Starlight Glimmer has finally achieved what she was trying to accomplish, and...she soon discovers that maybe it was for the best, that she was foiled by the Elements
Starlight Glimmer has finally achieved what she was trying to accomplish, and...she soon discovers that maybe it was for the best, that she was foiled by the Elements.
Starlight panted, her hooves tiredly trudging across the cloud-stadium. She had to make it in time, she only had a single opportunity to do it- she couldn't come back if she missed her chance. She glanced around the arena, pegasi crowding to see the race between three small pegasi, two colts and a filly. She eyed the filly quickly, recognizing her. Everypony knew the story of the Mane Six, and through this single prevention, would be their downfall. It was too easy, truly- her only obstacle now was time. With the Elements gone- nothing could stand in her way now.
She smirked, holding back her giddiness as her horn charged. The future-traitorous, butter-yellow pegasus waved the starter flag, and the three took off. She noticed Fluttershy tip over, falling off of the cloud, dropped like a rock.
'...good riddance, the traitor...' she thought, enjoying seeing the filly fall to her death.
Then why was her stomach in a knot?
She rolled her eyes, and fired off two bolts of magic, casting them just so, rendering them barely visible. One shot towards the embankment of clouds near the end of the track, and the other towards the ground, below the filly.
'Don't mess with the timeline more than you have to...' she convinced herself.
She payed no mind to Fluttershy, and stared carefully at the embankment, watching the section of cloud her magic had touched. The cloud inflated, doubling in size as it bulged out into the track. A multi-colored blur flew head-on into the cloud, soon followed by a faint groan.
She held in the sudden urge to squeal in joy. She'd done it! She'd finally done it!
Ducking, she quickly bolted, searching for somewhere to privately slip back to her own time period.
Now behind a paraphernalia shop of some kind, she grinned to herself as she charged her horn, disappearing from the alley. After her aura dissipated, not a trace of her was left.
Starlight flashed into existence, appearing in her own home. Except...it wasn't her home...it appeared to be a luxurious castle...
'Well...it appears I've done well for myself!' she giggled to herself.
Banners of every shape and size were hung on the walls of the circular room, some of them were symbols she recognized, others she didn't. None of them were her cutie mark, she noticed. Not a single one was even vaguely related to her.
'How can this be?!' she thought to herself 'I was so careful! I...I...'
Large, thundering steps made themselves known, and she immediately searched for somewhere to hide, she galloped around the room in vain, finding nowhere. The room had no decorations or tables, just four chairs, all perpendicular to each other, forming a square in the center of the room.
'Who could these chairs possibly belong to?' she wondered, panicking as a mammoth of a pony entered the room, easily taller than either of the Royal Sisters. He wasn't gangly or thin, he was about as pudgy and filled out as any normal-sized stallion.
"You do not belong here." he rumbled, his deep baritone rattling her ribcage.
The large pony proceeded to pick her up like a cat would its kittens. She yelped and struggled as his flat teeth dug into the fur of her neck, and she was lifted off of the ground, flailing.
"Unhand me you brute!" she shrieked "I have rights, you know!"
The large pony just gave a confused grunt as he carried her.
The odd pair then came upon a larger throne room, also with four chairs.
'What the buck is going on here...?' she wondered.
Surely...surely this didn't have anything to do with her messing with the timeline? The Elements of Harmony were just tools and a collective pawn to be used by the Royal Sisters, how could all of this happen now? The Elements weren't all that important!
Were they?
The small dinosaur-sized pony dropped her, and he stomped a large hoof three times, shaking the very cobblestone beneath her.
Five more enormous ponies entered the room, alongside them were four smaller figures. Starlight's jaw dropped, not believing her own eyes. The four regal figures were, in order, Nightmare Moon, an alicorn-like creature entirely made of stars, a changeling queen- the very one who'd attempted to take over Canterlot, and finally, Discord- the very entity of chaos.
"Who dares disturb us?" Nightmare Moon hissed.
"An intruder on the Royal Grounds, your worships." her large captor rumbled.
"Ah, an intruder, is it?" Nightmare stated, stepping down from her throne rather daintily "We believe We know the perfect punishment for-"
Starlight and Nightmare just shared an intense stare.
The dark alicorn stared past her, and her horn lit, forcing Starlight to the side. She shivered, spying the alicorn inspecting her cutie mark carefully out the corner of her eye.
"So...you finally arrive." Nightmare chuckled, releasing her from her magical grip.
"F-Finally?" Starlight shivered.
"You've been quite an elusive pony."
