The Alchemist and the Mirror

Chapters

Chapter 00: Prologue
Chapter 01: The Mirror
Chapter 02: Day 1
Chapter 03: Day 1 Pt. II
Chapter 04: Siren's Call
Chapter 05: Sweet Dreams (Aren't Made of This)
Chapter 06: Unforeseen Consequences
Chapter 07: Meeting of Minds
Chapter 08: Preparations
Chapter 09: Wilderness Sabbatical
Chapter 10: Deaf to All but the Song
Chapter 11: We Can Make the World Stop
Chapter 12: Our Demons
Chapter 13: Wander My Friends

Chapter 00: Prologue

Dear Diary,

It feels like it’s been forever since I’ve written one of these, and to be fair, it probably has been. What’s it been, like... fifteen years? Nah, gotta longer than that. I mean, the last time I bothered writing a personal diary had to have been before I finished the memoir I made Aqua Regia read before she volunteered in Project Genesis in lieu of execution. Wait... If I’m in my forties and I was... Okay... Not longer, just fourteen years.

Regardless, fourteen years is a long time by any definition. I mean, more than eight years on top of that... I’ve been on this world for more than half my life now, and things are changing so much. Populations are booming, towns have evolved into small cities, and the life expectancy is higher than it has ever been. I wonder if my parents are still alive and kicking? Mom’s gotta be in her seventies by now, dad in his eighties... Do they think about me at all, I wonder?

Sometimes, I wish I could go back and put up more of a fight when they decided to pretend I didn’t exist all those years back. When they disowned me, I lost something of myself, something I’ve been contemplating a lot, lately: family. I know that Lyra and Bon-Bon consider me a part of their herd, and their daughter, Honeydew, is like a big sister to Pura and Clara, but it’s just not the same. Honeydew has both Lyra and Bon-Bon’s parents, cousins, and aunts to call upon for possible support.

My girls grew up never knowing their grandparents, cousins, or aunts on my side of the family for fairly obvious reasons. Those not arrested in the inquisition of the house formerly known as Blueblood—a surprisingly high number in and of itself—have never shown an interest in the girls or me, not that I’m entirely sure I would ever have allowed it. Admittedly, a large amount of their assets became mine in the months that followed as form of reparations, and the Blueblood family was proud to a fault.

Still, Aqua Pura and Aqua Clara grew up as well as could be expected under the care of an eccentric single mother. In spite of my best efforts, Pura actually DID manage to read the entirety of the library in the Crystal Empire, and even got her cutie mark in library sciences in the process. Princess Twilight was certainly ecstatic about that. The day she saw Aqua Regia for the first and last time had a pretty big impact on Clara; she’s studying for a degree in mental health, and is basing her thesis on her sire. At least they’re more normal than I am. No inclination towards arson, murder, or jaywalking, or anything like that.

As for me, there’s not much to say. I’ve sorta bled into the background over the years. I’m still the most well-known alchemist in the Crystal Empire, but I seem to be treating illness, injury, and genetic issues more often than not these days. I’m still allowed to tinker and experiment, but it’s lost its lustre, as have a lot of things. I just hope the rumors about Twilight opening a portal back to my Earth aren’t true, or else I might get contracted to research ways to keep people from becoming ponies and ponies from not getting enough ambient magic on Earth, etc.

Am I tired, or am I just becoming predisposed to bouts of depression? I find myself yearning for those days when I had access to such wonders as video games and the internet. Heck, that’s all I seem to even really remember about being human; would I even remember how to walk, talk and act like a human if I went back to Earth?

~ Prologue ~

A pounding on my hotel room door stops my thoughts dead. Knowing that I probably won’t be finishing that page, I put aside my ballpoint pen and close the journal. There’s an inward sense of gratefulness for the interruption filling the back of my mind. That was going in a rather dark direction, and I know that such thoughts only end up putting me in a bad place.

There are three more solid thumps on the door, and then the tingle of magic alerts me to someone manipulating the lock. “Mom, are you still asleep?” is the query that floats through my bedroom door. “I swear, if I’m late for the party because you chose to sleep in again, I’ll light your arse on fire.”

“Sorry, Pura,” I call back, smiling into the vanity mirror at the reminder that she is most definitely my daughter. Got her mom’s penchant for swearing and everything. “Just felt the need to start a new diary is all. Also, watch your mouth; I’m still your mom and I can, and have in the past, removed all the bones from your legs with alchemy.”

I watch as the door creaks open to reveal a blond unicorn with a coat a darker shade of gray than my own. The embarrassed smile on her face says that she isn’t amused at being reminded of how she learned the ‘Don’t drink mommy’s experiments,’ lesson when she was five. “Ha ha, Mom,” she deadpans, looking me over. A smile crosses her face as she notes my mane and tail. “Wow, you look great; trying to keep up your youthful appearance?”

A smirk spreads across my face, and I flick my eye from Pura to my mane. Contrary to how I’ve worn it in the past, a long braided ponytail with a short fringe in front, it’s much shorter in the back, closer to how Princess Twilight wears it, while my face is framed by a rather spunky, uneven set of bangs. Also out of the norm is the set of strawberry blond streaks going throughout my otherwise silver-white mane.

“Oh please,” I respond, turning my nose up in mock offense. “I’m every bit as youthful as the day I gave birth to you.” Casing look over my shoulder, I give her a wink. “Besides, I think it goes well with my eye patch to give me a roguish look.”

Not missing a beat, Pura rolls her eyes at me. “No, mom, you look like a fuckin’ pirate,” she replies in monotone. “Now, are you ready to go?”

I note the large wrapped present protruding from her saddlebags, and frown, “Princess Flurry Heart happens to like pirates right now, kiddo,” I note, putting on my own saddlebags and placing a wrapped box of potions in one side. “Lemme guess, books.” When her cheeks flush red, I let out a laugh. “You’re getting as bad as Twilight, girl.”

“Yeah, well... potions from the alchemist!?” she says in an adorable display of being flustered. “Whodathunk?” At the sound of what could only be multiple confetti cannons going off in the distance, she gives me a worried look. “You reckon Ponyville will stay normal enough for Flurry’s birthday party?”

It’s my turn to share a deadpan look with my daughter. “Normal and Ponyville are mutually exclusive, Pura.” I lead her out of the hotel with as nonchalant an expression as I can. “We’ll be lucky if we don’t get some sort of kaiju wannabe or flavor villain of the month popping up to interrupt.” Under my breath I add, “Just keep Pinkie away from the hard cider and sex change potions... Or else I’m going to need a bloody vacation.”

~ Prologue ~

“And she’s all like, ‘Pinkamena Diane Pie, wherefore art the window coverings a conflagration?’ and I’m like, ‘Duh, mom, it’s cuz I like it that way, silly!’” Pinkie slurs, waving a half-empty plastic cup of soda around with one hoof, sloshing some of its contents into my face. “I didn’t have a good Christmas that year...”

Two and a half hours—I’ve had to listen to nearly two and a half hours of Pinkie’s horseshit, and believe me, I’ve been checking. Not once have I even seen the mare stop for air. Like me, she’s gotta be in her forties now, but she has the energy of a five-year-old on crack. How is this even possible?

Sucking a breath in between my teeth, I close my eyes—both of them. “Alright, Pinkie, there are so many things wrong with what you’re saying.” Mentally, I prepare the list. “One: you’d never heard of christmas until 20 years ago; you celebrated Hearth’s Warming as a filly.” I open my good eye a slit and grin. “Two: you might have changed some of the words, but I’d recognize Cops on Fire with Erections anywhere.” Taking the cup of soda from Pinkie’s hoof, I balance it on the tip of her snout. “Four: there is no three. You just did a mental playback to check.” Closing my eye again, I take another breath. “Five: that is a sugar free, non-alcoholic beverage. You are drunk on neither sugar or alcohol. Stop acting like you are, ya goofy fuzzball.”

Pinkie frowns, staring at the cup atop her muzzle. “When did you become such a party pooper, Silver Soren?” she says with a giggle. In one deft movement, the cup goes flipping into the air, its contents landing in her mouth, even as the cup itself vanishes into her mane. “I just wanted to say ‘Hi,’ to my bestest bestest friend from another world.”

Even as I laugh, I shake my head. “I’d almost believe that if you weren’t, in that demented little way of yours, trying to butter me up so that I might take you and Dash off the mail-order blacklist.” I glance over at the other ponies here in the main hall of Twilight’s castle, where I see Rainbow Dash boasting about something or other to Princess Cadance’s daughters, Etherea and Flurry Heart. “Look, Pinkie, the party’s almost over, and I’d really like to give the birthday girl her present.”

“Fine, ya got me,” she says with a smirk and a shrug. “Can’t blame a filly for trying, right?”

“A: When Rainbow Dash becomes a pterodactyl and accidentally eats a certain someone’s beloved housepet, yes, I can. B: You haven’t been a filly for like thirty years and you know it. Being a marechild don’t count none, either,” I reply with a wink. “Seriously though, Pinkie, it’s great to see you, but you’ve had me cordoned off from the rest of the party for hours; haven’t even been able to see my other daughter since she showed up.”

At that, I turn my back on the chatterbox before she can get another word in edgewise—which I just know would turn into a whole damn run-on paragraph—and make my way into the party. I could almost swear that she was stalling for something, but fuck only knows why she would be stalling at a bloody birthday party to keep me from seeing the birthday girl. That’d be like me giving a test subject a placebo when the whole reason that patient was there was to be experimented on.

Not even halfway across the hall, something interesting enough to give me pause catches my eye. In from a side entrance creeps the Princess of Friendship and Magic herself, Twilight Sparkle. That in itself isn’t actually all that unusual, given that this is her bloody castle and all, but there’s something about her demeanor that makes it seem like she’s not going to enjoy the party any; there’s a heavy weight on her shoulders, and though she’s making a brave face, her mind is elsewhere.

I watch as she makes her way through the festivities, stopping to talk in hushed tones to that Starlight Glimmer mare she befriended after fucking with the timeline repeatedly. Both mares look dead serious about whatever they are chatting about. This goes on for a few minutes before Twilight’s eyes flick in my direction, only to widen in alarm. Her ears fold back, and she whispers a few more things to Starlight before breaking away and moving on into the party.

Rather than approach me, however, she ignites her horn and begins to speak. “Silver Script, there’s something very important I need to tell you about, but this isn’t the time or place to have this discussion,” she whispers, her voice clear as day in my ears. What comes next almost has the tone of a royal order, but there’s something else in that voice, too: fear. “Meet me in my library in thirty minutes.”

Nodding absently in her direction, even though she’s already out of sight by the time I’ve even started going through the motion, I continue on my quest to give a teen her birthday gift. The entire time I’m talking to Flurry Heart and Etherea, even as I explain my alicorn concealment potion—more commonly known as a unicorn morph—and its ups and downs, my mind keeps going back to Twilight and her ominous request to speak.

~ Prologue ~

Thirty minutes later, I’m making my way through Twilight’s crystalline maze of a castle, cursing whoever designed it. Everyone says “A tree did it,” but as loathe as I am to believe such horseshit in a land where magic is a legitimate branch of science, it’s the answer that makes the most sense. The entire construct itself has a tree-like aesthetic on the outside, so I shouldn’t be surprised that its layout might make more sense to a fucking tree than it does a pony. Maybe I’m just spoiled from living in a normal three bedroom house with a fortified basement laboratory.

Regardless, it takes me more time and backtracks than I would like before I find the large double-doors. The one side is already ajar and there is light pouring through the pony-sized gap, but the moment I slip through, the door slams shut. My first reflex is to look back at the door, and when I do, I see the now closed doorway behind a shimmering pink barrier. There’s no denying that whatever Twilight wants to say, she wants there to be privacy.

Turning to face Twilight’s generally well-kept library, I see her planted in front of a large device seemingly built around a mirror. All around her are books stacked in towers, and a pile of rather ancient looking scrolls off to one side of the mess. You know something’s got her attention when she won’t even put books away.

“Silver, you were present in the Crystal Empire when I attended that Princess Summit all those years ago, right?” she asks, not facing or greeting me. I pause to consider her question before nodding an affirmative. “Do you recall anything odd happening around that time?”

Again, I have to think about that question. “You did seem to go AWOL for a few days partway through,” I reply, cautious of exactly what she’s getting at. “Rumor was you were eaten by a grue, though I’m pretty sure Pinkie was full of shit.”

“A unicorn by the name of Sunset Shimmer stole the Element of Magic, which was doubling as my crown at the time, and fled through this mirror.” She lifts a hoof to gesture at the item in question. “It serves as a fixed gateway between two worlds, not unlike the subspace highway I used to temporarily bridge your world and this one. It’s actually quite fascinating the way it’s tied to their lunar cycle, but that’s not important.

“Sunset fled through the mirror into a world very similar to your own.” She finally glances at me with a twinge of... guilt? “The humans of that world are much more colorful than those of your world, and seemingly were a counterpart of every pony in existence here. Sunset was living among them, biding her time at a school called Canterlot High. She’d been there for at least twenty years from the Equestrian standpoint, having forsaken Celestia’s tutelage in a desire for power, but she was still only in her teens when she came back through.”

“Different rates of time flow between the worlds, much like the cyclic nature of the afterlife,” I offered, giving her a soft smile. “Lemme guess; the flow of time only ever balances out when the mirror is active?”

“It seems that way, yes.” Twilight finally turned to face me completely, that look of guilt having gotten lost somewhere between relief and confusion. “The most interesting property is that when a pony goes through the portal, they come out on the other side a human, completely devoid of magic. Something changed when Sunset brought the Element of Magic through, however. People, namely the counterparts to the Elements of Harmony, began exhibiting signs of Equestrian magic when doing things they were passionate about, ‘Ponying up,’ as it were. This allowed me to unite the Elements of that world to quell Sunset’s rage and corruption by purifying her. Then we befriended her.”

I can’t quite stifle a derisive snort, and when she looks at me with a raised eyebrow, I smile. “Sorry, I’m just having a hard time not picturing you and the rest of the girls in schoolgirl outfit fighting the forces of evil. Please, continue.”

“To give you the long and short of it, I’ve been to that world a few times, helping out Sunset and the human equivalents of my friends,” she says a bit more tersely than she probably intended. “But when the group befriended my human counterpart around the time I was protecting our own timeline from Starlight, we decided that it was mutually beneficial for me to stay on this side of the portal, rather than risking unknown consequences of prolonged proximity to her.”

At this point in her speech she levitates down a book that I hadn’t noticed was mounted atop the device affixed to the machinery. “We’ve kept in touch using this book, which is linked to Sunset’s own book on the other side.” She frowns as a stricken look crosses her face. “After what I calculated to be about ten months from her perspective, I stopped receiving messages... I tried to open the portal, but it simply wouldn’t connect. I thought maybe having come into contact with my counterpart had weakened the bonds between worlds, but I kept trying every so often. Even my attempts to create a temporary subspace highway failed.”

