Chapters The Conversion Bureau - Most Faithful Student
Prologue: Operation Nightfall
Prologue: *Operation Nightfall *
Hours before dawn, a series of massive fireballs and conjured thunderbolts tore through the Conversion center. The wards that should have stopped them had been completely disenchanted, with the physical sigils shattered and the base’s more ephemeral defenses simply dispelled. The blast had leveled the chamber and reduced the alchemical serum it housed to harmless, magically inert ash and vapor, but had left both housing units – pony and ape – completely unharmed.
Only a mage could have controlled the flames, not to mention disenchant the protective spells surrounding the base. It literally never occurred to Twilight that the perpetrator could have been anyone but a unicorn.
Sunset Shimmer – “Dawn Marisol,” according to the fake papers she'd used to get into the camp – smirked as Celestia’s new most faithful sucker started to give orders reflecting that assumption, and watched Twilight direct her little ponies to find such a unicorn. Well, she was half -right…
Sunset dropped her façade of being a stunned bystander when Twilight ordered her familiar to take a letter. Sendfire was much quicker than a Twinned Tome for sending a message – a gout of flame dropping a letter in front of your eyes was harder to miss than a buzzing book – but it also required a dragon to exhale. Sealing his mouth magically took care of that, and took only a fraction of her power. Unfortunately, it required gestures and an incantation.
Twilight turned to the source and stared.
“Surprise,” Sunset said, before hurling a blast of red-hot electrical energy at her.
Twilight snarled, set all four of her hooves, and negated her spell in a shower of harmless motes of blue light – and again negated a second volley of electrical energy that Sunset had curveballed at her flank. She said “I don’t know what you think you’re doing or who you learned your tricks from, but –“
“-Celestia never told you? That figures,” Sunset said, leveling her wand – a rod of copper as big as her thumb at its widest, grooved in a spiral pattern, ending in a blunt point. “She never told me a damn thing about conversion when she taught me about magic.”
“You converted YOURSELF to THAT form?” Twilight said, eyes wide, pupils pinpricks. She fired a thin, crimson beam from her horn. Sunset grinned, and waved her hand – and suddenly, the ruins of the conversion chamber were full of a dense, greenish fog.
“Ask her about the Mirror of Reflected Worlds sometime,” Sunset said from somewhere within the miasma, before laughing. “Would have made infiltration easier, if I hadn’t wrecked it. But man - ripping open a hole in the in-between, and promising a cure for acquired thaumic poisoning syndrome through conversion? That’s inspired. She always could plot on her hooves.”
“Y-you’re lying!” Twilight said – a mistake when charging through fog. Sunset side-stepped it easily, then dismissed the fog and fired another jolt straight at Twilight’s cutie mark. Twilight let it burst and play against a shield of blue light. “Celestia is loving and kind. She would never plot murder on that scale, not even of –“
“See, now she’s even got you saying ‘not even humans,’” Sunset snarled. “That ‘not even humans’ attitude is the problem.”
“Shut up!” Twilight snarled, pouring power into an enormous ball of fire.
Another of the would-be Converted stepped out from behind Twilight and leveled a platinum rod tipped with a diamond. It fired a pulse of blue-white mist that caught and snuffed out part of the fireball, sending the rest of it veering wildly off course behind Sunset. Sunset could feel the heat, but was relatively safe.
Twilight fell to her chestnuts, staring in shock.
“I didn’t start the fire, Twilight Sparkle,” Sunset said. “I didn’t set the spells that blew your operation to kingdom come. I was only buying time for the people who did.”
“Hi,” said a voice from above. Twilight looked up and gasped. Standing on a cloud was a woman in jeans and a tank top, one of the latest batch who had volunteered for conversion. “Lemme introduce myself - Iris Kallistrate. Stormcaller. Human.” She grinned, all canines, and Twilight shivered. “Your friend with the red hair taught me how to throw lightning. Cool, huh?”
Twilight stared at her. “That’s – that’s impossible,” Twilight said. “This is a trick, it has to be. Humans can’t use magic. Humans have never used magic.”
“One must not ignore the evidence in front of them, darling,” said the woman with the diamond-tipped rod – and that word, darling , somehow managed to be a more venomous insult than if she had called Twilight a moon-banished whoresfoal of Tirac. She brushed a stray lock of black hair back under her violet silk shawl, then glowered at her. “Prejudices about our species aside.”
