Sol 231
AMICITAS FLIGHT THREE – MISSION DAY 233
ARES III SOL 231
The cave farm had to be tended. The crops needed watering, the plants trimmed and cared for (and, if necessary, weeded out). Crystals needed to be harvested for Fireball’s meals- and also for six new batteries, which would have been on the schedule for tomorrow, had events gone according to the best laid plans of ponies and man.
Oh, and there was the bug, too. Stupid troublemaking bug.
The farm had to be tended, and Mark needed to be there to help, even if he was off in some weird post-changeling trance. Fireball had insisted on two counts; first, they needed the rover to get the salvaged battery cases to the cave for the new batteries, and second, Fireball couldn’t walk back and forth. Unlike the ponies, his feet had claws on them, and even if he kept them filed and rounded down, they wore on the insides of his suit boots and gloves, just as the tips on his wings wore on the inside of the suit.
So Mark had to drive the rover… if he could be coaxed or bullied into it, given his condition.
He hadn’t called Miss Johanssen’s name when he woke this morning. That had been taken as a good omen. He ate a full breakfast, which was even better. It had taken constant prodding and pleading by Cherry Berry (who, Fireball thought, was welcome to the job of Markherder), but the tray was clean when she took it away.
But the struggle to get Mark to put his spacesuit on swept all good omens aside and replaced them with bad feelings all around. He wasn’t interested in the least. Finally Starlight recruited Fireball’s help and, with some heavy levitation and brute strength, the human got stuffed into his suit, one component at a time. Everyone was relieved when Mark, apparently from muscle memory alone, automatically activated his suit systems the moment the helmet assembly latched onto the suit torso.
And then it was “come along, Mark” to the airlock, “wait just a minute, Mark” during depressurization, “over here, Mark” to Rover 2, “thank you so much, Mark,” while he, Starlight and Fireball waited for Rover 2’s airlock to pressurize, and finally, “Mark, sit down right here, all right?” to get him to sit in the driver’s seat. Only it never took only one command. Oh, no. For Fireball it was almost half an hour of a single, highly repetitive stream of words, all in that annoying chirpy patronizing pony sound.
The thing which annoyed Fireball most was, he couldn’t object. Trying to take Mark along had been his idea. Also, he’d tried roaring at him, and roaring hadn’t worked. He’d shown his teeth, kept them about four inches from Mark’s nose long enough for the monkey to count all of them, and he had taken about as much interest as Fireball would have in a movie about the Great Accountants of the World.
(Dragon accounting was very simple. Your hoard had Income. If at any point your hoard had Expenditure, you had done something very wrong.)
But Mark was in the seat. It had required the better part of an hour to get him in it, but there he was. This had better work, Fireball thought, or else it’ll be most of another hour to get him back into the Hab.
“Okay, Mark,” Starlight said, still using her gentlest talking-to-skittish-animal tones. (Fireball always thought the most skittish animal in such conversations was the pony.) “I saw you activate the rover dozens of times when we drove to Pathfinder, but I don’t remember exactly how, so… could you activate the rover, please?”
Mark sat, immobile.
“Come on, Mark,” Starlight wheedled. “We have to go to the farm today- remember the farm? But we need the rover to make that happen. So Mark, could you reach your hands out to the keyboard? Reeeeach out…”
Not a twitch.
“It’s time to log in to the rover computer, Mark. Log in.”
That got a response. Mark’s hands slowly reached to the computer. Muscle memory took over from there. His fingers didn’t fly across the keys as they usually did, but they moved quickly enough. With the computer booted up and the rover controls lighting up, his hands automatically moved to the gear select switch, set it to “R”, and then came to rest on the steering yoke.
That, however, was as far as it went. Mark with hands on the wheel was just as statuelike as Mark at the breakfast table, having to be begged to take a bite.
“It’s going to be a long drive, isn’t it?” Fireball muttered.
“Not if I can help it,” Starlight grumbled, in a voice that, for the first time, betrayed how fed up she was with coddling Mark. She put the sweetness back into her voice, saying, “Thank you so much, Mark. I think I can handle it from here. So if you’ll just move to the back…” She reached a hoof to the steering yoke.
Mark batted it away, not hard enough to sting, but enough to surprise the buck out of both Starlight and Fireball. This done, he returned his hand to its position on the yoke.
