Passed the Reflex Save
Twilight Sparkle and Spike stared up at the spot that Starlight Glimmer had been only moments ago, mouths agape at what they just saw. It had taken less than a minute. Starlight was relaxing in one of the thrones, made a vague threat, and then activated an unknown spell before disappearing into a portal.
“Where’d she go?” Spike said as they approached the Cutie Map.
“I don’t know, Spike,” Twilight said, still in shock. “But I think we’d better find out.”
“Guess we could start with this,” Spike said. Twilight turned to see him reaching down to Starlight’s crumpled spell scroll.
“Spike, no! Don’t touch that!” she shouted. His hand was less than an inch from the paper when Twilight grabbed him with her magic, pulling him back.
“Hey! What gives?” Spike asked as Twilight set him down.
“The first rule when dealing with an unknown magical artifact, Spike. Never touch something until you’re sure it’s safe.” She stepped forward and cast a series of spells. A moment later, she nodded in satisfaction. “See? Starlight trapped it. If anypony had touched it without proper protection, it would have activated again.”
Spike let out a whistle. “Thanks, Twilight. Sorry about that.”
Twilight smiled. “It’s okay, Spike. We all make mistakes. Just don’t let it happen again.”
The door slammed open, and Pinkie Pie walked in, pushing a very large cake.
“Special delivery!” she called out.
Twilight and Spike looked at each other questioningly, and upon seeing that they both didn’t expect this, Twilight said, “Pinkie, we didn’t order a cake.”
“Of course you didn’t, silly! Somepony had an order but had to cancel it at the last minute. Rather than let it go to waste, the Cakes said I could have it. Soooooo, I thought I could share it with my super bestest friends!”
Twilight opened her mouth to say that this was no time for cake, but Spike’s growling stomach interrupted her. He gave her an apologetic smile before she rolled her eyes and smirked.
“Actually, I think that’s a good idea,” she said. “We have a maybe emergency going on, so we can get the girls together and have a snack while we discuss it. Can you get Rainbow Dash and Fluttershy? I’ll find Rarity and Applejack.”
Pinkie gave a stiff salute before zipping away.
===
Fifteen minutes later, everyone was sitting around the Cutie Map as Twilight finished her tale. Cake was all around, satisfying many sweet tooths and hungry bellies.
“...and then we came to get all of you,” Twilight finished.
“Ugh, I can’t believe that Starlight’s back,” Rainbow growled. “I thought she learned her lesson the last time!”
“Apparently not,” Applejack said. “It sounds like she needs another whoopin.”
“Um, do we know what she did?” Fluttershy asked.
Twilight shook her head, carefully manipulating the crumpled spell scroll. “No, not yet. I had Spike send warning letters to Canterlot and the Crystal Empire to be on the lookout, but they haven’t sent anything back yet other than to say that all is quiet.”
“Could her spell have failed?” Rarity asked.
“It’s possible,” Twilight said. “We know that Starlight is powerful, but not her level of education. I looked into her after our last encounter, and she’s never been enrolled in any of the major universities. It’s possible she was apprenticed, or even self taught, though.” With her spells finished, she smiled as the crumpled scroll straightened out.
“Ah! There we go, one moment.” She brought over a quill and notepad, and immediately set to work. For a few minutes everyone watched her, nibbling on cake or making light conversation.
“Oh no!” Twilight froze at what she found out, setting everything down. “This is bad, really really- wait.” She paused, looking over the scroll again.
“What is it, sugarcube?” Applejack asked.
“One second.” In a flash, she disappeared, only to reappear again a few moments later, books surrounding her. They passed in front of her over and over as she skimmed the pages, murmuring to herself. Everyone else knew better than to interrupt her during one of her ‘moments.’
With a smile, Twilight shut all the books and banished them back to her library.
“Okay, there is no cause for alarm,” she said.
Everyone looked at each other warily for a moment, and Rarity said, “Well, I wouldn’t say Starlight Glimmer being free to take her vengeance is not cause for alarm.”