“Karima here is the best damn enchantress I’ve ever met,” Sunset said, indicating the woman who had just spoken, “on two legs or four. All you need to cast spells is the will, the wand, the word – and a soul, if I’m not mistaken?”
Twilight shook her head, teleporting backwards, away, in a blue-white flash. She was shaking as she returned to physical space from the aether, her eyes wide with fear, her mind’s gears turning. Stripping themselves, more like, Sunset thought – before banishing the thought. Hopefully she would see reason. That would make her job – ‘being X-Com with wands,’ as Ross put it - easier.
Sunset pointed her wand at her, her mouth a fanged snarl. “Next time you send a friendship report, tell Celestia that Sunset Shimmer – and the human magi she taught - send their regards. I can imagine it now – ‘Dear Princess Celestia, today I learned that the species you’re trying to destroy for being soulless abominations have always had souls, what’s up with that?’ Sincerely -”
“GUARDS!” Twilight screamed, her voice amplified with crackling magic. A blue streak of a Pegasus immediately responded, a rainbow contrail in her wake.
“Fuck,” Iris said. “Calling a Code Flue, NOW!”
Three other strangers rose up from the confused huddle of the converted – one who looked like, and was, a cowgirl; an androgynous man in a black hoodie; and a redheaded woman in a pink t-shirt and khaki shorts. The two women linked hands, closed eyes, and started chanting – and glowing with blue-white light.
Twilight snap-cast a rune of negation at them, lazily countered by Karima’s own rune, and then the six of them – and all of the other would-be converted in the field - vanished from the physical world and what was left of the conversion center, leaving Twilight and her friends to stare at the devastation and the empty field that had been full of humans mere seconds ago.
The Conversion Bureau - Most Faithful Student
Chapter 1: *Honesty *
Sunset Shimmer ran through the Mirror of Reflected Worlds without looking back.
The spell she used to transit warped the mirror past its breaking point in her wake, allowing her passage while destroying the glass and its enchantment behind her. Sunset was going to miss Equestria, but given Celestia’s plans for the human world Sunset knew in the depths of her soul that she could not afford to leave that route open. Not when Celestia could follow her through it, or send troops through it.
How petty her old, villainous ambitions seemed, now! How foolish, and how simple-minded of her! Once, she would have given anything to have been like - greater than - her mentor, the Princess. To have ruled, like the Princess.
No. No time for self-pity; time for escape, time for warning. She knew that she would emerge on the other side in the shape of a human, fully clothed – that lore was in Starswirl’s On the Riders and their Realm that she had stolen from the restricted section of the library (safely ensconced in the bag on what was a wither and was now her hip). That didn’t make her lurching transition from four feet to two any easier.
It didn’t make casting spells any easier, for that matter – her ability to sense leylines and tap mana wasn’t impaired, but her land bonds were severed and she had no way of doing anything with what little energy she could channel. She tried to throw a spurt of flame just to prove she still could, but that failed act of pyromancy made the tips of her fingers throb and left her feeling exhausted and raw, accomplishing little else.
Sunset collapsed in a heap under an awning of the concrete citadel she found herself in. It was her namesake hour, when stars in alien constellations shimmered for her; and yet there were electric lights in the windows of the square buildings that rose like monoliths in the distance, though the fortress she found herself in was quiet and dark.
She drank water from a gourd, tried to eat a dried alfalfa ration before she spit it out in disgust – apparently, this body couldn’t digest it - then nibbled at an oatcake with currants and found it palatable. She took stock of her belongings; she had gold on her she could sell for money, and some potions which she HOPED would work – including several vials of conversion serum, which she desperately needed to analyze and counter. But that could wait. It would take time for Celestia to discover that the Mirror had been broken, and even more time for her to devise another route to invade the human world.
There, away from every friend she had ever had, and having just betrayed the mentor she now had to admit was a genocidal tyrant, Sunset Shimmer cried herself to sleep.
The Conversion Bureau - Most Faithful Student
Chapter 2: *Kindness *
An hour later, Sunset awoke to find a woman standing over her, dressed in a heavy gold-colored suit over teal and purple clothes. She was blonde, tanned, tall and sharp-featured – almost gangly – and her face had nothing on it but concern.
