Draft Mission Summary as of 10 May 200-

by publiq

Addendum: Interview with Starlight Glimmer (recorded later that evening)

AGENT: 🅱️ (owner of journal, automagically filed)
MISSION: putting Starlight’s story into fixed form
STATUS: started, presumed success

🍬 Hello, is this thing working? Thanks for setting this up, Lyra. Test check. Preliminary setting: packing up after dinner at a roadside grass patch. Not as tasty as the bluegrass. Sunset in about an hour? I LOVE YOU, LYRA! I just wanted to enter that in the permanent log in case, in case… 🅱️

🎼 I love you, Bon! I hope you don’t mind if I set up the spell to filter out the and. Oh! Sorry, that’s your logbook, not for my eyes. I couldn’t help but notice that the filter works. Look what I have! I think it’s called a “Pole-Rod”. Some kind of instant camera. Let’s kiss! One and two. Hi Starlight! Is Trixie still talking to Dave in human words? Let’s—oops! That’s a picture of my hoof. 🦄

⭐️ I was told only Bon-Bon would interview me. 🔦

🎼 Let’s take a silly picture. Do you want to Flehmen or dab? Dab? Okay, Bon, may I smell your mane? 🦄

⭐️ I needed that levity. I can’t shake the feeling that Bon-Bon is going to ask nothing but her most invasive questions. 🔦

🪄 Dave says we have about hour left until we can set up camp for the night. Trixie presumes that nopony objects if she “rides shotgun” again? 🎠

🍬 C’mon, Starlight, let’s climb back in. I know these are hard questions for you. If we make it back, your answers will be vital for Equestria’s temporal policy. They may not save anypony you wish you could save, but we owe them the truth. “To the living, we owe victory; to the dead, we owe the truth” is one of our many Agency mottos. I must’ve misspoke there, Lyra, it’s when and not if. You really do find the gentle sway of Dave’s truck relaxing, I’ve only stroked your mane three times and you're already half… Starlight, you don’t need to tell me why you ran away. Can you start by explaining the timeline of your life since you ran away? 🅱️

⭐️ As in how I reconnected with my father? After I ran away, I kept low for maybe five years. I earned my natural cutie mark not too long after running away when I nearly died inside the old Everfree Castle. I found scraps of spells still preserved, blown and strewn through the halls. Once I cross-referenced them with the paper refuse from various expelled students from Celestia’s school, that’s when I assembled my… well, my toolbox. 🔦

🍬 I’ll redact this from the final report once we’re back in Equestria. Please continue. 🅱️

⭐️ I discovered the utility of painting over my cutie mark when it allowed me to dodge—hey I get it you’re angry with me—to dodge—oh no no, that was when you went here to find me. 🔦

[17 seconds of silence]

⭐️ After working odd jobs in scroll recycling and traveling around the outlands, I knew both the spells I needed and the location of an abandoned village to occupy. Finding the first three ponies who were dissatisfied with their marks was easy. Spreading the word past them was hard. We had a happy village. It was perhaps five years into Our Town that my father found me. Or, I found him when visiting Sire’s Hollow on the hunch that surely, I must not be the only pony hating cutie marks to rise from that awful town. He thought I was a ghost at first because I turned ghostly white upon recognizing him. Ten years gone and assumed dead for eight of them and I was still his pumpkin. He declined to join my village. We agreed that I’d visit Sire’s Hollow at least once a year to “recruit.” Ten years gone was long enough to make me miss him, especially after the third visit when I could convince him to convert my room from my past to austere emptiness if he wanted me to visit more often. We made it to about about about 🔦

[8 seconds of silence]

🍬 You’re doing fine. Take your time. The timings of these pauses won’t be included. 🅱️

⭐️ Where was I? 🔦

🍬 Describing visits with your father. Something about remembering a quantity. 🅱️

⭐️ About a dozen visits in five years before I, well, died and came here. Lyra won’t mind that you’re caressing my hoof? 🔦

🍬 It’s in a professional capacity as an interviewer. Besides, I’m in no mood to do more than that. Your horn… 🅱️

⭐️ …is all the evidence you should need to know none of us are left alive in Equestria. 🔦

🍬 Can you explain more of your death story? 🅱️

⭐️ Our Town was attacked. An unfamiliar alicorn begged me to take her cutie mark—the most powerful one to add to my collection yet. Of course, I got straight to work before she could change her mind. During the process, there was a second being inside her fighting me. Whether it was a genuine desire to help an alicorn pony in a position to cast aside her mark willingly or the desire to brag that I bagged an alicorn, I doubled down and ignored the searing pain from the vibrations until I lifted those stars into my collection. A Celestia of fire also saw Twilight’s mark leave her body and used that as the moment of attack. Some screaming about avenging her sister and an enslaved Twilight. Well, something like that. Bolts of fire flew from her horn in every direction and I had a village to protect. Should any strays hit the… 🔦