“Ordinarily I’d agree with you,” Twilight said with a nod. “But the thing is, the moment she disappeared into the portal, she either won or lost.”
Everyone looked at her to explain, and she brought out the scroll.
“This is a modified version of Starswirl’s time travel spell. The same one I used a few years ago.”
Pinkie asked, “You mean that time you showed up in that black catsuit, trying to warn yourself not to worry about Tuesday, but future-you didn’t have time to explain so you ended up worrying about Tuesday and got so super worried that you ended up breaking into the Canterlot library and took the spell, only to find out there was nothing to worry about, so you travelled back in time to warn yourself not to worry about it starting the whole cycle?”
“Exactly,” Twilight said without a beat.
“So now Starlight’s running around messing up time? Why aren’t we stopping her?” Applejack asked.
“Simple,” Twilight said. She brought out a blackboard and began illustrating her explanation. “Time travel isn’t a very well studied branch of magic, and for very good reason. It’s dangerous. Nonetheless, everypony that has looked into it has come to an agreement. That travelling to the past can do one of three things.
“One: it can complete a logical loop, and was always going to happen. Say one day I fell down the stairs, and was caught by a net, thus preventing me from breaking my neck. I don’t know why the net was there, and upon investigating I realize that nopony I knew put it there. Eventually I end up travelling to the past and put up the net, thus saving myself, so I can eventually travel to the past and save myself.”
She got a number of nods, some more confident than others.
“Two: travelling to the past creates changes to the present. Let’s say that normally, I break my neck. Everypony is understandably sad, but Rarity doesn’t accept this. She travels to the past and puts up the net, thus saving my life. She then travels back to the present, where I’m alive and well. Nopony but she remembers my death, and everypony is happy.
“Three: travelling to the past creates a new reality. This time, when Rarity saves my life, there are two realities. Reality A, where I die, and Reality B, where I live. Both still exist. Where Rarity ends up after travelling to the present is up for debate. She may end up in the old reality where I died, or she may end up in the new reality, and there are two Raritys.”
Twilight turned and looked to the group, who was mostly confused. Pinkie Pie seemed to be the only one who completely understood, so there was that.
“All of this glosses over a number of paradoxes and situations involving duplicate Raritys and where the information to save me came from in the first place, but that’s not important now.”
“Then, what is?” Rainbow asked.
Twilight held the spell out. “The moment Starlight went through the portal, she ended up in the past. We already missed her, so she’s either already completed her objective, or has already failed. Because it happened in the past.
“If we live in a world of example one, she was always going to go to the past and meddle with it, so nothing’s changed. We treat it like a regular plan and just prepare for some kind of attack in the future.
“If we live in a world of example two, then our past has already changed, and we will never know what it should have been, outside interrogating her. So let me ask this, does anypony have some kind of traumatizing event in their past that seems outside the norm?”
Everyone looked at each other, asked questions, and came to the conclusion that their childhoods and lives seemed fine.
“Okay. Now, option three. Nothing has changed for us, but Starlight made a branching path. While I feel bad for the us that’s currently her victims, we can’t even be sure if she succeeded in this case. Outside of heavily modifying this spell, something that I would never do unless reality is at stake, we could never travel there to help them anyway.”
“So, what do we do?” Rarity asked.
“And how are we gonna catch Starlight?” Rainbow added.
“The original spell and-” she looked over the scroll once again, “-this spell both have the return point set to about a minute after departure. Spike’s been here the whole time, and she’s never come back. So either her modifications destabilized the spell and she’s trapped between time, or she’s off where we can’t get to her.” She tapped her chin. “Or she took the long way around. Either way, there’s really only one option. We just keep an eye out for her and any of her plans.”
“So...we don’t do anything?” Rainbow asked.
“We don’t do anything aside from maintaining vigilance.” Twilight summoned a chest, and put the scroll in it before wrapping it in several chains and warding it against intrusion. “I am going to return this to Canterlot and make sure it’s never stolen again.” She blinked. “Unless somepony wants to come with me?”
