The sun shone softly upon Cloudsdale as a faintly purplish-furred Unicorn laid in wait, sitting on a cloud, nonchalantly looking over a watch she had magic'd up. Her hair was a deep purple with bangs at the front and a blue streak flittering through it, and odd, wispy tattoo on her flank. This "cutie mark" was a symbol of her unique abilities of magic, and indeed, Starlight Glimmer was INCREDIBLY powerful and INCREDIBLY skilled when it came to magic. So skilled that she'd been able to improve on a time travel spell that only the greatest magician in all history had been able to craft.

Star Swirl the Bearded's magical spell had been a thing of incredible power. Designed only as kind of last resort. But Starlight Glimmer had decided to use it for a selfish, selfish reason. To keep Twilight Sparkle, the Princess of Friendship, from ever meeting her friends. How? Going to Cloudsdale, home of Rainbow Dash, and keeping her from accomplishing her "Sonic Rainboom". A breaking of the sound barrier that acted as a catalyst, which helped kick off all of her friend's special talents. Dash had gotten her cutie mark from winning a race as a child, Fluttershy, her fellow Pegasi, had then learned of her love of animals, Rarity had discovered her love of creating beautiful things, it all was connected. All of it went back to that Rainboom.

And so Starlight wanted to stop it. Because if the "Mane Six", as they were commonly called, had never gotten their cutie marks, they never would have interfered with her town of Equality, a place where nobody had nor needed cutie marks. At least, that was how she viewed it. She viewed what she'd done as making sure everyone was equal and on the exact same level, that nobody was lesser or greater than anyone. But in reality, she had pretty much forced that on the inhabitants. She'd never given them a chance to find out if they were GOOD at anything, and that had been wrong.

Not that she could see that. All she could feel was that she was in the right. And she didn't care how many times Twilight Sparkle tried to stop her, or how many times her stupid-

Wait a minute. Starlight Glimmer's eyes narrowed intensely as a figure calmly popped out of a shimmering, aquamarine portal before her, landing on the fluffy cloud ground some distance away as he glanced about. "welp." He remarked, holding a hand up to his forehead, squinting a bit. "so THAT'S what the sun looks like." He muttered, then peering over and looking down, down at the land of Equestria below. "now I know why they tell you "don't look down". didn't USE to be afraid of heights." He wryly remarked, his voice low and slightly sarcastic as he chuckled a bit, shaking his bony head.

Bony...head. A bony head, bony hands, a living skeleton that was distinctly NOT ponylike. It had a gaping nose slit, a big grinning smile, a rather tubby and short form with a blue jacket and blue slippers on his feet. He chuckled as he looked Starlight Glimmer over, pulling out what appeared to be some kind of food. "so! want a 'dog?"

"...a...whuh...?" Starlight Glimmer mumbled in confusion as she looked this...this STRANGE, STRANGE being over, glancing about as others who were in Cloudsdale glanced in his direction as well before wisely inching far, far away. "What's that?"

"an apostrophe dog. a hot dog. c'mon." He said, tossing it to her as she caught it, blinking before staring down at it.

"This is no "dog", it's a member of the species "Typha"! A group of wetland flowering plants with brown, oblong seedpods. Better known as a "water sausage"." She remarked. "...still, I DO like water sausages." She admitted, popping it into her mouth and chewing, enjoying the delightful, tangy, yet robust flavor as the skeleton shrugged and closed his eyes, grin widening some more.

"well, I'm a considerate guy. you sure have been busy, huh? so can I ask you a little question? if you don't mind."

Starlight munched on the "hot dog" some more before swallowing it down, looking the skeleton over. "...what kind of question?" She asked. "I mean, who are you anyhow?"

"the name's Sans. sans the skeleton. so I wanted to ask you this." Sans took in a deep breath. "do ya think anybody can be good, if they just TRY?"

"Huh?" Starlight muttered, scratching her head. "What's that supposed to mean?"

"you...are a dirty little hacker of time and space. you've been messing with things you ain't s'posed to. so I'll ask again. do you think anybody can be a good person?"

Starlight suddenly realized the skeleton's tone had shifted. It was now lower...darker. Colder.

Crueler.

"Are you trying to threaten me?" She asked, her eyes turning to dark slits as she stood up, her horn glittering with shimmering aquamarine light as she shook her head back and forth. "I don't have much patience for fools."

"lemme answer your question with another." Sans said as his closed eyes shot wide open, revealing nothing but dark, empty abysses for sockets, an empty expanse that stretched on and on, as if looking into her very soul. Or rather, what he viewed as a lack thereof. "DO YOU WANNA HAVE A BAD TIME?" He intoned, his voice like crawling maggots on her back as she shuddered.

