Starlight's World X
While the lights had disappeared thanks to Spike, and despite it being the dead of night and still hours before morning, the crystal ponies were gathering in the streets of the Crystal Empire. If one were to ask them why they wouldn’t respond. There was simply some unknown force telling them to wake up and gather outside the castle. Even the non-crystal ponies that lived in the Empire like Sunburst were woken up and took to the streets, preparing for… something. The brainwashing and control of Empress Starlight didn’t give them much room to think about why they did things and until she directed them again to power up the Crystal Heart they would just endlessly mill about below the castle. Or not really so endlessly. With Spike having disrupted the spell the ponies of the Empire and the rest of Equestria would return to normal in a few hours. But that was long enough.
Empress Starlight briefly looked down at her returned Cutie Mark before flickering her eyes back to Starlight. “Weren’t we just here?”
Starlight panted and sweated heavily, the exhaustion from the run now hitting her full force with the disappearance of Rainbow Dash’s Cutie Mark and reappearance of her own. “It’s the place to be...”
“You look tired.”
“Maybe a little.”
The advantage was still clearly with the Empress and neither one of them was closer to the Heart than the other. There were no tricks Starlight could pull, no shortcuts to take, she had nothing up her sleeve anymore. The two of them mostly knew each others full capabilities now but not only was the Empress far less worn out but Starlight was also sure she was far more willing to hurt her. There wouldn’t be any pulled punches coming from her enemy.
She wasn’t sure how long the Empress would allow her to catch her breath. Starlight wanted to buy some time so instead of initiating the fight again she decided to talk. And truth be told she did want to try and talk to the Empress first anyways. As well aware she was that most likely anything she said would fall on deaf ears.
“You don’t have to do any of this you know.” Starlight tried to reason with her.
The Empress giggled, holding a hoof in front of her mouth. “Of course I don’t have to.” Her expression turned dark and she growled at Starlight. “I just really want to.”
Starlight sighed. “Don’t you see there’s no point to all of this? You’ll never get what you want.”
“I have a plan, I’ve already told you.” She glared at her.
Starlight just stared at her double for a moment before responding. “I think I know what you really want a lot better than you do.”
“Again?” The Empress rolled her eyes. “You’re not going to try giving me another speech are you? I think I’ve had to listen to you and Twilight Sparkle, both of them, prattle on about friendship enough. You can stop trying to convince me.”
“No, no, I’m not going to do that.” Starlight shook her head. “I didn’t think I’d be able to change your mind with words or get you to stop. I just wanted to give you the chance. The same opportunity I had.” She briefly looked out at the dark sky. “You still have the choice. The spell is deactivated and if things stay like this the brainwashing will naturally go away in just a few hours. You can just stand down and let it happen. We don’t have to fight.”
Empress Starlight yawned and took a big stretch. She too looked out at the dark sky, and then the crystal prison that Spike was inside. Her patronizing smile returned to her face as she looked back to Starlight. “I’m sorry, but I think I’ll have to decline that offer.”
“Yeah. I figured you would.”
Inside his cage of crystals Spike could hear the return to silence. His body had no more sweat to give as he pressed himself against the wall of crystal to get as close to the two Starlight’s as possible. There wasn’t anything he could say, his heart pounded in his chest in anticipation, knowing that the next sound would indicate the start of the final fight between the two out there.
There was no signal. No sudden movement. Both of their horns merely lit up at the same time.
Starlight and the Empress fired twin beams of teal magic at each other that exploded in between them, their powers equal. With the smoke from the explosion blocking their view of each other Starlight took the opportunity to run around the crystal cage to where the Heart lied, if she could’ve just gotten in view of it she could grab it or blast it.
That was the plan at least. But Empress Starlight knew what she would do and also ran around the cage to protect the Heart. Both rounded the corner at the same time and Starlight shot an energy ball to shatter the Heart but the Empress fired her own blast that deflected the ball before it could hit.
Starlight tried to grab the Heart with her magic… and only too late remembered there was a spell on it protecting it from such things. This lapse in defense allowed Empress Starlight the opportunity to attack her freely. The Empress summoned a massive amount of magic power on her horn and fired a huge blast of magical energy at the wide-eyed Starlight. The energy completely swallowed the side of the spire they were on and careened off into the night sky. Bright and powerful enough to even draw the attention of some of the ponies down below, the light would’ve temporarily blinded anypony looking at it from close up in the middle of the night.