"A run for our money, as well." The Queen commented.
"H-How do you know who I am?"
"Almost all of Equestria knows you, Starlight Glimmer." Nightmare stated, circling her like a bird of prey.
"All of you, dismissed." she stated, dismissively waving off the large pony.
"Forgive Us if the Quake Shaker was too rough with you, they're more meant for muscle, rather than thinking."
"Q-Quake Shakers?" Starlight questioned.
"Indeed," Nightmare replied "Our very own application of ancient magiks, and mostly serve as Our personal bodyguards."
"Along with my troops, as well." the Queen added.
Nightmare nodded, just as more questions riddled Starlight's mind.
"How do you know who I am?" Starlight asked.
"This single photograph." Nightmare stated, conjuring a photo and handing it to her.
Starlight took the photo in her own magic, and inspected it. The photo depicted her, clear as day in Cloudsdale. The photo was taken from behind, her horn still aglow, her cutie mark clearly visible.
"You've been quite a source of speculation these past few decades." Discord stated, sounding oddly calm.
"Yes, and now that you're here-"
Starlight screwed her eyes shut, prepared for what was coming.
Something light was placed on her head, then nothing.
Cracking open an eye, Starlight stared fearfully at Nightmare.
"Welcome, most valiant of heroes."
Starlight collapsed.
"It seems that it was too much for the poor thing."
Starlight awoke, her eyes shooting open as sweat ran through her coat.
"M-Ma'am, I will e-escort you to the showers, now. I-If you'd like." a familiar, soft voice stated.
"The traitor." she hissed softly. Then quickly realized she was wrong. This version of Fluttershy seemed even meeker than before, if that was possible. This one was currently dressed in a simple black and white smock, also wearing a multi-pocketed saddlebag.
"Her Highness Tanta requested that you freshen yourself..." she said, then gave a low bow.
"A-Ah, of- c-course, lead on." Starlight replied, standing and stepping off of the bed.
'Seems like a perfect role for her...but why have her freely roaming the castle?'
They passed the same 'Quake-Shaker' from the day before, the very one that had brought her to the throne room.
"G-Good morning, Atom Smasher." Fluttershy stated nervously.
The large pony, apparently deemed 'Atom Smasher' gave a slow nod, and a small smile towards her, and went on his merry way.
"Do you two know each other?" Starlight asked out of passing interest.
"S-Sort of...I'm in his harem..."
"You're WHAT?!" Starlight screamed, drawing the attention of the other ponies in the hall.
"Q-Quake Shakers can have anypony they want...because of their positions...and...well...he...chose me...w-with others, of course!"
Starlight nodded, questioning how things were working in this upside-down future. She should've been the one ruling Equestria, not the four pretenders. They didn't put in the work she had, they didn't spend weeks out in the wilderness, painstakingly gathering supplies.
They soon reached the restroom, and motioned for Starlight to step inside.
"I'll be waiting for you, ma'am."
'Then I'll be sure to take as long as possible.' Starlight smirked.
She then immediately wish she hadn't had that thought- this Fluttershy really didn't deserve any mean-spiritedness, from her, anyway.
She ducked beneath the showerhead after activating it. Sighing in sudden relief, the water trickling down through her mane, and over her muzzle. She moved on to the rest of her body, washing the grunge and dirt out of her coat. Finally, she moved on to her tail- scrubbing the leaves and dirt particles out of it. She flinched as some strands came loose, thin lines of purple and teal mixed with the clean water, slowly inching towards the drain. Taking the time to glance around the shower, she suddenly realized that the room was much larger than she'd first realized. Larger showerheads were installed higher than the one she was currently using, she assumed that these showers were also meant for the Quake Shakers. The giants were a curious thing...she wondered what else had changed...
She turned the faucet the other way, stopping the flow of water. She sighed as she turned, and exited the shower, taking a towel off of the towel rack bolted next to the exit. She dried herself, running the towel through her mane and coat. Hanging the towel back on the rack, she exited the bathroom, where she was met with Fluttershy still waiting, just as she said.
"If you'd be so kind as to escort me back to my room?" Starlight asked.
"Erm, actually...Queen Tanta requested to see you..."
Starlight screamed mentally, not particularly wanting to meet the space-queen.
"Very well, lead the way." Starlight stated begrudgingly, gritting her teeth.
Fluttershy nodded, and led the purple mare down the hall, trotting further away from her room.
The corridors and passages didn't seem all that off from the rest of the castle's, but...she couldn't help but feel that something was off. They were just constructs of brick and mortar, what could possibly be wrong with them?