"What's this all about?" She growled. "Why are you interfering with me?!" She demanded to know.

Sans snapped his fingers. Suddenly all of time and space went dark, as if the light of the universe itself had been put out, and she saw something hovering right in front of her chest. It was, unmistakably, a heart. A heart the color of light blue...which was soon turned into dark blue as she felt herself lifted up not by her own power, but the power of Sans. His left eye glittered with an almost unnatural blue glow, burning like a fire as she was dragged through the air, into the portal behind him...

As she found herself in what was nothing but an endless abyss of dusty ground. Tumbleweeds rolled by, the skies red and brown and ugly as the Earth upon which they stood, a foul wind that smelled like rotting corpses stinging her nostrils as Sans snapped his bony fingers again and she flopped to the ground, Sans gesturing about her.

"THIS. is what will happen to Equestria if I let you go on with your little revenge. this is what happens cuz you try to fiddle with my friends. in a few weeks after Twilight gives her speech to those students, they were supposed to finally meet me and my buddies. our two worlds would have moved forward into a bright new future. but that could only happen if Twilight was still Princess, if Pinkie was still her crazy yet lovable self." Sans remarked, looking off to the side. "...but all of that faded away. my buddies couldn't even remember them. but I'm used to time travel. my memories, they...they stick. so I could hitch a ride on your spell...and I could try and talk some sense into you."

"You expect me to buy that?!" Starlight Glimmer snapped, now hovering in the air on her OWN accord, her body glowing with light blue light as she aimed her horn squarely at Sans. "You expect me to buy that those stupid ponies are just soooooo important to the world that if they don't get their cutie marks, everything and everyone dies?! You expect me to BELIEVE that?"

"ain't just about the little tattoos you got on ya. its called the "butterfly effect"." Sans said, shaking his bony head back and forth. "the tiniest change in one place can cause a monsoon of change elsewhere. if just the right string gets pulled on a blanket, the whole thing can fall apart."

"Don't you lie to me!" Starlight Glimmer roared out, firing off a pulsating beam at Sans as he nonchalantly stepped to the side, wagging a disapproving finger at her.

"ah-ah-ah. ya think I'm just gonna stand here and let you hit me?" Sans remarked, Starlight firing off another beam at him as he calmly stepped to the side again and again. He ducked and dipped, easily sliding left and right, avoiding her assault.

"That is IT!" She roared out, as twin beams of light coalesced around her horn and Sans sighed.

"welp. guess I gotta bring out the big guns." he intoned, snapping his fingers. And just as Starlight aimed her horn and fired at him...

An instant nightmare struck. A horrible, gastly, bony face that faintly resembled some kind of mandibled beast popped up in midair right in front of Sans. It opened its mouth wide as a beam of pure, horrible, light blue energy pulsated forth like a burning star, and Starlight's attack was nothing before its fury. Her own twin beams of light dissolved in the swatch of horrific skeleton power that bathed over her, and it felt like she was struck by a freight train as she was sent spiralling through the air, skidding across the ground as Sans approached her, hands in the pockets of his jacket, eyes soulless and cold.

"turn around kid. it'd be a crime. if I had to go to far and step over that line. so unless you wanna have a bad time-"

"If you're going to INSULT me, don't you do it in rhyme!" Starlight groaned out, smoke wafting off her body as she struggled to get to her feet, panting and heaving as she shook her head back and forth, burn marks all over her.

"you're no fun." Sans said, pouting a bit as he flexed his arms, Starlight seeing the heart manifest before her. "that right there? that's your SOUL. the cultivation of your being. and let me be the first to tell you this. YOU'RE BONED." he remarked, Starlight being bounced up and down and all around as Sans swept his arms about, tossing her like a rag doll.

"OW-OW-OW-OW! You expect me to buy that six stupid pony's friendships are so important that the world will fall apart without them?! How ego-OWOWOWOWWOWOW!" Her monologue got stopped in mid-sentence as he bounced her about like a basketball before finally letting her flop to the ground, Starlight shooting back up as her eyes glowered darkly. "The ego on you and your friends is amazing!"

"it ain't ego to speak the truth. sometimes people ARE just that important. sometimes all it takes is one person to change everything." Sans said.

"PROVE it." Starlight demanded, rushing forward at him, a swirling, glimmering dark barrier around her as Sans sighed, eyes closed before he suddenly popped right behind her, and a portal opened up, Starlight falling through, down, down, down into a dark abyss before...