“Er… if you want to drive, Mark, that’s fine,” Starlight said cautiously. “First we need to turn around…”
Mark’s foot found the accelerator. The rover moved slowly backwards, and Mark slewed the steering wheel hard right, performing a slow U-turn until the rear of the rover faced the Hab. This done, his foot slipped off the pedal.
“Okay, good,” Starlight said. “Now we need to go to the cave, Mark. Can you drive us to the cave?”
Mark’s spacesuit helmet was still on his head. Neither Starlight nor Fireball could see his face. But they both could imagine those unseeing eyes, that blank, indifferent expression, gazing out to infinity as his foot came down on the throttle like a supply probe in final descent.
“This was a bad idea!!” Fireball shouted as the rover lunged forward, hitting its meager 25 kph top speed almost immediately.
“What? This was YOUR idea!!” Starlight shouted back.
“That should have been your first warning!” Fireball snapped.
What with the many trips to and from Site Epsilon by this point, a track had been worn down into the Martian soil. The points where that track went across the gullies that criss-crossed Acidalia Planitia had worn down and shallowed out almost into proper ramps cut into the banks.
By the time the rover coasted to a stop at the northeastern base of Site Epsilon, that track had been worn down noticeably more. The nerves of the passengers got worn down even more than that. But despite the top speed and lack of interest in the obstacles along the route, the rover hadn’t actually hit anything, for which Fireball was grateful. “Walking ten K don’t look bad anymore,” he rumbled.
“Your idea,” Starlight snapped back.
More coaxing got Mark out of the seat, through the airlock, and out onto the Martian sand to meet Spitfire and Cherry Berry (who, having heard everything on their own comms, asked no questions). Mark had to be led by the hand up the slope, and halfway up Starlight threatened to pick him up and levitate him to the top even without a battery, but they got to the cave entrance eventually.
Once inside the cave, the ponies and dragon doffed their spacesuits and stacked them carefully next to Dragonfly’s abandoned suit. “Okay, everyone,” Cherry Berry said, “I want all you to say hello to Dragonfly and give her a big hug. It’s been three days.” To demonstrate, she began walking to the spot near the entrance where Dragonfly’s cocoon hung.
“Dragonfly?” It was the third word Mark had said since getting drained, and it got everyone’s attention. Mark’s head slowly turned to face Cherry, mirrored space suit faceplate staring directly at her.
“Er… yeah, Dragonfly,” Cherry agreed. “Let’s go say hi, okay?” She pointed to the chrysalis, a brooding black against the wall of milky crystals.
Mark’s helmet tracked towards the cocoon. Fireball could tell when he saw it, because in that moment his body language changed completely. He stood up straight, stiff, his hands coming up in some confused compromise between warding and reaching. Then, to everyone’s surprise, he bounded over to the cocoon, turned to face Cherry, and raised his arms to block her way. “What do you think you’re DOING?” he shouted.
“Mark?” Cherry asked cautiously.
“Haven’t you ever watched a sci-fi horror movie in your lives?” Mark continued, his voice carrying on in full rant mode. “When you see an egg or a pod or a cocoon or anything like that in a space cave, especially if it’s black, you leave it the fuck alone!! Look, the thing even has ‘LEAVE ME’ written on it, don’t you think that’s a clue?? You definitely don’t go poking and prodding and wishing it hello and…” He trailed off, looking down at his hands, then around at his surroundings. He uncoupled his helmet linkages and lifted the assembly off his shoulders, revealing a face full of confusion. “How the hell did I get here?” he asked. “And why do I feel so damn tired?”
Fireball let the ponies run to Mark. He was content to walk over in a slow, dignified manner that definitely wasn’t a sulky trudge and to wrap an arm around the group hug in a definitely draconic sign of comradeship and not in any way mushy or gooey. And he kept a most appropriate silence, but that was mainly because Starlight Glimmer and Cherry Berry were too busy talking over one another for anyone else to get a word in.
Eventually the group wandered into the field and over to The Stump, where Mark sat down and slumped. “Okay,” he said, “now that we’ve all been glad I’m back, wherever the hell I went, could one of you- and only one of you- explain what the fuck is going on?”
Explaining took some time.
Mark’s questions, which he withheld until the end, were brief and to the point. "So... 'changeling'?" he asked.
"Yes," Starlight said. "The pony word more or less means 'child of change.'"
“Why didn’t you tell me?” he asked.
