Starlight Fights a Giant Jellyfish
by Leviathan_Eclipse
The magic time bubble spat them out in yet another Equestria. Unfortunately, this Equestria was underwater. Before they could get a word out, Starlight Glimmer, Twilight Sparkle, and Spike each swallowed a muzzle full of water through their noses. The only light came from the shrinking time bubble and a few errant rays of sunlight glistening off of the air bubbles, quickly escaping their grasp.
Starlight could barely make out the other two figures through the haze of murky water as her fision began to grow dark at the edges. Panic overwhelmed the lilac unicorn. She tried kicking against what might as well have been a void for all the good it did. Before she blacked out, Starlight swore she could see a third pony swimming around, but her oxygen starved mind just wrote it off as double vision of her unenthusiastic travel companion.
Starlight woke with a gasp. Heart pounding, eyes darting left and right desperately scanning her surroundings. She failed to locate an alicorn or baby dragon. “Mother of Discord and her flaming road apples! Where the buck am I?”
“Such language for one so young! Do you kiss your mother with that mouth?” Starlight froze up at the sound of that voice. A voice she’d only heard from afar, and only a few times in her life, but anypony who ever heard her voice would never forget her universal motherly tone. Sure enough, out of the darkness came an alabaster alicorn, except… not. “To answer your rather vulgar question young one, we are in Seaquestria.”
Now that her brain could finally catch up and reboot, Starlight finally managed to make out finer details than vague colored blobs. She could still feel the water all around her, but it felt more natural. Around her were walls made of lumpy rock pillars with weird smoke spewing out from their tips. Finally, her eyes landed on the creature speaking to her. “Princess Celestia?”
“Ah, good. It seems you do recognize one of your princesses. You also seem to be much more talkative than the other two. Though I suppose I could understand, seeing as she resembles a good friend of mine.” Starlight caught a mischievous glint in the eye of what appeared to be a cross between an albino killer whale and the goddess of the sun.
“Why are you a sea pony?”
That got a giggle out of the princess. “And here I was hoping you’ve seen a hippocampus before. Then again, I guess we may be less common where you come from. So you know my name, and I have a feeling I know the names of your companions, but what of you?”
Starlight shook her head to clear out the lingering shock from almost drowning. “S-Starlight Glimmer… your highness. Forgive me if I don’t bow but I’m not the best at aquatic acrobatics on my best days.”
“Well it should be easy now that you’re a sea pony like the princess.” Starlight snapped her head in the direction of that voice. Swimming up to her was a purple and green shark. The only thing keeping Starlight from shooting it with a paralysis spell was her familiarity with who the creature had to be.
“Spike? Where’s Twilight?”
Spike rolled his eyes. “She’s still working through, well…” he trailed off, looking around and doing a flip in the water, “all of this.”
Unconsciously, Starlight began pacing around the room, proving herself wrong, not that she could or would acknowledge that. “Okay, first order of business. Why are we here? Do we need to restore Equestria to it’s original state? Are any of our ponies stuck here? Why did harmony send us to an ocean world?”
“I believe I can answer that.”
“We have to fight a giant jellyfish!” It wasn’t a question. Twilight Sparkle was snapped out of her panic and sent straight into a rage at the princess of the tides.
“It is an anomaly which nopony has questioned before. It has always been the great threat, nopony dared go near or even speak of it. Yet, soon after the pair of you arrived, many of our subjects began questioning the existence of said monster.”
“Wait… so it doesn’t actually exist?”
“Sadly Spike, it is all too real. What my sister was saying is our ponies are less fearful of it and more curious as to why it’s there in the first place. So either you all cast a mass spell of confusion upon entering our world, or your arrival has disrupted the memetic properties masking the truth behind an external entity. That said, I doubt myself or my sister could do anything about it.”
Starlight huffed out through her nostrils as she glared at the rulers in front of her. “So what makes you think we could take it on?”
“Because we’re the only ones who can alter the timeline.” Everypony looked to Twilight who looked everypony with a confident smirk. “Come on you two. It’s time to take down this overgrown cnidarian!”
Everypony, even the immortal fish ponies looked to her with tilted heads and lifted eyebrows as they all spoke at once. “What?”
Twilight huffed out and crossed her front limbs. “It’s the scientific name for jellyfish! Ugh, whatever! Let’s just go!”
“It tends to patrol around the base of Canterlot Mountain. Be careful my little ponies, and good luck.”
“So Twilight… why am I the bait again?” Starlight would have been sweating if her body had sweat glands and wasn’t underwater.
“Because you have the best reflexes, and also, we’re only in this mess because, once again, YOU SHATTERED THE TIMELINE IN THE FIRST PLACE!” Twilight grit her teeth as she tried to calm down, preforming her usual breathing technique.
Starlight rolled her eyes. “Mare, are you ever going to let that go?”
“Hmm, let me thing about that? No. Now, focus. The leviathan jelly will be coming around soon. When it gets close, it’ll try to attack. When it does, its guard will be lowered so me and spike will go for its weak point. You need to stay ‘stuck’ until the last possible moment before teleporting away. When it’s stunned from my initial attack, we’ll finish it off. Now be good bait and flail a bit. Gotta make it want to eat you just to be safe.” Twilight flashed her an encouraging, almost manic smile.
