• Published 20th Mar 2017
  • 1,834 Views, 10 Comments

Twilight vs Starlight: EXTENDED VERSION - 6-D Pegasus



When Part 2 of the Season 5 Finale was written, its author originally focused WAY too much on the magic fight between Twilight and Starlight. Although reduced to less than a minute in the final cut, the original would've taken an hour. Here's why. :)

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The "Original" Fight

Author's Note:

Treat this like the 100% original type of thing. Everything was extended, not just the main fight, and is supposed to neatly fit into the actual episode if spliced at the points where the first and last spoken lines of this story take place during the finale.

also, if you're confused, the overuse of horizontal rules is for change of perspective, since this is in 3rd person omniscient.

PLEASE tell me what you think in the comments! I need a little more feedback so I can improve my writing... English is my least favorite subject at school lol

[Scene 4]

"Even if what you saying were true, we'd never surrender to a CREATURE LIKE YOU! YAAAAA!"

As she stumbled desperately towards the where she came from, Twilight heard Zecora final cry of defiance behind her, leading what remained of her "little resistance" into one final, but futile, clash against Chrysalis and her changelings. The buzzing noise that surrounded her grew louder as several changelings broke loose from their formation to dive at Twilight and Spike.

"Agh!" Spike yelped in surprise and fear as one of the changeling dove straight for his head. At the last second, he ducked out of the changeling's reach; its jaws biting down into empty air. "Hurry up Twilight!"

"We're almost to the map, Spike! Hang on!" Twilight quickened her gallop towards the direction of the map, not daring to peel her eyes away in fear of losing it in the dense cover of the forest. Every single on of her legs were screaming in pain, begging for a few seconds of rest, but Twilight knew what would happen to her if she stopped. And what would happen to her friends. And to all of Equestria...

Suddenly, a familiar glint of whitish-blue light standing out against the dark green forest caught her eyes some distance in front of her. As she came closer, she began to recognize a sort of cylindrical shape colored bright blue with areas of red and green on the top. The Map! A spark of hope ignited within Twilight's mind as she galloped even faster towards her salvation.

"Watch out Twilight!" Spike screamed from his position on her back. Without taking her eyes off of what she could see of the map, Twilight noticed several changelings surrounding her on all four sides from above out of the corner of her eye. Spike's grip on her tightened in fear. Her mind raced, desperately searching for an answer. Then she found it.

As the changelings around her wound up, getting ready to tackle her, Twilight charged her horn with magic, channeling it into a very familiar spell. The moment the changelings began to close the distance between them and her, she released all of her magic in a sudden burst. Twilight and Spike were enveloped in a bright flash of light. When it subsided, they could see that they were now standing on the map. A few meters in front of them were four changelings, dazed and in a pile after smashing into each other when Twilight used her teleportation spell.

"Spike! The spell!" Spike quickly reached into his bag and pulled out an old parchment scroll. Twilight then levitated it in front of her and channeled a predetermined amount of magic into it, activating the spell. Giant rings of white magic began to rise from around the edge of the map, and a translucent dome of rotating energy formed above Twilight. As Twilight felt her body being pulled into the air, she gave one last glance to the horrible scene around her, A single thought quickly flashed through her mind before the pair and the scroll were swiftly sucked into the dome.

Starlight, you are so freaking dead!


[Scene 5]

After a few seconds of tumbling around in blinding light, Twilight and Spike's surroundings opened up into a bird-eye's view of Cloudsdale where the filly Rainbow Dash's critical sonic rainboom would occur. As soon as the scene fully developed, Twilight began to fall towards the runway of the filly Pegasus flight camp, Spike clinging tightly to her back.

This time, however, she was ready.