Rarity smiled. “I’m always up for a trip to Canterlot, darling.”
Pinkie bounced from her chair. “Ooh! Me too! I’m running low on my premium fancy party supplies.”
As the ponies cleared from the room and spoke of their plans, Spike turned and looked at the spot on the floor where the scroll once laid. He didn’t quite understand all of Twilight’s explanation, but understood that had she not stopped him, they would have been pulled into this whole time travel mess themselves.
He shuddered on considering what the future held for that Spike.
===
Starlight Glimmer stared blankly out onto the dusty wasteland. Behind her sat the Cutie Map, the centerpiece of her dirt and mud hovel. Torn and damaged scrolls of notes and failed experiments covered the damaged artifact, a testament to her failures.
She leaned over onto the stone table and grabbed the cup of dirty water, sipping at it and stopping herself from retching from the vile taste.
Two months. Two months of trying to retrigger her spell and return to the past. She didn’t know why. She didn’t know how. All she knew was that somehow, her changes had caused this apocalypse to happen.
With a sigh, she turned from the broken window and headed to her kitchen, or what passed for it. Opening the pantry didn’t change what she had, or rather didn’t have. With a sigh she took the roots she had managed to dig from the ground and threw them in the pot, added water, and set it on the fire.
She liked staring at the fire during her downtimes. The fire moved, the fire changed, the fire was alive, unlike everything else around her.
She sighed, and looked around at her hovel. Broken and burnt furniture held together by her spells, broken and burnt paperwork with her scrawlings…
Broken and burnt world, caused by her actions.
She returned to staring at the fire. She didn’t know how long she did that, watching the water slowly come to a boil, but she must have zoned out, because she heard something that was completely and utterly alien to her, and screamed.
Thump. Thump. Thump.
She whirled at the source, the door, in confusion and with a spell on the tip of her horn. She knew that anything beyond basic telekinesis was for emergencies only; she didn’t have enough food to fuel it. Still, she didn’t know what was going on. Why did the door-
Thump. Thump. Thump.
“We know you’re in there! We don’t want to hurt you!”
Starlight was hyperventilating. There were still ponies around? She hadn’t seen anything living except for dust caked grasses and shrubs ever since she got here. No animals, no ponies, nothing.
A part of her was suspicious about the visitor’s true intentions. Logically, if they were in this wasteland, they were just as poor off as she was, and thus might be here to steal what little she had. However her need to have some kind of social contact drowned out logic’s protests, and she frantically ran to the door, throwing it open.
Before here were six mares. Six very familiar mares. A very old and ingrained part of her immediately cried out for vengeance, and in a fit of anger she shot a beam attack at them.
The shield that absorbed it was up before the attack even left her horn.
The shock that she felt was immediately eclipsed by absolute fatigue. She promptly collapsed, her legs barely able to move. Instead she looked up, and met the unimpressed gaze of Twilight Sparkle. There was no softness to it. No pity. Just a slight frown and the impression that the mare wasn’t surprised in the slightest. Surrounding her, her friends had similar expressions, though they varied from Rainbow Dash’s snarl to Fluttershy’s minute shaking of her head.
“That was stupid,” Twilight said. “We were going to help you, but…” She didn’t even finish her sentence, and just turned away. The rest of them followed suit.
She had it. She had a way out. Even if it was with her most hated enemies, she had found some manner of social contact and possibly even a way to get home.
And she just threw it away.
Something broke within Starlight as she realized that for all her magic, for all her knowledge, because of her actions she would die as she lived: alone.
“I’m sorry!” she shouted, trying to get them to return. They kept walking away.
“I didn’t mean to!” Her cries fell on deaf ears, and she watched as they disappeared into the perpetual dust storm. As the last sight of them vanished, she wrenched her eyes shut and began to sob.
“Stop crying.”