She passes the large tome to me, opening it to the last page with any writing. “I received this message this morning.”

Twilight,

This is some seriously fucked up shit you got me into. I don’t even know where to begin, but I have the distinct impression that this world is trapped in some sort of time travel related insanity. When you asked me to check things out when the portal went live, you suspected your friends would all be in college or university by now, if not in their thirties, but they’re still in highschool. Sunset’s the only one with any inkling that time’s been fucked to shit, and even then, it’s only the impression that things aren’t supposed to be happening in such and such a way. She was genuinely surprised when I showed up asking for her.

There’s something else... a creature—I’m not sure if it’s some kind of monster or an angry deity or what—is here, causing trouble. It keeps popping up around holes in reality everyone says were appearing during some lame-ass event called the Friendship Games. It’s extremely powerful, but Sunset is hesitant to use the power of the Elements against it. She thinks that the Elements are causing time to loop in on itself, so she is saving it as a last resort.

I’m not sure if I’ll be coming back or not, Twi, or whether any of this will even make it home. Tell my girls I love them, okay?

~Silver Script

P.S. In the unlikely event that Sunset’s right and this message is somehow sent to before you showed me the portal, tell me not to go through the portal without THAT, as well as plenty of magic restoratives and alchemist’s fire. She just might be able to win with some extra help the next time around.

I stare at the book. “Well shit.”

~ Contact ~

I slammed Sunset’s cell-tome shut and turned to face her. “Alright, Sunset, it’s done,” I grunted, pulling off my eyepatch with one hand. “Are you absolutely sure Twilight will get the message?” I glanced at the middle of the intersection, where another magical vortex had begun to manifest. “And can you be so sure I’ll be there when the she gets the message and not here?”

The young woman before me ran her fingers through her fiery, rainslicked hair and leaned against a light pole. “We can’t be sure, but the two worlds are linked again; the moment you came through the portal, you became a part of this too,” she fired back with a hollow laugh. I could see the pain in her eyes as memories of previous loops trickled back. “I never did ask, though... why did you come through in the first place? You don’t know me or my friends at all...”

That was actually a good question. What was it that drove me to come through on Twilight’s behalf? Was it because I wanted a vacation from being a pony? Did I feel like I owed it to Twi as her friend, or was I too loyal to turn her down and let her go through the portal into an unknown, dangerous situation? With a shrug, I slid off the hood of the police car upon which I’d been sitting. Glancing around at Pinkie, Rarity, Applejack, Twilight and Sunset, I sighed. “I have a tendency to make things my problem. It’s how I ended up with a cursed eye in Equestria, after all.” Under my breath, I added, “I sure could use it right about now...”

Before Sunset could make any sort of remark, Rainbow Dash dropped down from above, Fluttershy coming in for a much more graceful landing behind her. “Alright, girls,” Rainbow said, wiping a bit of sweat from her brow, even as her wings dissolved into the aether. “This part of town’s been evacuated, but the army won’t be here for a while yet.”

Sunset Shimmer pushed off from the lamp post and straightened her jacket. “This is it then.” She looked even more pained than before. “We’ll have to do all we can.”

Walking around to the passenger side of the squad car, I frowned. “No, we just have to buy time,” I said, kicking in the passenger window. Reaching inside, I grabbed the still loaded shotgun that had been abandoned in the evacuation. I examined it before flicking off the safety and giving it a pump. “Even if we don’t succeed this time, maybe the next worldline will fare better.”

From the center of the vortex, a single green eye rose atop a slimy blue-black eyestalk; another soon followed. Tentacles surged up all around them, their sharp barbs glinting as lightning flashed through the sky. Shit, was this thing ugly or what? I’d seen enough hentai to know what was not going to happen here, but it’d almost be preferable.

Swallowing my fear, I stepped forward. “You girls do what you need to do,” I yelled, tightening my grip on the shotgun. “See you in the next world, Sunset.”

Charging into the intersection, I let out a bestial scream, firing off a shot at one of the eyestalks, even as multiple tentacles lashed out at me. The eye exploded into a mess of luminescent green-blue ichor as the buckshot tore through it, and an ungodly screech filled the air. Tentacle after tentacle scored scored hits against me, tearing through cloth and flesh alike as though both were butter.

Again and again, I fired off shells. None of my shots scored a direct hit, but each tore through either one of the flesh-rending barbs in my path, or deflected a tentacle enough to force it out of my way. Ichor sprayed every which way, coating me and staining my cargo pants and shirt phosphorescent green, this only seemed to encourage the wriggling terrors to redouble their efforts against me.

Whether by blood loss or misfortune, I tripped, and a tentacle seized me around the arms and torso, pinning the shotgun to my belly. The godless abomination raised my body into the air above the vortex, and when I looked down, I saw my many fanged death. “Come and get it, motherfucker! I hope I choke you!”

Chapter 01: The Mirror

I pace around my hotel room, continually shooting glances into the bathroom. There, in the bathtub and on the counters and even on the floor, is where my miniature travel lab has been set up. A number of beakers full of mana potion are cooking off atop small dragonfire burners on the floor, while in a bucket in the bathtub is the uncooked portion. It’s all pretty normal for what could easily be turned into a hotel room meth lab.

On the countertop, though, that’s the real prize: spell extracts. I haven’t made them in years, but it’s not that difficult, especially when you have access to a princess with some top tier combat spells. Basically, take a spell essence, mix it with the condensed form of your own magic, and then all you gotta do is take a swig and temporarily you are able to cast that spell. Ideally, I shouldn’t even need spell extracts, but if that letter’s right and time is looping, things probably aren’t going that well on previous me’s end. Especially if she’s asking me to bring what I think she’s asking.

Pura lets herself into the hotel room without my noticing, and it’s only when she speaks up that I even realize she’s there. “Mom, what’s going on,” she asks. “You just booked it out of the castle after seeing Princess Twilight, without even stopping to say goodbye to anypony. Nopony’s seen you this serious looking since you tried to put the fear into my first coltfriend, and I thought you were going to kill him then!”

I flick my eyes away from the mana condenser feeding my magic into the extracts onto the counter long enough to get a look at her face. “Can’t say too much, hon, but I’m going away on a trip on behalf of Princess Twilight,” I say calmly, slipping into the bathroom to take the mana potions off the burners. Once I’ve swapped in some fresh potions, I join her out in the main hotel room. “If all goes well, I’ll be back soon enough. If things go wrong, none of this will have ever happened, and there’ll be nothing for you to concern yourself about.”

Her eyebrow shoots up, and her lips tighten. With a shake of her head, she replies, “Yeah, it’s cryptic shit like this that makes me worry more.” Pura glances out the window, towards the Everfree. “I’ve heard the stories of what you’ve gotten up to when you don’t have a voice of reason. You go charging into a forest after a filly being chased by a monster. You literally wrestle a cockatrice to death. You literally get eaten by a giant lamia and blow it up from the inside. All of that inside one day, and none of it really fazed you, Mom. You were impulsive and reckless before you had me and Clara, and you’re still every bit impulsive.

“When you go off without a word, and I find you making potions and talking about a mysterious mission on the princess’s behest, I just know you’re going to get yourself into trouble.” Her eyes are actually watering as she says this. “You’ve got a bad heart, Mom. You can’t just go around like you’re a little filly on an adventure looking for her cutie mark.”

Without a word of protest on her behalf, I sit down beside her and put my wing around her. If she were still a filly, I could cover her completely, but just being able to hug her close works just as well. “I know, Pura, believe me, I know.” With a sigh, I steel myself. “You remember what I told you about the world I come from? How I never used to be a pony?”

She nods, but looks away. “I always thought you were just putting me on.”

With a laugh, I nod. “It’d certainly be nice if I was, but I really did come from a race of bipedal semi-apes.” A wistful smile crosses my face, and I look up at the ceiling. “Anyways, Twilight used to be in contact with a world of humans, similar to mine, where almost everypony in Equestria has a double. One of Princess Celestia’s earlier proteges lives there and Twilight befriended her. Unfortunately, the portal between the two worlds went dark ages ago, until today, around the same time she received a pretty weird message through her magical book.”

Pura frowned, already putting things together. “She can’t or won’t go, and asked you to go through in your stead because you should theoretically be able to acclimate quicker than any other pony?” She actually scoffs at this. “That doesn’t sound like the Princess of Friendship at all.”

“That’s ‘cause she didn’t ask me to go through,” I reply. “I—or a past iteration of me, at any rate—asked me to go through. I’m the one that sent the message she got this morning. I apparently went through once before, but there’s some weird timeline shit going on, and that world may have been in a Groundhog Day loop for the last two decades, with the only variations being caused by Twilight’s friends, or the sudden occurrence of me in their events.”

My daughter pushes away, and stands by the window. “I don’t like it, but it sounds like you’re already made up your mind.” Glancing back at me, she gives me a weak smile. “Just take care of yourself, Mom.”

~ 01 ~

A few hours later, I’m back on the road to Twilight’s castle. My enchanted saddlebags are packed to the brim with potions, bomb flasks, gems, and a few alchemical artifacts that have come into my possession over the years. Nothing too illegal or anything an alchemist of my caliber couldn’t have created, but a few things important enough to have some value in taking. If the story about her Element of Magic retaining its power on the other side holds true—and my alternate timeline doppelganger’s message seems to imply that it should—then my saddlebag of holding, a fairly powerful enchantment in and of itself, should in theory protect all of my magical possessions on the way through. Of course, that’s all a bunch of theorycraft right there. As much as I love to throw theory and intuition at the wall to see what’s not going to catch fire today, there comes a time when I have to stop relying on theory.

For all I know, this isn’t a stable time loop, and the previous me’s group succeeded in whatever they do, and my appearance would be both superfluous and largely confusing. I’m not sure meeting myself is really great for the timeline. Wouldn’t it suck to meet myself, only to be stuck there with me for a while and come to the realization that I’m a complete jerk?

Speaking of jerks, there’s also the whole matter of Twilight keeping the existence of both the portal and that other human world from me. After telling me a bit more about that other world, she actually asked me if I’m angry about her keeping it from me, and if I’m being genuine, I’m not sure of the answer. There’s no absolute answer to how I feel about this whole thing, and it kind of bugs me.

On the one hand, I’m not sure if I would have taken it as an option if she’d come to me about it as soon as she knew the option was there. Sure, I never wanted to give up my humanity and become a pony, but around the time Twilight came by this information, I was both heavily pregnant, and just settling into my new profession; would I even have been able to turn my back on all the studying and history I’d be leaving behind to go back to a human world where I would likely have no skills or trades in order to support my girls?

The other side of the coin, though, reminds me that it was, in a sense, my right to know I had the option to become human again. Even knowing that it wasn’t my world, it wouldn’t have killed her to pull me aside one day and just go, “Hey, Silver, if you ever wanna go on a vacation where you can be human again, I have this portal to a parallel world sitting in my library. You could take the girls and teach them about what it is to be human, or just go on a ‘Me Day’ and leave them with Lyra and Bon-Bon for the weekend.”

So condensing all of that down, am I mad? No, which is part of why I’m going at all. I can’t deny in the least that it’ll be nice to have honest-to-god real fingers again, and I can’t wait to eat a real hamburger and a guilt-free steak. For all the time I’ve spent eating genuine griffon cuisine, you just can’t get real beef in this world, on account of bovine sapience and all, without hitting some real shady and highly illegal places. So many human foods that I can catch up on.

I suppose I shouldn’t be surprised that by the time I’m back at Twilight’s castle’s library, there’s a little streamer of drool coming from the corner of my mouth. There’s only split-second opportunity between the time I step through the door and the moment I realize that fact, Twilight’s already noticed me. Without missing a beat, Twilight covers her face with a hoof, and mutters something about me and food under her breath.

Over the next twenty minutes, she briefs me on things she thinks I might need to know, and a few I likely don’t. People I’m likely to encounter is the first to be gone over, mentioning namely Sunset Shimmer, the staff of the school, and the doppelgangers of the Elements, ‘Science Twilight’ included. I may even end up meeting the other Shining Armor and Cadance.

After that is how to get into contact with Sunset. Sadly, this information is woefully inadequate, especially for Twilight. No cellular number, no home address, nothing more substantial than meet her at the school, or show up at Pinkie’s apartment above Sugarcube Corner. Hopefully, that won’t be necessary. Adult Pinkie still scares the everloving fuck out of me, never mind a human teen Pinkie.

Of course, once she starts talking about her friends and how much she wants to see them again, I have to remind the bloody mare about the very reasons she’d been hesitant to go after meeting her own doppelganger, adding on that the current circumstances only make it more dangerous for her specifically to go. Too goody-goody for her own good.

“I think that’s everything, Silver,” Twilight concludes, levitating the book onto the armature built around the portal. “As much as I want to help protect my friends, I can’t keep the portal open in order to protect Equestria if there really is something going wrong on the other side. If you manage to help them fix everything, the book on her end will hopefully work correctly and you’ll be able to call me to open the portal.”

I stop to ponder implication of what remains unsaid. If it doesn’t work correctly, where would I be then? Stuck in another reality, unable to ever see my family again? Or would my message loop back into yet another timeline, severing the ties to my Equestria, meaning that if that Twilight opens the portal, I could effectively meet myself and cause some kind of paradox? Shit, is that why Twilight is so hesitant to spend time with her human counterpart?

“I see,” I murmur, stepping up to the mirror. “Tell me, Twilight. Is this going to hurt?”

The purple alicorn’s horn ignited, pouring raw magic into the portal machine and bringing the device to life. “Honestly?” she asks, glancing at me as she turns a bit pink. “Only if you forget you’re a biped or walk into a glass door.”

I stick my tongue out at Twilight, holding back a comment about her simply being a complete twit. Instead, I simply tell her, “Unlike you, I was born for this shit,” and run through the portal.

~ One Will Be Forgotten ~

Sunset Shimmer watched in grim fascination as Silver Script, the woman she’d met a mere two months earlier, charged blindly into the mass of writhing tentacles. Never had she met anyone, human or pony, who was that willing to throw their life away on a gamble that their sacrifice would not be in vain, yet there she was, the human turned mare turned human again, trusting blindly in Sunset’s half-remembered conviction that the Elements were only going to cause time to loop back on itself. What hardships caused a person to treat their life as a commodity in the name of the greater good?

As the woman’s shotgun tore into the creature’s seething appendages, Sunset noticed Twilight, Rarity, and Fluttershy cringing away from the sight. She didn’t blame them; they were only kids, after all. It was one thing for them to see simulated violence in the television and internet, but to actually experience it was another thing entirely. Sunset wanted to look away from the display too, but she had to witness this.

“I don’t like this,” Applejack said quietly, her fists clenched at her sides. “She shouldn’t have to do this alone.”