Even though the Empress had shut her eyes when she unleashed the blast she still had to blink her eyes once or twice for her vision to fully return thanks to the dazzling flash of her own power, but the lack of her double standing in front of her when it did brought a delighted smirk to her face.
“And goodbye, me.” The Empress said to herself.
“Not quite yet.” Came Starlight’s voice from the floor.
Empress Starlight looked down in anger to see Starlight spread flat like a pancake on the floor, the slightest depression in the crystal dug out by her magic at the last second.
“I knew you had to leave some space above the floor so you didn’t blow away the Heart with that attack too.” She grinned at the Empress and stood back up, briefly glancing down at the Crystal Heart still right in the middle of the two of them.
“Well good for you.” The Empress sarcastically remarked. “So what? Back to where we started and you’ll still tire far faster than I will. I’m getting that Heart back.”
“No.” Starlight shook her head. “I’m getting it.”
The two stared each other down for a second—and then both teleported directly in front of the Crystal Heart, Empress Starlight already in mid swing and punching Starlight square in the face. Starlight was knocked backwards, rolling end over end until she came to a stop right at the edge of the spire.
“You lose!” Empress Starlight jumped over the Heart and raced towards Starlight with her horn glowing, ready to finish things.
Whether it was the crystal-encasing spell, the Cutie Mark removal spell, a simple energy beam or something even more dangerous, Starlight didn’t know. And she didn’t care.
“I was counting on you being willing to hurt me like that.” Starlight grinned and her horn flashed.
But instead of attacking or making a shield like the Empress expected Starlight transformed into a filly and ran right between her legs. Now with no obstacle between her and the Heart.
“What the?!” Empress Starlight yelled in surprise.
“This is a spell I only made because I reconnected with Sunburst!” Starlight shouted back to her, grin on her face. Right as she reached the Crystal Heart she turned back into her adult self and grabbed the Heart up in her hooves, sliding around to look at the dumbstruck expression on Empress Starlight’s face. “Is it irony or poetic justice that I beat you because of how I changed?”
There was no more smugness or mocking cruelty on the face of the Empress. For the first time Starlight had seen her she saw fear in her expression. Her eyes even looked like they might start to tear up in despair at any second.
Empress Starlight raised a shaky hoof and extended it towards Starlight. Her whole world was crashing down around her. “Stop… give me the Heart.”
Starlight looked at her with pity. Sadly shaking her head she sighed before saying the only words of comfort she could think of.
“If one day you really want to change and make up for what you’ve done… they’ll forgive you.” Her horn lit up and she pointed it at the Heart.
“Don’t!”
The precise beam of magic shot from Starlight’s horn and shattered the Crystal Heart.
Starlight and Spike weren’t sure what happened next in this world or what the Empress might have said and done, because the very next instant the world went white and fell apart around them. The sudden feeling of free-fall enraptured the both of them as they found themselves tumbling down a kaleidoscope of colors. Starlight could see Spike right in front of her, whatever barrier that was previously between them now irrelevant, she tried swimming towards him so they wouldn’t be separated in the rift between worlds. Even now the both of them could see bright lights approaching from all sides, possibly already signaling the end of the tunnel.
Twilight and Twilight held Shining Armor and Cadance in their magic respectively. The guards were being tied up by Applejack and Pinkie Pie (who somehow had pulled a long string of handkerchiefs from her hair) while Rarity and Fluttershy rested, happy to have things back to normal. As for Rainbow Dash, right when their Cutie Mark’s returned to normal the Twilight’s told her to go fly to the Crystal Heart.
“I think we’ve got it won, we just need to secure the Crystal Heart now and keep her from getting the crystal ponies to power it up again.” Alternate Twilight said.
The first Twilight nodded. “Right. Once that’s taken care of we can work on fixing some other things here, like Discord and the Tree of Harmony.”
“Uh, hold on a second.” Applejack spoke up. “Not that I’m not grateful that you’re offering to help but don’t you want to return home? If anything shouldn’t we be the ones helping you get back to your world or whatever as quickly as possible?”
Alternate Twilight raised an eyebrow as she looked at her double. “She has a point. This is our world, you’ve already done so much for us, leave things to us here.”
“But...” Twilight started.
“Darling, please. We’re the ones who need to pay you back now.” Rarity said as she walked up to her, Fluttershy on her heels. “The first thing to take care of is helping you.”