With a giant flap of her wings, Twilight slowed their descent at the last second and landed softly on the dark runway. Her eyes quickly scanned her environment for a certain light pink-colored unicorn among the crowd of filly pegasi, her horn flaring with magic and her mind racing. She did not wait long. Not even a second later, a beam of lime-colored magic zoomed towards Twilight from behind a nearby cloud. She spent no time in conjuring a small shield spell; a sparkling, translucent, lavender dome of magic formed around Twilight and Spike right before the beam of magic smashed into it. Spike flinched away slightly as a quiet boom was heard around them the moment the beam impacted the shield.

The defensive spell held strong, the magical attack being disrupted and scattered in several directions as it bounced off Twilight's shield. Twilight maintained her shield for nearly five seconds while Spike watched nearby clouds explode into white puffs as streams of green magic ricocheted off of it. When the attack was over, Twilight immediately lowered her shield and glared angrily at the light-pink unicorn floating towards her from the source of the beam. Her light-green and purple mane flew freely in the air as she levitated herself onto another cloud, closer to Twilight. Twilight narrowed her eyes as she glared angrily at the unicorn.

"STARLIGHT GLIMMER!!!!!!!"

Starlight put on a devilish grin as she taunted Twilight. "What's wrong, Princess Twilight? Time's really FLYING here, isn't it!?"

Twilight's horn flared brighter as rage began to boil within her. The future of Equestria was at stake and she was making a JOKE?! She pointed her horn straight at Starlight and let out a blast of purple magic. Without even blinking, Starlight effortlessly dodged the beam, quickly levitating herself to a new spot on the cloud. The beam sliced straight through the cloud where she had been standing, separating a small portion of it that began to slowly fall to the earth. Starlight spared a glance to the falling piece of cloud and gave a small nod of approval before turning back to Twilight, smirking. "Not bad. But it's going to take you a lot more than that!"

Twilight's left eye twitched slightly. Oh, she thinks this is a game? Fine, then. Her only skills are those of a powerful unicorn. I, however... Twilight unfurled her wings and stood fully upright, as if to intimidate Starlight. ...have the power of all three types of ponies! Twilight crouched down on her hooves and launched herself in the air, catching the air with her wings and diving towards Starlight. "Lucky for you, there's more where that come from!" Without giving Starlight a chance to respond, Twilight spun in the air before bombarding her with several small bursts of magic at her. Starlight took an involuntary step back, surprised by the speed of the attack, before conjuring her own shield spell in the form of a protective sphere around herself. Twilight's magic exploded upon contact with the shield, raining small sparkles around everything near the attack. Spike covered himself instinctively as some of the magical debris landed inches from his feet, leaving small scorch marks on the runway.


Starlight growled angrily, annoyed at how close she came to being foiled right away. Still, she didn't want Twilight to think she had begun to get to her yet. "Ha!" She jeered at Twilight as she continued to approach her while shooting blast after blast at her shield to no avail. "You've really got to work on your AIM!"

She shot a quick blast of magic at Twilight through her one-sided shield, and the purple alicorn quickly switched from using aggressive magic to a passive teleportation spell, disappearing in a flash of light the instant before Starlight's green beams of death reached her previous location. Not a moment later, Twilight appeared in another flash of light much closer to Starlight than before, cutting the distance between them in half. She then flew forward once more and continued her barrage attack on Starlight's shield, forcing Starlight to stop attacking and concentrate more energy in to her shield, waiting for Twilight to close the distance between them before she had to retreat.

Once Starlight could no longer feel the force of Twilight's attack on her shield and heard heard her swoop by overhead, she dropped her shield and whipped her head back and fired another intense beam of magic, this one cast specifically for hitting very distant targets. She followed Twilight's position in the sky with her laser, hoping to catch one of her wings. Fortunately for Twilight, her flying lessons with Rainbow Dash helped her to improve her agility, allowing for sudden turns whenever Starlight's laser came dangerously close to her. Twilight flew in a wide loop around Starlight, passing through several of the fillies' cloud loops before hearing them get sliced by the unicorn's beam.

"Stupid Twilight..." Starlight muttered angrily to herself, mentally noting the alicorn's improved flight capabilities. "...and her stupid friends. Learn to fly yourself you purple egghe-".

