Ch. 13 Interlude III
Starlight sat in the middle of a pile of books almost twice as tall as she was. The glow of her magic surrounded dozens of books as she skimmed through every single one of them, desperate for any lead. Her horn was too hot to touch and the familiar pain of a headache was coming on from the overexertion. Normally a unicorn would stop before they caused themselves any long-term injuries, but Starlight knew her horn would be just fine in the morning.
Her sole focus now was to escape the prison she had trapped herself in. Nopony in town knew her, except for the few who had destroyed her village and ruined her dream. For that reason she hadn’t bothered to reach out to any of them for help. If the answer existed, Starlight would be the one to find it and fix everything, then recast the spell and get her revenge.
The creek of the library doors alerted Starlight to a visitor in the castle library. She had cast a spell to make the hinges rustier in case she got any unexpected guests. The books all fell to the floor, and she hurried down the hall to see who was there.
Starlight tripped and nearly fell on somepony. She’d said her name was Lemon Drops, and she visited the library at eleven in the morning. Lemon was here every day in every loop, looking for a cookbook that might teach her new lemonade recipes. Her incessant questions were reason enough to avoid her each loop, until Starlight realized there were quicker ways to shut the pony up.
At the end of the aisle, Starlight slowly peaked her head out and saw a unicorn with light blue fur and a dark blue mane with a white stripe. Her and the mint green mare visited the library too, though Starlight had never bothered to keep track of the time of day. It was suspicious enough that they didn’t follow a fixed pattern in the loops that she decided to spy on this new pony today and find out what kind of books she had been coming to check out of the library.
The unicorn was headed right for Starlight’s aisle, so she had to quickly turn around and clear the aisle so that she wouldn’t be detected. She levitated Lemon Drop’s body onto one of the shelves, and crammed some books into the shelf to hide it. Starlight wouldn’t normally resort to violence so readily, but she’d figured out that her actions had no consequences until the loop had been fixed. For that reason she’d taken a much more… effective approach to ensure her attempts to fix the spell weren’t interrupted.
She hid down at the end of the aisle, a faint glow surrounding her as she tried to make herself less noticeable. The unicorn walked down the aisle and began levitating out a few books. Starlight had reshelved them in a hurry, but this aisle contained most of the books on advanced magic topics, including the pitifully few books on temporal mechanics. Whoever this pony was, they seemed to be studying the same thing as Starlight.
The fact a pony had been studying time magic was concerning, but more concerning was that she hadn’t noticed it sooner. At first Starlight had written off minor things, like a pony she hadn’t seen before; she paid so little attention to them she couldn’t be sure anything was out of the ordinary. She had started paying closer attention when somepony had been fired through a castle. Something was definitely going on, and since the spell was still stable, it must mean a pony was aware of the loop. Starlight decided to follow her back into town and see what else might have changed from past loops. She went back to the table where she’d stored her things and Starswirl’s book, and grabbed her bags and cloak.
Starlight followed the unicorn into town to a boutique. She recognized the building from her reconnaissance as Rarity’s home and shop. Her horn glowed briefly to strengthen her spell; anypony who looked at Starlight would suddenly find the area she was standing in painfully boring and quickly look away. It wasn’t as good as true invisibility, but often a subtle compulsion would work just as well to help a pony pass unseen.
She creeped up to a window slowly, looking inside. Starlight recognized Rarity, but not the other two unicorns. She did recognize the pegasus, blue furred with blonde hair and a pink streak. It was the stallion that should have been in the castle babysitting the dragon. She realized that this light blue unicorn must be aware of the time loop, and had disrupted the routines of the other ponies.
Starlight thought it through as she watched the ponies studying. If a pony was aware of the time loop, they could be recruiting help to try and escape, or find the cause. The two unicorns she didn’t recognize must be skilled in magic to be aware of the loops at all. Starlight would have to figure out which one of them it was for sure, but so far the blue unicorn seemed to be in charge. Rarity and the pegasus were inconsequential. Just as likely as fixing the spell, the group inside might be trying to find and capture the pony responsible.
She was getting desperate, but not desperate enough to ask for their help and risk taking the fall for this when Celestia found out.
After ducking back and hiding in the bushes, Starlight took some time to come up with a plan. Part of her wanted to burst in now and demand answers, but the wiser course of action would be to wait for them to split up. She could try and get a feel for how far along they were in their efforts to undo the spell. After all, if there’s one thing Starlight had, it was time.
