In the Shadows of Starlight

by IMFoalishFace

The Dawn of a New Day

Author's Note:

So, after how much of a hassle it was to get that last chapter written and edited, then having it still be a narrative mess in my opinion, I've decided to try making much shorter chapters. At least until I get more comfortable with my prose. I just don't feel I have the skills to pull off 10k+ chapters with any real effectiveness.
Plus this isn't (explicitly) a Fallout: Equestria fic so I think I can get away from having Kkat or Somber length chapters with out too much of a sense of failure.
(but seriously: goals)

Any way have a good time and any feedback is appreciated.

Edit: So, I'm probably not going to finish this one any time soon. I've pretty much diverted all of my effort to my FO:E side fic Sunny Skies. I will however post the last two chapters I wrote for this story. I didn't get them edited or pre-read so sorry about the drop in quality.

I might come back to this one eventually. It had a cool premise (I think) but I just lost a feel for it after a while.

Starlight awoke feeling dazed save for the sensations of a splitting headache.

After getting past the fact that she hadn't been having a terrible nightmare the night before, Starlight cradled her head and started to examine her newly discovered enclosure. The cell was very spacious for a single pony, possessing enough space for easily a half dozen beds, and was very barren. There were blank white walls on all sides: one had the bed against it, another bore a door, a sink/toilet combo in their corner, and a mirrored one way window dominating the side across from the bed. The room was unpleasantly similar to the holding room Starlight had in her village.

Starlight's headache eventually faded to a dull hammering and she grew bored with lying on her bed. First, she did a few laps of the new space, verifying that this was indeed all there was. She sat and thought about her current position and means of escape. An unknown building, in an unknown location, operated by a group of ponies that would probably have executed her if they didn't want something from her. Teleporting was an old standby but without knowledge of her surroundings she would probably wind up in a wall, and that was if she could even teleport through the walls. Escaping with no assistance sounded unlikely.

Analysis of her situation done opened up several minutes to spend testing how one-way the one-way glass was. A few more laps. Reminiscing on how thirsty she was and trying the sink. Several more minutes trying to rid her tongue of the taste of chlorine, rust, and only a chemist knows what else; the bed sheets proved to be fresh at least. The facility used a plesant lilac fabric softener. More laps. Discovering an intriguing crack in the wall across from the door.

Starlight did anything she could to occupy herself in the mind-numbingly boring space but she eventually found herself sitting on the floor at the foot of her bed staring at the blank wall. Her stomach growled, her mouth was dry, and pacing was only making it worse. Her thoughts rapidly grew dark. Matter less of how she tried, despair gripped Starlight.

What was wrong with her? She had kinda' lost a friend when she was young and used that as justification to cause all of this? Strip sentient beings of their identity. Act as a totalitarian dictator over a town of good ponies. Successfully stalk Twilight Sparkle and devise a plan that would leave her hopeless to fight back. Ruin who knows how many worlds in the process.

Starlight's time travel plot was beyond genius, the princess had no idea how to combat the spell and its effects. Starlight had been stronger, better prepared, and with an opponent who was completely unbalanced by a new environment. There were only two others who had come close to what Starlight had accomplished. Starswirl had laid the groundwork for Starlight's spell, dedicating most of his life to unlocking various methods of space/time travel but never quite cracking it. Discord, the all powerful manifestation of chaos himself, was the other. A being who spent his spare time making things fall away from gravity, animating inanimate objects, harassing the most powerful beings on the planet without repercussion, or lounging in his own claw and paw made pocket dimension.

No, Starlight hadn’t done too shabby for some random mare from a hick town in the middle of nowhere.

The things she could have accomplished if she had taken a better path. She could have easily gotten into Celestia's school with half the effort she put into her obsession with cutie marks as a filly. Twilight might have had to watch her position as Celestia's protege. Then again the thing that had driven Starlight to be so studious was her hurt. Unwilling to deal with her issues she had been driven to distract herself with knowledge, the result had been interesting to say the least.

Starlight's thoughts once again drifted to her new mentor. Princess Twilight Sparkle had a lot to say about the power of friendship. While the actual beams of love magic that the Elements dealt out were confusing and arbitrary in Starlight's opinion, she couldn't argue how useful others were when it came to accomplishing goals. However, Starlight found her mind poisonously reflecting on how she had never seen the benefits of friendship in action herself. She had relied on her own strength most of her life and having others follow her, willing or not, made up the balance.

Starlight could only try and put the doubt out of her mind. She would see how her escape options evolved with time and Twilight and company were out there working to break her out. She let the fact that she had a friend out there rooting for her soak in. There was no reason to despair. Starlight could still work to fix this all. Right?

