A Less-Than-Expected Detour
Their rift through time split wide open, and the anguished cries of Nightmare Moon echoed through the ages themselves as Twilight Sparkle and her trusty assistant were sucked back into the massless void. Spike knew to expect their immediate ejection from such a tumultuous tunnel of cascading energy, but every new second that passed grew his doubts, and his fears. He bravely opened his eyes, only to be greeted once more by the lightning-fast currents of time. To say the least, he was petrified.
“T-Twilight? Twilight!” exclaimed the frightful little dragon, searching until he caught eye of the mare, who seemed to be struggling greatly. He gasped, trying vainly to reach out and grab her, but arcs of arcane lightning lashed out at the air like angry, venomous snakes from the tip of her glowing horn. He had only ever seen Celestia and Luna wield such power. A single zap may be the end of him.
“Nnnch! S-Spike, hold still! I need to concentrate!” Twilight strained to keep what must have been an extremely powerful spell together. The lightning began to reach further out, seeming to grip at the “walls” of the tunnel, or at least try to.
“We can’t just keep going back and forth like this!” Spike shouted through the howling of the vortex. Both you and Starlight anticipate each other’s movements one after the other. At this rate, it’ll be a stalemate that never ends!”
“Nnn! I kn-know that!” The lightning had finally gained its grip, latching onto what must have been key moments in the time stream like they were no different than anything in the real world. It was such raw power too. How in the wide, multidimensional world of Equestria she could manifest it all, let alone in a place like this, he may never know. “But I’m taking us to a time where she can't touch me!”
Spike was just about to ask where exactly she meant, but the howling of the vortex began to fade, as did the winds. The points she had latched onto coalesced, forming a sphere of energy that swallowed them whole.
Rather than being regurgitated like a stomachful of alcohol and drunken memories, the pair were (quietly) deposited in a small, dark room, surrounded by layers of what could only be described as clothing; shirts, jackets, and the like. Such was confirmed upon Twilight lighting the tip of her horn, filling what was unquestionably a typical clothing closet with a warm blue glow.
“Pppffpt!” Spike sputtered as he fervently struggled to remove his head from the deep pocket of a trench coat. “Twilight! Where are--!”
“Shh! Quiet, Spike!” Twilight quickly retorted with a hissing whisper, slamming a hoof over his lips just before his confused outburst could be let loose. It was around this time that the two of them began hearing some very peculiar noises: lots of grunts and gasps just outside the door, as if somepony were in a fierce struggle for, possibly, their lives. Twilight put her ear close to the door, thinking hard on something before coming away from it with a devious smirk. She chuckled, grinning smugly. “Uh-huh. This is the place.”
“Twilight--!”
“Shh!”
“Where’s Starlight!?” He whispered anxiously, darting his eyes around the cramped space, half-expecting the villain in question to leap out of a shoe box, Pinkie Pie style. “Whenever we use the scroll she travels with us, remember?”
“I do.” she replied, continuing to listen in on the commotion happening only a few hooves away, her grin remaining.
“So where is she?”
"She'll be a little late getting here." Twilight giggled again before taking a step back, conjuring a bottle of mouth perfume and spritzing her lips and tongue with it before sending it away in a faint flash of light. Her magic began to grip the door handle. “You’d say you’re pretty old enough for a dragon, right?”
“Huh? What kind of question is that?”
“Right, Spike?”
“Well, yeah, right! I’ve been able to handle everything that’s been thrown at me, at us, for the past five years! What makes...wherever we are any different? Just show me, Twi’.”
She gently tugged the door forward before stopping, looking back one final time and giving him a rather odd wink. It may have left Spike a little more confused than he was before, but what he certainly wasn’t prepared to receive was a big, heaping eyeful the moment Twilight threw the door open, slammed it against the side wall, flicked on a light switch, and let her booming voice send great tremors through the walls, and through the shaking bed in front of her, like the voices of Olympus’ divines. “HEEEEELLO, MR. AND MRS. GLIMMER!”
The bed coverings, and whomever was under them, thrashed around violently, revealing the startled and sweating faces of a mare and a stallion. Upon catching eye of the astonishingly ecstatic home invader, the mare screamed, clinging tightly to her husband, whom she was on top of, panting haggardly with her covered rump raised in the air.