“Because we were worried about Dragonfly after the perchlorate explosion,” Starlight said. “She burned up a lot of love getting you home, and for a while she wasn’t getting it back. She was afraid that without you, she’d starve.”
“So… I wasn’t hallucinating when I thought I saw Johanssen in the rover,” Mark said cautiously.
“No. You were in very bad shape. Dragonfly transformed so you’d listen to her and get you all back to the Hab.”
“And when she saved me from the falling engine, she literally burned herself up to do it,” Mark said. “Okay. But you tell me she knew she was having problems. Why didn’t she tell me? Us?”
“Because-“ Cherry Berry began, but Starlight stopped her.
“Mark,” she said, “I’m going to tell you something I haven’t before. It’s something I’m really very ashamed of, which is why I haven’t told you before.” Starlight’s forehooves made circles in the soil. “When I was young I lost a friend after he got his cutie mark. He was pretty much the only friend I had. There were issues… I won’t go into details, but as a result I grew up believing that cutie marks were evil, and that pony society would be better if no one had a cutie mark- if everyone was exactly the same.
“And when I left home I tried to build that society. And it was terrible. I was a tyrant. I lied to my followers. I turned them against each other to enforce my will. I locked them up and made them listen to messages about my new society over, over, over, until it bent their brains. And I kept telling myself it was all right, because it would end in a glorious new society in which all ponies would be happy.
“Well, surprise! It didn’t work out that way. I ended up fleeing the village I’d created when six very special ponies revealed what I’d done to my followers. And then I got worse, because I wanted revenge on those ponies for destroying my dream. And I… well, I’m not going into details because there are a couple of things I don’t think your species is ready to dabble with. Suffice to say I used a very powerful magic, very stupidly, and nearly destroyed my homeworld.”
Starlight sniveled, and Fireball had to stifle a growl. Ponies got mushy at the most inconvenient times. The pause let Mark interject, “Destroy your world? One pony? How?”
“I’m not saying,” Starlight said. “Your species knows magic exists now, and we’re probably going to end up showing you how to use it. But I’m not going to tell you ways you can destroy yourselves.” She took a deep breath and continued, “But my point is, it took seeing the possible results of my horrible actions to make me realize that I wasn’t the good guy. I was a monster. And the pony who I had been trying to destroy… Twilight Sparkle gave me the chance to not be a monster anymore.”
Starlight pointed a hoof back towards the cave entrance and the cocoon. “I didn’t tell you that before because I didn’t want to be a monster to you,” she said. “And Dragonfly didn’t tell you about her changing, about her hunger, about any of that… because she didn’t want to be a monster to you. Because she didn’t want her species to be a monster in the eyes of your species.”
Mark grunted. “The only thing we have to fear is fear itself,” he muttered. He looked at Starlight very carefully. “Mind control? Making everyone the same? Almost destroying the world?”
“I… I was in a bad place at the time,” Starlight said sheepishly. “And… it took me quite some time to get better. And, well… there were setbacks.”
“I think,” Mark said carefully, “I don’t want to tell any of that to the people back home. My nation in particular is a little… vindictive… when it comes to dealing with criminals.” He raised an eyebrow and added, “What you did was illegal where you come from, right?”
“Parts of it, yeah,” Starlight said. “No one ever thought we’d need a law against destroying the world, but the rest of it, yeah.”
“Yeah,” Mark echoed. “The fact that you’re walking around in a space larger than four square meters tells me your people are a lot more about rehabilitation than mine.”
“I don’t know the word ‘rehabilitation’.”
“I mean you ponies are a lot more forgiving than humans.”
Fireball chose this moment to speak up. “Ponies more forgiving than anybody,” he snorted. “Absolutely anybody.” He was proud of that absolutely. He had no idea why that English word stuck in his mind when so many other words just sieved through it like water through sugar-sand, but…
“I’ll bet,” Mark said. He jerked a thumb at Dragonfly. “Same deal with her?”
Starlight fidgeted her hooves. “Forgiving changelings… bug-ponies… is still a work in progress,” she said. “To us they’re really, really scary.”
“Yeah,” Mark said. “I understand why, now.” He shifted in his seat. “Help me up, please,” he said. “I’m not feeling all the man I should be.”
“You eat almost nothing for three days,” Spitfire accused.
