Author's Note
This story was written on a whim and may at some points seem confusing or too fast-paced. Rest assured that everything will be explained and everything will make sense at the end.
Talentless
Starlight Glimmer smiled to herself, trotting through their little village of equality. It wasn’t so little anymore, these days. It wasn’t a metropolis either (and probably never would be. Even a town the size of Canterlot and Manehattan combined wouldn’t be called a metropolis with buildings like these), but it had taken quite a growth spurt lately. And that wasn’t even the best part.
A few weeks ago they had ~~captured~~ befriended the Elements of Harmony and Princess Twilight Sparkle, the Alicorn of Friendship herself. And while the six mares still had some… problems, accepting their philosophy, it was only a matter of time until they would see the light and join them in their happy little community. Especially with the newest addition to their circle.
She slowly unlocked the door to the quaint little house near the center of the town and peeked inside. Even after ‘equalizing’ their new guest, it was still good to remain cautious. There was no telling what the mare could still do without her cutie mark to back her up.
A brilliant white alicorn sat regally in one corner of the room, looking up to meet her gaze with an expressionless stare. Her mane had reverted to a greyish pink after the equalization and the famous sun symbol on her flank had been replaced by an equal sign. Starlight Glimmer had made very sure to keep her cutie mark somewhere safe, along with the marks of some other choice ponies.
“Welcome back, Starlight Glimmer.” The alicorn gave her a curt nod. “Have you reconsidered the situation, or do you persist in your foolish crusade for your twisted equality?”
Starlight scoffed. “Talk all you want, Princess. You are going to stay in this room until you have seen the merit of real friendship and equality and decided to join us.”
“Yes, I’m sure that is all that will be required of me.” Celestia raised an eyebrow questioningly, then shrugged. “Not that it makes a difference, seeing how nothing like that will happen. At the worst, I do have the time to simply wait you out, you realize?”
Starlight frowned, cautiously watching the alicorn. “You know, from what I heard about you I always expected you to have a warmer personality.”
Celestia stared at her for a few seconds, then glanced down at her flank where the equal sign had flashed up as it did occasionally. “You don’t say.”
Starlight opened her mouth to say something, then bit her lip and stifled a frustrated groan, turning back around. “If you don’t have anything more meaningful to say, I’ll check on you again tomorrow morning.” She slammed the door behind her just as Celestia was starting on her retort and locked it twice, feeling a sense of petty satisfaction at the act.
“Starlight Glimmer! Please, you have to come, it’s an emergency!”
The mare lowered her head and let out a low growl, then took a deep breath and turned around, adopting a bright smile as her right-hoof pony came into earshot. “Double Diamond! What can I do for you? Whatever it is, I’m sure it can’t be quite that bad.”
The white-coated earth pony stallion skidded to a halt in front of her, panting and gasping for breath as he pointed towards the west. “Sun… going down…”
Starlight looked past his hoof, seeing the sun hover just above the horizon, framed by a couple of stray clouds. “Yes, it’s a very nice sunset. Not one of the best I’ve seen but probably a nice shade of orange, I guess. Now why is that a reason to go running around like that?”
Double Diamond took one more deep breath, then looked over his shoulder at the sunset and back at her again. “I-it’s just that… T-the sunset… It’s been like this for the last fifteen minutes!”
“What is the meaning of this?!” Starlight Glimmer smashed the door into the wall, glaring down… well, technically glaring up at the Alicorn Princess. “Why isn’t the sun setting? Is this your idea of petty revenge?”
Celestia gave her a short glance, then turned her attention back to the teacup she had procured from somewhere. “I can assure you that I have been sitting here and doing nothing since the last time we saw each other, ten minutes ago. Didn’t you say that you wanted to check on me again tomorrow?”
“Stop playing dumb.” Starlight growled and ground her teeth, her patience wearing thin. “Why isn’t the sun setting? Lower it, now.”
“If you say so.” Celestia sighed and lit her horn with a bored expression. It continued to brighten for a few seconds before the equal sign on her flank flashed up and her magic fizzled out.
“Oh dear, it doesn’t seem to be working. I wonder why.” The Princess leaned back against the wall, stretching herself a little. “Is there anything else or can I go back to my passive resistance now?”
“You mean you can’t control the sun anymore?” Starlight took a step back in shock, looking back out the door towards the sunset.
“What did you think my special talent was?”
“That… that’s okay, I can still work with that. The sunset and sunrise was controlled by unicorns before, we can do it again, isn’t that right?”
Celestia shrugged and looked towards the sunset as well. “Sure, in theory. As far as I know there are four unicorn mages at the Academy in Canterlot at the moment who know the necessary spell. Unless they have taken another dozen apprentices I don’t know about, that will barely be enough to set and raise the sun for one day before they exhaust themselves.”
Starlight growled to herself for a moment before turning around and walking back out of the room. “That changes nothing. I can manage this, I just need some more time to teach enough unicorns the necessary spells…”
“Starlight Glimmer! It’s an emergency! There’s–“
“WHAT? What is it?!” She whipped her head around to glare at the group of ponies who had galloped up to her, all of them cringing back and cowering under her gaze.
One of the ponies nervously looked up, stammering. “I-it’s the Royal Guard… They’re on the way here and they say that we’ve kidnapped Princess Celestia.”
“They’ve found us already? Well then, go and gather everypony. If they don’t want to see the merits of equality, we will have to show them or drive them off again.” Starlight frowned and trotted past them, not even giving them a glance.