"Damn it" Starlight mumbled to herself as her eyes didn't close nor her thoughts slow.

---

Starlight woke with a hollow feeling in her gut, partly explained by hunger. However, that wasn't the reason she was drifting back into the realm of the waking. Her head didn't hurt and it's thoughts had finally stopped, allowing the mare a painfully short trip to blissful, dreamless sleep. Starlight was quite irritated to be drifting back into consciousness. She eventually became aware of her left side feeling numb but that was something that came after wakefulness. There was something her subconscious was having issues with. Starlight tried to rub the sensation out of her head on the carpet.

Wait a moment......

Her cell had a concrete floor.

Starlight's eyes jerked open. This was not her cell. The room was much smaller, about a quarter of the size. It had a deep, luxurious red carpet and walls covered in handsome wood paneling. Another one-way window dominated the wall to Starlight's right, but featured a golden frame about it, giving the impression of a massive picture mirror. A hardwood door was directly in front of Starlight; between her and the door was a table with a mare sitting at it...

"Glad to see you've finally woken up, darling."

The mare's blue eyes flicked up from a stack of reports on the table, looking over her red-rimmed reading glasses. The usual elegant waves had been replaced with an economic but still sophisticated bun. Rarity wore a calm expression with a hint of concern, sniff of awe, and underlying fear as she looked at Starlight sprawled on the floor.

"How are you feeling? Are you thirsty? Hungry?" Rarity motioned to a covered tray and pitcher sitting next to her, a smile on her face. "I'm just wondering if you could answer a few questions."

Starlight stared blankly at the white unicorn, her skin crawling and nerves buzzing for some unknown reason. The way Sunset had spoken, Starlight was surprised she wasn't already strapped to a rack, the orange mare and her minions trying to literally wring information out of her. She definitely didn't expect finding herself sitting in a nice room with Rarity who was treating her like a house guest to a noble.

Starlight choked down the surrealism and instead assessed her current situation. She was defiantly in the custody of Celestia's government. Sunset was not beating her to a pulp nor was she still locked in the blank cell. According to the other Twilight this was a government that had completely lost all sense of morals and ethics. Corrupt and merciless. They would stop at nothing until they had achieved their goals which right now was a knowledge of time travel that they strongly believed (and rightly so) that Starlight possessed. If Other-Twilight was to be believed, Starlight was going to suffer until she had given up everything she knew at the hooves of Celestia's twisted will.

Of course, Other-Twilight had also come through time and space, foalnapped Starlight, and threatened her with bodily harm if she didn't give up the secrets time travel so her opinions of the Equestrian government were probably skewed. Rarity showing up was making her even more uneasy but for all she knew it was a coincidence, not some grand plot to dull Starlight's guard. As the pink mare stood she figured the best course of action would be to cooperate, she just had to make sure not to give anything too important away.

That and she was starving.

"Something to eat sounds fantastic."

The concern that had been building on Rarity's face melted away as she levitated the tray and pitcher over. Carrot soup with plain hay and water was very satisfying after not eating for.... How long had Starlight been unconscious or in her cell? There were no means of telling time when one was passed out or locked in a windowless and clockless room. Rarity sipped from a glass of water and went back to looking over her paperwork while she waited for Starlight to finish.

"The meal was satisfactory I hope?" Rarity asked, looking over her reading glasses.

"Yes, it was. Thank you"

"It is nothing, dear. It sounds like you needed some nourishment after all you've been through." Rarity smiled radiantly while she pulled out a quill and a blank sheet. "Now, my name is Rarity. I'm with the Internal Regulatory and Investigative Service. I'm here to follow up on your encounter with Twilight Sparkle and her group."

Starlight reached up and scratched her head, the inside of her skull was itchy somehow, looking down at the table. "Am I in trouble?"

"Calm down, darling. We are just wondering how it is that you came to be in the company of some very unsavory ponies. Could you please tell me your name?"

"I'm Starlight. Starlight Glimmer." No real point lying about her name. Hopefully this her hadn't spent her life being evil. "Who were those ponies that captured me?"

"Some truly terrible ponies, darling." Rarity floated over six folders of varying thicknesses, set them out in front of the other mare, and flipped them open. The first pages were summaries giving a pony's name, race, physical description, status, occupation, a few others things, and a large box at the bottom marked "notes". Each rap sheet was completed by three pictures: a mug shots of the face and a sketch of a cutie mark. Starlight didn't recognize any of the pictured ponies except Sparkle and Minuette, who was a pretty blue mare with a warm smile and no missing eye in her picture. Sweeping across the group she noticed the common themes of "Status: Rouge", "treason, murder in the first, mareslaughter, assault, sabotage, theft, resisting arrest" and "extremely dangerous, deadly force approved, do NOT approach". There were also other notes about things like Night Mare, 3rd Rangers, and STAR shared by more than a few of the mares.