“That would do it,” Mark admitted as Fireball hauled him to his feet. With the support of the Amicitas crew Mark walked over to the cocoon, putting a hand on it. “Hello, Dragonfly,” he said. “I hope you can hear me. I just want to say, the next time you need to suck all my feelings and the will to live out of my ear with a straw, ask first. It’s rude to go all Dracula on someone without asking. I mean, I hadn’t even done my laundry yet.”
Mark eased himself down to the dirt below the cocoon, sitting with those ridiculous long rear legs bent into a triangle, keeping his hand on the cocoon. "It could be worse," he continued. "At least you're not wearing my skull on your belt. And I'm not going to have a little Dragonfly burst out of my rib cage and kill me in a month or so. I'm not, right?" Mark patted the cocoon, adding, "Because if I am, I'm writing you out of my will. My Hawaiian shirts go to Fireball, and my glass aardvark collection goes to Spitfire."
Fireball sat down, as did the others. Obviously Mark didn’t intend to go anywhere.
“So, what’s it like living in there?” Mark asked. “It looks worse even than my dorm room. Well, maybe worse. My dorm room was a little larger, but I had to share it with someone, and he was such a pig…”
The cave needed tending, but it could wait.
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The psychologists screaming 'Catatonia doesn't work like that' can talk when they've dealt with changeling-love-draining catatonia.
Good chapter, good to see Mark back, even if it was a tad sudden.
Except it kinda does?
Sometimes people just need a reminder of what's important to snap out of it.
So Mark is saved by the power of Friendship.
And genre-saviness. But mostly Friendship.
I like the Alien reference.
word
8922824
Confound these [adorable] ponies and their friendship!
I'm kinda doubting most of the stuff Starlight did was actually illegal. Wrong, yes. But not illegal. They got brainwashing spells available to the general public in Twilight's library. If that was actually illegal, they would have those spells locked up or destroyed.
I am kinda doubting that most stuff is illegal in Equestria. If it was, the Mane 6 would have been locked up multiple times.
Like that weather factory incident from Rainbow Dash. In modern America, she probably would be locked up for years.
If you're a pony, It would probably have to be outright 1st degree murder before the ponies even think of locking you up.
I generally think that the Equestrian approach to mental magic is similar to the medical approach to drugs. "Useful in small doses, but overdosing is bad. Wait, you think it's inherently evil? This is science, not the dark ages!"
Great chapter!!
8922857
Theres quite a few things that were forgiven in cannon mlp that would have gotten others of the mane 6 arrested(if they were not the EoH). For example Fluttershy in season 1's actions at the Gala causing the animal stampede. I am ALMOST sure had she not been one of the EoH some action even if minor woulda been taken, but all and all yeah Equestria is a pretty forgiving place more so then earth is
8922824
That makes him an Honorary Equestrian XD
8922897
Not to mention pretty much stealing Celestia's pet Phoenix. Robbing the ruler of your country..
Yeah, you do that here, you're in for a whole heap load of trouble.
Catatonia doesn't work like that!
I just didn't want to disappoint.
I really like Fireball knowing his place within the crew - he has ideas enough to get frustrated with others doing it their way, but ultimately he knows deep down there's a reason why he isn't listened to. Nearly breaching the Hab springs to mind
I expect these events will go a long way to satisfying Spitfire's desire for Mark to not see them as children.
I love GlimGlam even more here. I don't know many who would do what she just did here. She didn't have to reveal her past like this, but she did so for Dragonfly's sake . It should mean a lot to Mark that Starlight is this open with him, especially since she didn't know how Mark would react to it.
From the very start, I always believed Starlight was and is a good pony. She just got lost, and needed to be brought back home.
Yay, Mark!
The bit at the end was surprisingly heartwarming.
8922904
eeyup!
8922826 True neutral. Chrysalis likes the law only when it's HER law.
I'm surprised Mark didn't go with a marriage joke about the soul sucking.
So after all the freaking out and planning and effort of sending messages of love to Mark... it takes a sci-fi reference to jolt him out of his catatonia.
How completely appropriate.
8922857
Probably because most mind magic is easily reversible. We've seen memory recovery spells as far back as season 2's Return of Harmony and permanent irreversible memory loss we've only seen in the recent Forgotten Friendship episode of EQG and that took a magical item so rare they're the stuff of legend buried as far away as possible. Beyond that, any form of mind control or memory manipulation is just one counterspell away from being cured.
So ponies might look at the outright terror people from earth would go through hearing any unicorn with decent motivation has access to mind magic and ask with incredible confusion "why are you all freaking out over this?"
