Starlight Saint

Today was the day she awaited with anticipation. Ever since that alicorn and her friends ruined everything that she had spent years building up, her thoughts were focused on her revenge.

She had spent months planning her revenge. She studied the six of them; their behaviors, their strengths, their weaknesses, their doubts, their fears, and anything else that she could use to ensure her plan went off without a hitch.

The final piece of information came into her clutches. During Twilight’s lecture on cutie mark magic, which filled her with disgust, she had learned of the point of origin of her enemies’ cutie marks; a Sonic Rainboom from years ago.

With everything she needed to carry out this plan, Starlight Glimmer, a unicorn mare with a lilac coat and royal purple mane and tail with a teal stripe and a cutie mark of two overlapping four-pointed stars, one purple, with two trails of turquoise vapor, proceeded to the Canterlot Train Station to take the train to Ponyville.

During the ride, Starlight took out the time travel scroll that she had stolen from the Starswirl the Bearded section of Canterlot Castle. The current version would only allow her to go back so far and only for thirty seconds. It wasn’t enough time for her to carry out her plan though. However, she knew her way around altering spells so all she had to do was remove the limitations and use the magic within Twilight’s castle to power it.

In her haste, however, she neglected a key rune that would come back to bite her in the flank soon.

Once the train was entering the station, Starlight teleported out of the train and ran toward Twilight’s castle while avoiding the town’s denizens.

Once inside, she proceeded into the map room feeling pleased with herself that everything was going according to plan. Soon, the princess and her friends were going to learn to respect her.

She reclined in Twilight’s throne and kicked up her back hooves onto the map table as she awaited her victims. She didn’t have to wait long as she heard their conversation as they entered the castle.

“Maybe I was more stressed about that speech than I thought,” Twilight reasoned.

“Yeah. That sounds better than Starlight Glimmer coming back with an evil plot for revenge,” Spike agreed.

“Well, when you say it like that, it does sound kinda silly.”

As they entered the map room, Spike’s eyes widened in horror as he spotted the pony they were just talking about. “Or it’s totally true!”

“Welcome home, Twilight!” Starlight cheerfully responded with her biggest shit-eating grin. She then cast her spell on the scroll which fired a beam at the map table, activating it and showing the map of Equestria.

“What are you doing, Starlight?” Twilight demanded.

Starlight villainously laughed, “I’d tell you, but I wouldn’t want to–”

That was when something Starlight wasn’t expecting happened. The aura around the scroll suddenly turned from Starlight’s turquoise magic to a purple close to her mane color. It then fired a purple beam at the map which completely changed the displayed image from one of Equestria to what appeared to be a huge city built onto a pair of islands in the middle of a massive lake.

Starlight’s eyes widened as she saw this. Whatever it was, it wasn’t Equestria at all. “Wh…what is this? This shouldn’t be–”

Suddenly a vortex opened up over the map table and began pulling in whatever it could. Twilight was able to keep herself anchored to the floor with her earth pony magic while her wings kept Spike from being pulled in. Starlight was not so fortunate as the vortex sucked her in. Starlight screamed in panic as she fell into the vortex which closed once she was inside.

The map room became silent for a few long moments before Spike broke the silence. “What…what happened?”

“I…I don’t know, Spike.” Twilight began looking around the crime scene but discovered that the map returned to normal. The only evidence that something happened was the scroll that was left behind. “She left the scroll behind. Maybe I can analyze it and find out where it took her.”

“I dunno, Twilight. Maybe it would be better if she were left wherever she ended up.”

“You know I can’t do that, Spike. Help me gather up the girls. We need to discuss what happened here.”

Stilwater, Michigan 1990

The city was a dump. It had been that way for many years. If you were rich and powerful, you got to live on the northern island where everything was much nicer and people lived in luxury. If you weren’t, you lived in the slums on the eastern side of the southern island. The western side was somewhere in the middle.

Stilwater was a city plagued with crime in almost every conceivable form. Some were paid to blow up property to force landowners to pay protection money, some were paid to steal cars for parts, some decided on whoring themselves out for a living. Other crimes included drug trafficking and defrauding insurance companies.

The biggest problem within the city was that the dominant power within the city wasn’t the city government and its police force. Rather, it was the street gangs and the most powerful gang at this time was the Vice Kings whose members wore yellow clothing to show their affiliation, also known as “flags”.