“Ooh! As long as we have a goodbye party before they all leave!” Pinkie Pie ecstatically said.
Twilight looked around her at the smiling faces of her friends. Yes, they may not have been “her” friends exactly but they were the same ponies and the same warmth and powerful bond of friendship existed in all of them.
“I… thank you.” She finally said.
After the words left her mouth Twilight noticed several cracks appearing in thin air around her, looking at the ground it was the same, cracks spreading like wildfire everywhere and only she seemed to notice them. Piece by piece the world fell apart until the floor shattered and Twilight went falling with it.
“Starlight, did you?!-” She screamed as she entered the time rift.
Starlight and Spike were twisted and stretched like taffy as they continued to tumble through time. Both found they couldn’t speak here, or perhaps they just couldn’t hear their own words, but they were at least together right now and hopefully Twilight was right behind them too.
And finally, just like always, it ended as quickly as it had begun. The rainbow of lights around them vanished. The feeling of vertigo and weightlessness disappeared. And the two of them found themselves standing around outside in the grass.
Starlight looked around, wherever they were it wasn’t the Crystal Empire. It looked more like the countryside somewhere around Ponyville with hills and a forest around them. Why or how they ended up here she couldn’t tell. Squinting she looked up at the sky, it seemed to be the middle of the day too with the sun hanging directly overhead. And no lights from the Crystal Empire either.
She smiled down at Spike, who had a strangely shocked and disturbed look on his face for some reason as he looked at her. “Well I’m not sure where we’ve ended up now but at least that’s over with.”
“Starlight.”
“I just hope Twilight came with us. She’s probably okay though. It’s Twilight after all.”
“Starlight.”
“And I hope everypony and that world is okay now too… they’ve got a lot to take care of now.”
“Starlight...”
“There doesn’t seem to be anything going on here at any rate.” Starlight sneezed. “Oh right! My book. Well, not my book. But still...” She reached into her mane to see if the copy of Empress Starlight’s manifesto was still safely inside, but as her hoof searched through the hair she couldn’t find anything. “Ugh, great! It must have fallen out at some point. How does Pinkie Pie keep anything in here?”
“Starlight!”
“What is it, Spike?!” She finally rounded on him in annoyance.
The dragon pointed to her sides. “You have wings.”
Starlight’s eyebrows shot into her forehead and she looked to her sides. Just like he said, a pair of lilac pegasus wings rested there. Opening and stretching them they seemed to work like a perfectly normal pair of wings. Starlight grimaced and inspected the rest of her body, her fatigue had vanished entirely, she was slightly taller and her horn had even grown a bit too. There was no question about it. She was an Alicorn.
“Well that’s not good.”
“PRINCESS STARLIGHT!”
The thundering voice shook the both of them to their bones. Starlight and Spike looked behind them in surprise to see a massive red and black centaur with great horns and an impressive white beard standing at the edge of the forest, his arms outstretched in grand desire. The threatening and world-endingly evil looking beast waited for no response as his piercing eyes drilled right into their souls.
“You have something that belongs to me!”
Starlight gulped.
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You had me at the part where we found out Starlight is an alicorn but then you lost me when it was revealed that it’s just because they’re in another alternate timeline.
So what, is she quantum leaping now?
Oh great, Tirek’s back.
Gonna make a quick guess here: Somehow, the three of them went to a timeline similar to their own, but for some reason, Twilight and Starlight switched places, and now they’re in the Season 4 finale. Did I get that right?
At first I really liked how Starlight & Spike we’re messing around the past and now we our jumping into different timelines... Might be a bit to much
9735514
I don't particularly mind it but the world-hopping could easily be its own story it didn't really need to be connected to a story about messing with the past. I get that them messing with the past lead to them ending up in another world but even in the season 5 finale the world they ended up in was the result of the changes made to the past whereas here these worlds don't seem to have anything to do with the changes made.
Of course, I could be wrong and maybe this is the world that was created by the changes she made.
9735335
Starlight shouldn’t be an Alicorn. But if you think so then I guess everyone to their own. Personally I hope that Starlight loses them when they go back to their own timeline. She hasn’t done something ascend-worthy, so it’s the timeline that screwed up.
I’m eager to find out how it screwed up though
Exciting.
What an unfortunate point and state in spacetime to wind up in.
Meanwhile, a certain book gets yeeted through spacetime and winds up in the middle of a certain village...