Side of Beans

by Irrespective

Aborted Sequel - Part 1

Author's Note:

This is what I had stated to write for the sequel to Pregnant Noses Know, but it's a unholy disaster of a mess so I won't be putting any more effort into it. Take this as a warning and and example of how not to turn your romcom into a grimdark.

* * ✹ * *

“Up for another race-ending fight, Twilight?” Starlight Glimmer called out to her foe with a smug grin.

Everything was going exactly as she wanted it to, and she had to admit that vengeance was deliriously delicious. It had taken the most detailed of planning and plotting, breaking into the Starswirl the Bearded wing in the Canterlot Archives, a smidge of luck, and innumerable hours of stalking the so-called Princess of “Friendship,” but all of that effort was now paying out handsome dividends. Each time Twilight Sparkle returned from the future, she was a little more beaten, a little more broken and worn. Soon she would completely break, and Starlight would finally prove that she had been right about cutie marks all along.

“You’re right, Starlight,” Twilight replied in a weary voice. “I can’t beat you.”

Emboldened even more by her confession, Starlight let loose with a shot of paralyzing magic, but Twilight effortlessly parried it away with a shield. “But you can’t stop me from trying, and we could be stuck doing this for all eternity!” the Princess finished.

“If that’s what it takes to keep you and your friends from getting your cutie mark connection, then I’m game!” Starlight announced before firing off another beam from her horn.

Twilight effortlessly deflected the shot with another shield, then grabbed a nearby cloud and shaped it with her own magic into what looked like a village at the base of a hill. “What you’re doing goes way beyond cutie marks. Everything we do here in the past,” she said as she created a cloud snowball at the top of the ‘hill,’ “even the smallest change can snowball into an avalanche of trouble for the future.”

The cloud snowball slammed into the village, but Starlight simply vaporized the whole thing with another shot. “Oh, next I suppose you’ll tell me that the fate of all of Equestria hangs in the balance.”

“It does!” Twilight protested.

“Spare me your overblown ego!” Starlight snapped. “No group of friends, not even Princess Twilight’s, are that important!”

Another magic blast shot from Starlight’s horn, but this one lashed out to strike the young Rainbow Dash as she raced by, sending her into a tailspin and opening the time portal once more. Twilight clearly wasn’t learning the lesson that she was supposed to, so Starlight was going to have to be more direct this time.

“I don’t know how important other ponies’ friendships are to the future,” Twilight said as Spike lost his grip and was sucked away, “but I can show you what the world is like without mine!”

And before Starlight could react, Twilight leapt from her cloud, tackled her, and then held fast as they were sucked up into the portal.

Or, at least Twilight tried to. Despite the shock of the action, Starlight managed to recover, and as they crossed the event horizon of the spell, her horn flared to life.

“Starlight, no!” Twilight called out, but before her own magic could counter it, Starlight’s teleportation spell flung her away from Twilight’s grip.

* * ✹ * *

Teleportation spells were fairly standard and straightforward, once a pony could work the math required. The main problem was making sure one calculated out the distribution of mass properly, or the end result could be a bit messy.

Most unicorns avoided using teleportation for this very reason, but Starlight had figured out the equations for her own mass years ago, with occasional adjustments whenever she noticed that she needed to eat more rice cakes and less cheesecakes. By now, it was a simple matter of having where she wanted to go in her mind’s eye, and then letting magic take care of the rest.

So, when Starlight had used her teleportation spell to get away from Twilight, she had intended to reappear on a cloud bank half a skip away from where the time portal had opened.

But when she winked back into existence, she was mildly annoyed to find that she was not on the intended cloud. Yes, plotting revenge meant she'd ordered take-out every night, but surely she hadn't gained that much weight with her unhealthy eating habits.

Starlight glanced around, trying to figure out where she was and how far away from her intended target she was.

She then glanced down. She hadn’t bothered to look over the vast green land of Equestria while she had been trying to sabotage Rainbow Dash’s race, but now that there were no clouds to block the scenery, she had to admit that the view was rather stunning.

Half a second later, the full weight of what this meant hit Starlight, and she screamed when she realized that the ground was going to be a lot more stunning once her freefall through the air came to an abrupt conclusion. Her legs flailed wildly, and either she forgot how to breathe or the rushing wind stole her breath from her as she streaked downward. Blind panic overtook her rational thought, and in a desperate attempt to avoid becoming a pinkish-purple splat, she hastily cast another teleportation spell.

This time, Starlight Glimmer found that she was not plummeting to immediate doom. Instead, the not-so-tender embrace of a tree welcomed her with sharp twigs and razor-edged leaves, and she yelped in pain as she bounced off three stout branches, ricocheted off the trunk, and finally slammed into the ground in a painful heap.

