Starry's sky

Twilight trotted up to the snowdrift where she had found Starry the night before.

"So, how are we s'posed to find where he came from? his tracks would have been filled in by fresh snow." Twilight stared at the spot for a few moments.

"Oh dont worry about that A.J. I have a tracking spell." Twilight Stated, then concentrated for a few seconds before a soft purple light surrounded her horn, then as she released the spell several colored hoof-prints were projected on the snow, a orange and purple pair leading from the two pony's hooves back to town, another purple set leading to the spot then back to town, and a multicolored set leading deeper into the everfree.

"bingo." Twilight said and led herself and A.J. into the shade of the everfree.

Starry blinked lightly as he regained control of his faculties, he forced his hooves under himself and lifted up to a standing position, with a quick look around he realized he was standing on a section of land from ponyville, only that chunk of land that he was on was no longer in ponyville. Large shining spires rose up all along the ground, he looked to be standing in some sort of park, far away he could see other ponies, but they seemed to be sparkling in the sunlight, the weather was also vastly different, there was no snow, in fact it was warm, a very pleasant breeze wafted across his coat. That was good, he must be far away from those other ponies who wanted to send him back, he wouldn't make the mistake of letting anyone know he had run away again. Starry hopped down off the chunk of Ponyville, and began walking towards what looked like the city center, he was hungry and reasoned he could probably find some food there. after only a few hoofsteps he heard something behind him, a hole in the air above the ponyville chunk had appeared and after a few moments passed a pony jumped out, followed by another. Starry couldn't believe it it was the yellow and rainbow one from earlier. Starry pivoted on his hooves and started running for the nearest cover.

Twilight and A.J picked their way through the forest following the soft chromatic glow of Starry's hooves.

"uh, Twilight, I don't mean to say your magic spell is wrong, but ah dont remember there being any town that a pony could get ta through the everfree like this, are ya sure we are going the right way?" Twilight looked down at the path, continuing through brush, they had already been walking for about half an hour and Twilight was trying to imagine how Starry had made it out here in the middle of the night covering this much distance.

"I'm sure this is the right way, the margin of error for this spell is less than half of one percent, and even then its only off by a few feet, it's virtually impossible for this to be the wrong direction." Twilight said as she sliced through some dense brush.

"well, okay, so tell me, what happened earlier, when he teleported to the crystal kingdom, how was he able to do that? as far as I know not even you can do something like that, no offence.

"none taken, and to be honest, I'm not entirely sure either, though I have a theory, what I am more interested in are his eyes and magic, its more than one color, which is very strange, and it feels different than any other magic that I have even encountered, it's hard to explain." Twilight and A.J. stopped as suddenly the trail stopped in front of them. They were standing in a clearing of some kind, very old stones were set into the ground , and pillars around the area had crumbled and succumed to the natural weather in the everfree.

"uh, Twilight i don't mean to be rude, but it looks like your spell might be wrong because it just stops here." Twilight looked around for anything that made sense, a little in front of the stone ground was a stone ring, it was smooth and showed no sign of aging at all, it was as smooth as the day it was carved, upon closer inspection Twilight found several strong enchantments to keep the stone protected from the elements and one which she didn't recognize. It was similar to a sustained teleport gate spell, but the destination coordinates were long, several hundred characters long, and there was a bit of information after the coordinate she didn't get. After a small amount of tinkering she found where it was looking for a power source, a few feet away in the center of the path was a circular stone, with a hoof she brushed away the leaves and dirt that had accumulated over the years, there was an inscription magically carved into the rock, it read:" The everfree portal, Entrance to The Safe World". Twilight stared at the stone for a bit trying to remember if she knew anything about that before, after a few seconds she directed magic down at the stone,which grabbed at it eagerly, running the magic through several tests before it was sent to the gate.

There was a loud sound as suddenly the stone sphere lifted itself off the ground and placed itself upright before the two ponies.

"Twilight what did you just do?" A.J. asked as she took an instinctive step backwards, suddenly a multicolored rim light up around the inside of the portal, then suddenly there was a different scene displayed in the ring than what was just behind it, it looked like a window to somewhere else, it appeared to be night on the other side,which made no sense at all, but most importantly there were glowing tracks on the other side of the portal.

"well A.J. looks like we know where to go."

Starry pushed himself hard, he knew the blue and rainbow mare was right behind him, whenever he looked back he could see her closer than she was last time, and she had a smile on her face, she seemed to enjoy chasing him. After several minutes of hard running Starry was out of breath completely from running and finally stopped to breath, his ear twitched as he heard the other pony's wings beating behind him. the colt turned on his hooves and looked at her, she had a very smug look on her face.

"okay kid, we both know I am faster than you, and i have more stamina, i can outrun you no matter what you do, so why not just give up here and come back to ponyville with me, you did a really good job for your age, but you are no match against me. Starry backed up slightly and stared at her, he looked at the way her wings were beating, he memorized her posture, her feathers, the size and dimension of her wings, he started to build in his mind where bones would be placed, then after a second he had a prefect view of them in his mind, muscle placement, strength, elasticity, weight, density, then his mind started pushing out on its own, at the city center it grabbed onto something. an object that seemed to have immense energy in it, and he began pulling from it.

Rainbow watched at the colt stared at her, and sighed softly.

"okay, then we do it the hard way." she said simply and started flying over to the colt when his eyes suddenly went wide and a magical aura flowed around his body, lifting him from the ground. after a few moments his horn was bathed in multicolored light before fully disappearing odd his head, he landed on the ground and pressed his face against the grass, while raising his back legs. White beams of light erupted from his back and started to assume the shape of wings, which were disproportionate to his body size, after a second or so the light faded revealing them to be the same color as rainbow's wings , and size, they were a prefect copy, and after a little the color faded to the deeper blue of Starry's coat.