"They're some of the most dangerous criminals in the nation. Being their prisoner must have been simply horrifying." Rarity raised a hoof to her brow and leaned back. Still dramatic as anywhen else.

"I guess I didn't really stay with them long enough to see." Starlight said. She had Rarity's sympathy and that could be used to her advantage. "They were really scary though."

"Could you tell me what happened to you? From the beginning?" Rarity put on a sugar-coated smile with a slight tilt of her head.

"Well I was asleep in my bed when a friend came and woke me in the middle of the night. She lead me into the middle of my garden and then teleported me away, when the spell was complete my friend had turned into her." Starlight pointed to Twilight's picture. "The alicorn showed up not to long after and tried to take me away. I struggled but I didn't know what was happening or who anypony was. I got knocked out and woke up with the alicorn. She sedated me and the next thing I woke up in a cell. Now I'm talking to you."

If that story wasn't a paper-mache cup full of water. Starlight still did as much as she could to hide her feelings of doubt as Rarity looked over some more paperwork.

"I see, darling, and where is it you live?"

"I live in a small settlement north of Manehattan. Out in the deserts."

"And does this settlement have a name?"

"Not really. Only about thirty ponies live there and we all just call it 'Our Town'."

"Mm-hum" Rarity wrote some more and shifted the files in front of her, digging one out and setting it off by itself. "Now this town up north you claim to be from: how would you describe it, Starlight Glimmer?" Her tone was still sweet as ever as she looked up over her glasses.

'That's an odd question to ask,' Starlight thought. Answering aloud: "Its nice enough I guess. Nothing much but it’s home and we all make it work."

"Is it peaceful, Starlight?" Rarity set Starlight with a confrontational glare that caused the other mare to shift in her seat slightly.

"There isn't really anything to cause a ruckus. It’s just us, the dirt, a couple of beasts in the nearby mountains to watch for, and the occasional traveler to spice things up. We all just kind of just live our lives."

"I see, and this is in the north right?"

"Yes.." Starlight dragged the world out. She was going to get nailed.

"I find that interesting. The stories I’ve heard about the fighting in the north are most gruesome and unpleasant. The Army’s been dealing with Changelings, the Crystal Remnant, Yaks, and a very odd group of upstart ponies lead by some madmare."
Rarity levitated the folder she had set aside in front of Starlight and opened it with her magic.

“Starlight Glimmer. Female, Unicorn. Avg height and build; blue eyes; pink coat; purple mane with light purple and bright blue accents. Advanced magical knowledge and training, learned combat knowledge: dangerous, approach with extreme caution. Treason, insurrection, various accounts of conspiracy in murder (varying degrees), assault, resisting arrest, sabotage of military and civil functions and structures, practice of dark magic, and atrocities to the Equine races. Former leader and Founder of the Equalist Movement, toppled from position due to internal opposition. Status: Unknown.”

Starlight gulped. She was quite nailed. Looking back up to Rarity didn't help. The white unicorn's expression had turned to icy stone barely containing an underlying rage. "I do not appreciate being lied to, Miss Glimmer. Now, you are either a zealot that I should have executed immediately or you can start telling the truth about where and when you came from and how it is you got to be my problem. You could cooperate but I should tell you that I have been given permission from the princess herself to use any and all means at my disposal to break you as fast as possible. And trust me when I tell you: nopony wants that."

Starlight shifted again. She was cornered. She was going to get tortured and mutilated by Rarity. The sheer ridiculousness was almost overwhelming. Here, the stuck-up fashionista was some sort of thriller novel’s sinister spymaster. Starlight's Rarity would probably have loved the idea, what with her love of Shadow Spade and similar novels. The theatrics, the mystery, the drama of keeping Equestria's underbelly in check. If Starlight made it out of this she would have to write those books.

Starlight’s mind stalled, her thoughts getting caught one unifying thought: Rarity was a very theatrical pony. She carried herself as a Canterlot elite despite the fact she was born and raised in a hick town. Acted like a dainty, prissy lady despite the fact that she could beat Applejack and Rainbow Dash in a hoof to hoof fight. This Rarity had acted very similar to the other.

Starlight wondered consciously why she was spending time thinking about this. She was getting interrogated. Rarity was her opponent, time couldn’t be wasted reminiscing on a her from another dimension. Yet, her mind wouldn’t be desuaded as she followed the idea’s path through her head.