Suddenly, Twilight horn lit up brightly before she disappeared in a flash of purple light. Starlight's eyes widened as she heard the all too familiar sound of a teleportation spell directly behind her. She quickly spun around on her hooves to see Twilight zooming towards her from behind, her horn already fully charged for another attack. Starlight barely managed to deflect it at the last second. The attack was too sudden for her to have enough time to create a shield, so she resorted to a basic repulsion spell much simpler than a full shield and thus much quicker. The move cost her, though. Since the attack was of magic instead of a solid object, the repulsion spell could only absorb the blast partially while reflecting the rest of it in a random direction. It was just Starlight's dumb luck that the blast got deflected downward. Into the cloud she was standing on.

Starlight gasped as she glanced down to see the cloud she was standing on explode into nothing, leaving her staring at the greens and browns of the distant earth. Panic took her mind for an instant as she began to free-fall towards the ground before she quickly caught herself with her magic, her vision regaining that slight greenish hue she had grown accustomed to seeing whenever she used levitation magic on herself. She looked back to Twilight, who was hovering in front of her, looking...nervous? Starlight decided that, if Twilight really was intending to defeat her, then she it would only be "fair" if she did so unto her as well. Starlight sneered at her nemesis mischievously.

"So you want a real fight, Twilight? Well then...

Game. On."


[Scene 6]

"Agh!" Twilight screamed as she quickly brought her right wing down mid-flight, putting her in a sharp right turn and narrowly avoiding another one of Starlight's death lasers. She had hoped that, once she knocked Starlight off her cloud, Twilight would catch her with her magic before coming to terms with her and explain the rainboom's significance., ending the conundrum quickly. To Twilight's surprise, not only was the pink unicorn able to maintain a levitation spell on herself with excellent stability, but she could also zip around through the sky with surprising speed. Granted, she wasn't as fast or agile as the average pegasus, nor was she anywhere near Rainbow Dash's speed. But she could easily have participated in lifting the water in to the weather factory with the other pegasi back then.

Twilight spared a quick glance downwards and spotted a cyan filly pegasus land between two brownish colored colts and another yellow pegasus filly. Twilight gave a small sigh of relief and wiped a bead of sweat off of her forehead. All she needed to do was keep Starlight busy for the next ten minutes or so until filly Rainbow Dash performed the sonic rainboom that would grant all her friends', including Twilight and RD herself, cutie marks. The moment the ring of pegasus magic explodes, there would be nothing Starlight can do to stop the chain of events that would lead to the true present.

And all of Equestria and its friendships would be safe...

"Ha ha ha ha ha ha HAA!"

Twilight heard Starlight wickedly laugh from behind her, its tone putting her on edge. She spun around to see Starlight levitating herself at level height to Twilight. Their eyes met, and Twilight could see the malice burning in her lavender eyes. Starlight's horn flared suddenly, a bright ball of pure magic coalescing at the tip before being released in the form of a blinding green light.

[Scene 7]

Twilight lifted a foreleg to shield her eyes, but the light vanished instantly. Twilight looked around again and realized something was off. Everything appeared to be a slightly darker hue than it was before, and nothing seemed to be moving.

Twilight gasped quietly in horror as she grabbed at the first explanation she could think of. Holy Celestia! Did Starlight just kill everypony here?! All the fillies?! Is she really that evi- Twilight's fears were proven wrong when her eyes fell on a few fillies who seemed to be talking on a cloud. They seemed to be...frozen? No, they were indeed moving, but extremely slowly. She glanced around until she found Spike still standing on the runway. Spike seemed perfectly normal, and was looking around in astonishment at the confusing sight. Twilight noticed that, while everything else had that strange dark hue to it, Spike's colors stood out brightly in contrast.

"HA HA HA HA HA HA!!!!!" Twilight's thoughts were interrupted by that same evil laugh, and she turned her eyes back to the smirking, floating unicorn in front of her.


