My Brave Pony: Starfleet Nemesis

by Scipio Smith

Open Up Your Eyes

Open Up Your Eyes

Twilight didn't regret for one instant that she had returned as a true pony, rather than as an anthropomorphised...thing, but it did mean that she was rather dwarfed on board the Princess Twilight Sparkle. Everything had been designed - by her, she would hasten to admit before she started to sound as though she was blaming somepony else - for beings who stood taller than she was now by as high as twice as much. It wasn't as though she hadn't spent time in much taller places - the palace in Old Canterlot, for example - but at the same time it was still a little disconcerting to be confronted with a door she had intended to be about her height or the height of an average person, but which now loomed over her like a standing stone.

It was a reminder, one amongst many, of how, in returning to what she might call a state of nature, she had also alienated herself from the world around her.

But she had no regrets. This was who she was, and she wasn't going to compromise that for the convenience of the world around her.

She had tried that once and...and it hadn't worked out too well. She was Twilight Sparkle, a pony. She had a pony soul, she would have a pony form, too.

Besides, it wasn't as though any form could make the world around her wholly un-alien to her. She had died, sort of. She had spent years - years! - with her sould trapped in a magic stone. She had returned from kinda-sorta death. She had been gone for three years(!). Everything had changed in her absence, the world, people...Princess Luna.

Twilight was not entirely successful at stifling a sniffle. The others...they'd told her about what Princess Lunad had done, how she had given her life to inspire the resistance to the Grand Ruler and to give her friends a chance to escape and get to her. And Twilight would never be able to thank her for that, never be able to repay.

I wonder if Celestia thinks it was a trade worth making.

Twilight scowled. She couldn't afford to think like that, not now. Self doubt might be natural, but it was also a weakness. A weakness that she couldn't afford.

With the person on the other side of that door she couldn't really afford any weaknesses at all.

"Twilight," Rainbow Dash said quietly. "Are you sure that you want to do this?"

Twilight looked up at him. Her friends now towered over her, another consequence of her having resumed her original form while they had not. Where once ascension had made her the tallest of them, if only by a little bit, now she was a dwarf amongst giants.

I am an alien to this place, a stranger in the land of the living.

It took her a moment, under Rainbow's gaze, to find her voice. "I...I'm not sure," Twilight admitted. "But I have to do this. It's the right thing to do. I wouldn't feel right if I didn't try."

"I don't see why we can't all go in there with you," Applejack grumbled. "We only just got you back and already you want to leave us behind?"

Twilight chuckled. "Trust me, Applejack, when I say that I have no intention of leaving you behind ever again. I won't make that mistake more than once. But...if we all go in there it will seem like we're trying to bully her-"

"She deserves worse," Rainbow muttered.

"She deserves compassion, in spite of everything," Twilight replied. "That's why I'm going in there."

"Okay," Rainbow said, the concession sounding as though it had had to be wrenched out of her throat using pliers. "But I'm going to be listening, and the first sound of trouble I'm going to bust right in there and take care of everything."

Twilight grinned. "I'd expect nothing less."

Rainbow Dash knelt down in front of her. "I'm serious, Twilight. Dead...okay, not that, but...it's like Applejack said, we only just got you back Twi. Like today, a couple of hours ago. That's how only just we got you back." She reached out, and ran a hand across Twilight's fringe as though she couldn't quite believe it was real. "It's not just about going through that door, it's...there's a part of me that wants to grab hold of you and squeeze you tight and never let you because I...because I'm afraid that if I do you'll disappear, and this will all turn out to be a dream or something. We can't lose you again. It...I don't think we could take it."

Twilight bowed her head, a soft, fond smile playing across her face as she felt an old familiar warm feeling in her heart.

"What?" Rainbow demanded. "What's that smile?"

"I was just thinking about how everything's changed around me while I've been...gone," Twilight said. "But...it's good to know, no matter what else has changed, our friendship hasn't, and neither have you girls."

Rainbow snorted. "Come here." She pulled Twilight into a hug. "Come back out of there okay. And take care of yourself."

"That's the plan," Twilight said. "Nothing but talking."

"And we're right here if you need us, right?"

"Not planning on going nowhere," Applejack declared.

Rainbow released Twilight, and stood up again. "You ready?"

Twilight took a deep breath. "Yes."

Rainbow hit the button mounted to the wall, and the lavender door slid open with a hydraulic hiss.