Starlight just gulped. “Ya know, I think I’ve been a really bad influence on you.”
Spike rolled his eyes. “What was your first clue?” Before Starlight could respond, they felt a disturbance in the water. “No time! Let’s go Twilight!” Without further fanfare, the pair bolted off like aquatic bats out of Tartarus.
After what felt like hours in her head but was likely only a dozen minutes, a luminescent blob appeared in the distance. Said blob was visibly undulating as it’s haunting blue glow came into sharper relief. Starlight had seen jellyfish before. In text books and even in the ocean when her father took her to the beach as a filly. This was not a jellyfish like she had ever seen. Its bulb was easily the size of her old house in Our Town. From what she could see, the tentacles could easily cover the Canterlot Mountain, if not also smother Ponyville and the Everfree forest
Despite not particularly wanting to be eaten, she couldn’t help but squirm in her bindings until she remembered the plan. Starlight continued wiggling but she made sure to charge up a teleport focused on Twilight’s thaumic signature. All the while, dozens if not hundreds of tentacles started reaching up and around the head to reach for their latest prey.
Starlight put all her mental effort into maintaining her spell matrix. It was ready to release, she just needed to let it go, but until then, she had to stay focused.
The multitude of appendages, widely varying in length and girth inched ever closer, even as the monster was rushing forward. It was like it wanted to cause as much fear as possible before making the killing blow. That worked out in their favor, but any guilt she had over ending this thing went out the window as she realized it somehow enjoyed tormenting its victims. That or whoever made this thing wanted it that way.
They were just a few pony lengths away now. She could make out patterns and structures within the transparent tendrils. The bulb at the head was almost upon her, and it appeared have an intricate tapestry of veins and nerves. Just as it’s flaps began to bend upwards, and its stingers were no more than a hoof away from her, she let her spell go.
The jellyfish consumed a bit of kelp before its whole body trembled in the closest approximation to pain it could feel. Starlight didn’t much care as she wove her mana together with Twilight to blast the abomination into last Tuesday. Since last Tuesday was in its separate time loop at the time, the monster ended up floating in a void until exposure to the raw temporal essence ripped it apart into its constituent threads, to find their ways back to the cannon timeline, stabilizing their home timeline just a bit.
Before they could congratulate themselves, another time bubble appeared, sucking them back to their own personal bubble universe held together with bubble gum, twine, and the spite of a primordial force of all things good.
“Note to that thing that keeps making holographic Twilights. If we’re going to a water world, a bit of a heads up would be much appreciated. Especially if we have to kill any more giant marine life!” With that, Starlight once again fell unconscious, knowing she was only starting to suffer the consequences of her actions.
Starlight could barely make out the other two figures through the haze of murky water as her fision began to grow dark at the edges. Panic overwhelmed the lilac unicorn. She tried kicking against what might as well have been a void for all the good it did. Before she blacked out, Starlight swore she could see a third pony swimming around, but her oxygen starved mind just wrote it off as double vision of her unenthusiastic travel companion.
Starlight woke with a gasp. Heart pounding, eyes darting left and right desperately scanning her surroundings. She failed to locate an alicorn or baby dragon. “Mother of Discord and her flaming road apples! Where the buck am I?”
“Such language for one so young! Do you kiss your mother with that mouth?” Starlight froze up at the sound of that voice. A voice she’d only heard from afar, and only a few times in her life, but anypony who ever heard her voice would never forget her universal motherly tone. Sure enough, out of the darkness came an alabaster alicorn, except… not. “To answer your rather vulgar question young one, we are in Seaquestria.”
Now that her brain could finally catch up and reboot, Starlight finally managed to make out finer details than vague colored blobs. She could still feel the water all around her, but it felt more natural. Around her were walls made of lumpy rock pillars with weird smoke spewing out from their tips. Finally, her eyes landed on the creature speaking to her. “Princess Celestia?”
“Ah, good. It seems you do recognize one of your princesses. You also seem to be much more talkative than the other two. Though I suppose I could understand, seeing as she resembles a good friend of mine.” Starlight caught a mischievous glint in the eye of what appeared to be a cross between an albino killer whale and the goddess of the sun.
“Why are you a sea pony?”
That got a giggle out of the princess. “And here I was hoping you’ve seen a hippocampus before. Then again, I guess we may be less common where you come from. So you know my name, and I have a feeling I know the names of your companions, but what of you?”
Starlight shook her head to clear out the lingering shock from almost drowning. “S-Starlight Glimmer… your highness. Forgive me if I don’t bow but I’m not the best at aquatic acrobatics on my best days.”
“Well it should be easy now that you’re a sea pony like the princess.” Starlight snapped her head in the direction of that voice. Swimming up to her was a purple and green shark. The only thing keeping Starlight from shooting it with a paralysis spell was her familiarity with who the creature had to be.
“Spike? Where’s Twilight?”
Spike rolled his eyes. “She’s still working through, well…” he trailed off, looking around and doing a flip in the water, “all of this.”