"Starlight, what... what did you do!?" Starlight grinned proudly at the thought that the Princess of Friendship was at a loss for words at one of her feats.

"I knew what you were up to from the very beginning! You think I'm stupid?! That I didn't know you were stalling for time?!" Twilight looked away slightly, confirming her accusation. Starlight raised a hoof to motion to everything around her. "Recognize this spell? Of course you wouldn't; I INVENTED IT! You thought you were the only one who intensely studied magic?! By combining a basic speed spell, Accelero, and a heavily modified version of Starswirl's time spell, I can control the flow of time around us! I can slow it down so that the race's five-minute duration stretches over an hour for us! Now I don't need to hurry to stop the rainboom! I have all the TIME I need!"

While Twilight gazed at her in awe, Starlight fought to stop a mischievous giggle from breaking through her evil smile. Hehe, that fool. Totally fell for my lie. I may not be able to control time, but I'm still powerful enough to move the two of us into a different time stream. Hopefully she doesn't question why my "spell" isn't affecting her, or she'll figure out what I did and easily cancel the spell's effect on her. She felt a small hint of pride within her when she realized that this was probably the most complicated spell she had ever cast, even more than her cutie mark removal spell or time travel spell. She never showed it, but Starlight enjoyed seeing a princess impressed by her work. I'm surprised it even worked... I've always wanted to test this spell out. Besides, there's no other condition under which it can succeed. It only works because the two of us are already outside the current time stream; every pony else will be reliving the same moment since it technically already happened. It's not that hard to shift us into a different one. Starlight turned her attention to the confused purple pony princess in front of her and remembered why she had cast that spell in the first place. "Now you have to hold me off even longer!"


Twilight gritted her teeth with anger and determination.

"Oh, and you're gonna have to watch out for your poly-chromatic friend over there, now that she's a much easier target. "

Twilight's eyes bugged out of her sockets as she turned back to where the race was. Rainbow Dash and the other two colts had already begun the race, but appeared to be moving through the air at a snail's pace. Oh shoot now it'll be easier for Starlight to hit her! Twilight took a deep breath in to calm herself. A thought passed through her mind, giving her some reassurance. Well, at least now Rainbow Dash can't be distracted. Twilight turned back to Starlight, only to see a bright beam of magic heading straight for her. She quickly glanced to her right and teleported along her line of sight onto a distant cloud, barely avoiding Starlight's death laser. The beam struck a cloud which began to explode slowly, due to Starlight's spell.

Without warning, a storm cloud materialized above Twilight, glowing with the same green light as Starlight's horn.

"HA ha ha ha ha ha! Say goodbye, TWILIGHT SPARKLE! MUAHAHAHA HA HA HA HA HA HA!!!" Starlight shot a beam of magic into the enchanted cloud, and it unleashed a deadly bolt of lightning straight towards Twilight. Twilight gasped and shielded her face from the light while Starlight continued to laugh evilly.

For a whole ten seconds...

Starlight finally stopped laughing as Twilight put her hoof back down, and they both stared at the bright bolt of electricity, trailing down from the cloud so slowly, even Fluttershy could escape it. Starlight slapped a hoof to her face, realizing that lightning did not come from her directly, meaning it would flow in the normal time stream. Twilight saw this as an opening and opened her wings to launch herself into the air straight for Starlight. If I can catch her off guard, I could destroy her concentration, and she would lose control of the time...spell. Her horn glowed with magic as she charged up the biggest laser she could. Starlight heard the whistling sound of an object heading straight for and looked forward to see Twilight getting closer and closer, her head seemingly engulfed by the huge amount of magic gathering at her horn.