FWOP. She landed in a large pile of snow, shuddering as she wrapped her arms around herself, Sans carefullly taking off his jacket as he approached from behind, putting it around her as he pointed. "look there." He said, pointing at a figure who was sitting on a tree stump, surrounded by icy trees on all sides as an odd, bird-like, almost draconic figure with a faintly snowflake-esque head cleared its throat, holding a light blue wing up to its face.

"Ah-hem. What is my favorite Queen song? IIIIICLE! IIIIICLE! Icicle, icicle, icicle, iciclllle-RACE!" He proclaimed, the brown-haired young lad in a blue and red-striped long sleeve shirt laughing at this, covering their face with their hands. "Wow! Real laughs! Dad was wrong!"

"Who's...that?" Starlight Glimmer wanted to know as Sans sat down next to her.

"his name's Frisk, and he's a human. he ended up in the Underground, my home. the land of Monsters ain't really friendly to humans cuz their race trapped us down here eons ago. we'd been trying to get seven human souls to break the magical barrier that keeps us here, but instead of taking his, we found out something. we...we really liked him."

Sans escorted her through the forest as Frisk then looked over at a cube of ice, patting it on its "head". "Aw, c'mon. Cheer up!"

"...I can't. My hat is gone."

"You don't need clothing to define you. You can just be you."

"...you...you think so?" The ice cube quietly asked, Frisk nodding in agreement. "You know what? You're right! I'd rather be a HATER than a HATTER"! The Ice Cube proclaimed.

"one by one, he made friends with every monster he came across. he found a way to connect." Sans said as he put a bony hand on Starlight's shoulder, and she found herself whisked away to a large, lava-filled cavernous space, an ice cream man with blue fur selling the last of his stock to armored guards as Frisk cheerily smiled at the two.

"You two having fun?"

"Thanks for finally helping me to open up about my feelings." The rabbit guard remarked, nodding back at Frisk. "You're right, it's much better to be honest."

"...thanks." The second one said, as the two began to take their helmets off, Frisk heading up some nearby stairs as Sans and Starlight followed, Frisk handing over some gold to a cat and a crocodile in an alleway.

"Oh, WOW, you're actually willing to buy this garbage?" The cat-like monster asked, nervously blushing as Frisk looked over the cowboy hat, putting it on his head.

"Oh, I dunno, I think it looks good!"

"No, really, it's garbage. We got it at the dump. I mean, I even found this gun in a dumpster." The crocodile woman remarked, Frisk shrugging.

"It looks fine to me. And you guys need this more than I do."

"Ohhh, you are, like, so totally sweeeet! Isn't he, Bratty?"

"Oh, definitely, Catty. You are like, SOOOO nice."

"the kid had a quality about him that drew us all together. he was just so nice and kind, and he didn't ever give up on anyone." Sans said as he wistfully sighed. "we all grew to love him. and its because of him that we got out of the barrier. his friendship with another soul allowed the barrier to come down because he united all of us. sometimes that really is all it takes. just one really good, caring friend to change everything."

Starlight felt his shoulder again, and suddenly, everyone was together on the surface, all standing by Frisk as he rested his head on a large, goat-lady's shoulder.

"I could look at this for hours too." He said, Starlight glancing all about at the many, many monsters that were gazing with awe at the sunrise that stretched out before the valley she now stood high over with Sans.

"All because of this one human?" She asked Sans.

"yeeeep." Sans said with a smile, Starlight hanging her head as he took her shoulder again, and this time, she was back in Cloudsdale, sitting on a cloud with him as they looked over at a racing little Pegasus with rainbow hair. "so, you wanna talk?"

"...I lost my only friend when his parents took him away to Canterlot. All because he was so talented. All because of his cutie mark. I'd never learned how to make any other friends because I spent all my childhood with just him, and I thought it'd be us together. That we'd get our marks at the same time. I had to struggle and scrape just to get my mark, and everyone else seemed to get their talents found so easily, and..." She hung her head. "...it didn't seem fair. If there wasn't some magical mark that made everything easy for you..."

"it ain't always fair. but it ain't always unfair. you just do the best ya can with what ya got. but c'mon. you look down, and I think ol' Uncle Sans can cheer you up."

"How?"

Another pat on the shoulder, and suddenly, she was right in front of a brown-haired Asian American who had his arms stretched out as a goat-like, VERY nicely-smelling child stood nearby, the Asian kid grinning in delight.

"I'm gonna hug the HELL outta you." Frisk announced, Asriel calmly approaching with his own wide arms as Sans grinned.

He had a good feeling about this.