Twilight had lost. She couldn't believe it. She and her friends had thrown everything at her. Rainbow Power, their newly acquired Cutie Mark Magic, they even pried the Elements of Harmony to try and thwart her, but they couldn't defeat Starlight Glimmer. All Twilight could do now was lay there and admit defeat.
"Hmph. You see, Princess? For all your speeches of friendship and talent, it's proven fruitless. I managed to defeat you and by extension, everything you stood for." Starlight smirked. Rainbow Dash coughed a bit before she spoke.
"S-so what!? All you just did was prove you're better than everypony else!" She said. Twilight could see in Starlight's eyes that she wasn't gonna take that. Twilight weakly stood up, her legs beginning to tremble.
"She... has a point. It's true, you've bested me, but by doing so, you showed that you excelled. What happened to your speeches of equality and sameness? What happened to 'to excel is to fail'?" Twilight asked. She counted down the seconds until Starlight snapped just from her pulsing veins alone.
3... 2... 1...
"Shut up." To Twilight's surprise, it was just a simple mutter. Twilight steadied herself and attempted to give her a speech of a lifetime. That's when Starlight screamed. "SHUT UP SHUT UP SHUT UP SHUT UP SHUT UP SHUT UUUUUUUP!" With that, Starlight Glimmer sent a blast towards Twilight. She tried to counter, but she winced in pain as her horn smoked. She didn't have time to warn her friends as the beam blasted Twilight apart. In a flash of light, Twilight was gone and in her place was a smoldering crater. Starlight heaved and sighed.
"What didya do to her!?" Applejack tried to stand. Starlight smiled.
"Relax. I didn't destroy Twilight. I merely just sent her back in time. She's probably gone so far back, she might end up undoing herself by merely sneezing on a butterfly." With that, she cackled.
While that was true, there was something Starlight Glimmer never studied upon when practicing chronomancy. The caster of a time travel spell is not necessarily the one who picked the destination, but rather the person going through the spell. Twilight was well aware of the effect, as she had used a time travel spell before, albeit in a more balanced and easy to use method.
However, Twilight knew she had to decide on one point in time to go back to. Does she go back to when Rainbow Dash was about to do the Sonic Rainboom and ensure Starlight doesn't interrupt it? Does she go back to when she was giving a presentation and call the guards to arrest Starlight? Does she go back to when she first met her and try to arrest her before she ever left? Would those points in time even worked if the first point wasn't fixed?
She thought of neither of that. She instead thought about Starlight and just why she wanted to make a big deal about cutie marks, talents, and equalization.
And that ended up deciding where she went.
Twilight emerged in a flash of light onto a street, just close to a school not unlike the one that Apple Bloom and her friends went to. Twilight extended her wings a bit and gave a sigh of relief when she didn't feel any pain from them. It seemed the travel through time healed her. She trotted around and explored the area. She didn't seem to be in either Canterlot or Ponyville. She recognized the layout of the place though. High-rise buildings, hordes of ponies walking around with taxi carriages towed about.
No doubt about it, she was in Manehattan. She looked around to see any sort of clue as to when exactly she was teleported to. That's when she saw a group of ponies passing by. A family it seemed. A mother, father, and their orange-coated foa-
Wait, Applejack?
Twilight looked as the Oranges passed by her unseen. Even though Applejack was prepped up more than if she had Rarity be her makeup artist, she recognized her freckled face anywhere. A smirk came on Twilight's face. If Applejack is in Manehatten as a filly, that must mean she was sent back to before the Sonic Rainboom was even thought of.
She could save everypony. She readied her wings. She could make it to Cloudsdale and stake out there to stop Starlight. Only then would she-
"Blank flank! Blank flank!" Just as Twilight was about to take off, she heard the sound of playground bullying. She rushed over to see what the fuss was. That's when she saw it.
A group of older ponies were laughing at a pink coated filly. She didn't even need to get a good look at the filly's face to know who it was.
"...Starlight..." Twilight muttered. She replayed the last thing she thought in her head as she was sent through time: "what could have caused Starlight Glimmer to resent Cutie Marks?" She had always thought of Starlight Glimmer was a power hungry dictator. Why else would she struggle to be better than everypony else and create an environment where she was the better pony?
She never once thought that simple bullying, something she knew well about from her experiences with the Cutie Mark Crusaders, could have caused it. Starlight ran off crying to another foal.
"Rising Star! They're being mean to me again!" She tried to hide behind him, only for him to shrug her off.
"Starlight... I..." He held Starlight back a bit to show her three white stars on his flank. "I got these from watching the stars last night! Isn't it neat!?" He said. Starlight began to smile slightly, only for it to fade once the bullies spoke up.
"Rising Star! Nice! You're no longer a blank flank! Welcome to the herd!" They said. Rising Star looked to them.
"Rising Star?" Starlight's voice began to break as Rising Star frowned at Starlight.