“Totally!” Rainbow agreed, inclining her head to regard their leader. “We should be out there with her, kickin’ that thing’s butt too, not sitting here watching her attempt at being a one woman army.”

A low growl escaped Sunset’s throat, and she glared at her friends. “You think I don’t want to be out there helping her too?” She thrust her arm in Silver’s direction as the gray lady was snatched up by the abomination trying to push through into their world. “She’s buying us time in hopes that we can figure something out, to defeat that thing instead of just rolling the clock back, because today’s the day that thing breaks through completely, and if that thing gets loose, this world is doomed.” She clenched her eyes shut, even as the tears threatened to well up in her eyes. “We can’t help her, because if any of you die...” She grit her teeth at the thought. “I’m not sure I have enough power to do whatever it is the elements have been doing on its own.”

Twilight placed a comforting hand on Sunset’s shoulder. “Sunset, it’ll be alright,” she said, forcing Sunset to turn and face her. “So you didn’t manage to save the world this time. Silver Script is right: all we can do is bide our time until you are ready.”

A cry of “Come and get it, motherfucker! I hope I choke you!” reached Sunset’s ears, and she turned her head just in time to witness Silver Script plummet into the gaping maw now protruding from the rip in spacetime. They were out of time.

“Goodbye, Silver Script,” she mouthed. “I hope you’re right about the next world.”

Sunset shut her eyes once more, and began to focus on everything she held dear in this world. Her friendships and bonds, the place she’d carved for herself in this reality, even the hardships and the world itself: she thought of all of this and her desire to protect it, to not let this thing take them away from her. Deep in her heart, a tiny flame of magic surged to life. She embraced it, and nourished it with the hope that she might someday find a way to break this loop, allowing that flame to become a blazing inferno. “It’s time to Pony Up, girls.”

A burning spike of raw magic manifested upon her forehead, while two jets of fire burst free from her shoulders even as her hair lengthened and her clothes reformed into a dress. She opened her eyes and watched as her friends, even Twilight, began to manifest their ponytails and, in the case of Fluttershy and Rainbow, their wings one by one. All of them took up positions around her.

Reaching out with her own magic, Sunset quickly reached out to the essences of Honesty, Kindness, Generosity, Laughter, Loyalty, and Magic exuded by her friends, and gently pulled, dragging it into herself as one would take in a breath of air. The magical power built within her as she focused and channeled it, using her own body as the focus of the spell, as she had against the Dazzlings and even when she had purified the power-mad Twilight.

In that moment of raw, near godlike power, she caught a glimpse of insight, as she had countless times before. The Elements of Harmony would not work against this thing from outside time and space, and they knew it. Concepts and ideas of the most complicated spellwork she’d ever imagined flooded into her head. Greater than Starswirl, Princess Celestia, or even Princess Twilight could possibly manage, and for the fraction of a second it took for her to channel it all into the time travel spell she knew she had cast hundreds of times.

At the same time, a second instant of inspiration surged through her; Silver Script HAD been useful, and something had caused the portal to come alive for her to come through. That was my doing, too, she realized. The Elements certainly gave her more than enough power to do what she needed to do to ensure they had more time, so why not use the excess, rather than letting it go to waste? Even if she couldn’t open the portal permanently, maybe she could open it long enough to make sure Silver’s message went through, and allow someone to come through in the next iteration.

The world flashed around her, fading to darkness before being enveloped in a blinding explosion of color.

~ 01 ~

The ground trembled, rattling and jostling everything in Sunset Shimmer’s apartment. So violent was the shaking that Sunset was unable to sleep through it. She jerked upright, clutching the comforter to her pajamaed form, looking around in dazed alarm. Is it an earthquake? she wondered, fighting off a pang of deja vu.

Just when she was reaching for her cellphone, fully intent on shooting an SMS off to her friends, the tremors ceased. Sunset sat unmoving for many minutes. The idea of waiting to see if she felt any aftershocks before pestering her friends crossed her mind, and she had to admit that it was far more sensible. Was she even sure that it’d actually happened and she hadn’t simply been dreaming or experienced some magic-centric phenomena?

She frowned at this, but snatched up her phone anyway. The instant messaging app was no longer her destination however. Instead, she opened up the Whinny social media app and did a quick search for the keywords canterlot and earthquake. No messages came, even when she switched the feed to live updates. A spike of disappointment wedged itself in her belly, but she did her best to ignore it.

Was it only me that felt it? she thought, swiping ‘No’ when the app asked if she wanted notifications on new messages. It’s unlikely that it was a dream; the shaking persisted after I regained consciousness, and had a vague familiarity, but why?

The portal crossed her mind. It had been a while since Princess Twilight had been back, and the bridge between worlds had been devoid of any magic since then. She supposed if the portal had regained its connection rather suddenly, it would have produced a surge of magic perceptible to those who were sensitive to it. If more of her friends were as attuned to magic as she was, she might even have called them. As it stood, though, it was only Rarity and Twilight who had near-unicorn influence over magic, and both were still largely inexperienced with it.

She grimaced at the memory of Twilight’s first experience with magic. It had corrupted and empowered them, and, though she’d been purified, it left its scars. The girl was doing better, trying to help Sunset catalogue and study the effects Equestrian magic had on the humans exposed, but she hesitated when it came to Ponying Up herself. What would she think if she did experience that?

The clock on her phone told her it was quarter of six in the morning. It was far too early to get ready for classes at Canterlot High, but much too late to make it worthwhile to go back to sleep. Maybe I should just look over my homework until it’s time to get ready, she thought, rising from her bed to fetch some coffee.

She paused in the doorway, glancing back at her desk. Though it had a number of books stacked on it, she could easily spot the enchanted tome in the half-light of the pre-dawn hour. Princess Celestia had given her that book so that Sunset would never be without a means to contact her mentor, paired with a tome of her own. That very book then passed into Princess Twilight’s possession, and even allowed the genius alicorn to force the portal open on her own.

She crossed the room to her desk, wiping the last vestiges of sleep from the corners of her eyes, and looked down at the book. It looked like it always had, belying the cold hard fact that the book was as dead as the portal. When did I even notice that they were both nonfunctioning? No one could even feel the magic in them now.

With a sweep of her hand, her AP Physics textbook tumbled off of the tome. Putting her phone down, she traced her index finger across the beveled representation of her cutie mark, allowing herself a moment of whimsy by imagining that she could feel the stirring of magic beneath her fingertips. The book certainly hummed to the touch, as if it had never been devoid of magic.

Wait...

She placed her palm against the book, and sure enough, she felt the lively pulse of magic, like a heartbeat against her hand. Her eyes widened in shock, and she scrambled to flick on her desk lamp. There was no gentleness in her touch as she thumbed through the pages of the tome to the last entry with a blank page across from it.

Reaching for a pen with her free hand, she froze. There, scrawled across the page in her own neat handwriting, was a message she had no recollection of writing. At the top was a more hastily written one, also in her own handwriting. Am I still... dreaming?

Sunset,

This is going to seem strange reading a message to yourself you do not recall writing, and I can’t explain why in all the times this message has been sent, it hasn’t once reached Twilight. Maybe when I originally sent this, I’d intended for the page to only reach you in an attempt to warn you ahead of time, or maybe I hadn’t forced the portal open long enough for this page to send. Doesn’t matter in the long run, just keep in mind that what’s written here is not a joke.

She blinked. A message from herself? It was a ludicrous thought, yet the message was staring her right in the face. The strange thing was that it actually felt familiar, as if she had not only read it before, but even experienced the deja vu she was now experiencing before. She quickly decided she did not like the implications as she read on.

Sunset

In the coming weeks, Canterlot will be beset by intermittent tears in reality and a creature beyond mortal comprehension. At first, it will not be a problem for our friends, and we will successfully close the tears, but with each incursion, it grows in power, able to open larger and larger holes, before finally, it risks being able to come through. The Elements of Harmony can’t or won’t help, and can only send bits and pieces of remembrance back through time.

You must find a way to utilize the insight of previous timelines to defeat it, Sunset. It will not stop at trying to consume Canterlot or this world, and if it discovers the portal, regardless of its level of dormancy, it could find its way into Equestria, too. From there, it can only continue as a blight across the multiverse. The fate of countless lives and worlds hinge on your success.

Sure enough, at the bottom was her signature.

“You have got to be kidding me,” she groaned, once again reaching for the pen. “I’ve gotta write to Twilight about this. If I can feel magic in the book again, then the portal must at least be dormant again.”

Sunset paused as she flicked to the next blank page; it wasn’t so blank either. She blinked again. Unlike the previous page, this handwriting was messy and unfamiliar. No, that wasn’t quite right, either. It wasn’t messy so much as it was Equestrian mouth cursive adapted for handwriting. The author was incredibly vulgar but to the point. Whoever sent the message was at least familiar with Twilight, but also very familiar with human profanity. The message also implied that the portal was indeed live right now, and mirrored the sentiments of the previous Sunset.

Placing the tip of her pen down on the parchment of the next fresh page, she felt a powerful surge of magic, both beneath the pages of the tome and radiating from the direction of the portal, almost as if the barrier between worlds was fighting something. She couldn’t imagine the threat the two entries had warned against would be here so quickly, nor through the portal, so what...

The portal changes things, she reminded herself. If something came through that wasn’t supposed to be here, like the Element of Magic, the portal would try to resist, or break down the enchantment. Any sufficiently powerful enchantment wouldn’t be able to be broken down without causing a catastrophic error, though, so it’d have to work around it. My book is proof of it.

As quick as the sensation came, it went, and with it, she could feel the magic once again leaving the book. “No!” she shouted in frustration. “Why is the universe conspiring to keep me from getting Princess Twilight’s advice!?”

This time when she grabbed her phone, she did not hesitate to open the SMS app and send a group message to her friends.

Sighing, she closed the messaging application. “If an Equestrian has come through, I better find them before they get into too much trouble; Twilight was a disaster when she came through.”

Sunset glanced down at her phone’s display and then shook her head. Flicking into her contacts, she selected the direct line to Principal Celestia’s office—a number she’d been given to call only in the event of otherworldly matters. The counterpart to her former mentor wouldn’t be in for another hour or so, but she could leave a message. “Principal Celestia, it’s Sunset Shimmer. I am probably going to be absent today. Someone came through from Equestria and I need to find them ASAP. I don’t think this is going to be another Dazzlings or Friendship Games incident—” She didn’t want to mention the messages she’d received until she had more information. “—but I’m not taking any chances after the portal’s been offline for four months.”

With that, she quickly shucked her pajamas into the laundry basket and began hurriedly dressing. If she was lucky, she could still make the bus and get there before the pony got too far. In her experience, it was rather disorienting going bipedal from quadrupedal, and Princess Twilight had only really gained some grace after her second trip through the portal. Even then, the Princess still had ponyesque mannerisms when it came to her hands. How hard could it be to spot one pony turned human in Canterlot?

Chapter 02: Day 1

Now, when you spend as much time as a pony as I have, you become used to certain details about yourself. For a pegasus pony such as myself, to lose your wings is the human equivalent of losing one’s arms. Losing your tail is like losing both a part of your modesty, and your sense of balance. Then of course there’s your tits. As a pony, you don’t usually have to worry about your breasts being on display unless you’re on your back or you suffer from any number of conditions that would cause them to engorge to proportions impossible to hide. Even then, it’s a very unique fetish among ponies; most don’t even care.

Walking through Twilight’s mirror takes all of that and changes it without changing my overall brain function or structure. Maybe it’s because I’m used to transformation potions, being able to feel every bit of the process, and blocking out the often uncomfortable sensations of my body changing shape, or maybe the portal is just that much more effective, but I don’t feel one iota of change as I pass down the trippy rainbow seizure tube between worlds. As a former writer, I could call it a convenient means to avoid describing a transformation sequence, but to be honest, I’m more concerned by the fact that my muzzle is no longer in my field of view.

Like I said, you get used to certain things, and it is particularly alarming when you’re used to see a large part of your face occupying the bottom of your field of vision and instead you just have this little nub of a nose occupying the space between your eyes and mouth. Makes it pretty easy to ignore your surroundings, too.

“Whoa, did you just come out of the statue mirror?” a passing young man asks as he slows from his jog to regard me. He’s easily a head taller than me, and oddly he looks like he has relatively normal colored skin.

Dreadlocks and a beanie? Hippie? Pothead? I shake my head slowly, clearing the thoughts from my mind. Oh man, I am not used to my ears being on the side of my head anymore, I note as my hair brushes my ears. “Who, me?” I reflexively gesture at myself with my thumb. “Nah, that’d be weird. I was just on the other side of it.”

“Oh,” he says. Wiping a bead of sweat from his brow with a towel draped over his shoulders, he takes a sip from the water bottle clutched in his other hand. “Too bad. It’d be nice to have another pony girl come through the mirror. Things are far more lively when that happens.”

My eyebrow rises slightly at that. The guy obviously has met Twilight, or seen her around, during her adventures here. He’d probably know Sunset Shimmer, too, and might even know how to get into contact with her better than ‘Hope she’s at Pinkie’s,’ or ‘Hope she’s at school.’ “Alright, I lied,” I admit, casting a glance back at the mirror. “I’m a colleague of the Twilight Sparkle from my side of the mirror, and I need to find Sunset Shimmer. Know how I could get into contact with her?”

The guy flinches at the mention of her name, as if physically slapped. Oh yeah, she did cause some trouble here didn’t she? Even after the ten months Twilight suspects has passed on this side since she met her doppelganger, some people might still be sore about being a she demon to everybody. The guy lets out a sigh and then frowns, glancing at the main entrance of the school building directly across from us.

“No, sorry,” he says without any hint that he’s put off by my question. “She goes to this school, and it will be open in a few hours, though, so you could always wait around. Everyone passes the statue on their way in, so you’re bound to catch her.”

I bite the inside of my cheek and look up at the sky. Lo and behold, it’s roughly dawn. Well, I suppose I could wait around a bit. It would give me a good opportunity to acclimate to my altered body, maybe do a bit of information gathering while I’m at it. “Alright, thanks for the help,” I tell him, turning my head back down to meet his gaze. “Have a good run.”

He nods and begins to jog away. “Hope you find her, dudette!” he calls back as he turns at the next intersection. “Or that she finds you!”

Once the possible stoner is well out of eyesight, I turn to the mirror to examine myself. Starting at the very top, I see my hair is largely unchanged from my mane, though maybe a bit shorter in back to account for the fact that it doesn’t continue down my neck. My face is surprisingly cute, gray skinned with a little button nose and expressive silver eyebrows. My left eye is largely unchanged, a sapphire blue meeting my gaze. The other is obscured behind a pale leather eye patch.

