Starlight Fixes Everything Else

"Harrumph!" Trixie harrumphed. "Princess Twilight Sparkle's coronation had way more fanfare than yours," Trixie grumbled. "You're literally the princess of time, how did they not demand all of Equestria and beyond come to pay lip service?" she demanded.

"Maybe because I asked them to keep it as small as possible while still spreading the word?" Starlight offered. "I didn't want to make a big deal of it Trix, I know how that goes, and let me assure you it doesn't go well," she insisted.

"Oh... right, Trixie guesses Trixie should have known you already knew what would happen," Trixie admitted sheepishly. "Do you just know everything now?"

"No, I only know what I've seen, although time related spells have gotten a lot easier to use now that I have alicorn magic!" Starlight boasted. "But for real, I'm not an infallible goddess. Especially considering how many of those friendship lessons I had to redo to keep the timeline stable. I still don't know what I was thinking, giving Rainbow that unholy abomination. It's way more sensible to just have a tortoise and a bird of prey!"

"Yeah, but it made for a funny story at least," Trixie replied, giggling at the scenario her filly friend had described. "But hey, in the end it was worth it right? Now you got those sweet wings... even if you could basically fly on your own before."

"Well now I don't have to expend any magic to fly, or walk on clouds, plus I'm way stronger now!" Starlight jumped and bucked the air behind her in demonstration. "Plus now I'm immortal! Combined with my time magic, there's basically no limit to what I can do!"

"Yeah, great, good for you..." Trixie trailed off visibly upset.

"Trix, what's wro-" at that moment, Starlight mentally slapped herself while physically face hoofing. She wished she could just redo that bit of the conversation. As if time itself was listening to her thoughts, when she lifted her hoof Trixie and herself were a bit further away from the castle of friendship than they had been.

Before she knew it, Trixie was repeating herself, "even if you could basically fly on your own before." Starlight wasn't about to squander this opportunity.

"Yeah, but now I have access to alicorn magic, plus with my specialty in time magic means I can easily use age spells to keep a certain somepony eternally young," Starlight said giving Trixie a wink and a wiggle of her eye brows. Trixie visibly perked up at this, signalling to Starlight that she managed to not put her hoof in her mouth this time.

Before either of them could get another word in, Starlight felt a warm sensation in her flanks before Trixie pointed out her glowing cutie mark. "Uh Starlight? Is that supposed to keep happening?" Trixie asked a tinge of annoyance in her voice.

"I mean, if the map calls, you answer," Starlight said before teleporting both of them to the Cutie MapTM. What greeted them upon arrival was so out of left field it should have shocked them both to their cores. However, surviving all the crazy world threatening events of the past few years, then going back to prevent all those things from happening, tends to get the panic volume turned down on stuff like this.

"What am I even looking at here?" Trixie deadpanned, not even bothering to speak in the third person. What laid before them was the holographic map of Equestria they were familiar with, except there was more than one of them. In fact, as they moved around the table, it looked like various versions of the map started to disappear, appear, or morph from one to the next. Out of curiosity, Trixie tried waving her hoof around the top of the table. This caused various holograms to cycle through at a rapid pace.

"Hold on, where's my cutie mark? It usually shows up on the map orbiting around where it wants me to go," Starlight mused out loud. Before she was even done talking, the map rapidly cycled through countless configurations until all the jumbled floating variations coalesced into a single standard looking map. As soon as it stabilized, a hologram of her cutie mark jumped from her flanks and zipped toward the map before it rested above Ponyville and started spiraling down to the simulacrum of sugar cube corner before circling the building. At the same time, a copy of Pinkie's cutie mark began to rise from the bakery, resting in the center of Starlight's cutie mark orbit.

"Huh, that's a new one," said Pinkie from right behind Starlight.

"Gah! Pinkie, we talked about this! Personal space, remember?" Starlight blurted, before she realized Pinkie's flank wasn't glowing like her own.

"Yeah, I know, it's weird. I didn't get a glowing cutie mark, but I did get a Pinkie Sense that means I was summoned. I usually just ignore it because it's like, no duh Pinkie Sense, I already have a glowing flank to tell me where to go, but this time I got the sense without the glow so I was like 'huh, maybe that's why I get a sense for it every time', but I was just at Sugar-Cube Corner, and there wasn't any friendship problems there, so I cam here and then I snuck up on you as a prank an you were like-" a baby blue hoof made its way into Pinkie's mouth to shut her up.