Starla Shine was on the other side of the door, confined in one of the Princess Twilight's cells. An electro-magical barrier separated the cell from the room beyond but, just in case the power went down or something happened to disrupt the barrier, there was also a set of metal bars between the prisoner and freedom.

Starla didn't immediately notice her come in, for all the noise that the door made. She was sitting with her head and shoulders resting on the bars, singing what sounded like a sadly romantic song, her mane dishevelled as it fell down her back. It wasn't the Starla that Twilight was expecting. Her memories of Starla were, to put it bluntly, ferocious. A peerless warrior with eyes as cold as ice. Now she looked a mess, broken and defeated, and as Twilight entered the room she almost thought there were tear tracks on Starla's face.

"What do I have to do to make you notice me?" she sang softly, as though she were singing a lullaby. "Notice meeeeee? Notice me?"

"Starla?" Twilight said.

Starla jumped, jerking away from the bars as she looked in the direction of the voice. She stopped. She stared. Her eyes widened. "It's you," she whispered.

"Yes," Twilight said. "It's me, I'm...back, for want of a better word."

"Back," Starla repeated, her voice barely rising above a whisper. "You're not a clone, then?"

"There is a clone," Twilight said. "But I'm not her and she isn't me. I'm Twilight Sparkle."

Starla stared at her a moment longer, before her face twisted into a sneer. "What do you want? Have you come to revel in your triumph over me? The Princess Twilight cometh, behold, behold! Are you here to gloat or are you going to make me beg for my life?"

"I'm not here to gloat and I'm not going to kill you, whether you beg for your life or not," Twilight said sharply. "This isn't Starfleet, we do things differently here. I came here to help you, Starla."

"What makes you think that I need help from your or anyone else?"

"The fact that you're clearly unhappy," Twilight said.

Starla shook her head. Then she laughed, throwing back her head and roaring up at the ceiling. "I'm unhappy? That's it? I came here with the intent of killing you while your friends watched and you offer me help because I am unhappy, well doesn't that just...you are the last person in the universe I would ever accept help from!"

Twilight took a step back. "Why? Why do you hate me so much? I never did anything to you."

Starla sounded as though she was trying to laugh and gasp at the same time. "You never...oh! The audacity! You can drop the act now, Twilight, there's only you and me in here. There's no need to pretend to be the good, kind girl; there's no one around to suck up to here, no one to admire the model citizen that you pretend to be. It's just you and me in here, and I know what you really are."

"Really?" Twilight said dryly. "And what am I?"

"A corrupter," Starla said. "A temptress. Someone who wears a mild mask to conceal the venom beneath."

"And who did I corrupt?" Twilight demanded. "Who did I tempt?"

"Lightning Dawn, my husband!" Starla howled, her eyes wild and her mane flying all around her. "He was mine! He was mine and mine alone and my only and I deserved him!" she was crying now, sobbing as she curled up in a ball in the centre of her cell. "He was mine," she repeated. "Until you came and you...you...you changed him. You took him away from me. Why did you have to do that? Why did you have to...why? Why did you have to take him away from me?"

"I didn't take Lightning anywhere."

"Stop lying!" Starla shouted. "He loves you now. He only has eyes and thoughts for you now! He is my husband but his heart is yours! You did that! You! No one else! You did that and I want you to tell me why?"

Twilight said nothing. Her thoughts were whirling, galloping as fast as Applejack but they were still not moving fast enough to keep up with Starla's ranting.

At first...at first she didn't believe it. At first she thought that Starla was the one lying, making up allegations to hurl at her to maintain her sense of injured righteousness. But, as Twilight watched, as she looked upon the broken mare in the cell before her, sobbing in a heap on the floor even as she insisted on her truth, the less Twilight felt as though she was capable of deceit at this moment.

Did Lightning...was he in love with her? He'd started spending a lot more time with her lately, started to behave in a more affable and obliging fashion towards her, but...love? She'd noticed the changes of course, but she had not thought it love. She'd simply thought, and been glad to think, that he had been taking the magic of friendship to heart. Had it been a different kind of magic all along?

And how did she feel about that if it was?

Twilight put that question on the back burner. It wasn't important right now. Or rather, it was important but it could also wait. Starla was what mattered here, Starla who needed a kind of help that no one had ever offered to her before.