"Oh, NO YOU DON'T!" Starlight closed her eyes and began gathering magic as well at her horn, mirroring Twilight's mana accumulation spell. She grunted in pain from the effort. Although she was a powerful unicorn, she was still just a unicorn and could not exceed the amount of magic she was born with. Nevertheless, Starlight Glimmer continued to fill her horn with more and more. After about eight seconds, both Starlight and Twilight had reached the limits of the spell, where trying to pour any more magic into into their horns could be lethal. They opened their eyes and saw the other straining to maintain control over their glowing, swirling balls of unstable magic. They pointed their horns straight at each other...and released everything they had at each other.

Starlight unleashed a massive gush of magic straight towards Twilight at the same time that she released hers, both beams so powerful light seemed to warp around the edges of the speeding lasers. The green and purple streams of magic collided at a perfect midpoint between Starlight and Twilight, releasing a blinding explosion that expanded rapidly towards the two ponies. The two instinctively conjured full body shields right before the blast slammed into them, creating a reverberating boom that echoed within both shields.

Then it was silent.


Starlight and Twilight dropped their shields and opened their eyes, exhausted from using up so much of their magic at once. Sounds of flapping wings and excited fillies filled the air. Twilight was barely able to stay airborne as her wings flapped tiredly. To her relief, she saw that Starlight was having trouble supporting her self-levitation spell, and both ponies slowly descended towards the runway below them. Although Starlight had been anything but caught off guard, Twilight was right about Starlight losing her concentration on her time spell. Slowly, the color in all of their surroundings reverted to their supposed shades as time appeared to return to its normal flow. Somewhere behind Spike, a cloud cloud exploded without explanation. Near a group of conversing fillies in the distance, a massive storm cloud spontaneously appeared near them, releasing a giant bolt of lightning that scared the living daylights out of them.

Eventually, the two overpowered ponies reached the runway. Starlight awkwardly slipping out of her own telekinetic grasp early and stumbled onto the ground, and Twilight's wings fell down beside her when she landed, lacking the energy to fold them back in. Starlight looked up to see her nemesis still standing and tried to shoot her with another beam of magic, but it only came out as a weak ball the size of a melon, zipping unsteadily towards Twilight. Twilight, upon seeing the attack, tried to form a full shield, but it only came out as a small sheet in front of her. Both magic forms collided and vanished in a small poof. Twilight grinned to herself. Yes, it worked! She lost control of the spell and is too weak to really do anything now! Now Rainbow Dash should surely finish the ra-

"WOAH!"

A familiar, tomboyish from behind Twilight froze all of her thoughts in an instant. Slowly, she turned around and saw Rainbow Dash sitting on a cloud ledge, watching with excitement as she popped a kernel of popcorn into her mouth. Somehow, she had gotten her hooves on a bucket of popcorn in the middle of flight camp. Twilight mentally died inside.

Oh, buck me with Celestia's horn.

Comments ( 10 )

Alright! Cool! A thing that kinda sorta did the same thing I did in my own fanfic--expanded on the S5 finale episode. Let's give it a look.


I need a little more feedback so I can improve my writing.

Very well. That's why I'm here.

Spike flinched away slightly as a quiet boom was heard around them the moment the beam impacted the shield.

Sorry to bring this up since you said English is your least favorite subject, but passive voice is typically not your friend. There are specific instances where it can be used effectively (did you notice what I did there?), but you can almost always write more dynamic action sequences by switching to active voice. You might try "Spike flinched away slightly as a quiet boom resonated around them the moment the beam impacted the shield." Or perhaps you could go for "Spike flinched away slightly, a quiet boom reverberating all around them the moment the beam impacted the shield." The second example carries the added bonus of shifting the sentence's emphasis and heightening the tension.

Not to say that passive voice is wrong; it's merely situational.

Twilight unfurled her wings and stood fully upright, as if to intimidate Starlight.

Yeah! Someone else who understands pegasus body language! (well, alicorn in this case, but wing body language in any case.) Brohoof. /)

Starlight took an involuntary step back, surprised by the speed of the attack, before conjuring her own shield spell in the form of a protective sphere around herself.