Starlight looked up to find the six had returned. She didn’t know how long she had laid there. Minutes, probably. Maybe even an hour. She looked up at Twilight with something akin to hope, but the other mare held her only in contempt.
“Th-thank you, I-”
“Don’t thank me,” Twilight interrupted. She gestured to the others. “Thank them. It’s not often I give a second chance. So start explaining.”
And so Starlight did. Not the whole truth, of course. She left out a lot of the details. Details that, once glossed over, Applejack frowned at her for, yet said nothing. Twilight was as still as a statue as she explained, and was silent for a moment at the end.
“You’re going to die out here,” she said. “There’s nothing to eat, and no clean water. All of the remaining towns are near the coasts. The way I see it, you have two options. Either stay here and hope you find enough roots and old food to keep you going, or come with us to Vanhoover. You can come back here later with supplies if you want.”
Starlight, who had been helped up and given some clean water and rations, nodded meekly. “I understand. But...why were you out here in the first place?”
“We were on a trade mission when I felt your magic,” Twilight explained. “Which, since there’s nothing here but ruins, was surprising. I thought that somepony got lost.” She smirked. “I was right, but not how I thought. Still, we don’t leave somepony behind without cause. Equestria’s gone, but that’s no reason we should turn our backs on friendship.”
She held out a hoof. “Come with us.”
Starlight looked at the offered hoof, then to Twilight’s eyes. Gone was the hard and cold expression of a seasoned wastelander. She still saw the scars, the stress, and the shadows under her eyes, but underneath it all was a look that promised forgiveness and, if she sought it, perhaps something more.
Despite the fact that this mare was her enemy, at least in another world, the thought of slowly starving, surrounded by nothing by her work, was too much to bear. Pride and anger, two of her oldest friends, looked at the writing on the wall and sighed.
She reached out and tearfully took Twilight’s hoof.
Also LikedSimilarAuthor
- SpectralFury · 2.1k words · 389 2 · 6.6k views
- SpectralFury · 4.5k words · 406 9 · 6.1k views
- SpectralFury · 2.5k words · 391 17 · 6.1k views
- SpectralFury · 30k words · 573 8 · 7k views
- SpectralFury · 4.9k words · 439 3 · 5.7k views
- Jest · 2k words · 589 28 · 8k views
- Aquaman · 1.6k words · 339 15 · 4.1k views
- Leondude · 1.8k words · 97 13 · 2.2k views
Stats
Page generated in 0.18 seconds
Total duration
1,031 users online
2,191,014 hits today, 2,054,621 yesterday
FIMFiction
My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic Fanfiction
Designed and coded by knighty & Xaquseg - © 2011-2024
Follow & Support Us
Support us
SubStar
Chat!
Discord
Follow us
Twitter
MLP: Friendship is Magic® - © 2024 Hasbro Inc.®
Fimfiction is in no way affiliated with or endorsed by Hasbro Inc.®
You seem to be missing an Alternate Universe tag, but other than that minute nitpick, I really enjoyed this!
Have a thumbs up. Kudos!
:)
10418488
I always thought that Alt Universe tags are for when the entire setting is changed, not when a different decision is made in-story.
Obviously Starlight fares better if Spike touches the scroll. Don't know about the other universes -- I mean here she makes one grim universe and reality stays the same for everypony in the original sans Starlight. In the other case it is weird. It seems impossible that she managed to return to her own future, but since there aren't TWO Twlights there, she must have. Other universes were created, although one can't be certain if they continued without Twi and Starlight in them.
10418494
This is how I thought of it. If your universe zigs at some point, the original story isn't an AU but any sequel you write is an AU.
As for this modified universe though, without Starlight, I wonder if/how they would have beaten Chrysalis.
10418494
Maybe. Personally, I've always interpreted AU as "featuring events/elements that directly contradict the source's canonical timeline."
This fic and "The Cutie Re-Mark", by design, cannot co-exist in the same continuity—therefore, at least in my eyes, this is an AU.
