Once history gets to the point Starlight leaves Sire’s Hollow, I return back to the frozen moment where Starlight was going to cast the spell and get ready, before unfreezing time. She casts the spell, only to suddenly find her horn encased in a jawbreaker and her legs bound to her side as we all fly back into the portal. Once time’s back to the way it should be, we’ll explain to her just why her plan is wrong. I’ll even show her all the alternate timelines she didn’t see, from their past points, before we had gotten to them. Maybe, once she’s realized how wrong she was, we can get her back on the right path. Who knows, maybe she’ll even be able to become friends with the Mane 6. She and I can certainty bond over parental problems. We’ll have to wait and see.