Starlight had done a decent amount of pondering how things in this timeline came to be and still didn't have any real answers. She knew that the Bearers of the Elements of Harmony had never been found and that would have lead to disaster after disaster. She lacked information to understand what exactly had happened to Twilight, Rainbow, or Ponyville. There was nothing but massive question marks when it came to the matters of magic and time that got her here in the first place (that might not end well for Starlight given her current situation). The events and politics that had shaped this modern Equestria were beyond her comprehension but she saw truth right in front of her.

Rarity had decent natural skills as an actress, knew how to carry herself with both nobility and peasantry, loved collecting gossip, could work a group of ponies with finesse (most of the time), and had mad organizational skills. The mare Starlight knew had gone from a dressmaker in a backwater town to one of the premier fashion designers in the nation. Here she had been forced into a different life path but she was still just about the same mare.

Starlight blinked. That was quite a conclusion she had arrived at. All of it seemed to make sense of how Rarity had wound up in her current position but it seemed to have come out of nowhere. Starlight’s skin crawled again and she was momentarily gripped in panic. Something wasn’t right but she just couldn’t tell what. She might have been drugged with something to make her tell the truth or just dull her guard and make her think slower.

Wait, there was a very irritated mare in front of Starlight. She looked up at Rarity who was looking at her like a mother would a child who had been caught stealing and needed to explain herself. Being treated like a foal really rubbed Starlight the wrong way; she set Rarity with an equally cold glare:

"Fine. I didn't come from up north. I live in Ponyville." Rarity flinched at that. "I was awoken late last night, I think, by Twilight Sparkle, whom is my teacher and a personal friend, except that particular Twilight was from this timeline. She dragged me through a portal and I wound up here where I was quickly detained by Sunset and her goons."

Starlight flashed Rarity a smile. And Rarity returned it, saying: "See. Now how hard was that, darling?"

"Incredibly," Starlight answered. "So, Rarity, I'm assuming the dressmaking thing didn't go so well. Then again it would be hard to stay fabulous during repeated national crises."

Starlight found the look of complete incomprehension and confused terror on Rarity's face to be one of the most gratifying things she had ever seen. "I-I've no idea what you're talking about."

'Ah, the sputtering of fear.' Starlight thought. "Why, darling, I thought we weren't lying to each other. You are Rarity, from in Ponyville. Aren't you?"

Rarity hardened herself and stared back at Starlight. "The fact that that's how you know me points to you not being able to read minds or doing your homework. And you're not scarred up or crazy enough to be the Starlight Glimmer in that file. So, I assume Miss Shimmer was right in her statement that you're some sort of time traveler then?"

"If I were a time traveler wouldn't I have popped into existence from the future to bust me out already?"

"Being that time travel spells are im- almost impossible, I'm not sure you have the strength to jump about willy-nilly, not mention risking hurting yourself or ripping a hole in the universe."

“Well, I’m only a time traveler by foalnapping. I got drug out of my home and taken here by somepony that you’ve openly called: ‘an obsessive madmare’.”

Starlight finished her statement with air quotes and then set Rarity with a challenging glare. The other pony returned it and they sat in silence for several moments.

"I'm not a mare to be trifled with, Starlight."

"And neither am I."

"I can make your world hell."

"Say, have you heard the word about equality? It could really help you enrich your life. Plus, diamonds are so materialistic and cliche."

Rarity's eye twitched and she looked like she was going to throw a temper tantrum. Starlight just stared back with a small smile on her lips as the other mare fumed.

After gathering herself, Rarity looked back at Starlight with an irritation and exhaustion, rubbing the bridge of her nose. “Really, Starlight. We are two grown civilized mares and I really have gotten tired of the barbarism that dominates this business. Why can’t we just act decent to each other instead of getting all worked up.”

Starlight looked incredulously at the other unicorn as she pouted. The suggestion was most unexpected but did sound very pleasant to Starlight. A spell of dizziness washed over Starlight and she raised a hoof to her head, leaning on the table with the other.

“Oh my,” Rarity asked with concern. “Are you alright?” When Starlight didn’t answer she continued. “See, all of this aggression and anger is doing a real number on both of us. What we need is some fresh air. Come, dear, a good walk would do us some good.”

Rarity stood and smiled at Starlight, the latter feeling like she was about to die. Starlight stood and broke out in a cold sweat, her knees shaking. The pink mare stumbled to the wall to her right for support as she was momentarily left disoriented. Looking out the window on the wall she saw a park sprawling out below them. The sun shown down on soft rolling hills, criss-crossed with trotting paths, surrounded by skyscrapers. It was a perfect day to go strolling in Manehattan’s Central Park and just looking at the scene was clearing Starlight’s head.

Looking back to Rarity, Starlight smiled, pushed off the wall, and said: “Sounds like a wonderful idea.”