"I hate you, Twilight Sparkle," Starla declared, and what once might have sounded ominous now, coming from the mare on the floor, sounded rather pathetic. "I hate you," she repeated. "I hate you because...because you've got everything that I...that I could never have."

"But always wanted," Twilight murmured. "That's it, isn't it? That was it all along and I never realised. All the put downs, all the arrogance, the way you turned up your nose at my friends...you were jealous all along, weren't you?"

"I had to have you as the best mare of my wedding!" Starla snapped. "You, the mare the my husband really wanted to marry! And why? Because I don't have any friends! Because I didn't have any other mare in the whole dimensional universe whom I could ask to stand beside me at the altar! Do you have any idea what that feels like? Do you know what it's like to be all alone in the world?"

"No," Twilight confessed, because she had never been alone. Even before her friends, before Spike, she had always had Shining Armour, and her parents, and Cadance too. She'd never been truly alone.

Starla was still sobbing, and if possible she seemed to be crying even more than she had been before. "You...you have such good friends. You have a family. You have so many people who love you. The Queen...the queen loves you like a daughter and she...you're so loved, Twilight. Do you even realise? Do you even notice the way people look at you? Do you even understand how loved you are, how lucky you are?"

"I don't know," Twilight said. "Although I'd like to think so."

"I have nothing," Starla confessed. "I...I looked at all the things that you had, all the things that I wanted but couldn't have, had never been given and I...I envied you. I envied you so much that it hurt inside. I have no friends but my sword and bow. I have no life but duty. But I had him. Lightning Dawn, the star in the bleak void of my life. Mine, to have and to love and to love me in return. And you took him away from me. Why did you have to do that to me?"

"It wasn't my intent," Twilight said. "I just wanted to show him a better way."

"A better way?" Starla repeated. "Or a better mare?"

“You can change too, you only have to want to,” Twilight said. “You can have all the things that you envied me for, you always could-“

“No,” Starla shook her head. “No, I can’t I…I never could, not ever. My mother was never around, she preferred fighting for Starfleet to raising her daughter. My father, he…I couldn’t get on with the other children. I just couldn’t…they didn’t like me and it was mutual. I used to read these books, all about heroes. Great heroes of Starfleet like my mother. Pictures of them, how beautiful they were, how strong, how proud they all looked with light blazing out of them. And it didn’t matter so much to me then, looking at those pictures, that I was weird and a loner and I didn’t have any friends because I was going to be a hero just like those pictures, and in the pictures the hero was always alone. That’s why I trained so hard, that’s why I had to get strong, as strong as anyone-“

“That’s not strength,” Twilight said. “Isolating yourself, obsessing over something, shutting yourself down, there’s nothing strong about that no matter how much you train. Open up your eyes, Starla: I’m out here, and you’re in there and why do you think that is? It’s not because I trained harder than you. It’s not because I’m stronger than you. It’s because I have friends who were there for me when I needed them the most, just like Lightning did. My friends are my power, not my magic. And you can have that power too, if you only have the courage to reach for it. So I have a question for you, Starla Shine…what are you going to do?”

Comments

[hubakon1368]

I love Twilight deconstructing Starla's (and Starfleet's) idea of what strength is. And Twilight's explanation that she's strong because she has others who will stand beside her.

[N Harmonik]

["Twilight," Rainbow Dash said quietly. "Are you sure that you want to do this?"

Twilight looked up at him.]

I know Rainbow Dash is a tomboy but I didn't know she could actually change genders just like that.

Not another cliffhanger!

[heavens-champion]

So, when is the next chapter?

[WhitewolfStormrunner]

9121681 Hopefully soon.

[heavens-champion]

Another thing, did you forget about Daring Do? Last time we saw her, she was on another planet at an archaeological site. I forget the details, but I know Dyno and Myte were there keeping an eye on her and her mother.

[Spellflame]

Well, I was right twilight did possess eve, even if It didn’t last very long

[Starlight Nova]

Before I read this, I must know: How do I know this story isn't a thiny-veiled jab at Dakari King Mykan skills as an author? I've never actually read any of his story, but I think it really is disturbing how many people seem to hate him and his work just because they don't think his stories are any good. ...Yeah, I said it! And you know what else? I'm not taking it back, either!

[Mystic Sunrise]

9909734
I say read some of his stories. And you will know why people say what they do about him. Read the comments on the stories as well.

There is a very good reason for the reputation he has.