“Ow.”

For several long moments, Starlight simply lay where she’d landed, trying to convince herself that she was, in fact, still breathing and could still feel her extremities, even if she wasn’t totally sure that she wanted to.

Finally, once Starlight was mostly sure that her legs would cooperate, she slowly picked herself up with a groan as new aches joined in with the screaming pains from all over her body. Twilight Sparkle was going to pay for this, if it was the last thing she did!

“Where am I?” she muttered, a hoof rubbing the back of her head, as she surveyed her landing spot. At first glance, she appeared to be in a farmer’s field somewhere, and her landing had been softened by a healthy crop of wheat stalks. A lush mountain range was off in the distance, but the peaks did not look familiar to her, and as far as she could see, there was no sign of civilization. “Great. I’m out in the middle of nowhere!”

Starlight snorted. If she didn’t know where she was, then she couldn’t know where to go.

But she could still make this work for her. Twilight Sparkle was also nowhere in sight, so at least her teleport had flung her away, too. If she could just figure out where that cutie mark map thing was before Twilight did, she could get herself back to the past and then seal the time portal, thus trapping her nemesis here and completing Starlight’s revenge once and for all.

Starlight glanced up to note the position of the sun, pointed herself east, and began to walk. A farmer’s field obviously meant there was a farmer somewhere, and said farmer could at least tell her how to get to the nearest city. If she was lucky, she might even be able to sweet talk him or her into giving her a ride.

It did take a few minutes longer than she expected to get out of the field, but she smiled once she found the dirt road that divided the farmer’s crops. Thus far, this future world didn’t seem all that bad, so Twilight had obviously overstated how dire the consequences would be for tampering with the past.

“She probably can’t stand the fact that everything turns out just fine without her and her friends,” Starlight remarked to herself as she turned to follow the road, and then she snickered. “Maybe I should go find her, just to rub the truth in her face. ‘Oh, this is just so horrible, Princess!’” she mockingly said with a deep smile. “‘However will Equestria go on without you?’”

A distant buzzing noise caught her attention, but when she stopped to figure out where it was coming from, it stopped too. Starlight took a moment to glance behind her, and she shrugged when she found nothing amiss. There was a slight prance in her step when she started off again, and she began to hum a happy tune as she moved along. This setback was but a minor bump in the road, and soon, everything would be—

Starlight stopped and whipped around. That high-pitched buzzing had started up again, and it was getting louder. “Hello?” she called out. “Is somepony there?”

No answer came. Starlight stood stock still for several minutes, her eyes and ears darting about in a vain effort to catch her mysterious stalker, if there was one. Once she was halfway satisfied that she was alone, she again began to trot down the path before her.

But after a moment of thought, and another backward glance, Starlight decided a brisk canter would be better.

* * ✹ * *

“Finally!” Starlight cheered. She’d lost track of time while she’d been marching herself along, but she was sure she’d been on the move for the better part of the last hour, if not longer. The simple farmhouse she'd found reminded her of the simple homes that had made up Our Town, and Starlight’s burning thirst for revenge flared as she moved to the front door, to say nothing of her burning thirst for water.

“Hello?” she called out as she knocked. “Is somepony home? I’m lost, and I need help!”

“I’m coming, I’m coming!” a voice called back from somewhere inside. “Who in Equestria could be banging on…”

The speaker trailed off as he opened the door, and his eyes went wide in shock once he saw her. “Chancellor Glimmer? What are you doing out here?”

“Chancellor?” Starlight took a step back and evaluated the crystal pony before her. She’d met a couple of crystal ponies while she had been searching for those who were disenfranchised and disheartened with their cutie marks, but none of them had been willing to listen to her explanation on why they should come to Our Town. Meeting a crystal pony meant that she was most likely in the Crystal Empire, and for a brief instant, Starlight’s mind tried to figure out how she had gotten shot so far away from Cloudsdale. “Look, I’m not who you think I am. I don’t even know where I am. Can you help me?”

“Of course, of course!” The glittering stallion stepped outside with a grin, and he pointed down the road Starlight had just left. “I’m sorry you’re lost, Chancellor, but if you just keep going that way, you’ll walk right into the city.”

Starlight smiled. If she hurried, she might be able to catch the afternoon train to Ponyville and get a chance to eat and rest along the way. “Thank you. That’s just what I wanted to hear,” she gleefully said.

“How did you end up way out here?” the stallion asked. “Not that I mind the surprise visit, of course, but my farm is too small to be of any importance to you.”

“Twilight Sparkle happened,” Starlight growled. “But don’t worry about it. Thanks for the help.”