"what the hay?" rainbow asked, looking at Starry who was not inspecting his new wings curiously before realizing rainbow was still staring at him, without another word Starry beat his wings hard and took off into the sky.

"Oh no you dont!" rainbow shouted after recovering from her confusion, wings or no wings, she was going to catch this pony, now it was just going to be more of a challenge.

A.J. and Twilight stepped through the portal and into the strange other place, It was quite a jarring change of scenery, all the plants had brightly colored glowing spots, lines tracing around them. through the canopy above them they could see lights dancing in the sky above them with stars and constellations Twilight had never seen before.

"I dont think we are in the everfree anymore twi." AppleJack stated as she looked in wonder at the forest.

"me either, in fact I might be willing to say I don't think we are even in equestria anymore, I don't know where we are." Twilight responded before turning her attention back to the tracks "come on A.J. we don't have much time, this spell can only track up to ten hours into the past.A.J nodded as they continued following Starry's trail.

the two ponies continued following the trail when it abruptly ended in front of them, then started disappearing from behind them.

"well I guess that means our time is up." Twilight said and looked around, not too far away she saw a spherical glow and started heading towards it. Upon reaching the sign she realized it was a road sign, there was a single arrow pointing away from A.J and Twilight, that read "StarFalls" The two ponies began walking in the direction the sign was pointing until they hit the end of the treeline, a little way off they could see strong looking, dark wood buildings, and ponies milling about with their daily lives.

"okay, lets go see if we can find something out about Starry, maybe find his parents."

As Twilight and AJ approached the town they noticed some strange things, first of all every pony had the multicolored eyes like Starry's, and secondly every pony seemed to be using some kind of magic, even the pegasi, their wings emitted a soft glow as they flew, and the earth ponies hooves glowed as they performed any kind of work, and the unicorns all had the the same magical aura that Starry had.

"Twilight, what is up with these ponies? they are all using magic." A.J. asked as she looked at an earth pony pick up a rock several times her own size and casually move it to a different location.

Twilight spotted a group of young colts playing among themselves and casually trotted up to them.

"ahem, excuse me, but do any of you know a pony named StarrySkies?" Twilight asked calmly, before being greeted with laughter.

"Know him? of course we know that lame excuse for a unicorn, you would be hard pressed to find anypony who didn't know that little fire-starter!" Twilight was slightly taken aback at the colts vernacular.

"you called him a fire-starter, why?" Twilight inquired.

"you must not be from around here, the little dweeb burned down a school, the whole town practically hates him now, but don't worry, me and my gang have been keeping him in line and, recently chased him off, so he wont be bothering the town anymore, pfft we didn't even hit him even that hard, such a wuss!"

Twilight was really starting to understand why Starry left when she felt A.J. Brush past her, Twilight could already tell the look on her face without even having to see her.

"What did y'all mean when you said you didn't hit him that hard, and you better choose your next words real carefully."

The colts seemed to realize they weren't in company that would approve of their actions and went slightly wide eyed, suddenly a bright pink pony with a dark pink mane step out of the nearest building.

"Did I hear you asking about Starry Skies?"

Starry pumped his new wings hard, he didn't fully understand how he got them, but now he had a chance at losing this rainbow pony. looking over his shoulder he could however see that he was keeping a fairly good distance away from her , but he couldn't keep up this pace, he was nearing the strange crystal buildings, perhaps he could lose her if he were to weave through the buildings at a high speed.

Rainbow looked at the pony flying in front of her, how the hell did he know how to fly, and more importantly, how did he get her wings? Rainbow pushed herself harder, she would have to go back for fluttershy later,because there was no way the pegasus could possibly keep up with them at these speeds, suddenly Starry veered a hard left then right into the alley between two buildings.

"Whoa kid! these spaces are too tight for you to fly through!" rainbow pushed her wings close to her body and slipped through the alley way, she could barely keep her eyes on the pony ahead of her, he was flying rather recklessly at this point, zipping between buildings and having his wingtips grazing the buildings on either side.

"Hey kid c'mon! you cant fly in between buildings like this!" Rainbow shouted, when suddenly she saw something ahead of them, two crystals were crossing in front of them and leaving a small gap, rainbow's eyes went wide as she saw Starry speeding up at this she sped up rapidly to Starry, trying to catch him before he hit the two spires, he couldn't possibly fit.

Starry saw the hole that he was speeding up to and pumped his wings harder, he knew he was smaller than rainbow and would fit, Starry closed his eyes as he passed through the hole, only he didnt pass through the hole as smoothly as he thought he would, he had forgotten to take into account that his wings were now a part of his body and he had them spread full when he attempted to pass through the hole. hot pain spread down his spine and into his body as his wings were folded backwards with a sickening snap, he looked down as his body passed out of the other side of the spires and saw the ground rushing up to meet him rapidly.

Rainbow cringed as she saw Starry's wings fold behind him , sh closed her wings and slipped through the hole, grazing her sides on the small opening and spreading her wings on the other side and flapping hard to accelerate fast enough to reach Starry before he hit the ground.

Starry's body rolled slightly in the air to where he was falling with his back to the ground, he could see the rainbow one coming at him at a breakneck speed, she should stop or she will hit the ground with him, she reached him and wrapped her hooves around his body, all he could see was the light blue of her coat.

Rainbow managed to grab Starry and flip to where her back was to the ground and spread her wings to slow their fall as much as she could, though they were at such a speed where impact was guaranteed.

"Aw buck this is gonna hurt"