8922960
can i say this to starlight...... just show her a pic or video of a nuke and see can see us humans can do lot more damage to the would then anyone can think
Excellent chapter.
8923025
I don't think that's going to do much to help convince Starlight to teach time travel magic to humanity.
8922824
One good fear-shock to snap him out of his funk.
Vdrake did something similar with https://www.fimfiction.net/story/174129/the-changeling-of-the-guard
Mark got Sigourneyd?
Changelings in the Mist.
Mark didnt half drive to get to the cave, and he wernt Whisling Dixie neither? Although Im pretty sure when he gets back out of the cave and takes a look at the beating the Rover took, the first suit he is going to look at accusingly is Fireball.
At least theres something good about potatoes. When ready for harvest you can store them in place for months by removing the tops off. Dragonfly just made the farm that bit more efficint? Down the bottom end would be the cold clamp? Wrapped in loose alfalfa stalks for air circulation?
I also apologise for the prior data analysis, apprently when I did the origional analysis I did by bytes or other collections of bit sequences and this time was pure bit array, and the numbers were different, giving and information compression quantisation behaviour. I havent worked out the generalised function yet to give meaningful answer or questions, so therefore cant give the inverse either. For a given amount of bit storage, what is the optimum symbol size of both store and data to get the highest compression possible.
Really, really have to be carefull with Engine 13. Doesnt need just scanning for cracks, but right down to shear and stress faults, which is going to need one heck of a power scan spell.
8923039
i don't think they need her help to begin with we can do it by just getting an iteam made during that time if you play sly 4 game or see video of it.
all we have to do of going back in ww2 is get a weapon that was made before it put it into a magic read out thing and boom back in time we go
8922979
Well, "AAAARGH! XENOMORPHS!" Would be enough for me to engage a very primal part of my brain, and it sounds like it did the same to Mark.
Space-suit wetting terror would be enough to jump-start emotion in anyone.
D'awwww ~ get better, Cuddlebug, your queen worries for you.
Hahah, little Dragonfly chest burster.
By golly this was a fun chapter!
I loved marks reaction to dragonfly's cocoon and that (Somewhat) heart to heart was just sweet.
8923025
Your overestimating how powerful nukes are there. The US 60's till the end of the cold war's 41 for freedom nuke subs carried 656 missiles in there last respective configurations with 6272 nuclear warheads with a total yield of 421 megatons that's 8 reduced Tsar bombs one of which is a New York city size one hit killer.
8922857 Starlight's rap sheet would include, at the least, kidnapping and illegal imprisonment, torture, fraud, and theft- and that's before we get into the time travel shenanigans.
8922978 Mark isn't that much of an anime fan to say things like, "Now that I've been spoiled for other women, I expect you to take responsibility."
"But the both could"
"But they both could"?
"but Mark has found his moment of love to pull him out of his trance- love of his crew"
Dragonfly doing something out of a horror movie may have put him into it, but Dragonfly doing something out of a horror movie pulled him out of it, too! :D
8923083
Kidnapping... Yeah, that never happened. I've you're talking the villagers, they themselves say that didn't happen. As for the Mane 6, your definition of Kidnapping most be different from mine and what I'very read..😕😕
Time travel and changing history - Nothing illegal about that because no one ever did something on the scale she was able to. Heck, Twilight herself attempted that. It doesn't matter if it's a week or 20 years, Twilight still attempted to change history for her benefit.
Fraud, torture, theft - I can name several prominent ponies that have done those, including several of the Mane 6.
The Mane 6's rap sheet is a hell of a lot bigger, if you consider their entire history.
And we have seen none of them imprisoned for it.
8923125 Starlight held the Mane 6 prisoner after stealing their cutie marks. That counts.
8923025
I'm pretty sure Time Rewriting is significantly more dangerous than nuclear weapons.
After all, Hiroshima is inhabitable and has a large population.
Starlight's meddling eventually left nothing but Ashlands.
8923125
The mane 6 had their cutie marks taken and were tossed into a locked room forced to listen to and read propaganda and be released and put back only at Starlight's leisure. That's kidnapping by pretty much any definition. Torture by some.
Yes, it's terrible. That's kinda the point she's trying to make: that she didn't want Mark to know this because it's terrible and would scare the pants of him, much like how Dragonfly didn't want Mark to know how deceptive and brutal changelings can be for the same reason.