Even for a dragon as innocent and young as Spike, it didn’t take long for him to realize exactly where Twilight had taken them. Pale in the face and sweating bullets, he retreated to his cozy trench coat pocket in wait for the inevitable to blow over.
“W-What!? Who they hay are you!? How did you get in here!?” The stallion screamed upon sighting Twilight for himself, then immediately taking notice of her wings as his eyes widened to the size of dinner plates. “A-Are those wings? And a horn!? Are you an--?”
“Alicorn, of course!” Twilight cheerfully piped up, then cantered carelessly to the foot of the bed while the couple cowered in fear, seemingly unable to move. She crossed her hind legs and leaned against the wooden frame, silently eyeing up their faces with a cheeky grin. They could only lay there, dumbstruck, glancing back and forth between each other, the alicorn, and what had to have been a baby dragon hiding in their closet. They had no words, and neither did Twilight. She started humming to herself, tapping a hoof on the ground, then let her eyes begin to roam the room.
Eventually, the silence had to be broken, and the stallion daringly spoke up again, stumbling with his words. “W-What are you--”
“Waiting.” Twilight again cut in, now looking up to the ceiling. "She should be here any second."
“She? Who? F-For what? Just get out of our house!”
A circle of light began to emanate from the ceiling, much to the dismay of the couple in distress. It was just what Twilight had been waiting for. A rift of light and magic tore open and ejected a very familiar Starlight Glimmer, who quickly came to a hard landing.
“Oof! Huh? Twilight!?” Starlight exclaimed as she weakly rose to her hooves, her first sight of her newest destination being the same mare who sought to put an end to her vengeance. It was odd that she was somehow the second pony to get here, but that hardly mattered to her. She growled angrily, thinking nothing else of her destination before charging up a great deal of magical energy with almost the full intent of vaporizing her where she stood. “Now I’ve got you!”
Twilight merely stood there, idly inspecting her hooves and pondering getting a hooficure after this whole friendship ordeal was over. Just when Starlight was about to unleash her full fury, she looked up and gestured to her side. On a puzzled whim, Starlight looked to where she was pointing, causing her spell to immediately fizzle and die.
“M-Mom?” Her lower jaw nearly hit the floor. “D...dad?”
“In the middle of making you.” said Twilight with as sassy and brazen of a tone as she could muster. Everypony went as stiff as a board, save Twilight. “Quite the family reunion, isn’t it?”
Starlight and her parents stared horrifyingly at each other, agog and thunderstruck.
“Still thinking about putting an end to my friendship and throwing all of Equestria into chaos and disharmony now, Starlight?” Twilight started up again, looking as laid back as could be, drinking it all in like sweet, sweet nectar. “Or maybe you’d like to tell your parents all about how you once were a tyrannical ruler of a dystopian village of prisoners, taking away everypony’s cutie marks and planning to have the whole world under your iron boot within a few years?”
“She’ll do what!?” The mare in the bed shouted, swallowing hard as her weight shifted atop her husband, and looking deeply concerned after noticing her husband wince. Starlight remained unspoken for. “Honey?”
“Pfft! I could go on for days, y'know? Those aren’t even the worst things she plans on doing!” Twilight giggled, not experiencing the least amount of guilt while she exaggerated, looking back to Mrs. Glimmer, her smarmy complexion never fading before she casually starts moving away and levitating Spike out of the closet. “But please, feel free to keep going, you two. Talk about a life or death situation, am I right? Or don’t continue. I honestly don’t care. I’ve done what I came here to do.”
“This..no. This has to be a trick.” Starlight whispered to herself, glaring angrily between her parents of yesteryear and her egotistic nemesis. “And I’m not falling for it, Twilight!”
A bolt of magic arced up and out from Starlight’s horn and zapped the ceiling, reopening the rift through time and summarily sucking both of them, and Spike, back in to continue their fruitless excursion.
Mrs. Glimmer looked on the verge of fainting, as did her husband. She pressed a shaking hoof to his chest, again swallowing hard as the color drained completely from her face. Neither of them knew exactly what had transpired yet, oddly, it wasn’t what had just happened that worried her the most. “That was you...pulling out, right?”