It took a couple hours before two of the unicorns finally left the building. Starlight glanced inside to see the other two talking, and decided to follow the mysterious unicorn from the library down the road. Nopony seemed to care much that she was in a dark traveling cloak and following behind the mares. A couple weather ponies almost landed on her, before the spell suggested to them they land a little further down the road. Starlight grinned at how easy it was to hide from ponies when they didn’t have a reason to look twice.
As she got closer, she began to hear them speak.
“That was a really cool analogy,” the one with a harp on their flank said.
“At least I don’t have to worry about you repeating it when the loop resets. Princess Celestia doesn’t have a sense of humor when it comes to time magic, or eating the last slice of cake. Both almost got me expelled from her school.”
The green one laughed. “Yeah, she removed cake from the school cafeteria for two months because of that.”
“Worth it. That cake was pretty awesome.”
They turned a corner, and Starlight hurried after them. They’d gotten to a less populated part of town; there were only about a dozen ponies in eyesight. It was as good a time as any, and she pulled back her hood and dropped the spell that was helping hide her from being noticed.
“Excuse me!” Starlight called out. She trotted up. “I seem to be a bit lost, I was looking for Twilight.”
The two unicorns turned around and smiled at Starlight. “Sorry, she’s out of town.”
“Oh, what’s your name?” she asked.
“I’m Minuette, and this is Lyra,” Minuette replied.
“Hello there!” Lyra said enthusiastically.
“Ah, and you’re trying to fix the time loop we’ve been trapped in?” Starlight dropped her smile and glared at Minuette as if she’d just killed Starlight’s favorite puppy.
“And you are?” Minuette shifted forward slightly to put herself between Lyra and the stranger.
“Uh…” Starlight looked around, spotting an outdoor diner and a half empty glass of soda. She glanced to the other side of the street, seeing a box of cereal through a window. “Fizzlepop Berrytwist.”
Lyra burst out laughing, causing them both to stare at her until she stopped. “Sorry, but that’s just such a silly name for a pony!”
Starlight felt a surge of frustration welling up inside her. She had neither the time nor the patience to bottle up her anger right now; these ponies had answers and they were going to give them to Starlight. If they didn’t, there was always an endless supply of do-overs.
“I don’t have time for this.” Starlight took a step forward and was already mentally preparing several spells to choose from. “I know we’re in the time loop, you know you’re in it. You’re going to tell me everything you know about time magic and what you’re planning to do!”
Minuette also got rid of her jovial attitude, the faintest hint of magic running along the spiral of her horn. Starlight smirked, whoever this unicorn was had the skill to prepare a spell and keep the signs hidden almost as well as she did. This would be fun.
“Why should I tell you anything? This is Ponyville, handling the apocalypse is just a normal Tuesday.”
Lyra’s horn lit up, a faint green shield appearing around her. Starlight glanced and could sense from here it’d hardly have enough power to stop a basic spell. The other unicorn, however, was still primed to cast an unknown spell, presenting the greater threat.
“I can fix this still, end the loop, and then cast it correctly. But if you insist on making this difficult, I will hunt you down every single loop until you beg me to let you tell me all you know. Then I’ll fix the loop, and if you piss me off enough, you’ll become a loose end I need to tie up.”
Minuette and Starlight locked gazes, each waiting for the other to make a first move.
“Well, if you’re feeling froggy. Then. Jump!” Lyra shouted.
Starlight almost ignored her, but felt the buildup of power from the green unicorn. Some sort of large fist resembling a monkey’s hand formed and nearly collided with Starlight. She barely deflected it in time, and expected the other unicorn to seize the opportunity to attack.
“Run, Lyra!” Minuette commanded.
“Buck this!” Starlight turned on the confused Lyra and fired a small ball of fire at her. The orange globe hit her fur and passed into her, leaking a little smoke. The unicorn fell to the ground, dead.
Minuette gasped, finally releasing the spell she’d been charging.
“Excuse me!” Starlight called out. She trotted up. “I seem to be a bit lost, I was looking for Twilight.” She stopped in place, looking around in confusion. “Deja vu?”
“Go get Dawn!” Minuette yelled at Lyra.
“What?” Lyra glanced between the two of them, and noticed Minuette’s horn had wisps of black smoke coming off it. “Uh, yes!”
Starlight took aim as the mint green unicorn turned to run, firing a bolt of lightning this time since it was a quicker spell to cast. Lyra fell to the ground in cardiac arrest.