Did the mirror suppress the cockatrice magic in my right eye? I can’t help but wonder as my hand drifts up to touch the eye patch. Dainty little fingers, free from blemish or chemical burn scars, trace the very bottom of the protective covering. The short nail of my thumb slips beneath the bottom of the patch, and I begin to press up. As the covering lifts, I’m particularly self-conscious of whether anybody is around to risk petrifying.

My concerns are quickly unfounded as I’m not treated to red-tinged binocular vision I’d experience any other time. Instead, my right eye looks completely normal, if you can ignore the glaring disparity in color between it and the left. Much as it has been since my eye wound up permanently housing the petrifying gaze of a cockatrice, it is a brilliant red that glistens like a blood ruby in the morning sun.

Moving down from my face, I take in my body. Not exactly fat, but not totally lithe, either. If I had to guess, I never shed any of the baby fat from when my girls were born. Still, the figure is feminine enough. My boobs are pretty pronounced in my reflection, emphasized by the charcoal gray form-fitting jacket. Been a pony too long to remember all the human cup sizes and whatnot, or if they even apply here, but I could easily liken them somewhere between a large grapefruit and a small melon: big, but not back-achingly huge.

Had this been me anywhere from twenty to thirty years ago, I would have been hard pressed not to reach up and give them both a squeeze. Thankfully, the fact that I have plenty of boob experience from being a mom, and my awareness that I am in a public place, gives me the willpower to ignore that compulsion. Instead, I simply cross my arms beneath my chest to feel their weight on my arms.

Hmm, wearing a bra, too; where do these clothes even come from? I’m left to wonder as I continue looking down my body. At the point at which my waist narrows sits a heavy brown leather belt. It’s not looped through belt loops on the green plaid skirt beneath or nothing; I think it’s just there to hold the light-pink medkit on my right hip that I suspect is what became of my saddlebag of holding. Focus on that later.

The skirt itself is actually pretty short, strangely enough. At most, it’s like halfway down my thigh. High enough to show a lot of leg, but not so high as to be like, “Hey, look at my panties!” That’s a miniskirt, right? Speaking of panties... like the bra, I should probably leave checking that out for a bathroom visit.

When I was a guy, I wasn’t much of a leg or foot person, so I practically gloss over my assessment of my legs. I have two of them, and they both end in feet. From what I can see, both legs are encased in dark, high denier pantyhose or tights. The are protected by some, in my opinion, stylish black flat soled shoes that look like they slip on and off easily.

My professional opinion? Hot damn, I’m a MILF, I think to myself with a smile, slowly shifting about on the spot.

Despite the recognizable colorings, it’s still strange seeing myself with human proportions after all these years, and it’s kind of entrancing to see the way I move as I rediscover the way a human’s muscles function. Conscious movement of my arms is a queer combination of my forelegs and wings, the manipulation of my fingers stemming from the adjustments I’d make to my primaries mid flight. Toes, on the other hand, are a big case of the old being new again.

It’s not what I’m used to, I decide, turning to face the school building, but for the time being, I suppose it’s a start.

~ 02 ~

It was times like these that she sincerely wished that she’d found a place to live closer to the school and portal. Her concerns about Princess Celestia coming to find her when she first came to this world had lead her to seek shelter a fair distance away. Though she was thankful enough to find a man unscrupulous enough to rent to a girl that this world considered underage, but not so much as to try to take advantage of her, she found that as her social life improved, it was starting to be more of a curse than a blessing.

Wind tore at the collar of her riding jacket as she sped off down the highway. Normally, she wouldn’t drive her motorcycle nearly this fast—she was not insured, nor was she even supposed to be in this world—but this was far from a normal circumstance, even by her standards. After all, there was a pony at or near the school grounds right at this very moment, and she knew next to nothing about them. Were they male or female? What did they even look like!?

As loathe as she was to admit it, she only really realized who Twilight Sparkle was when the mare had come to the defense of Fluttershy on the day that now felt decades away. Up until that moment, she’d mentally dismissed her as a background human she’d seen about Canterlot—the same background human who’d become her friend after the insanity of the Friendship Games. Fact of the matter was that even if this Silver Script stayed put, Sunset wasn’t sure she’d be able to find them.

There was also the matter of how this person tied into that other message in her book. Both messages mentioned an otherworldly threat not only to this world, but possibly entire universes. She supposed the pony could be some sort of expert on monsters or temporal physics, though the latter admittedly seemed farfetched. Only Starswirl the Bearded had made any headway into temporal magic, and even then, his spell only ever managed to cause what human interpretation of temporal mechanics referred to as a Causal loop. The research had been abandoned and locked up for centuries; surely nobody could have achieved that sort of expanded knowledge that quickly after she’d left.

As she slowed down for an off ramp, she had to remind herself that time did not seem to flow at equal rates between the two worlds when the portal wasn’t open. After all, Princess Celestia wouldn’t have been able to have two proteges at the same time without either knowing, never mind groom that other to become a princess. Just how many years went by in Equestria for every month she spent here? Just how bad had it gotten if she was indeed trapped in a time loop? Did the noble House of Shimmer still hold a position of power in Canterlot politics? Were her parents even still... ?

Pushing the thought away, Sunset pulled her motorcycle into the student parking lot. She needed to keep her head clear, at least for the time being. After she found this pony and was certain he or she wasn’t about to meet an unfortunate end in traffic, she could stop to worry about all that. Until then it would only serve as a distraction from the issue at hand.

After parking and dismounting her bike, she ran as fast as she could around the front of the building. Barely even a second was put aside to remove her helmet, for every second wasted was one better spent finding that pony. When she cut through the sports field and hopped the fence into the front of the school, however, she was treated to the sight of an empty schoolground. Nobody—human, pony, or otherwise—was present; it was just completely empty.

“Come, child. Have a seat,” came a woman’s voice to her immediate right, behind some of the decorative shrubbery. Following the voice, Sunset found an eyepatch bearing woman who looked to be in her early thirties in the corner between two shrubs, her legs comfortably folded beneath her. Before her was a jade teapot sitting atop an impossible jar of fire. “You look like you could use a calming cup of jasmine tea.”

The woman offered a jade teacup full of a steaming liquid that could only be tea. Taken aback, Sunset accepted the offered tea and crouched before the woman on the ground, her helmet quickly forgotten at her side. Though she knew she had more important things to do than have tea with strange women in the bushes in front of her school, something—some sort of intuition or half-forgotten memory?—told it would be best to accept.

“What brings a young woman riding on her shiny metal horse so early in the morning?” the woman asked in a playful tone, smiling in such a way as to accentuate the laugh lines on her face. Taking a sip from her own teacup, she looked up at the brightening sky with one blue eye. “This is the time to be fighting a losing battle with a snooze alarm, not rushing about, ignoring the things set out before her. Unless...”

Sunset blinked in confusion. Why was she wasting her time here? “I’m looking for someone,” she offered warily, sipping her cup of tea. Coffee was Sunset’s preferred beverage, but the tea was of high quality, and it reminded her of her old mentor. “They were in this area not too long ago, and I should really be looking for them right now.”

Nodding, the woman retrieved a napkin from a light pink cloth medical kit at her hip. “It must be pretty important,” the gray lady agreed, wiping her teacup and stashing it in the medkit of all places. “What are you expecting to find in this person: friend, lover, ally? They might still be about, if only you’d look.”

At the mention of an ally, Sunset narrowed her eyes. “You aren’t anything like what I expected, Silver Script,” she said with a smile, finishing her tea. “From your letter in my book, I was expecting—”

“A punk? A brute? A guy, perhaps?” Silver Script asked, arching her eyebrow. “Yeah, perceptions are easy to skew and misread, and you never know who’s putting you on, who’s fuckin’ with you, y’know?” She accepted Sunset’s cup and putting it away much like the first. Pouring out the remains in the pot, Silver did something very peculiar; she put the pot and the jar of fire into her medkit without creating any sort of distortion in the cloth. “You usually don’t know who’s dangerous or crazy as shit until it’s too late. Even if they give you bad vibes, it’s easy to mistake someone for criminally stupid, rather than a threat.”

Sunset rose to her feet and brushed off her jeans, before offering a hand to help Silver up. To her surprise, the pony-turned-human’s grip was far more firm than she would have expected. Even Twilight’s grip hadn’t been that firm her second time around. “Sounds like you’ve got some stories to tell,” she commented, leaning down to grab her helmet. “Just how much can you fit in that, anyway?”

“Practically or theoretically?” Silver asked with a toothy grin. “Let’s see... I have an entire lab worth of alchemy equipment and supplies, enough tea to survive ten weeks plus my favorite jade tea set, dozens upon dozens of potions, a few magical artifacts, and some personal belongings with me right now, and that’s just in practice. In theory, I could probably haul a couple of manticores, but never been arsed to test that. Why?”

Looking down at the helmet in her hands, Sunset bit her lip. “In my hurry to get here to find you, I kinda forgot to bring a spare helmet,” she said. “I can’t risk a ticket without raising a lot of questions I can’t answer without being committed.”

A shiver wormed its way down Sunset’s back as the woman’s grin widened. “Oooh, a challenge,” Silver said, rubbing her palms together. “Ever imagined you’d have a pocket rocket?”

~ 02 ~

“You know, when I asked how much your bag could hold, I wasn’t expecting you to fit my entire motorcycle in there,” Sunset says from the seat beside me. “I just wanted you to hold onto my helmet until I could go back to get the bike later. Helmets are expensive!”

I roll my eyes and glance toward the front of the bus, where the old man driving the bus is definitely trying to keep his eyes on the road and not risking a peek up my skirt. “C’mon, you know that stoner from the parking lot is going to spend a lot of sleepless nights wondering how we pulled that ‘vanishing act’ off,” I reply, making good use of air quotes for emphasis. No, seriously, do you have any idea how awkward air quotes are when you have goddamn hooves? “Besides, you said that pawn shop is closer to your apartment than the school is, right? This way, I’m saving you gas and a trip.”

The younger woman crosses her arms and looks out the window. “What do you have that you can sell that won’t be potentially harmful to this world?” She throws a sidelong glance to the bag at my waist. “Even if that tea set is an antique, Flim and Flam won’t give you too good of a deal.”

With casual ease, I reach into my enchanted bag and begin feeling about the void for one of my bartering chips. I close my fingers around a coarse object and carefully pull it out, taking care not to draw attention to it, and slip it into Sunset’s hands. “Pretty sure when cut and polished, one of these would run around a million dollars,” I whisper, fighting off another shit-eating grin as I watch her eyes widen. “Even if they try to ‘rip me off’, I’ll still end up getting a good price in the end. I paid maybe forty bits for this.”

With an almost frantic urgency, she shoves the piece of ore into my hand and urges it back toward the bag. “You can’t just wave a pink diamond around like that,” she practically hisses, and I can see her fighting the urge to smack me in the back of the head. “Jeeze, it’s like you’re trying to draw attention to yourself.”

I put my hand on her shoulder and look her in the eye. “Sunset, I don’t know how long I’m even going to be here,” I say calmly. “I have no job and no documentation, so I can’t exactly open a bank account here. Can’t even get some false credentials until I have some money to buy them.”

For a long while, she doesn’t say anything; I just watch her as the scenery flashes by. After maybe ten minutes, she says, “Don’t try and milk Flim and Flam for too much, okay? I do odd jobs for them and manage their shop’s online storefront, and they help me out financially in return.” She gives me a pleading look. “They’re as crooked as they come, but when it comes down to it, they’re my friends. Try not to take advantage of them.”

“I’m not looking to fleece anybody, Sunset,” I say flatly. “They’ll get rich off what I have to offer, and all I’ll be asking in return is a few things from the shop and a paltry sum to live off while I’m here.” I reach into my bag and pull out some chicken jerky. I don’t even have to see the look of horror in her eye to know that offering her a piece is probably not the best idea. Doesn’t stop me from stuffing my own face. “Besides, unless I find a place right quick, I’ma be payin’ you rent and utilities.”

The question of ‘What is wrong with you?’ is evident on her face, but she refrains from saying anything on the matter. Instead, she looks once more out the window and says, “This is our stop.”

After departing the bus and bidding the driver a pleasant day—never hurts to be courteous, even if the driver was trying to be a perv—Sunset leads me down the block to a charming little storefront that couldn’t be mistaken for anything other than a pawn shop. You know how it goes; guitars, computers and furniture all occupy the space behind barred windows. Pretty sure I even see what looks to be a game console or two. Tempting...

She leads me unceremoniously through the door, and I’m nearly crushed by a wave of raw nostalgia. It’s been almost twenty years since I’ve seen a television, and now here I am in a pawn shop surrounded by beautiful, glorious, kill-your-mom cathode ray tube televisions of all shapes and sizes. DVD and VHS cassette players in stacks line one row of shelves, and directly opposite of them were mounds upon mounds of discs and cassettes. I didn’t even recognize any of the titles on the spines or covers—otherworld differences and all—but it’s like fucking Christmas seeing all of this consumable media ripe for the picking.

Is it bad that this is kinda turning me on?

We continue past that aisle to a corner of the store opposite the one that has a whole bunch of computers. Does she suspect, or... She leads me to a countertop beneath a sign stating ‘Trade & Sell’, where one of the Flim-Flam brothers is seated. The mustachioed man doesn’t notice us approach, focused intently on the mechanism of a pocket watch that bears an alarming resemblance to a cursed compass I once owned. No sign of the other brother, though. Come to think of it, is this place even open yet?

We stand patiently near the counter, allowing Flam ample time to complete his operation on the delicate clockwork device. Once he sets it aside, he looks up to Sunset with a curious smile. “Sunset, you know the arrangement,” he says with an air of amusement. “No work during school hours; the labor board doesn’t appreciate us working kids your age during the weekday. We wouldn’t want anyone thinking my brother and I were contributing to the delinquency of a minor.”

Rather than remark or counterpoint in her defense, my bacon-haired companion tilts her head in my direction. When his eyes alight on me, I give a coy little wave. “My friend has something she thinks you might want to get your hands on,” she says coolly, as if she doesn’t particularly enjoy dealing with him. “Having seen it, I figured it might be better to do this before store hours. Not the sort of thing you want customers hearing about, lest they get ideas.”

His eyebrows rise as he looks at me with a greedy glimmer in his eyes. “You must have something worth a pretty penny, Miss,” he says, resting his elbows on the counter and steepling his hands before him. “May I see it?”

With a nod, I turn away, just enough that he can’t see the opening of the bag at my hip, and withdraw the unprocessed pink diamond. I hold it at arm’s length, but when he reaches out one hand to take the stone, I tighten my grip on it. “Tut-tut,” I say, clicking my tongue and waving a finger teasingly. “This is a raw pink diamond, mate. This stone is easily 5 grams. Even accounting for what’ll be lost during processing this’ll still be worth quite a bit.” I open my hand and allow him to take it. “I’m not looking for the whole value. Just enough to live comfortably for a couple of months.”