"Thank you Trixie, but I've got it from here," Starlight said as Trixie removed her hoof. "Okay, let's eliminate the most likely suspects first." Preparing her magic for a slew of spells, her horn charged up with her turquoise aura before first casting a spell, removing any illusions on herself and the castle of friendship.

Seeing that her cutie mark was still glowing and present on the map, Starlight set off a spell to summon discord. While she didn't actually have any means to control him any more than Twilight, she did work out a sort of request alarm to tell Discord where and when she was, and the level of urgency. To everypony's surprise save for Pinkie, Discord actually showed up for a moderate level summons. "You rang?" Discord asked, having manifested from the void in a flash of light.

"Discord, did you do something to the map table again? It's acting up, and I need to know if its a legitimate summons," Starlight demanded, only mildly annoyed at her near omnipotent friend.

"Weeeelllll..." Discord dragged out, examining the map table by expanding his eye balls to reach out like pseudopods to touch the crystal surface directly. Popping his eyes back in their sockets, he turned his head, just his head, to face Starlight directly with what looked like shrunken eye balls in expanded and sunken sockets. In an uncharacteristically deadly serious tone he uttered, "it's real," before grabbing Pinkie Pie and vanishing once again.

"Okaaaaay..." Starlight said, utterly dumbfounded. Turning to Trixie she asked, "have you ever seen him do that before?"

Without giving Trixie time to answer, Discord was back in a flash. "So, I was going to give you a long and boring exposition dump out of courtesy for a fellow time hopper, but then I decided it would be much more entertaining to just throw you into the deep end!" Discord announced, summoning a mini Starlight next to a mini pool before a mini discord pushed her in.

"What?" Was all Starlight could think to say to that.

"Look, just focus your timey whimey magic on the map table and find out for yourself what the map wants," Discord insisted, gently nudging Starlight toward the table. "Just remember two things Starlight," he said dropping back into his serious voice. "First, be careful, second, it isn't your Equestria." With that, his mirthful, almost predatory grin returned. "Good luck!" he shouted before de-manifesting again. "You're gonna need it...." echoed throughout the room from everywhere and nowhere.

"Well, that wasn't ominous at all," Trixie commented, pulling Starlight out of her stupor.

"Yeah, well I guess if this is a legitimate quest, I should answer it." Starlight tried to not let her apprehension show on in her voice, but her face was a wreck of nerves.

Before her filly friend could devolve into a Twilight level freak out, Trixie locked their lips together until she felt her lover calm down. Disconnecting herself she asked, "better?"

"Yeah, sorry about that. I'm sure I'll be fine, the map wouldn't send me on a suicide mission or anything right?" Starlight asked, mostly trying to soothe her own fears more than explain her situation.

"That wouldn't be very harmonious would it?" Trixie asked, using sarcasm to defuse the tension. "Look, if things get too hot to handle, just teleport back here or something. Or use some other time powers! Remember, you're an alicorn, you can face anything this map can dish your way!" Trixie proclaimed with utter confidence.

Starlight couldn't help but allow some of that confidence to seep into herself. "You're right Trix! I can do this! I'll be back before you know it," Starlight said, preparing a fairly generic time manipulation spell to cast at the table map. Releasing her will on the spell, the powers of harmony took over, creating a swirling vortex in the map which Starlight allowed to suck her in.

About five seconds later, Trixie shrugged and started making her way out of the room when the vortex appeared again, only to spit out Starlight. The mare in question had a million hoof stare, and stood slack jawed for just a moment before breaking down crying.

Trixie was on Starlight in an instant, cuddling, shushing, and generally comforting her as much as possible. "It's okay Glimmy, I got you," she gently cooed as she placed gentle kisses along her muzzle and neck. Once Starlight seemed to be done crying Trixie finally asked, "wanna talk about it?"

"No," Starlight answered barely above a whisper, "at least not yet, but I need to see Pinkie's basement." This left Trixie confused, but instead of asking questions without a filter, she just stayed there, holding her broken fillyfriend, and offered her as much comfort as possible.