"I... I'm sorry. But... I'm excited that I've finally got my Cutie Mark! WAHOO!" He skipped and hopped over to the group, cheering along the way. Starlight fell on her knees and began to whimper.
"So what? Just because you saw some stupid specks in the sky, that makes you better? How!?" She cried out. Twilight began to think back to when she first met Starlight Glimmer and saw her for the true pony she was.
"You'd all still be living your miserable lives thinking you're "better" than everypony else if it weren't for my magical abilities!"
At first, it seemed that she was just ranting to try and justify any flimsy excuse she could grab. But now that she had seen what she had meant, Twilight couldn't help by weep a bit for her.
"Rising Star, what are you waiting for?" One of the bullies called out to him. "If you wanna be truly one of us, you'd have to shame the Blank Flanks for not having a special talent!" Eventually all the bullies began chant: "Blank Flank! Blank Flank! Blank Flank!" Rising Star looked at a crying Starlight. He sighed. Just as he was about to join in the chanting, a loud, sharp voice broke through the noise.
"QUIET!" The foals turned to see Twilight glare at them. "You ponies should know better than to pick fun at your peers! Just because she has no Cutie Mark doesn't mean that she should be considered an outcast, just like how you shouldn't treat yourselves as the better ponies just because you have one. She just needs time to figure out her talent." She turned around and wiped a tear from the young Starlight with her wing. "And that's okay. It doesn't matter if it takes you a day or even a decade to find your Cutie Mark. You have the potential to be anything you want, and part of what makes life worth living is discovering what your talent is. The absence of a Cutie Mark itself symbolizes something you have: infinite potential." Twilight said. Rising Star stepped away from the group and offered a hoof to Starlight.
"I'm sorry, Starlight. Are we friends still?" He asked. Starlight looked to him, nodded, and got up. They embraced for a small bit before she turned to Twilight. She smiled as a few tears dropped down.
"Th-thank you... What's your name?" She asked.
"... Well, my name is T-" Just then, she could hear a loud pop sound as everything went to black.
"Ah, there we go!" Twilight heard a familiar voice when she opened her eyes. She looked around and saw she was in a white space with shards of glass flying about. She seemed to be the only pony in this space save for one other: a certain chimeric dragon. "Oh, Twilight! There you are! I see you're the one to cause the Time Burp!"
"Time bu- Discord, what's going on?" Twilight asked.
"Oh, right, you must be new to the time travel thing." Discord said.
"What? No! I time traveled before! I went back a week to warn myself about not worrying about anything and I wound up creating my own future!" Twilight said.
"Ah, see, that's the problem. You managed to make a stable time loop in that instance. This is something different. Tell me what happened this time around." Discord said.
"Well, Starlight Glimmer wound up stopping Rainbow Dash from causing the Sonic Rainboom, and thus changed our entire futures and-"
"And what did you do?" Discord asked.
"Well, she sent me back in time and I wound up talking to her younger version and- Wait, did I end up breaking the space time continuum?" Twilight asked. "Oh no! I must have ruined my future more than Starlight ever did! What did I do?" She flew around in circles as she pulled her mane. Discord grabbed her tail.
"Nothing. You merely corrected a change." Discord said. Twilight hyperventilated before she realized what he said.
"Wait, what?" She asked.
"See, this is the thing about time travel and why you'll never see me dabble with it. Some genius will come back in time to 'fix' something, only to end up ruining something else. Then some other genius will go back in time and fix that fix! The end result is the second fix completely destroying the first fix and the timeline that was created with it. A Time Burp." Discord said.
"... What?" She asked. Discord chuckled.
"I always found you to be the smartest of the bunch, but I can understand time travel being an incomprehensible topic. To put simply: Starlight Glimmer went back in time to ruin your future. Then you went back to the past and talked to her years before she even considered time travel. You wound up stopping her from stopping the Sonic Rainboom without ever actively going after her and in doing so, ensured a Time Burp." Discord said.
"... Is it permanent? Will I be stuck here forever?" Twilight asked.
"What? No. Don't worry about it. In about five minutes, the timeline will fix itself and you'll be back in Ponyville before you know it! It'd be as if Starlight Glimmer was a bad dream!" He said.
"... That's right. Starlight Glimmer's not a major threat now. But with her absence, how would my future change?" Twilight asked.
"I doubt a pony who had appeared twice in your life will have any lifelong consequences. Trust me on this." Discord said.
"Trust the embodiment of Chaos... Yeah, because that ended so well the last time." She glared to the side and puffed her lips.
"Oh, are you still upset about that time with Tirek? Look, I'll magic you up a new tree with all the books you want in it if that'll make you feel better!" Discord looked at his wrist. "Buuuut you may want to remind me, since the Time Burp's just about to end." Discord said.
"Wait, how come you're here in this Time Burp? I was the one who wound up changing the future." Twilight asked. Discord gave Twilight a deadpan expression.
"You're asking the embodiment of Chaos how he is able to exist outside logical space." Just then, Twilight's vision faded to white.