Flam pulls a magnifying eyepiece from his shirt pocket and begins examining the uncut gemstone. His jaw drops, and quite quickly it is followed by the eyepiece as he continues to gape at the stone. Without even looking, his free hand moves over to pick up a cordless handset. Pushing a single digit and then the call button, he puts the phone to his ear. “Flim, brother of mine,” he croaks in a shaky voice. “You gotta see this.”

~ 02 ~

The next half hour is spent making offers and parrying counter-offers. In the end, I get about $50,000, a high-end laptop with a bag and headset, a futon—just a mattress, not that bulky piece of furniture—a mini-fridge, a helmet should I ever need to ride bitch on Sunset’s snazzy not-Suzuki motorcycle, a backpack, and a safe. I still don’t know how I resisted getting a stack of DVDs that looked interesting. Hell, one of the brothers even offers to give us and ‘our’ swag a ride back to Sunset’s apartment.

Well, he gives me a ride to Sunset’s apartment. While Flim is loading the stuff out back—faux-chivalry in this world is the same as the one I was born in, it seems—I’m in the alley next to the shop carefully maneuvering Sunset’s bike out of my bag. Before the brother is even done loading the stuff, she’s off, presumably to her apartment to either tidy up or unlock the place, leaving me to ride with a strange man I barely know. Eh, if she trusts him enough to work for him...

God, it’s so weird getting into a truck is strange after all this time, I muse as I climb into the passenger seat. After being spoiled by the bus ride, I nearly have to be reminded by Flim to do up my seatbelt. Can you fuckin’ imagine? Show up in another world to lend a hand only to fuckin’ fly through a windshield?

“You’re not from around here. I can tell from your accent,” he says, idly tapping his fingers on the steering wheel while we wait at a traffic light. “What brings a pretty lady like you to Canterlot? For that matter, how do you know our Sunset.”

“Family friend sent me her way,” I reply in a flat voice. “Suggested she might need someone to keep an eye on her, and I needed to get away from it all for a while, y’know?”

“Can’t say I do.” He glances at me out of the corner of his eye as we continue on. “Ma’am, I’m going to be honest with you, which isn’t something my brother and I often do in our line of work. Sunset’s been a good employee to us, and if she didn’t trust you, we wouldn’t have done business with you. I can tell you’re holding something back, but you’re also being truthful enough.”

At the next traffic light, he turns to me and gives me a look. “That diamond you sold us: is any trouble going to come from it?”

I smile at him and lift my eyepatch to look him in both eyes. “I can one hundred percent guarantee that unless you go waving that thing around until you can hock it for more, nothing will come of it. It’s clean with no history.” Letting the eyepatch fall back into place, I lean back into the seat. “Can’t say the same about me, but none of that’s going to bring our fiery friend to harm.”

“I’ll hold you to that.”

Author's Note

Hey guys, sorry for the delay on this one. DarkxRedemption's work had them pretty busy and unable to assess the chapter until today. Next chapter'll be up in a few hours at most, so most joyous of occasions, right?

Now, in these last few chapters, you might have noticed a bit of a theme as far as word pairings/phrases showing up. They are in fact references toward one of my new favorite songs, 'Contact Redux (Feat. Meredith Hagan' by Trocadero. Can you spot them all?

Also, you expected Silver would make finding her hard for Sunset, didn't ya?

Chapter 03: Day 1 Pt. II

“Hey, motherfucker, this is your wake-up call!”

I jerk awake beneath a mountain of borrowed linens in Sunset’s living room. From beneath a comforter far too small for my new futon, I reach out one hand and grab the disposable cell phone I picked up at the bodega down the street. Before the phone can shout out my recorded alarm message again, I slip into the settings and turn off the alarm.

Why was Sunset so surprised that I needed to crash for a few hours; never heard of jet lag? I wonder as I push off the covers. She needed to attend school anyway, and she can’t do that if she’s watching me. Besides, it’s weird enough that I’m bunking with a teenage girl without her trying to babysit me, too.

The clock in the top corner of my screen says it’s quarter to four in the afternoon, and I remember that Sunset will be back in around an hour. It’s probably as good a time as any to freshen up; Luna knows I probably need it. You can’t do push-ups, crunches and leg lifts in a new body without working up a bit of a sweat. That reminds me, I need to get some clothes to last my stay here. No way in hell am I doing the foul bachelor method of living.

A grumble from my stomach alerts me to another problem, as well. I haven’t eaten anything more substantial than chicken jerky in more than half a day, and if my bad heart carried over through the portal, I’ll definitely start getting dizzy soon. Not the kind of person to raid another’s fridge, my eyes instead drift to a well-read looking pizza menu stuck to said fridge with a magnet.

Casually walking over, I pull the menu free and look it over. It has your standard prices, as well as several familiar specialty pizzas. I’m genuinely stuck between ordering one that offers chicken and heat in the form of hot sauce of some sort, but on the other hand, goddamn meat lover’s pizza sounds heavenly right now. Place even seems nearby, though I don’t exactly have a key to lock up. Somehow, I doubt she’d be pleased if she got robbed ‘cause I wanted a meat murder pizza. They do delivery though...

That’s when I notice a stack of bills on the counter beside the fridge, all of them addressed to Sunset Shimmer. Smiling, I ring up the pizzeria and place an order for not one, but two large pizzas. One of them is of course the long coveted meat lover’s pizza, but the other is a vegetarian pizza that I figure she’d prefer to my carnivore’s delight. Almost as an afterthought, I add in a small garlic bread pizza and a bottle of ginger beer. The guy on the other end knows exactly which apartment I mean, and gives me half an hour before the pizzas will be here.

Without further ado, I strut into the bathroom and begin taking off my clothes. Again, I’m reminded that had this been decades earlier, I’d be most eager to check out my new feminine body, while also giving myself a strip show. Now, though, I just shuck my jacket, skirt, pantyhose and shoes—yes, I fell asleep wearing shoes; sue me—onto the bathroom vanity before finally looking at myself. It’s kinda strange seeing myself in plain white panties and a low cut tank top; almost reminds me of Alien, and how Ellen Ripley spent part of the movie in a similar state of undress.

Almost immediately, my eyes are drawn to the wide scar across my abdomen, roughly where my cesarean would have been on my pony body. Funny how that one is still there, but my hands are practically flawless, I muse, pulling the tank top and bra off. Expecting to see my scars from the glass the day I depetrified Pound Cake and promptly collapsed into some broken glass, I am only more perplexed when, aside from a bit of lingering fat from my pregnancy all that time ago, I don’t even find so much as a freckle.

Without the bra or tank top, the bathroom mirror does give me an unobscured view of my new human tits. Again, not huge, but fairly large, especially in comparison to Sunset; just enough to spill over when I cross my arms. They just sit there like two pale, squishy globes, capped with large gray nipples that definitely make me think human, rather than horse.

This time, I can’t resist giving a little squeeze. It’s a lot different than when I’ve played with my teats as a pony. Regardless of their size or state, mine have never been particularly sensitive; I’ve known mares who get off just fine from stimulation of their teats, and even treated a few whose were too sensitive. Going from zero to “This is amazing!” Definitely gives me new respect to the mares who had to deal with the oversensitivity.

Knowing that I’ll just end up with my hand stuffed in my muff until the pizza guy shows up if I give into curiosity and my budding arousal, I drop my panties and step into the walk-in shower stall. On second thought... I duck back out of the shower and begin rooting through drawers, looking for bar-soap a different color than what is already sitting in the soap nook. Call it weird, but I personally don’t wanna groom myself with a bar of soap that might have been used on someone else’s arse. Plus, Sunset would probably appreciate not having to use the same bar of soap as me.

A near indeterminate amount of time later, I step out of the shower, dripping wet and plenty refreshed—face to face with Sunset Shimmer, who is standing in the bathroom door. “Where’s your money? I need to pay the pizza guy.”

I don’t really do anything to cover my modesty as I gesture back out the door toward my bedding. “Under the futon, there should be a few fifties,” I respond, reaching for a towel before casually drying myself in front of her as I meet her gaze with both eyes. It’s not like she wouldn’t see anything different in her locker room. “Unless maybe you want me to see if I can flash him for free pizza.”

“N-no!” she stammers and averts her eyes. “I want to be able to look him in the eye in the future.” She stops just inside the door and grabs the knob, pulling it shut as she goes. “Please close the bathroom door next time.”

I just grin and pull on my panties, tank top sans bra, and shoes and skirt. The jacket, bra, and pantyhose are simply draped over my arm as I step out after her. Just in time to hear the pizza guy saying he doesn’t have change for a fifty, I call out, “Oh let the guy keep the change, Sunset.” The guy’s eyes flick over to me, and I realize that my top is probably showing a bit more now that I don’t have a bra on, but I just give him a knowing smile and a wink as I pull my eyepatch on.

While Sunset trades two of the fifties for the two pizzas, the garlic fingers, and the soda, I set about putting away my bed—into the bag, of course. Then, it’s just a matter of moving my new cellphone and the rest of the loose money into a cheap purse I picked up. Once that’s out of the way with, I pull the coffee table back in front of the couch. I have just enough time to don my bag when Sunset drops the pizza boxes on the table.

“I was going to ask earlier about that jerky,” she says, pushing my meat lover’s towards me as she takes the vegetarian for herself. “Are you a griffon? I mean, you have some pony-like mannerisms, but you use your hands like it’s second nature to you.”

I pause even as I open my pizza box. “Now there’s an interesting question,” I say. “Ponies certainly thought I thought I was in my first year at the university in Canterlot. Hell, I even tried to give myself griffon claws, one time. That was messy. Nah, I’m just a simple pegasus mare who’s been through a lot.”

Her eyes widen, and she nearly drops her first slice of pizza. “How can you eat meat like that, then!?” she asks, growing even more aghast as I dig into my first slice with almost religious bliss on my face. “Wh—”

Despite the near spiritual experience I’m having eating this greasy pizza blessed with processed meats and cheeses, which you just can’t get in Equestria, I pause my feast. “Relax, I’ll tell you everything you need to know. My hands are second nature to me because they’re actually first nature; I was born a human male.”

If her jaw could drop any further, the neighbor downstairs would have an unexpected visitor. At first, she only listens in disbelief as I tell her about this other human world, about the show, and the life I left behind. She gets a bit confused when I start talking about perpendicular dimensions, so I get off on a tangent on that.

In the end, I end up holding up the lid of my pizza box and drawing a triad of circles. “Each of these dots represent a parallel world.” I point to one, stating, “Equestria,” then another, “An alternate Equestria where Celestia was evil,” and then, “Whatever this world is called. As it stands, none of these worlds naturally come into contact on their own.” I draw dotted lines between the central one and the two lower ones. “It isn’t until you get ponies like Starswirl the Bearded building bridges between the worlds that they ever actually touch.”

I push the pencil through space in between the three points, smiling as the pencil grazes all three circles. “With this perpendicular world, you have a mostly different world. Different cultures, different culturally significant naming conventions, different religions. The whole shebang.” I shrug. “You might see similarities between this parallel world,” I say, pointing to where the pencil is touching human-Equestria, “and the perpendicular one, or you might have Equestria bleed through in the form of inspiration for a cartoon.”

“Uh-huh,” is all she says, as I move back into my tale.

This time, I don’t stop. Not when I get to where I nearly murdered Twilight, not when I start my feud with house Blueblood. Not even when Aqua Regia raped me and murdered Ice Blossom right in front of me. It’s only when I get to when I finally broke and had myself committed to the mental hospital in Ponyville that I finally stop. Even then, it’s only because my voice is trembling, and tears are streaming down my cheeks.

Sunset looks mortified by what she’s heard, and almost afraid to speak. “I never did like the Bluebloods,” she finally manages. “There was always something off about them, but my parents liked them. Nobility always stuck together...”

My eyes widen in sudden realization when she says her parents liked the Bluebloods. “You were the missing daughter of House Shimmer,” I whisper drily. “Your parents were the ones that had a blood feud with the Bluebloods after your disappearance... the ones that tried to fake my death and have me locked away almost twenty years ago.” I blink and then look away, my cheeks burning. “Holy fuck, what kind of astronomical odds would have us meet after all these years?”

Sunset pulls out her phone and looks at the time. “Oh crap, I gotta go,” she says, her hand shaking as she tries to dab away tears starting to form. “I was supposed to meet the girls twenty minutes ago. Are you gonna be alright here by yourself?”

I nod, glancing at the laptop charging in the corner. “I’m sure I could find something to do.”

~ 03 ~

When Sunset finally arrived in the little cafe her friends always gathered at, she was treated to several concerned looks. In return, she gave them a tired look of their own that pretty much said she’d tell them just as soon as she got something to drink. In the meantime, she walked up to the counter to address the shop’s owner, Mr. Cake.

“Good afternoon, Sunset,” he said in a cheerful tone as he rinsed and wiped a coffee cup. Upon noting the distraction on her face, he quickly asked, “Need a pick-me-up?

“Yeah,” she answered, barely noticing. Her mind was caught on what the human-turned-pony-turned-human crashing on her living room floor had said. All of it. “Hot chocolate, please. Largest you got.”

“Sure thing,” he replied, grabbing a tall paper cup and moving over to one of his serving machines. “Go on and join your friends. It’s pretty empty for a change, so I’ll bring it over.”

Paying the man, Sunset made her way over to the booth her friends were all at. Rarity was already speaking by the time she slumped into the spot her friends always left her. “Sunset, darling, are you alright?” she asked with obvious concern. “Forgive me for saying this, but you look terrible.”

Rainbow Dash was next. “Yeah, Sunset,” she added in quickly. “You get us all worked up with that text message this morning, then show up in school and won’t say anything, and now you’re coming in here looking like someone ran over your dog. What gives?”

Sunset folded her hands on the table and just stared at them, unable to look at her friends. “It’s just been a really, really screwed up day,” she answered, after giving her words some thought. “I received a message this morning from the book, but not in the normal way.”

She placed her tome on the center of the table table and opened it for her friends to read. “I didn’t write any of that, or at least, I haven’t written it yet,” she said, watching her friends poring over the entry. “At some point this morning, the portal was open for a brief time, and that message appeared in the book. It’s not the only one, though.”

She turned the page and watched her friends struggling to read it. “It’s Equestrian mouth cursive written by hand,” she explained upon seeing their perplexed expressions. “Long and short of it is this: we’re in some sort of time loop, and a pony came through to help in the last iteration, even if they came unprepared.”

“I don’t much know about this time travel hooey,” Applejack added. “Help’s a good thing, though, ain’t it?”

Sunset bit her lip, and held her tongue as Mr. Cake gave her the hot chocolate that she’d ordered. “Normally, yeah,” she admitted, taking a big sip of scalding chocolatey goodness. “But if even half of what she’s said is true, things are far too complicated for me to think about without getting a migraine.”