8922882
Humans are generally much more protective of their minds. What Princess Luna does as a job would skeeze (or is it skeeve?) a lot of people out.
8923141
Not unexpected, given how as a culture we have no experience with actually having access to the mind at all and all we have to go on is fiction, where some exceptions notwithstanding it tends to be used by villains, and the heroes who use it tend to avoid using it on friends.
It'd make for some fun cultural exchanges though. Imagine a pony being on an American talk show with a stereotypical loudmouth. One side is yelling about mind magic, the other side about guns while both accusing eachother of being absolutely insane for allowing the general public access to the other.
8923141 It's squick. Skeeve is acting untrustworthy.
To be fair, I think at this point it's less "teach me how to time travel" and more "tell me that time travel is even possible". I think Humanity is ready to know that it's possible, even if I think there's no way in hell they should have access to it. Humanity's going to hear about it sooner or later if extended contact is kept with Equestria. Starlight's exploits aren't exactly state secrets.
To be honest though, I think that if we can start working with magic, we'll get to time magic sooner or later anyway. Just like Equestria will probably eventually develop nuclear weaponry (or at least the theoretical capability to make nuclear weaponry) if they keep studying atomic science. Maybe it would be best if these things weren't possible, but there's no real way to get around that beyond stopping all technological and scientific progress, which I think we can all agree probably isn't a good thing.
8923082
Problem with that comparison is that there's not been (so far as I can recall) a single instance in canon where a device or spell with nuclear level damage potential has been showcased. Which makes sense, it's MLP.
And your comparison using only nuke subs is more than a little bit cherry-picking, I feel. In 1964, the US had over two thousand ready ICBM silos ready, with more than 7,000 megatons of nukes in the tubes waiting for launch.
Then there would be all the bombers with their nukes, and all the subs with their nukes too.
The real danger of all that megatonnage was that it wouldn't be concentrated. The old movie "War Games" has a great scene where you're watching what appears to be tracking of a nuclear launch against the US. They zoom in for several shots, and you see a single tracking line split and blanket a much larger area. Comparing that blast map against actual population centers of the mid-1980's.... yeah, 95% or better of the US population would be annihilated.
On topic though, seeing what snapped Mark out of it was hilarious - and as mentioned, once understanding the situation and having him sit down and just start chilling with the cocoon was heartwarming. Also, the snap out was very on-target, I feel. A photo and audio track just doesn't compare to something right there in your face.
8923178
They might be, actually - after all no one knows what happened besides, Twilight, Starlight and Spike and those they told about it afterwards. The evil tyrant phase - sure, but the time travel incident isn't something that can be known about without being told by those who were involved.
8923178
Well, state secret no, but the amount of ponies who know about her time travel exploits is... 10, maybe 11 tops.
That said, there is a known and quite prominently displayed time travel spell in Canterlot's library, so time travel itself being possible is not a big secret.
8923204
Uhm, demolishing a mountain via kinetic impact doesn't count? Or Discord mass trasmuting things covering at least a small city?
Or do you mean devices only? MLP is big on persons of mass destruction, rather than artifacts.
Less directly, manipulating the daynight cycle is a mass extinction event ability assuming the sun provides heat and plants require light to grow.
And lets not think about DO NOT MESS WITH TIME.
Dang, this chapter was hot stuff.
8923217
Discord's stuff was all reversed (see comments regarding mental manipulation being easily reversible and the sort of shrug that gets in Equestria) and I don't recall a mountain getting wrecked (fairly casual viewer of the series).
Persons of mass destruction yeah, but no-one in Equestria seems to have done that math. They're... rather less paranoid and destruction seeking than we are, no?
8923025 More damage to the world? Starlight actually did the destroy the world at least once.
She kinda has blown it in the immediately next sentence for someone who listens attentively
i've read a few stories where a time travel paradox COULD destroy an entire dimension...
and some where it's effectively impossible to change history...
i like to call it the "motivation paradox": the TT removes the reason for going back, so he would not go back, so...
i also read that in the first time travel story EVER someone killed his own Grandfather, thus removing HIMSELF from history entirely...that's why it's often called the "grandfather paradox".
oh, and i read a Fimfiction story that guesses that Starlight HERSELF caused that barren wasteland alternate reality by stealing Celestia's Cutie-mark!
8923178
Their "theoretical capability" is Starlight casually strolling near uranium deposits and pulling a few kilos of 235U in a couple of minutes --- they already have gunpowder and steel pipes.