🍬 What was this most-important building to protect? 🅱️

⭐ The cave with the original cutie marks inside. I don’t what to think about what may have happened to my ponies if it were incinerated. I cast my shield and then I died. The fire overcame my cracked horn, and I could only yell “STOP” before bleeding out, but it worked and I could grab the pure fire of the alicorn’s mane without melting my hoof—stuffing it into the hole in my head bought me a few more seconds. Then I went somewhere black enshrouded in the glowing white and woke up here with my prosthetic horn. Think about it: I got my head blown open and Trixie jumped in a lake after telling some talisman to turn it into a portal. Why are you so insistent that you and Lyra are alive? 🔦

🍬 We were dropped off in a time box. You and Trixie will be very much alive once we’re back in Equestria. 🅱️

⭐️ I wish Trixie felt the same way about me as you do for Lyra. Please erase that. I don’t mind her having visited a stallion. Just what does she see in a human, anyway? We were so good together when it was just us and the herd. Thank you for that hug. 🔦

🍬 What is your thought on the lack of ambient magic field? 🅱️

🎼 Judging from Trixie’s posture change, I believe we’re near our destination. 🦄

🍬 I didn’t realize you were awake. 🅱️

🎼 I wasn’t very sleepy to begin with. Not much reason to rest if we’re traveling like this. 🦄

🍬 Anyway, one final question for Starlight: have you noticed any changes in the ambient magic? For some reason, Trixie and Lyra do not. Note for the journal: we have left the highway and are now on a windy road through a cornfield. 🅱️

⭐️ I feel it flowing past my hollow core, as if it would dissolve me if it returned to full power. 🔦

🍬 Can you tell in which direction it’s flowing? 🅱️

⭐️ From the east, I think. 🔦

🍬 Same. It’s as if the facility containing the Amulet is also the source of the magic leak. Lyra, you can break the spell now. 🅱️

Author's Note:

This doubles as a 3000-word summary of a much larger project I may eventually write near the end of next year or 2024.

Comments

[Bicyclette]

🎼 I love you, Bon! I hope you don’t mind if I set up the spell to filter out the and. Oh! Sorry, that’s your logbook, not for my eyes. I couldn’t help but notice that the filter works. Look what I have! I think it’s called a “Pole-Rod”. Some kind of instant camera. Let’s kiss! One and two. Hi Starlight! Is Trixie still talking to Dave in human words? Let’s—oops! That’s a picture of my hoof. 🦄

aww love this silly stream of consciousness

⭐️ I was told only Bon-Bon would interview me. 🔦

yeah i can see this interview going off the rails with Lyra here too lol

“To the living, we owe victory; to the dead, we owe the truth” is one of our many Agency mottos.

good motto!

Ten years gone and assumed dead for eight of them and I was still his pumpkin. He declined to join my village. We agreed that I’d visit Sire’s Hollow at least once a year to “recruit.” Ten years gone was long enough to make me miss him, especially after the third visit when I could convince him to convert my room from my past to austere emptiness if he wanted me to visit more often. We made it to about about about 🔦

ooh yeah, considering how doting Firelight is, that raises a lot of questions about just how much he know what Starlight was up to during her cult leader arc. secretly helping her out because she is his pumpkin who can do no wrong makes more sense than any other possibility!

🍬 It’s in a professional capacity as an interviewer. Besides, I’m in no mood to do more than that. Your horn… 🅱️

⭐️ …is all the evidence you should need to know none of us are left alive in Equestria. 🔦

well that is burying the lede!

⭐ The cave with the original cutie marks inside. I don’t what to think about what may have happened to my ponies if it were incinerated. I cast my shield and then I died. The fire overcame my cracked horn, and I could only yell “STOP” before bleeding out, but it worked and I could grab the pure fire of the alicorn’s mane without melting my hoof—stuffing it into the hole in my head bought me a few more seconds. Then I went somewhere black enshrouded in the glowing white and woke up here with my prosthetic horn. Think about it: I got my head blown open and Trixie jumped in a lake after telling some talisman to turn it into a portal. Why are you so insistent that you and Lyra are alive? 🔦

loved this paragraph, definitely see why Starlight thinks she and everypony else is dead.

🍬 Same. It’s as if the facility containing the Amulet is also the source of the magic leak. Lyra, you can break the spell now. 🅱️

this really feels like an SCP page more than anything else! and like many SCPs, it feels as if the goal is to induce a sense of unease and awe by hinting at many big mind-shattering facts about this world without letting a coherent picture fully stitch itself together. and if that was the goal, i think it did a good job! Starlight's perspective on evens especially were a highlight there.

i do hope you do get the larger project out one day, so that i can get a better picture of the ideas you are putting together here! there are a lot of fascinating ones for sure. thank you for writing!

[publiq]

11360151
How did I not see that you left decently detailed comments on my story for an entire year?
11360152

i guess we never saw the Mirror Pool duplicating anything other than Pinkie, huh? if it's meant to grant more generic wishes to the best of its abilities, then yeah, this makes sense

The Mirror Pool naturally only invokes cloning magic. Its raw energy can be coerced toward other purposes under strong enough influence (such as the Alicorn Amulet).

Time travel is confusing

💯