“Forgive me, Chancellor, but maybe you should step inside for a moment? It looks like you might be bleeding.”

Starlight glanced back to her cutie mark, and she sucked in a breath when she saw the trickle of blood running down her flank and leg. She hadn’t noticed the pain or the cut before, but now that the adrenaline from her skydiving incident was wearing off, the pain from her impact was beginning to flair and surge. “Well, I could use a drink of water,” she admitted.

“Please!” The stallion stepped back, pushed his front door wide open, and motioned for her to enter. “It would be my pleasure to assist.”

Starlight took the invitation, but she resolved to be on her way as soon as possible. A quick drink, a few minutes to patch up her cuts, and then she’d—

“Well, well, well! What do we have here?”

Starlight froze in place, and her heart nearly pounded clean out of her chest. She knew she should scream, or run, or do anything besides stand there like an idiot, but the glowing green eyes before her seemed to hold her captive within an invisible grasp.

“Chancellor Glimmer, what a surprise!” Queen Chrysalis pronounced, and with a predatory grin, she approached the trembling visitor. “I was under the impression that you were going to be in Manehattan this week. I do hope you’ll forgive my lack of a proper welcome party.”

This was bad! This was very, very bad! Starlight had never encountered a changeling before—or, at least, not that she was aware of—and the stories she had heard about the fearsome Queen were bad enough to give any pony nightmares. Of course, there had been some rumors floating around that Chrysalis was living in Canterlot with a royal guard, but that detail was lost as soon as it came as Starlight finally found her voice and let out a terrified scream. Her horn flared to life, and in desperation, she tried to teleport to anywhere besides here.

“Aw, leaving so soon?” Chrysalis sneered when Starlight blinked back in the exact same place. “What a pity. You just got here, and you never got your drink of water.”

Another frantic attempt at teleportation ended the same way, as did the third and fourth. Starlight then tried to turn and make a run for it, but the stallion from before was blocking the door, and in a blast of green balefire, his form twisted into a loyal and sharp-fanged drone, complete with armor and spear.

“Mandible, I have a question for you,” Chrysalis said with a bob of her eyebrows. “Do you notice anything different about the good Chancellor here?”

“It sure looks like the Chancellor,” Mandible replied with a wicked grin. “But that mane style is rather old-fashioned, I have to say. I don’t think I’ve ever seen Starlight Glimmer with bangs.”

“It’s rather tacky, too,” Chrysalis said. “And since she’s in such a hurry to leave, I’d be willing to bet that this Starlight Glimmer is not the Starlight that we both know and love.”

“You stay back!” Starlight warned with more bravado than she felt.

“Or what?” Chrysalis shot back. “You’re in no position to make threats, my little impostor!”

The statement was true, and Starlight knew it. But she was determined to put up a fight all the same, and her horn flared to life again, ready to fire off the strongest paralyzation spell she knew. Maybe if she could get a good hit on Chrysalis, the drone would rush to her aid, and Starlight could—

Without warning, Starlight was tackled from the left, and before she knew what was happening, two more changelings pounced on top of her. Thick strips of green ichor were wrapped around her faster than she could react, and within moments, the unicorn found herself bound and immobile within a slimy green pod.

“Mandible, take our guest back to my palace.” Chrysalis strode out of the house, but paused to glance back once outside with a grin. “And make sure she’s shown to our finest accommodations.”

“With pleasure, my Empress,” Mandible replied.

* * ✹ * *

Wrong.

This was all wrong. Starlight Glimmer wasn’t supposed to be wrapped up in a cocoon of changeling… well, it was probably best that she not think about what she was bound in. She wasn’t supposed to be a prisoner to the changelings, and the changelings were not supposed to be in the Crystal Empire.

The trip to her current jail cell had answered one question and bought several dozen more to life. Starlight was in the Crystal Empire, and she had crash-landed in a field not too far away from the grand crystalline city. The flight from the farm to the castle had only taken about ten minutes or so, but she’d lost track of time after the changeling drones had unceremoniously dumped her in a pitch-black cell and left her to rot. Every effort to break free had failed miserably, and Starlight’s strength had given out with her magic hours ago, if not longer.

Why are there changelings in the Crystal Empire? Starlight had nothing better to do at the moment, so she allowed her questions to meet up with her wild speculation and have a field day in her head. Maybe they defeated Shining Armor and Cadence at the wedding, or they got here before the ponies could. Why don’t the crystal ponies fight back? Are there even any crystal ponies left, or did Chrysalis enslave them all?

She hadn’t seen any ponies on her way to jail, but then again, she had been rather preoccupied with trying to escape at the time. Even if there were crystal ponies who weren’t enslaved, how was she supposed to contact them? Had anypony seen the changelings while they had buzzed in with her?