Of course, that's just my mindset. If it doesn't align with yours, that's perfectly fine! I won't continue to prod.
:)
A very interesting exploration of a what-if scenario. Good on ya, mate!
I'm confused. If Starlight ended up in the dustlands timeline, how come Twilight and her friends are together? She still prevented Rainbow Dash from doing her Sonic Rainboom thus the other Mane 5 didn't get their cutiemarks and would have never met each other. Applejack would've stayed in Manehattan, Dash in Cloudsdale, Fluttershy also Cloudsdale, Twilight in Canterlot, still a unicorn and not Celestia's protege, Rarity in Ponyville and Pinkie in the rock farm.
10418526
To be fair, the Mane Six still managed to cross paths in many of the alternate timelines from that episode: Rainbow and Pinkie fought side-by-side in Sombra's, Pinkie and Fluttershy were part of the resistance in Chrysalis's, and Rainbow and Rarity both worked for Nightmare Moon in her timeline.
It's not too much of a stretch to say the Mane Six would still get drawn together, even if it'd be under less-than-desirable circumstances.
10418507
So, the way I look at it is that the universe is infinite, and all timelines exist. I got the idea from Justice League: Crisis on Two Earths. So here, the divergence is that Twilight stops Spike, but that doesn't destroy the canon timeline where she doesn't from happening. Thus, we have two time travel scenarios. One, where Twilight and Spike fight Starlight, and thus have the scroll to keep trying, and Two, where they don't fight, and Starlight is at the mercy of the consequences when she returns to the present.
So, when Starlight creates this new timeline, she's locked into it, and the spell's destination is now the dustlands. She stupidly discarded the scroll, which she said she needed earlier ("Won't be needing that anymore."), and thus has to try to reverse engineer the spell from scratch. As to why she's locked into this timeline, I'm going to say "because magic" because the magic system in MLP isn't set in stone. As to why she's in the dustlands timeline instead of the Sombra one, it's because it suits my purposes of getting Starlight to see past her hatred. I considered having her end up drafted into the Equestrian army and being yelled at by drill sergeant Twilight, but it didn't click with me.
As to how Chrysalis was defeated and why the dustlands exist, well... I have a background to it, but I'll keep it mostly to myself. Let's just say that Chrysalis had no reason to invade Equestria and leave it at that.
So, basically this is what happens if the time-travel mechanic worked on Avengers: Endgame logic. I dig it.
10418545
Would be intresting if the Ruined Equestria this Starlight ended up in was the same one from the actual episode. Of course my running head Cannon is all the alternate realities eventually got saved as Fate stepped in to push this back toward the Prime time line as much as it could. Each time line had similar end results but how they where reached was diffrent, with events happening in diffrent orders, in diffrent ways or just not at all. The Ruined timeline taking the longest with events delayed by decades and many not happening in the same places.
I can imagine the ruined time line is like it is because Princesses had to use thier full power to beat some of the villians, and it caused mass collateral damage.
10418519
Well, see, the issue with that is any scene in the original work that is even slightly different, even if the change is ultimately meaningless becomes an AU by that definition. Thus, all fanfiction is essentially AU. Which makes it useless as a tag.
And that's not helpful.
In my opinion, "Alternate Universe" requires a significant change to the canon of the show (as of the posting of the fic) that happens before the fic's narrative starts. In this fic, the assumption is that everything is entirely canon up until Twilight stops Spike, a la For Want of a Nail. Thus, it's not an AU.
That's why you never time travel kids. Also it logically speaking can't happen. It's a Theseus paradox. True time travel is impossible.
I'm guessing Starlight created an alternative reality?
I see someone watches the "Everything Wrong" series.
10418545
I think 10418511 was referring to the Season 6 finale with the Chrysalis line, not her original appearance. That goes a bit more poorly with the Season 5 finale having gone off the rails.
A fitting end to this villain.
I wonder what happened to Tirek and Cozy, though...