“B-but… couldn’t we just let them go? I-if they don’t want to join us, I mean. I-it just doesn’t seem right to force them to join us and give up their cutie marks.” The stallion shuffled his hoof nervously.
Starlight stopped and whirled back around, eyeing him intently. “Do you have a problem with our philosophy? Would you perhaps like to have your cutie mark back and lose all those friends you made?”
“N-no. I-I was just thinking… I’m sorry.” He cowered and slowly backed away into the crowd.
Starlight looked down at the rows of Royal Guards advancing across the plains, led by their former Captain and now Prince of the Crystal Empire, Shining Armor. Against them stood hundreds of equalized mares and stallions, all with weapons and armor forged in their village. Their forces were about the same, but unlike the Royal Guard, their group wouldn’t have any weak points. Every pony was equally good as the pony beside them.
The two armies clashed. Metal struck against metal, wooden shafts against armor…
About half of the weapons broke immediately. None of them were on the side of the Royal Guard.
“What… what happened? Why is our equipment turning into… scrap metal?!” Starlight stared incredulously at the battlefield, then at the few ponies who had stayed with her to observe. Double Diamond opened his mouth to say something, then looked down and nervously shifted his hoof.
Next to him Party Favor stepped forward, rubbing his neck. “Uhm, I-I think the reason for that are… some minor issues with the production.”
“Issues? What kind of issues? Why wasn’t I informed about this?!”
Party Favor looked down, taking a step back in defense. “I-it’s not my fault. Or anypony’s fault, really. The problem is that, well… we didn’t have a blacksmith. Everypony of us is equal, but, uhm… Apparently that just means that none of us was any good at forging weapons. And the stallion you appointed to the forge used to be a blacksmith, so whenever he tried to forge something, his mark, uhm… it just… I-I’m not complaining about losing my cutie mark, really, there’s just some minor side effects to it. ...At least the forge didn’t collapse again like some of the other houses we built?” He gave her a weak grin.
Starlight stared at him for a moment, then whipped back around to watch the battlefield. Some of her ponies had begun to retreat while others tried to defend themselves in hoof-to-hoof combat, injuring themselves more than they hurt any of the guards.
She barely heard one of the ponies behind her mutter, “We should’ve used my muffins instead. The last batch could’ve killed ponies.”
“It’s over, Starlight Glimmer! Surrender while you still can!” Starlight looked down to see Shining Armor standing at the front of the battlefield, holding his helmet under one foreleg and glaring up at her.
She cringed back, then growled and took a step forward again, lighting her horn. “No… No! It’s not over yet! I’m going to make you all see true equality!” Her magic flared up and beams started to shoot off towards the battlefield, hitting guards and collecting several cutie marks each. She turned her attention back to the unicorn at the front and charged another beam, aiming right at him.
“No!” Somepony jumped in front of Shining Armor before he could react, taking the beam head-on. The figure rolled across the grass, then slowly stood up and shook itself, revealing itself as a small purple dragon with green spines.
“Whoa, that felt weird…” The dragon looked himself over, rubbing his tail. “I don’t feel any different, though. Hey, I don’t think the spell works if you don’t have a cutie mark.”
Starlight’s left eye twitched and she charged her spell again, firing into the group of guards again. The guard it hit staggered a back, then shook herself and looked around, clicking her beak and swishing her lion’s tail.
“This is those dweeb’s secret weapon? You ponies are even lamer than I thought.”
Another beam shot at the guards, this time hitting a minotaur bull who didn’t even flinch and instead started to flex his muscles.
“You try to use your zap, you fall right into my trap!”
One more beam shot across the battlefield, streaking at two unicorn stallions and fizzling out only two feet away from them.
“Magic-repelling bowties? Why didn’t we think of that, brother?”
“I daresay, brother, we did.” The mustachioed one raised a foreleg to high-hoof his sibling.
Starlight took another step back, looking around. Her forces had lost or fled, she was outnumbered and surrounded with no way out. A shadow appeared above her and she looked back to see a large, dark blue alicorn standing right behind her, wings spread.
“Do you now understand the error of your ways?”
Celestia took a sip of her tea, not looking up from the newspaper as her sister entered the small dinner hall where they shared their meals. “Did you find her?”
Luna nodded, sitting down on the other side of the table and pouring herself a cup of coffee. “I did. She is still in those cavernous systems, though, so it won’t be of much use to your guards. Even if I tried to pinpoint her exact location, I could not lead them to her.” She picked up a knife and a scone. “I did enter her dreams, however, and I hope that I have given her some things to think about.”
Celestia nodded, then sighed and looked at her sister. “I’m sorry about this, Luna. I know that you don’t like bringing nightmares to anypony.”
“I think you have a worse picture of those nightmares than is usually necessary, sister.” Luna rolled her eyes, then smiled. “Though I did find a way to make the task a little more enjoyable.”
“Oh?” Celestia’s ears perked up.
“Indeed. It is something Our friend First Edition told us about. Do you remember her? She was the hobby writer I met on that gathering for the enthusiasts of the Daring Do literary series.”
“I do remember. Didn’t you ask her for tips to improve your dreams? What advice did she give you?”
“Oh, it isn’t so much to improve my dreams for other ponies, but it does make them more fun to weave.” Luna clapped her hooves happily. “They are called ‘cameos’. I think I will use them more often in the future.”