Starlight’s thoughts were interrupted when the heavy iron locks on her cell began to clank and thunk open, and she had to close her eyes when the bright exterior light flooded the interior. For several long moments, all she could see was vague shapes and blurs, but since they were all black against blinding white, she was reasonably assured that her changeling captors had come back.

“I think there’s been some kind of misunderstanding,” Starlight said while blinking rapidly. “I’m not an impostor; I was brought here against my will.”

“Obviously,” the dark voice of Chrysalis snarked.

“I don’t mean by you or your changelings, Your Majesty,” Starlight went on, hoping that an appeal to vanity might help her cause. “I’m not from this world, originally. I’m from a different timeline, or dimension, or reality, or whatever you want to call it, I don’t know. All I know is that I want to go home, and I promise I won’t cause any problems for you or your changelings. I just need to get to Ponyville, and then I’ll leave and never bother you again.”

“Ponyville?” Chrysalis said, and Starlight wasn’t quite sure that she wanted her vision to clear when the changeling queen came within an inch of her nose. “What could possibly be in that abysmal heap that’d rip a pony from one reality to another?”

For a brief moment, Starlight paused. This Queen Chrysalis didn’t look quite like the one that she’d seen in the newspaper articles, tabloids, and magazines. This Queen wore a crown of some jade-colored material that rested behind her jagged horn and ran down the sides of her head, thick green shoes with some odd, rune-like markings, and a breastplate of similar composition and with similar markings. The top third of her horn seemed to be glowing with pent-up magical power, but the biggest and most obvious difference was in the eyes. Her sclera was the same glowing green as her irises and it was almost impossible to make out where one part began and the other ended.

“There’s a magical map and table,” Starlight said, once she’d finished her evaluation. This version of Chrysalis was even more creepy than the regular one, so she had to play her cards carefully here and stay on the Queen’s good side. Besides, there was no real reason to lie, and once she got back to the cutie mark map, she could ditch this horrible world faster than Chrysalis would be able to respond. “I don’t know if it exists here, but in my world, I figured out a way to use it for time travel. I belong in the past, and that map can send me there.”

“How very interesting,” Chrysalis said thoughtfully. “Why would you travel to the future? Curious to see how awesome you’d be?”

“I was tricked into coming here by Twilight Sparkle. She’s jealous of my abilities, and she’s trying to get rid of me.”

“Twilight Sparkle?” Chrysalis tapped her chin and glanced up as she thought. “Twilight, Twilight, Twilight. Mandible?”

“I got nothing, my Empress,” a drone said from somewhere on Starlight’s right. She would have turned to look at the speaker, but her uncomfortable pod prevented any sort of head movement.

“She’s probably in Ponyville now, trying to figure out how to keep me trapped here. Please,” Starlight begged, and she quickly worked up some tears for added dramatic emphasis. “I just want to go home, Your Majesty.”

“Oh, spare me the crocodile tears, will you?” Chrysalis sneered. “You’re a horrible liar who’s just trying to get out of here. I could taste your deceit and your pride from a mile away.”

Well, that didn’t go quite the way she’d wanted it to. “So what are you going to do with me?”

“That is quite the dilemma I face, isn’t it?” Chrysalis flashed a wicked smile, and her tongue darted out to taste the emotions in the air. “But I am feeling peckish, and I bet you’re just stuffed full with all sorts of tasty emotions. Anger, with some subtle hints of jealousy and sadness, and…” her tongue darted out again. “Is that just a hint of doubt? What a delightful little cocktail you are!”

Starlight whimpered slightly. Some small part of her cursed Twilight Sparkle yet again for getting her into this mess, but she was too busy wondering if changelings saw her as an appetizer or as dessert to fully form the curse.

“However, and unfortunately for you, all trespassers are to be sent to Canterlot for questioning.” Chrysalis reached out and pulled Starlight’s pod in so the prisoner’s nose was touching her own. “But don’t worry, my little Anarchist. Once you’ve been properly and completely broken, I’ll get to feast on what’s left of you. Mandible! Prepare my carriage. Chancellor Glimmer and I are overdue for our appointment, and you know how the Prince detests it when his spinach puffs get cold.”

* * ✹ * *

Comments

[A.P.O.N.I.]

You lost me at grimdark. I'm glad you didn't pursue this route.

[Irrespective]

11072826
To be fair, it wouldn't have really been all that dark, but it was a route best not taken all the same.

[QueenChrysalisForever]

I kind of like this alt timeline, would totally have loved to see more of it and where it could have gone.

[Lee Goldson]

I want to see where this goes.
This side platform is the place for it.

[Thor447]

Always makes you wonder how things could have gone