10418985
It may or may not have been an inspiration ;)
10419051
Ah. Well, the issue is that Equestria is still a destroyed wasteland where most of the ponies died during the apocalypse or subsequent famine. Love is jealously guarded between tight knit groups, and everyone is paranoid. It's a matter of risk-reward here. The changelings would get very little from infiltrating the Equestrian remnant, and the chance of getting caught is very high, if we're going with how bad changelings are at impersonation canonically.
Of course, Chrysalis is an idiot, so who really knows.
10419468
No, no, in the timeline that Starlight left, which is being presumed to still exist in some manner. If that is incorrect, at least be upfront about it.
And this, ladies and gentlemen, is why one does not introduce time travel to an ongoing series unless
A) It's part of the premise
2) It's a one time deal
MLP got away with it twice solely due to the nature of the time travel. It's a one time use spell, and it seems like Starlight's mod was merely altering her 1 time use into a fixed point use sort of thing. Doubtful she could make it work later. And no, the Groundhog's Day loop doesn't count the same, the mechanics there are entirely different than normal time travel. Still, it is an interesting look into how this one works, and I quite enjoyed it. Curious about her final timeline, and it again begs the question of what happened to the Twilight in all the alternate timelines.
Also, this does set up the timeline Starlight left behind to get taken over by Chrysalis... though there's the question of how long Celestia and Luna's replacements can keep up the charade when they can't move the sun and moon.
In any case, nice exercise in temporal dynamics. Thank you for it.
10419494
Ah you mean the main timeline. Gotcha. Yeah that might be an issue.
This is where it fails. Starlight was able to cast the time travel spell, without using the scroll. Plus on two occasions it was confirmed she is still able to use the spell, despite the scroll being long gone.
10418511 Well, the original timeline is doomed without Starlight. The changelings will have kidnapped everyone important and nobody will ever be the wiser.
But of course, before that the Crystal Empire is fu**ed and is lost again.
I’ve always felt the Wasteland timeline is where Sunset won and came back as a demon. Fire demon + Sun Princess = ash-filled wastes.
10419688
Because of Flurry during the Crystalling? During the evacuation they’d have come across Sunburst anyway, so the empire probably would’ve been fine. The changelings return... I mean it’d have to be that Sunburst basically fills Starlight’s role from the Crystalling and on...
Interesting. Never really considered that the dust bowl might be a localized phenomenon.
I wonder what could happened if Starlight managed to end in another timeline... Maybe trying to re-do the spell to get out of that timeline and return to her timeline only to end in the others by mistake
10420050
Nope it would not. Sunburst only got the idea because of Starlight. And the Mane 6 have absolutely no reason to ever make contact with him.
Not to mention he would never have the connection with Trixie that helped Trixie form her bond with Starlight. Plus he can't use invisibility or flight, which is what allowed Starlight to avoid detection by the Changelings impersonating the Mane 6. If he wasn't just plain replaced himself.
10419515
Eh, Dragonball Z did fine with it.
10420050
Yeah, that was always my favourite theory too. Whoever got Magic in that universe had no Spike, so Sunset gets away with it easily, goes insane due to the Element, then comes back and nukes the place.
Wonky story but time travel stuff is always wonky.
Aren't these kinda stories kinda overdone and outdated at this point? It's well written, but the premise feels like a throw back to the "Starlight was too easily forgiven, so I'm gonna write her getting hers!" You do the characters in character and follow the premise to it's logical conclusion. But I can't help but feel I'm reading a story from six years ago. I hope you can accept my different opinion.
10422354
Ow, my fragile sense of self worth has been shattered by your valid issues!
In all seriousness, yes there are quite a few of these. The issue with me is that I dropped FiM shortly after the start of Season 3 and only really picked it back up near the end of Season 9, so I missed pretty much all of the 'what if' waves that followed each season finale and controversial episode. Everything's still relatively fresh for me.