Unconsciously, Starlight began pacing around the room, proving herself wrong, not that she could or would acknowledge that. “Okay, first order of business. Why are we here? Do we need to restore Equestria to it’s original state? Are any of our ponies stuck here? Why did harmony send us to an ocean world?”
“I believe I can answer that.”
“We have to fight a giant jellyfish!” It wasn’t a question. Twilight Sparkle was snapped out of her panic and sent straight into a rage at the princess of the tides.
“It is an anomaly which nopony has questioned before. It has always been the great threat, nopony dared go near or even speak of it. Yet, soon after the pair of you arrived, many of our subjects began questioning the existence of said monster.”
“Wait… so it doesn’t actually exist?”
“Sadly Spike, it is all too real. What my sister was saying is our ponies are less fearful of it and more curious as to why it’s there in the first place. So either you all cast a mass spell of confusion upon entering our world, or your arrival has disrupted the memetic properties masking the truth behind an external entity. That said, I doubt myself or my sister could do anything about it.”
Starlight huffed out through her nostrils as she glared at the rulers in front of her. “So what makes you think we could take it on?”
“Because we’re the only ones who can alter the timeline.” Everypony looked to Twilight who looked everypony with a confident smirk. “Come on you two. It’s time to take down this overgrown cnidarian!”
Everypony, even the immortal fish ponies looked to her with tilted heads and lifted eyebrows as they all spoke at once. “What?”
Twilight huffed out and crossed her front limbs. “It’s the scientific name for jellyfish! Ugh, whatever! Let’s just go!”
“It tends to patrol around the base of Canterlot Mountain. Be careful my little ponies, and good luck.”
“So Twilight… why am I the bait again?” Starlight would have been sweating if her body had sweat glands and wasn’t underwater.
“Because you have the best reflexes, and also, we’re only in this mess because, once again, YOU SHATTERED THE TIMELINE IN THE FIRST PLACE!” Twilight grit her teeth as she tried to calm down, preforming her usual breathing technique.
Starlight rolled her eyes. “Mare, are you ever going to let that go?”
“Hmm, let me thing about that? No. Now, focus. The leviathan jelly will be coming around soon. When it gets close, it’ll try to attack. When it does, its guard will be lowered so me and spike will go for its weak point. You need to stay ‘stuck’ until the last possible moment before teleporting away. When it’s stunned from my initial attack, we’ll finish it off. Now be good bait and flail a bit. Gotta make it want to eat you just to be safe.” Twilight flashed her an encouraging, almost manic smile.
Starlight just gulped. “Ya know, I think I’ve been a really bad influence on you.”
Spike rolled his eyes. “What was your first clue?” Before Starlight could respond, they felt a disturbance in the water. “No time! Let’s go Twilight!” Without further fanfare, the pair bolted off like aquatic bats out of Tartarus.
After what felt like hours in her head but was likely only a dozen minutes, a luminescent blob appeared in the distance. Said blob was visibly undulating as it’s haunting blue glow came into sharper relief. Starlight had seen jellyfish before. In text books and even in the ocean when her father took her to the beach as a filly. This was not a jellyfish like she had ever seen. Its bulb was easily the size of her old house in Our Town. From what she could see, the tentacles could easily cover the Canterlot Mountain, if not also smother Ponyville and the Everfree forest
Despite not particularly wanting to be eaten, she couldn’t help but squirm in her bindings until she remembered the plan. Starlight continued wiggling but she made sure to charge up a teleport focused on Twilight’s thaumic signature. All the while, dozens if not hundreds of tentacles started reaching up and around the head to reach for their latest prey.
Starlight put all her mental effort into maintaining her spell matrix. It was ready to release, she just needed to let it go, but until then, she had to stay focused.
The multitude of appendages, widely varying in length and girth inched ever closer, even as the monster was rushing forward. It was like it wanted to cause as much fear as possible before making the killing blow. That worked out in their favor, but any guilt she had over ending this thing went out the window as she realized it somehow enjoyed tormenting its victims. That or whoever made this thing wanted it that way.
They were just a few pony lengths away now. She could make out patterns and structures within the transparent tendrils. The bulb at the head was almost upon her, and it appeared have an intricate tapestry of veins and nerves. Just as it’s flaps began to bend upwards, and its stingers were no more than a hoof away from her, she let her spell go.
The jellyfish consumed a bit of kelp before its whole body trembled in the closest approximation to pain it could feel. Starlight didn’t much care as she wove her mana together with Twilight to blast the abomination into last Tuesday. Since last Tuesday was in its separate time loop at the time, the monster ended up floating in a void until exposure to the raw temporal essence ripped it apart into its constituent threads, to find their ways back to the cannon timeline, stabilizing their home timeline just a bit.
Before they could congratulate themselves, another time bubble appeared, sucking them back to their own personal bubble universe held together with bubble gum, twine, and the spite of a primordial force of all things good.
“Note to that thing that keeps making holographic Twilights. If we’re going to a water world, a bit of a heads up would be much appreciated. Especially if we have to kill any more giant marine life!” With that, Starlight once again fell unconscious, knowing she was only starting to suffer the consequences of her actions.