The Vice Kings were not without their competition though. The first gang to hold domination over Stilwater were Los Carnales who wore red. The Carnales were a gang of Hispanics and Caucasians led by the Lopez family. Backed by a Columbian drug cartel, the Carnales dominated Stilwater. When the brutality of the gang became too much, the Vice Kings were formed under the leadership of two men named Benjamin King and Julius Little and their gang quickly became powerful enough to push the Carnales out of the city for a time.

Unfortunately, with the Carnales all but wiped out, the Vice Kings effectively replaced the Carnales as the dominant power in Stilwater. Disgusted by this, Julius left the Vice Kings by a term known to the gangs as “dropping flags”. Julius had faded into the background since then.

Since the Vice Kings had no real rivals left in Stilwater, Benjamin King had turned to legal means to accrue wealth since money was no longer an issue. However, this only allowed the Carnales a means to get back into Stilwater and reclaim most of the southern island. The two sides had been engaging in brutal turf wars ever since.

Worse yet, there were rumors of a third gang who were beginning to gather power in Stilwater. This gang wore blue for their flags. They weren’t worth the attention of the other two gangs but that would change over time.

In the sums of the Carnales-held territory walked a couple who had just graduated high school, one of them just barely. One was a man of asian descent with slicked black hair and brown eyes wearing square sunglasses while the other was a woman with dark skin and hooped earrings. The man’s name was Johnny Gat and the girl was Aisha, who had preferred nobody knew of her last name.

“Eesh, we are gonna be set for life!” Johnny proudly declared.

Aisha gave an exasperated sigh, “Johnny, we are definitely not ‘set for life’. Your school transcript is proof of that.”

“What can I say? My fists and their faces were drawn to each other like magnets,” Johnny quipped.

“You put half of those people in the hospital and half of the student body transferred to a school out of town to get away from you.”

“And it made the boring graduation ceremony a lot shorter than it coulda been so I did you a favor.”

“Ugh!” Aisha had no idea why she put up with Johnny. Sure, the guy was muscular, hot and able to handle his own against the Carnales and Vice Kings crews, but his methods were a little too excessive as he left bodies in his wake. He was also very cocky. She contemplated whether it was worth staying in a relationship with him.

Just then, a bright flash of light went off in a nearby alleyway, taking the two by surprise. “What was that?” Aisha asked.

“Dunno, weird flashbang, though. All flash and no bang.”

At first the couple decided to ignore it but the sound of an infant crying changed their mind quickly. They proceeded into the alley to investigate. They found the burn marks that they first assumed was from a flashbang grenade until they spotted an infant in the center of the blast. Even stranger was the unblemished white and gold katana that lay next to the infant.

Aisha picked up the child and gave her a quick inspection to discover that she was carrying a baby girl. “Doesn’t look like there’s a note anywhere.” Johnny noted. “No sign of the mother either. Must have been one hell of an unwanted pregnancy.”

“Johnny!” Aisha admonished. She then quickly decided to drop it because there were more important things to deal with. “Look, we can’t just leave her like this. I say we take her with us.”

“I figured you were gonna say that, Eesh. I was already considering the wallpaper for the nursery. How does Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland sound?” He then picked up the katana. As he did he had to wonder why the kid was laying next to a weapon. If it were an omen it seemed like a good one. “Nice sword.” He then rested the blade on his right shoulder.

Ignoring the sword, Aisha did have one other important detail to consider. “What should we name her?”

“There’s plenty to go around. Doesn’t seem to be african american or hispanic so caucasian names will have to do. We can go with Alice, Sarah, Cynthia…” The infant frowned and fussed at the name suggestions. “No? Well we have plenty more options.”

As he considered more names he saw a strange mark over her left eye: two overlapping four-pointed stars with turquoise vapors. “Well, well, what do we have here?” Johnny inquired. “Starlight, star bright, first star I see tonight…”

The infant giggled and clapped happily from Johnny’s recitation. “You like that huh? Hey Eesh, whaddya say we go with Starlight?”

“That’s a beautiful name and she seems to like it. Starlight it is.”

What the two didn’t realize was that taking this child under their care would lead to a time of great chaos in the world in the years to come.