“Wow, Sunny, it must be real hard if it makes your head hurt!” Pinkie exclaimed, bouncing in her seat. “You’re like the smartest person I know, next to Twilight, and if it makes your head hurt, it’s probably going to make her head hurt, so if you explain it to us, we’re all just going to be head hurty.”

Shaking her head, Twilight reached her hand across the table to close the book. “I don’t think it’s that kind of problem, Pinkie,” she said in a calming voice. “She hasn’t explained everything yet, but I imagine that it has more to do with the pony than what brings the pony here, right?”

There was nothing that really needed to be said on that; Twilight had hit the nail right on the head. She nodded before summarizing everything that Silver had told her, emphasizing that she pretty sure hadn’t heard everything she had to say, that supposedly around 20 years had passed from Princess Twilight’s perspective, and that this pony had apparently been through a lot. She did make sure to leave out the level of graphic detail that Silver’s recollection had.

“Um, if you think she’s supposed to be helping us, why did you leave her all alone in your apartment instead of bringing her with you?” Fluttershy asked, peering worriedly from beneath her curtain of pink hair. “I mean, why not bring her to the school with you, if you don’t mind telling...”

Sunset looked up at the ceiling, suddenly unsure of herself. It occurred to her that sharing that sort of thing must not have been all that easy, and that leaving her there might have been taken as some sort of rejection. “I honestly don’t know what to think about her,” she admitted, turning her hot chocolate in her hands as she thought. “On the one hand, she seems incredibly erratic, and I’m talking in comparison to Pinkie—”

“Aww, Shimmy, I’m flattered, but I don’t swing that way...”

“Pinkie, that’s erotic, not erratic,” Fluttershy whispered a little loudly into Pinkie’s ear, her face scarlet with embarrassment. “Erratic means unpredictable.”

“Anyway, that aside, I can’t exactly bring her to school, because unlike when Twilight came through the portal, this Silver Script came out looking old enough to be your mom if she had you when she was a teen.” She glanced out the window. “Also, I don’t know how to deal with her claims that she used to be a human guy. I mean, if it weren’t for the fact that she’s uncannily familiar with the technology here as well as knowing too much information about Equestria, I’d have thought that she was an escapee from Helping Hooves Clinic for the Criminally Insane.”

“The insane asylum?” Rainbow Dash asked with a start. “Do you think she’s dangerous?”

Sunset shook her head. “Everyone has the capacity to be dangerous, Rainbow Dash. Just look at us.” She gestured at herself and Twilight. “I don’t think she’d intentionally hurt anyone if she could help it, but again, if her story’s true, she’d probably set fire to half the city to protect anyone she was loyal to.”

~ 03 ~

So, it’s just like I figured: a woman by the name of Silver Script matching my general appearance doesn’t have a digital footprint in this world. Believe me, I checked. Public birth records, obituaries, and social media, local and international, all come up zero. Not even altering search parameters to search for a man matching my coloring yields anything, which means that I never existed in this reality or Equestria.

Not even my daughters exist here, which is kind of a bummer, but that’s how it goes, isn’t it? They don’t exist due to my lack of existence here. I bet they’d be pretty though.

Conversely, people that I know or knew in Equestria, are very much present here. A lot of them are even students at Canterlot High or at a school called Crystal Prep Academy. Even Ice Blossom is alive and attending the latter school. That’s something a whole nest of trouble I’m not going to get involved in. Just the fact that she’s alive and not murdered implies that her counterpart’s life is better here without me in it. Same can probably be said for her sister and my griffon friends, too.

Plus, there’s the whole “I’m old enough to be her mom,” thing going now, I remind myself. Let’s not get ourselves on a sex offender registry for crushing on a minor.

If there’s one plus to all of this, I’m highly unlikely to run into Aqua Regia’s counterpart. Much like my friends, I was curious as to whether or not she was still alive or in prison or something, so of course I looked her up. She’s attending Crystal Prep in the upper part of the city, making any sort of encounter highly unlikely. Honestly, I don’t know what I’d do if we ever met.

But enough about all that. The computer’s boring me right now, mostly because all of the digital media of this world is largely unfamiliar to me. Besides, I don’t know what kind of data cap Sunset’s WiFi has, so it’s not like I’m about to check out the Daring Do or Harry Trotter film adaptations. What to do, then? I ask myself as I put my unfinished slice of pizza back in the box.

Falling back into the surprisingly cushy couch, I ponder the situation at hand. Sunset and the counterparts of the Elements of Harmony are all capable of expressing Equestrian magic, or ‘Ponying Up’ as Twilight has quoted Sunset. Princess Twilight and the Elements were capable of doing this in a moment of passion or danger, but never at will. The princess said that both Sunset and human Twilight also underwent forcible, if altered, transformations when exposed to large volumes of pure magic.

Princess Twilight and Sunset have the benefit of having been Equestrians, but the others... did they develop wells of magic inside them as a result of exposure to real magic, or is it always present in this world, locked deep inside you by default? Would that mean that a mana potion could trigger a change? I ponder, tapping my chin. Is that why past-future me wanted me to bring mana potions and those?

Shaking my head, I reach over and shut off the lamp, plunging the room into darkness. Once that is done, I pull my legs up underneath me in an imitation of a pose I’ve only taken a handful of times as a pony: full lotus. I refuse to believe that there are only two options to, chance or outside influence. Like a unicorn learning spells, an earth pony learning their own strength, or a pegasus learning flight, it’s just got to be a matter of the mind coming into harmony with the body.

Like I did in a prison cell so many years ago, I shut my eyes and begin to envision a small candle flame stirring gently before me with my every breath. There’s nothing else to think about, just the flame. There’s no thought, no movement, and no sense of touch... There’s not even a Silver Script; only the flame remains.

A familiar sense of warm numbness floods my being after seconds or hours of my pulse growing slow. Time has no meaning, so for all I know, I might be sitting here for days. All I do know is that my awareness of my body and surroundings grows lesser with every breath. The candle is my reality now. Now this is familiar.

When I open my eyes, I decide, in spite of reality, I will be not in Sunset’s living room, but in the bridge between mind, body, and magic.

My eyes open, and I find myself in an obsidian black chamber, its walls lined with knowledge filled, flame blackened book shelves. In the center of the room stands a narrow waist high pillar that, even at this angle, I know to be triangular in shape. Atop it is an odd seed-shaped object, balanced precariously on one point. The entire room brings back some bad memories, but at least there is no book of pain nor a face in the wall.

Moving forward is an interesting experience, to say the least. Every step forward is one that I experience not only as a human, but as a pony as well. I’d almost go so far as to say that I am both in this mental construct, which honestly wouldn’t be too surprising. Given that I did not envision form, it’s probably a mental disconnect; body is human, mind is still geared to pony.

The balanced seed visibly shivers at my approach. If this is all inside my mind, and I desired to be at the bridge of mind, body, and magic, then this construct must be linked to it, but how does it work? I walk around the odd little pillar, examining both it and the seed for any sort of clue as to how they work. After all, my mind wouldn’t have conjured this without purpose; it simply wouldn’t.

Upon closer inspection, the top two thirds of the seed almost look as though they detach or open by some unseen mechanism. Maybe if I just... My finger traces along the tip of the device, and I leap back as a precaution. I can only watch in interest as top sinks into the bottom slightly, before folding open into a tilted triquetra-like flower with only three petals.

Almost immediately, I note that each ‘petal’ bears a symbol. The one raised the most resembles an open wound with three drops of blood, color and all. One of the two at the bottom two has a vaguely familiar, almost ethereal looking teal circle with three swirled tails. The last one looks like a dark magenta heart split in two, one half being hollow.

I frown, uncertain at what it is I am seeing. What do the symbols mean? Is this some sort of mechanism that will allow access to my magic? This seems incredibly asinine, but at the same time, it’s not like I expected it to be like flicking a switch. Maybe... if the properties I specified are body, mind, and magic, one of these symbols would ideally represent each of them.

A smile creases my face as I begin to puzzle it out. The wound seems like the most likely to represent the body, I decide, having bled enough in my past to not question it. The mind isn’t something you can really quantify into any sort of tangible image, so an abstract would be most likely... meaning the circle with the tails, right? I rub my chin and stare at the last symbol. This one honestly brings to mind the heart and soul idiom... yet I can’t shake the feeling that magic is the core—the heart and soul—of all Equestrian beings.

None of the petals budge to the touch when I try to close the seed, but strangely, the base upon which they are attached has some give. With great caution, I rotate it as I would a door knob or a tap, bringing heart and blood up to equal height with a resounding click. Almost without delay, I have results; a nostalgic warmth—one that I hadn’t realized I was missing—flows through my veins. Some of my magic has returned to me, and...

I jerk out of my meditative state, my chest and head aching. What in the blazes!? There’s no doubt I’ve changed position during my introspection. Instead of on the couch, I’m on the floor beside the coffee table, and Sunset Shimmer is there, crouched over me. At least, I think it is. She’s the only one who can really get into this apartment, but I can’t really tell; they’re shining a light in my eye.

Fingers fumble at the edge of my eye patch, and the light strays from my uncovered eye. Just as Sunset’s fingers find purchase and begin to pull at the eye patch, I grab her wrist and grunt. “I don’t think you wanna do that right now,” I wheeze, clutching my chest with my free hand. “At least, not without polarized lenses shielding your eyes.”

“What was that just now?” she asks, backing off to allow me to get up. “You were just sitting there, ramrod still, when I came in. Didn’t even respond when I said hi.” She kindly offers me a hand getting up when she sees I’m struggling to get to my feet. “All of a sudden, you just seize up and fall off the couch.”

I rub my head in search of bumps or bruises. Finding none, I lift my eyepatch just enough to be able to see light in my lower peripheral. Sure enough, it’s blood red like it normally is. “I was meditating on something,” I reply with a hoarse laugh. Heaving myself onto the couch, I grab the unopened bottle of ginger ale from the table. “I was puzzling over how you and the others ‘Pony Up’.”

She goggles at me, as if I’m suddenly in possession of nine heads or something. “How does meditation do that?” she says in obvious reference to whatever put me on the floor. “Meditation is supposed to be peaceful, isn’t it?”

Taking a swig of soda straight from the bottle, I shrug. “I have a pretty weak heart from repeated and intense alchemical poisoning,” I nonchalantly tell the young woman as I spot the time on a wall clock. Much later in the evening than I’d have thought. “Either I was deep enough that I stopped my heartbeat, or when I manipulated the way my body, mind, and magic interacted, my body went into shock.”

Her left eyebrow rises as she looks me over. “Well, I can tell you that you haven’t Ponied Up.” She walks away, toward her room, grabbing a slice of pizza from her box. “Your ears are still normal, and your hair isn’t long, nor do you have wings.” Sunset pauses in the doorway to her bedroom and looks back at me. “I’m going to finish up some homework and turn in for the night. Are you planning on doing anything tomorrow?”

“Depends; what day is it?” I ask, rising shakily to my feet and making room for my bedding again.

“Tomorrow’s Saturday, so I don’t have school,” she replies, nibbling her vegetarian pizza as she leans against the doorjamb. “I figured if you’re here to work with us, you might as well get to meet the girls sooner rather than later.”

“If that means I have an opportunity to go get some clothes, sure.” I shut off the light and flop onto my new futon. “I’m not going to be borrowing your stuff, no offense. Besides the fact that your bras might be too tight, I ain’t sharing panties with nobody, no how.”

From the doorway, I hear a snort of laughter and what might have been an, “Ew!” as if the idea repulses her, too. “Alright, see you in the morning.”

When the hallway light turns off and I hear her door close, I can’t quite stifle a little yawn. I’m really glad you didn’t pull off my eye patch, I muse as I do just that. In spite of the darkness in the room, I can see my hands as I hold them up in front of my face. Wreathed in a light blue glow, there’s no mistaking that yes, some of my magic has returned. I wonder if other me went through this same day. Did she end up accidentally petrifying Sunset? Or did she not come nearly as prepared and informed as I did, and fail to think about manipulating her spirit through meditation?

Author's Note

Yes! Delicious meat lover's/murder pizza! So good you gotta murder plenty of animals for it!

I hope you enjoyed this. Next chapter, so many panties, and someone plays the hero and makes a friend.

Chapter 04: Siren's Call

As I stir from a dreamless slumber, I can already feel my inner magics going back to the way they were. Can’t say that I’m too surprised to find the blue glow to be nothing more than a faint distortion of my otherwise normal sight. Would probably be necessary to conserve magic in a world that doesn’t seem to have any apparent ambient magical field, I note as I sit up on my futon. That does beg the question of where Sunset and her friends get their excess.

A groan escapes my throat as I struggle to find my eye patch in the early morning brightness. It isn’t far, of course: just beneath a pillow I don’t remember having here when I went to sleep. I guess Sunset got sick of my snoring and tried to smother me in my sleep... or she got up in the middle of the night, saw me without a pillow, and decided to be a good host. One of the two.

Sucking in a deep breath through my nose, I pull the eye patch on and sit upright in my blanket nest. It is good to find that I am still clothed in what I went to sleep in. Definitely reaffirms that she’s being a good host, and not going all Misery on me. It’s not that I don’t trust her or anything; you gotta remember that she’s the absentee daughter of House Shimmer, and that her folks had me carted off to a prison in the dead of night, leaving a forged suicide note and one very scared marefriend in my dorm room. It’s hard to just separate the two now that the connection has finally sunk in.

From everything Twilight’s told me about her, though, Sunset is not like the rest of her family. She’s not like Aqua Regia—a monster created by her environment—but rather a girl who’s struggled to find her lot in life and made a few bad decisions along the way. It’s something that, if I can get past the whole drow caste insanity the Canterlot nobility had kicking around during my time in University, I can relate a great deal to.

I suck in another deep breath, pushing aside that thought. It’s the sort of thing that can wait until after I’ve eaten something and had something non-carbonated to drink. What should I think about instead, though? my mind asks me in a way that would sound challenging had it a real voice. Like I really care that much about getting more clothes.

Getting back on my feet is just a matter of pulling myself up with the assistance of the arm of the couch. From there, the distance from there to the little kitchen nook is only a few staggered steps. Well, it’s technically further, but by the time I’ve made those first steps, my gait is back to normal.

Upon reaching the counter, I fumble about the cupboards for a glass to fetch myself a drink. That’s when I notice the note taped to the microwave. At first I barely even glance at it. Instead, I’m more focused on dislodging my panties from my plush human ass-crack as I gulp down a glass of water. Why do I feel like I’m forgetting something, I wonder as I finally pay it the note any mind.

Silver Script,

Rarity had a mini-crisis when she ran out of hair product in the middle of a shower, and because I live closest and her parents are out of town for the weekend, I figured it wouldn’t hurt for me to pop out and lend her some of mine. Since you wanted to get more clothes, I figured she might be helpful, so she’ll be coming back with me.

