Once again, I'm dissatisfied with what I wrote. This time however, I don't know why. But still, expect Chapter 19 to be 8 million times better

Chapter Eighteen:
“Time Travel”

Starlight sat in the castle, waiting for the princess to return. It had been several months since the last time she saw Twilight, but she didn’t forget about her. Her loneliness kept the princess permanently on her mind.

The last several months were the most painful Starlight had ever endured. She was forced to go back to living in Sires Hollow, which was made worse by the fact that nopony even seemed to notice her absence. She’d been gone for several years, and they still didn’t care. And it hurt, more than she imagined it would.

She spent her first several days feeling hopeless, feeling like she should just give up on life. Why should she even continue? Nopony liked her. She would always be alone. And if she was always going to be alone, what was the point of getting revenge on Twilight? Maybe she should just give up.

However, Starlight fought these thoughts away. She wasn’t ready to give up. Giving up meant that there was nothing to live for. If she gave up, she knew she would never be able to pick herself back up. And since nopony else cared about her, that meant she would stay down forever. And however hopeless things seemed at that moment, Starlight wasn’t ready to accept such a fate.

So she went back to living in her previous home, now dusty and filled with spiders, focusing only on her revenge. She wanted Twilight to suffer. She wanted her to feel how she felt her whole life. She wanted to take away the princess’s friends. No, she wanted to make it so that she never had her friends in the first place. She was obsessed with it. She didn’t talk to or interact with anypony, staying cooped up in her home except to find a new book to study for a spell. Not that it mattered to her. It wasn’t like any of these ponies cared about her.

Slowly but surely, she made progress. Within a few weeks, she found an old spell of Starswirl the Beared’s, an unfinished time travel spell. However, it was one only able to be used once, and she knew she would need it more than that. So she spent the next several weeks tinkering with it, working out a way to use the spell an indefinite number of times. She also planned on trying to use this spell on something equally important, perhaps more so, but would work on that later. For now, she was focused on the princess

After this, she spent several weeks learning about the princess’s past, as well as those of her friends. She was particularly interested in how she and her friends all got their cutie marks at the exact same time. She felt like she could use this fact to her advantage, and planned on using this fact, combined with her time travel spell, to break them up. She was going to make the princess suffer through loneliness like she did.

All of this lead to this moment, Starlight lying in wait for the princess. She sat crossed legged, hooves on the table, waiting in the throne room as the princess entered. She caught the look of shock and fear on her face, and relished it for just a moment, as she watched it change it to a look of anger. “What are you doing here?” the princess demanded.

“I’d tell you,” Starlight spat as she cast her spell, “but I wouldn’t want to ruin the surprise,”.

With that, she traveled back in time, crumpling up and throwing the paper she used for the spell on the ground just before she left. She went to the day Twilight and her friends got their cutie marks, with the plan of stopping that from happening. She knew about Rainbow Dash’s explosion, a Sonic Rainboom she called it, and knew that all she had to do was prevent that from happening. And then Twilight and her friends wouldn’t get their cutie marks, and then she would suffer.

She watched from the clouds as Twilight appeared. “She’s so predictable,” she thought as she watched her look around, trying to find out where she was. Luckily for Starlight, the princess’s predictability helped her in this case. She would only be able to suffer if she remembered the friends she used to have, which is why she made the spell so that it would only be deactivated after she deactivated it. The only two places that Twilight could go were the present and this very moment in the past. Starlight also made sure to set it up so that, if Twilight were to figure out a way to come back to this moment from her new present, Starlight would automatically follow her to this moment. Which meant that there was nothing to prevent Starlight from taking her revenge.

She waited until the race started, then moved out of the clouds she was hiding in, in full view of the princess. She wanted her to watch as she destroyed her life, just as she watched as the princess destroyed hers. She saw Twilight watching her, and, the moment before Rainbow Dash performed her rainboom, made a show of using her magic to stop her in place.

“What are you doing?” the princess yelled as she made her way towards Starlight.

“You are about to find out,” Starlight told her, putting on an evil grin as she watched Twilight get sucked back to the present.

Once Twilight disappeared however, the grin Starlight wore for her dropped, and a feeling of frustration began to creep up on her. She wasn’t happy. She had just enacted her revenge, taking away everything from the princess like the princess had done to her. Yet she wasn’t happy, and it made her frustrated. She was frustrated that she couldn’t take joy in the suffering of the pony who made her suffer.

The feeling of hopelessness began to creep up on her again. Why was she even here? It wasn’t like it would change anything. Even if the princess suffered, she would still be alone. Nothing she did to the princess would change that fact, and she hated knowing that.

However, before she could think more about it, she felt a tug on her body, and watched as a portal opened up to take her back to a few minutes ago. “Already?” Starlight thought, annoyed. “Fine. Maybe watching your life get ruined a second time will make me happy”.

She let herself be sucked in the portal and deposited back to just a few minutes ago. At the same moment, she saw Twilight get deposited there, too. “Do you understand how much I hate you?” she thought, waiting for her to get into full view. Once she was, she quickly used a spell to freeze her in place. “Did you really think I’d let you come back and ruin my fun?” she asked her, putting on a fake grin for her. “Sorry to tell you this, but the spell I’ve created won’t be undone quite so easily,”.

She turned to fly away from her, to let her watch as her life was ruined again, then turned back and jumped on the frozen block she was trapped in. “My village,” she angrily told her, “was a sanctuary of equality, where no pony’s cutie mark allowed them to feel superior. It was a place where everypony was happy, but you made me watch as you and your friends ruined it! Now you get to watch as I ruin something special of yours!”.

With that, she sent a beam of magic at Rainbow Dash, knocking her off course and making her rainboom fail. She then looked up at Twilight, giving her a smile and a wave as she was once again sent to the present.

Once she disappeared, Starlight let out a scream of frustration. She wasn’t happy. She was hitting Twilight where she knew it would hurt her the most, but it did nothing for her. It did nothing to quell her anger and hate for the princess. She didn’t even feel a little bit better, and it made her more frustrated than she could stand.

She wanted somepony to vent to, somepony to hear her frustrations and tell her it was going to be okay, but she had no one. She’d been keeping her emotions pent up inside her for her whole life, and she hated it. Even in her village, she didn’t dare tell anypony her feelings for fear of them turning away. She had no choice but to keep everything in, and she felt like it was killing her.
Adding to her frustration, she again felt a tug, as saw the portal open up once again to send her a few minutes back in the past. “Can’t you just stay put in the present?” she screamed as she was once again pulled in.