10422409
So are ya gonna write a classic "Rainbow Dash adopts Scootaloo" story? :-)
10422465
Wasn't planning on it, but anything's possible. I suppose.
10422482
As an aside, I don't what 'lesson' Starlight was supposed to learn when strangers came to her town, corrupted her friends, turned those she loves against her, and destroyed her utopia, after she tried to save them all from their brainwashing mind control butt tattoos enslaving them to a particular societal role.
10422486
I personally think that episode's lesson was supposed to be "everyone should be able to choose what kind of future they want for themselves". If you look at it from a certain angle, in a certain lighting, from a certain distance. Probably.
Point is they didn't do a good job trying to sell the lesson if that indeed was what they were going for.
well she learned her lesson the hard way, it was a far better punishment than in canon.
All downvotes are from die-hard Glim-Glam fans who think she's perfect in every way.
s3.amazonaws.com/static.mememypic.com/uploads/user_photos/2019/12/31/original-1577804560.7409.gif
10422486
did you forget the part where sugar belle asked the mane 6 to meet them in secret with a few other ponies to ask for their cutie marks back?
if some ponies were unhappy, willing to rebel against starlight, but too afraid of her to the point that they had to meet in secret, then really the town wasn't all that good.
10423184
If you were convinced people had been brainwashed, and were suffering from stockholm syndrome of a sort without the mind control butt tattoo telling them how to live, how eager would you be to give it back to them?
10423191
your cutie mark dosen't define who you are. there was literally an episode about this:
https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Recap/MyLittlePonyFriendshipIsMagicS7E22MarksAndRecreation
10423201
That is objectively true. That isn't how Starlight sees it.
I'm saying Starlight only lesson she learned was Evil Ponies destroyed Her Utopia, and so her only sane goal was to go back in time and Make Right What Went Wrong.
10423266
well, you gotta word your comments right man, i thought you were supporting her for a second. but i get what you mean. the mane 6 came, saw, conquered, but didn't stop to tell her why it's wrong.
or maybe they did. and she didn't want to listen.
10423201
Also, I felt episode was a WASTE as it would have been a golden opportunity for Starlight to speak with Rumble about him going down the same she did. Also a golden chance for Diamond Tiara to show up given her attitude of "cutie marks mean everything", and explain she ONLY spoke that view because it hurt Apple Bloom... heck, it would have been a great chance to a call back to the CMC's first formal episode where Twilight said how them being Blank Flanks gives them plenty of potential, and one filly even being causally inspired to remark how "maybe I got my cutie mark too early" and the CMC telling Diamond Tiara and Silver Spoon how at least Apple Bloom wasn't "stuck being stuck up like you."
10422486
Okay Ancap.
10419515
Startrek managed to turn one-time deal into recurrent premise :P
From what Starlight said, her intention was to create a loop as a safeguard againt mistakes or tampering
10475552
To be fair, My Fair Trekky...no that does not work. Anyway, to be fair, Star Trek did it a lot of times as a one shot sort of deal, usually in a way the POV/Protagonists could not control, and instead had them adapting to the Time Travel happening around them. And even then, we see there are those who will keep you from mucking about with time(Star Fleet's Temporal Affairs office, the Romulan Time Blade, and the even some of the Borg's rules straight say no Time Travel). All those organizations and rules exist because they've tried it, and it never works the way you want it to.
Heck, even the Temporal Cold War was a result of someone screwing up royally, and forcing the hand of a lot of those aforementioned groups to counter them.
And yeah, it sounded like she would always be returned to that moment in time, every time Twilight used the spell. I do enjoy what this story, and others have done with that premise alone. Some light hearted, some, like this one, much less so.
10476994
It actually looks like that origin of Cold War was in 30th century where... right, Tox was coming from, the stranded timeship from Enterprise and artifact are linchpin to rise of conflict and time-travelled Discovery may be instrumental, too. Cold War started because someone tried to change timeline and save galaxy, but left injured parties behind. Not to mention that new movies are separate timeline created by Spock's failure