Wore nothing but concern.
Given the last woman that Sunset had spoken to and how much kindness that woman had radiated, this did little to reassure her. Sunset’s reaction to the woman was a scream and another attempt to channel fire – again, accomplishing nothing but heating up her fingertips.
“It’s alright,” the woman said, but again her voice was too similar to her mentor’s to offer comfort. “What are you doing here so late at night? You must be freezing.”
“I don’t know where ‘here’ is and I don’t know who you are,” Sunset said. “I can leave…”
“Do you have anywhere to go? …you must not, can’t have one, if you don’t know where you are,” the woman mused. “This is John F. Kennedy Academy. Does that mean anything to you?”
Sunset shook her head, still tensed. She didn’t have magic, but she still had teeth if it came to that. Some of them canines, now.
“Oh, you poor girl,” the woman said with a sigh and a shake of her head. “At least let me give you a bed for the night, some proper food. You’ll freeze out here.”
Sunset’s stomach chose that moment to growl.
“Endless Night, that’s great timing, you fucking traitor,” she muttered into her belly.
The woman laughed at that. “My name is Aurora. Aurora Williams. I’m the headmistress here.” She flexed her hand – her open, empty hand – at Sunset. “And you are?”
It was a while before Sunset decided to speak. “…Sunset,” she said. “My name’s Sunset.”
Aurora frowned. “Did your parents throw you out?” she growled. “Let me guess. They found out about a girlfriend of yours and then they showed you the door?”
The idea of a parent abandoning a child for that reason was so absurd to Sunset’s Equestrian sensibilities that she didn’t realize Aurora was serious until after she had laughed in the woman’s face. Then Sunset cringed, and her face – and head - fell into her lap. “I wish it was that petty,” she said, in a sad low tone that she didn’t realize Aurora could hear.
And then, louder: “I ran away. I realized she was a monster and I ran away. I had to.”
Aurora offered her hand again and said, “I’m sorry,” and this time Sunset realized she meant it. She took Aurora’s hand and let the woman pull her up.
Sunset wouldn’t meet her gaze as she took her to a carriage – at least, not until Aurora got in with her, then started the engine; then she gaped at her before looking at the dashboard. Sunset put her hand on it, felt the thrumming and heat under it as Aurora pulled out of the parking lot.
According to her ex-mentor’s notes, they hadn’t developed electrical power yet. And those notes were only a century or two out of date! Yet this woman took a carriage that carried itself for granted – clearly so, given how casual her movements were – and Equestrian engineers considered such devices expensive curiosities after hundreds of years of work...
“Where are you from, if you don’t mind my asking?” Aurora said to her. Sunset recoiled like the dashboard was going to bite her, realizing that Aurora had been staring at her hands.
“A long way away,” she said. “Long story. Really do not want to get into it.”
“This must be surreal for you, being so far from home,” Aurora said, never taking her eyes off the horizon. “Depending on the kindness of a complete stranger, after suffering what you must have from your guardian. I don’t blame you for not trusting me.”
“Oh, she treated me kindly enough,” Sunset hissed. “I just – augh, I don’t even know where to begin. It wasn’t me she was planning on hurting.”
Aurora mumbled something. Sunset looked at her with what must have been evident fear, for she turned with an apologetic smile to her passenger for a second before turning her gaze back to the road. “I have a colleague at the school,” she said. “Doctor Cadenza Lovegood. I was just thinking out loud that you might want a check up with her.”
“Is she a psychologist?” Sunset asked, her voice flat as her ears would have been on the other side. She could actually feel their absence, her scalp itching where her ears should have been.
Aurora paused for a good while before answering. “She is,” Aurora said. “She specializes in cognitive-behavioral therapy, and in helping people from broken homes. And lovers, for that matter. Definitely not a pills and Freud kind of therapist, if that’s what you’re worried about.”
She was more worried about Doctor Cadenza’s reaction to 'I'm actually a unicorn from another world,' but she wasn’t about to say that. “I really don’t want to go,” she said.
“I won’t force you to do anything you don’t want to do, Sunset. I promise,” Aurora said, and Sunset could tell that she meant it.
Sunset nodded, and no more words passed between them under that twilight sky until they arrived at Aurora’s house.