"... Good point." Was all Twilight said before her mind completely whited out.
"Twilight! Twilight!" Spike's voice woke up Twilight as she immediately held Spike, something she never got to do since Starlight changed her past and essentially retconned Spike out of existence. "H-hey! You're crushing me!" Spike said. Twilight let go and got off her bed.
"Oh... Sorry, Spike. I'm just really happy is all." Twilight said. Spike raised an eyebrow.
"Yeeaaaah... Look, Celestia is sending a pony over to your place. She said the time has come for you to have a student and she thinks this pony will be the one for you." Spike said. Twilight gasped.
"R-really?" She smiled as her eyes sparkled. "Ooooh! I'm very excited!" Twilight hopped and skipped out of her room and into the main hall of the castle. She stopped and turned to Spike. "Hey, wait, Spike... Tell me, what happened when we first found the Cutie Map?"
"Huh? Um... Well... We just found it. It was a pretty cool visual map, but we never found a use for it until Rainbow Dash and Pinkie Pie were brought to it and had to go to Griffonstone." Spike said.
"Oh... I see." Twilight's skip became a normal trot.
"Why do you ask?" Spike asked.
"Well, I-" Twilight was at the door when she opened, and that's when she saw her. A pink pony with a purple mane and a turquoise highlight.
"H-hi. Are you Twilight Sparkle, Princess of Friendship?" She asked. Twilight slowly nodded. "My name is Starlight Glimmer! I just came here from Canterlot after Celestia advised me to head here to learn from you! She said that you'd teach me how to understand friendship and improve on my magic and I can't believe you're younger than me, oh I'm so embarrassed!" Twilight backed away. For a moment, she missed evil Starlight Glimmer. But she smiled. She liked good Starlight Glimmer better.
"Welcome." Twilight looked at Starlight. She was exactly the same, though she had a genuine smile on and wore a pink saddle pack with a blue blanket underneath. "I'll get you accustomed to the area. Why don't you put your luggage away for a bit?" Twilight asked.
"Oh, no, that's okay. My mom always said that life's about journeying with the clothes on your back! Eheh..." Twilight slightly looked to her as she walked out of her castle. Spike stayed behind. She decided to escort Starlight to Sweet Apple Acres. "So tell me, is it true that you managed to stop so many threats through harmony?"
"Yes. Well, except the Changelings, though my brother as a pretty interesting story about that." Twilight said.
"Oooh wow! I get to learn from the Princess of Friendshi-" As Starlight was ready to jump with excitement, she tripped over her hooves and fell down, spilling her luggage and blanket.
"Oh! Let me help!" Twilight went over to her and helped her up, only to notice something. Her cutie mark of a star and two streams of magic was gone. In its place was... nothing.
A blank flank.
She stared at it for a few moments. She had began to wonder about a disturbing idea she had played with ever since meeting with Starlight Glimmer. What if her ability to steal Cutie Marks was her talent? What if what she did in the past forever changed her future and locked her out of her talent and destiny, albeit a bad one? She froze for a bit as she wondered about it. A whimper broke her thoughts though.
"Starlight, you clumsy foal..." Starlight said. Twilight looked to her.
"...I..." Starlight turned around and snapped at Twilight. She could see the vein pop from her neck as she did.
"I knew coming to you was too good to be true! You're gonna laugh at me and call me a Blank Flank, aren't you!?" She said. Moments of silence later, she broke down into tears and fell onto the ground. "I... I'm sorry. It's just... I'm embarrassed at myself. I've had no Cutie Mark for my entire life! I hate myself! Why can't I figure out my talent already?" She said. Twilight stood there and frowned. "That's... That's why I came to you! I thought you could help me find my talent!"
Twilight walked over and held Starlight with her wings.
"Don't cry. It'll be alright. I'm still going to be your teacher regardless of what your flank says. I can't help you find your talent, though. It's something you're gonna have to do yourself." She nuzzled Starlight's cheek as she stopped crying. "But that's what makes life worth living. You have a lot of potential to be whatever you want and a lot of time to figure out what you want to do with your life." Twilight said. Starlight smiled.
"That's... I remember somepony telling me something similar a long time ago. She never gave me her name, but she was what inspired me to study magic. I haven't been able to find one that I'm talented in, but I'm determined to find it someday. If you can't help me find my talent, then at least help me find the spell that will be my talent. Okay?" She asked. Twilight hesitated.
"I brought you friendship! I brought you equality! I created harmony!" She remembered the pain and suffering she had caused to her and the other ponies with her signature talent. She tried desperately to figure out any useful applications of stealing Cutie Marks away in the few seconds she had.
But she couldn't. She just smiled and said: "Okay." Starlight smiled back. The two trotted along as Starlight said one more thing before they continued the rest of the way to Applejack's place in silence.
"You know, that pony that inspired me... She looks just like you."
Author's Note
I will laugh if any part of this gets confirmed in the actual show.