Minuette’s horn lit up again, but this time she fell to the ground in pain, her horn sputtering from the overload of magic flowing through it.
“Impressive. You reversed time to before I killed her.” Starlight grinned. “So are we doing this the easy way or the hard way? Because I’m sure finding where you live won’t be hard, and I can be very persuasive.”
“I won’t help you!” Minuette screamed, hoping to draw the attention of other ponies. “The spell you’ve cast has damaged the fabric of time, if you haven’t damned us all yet, you very well might!”
Starlight looked around, noticing a crowd gathering. “We didn’t have to make this personal, but after two hundred forty seven loops trapped in this living hell you call a town, I have to say… I’m very much going to enjoy breaking you.”
Before Minuette could answer, Starlight screamed and poured all her magic into a searing lance of fire, killing the unicorn where she lay.
It only took her a few seconds to pull her hood up and renew the spell to mask her from the presence of the other nearby ponies. Most of them hurried around the two dead unicorns, a few could still see Starlight. As she walked away from the scene, she heard some shouting and looked back.
Starlight wanted to see what the town’s reaction would be to a couple dead ponies, and waited a few houses down to watch.
“Who did this?!”
The shout seemed to carry through the crowd, but Starlight couldn’t see the source from here. A moment later she saw a pegasus staring right at her. A halo of lightning seemed to form, arcing between his feathers and zapping at the ground like a filly’s science toy. She realized her mistake at once. This pony was very angry, and very determined to find out what had happened. Her spell wasn’t strong enough to compel him to look away, or make her any less interesting, especially not to a pony affected by strong emotions.
Starlight turned to run, teleporting down the alley to take the next corner more quickly. There was a loud boom that rattled some nearby windows. She looked back just in time to see a pegasus flying straight at her like a thestral out of tartarus. As he got closer she recognized the pegasus as the babysitter, and threw up a shield as quick as she could.
She felt a jolt of pain as the pegasus collided with the shield, his weather magic discharging and disrupting the shield. She landed on her back and began to laugh, finally something interesting was happening in the loops. “You’re just a worthless pegasus.”
Starlight lit up her horn, and predictably the pegasus tried to stomp on her horn. The magic flew up his foreleg, into the pony, dropping him dead with minimal effort. She got up and dusted herself off, readjusting her cloak. “Now, I think I’ve got some research to do on who the hell you ponies are.”
Stats
Page generated in 0.029 seconds
Total duration
974 users online
1,453,595 hits today, 2,004,447 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.®
Elmer Fudd, eat your heart out!
Excellent work
And this is officially one of those timelines where Starlight needs to die or at least be locked away for a long long time instead of getting off.
and Dawn's all out of Bubblegum
She finds basically nothing on "the babysitter" until around the time that one Twilight entry on creating life was written. Then she realizes the thing about transferring I mentioned earlier and ****s approximately all of the bricks.
I really hope Starlight becomes a new lawn ornament.
11120683
11120708
Or trapped in a time loop, forced to live the same day over and over again for all of eternity.
If Discord could get sun kissed, we could at least hope for that.
HONEY WAKE UP
[[Dash of Humanity 3: Live, Fly, Reboot.]]
JUST UPDATED ON [[fimfiction.net]]
!!!
Dawn is going to murder Starlight… over and over over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over again.
Is Starlight leagues more unhinged than I should expect, or is it just me having trouble following her reasoning?
First, she makes an assumption that someone's acting to stop her from fixing the spell despite no evidence of meeting prior resistance, because so far she's only expressed personal failure and nothing coming from another party.
Next, despite that assumption, she has no trouble jumping to a very different assumption, with very little to go on and not bothering to confirm anything even though she — as she's expressed — has the time to.
Finally, the assumptions are discarded for some reason and she's suddenly interested in information gathering, including trying to directly confirm what they actually might be doing despite clearly being in no mindset to believe them. Also, the fact that they've been in the time loop for so long should tell her all that she needs to know, unless she's making another big assumption that Minuette knows something about time magic that she doesn't, despite — again — the situation being unresolved for so long.
Just hoping to be less confused, since the motives to her actions are probably going to be important from here on out and I want to feel secure in believing those actions.
so how many times and how many way are we going to kill Star loser??
dawn has a human mind, let us not forget. given infinite tries, he will find ways to be more 'creative' than starlight might realize
Jeez, you're REALLY going out of your way to make Starlight as UNlikable as possible, eh?