She continued to follow Fluttershy, her anxiety steadily growing, as well as her dread. What did this Tanta have to say to her? Nightmare Moon had already congratulated her on interfering with the timeline, so what did that mean that Tanta wanted to meet her?
"H-Here we are..." Fluttershy said, stopping at a rather normal door, not ornately decorated as she expected a queen's to be.
'This is it?' Starlight thought, not daring to say such a thing out loud.
The yellow one could still be a spy for the Nightmare, after all.
"Just knock twice." Fluttershy stated, then turned and trotted away.
Starlight stared at the door for a moment, before slowly knocking.
The door opened slowly, the doorknob encased in a neon purple glow.
"Come in."
She obeyed, trotting inside. The door closed, and she immediately noticed that the room was bathed in a low, blue-ish glow.
"Welcome, Starlight Glimmer."
She felt herself bow, despite her mind shouting at her not to.
"M-My pleasure, your highness."
The space-queen was rather informally stretched out on a large bed, and her expression was virtually impossible to make out, given she had no specific facial features.
"Rise."
She did, and stood rooted to her spot on the floor.
She patted the soft sheets of the bed, offering her an invitation to sit next to her. Starlight trotted across the room, and settled on the bed. The Queen reclined, apparently unfazed by her presence on the bed. If they were any closer, anyone that would've walked in could've mistaken them for mates.
"What did you...need to talk to be about?" she asked carefully.
"Our situation."
"Our...situation?"
"Yes."
"What...is our situation?"
"The simple fact that the timeline is not as it should be. "
"H-How did you know that?"
"Calm yourself," she stated "Only I and one other know of what you've done."
That did, in fact, calm her nerves just a bit. No need to worry about getting chased by an angry mob, just a space-goddess-queen that could probably snap her in half.
"St-Still...how did you know?"
"The air is littered with Trotchyon particles, if this were in fact the unaltered timeline, the air would not be so saturated with them- not to mention that your entire body is coated with them."
"I...um..."
"Didn't quite take that into account when you concocted this plan of yours, did you?" she asked knowingly.
"N-No..." she stated begrudgingly, honestly thinking she wouldn't have been caught.
"Well, in any case, we must set about a way to reverse this foolishness."
"R-Reverse it?"
She nodded.
"Wh-Why would you want to reverse...this?!" she shouted, motioning to the room "You've got everything! A castle! A country to rule over! Anything you want at your beck and call! Why would you want to give all of this up?!"
Tanta was silent for a moment, appearing as if she was deep in thought.
"I suppose you could say...that I miss my other half."
"You had a special someone?" Starlight asked, confused.
Though, she was very beautiful- anypony with half a brain could tell that she was a knockout.
The queen chuckled lightly, not harshly, but rather in genuine mirth.
"No, my literal other half- Luna."
"Luna...you mean...her? Out there?" Starlight asked, gesturing with a hoof to the door, vaguely referring to Nightmare Moon.
"Not quite, the being that possesses her body is not Luna, as much as she will claim to be."
"How can you tell?" Starlight asked in genuine curiosity.
"Luna and I are connected, for better or worse, her presence in Nightmare is very small. There must be at least a small part of Luna there for Nightmare to exist-"
"And it's as little as possible." Starlight finished.
Tanta nodded, and took a bottle of wine and glass in her magic, from a bucket sitting in the far corner of the room.
"A glass of wine?" Tanta offered.
Starlight politely declined.
Tanta then poured herself a small amount, and set the bottle on the bedstand.
"So...are there any ah, 'co-conspirators'?"
"A few- Discord, among them."
"D-Discord? Th-The chaos god?"
"Hardly a god, simply a spirit."
Starlight shuddered- she'd hate to think then, what a god could truly do if someone like Discord was just a spirit.
"You have a spirit of chaos on your side, what more do you need to fix everything?"
"You, for one thing."
"Why do you need me?"
"The universe works rather primitively- compared to what some may think. Your magic is intertwined with this catastrophe, and only your magic will undo it."
"B-But how?! I've already changed the timeline at a critical juncture! H-How could I possibly fix it now?!"
"That, Miss Starlight, is what we must figure out."
"A-And what if I don't want to change the timeline?"
"Then your magic, permeating the timeline of this timeline, will backlash- and the magical overload would be enough to kill you."
Starlight gulped hard, and began to sweat bullets.
Starlight lay holed up in her room. Her conversation with Tantabus zipping through her mind.
How in the world was she supposed to fix this? she wondered.
Time-travel being as fickle as it was, it would take weeks, nay- years to find the exact point to rectify the timeline.