If you’re up by the time we get back, could you try to be decent? I know you’re still used to Equestria’s casual nudity, and I can relate, but I’m pretty sure that Rarity won’t share my sentiments. Twilight never had any such problems, but then again, she wasn’t staying for an indeterminate amount of time and she took our cues well enough to get by. Just, please don’t have a repeat of yesterday. We should be there around ten.

Sunset

I glance at the clock on the microwave. It reads five after ten in the morning. Around that same moment, I hear a key in the apartment door. In walks Sunset, dressed in her riding clothes, followed by Rarity in a blue-gray top, indigo skirt, and violet knee-high stripper boots. Both of them are carrying motorcycle helmets, and everything seems normal until they look at me. Then everything seems to go into slow motion.

Both of their heads turn to regard me standing there at the sink. Sunset’s palm meets her face, while Rarity’s ashen cheeks turn scarlet even as she looks away. I look down and come to realize that my skirt came off while I slept, leaving me standing in the kitchen nook in nothing but panties and a tank top. I guess I got too hot last night?

A blush creeps across my own face as I grab for the first thing I can to hide my underwear: a cutting board on the nearby counter. Unfortunately, not enough attention was paid to the object I was grabbing, nor what was sitting atop it, for me to realize that a large chef’s knife is sitting atop it. All of our eyes widen as the knife drops from the board, on a direct course for my left foot. I clench my eyes shut and brace myself for the pain.

A gasp of alarm the other two women in the room, but the pain never comes. Slowly, I open my eyelid and peer down. Rather than finding a knife jutting out of a blood-spurting foot or a number of severed toes rolling away from a bleeding stump, I’m treated to the curious sight of the knife floating an inch above my left foot. Just barely visible is a pale green aura of magic, the likes of which I’d never seen before.

“Well, that’s new,” I say, moving my left foot well out of range of the knife should it fall. I look to Sunset and arch an eyebrow. “This your doing, kiddo?”

She turns her wide-eyed gaze from the gravity defying knife to my good eye. “That’s not me,” she croaks, an unsure look filling her eyes. “Rarity, either. Neither of us are transformed.”

Continuing to clutch the cutting board in front of my lower half, I crouch down to get a closer look at the floating knife. Sunset’s definitely not lying about it being Rarity. Having met Equestria’s fashion mogul on multiple occasions and seen her telekinesis at work, I can safely say that this is not her magic.

“Curious,” I murmur, poking the flat of the blade, which in turn gently revolves on the spot. With a smirk, I lift my patch just enough to peek at the knife without looking at either of the girls directly in front of me. “Simply fascinating.”

Though the knife is already wrapped in a tangible sheath of magic, my eye is picking up a near nonexistent aura strand stretching towards my chest. With but a mental twitch, that bit connection to the knife cuts off, dropping the blade to the ground, as though it had never considered violating gravity. I simply stare at it, a full-blown smile taking over my face.

“Was her other eye glowing just now?” I hear Rarity ask as I slide the patch back over. Something about that makes the back of my mind prickle with ideas.

“Yo, Sunset,” I call out, standing up and considering using my newfound ability to use unicorn magic to fetch my skirt. Nah, it’d be too weird. “Princess Twilight said that the girls managed to produce outward magical phenomena during a battle of bands. Did that include those whose Equestrian counterparts are non-unicorns?”

“That’s kind of out of left field, but yeah, Fluttershy did,” she replies, moving out of the way as I make for my bed. She tries not to look as I bend over to scoop up the discarded skirt beside my bed. “What of it?”

“Unaided, or did she have some sort of focus?” I crouch down behind the couch and slide on my skirt.

“She had a tambourine... what is this about?”

I shrug, before grabbing my bag and jacket. “Just building a theory of how magic functions in this world,” I reply, joining the girls at the door. “We going now, or did you want to grab a slice of cold pizza before we go anywhere?”

Rarity just stares at me, her mouth opening and closing as she tries to fathom what is even happening. Finally, she turns to Sunset and says, “Well, darling, I understand why you don’t know exactly how to cope with her.” She glances at me out of the corner of her eyes. “I dare say she’s as coherent as our Pinkie, as savvy as pony Twilight, and as modest as Rainbow.”

“Hey, don’t compare me to Pinkie Pie,” I say, putting my hands up in a warding gesture as I slip between them and out the still-open door. “Our Pinkie scares the crap out of me. I’m still trying to figure out the meaning behind my twenty-second birthday gift. Seriously, who gets a mare a cucumber, wool shears, and a muffin tin without any explanation?”

~ 04 ~

Surprisingly, or maybe not so much, Sunset’s place is practically within spitting distance of a shopping mall. For that reason, we end up walking rather than catching a bus. It’s actually kinda nice and nostalgic for me. Y’know how it goes; even if you’ve walked the streets of Canterlot, it’s not remotely comparable if you’ve walked the streets of any sprawling man-made metropolis in your lifetime.

Personally, I’d like nothing more than to listen idly to them conversing while we walk, inwardly considering this morning’s turn of events and its possible relationship to what I did last night. To some extent, I’m even able to think about it for a few moments. Much of the trip, however, is spent updating the two on the goings-on in Equestria, especially around the counterparts of their friends.

I need to give Rarity some credit where credit is due; she’s clearly trying to be skeptical of everything I’m telling her, and she’s doing an excellent job of not flipping out at the idea of having a fashion boutique in every major city, as well as being a household name. That said there’s also a very adorable skip in her gait after that revelation, and she still titters excitedly at the idea of being a bigwig in the runway scene.

As for Sunset, there honestly isn’t that much news I can give her. I mean, it was awkward enough last night when I realized her father was the stallion who hired those griffon bounty hunters to kidnap me, fake my death, and hide me in plain sight in a prison, as well as the one whose P.I. publicly outed me as an alien living among them. There’s no nice way to tell her that her father passed away under suspicious circumstances in prison after being sentenced for conspiracy, kidnapping, and unlawful restraint. To that effect, I gently inform her that her father and mother are no longer among the living, and that presently her cousin leads what remains of House Shimmer.

Let’s be more honest than I was with Sunset just now. Though I try to be a good, honest person, I know when lies of omission are necessary, especially when I am trying to keep someone from having a reason to hold a grudge against me. First and foremost, in this situation, I’m pretty sure I need to be able to work with Sunset and her friends without her lashing out at me for her dad dying in prison. Besides, I’d like to imagine that she knows on some level that her dad was into some of the hardcore backstabbery and conspiring the nobles engaged in, and that he’d be caught eventually. Not only that, there’s also that whole slip-up yesterday where she heard that someone in House Shimmer was responsible for what I went through on the day of Twilight’s coronation.

I’m just glad they didn’t bring Applejack. That would be incredibly awkward if she called me out on anything there. Especially because she could out me as being a bit of a sociopath. Even though I have every excuse to exhibit sociopathic tendencies, them knowing isn’t going to make them trust me any more than they already do, taking me at my word and all.

“So, Miss Silver Script, Sunset tells me that you’re an alchemist in Equestria,” she says in that casual ‘I want to talk but am grasping for straws’ sort of way, as we draw closer to the mall. “Can you tell me a bit about your work and what it entails?”

I smile and wonder momentarily if this world has animation analogous to the stuff kicking around back on earth. “Well, that depends on what you think alchemy is, first,” I say, hooking my thumbs in the belt holding up my nigh-bottomless bag. “I’ve heard of it depicted as the manipulation of energy and matter through the use of intricate glyphs, transmutation circles, and spiritual energy. That’s not what I work with.”

My right hand strays from the belt and slips into my bag. I feel around for my potions and, upon feeling the glyph of a relatively harmless color changing potion, pull it out to show her. “Think of a witch or wizard, standing over a cauldron, mixing a magic potion,” I say, twirling the thin test-tube shaped flask between my fingers. “That’s roughly what I do, but I don’t think I’ve ever used a full-sized cauldron since I was in school. That’s more of zebra style alchemy anyway. Then of course there’s your classical tradition of turning lead into gold, but that just devalues an already common mineral.”

The young woman eyes the flask, and it’s not hard to imagine she’s wondering what that does. “What kind of potions do you make?”

“Medicines and restoratives, mostly,” I say with relative disinterest. I pop the lid of the potion and knock it back like a shot. “I also do varying transformatives such as, but not limited to, potions that change a pony’s species or sex and those that return the drinker to their birth state without any of the genetic defects they were born with. Problem with the latter is that it makes that pony a blank slate, just like a foal.”

“You’re not about to change sex right now, are you?” Sunset asks, her eyes widening with alarm. “It’d be a bad time for that.”

“Your arse is off its rocker.” I laugh, stowing away the test tube. Holding my index finger and thumb far enough apart to indicate something small. “If I wanted to be packing, it’d be a real stallion or nothing, hon. Human toys aren’t nearly as fun as you’d think, believe me.”

With Rarity and Sunset sufficiently embarrassed in public, I indicate the skin on the back of my hand. “Nah, the potion’s just a color changing potion. Notice how my skin is taking on a peachier tone?” I explain, grabbing a lock of my hair next. “Or the indigo my mane is taking on?” I shrug and do a little pirouette as I walk. “I always keep a few random disguises potions about. I’m not famous, but even I wanna go incognito from time to time.”

The pair of them just blink and shake their heads. I could swear Rarity whispering something about eyes and hair, and something being uncanny to Sunset, but honestly I can’t be arsed enough to care. Heck, I just changed colors like a chameleon in public, and there had to have been a number of closed circuit security cameras to have caught that, and I don’t care about that, either. I’m going fucking shopping, this should be fun!

~ 04 ~

I take it back. Shopping is not nearly as fun as I expected it to be. I mean, don’t get me wrong; Rarity is every bit as qualified as her Equestrian counterpart to put together a stunning ensemble. That being said, she’s a woman largely focused on showy, feminine stuff. It took a lot of convincing before I could even get her to focus on practical things.

She is more than a little disappointed that I don’t aim to show off my ‘natural beauty’, but she still manages to cow me into getting the infamous little black dress. In the end, we settle mostly on semi-formal stuff, such as polos, button-up blouses, and a mix of skirts and pants. Plenty of socks, too. I’ll neither confirm nor deny that I may have a sexy schoolgirl-esque ensemble that just so happened to fall together.

Sunset’s a lot more helpful when it comes to the sporting goods. Neither of them aren’t sure why I’m intent on getting compression shorts, sports bras, and headbands at first, but it doesn’t take much to convince them that, with what’s coming, it’ll be better if I’m at my physical peak. I just hope that they get the implication that all of their friends should train their bodies and minds, too.

Shoes... just, no. Please. All I need are comfy shoes that I can move and run around in, and maybe some basic, black knee-high boots that I can wear during wet days. What I don’t need is to try on every pair of pumps, sandals and what have you in no less than three shoe stores in the mall. If not for the fact that Rarity’s just being obsessed about having my footwear match my outfits, I’d swear the two hours spent on shoes stem from some sort of foot fetish. Then again, I could totally see her deeming a man’s business only being worthy enough to be touched by her feet. I can’t even entertain myself with the newfound access to telekinesis because that seems to have faded back into the aether along with my petrifying gaze.

Even though all of the shopping that goes into my bag, even things the others end up buying, ends up being pretty much weightless, it’s still a pretty tiring event. I can’t be blamed for wanting to get away from them for just a little bit, can I? I mean, hell... I’ve still gotta do the whole lingerie thing, and I just know it’s going to get awkward if Rarity tries to co-ordinate that.

“Hey, I’m going to go get something to eat before we hit the last stop, alright?” I say, pausing by a split in the path leading towards the food court. “You two can go on and do whatever; meet up in say... an hour?”

“Do you promise to stay out of trouble?” Sunset asks, stopping nearby with a doubtful look in her eyes.

“Sunset, darling,” Rarity interjects, placing herself between us. Before the snark even leaves my lips, she gives me a smile. “This is a shopping mall, not the bad part of town; what’s the w—”

My once-more gray palm is over her mouth to stop her from finishing that sentence. “If there is one thing I’ve learned from the universe,” I whisper in a warning tone, “it’s never to voice that question, or even think it. It’s practically begging for trouble.” I pull my hand away from her mouth, and then give her an apologetic look. “Sorry.”

“No, I should apologize, dear,” she replies in a hesitant tone. “I forgot that trouble seems to follow you Equestria girls around, regardless, and it definitely doesn’t help that you are such a... colorful character. I shan’t begin to challenge the universe when I already worry for Canterlot if you, Applejack and Rainbow, dare I say, get into it.”

I almost tell her that they’d be hosting get-well-soon parties if that ever happened, because I don’t do fair fights, but somehow, I don’t imagine she’s talking about physical combat. Probably competition. Feh, two girls in their primes versus an bored old lady who spends her time making medicine, experimenting with unicorn potions, or finding new ways to blow up her lab... doesn’t exactly seem like a fair competition anyhow.

Instead, I do a mock salute above my right eye and then dart off toward the food court. I’m barely halfway down the hall when I can hear percussion and strings of a an indie rock band at play ahead. It’s pretty lively music, and even vaguely familiar to some extent. Probably the most noticeable thing about the music is the singer’s voice. “My name is Trixie, the sexy white haired, and so powerful.”

Figures she’d be some kind of performer here, too, right? If she’s a student in this world like the others, it’d make sense she might hold gigs in a public location on an off-day, which explains why part of the food court seems built around a stage. “I’m breaking the news now peeps; Canterlot High is the greatest!”

There’s a collective cheer from those seated around that stage as I step in, though it’s pretty obvious they’re Canterlot High students. All of them are facing the stage, seated at tables with food in various states in consumption, goading on a rather scantily clad Trixie to play another set. Those people not seated at the tables closest the stage are all lined up in front of the various restaurant storefronts, listening to the loud, but not overpowering music, as they wait to be served.

Hmm, what do I want? Neighponese? Xiao Ma? Or do I want some Mexicolt? Taco Tuesdays doesn’t seem to be busy. Now that I think about it, I don’t think there are any of the sort who might attend CHS lined up there. Just an older fellow and his wife, and then a short, tall, gangly looking fellow in a sombrero that reminds me eerily of Discord. Does that mean that there is something wrong with the food here? Meh, shortest line. If it means, I get the shits later, it’ll be worth it just to have some genuine ground beef.

As I wait in line for some tacos, I find myself easily swept up in the music, tapping my feet and bobbing my head to the beat. The next song is more of a high-energy electronica than rock, and its lyrics seem mostly repetitious bits about flying away and... How the fuck does she do that with her voice? Is she just lip syncing a recording?

The longer I wait, though, the more I begin to tune out the music and pay more attention to my surroundings. Over at the Neighponese joint, there’s one of those stereotypical dumb valley girls kicking up a fuss over the fish in her sushi—I kid you not—being raw. A bit closer to me, there’s a couple fighting over who gets the last donut. Over in a hallway marked Employees Only, there’s a bit of a ruckus going on.