Perhaps a touch nitpicky here, but you might consider flipping those two phrases around. You've got a lot going on in this sentence, and it would seem to flow better if the more important bits were in the middle, flanked by supporting clauses and phrases. (Again, you see what I did there? Doing this to demonstrate, not to show off.)

"Recognize this spell? Of course you wouldn't; I INVENTED IT!"

I love magicy, lore-building lines like the paragraph this excerpt came from. There's another pretty good example a few paragraphs down from there.

Hehe, that fool. Totally fell for my lie.

Dangit. You got me. I still love the lore-building lines of course, but dang! You made it sound so convincing!

Starlight slapped a hoof to her face, realizing that lightning did not come from her directly, meaning it would flow in the normal time stream.

Just a particularly well-delivered bit of humor I wanted to highlight. Made me laugh.

Starlight awkwardly slipping out of her own telekinetic grasp early and stumbled onto the ground...

Based on everything else you've written, I think it is safe to label this a typo rather than an actual misuse of parallelism.


All right, so that's a wrap. It certainly was an intriguing bit of headcanon mixed with a smattering of lore-building, both of which I'm more than willing to get behind when done well. I feel that it built on the way magic works at least as much as it built on the extension of the battle. (But perhaps take that with a grain of salt; that criticism is coming from an author who just finished a 65K word fanfic creating and detailing the fall of a hypothetical eighth bad timeline from the S5 finale.)

Mechanically, you've got a solid start here. I'm seeing a lot of good stuff in the structures of your sentences and paragraphs. There were a few typos, mostly words that were standing in for the wrong word (e.g. on-->one). Most of these could be caught during a thorough proofing session.

Perhaps the best thing you're doing, author, is seeking advice to better your craft. If you're really interested and have some free time this weekend (and have a thick skin in regards to honest critiques of your work), then I would recommend the Writeoff contest this weekend. The Writeoff page explains its purpose and mechanics better than I'm going to here, but basically it's a tri-weekly, anonymous-until-the-end, 3-day-writing-period, prompt-based writing challenge where everyone has opportunity to blindly review everyone else's stories. This particular Writeoff has the added benefit of featuring our first art prompt rather than the standard word/phrase prompt. This group has fast-tracked my writing progress for sure. The criticisms I received were quite honest, but it was what I needed to become better at writing.

Hope this helped!

Holly F*** THIS IS AWESOME!!!! And sorry ,but I suck with Grammer and Punctuation.

>>Silver Butcher thanks! :twilightsmile: this took me FOREVER to make, no thanks to school work XD. I'm in almost all honors classes, so i'm more used to formal writing...despite my failing in English this year.... but yeah I wrote this for those who were all like "Oh COme ON is that all the fight scene we're going to see?!" in the S5 finale. the first half was written over the course of a week, then the last half was blitzed in one final night for the sake of me seeing it published so i could study for a test

8081483 wow, makes me happy I have no life.

8081490 lol dont say that about yourself XD everyone has a life of their own, it just depends on how they see it :D

8081490 also how the f do you reply like that lol

8081496 I'm simple. I wrought my Spike Pie because I was bored and had nothing to do

Wow! this story had me hooked, it was action packed, had good descriptors and pacing, some nice humor from time to time, etc.. My only regrets are that I didn't read this earlier and that it wasn't longer.

Somewhere behind Spike, a cloud cloud exploded without explanation. Near a group of conversing fillies in the distance, a massive storm cloud spontaneously appeared near them, releasing a giant bolt of lightning that scared the living daylights out of them.

Gasp, a cloud cloud? That's a very rare type of cloud! It's so rare that it only happens when someone accidentally writes the word cloud twice in a row!

A good experiment in action scenes. I liked the swapping perspectives conceptually - it helps keep longer fight scenes from becoming stale, but you do (or did?) need to work on pacing.

To my understanding, it's better to use shorter paragraphs and less words during an action scene. It also helps to focus on a character's sensations in a way that adds to the fight without getting bogged down with details.

Otherwise, nice idea and it fits well where you squeeze it in storywise.

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