Shoving her muzzle into her pillow on the large bed, she whimpered. For the first time in a long time, she truly whimpered. Nothing could go right with her, could it? Even the plan, which actually worked, hadn't turned out correctly. SHE was the one who was supposed to be in charge...
She lifted her head, and wiped at her muzzle, and came to realize that she'd been crying, if only a little. She shook herself out, and stood on the bed, stretching out. She already felt a little better.
'No use in crying over it now...' she thought, then with a little humor 'plenty of time for it after I fix all of this...'
Stepping down from the bed, she wandered to the door, with the intent to peek out.
She naturally shrieked when the doorknob suddenly turned into an eye. A mouth soon followed, appearing on the door itself.
"Don't you know- what happened to the cat? Curiousity and all that?"
"I could say the same thing about peeping toms!" Starlight shouted, punching the doorknob.
No shriek of pain came, but the doorknob disappeared altogether, along with the mouth.
She turned around, just in time to see the chaos spirit float in through the large glass balcony doors, riding a floating carpet.
"A peeping tom, I ain't." he stated, jumping off of the carpet.
The rug then exploded into a thousand pieces, shooting every which way, sticking to the walls and floor like bubblegum.
Starlight blinked, and shuddered in disgust when she realized that some of the sticky bits of fuzz and goo were stuck in her mane and coat. She winced in pain as she twisted her head, the bits pulling at her mane.
"W-Well...what do you want?" Starlight asked, peeved at the spirit.
Honestly, in her own Faust-damned room!
"Want? What could I possibly want from you?" he chuckled, sitting rather demurely on a chair that certainly wasn't there before, as he crossed his mismatched legs.
"Something obviously," Starlight stated, wincing once more as she sat down "unless you just appear to random strangers, and cover them in...in this..."
"It happens more often than you might think." he said, grinning like a maniac.
A firehose suddenly snaked its way out of her dresser, and sprayed the whole room, and herself, down in a shower of corn kernels and some kind of plant seed.
Everything was soon clean, and the hose wound its way back into the drawer, and firmly closed itself.
"Now, let's get down to business, shall we?" Discord said, seeming more like a statement than a question.
"What about?" Starlight asked.
"I think you know, Miss Glimmer."
She gulped.
"The damage is quite severe, but I assume you knew that." he muttered, seeming heavily displeased.
"Why...why do all of you want things back the way they were?" Starlight asked, seemingly out of the blue. It'd been nagging at her, ever since she came back, after 'fixing' the timeline.
"Not all of us, mind." Discord stated "There are some of us who are oblivious of course, thanks to those of us that want to keep it a secret."
"You're conspiring against the others?" she whispered.
"It's only Tantabus and I at the moment, plus yourself." he stated, matter-of-factly.
"But...why?" she asked again "I can't wrap my head around this- you've got everything; everything!. Why in Equestria are you just going to throw all of that away?!"
"Because Tanta and I both know that both of us will still survive in the 'original' future." Discord stated.
"Nightmare Moon, I understand- but Chrysalis...?"
"Dies of love radiation on the outskirts of Equestria."
"...no- no take that back!" Starlight stammered "I can't know these things! Who knows what effect that could have!"
"Says the pony who single-handedly changed all life as we know it." Discord shot back "You're already Deltoideus-deep in hot water- nowhere to go but left."
"So...the only reason the two of you are doing this...is to get rid of the other two..." Starlight said slowly.
"No..." Discord replied, smiling at her "as twisted as I am- Nightmare Moon and Chrysalis could do far worse damage either alone or together, than the four of us together."
"An alicorn can do worse damage than a spirit with your power?"
"Yes."
"...in what universe does that make sense?"
"In all of them."
Starlight blanched.
"I might mess with the environment, and with gravity, etc, etc- but Nightmare Moon and Chrysalis can do something far worse than I can."
"What would that be?" Starlight asked.
"They can break their subjects."
"Don't you do that?" Starlight asked, partially remembering some of her history classes.
"Not permanently," he shot back "anything I do can easily be undone- but truly breaking someone...it's evil..."
Starlight opened her mouth to reply, when Discord spoke up once more.
"And, a country full of broken ponies is no fun to rule over."
"Ah, of course." Starlight replied sarcastically, rolling her eyes.
"I mean it, breaking a pony is one of the worst things you can do." he stated, dead serious.
'Coming from the thing that plunged Equestria and then some into an unstable madhouse.' she thought, though didn't even consider voicing her thoughts to the chaos spirit.