Nice
11121145
Starlight is probably just insane. This arguably goes for why the canon one got off so lightly, for that matter; there's such an obvious disconnect between her actions and her motivation that an insanity plea might stick.
11121708
this is why I don't like magical systems with killing spells, it just makes things too lame
11121708
Dawn is passively killing ponies, Starlight is just being more active. Both are crazy right now. In their minds the ponies are only real outside the loops.
spoilers for ch. 13
11121145
Pretty big oversight on my part, the whole point of editing and revising was to catch things like this. I'm glad you caught it, since I'm not doing a very good job of characterization and Starlight's coming off as a murder-hobo so far. (but too be fair, who wouldn't murder-hobo their way across town when they realize there's no consequences and they're damned for eternity?)
Here's the revised parts so you can see the intended train of thought I had for Starlight without having to re-read the chapter:
Becomes:
Becomes:
Is preceded by the paragraph:
Hopefully this conveys her thought process better. She's frustrated, desperate, and after finding some pony pudding in the hallway, she's zeroed in on the fact that somepony else is aware of the loops. She realizes this means they're working against her, and that if they solve it first, she's going to be in deep shit.
The parallel journey of how Dawn and Starlight react differently to their time in the loop is supposed to be an important contrast. So if the characterization is off in other ways, let me know.
spoilers for ch. 13
11122071 11121708 11120708 11120683
Hopefully the revisions I Just made to chapter 13 help with Starlight's characterization and thought process a little.
I've been trying to contrast Dawn, who is morally opposed to killing, with Starlight. She might believe things like "desperate times call for desperate measures" or "the ends justify the means". Before the time loop, she wouldn't have killed a pony. She'd have to hide the body, it'd be a huge hassle, and what would she personally gain from it? She could have killed Twilight, but chose to spy, plot, and plan a carefully constructed revenge to ensure she wouldn't get caught. She wanted to thoroughly unmake Twilight, and she wanted Twilight to know it was her.
Now after looping for 8 months, she's getting too frustrated to deal with this crap. If she could kill somepony to make fixing the loop a little easier? Sure thing. After all, no one can remember the loops, and when she fixes the spell that entire timeline just ceases to exist... right? Unfortunately for her, somepony is going to remember her cutting down his best friends in the street, and he's all out of bubblegum.
I don't think the interludes are long enough to portray that descent into madness properly, but hopefully they're helping somewhat. What she really needs is a little blunt force trauma to knock some sense into her.
11122473
But... Dawn hasn't killed anypony yet! He's made a point to help the construction pony every day (except the time he forgot). And his crazy is eating an entire cake and starting a harem. Starlight's crazy is, well, basically how must of us play Grand Theft Auto 5. I'm surprised she hasn't run anypony over in a cart yet just to watch them ragdoll.
11122196
Yeah, it opens a can of worms if ponies can just blast and kill someone. The story required some magical system rules though, and to have a big showdown that means attack spells. Plus if Dawn learns enough magic he can get an honorary degree from Celestia's School for Gifted
Unicornsponies. What could possibly go wrong if Dawn knows magic?11121321
You gave me an idea for a spin-off, it'd be like Hello Neighbor, but it's just Dawn appearing over and over in unexpected places to kill Starlight in new and creative ways! It seems to be what everyone is craving.
11123509
O i like this idea.
11123492
This is a lot better. It's possible to simplify it and still get the pivotal murders, but it's not necessary. 👍
If you don't I'll either pay someone to or do it myself
11124335
I already had some ideas for it; it'd be Starlight's point of view. She's in a blind panic, she locks herself into somepony's coat closet. She's finally getting her breathing under control, when a garrote tightens around her neck. He knew she'd pick this closet today. She panics, firing off bolts of magic blindly. The metal cord digs in as she hears a soft chuckle. "See you next loop." Starlight wakes up running into a door.
I wonder how many different ways you can kill a villain before it becomes gratuitous? Anyway I've added "murder spree" next to "ponyville harem", and I haven't written off a Hard Reset style "Oh we need to go prune the really, really bad alternate timeline" style sequel. That may be a little too ambitious. I guess we'll see.
11124355
Tell spike she killed rarity last loop and have him go spike zilla on her,
Sonic rain punch (it'll hurt star more than dawn),
Tree sap!
The Stare!!
11124374
Oh perfect thing to do if trapped in an endless timeloop... find out what it takes to get other ponies to kill in cold blood for you.
11124468
Personally, I'd like to see that.