“Well, look who we have here, boys!” says a voice I’ve heard often enough in my time in the Crystal Empire. “One of the three siren bitches who turned the whole school against each other.”

Huh, that’s Flash Sentry, one of Princess Cadance’s personal guards, isn’t it? Wonder why Twilight never mentioned him? She always seemed to have a crush on the pony version of him, so why would she not have mentioned his human counterpart? Was he a Crystal Prep boy? No, that wouldn’t account for what I just heard.

“Please stop,” a girl’s voice replies, a pleading, dejected tone in her voice. “I’m just trying to work...”

“Oh sure,” comes another, less familiar, voice. “You ever notice how little business Taco Tuesday does when you’re working? That’s your fault; nobody who knows who you are wants anything to do with you.”

“Yeah,” Flash says. “You and those other two ruin everything you touch; it’s a wonder old Refried Beans hasn’t fired you yet. Well, if he won’t do that for the good of his business, I guess we can always make you quit.” A crack splits the air, unmistakably the first step towards a violent encounter.

Seriously? I can’t help but sigh. The Flash Sentry I’ve met is nothing like this guy, teenage angst or not. There’s either some real fuckin’ animosity that I’m not accounting for, or I’m missing something entirely. This certainly makes things a lot more complicated... I mean, I vaguely implied that I’d be trying to stay out of trouble, but I simply cannot allow two guys—that I know of—gang up on a girl, regardless of what she might have done. I thought I was over this whole hero complex.

Shutting my eyes, I crouch down and rub at my ankle. As soon as I’m in a less fall-prone position, I mentally put aside the sounds of Trixie’s band, the idle conversations of diners, and the bustle of the crowds. It’s, strangely enough, not too hard to center myself, and quite quickly I’m able to bring myself to the mental construct at the balance point of body, mind and magic. With my body already braced, I concentrate on the mechanism, and—operating entirely on instinct—snap the mechanism sideways on its axis, balancing out all three aspects.

~ 04 ~

The girl knew almost immediately that she was in big trouble. These boys, Flash Sentry and a pair of other faces she’d seen at her short stint at Canterlot High, had her at a big disadvantage, and that wasn’t even counting their superior numbers. Ever since the battle of the bands, when she and her sisters had tried and failed to achieve true power, she’d been alone. Her sisters had abandoned her, each other, and whatever semblance they’d had of a ‘normal life’. She was beyond powerless; with her magical focus destroyed, she was unable to consume even the weakest of emotions to sustain herself, leaving her weaker every day. As it stood now, she was as weak as a human child.

Flash was the one who made the first move. A nasty backhand sent her staggering back into the waiting arms of his friends, who were all quite eager hold her by her taco mascot uniform to keep her still. The Canterlot High kids, once enraptured by her spell, were all the same when it came to Sonata Dusk now. Bruises and black eyes were quick to be replaced before they ever truly faded, so readily donated by those who once adored her. She expected this would be no different, but at the same time, this seemed to be out of the norm.

Though she could no longer control magic or feed on emotions, she was still vaguely able to pick up on magic; the awareness of Equestrian magic had, after all, allowed her to avoid those who had justly ruined her life. Even now, she could feel magic in the air, surrounding these three, but it wasn’t the pony magic she was used to. It was something different—wrong—and she could practically see it pulsing in the whites of Flash’s eyes like an inky blackness.

He was on her again in the second it took for her to pick up on this magic. A fist connected with her midsection with enough force that the foam taco encasing her did nothing to cushion the blow. The pain was so blinding that she almost didn’t even notice another taste of magic filling the air. She couldn’t even double over in pain on account of the other two goons holding her up. Then again, the next strike was worse, and then the next one.

Sonata just shut her eyes, grit her teeth, and took the punishment he dished out. None of what she’d faced at the hands of disgruntled CHS students in the past was nearly as vicious as this, but on principle, she’d had to learn to block out the pain and just let it come. It’s not like they showed any inclination towards other forms of assault... thankfully.

What had been a near torrent of blows suddenly stopped without a warning. A strangled “What the!?” escaped one of the boys holding her before she felt the grips on her arms go slack. She collapsed to the floor, clutching her midsection, barely aware enough to hear a concerned, “What the hell is going on, Flash?”

“Well, isn’t this a pity,” came a woman’s response, her barely controlled anger causing her to hiss her S sounds. “Three strapping young men beating up on a sickly little girl. What would your mothers think, boys?”

Sonata cracked one of her eyes open just enough to see all three of her attackers suspended in the air, their limbs spread like they were a chain of paper dolls. The other magic that infused their bodies was barely noticeable beneath the magical field holding them in the air, refusing their every attempt to move.

“Fuck off, pony lady,” Flash spat, trying his hardest to lean forward as if to challenge her. “You don’t know what she’s done to us, what she might one day do again! We’d be doing the world a favor.”

Sonata caught a glimpse of the her unlikely savior through the curtain of legs between them and froze. This person was unmistakably a pegasus pony by nature, based on the ease with which she was hovering in position, but she was wielding magic—genuine Equestrian magic—like a unicorn. Not even Sunset Shimmer or that Twilight pony showed this much control over magic here. Is she another princess? No, she quickly decided. This wasn’t a princess. All of the ponies Sonata had ever met before Starswirl sent her and her sisters to this world were peaceful until her sisters started to play with them; this woman, on the other hand, had near predatory bloodlust in her eye.

“Huh, I thought Twilight’s position on second chances and forgiveness had reached everyone at that School,” the woman answered coldly, pushing silvery strands of hair back, before her hand shot up to her ear. “Guess she missed some pretty nasty pieces of work while she was here.”

Though Sonata could not see Flash’s face, even from this angle she could see the change in his demeanor, and even that of the others. All of them recoiled from the gray lady as if physically slapped, and that presence of wrong magic inside them receded ever so slightly. “T-Twilight? How do you know Twilight?”

Rather than sneering at the boys, the woman’s expression softened. “She’s an old friend of mine, and hell, I practically taught her a lesson on giving people second chances when I nearly murdered her during a psychotic episode and she still helped me,” the woman explained, idly toying with her eye patch while her other hand rested on the bag on her hip. “These days, I sometimes turn into a unicorn and have magic duels with her, just so we can laugh about it together.”

Flash’s demeanor changed at once. He struggled against the woman’s magical hold once more, and even managed to wrench free one of his arms as the corrupting magic inside him surged. “You tried to hurt Twilight?” the blue-haired boy bellowed, freeing his other arm and his legs from her grip. “I’ll fucking kill you!”

Sonata watched the woman’s expression as he lunged towards her. She didn’t flinch, or brace herself, or even show fear on her face; instead, the gray lady just rolled her free blue eye, looked at Flash’s compadres, released her hold on his friends and said, “You two boys be good, or this learning experience will become a group session.” Without even looking away, Sonata could sense that they wouldn’t; whatever magical presence was possessing them seemed to have concentrated itself in Flash, feeding off of his anger. Instead, they stepped off to the side, shooting Sonata apologetic, mortified looks.

To Sonata’s surprise, the fight was over in an instant.

The gray lady folded her wings and dropped to the floor, shifting easily into a fighting stance. Her right hand darted to her the bag at her waist, and Flash, expecting maybe mace, threw his arms up in front of his face, determined to barrel her over. Instead, she threw whatever object she had in her bag at his feet when he was in swinging distance. A blob of ice exploded out from the point of impact, stopping Flash dead in his tracks.

“In the future, hon, if a guy ever gives you trouble, here’s what you do to protect yourself,” she said, pulling her knee up to her chest. “It’s not a nice thing, and it hurts them like a motherfucker, but it gets the job done.”

Pivoting on the spot, she thrust her leg out, slamming her heel directly into Flash Sentry’s groin. Even as Flash let out a squeal of pain a full octave or two higher than his normal voice, his friends cringed away, shielding their own genitals through reflex and letting out groans of sympathy. Clutching his groin, Flash crumpled backwards into an awkward heap.

“T.K.O., motherfucker,” the gray angel of testicular torment said with a smirk, watching as a plume of acrid black something exited the downed young man’s nostrils and mouth before dissipating into nothingness. She frowned at that sight, glancing back to the other two boys, who were now looking rather confused. “Aw, no round two?”

~ 04 ~

“You alright?” I ask, offering the taco costume-clad young woman a hand up. “You don’t look to good.”

Her raspberry eyes go from my hand to the two other boys standing to the side of the hallway, and then to hallway behind me, which opened to the food court. I don’t even need eyes on the back of my head to know that there’s a crowd of onlookers, youth and adult alike, at the end of the hall. She takes my hand and pulls herself up, eliciting a cheer of mixed degrees of enthusiasm from the crowd.

“Nothing an ice pack and some rest won’t fix,” she says with some forced cheeriness. Her bruised bluish-white cheeks flush purple as she pats dirt from her mascot outfit and examines it for damage. “Um, thanks, Miss...”

“Silver Script, you?” I say her, wiping a veritable curtain of sweat from my brow with my free sleeve. “This hallway come out in another part of the mall, or somewhere out of the way?”

The young lady I’ve just so heroically ballbusted a guy for nods and, not releasing my hand, leads me further down the hallway to a room that has a sign declaring it Food Court Employee Lounge. “My name’s Sonata Dusk, but... if you know Twilight Sparkle like you said you do, you probably knew that already.” She releases my hand, and leans in close. “Speaking of alright, you aren’t looking too good yourself.”

Now that she mentions it, I am feeling pretty lightheaded. Shaking my head, I make my way over to a chair and seat myself. “No, I’m pretty sure I burned too much magic,” I explain as I fumble through the bag at my hip for the burner phone. My head throbs, and then I feel the wings on my back break down into nothing, and my ears migrate and reshape. “I don’t know how Twilight and the girls do it, but forcing myself... haven’t felt like this since the first time I became a unicorn and burned myself out.” I clutch the phone to my chest and look away. “Beats other things.”

I watch as Sonata walks over to a mini-fridge in the corner, noting a slight limp in her gait. She fetches two bottles of water, and passes one to me. “I won’t lie, I don’t get half of what you’re saying,” she says, holding the bottle against the bruise forming on her cheek. “I get rough, though. Kinda had a hard time since... yeah.” She raises her eyebrow as I open the water bottle one-handed and take a swig. “So... why’d you help me? That Twilight girl and that Sunset Shimmer were kind of at odds with me and my sisters. If you’re associated with their lot, doesn’t that make us enemies? Or does you saving me make us frenemies?”

I nearly choke on my water when I snort in amusement. Wiping away a trickle of water from my nostril, I smile at her. “Sonata, didn’t you hear a thing I said to ol’ Flashlight back there?” I lean back in the chair and stare down at the phone in my hand. “You didn’t kill anyone, right?” She shakes her head. “Did you ever make someone suffer for no other reason than your own amusement?” Again, she shakes her head. “Have you ever sexually assaulted someone?”

She drops her water and stares at me. “Ew, no! What the heck is wrong with you!?”

“Those are three things I can’t forgive a person for.” I shrug, before giving her a soft smile. “As far as I’m concerned, you’re absolved of your sins, and from the looks of things, you’ve done more than your fair share of penance.” I flick through the settings menu on my phone and then offer it to her. “This is my number, Sonata. I’m getting the eerie feeling that the events that brought me here is tied to what just happened in the hall back there. If you see anything strange, or if you ever want someone to talk to, feel free to gimme a call.”

As she pulls out her phone and seemingly inputs the number into her contact list, I consider whether I did the right thing. I mean, to some extent I’m dealing with time travel related shenanigans, and there’s a vague point in the future at which the past iteration of me could not get past. By helping Sonata today, have I ensured that we can’t reach that point? Or conversely, have I made a potential ally? Did the other me even encounter her during her time here?

At any rate, it’s certainly something I can talk to Sunset about. Even if she doesn’t know anything about my previous iteration’s dealings, I can at the very least talk to her about maybe extending an olive branch to Sonata. Turnabout is fair play and all; it’d be good for them both. Maybe I could take them both out to dinner and then sit them down and work out some kind of accord?

I’m jerked out of my introspection by the ringing of my phone. Even Sonata is caught off guard, because she nearly drops the bloody thing. She manages not to—thank fuck—and instead brings it to me. “Oh boy,” I say, looking at the caller ID. “It’s Sunset. She told me to stay out of trouble; wanna bet she’s pissed?”

Sonata gives me this look of incredulity. “Look, I admit I can be a bit of a ditz at times, but I’m no dummy,” she replies, crossing her arms in front of her and frowning. If not for the mascot outfit, it might even have been a bit intimidating; instead, it’s absolutely adorable. “Oh, wait... that was a rhetorical question, wasn’t it?” Okay, seriously, I’m not sure if it’s legal or not, but I kinda wanna hug this kid. Reminds me a bit of Clara.

I hit answer on the phone, and hold it an inch or two away from my ear. “Hey, Sunset,” I say as casually as I’m able. My voice is a bit shaky, though whether I’m actually nervous or just suffering burnout is another matter. “What’s up?”

It’s a good thing I didn’t put the phone up to my ear, really. “Don’t you “What’s up?” me!” she shouts on the other end. “I just wanted you to stay out of trouble! You weren’t even gone ten minutes and I hear you Ponied Up in front of a crowd and gave some of my classmates an off-season showing of the Nutcracker on Ice before running off with one of the sirens! It’s all over social media! What gives!?”

“The too short, don’t care version is this, Sunset,” I say, trying to hold back my laughter at her description of my ‘fight’ with Flash. “Flash Sentry blah blah possessed blah blah attacked Sonata Dusk. I blah blah Pony Up blah crowd blah blah magic blah alchemy blah blah kicked him right in the nuts. So as you can see, she needed help and I’m in the right.”

Sonata bursts out laughing at the exact same time Sunset’s strangled cry of fury comes through my phone. I can’t help but join her. I mean, come on; I’d almost fucking pay to have seen her expression when I said that. Can you imagine? That’s what she gets for letting Rarity compare me to the Pink One.

“Rarity, nobody will ever find her body,” I hear Sunset say over the phone, followed by some very posh sounding laughter. “It’s not funny!”

“In all seriousness, though, Sunset,” I add in a placating tone, “I’m pretty sure this ties in with why I’m here. After I rang his bells, some real creepy looking black stuff came out of his nose and mouth and faded into nothing; tell me that’s normal.”

Judging by her disgruntled noise, I think I’m in the dog house. Maybe I can bunk with Sonata until Sunset doesn’t feel the need to kill me? I mean, she’s probably way older than Sunset in the literal sense, so it wouldn’t actually be creepy... right?

Author's Note

So, here we are, with the return of a snarkier, mostly care-free Silver Script.

But what of the otherworldly presence possessing Flash and those other two? Is it gone for good like a one-episode filler baddie? Or is it by chance the harbinger of things to come? And Sonata Dusk... Was she supposed to die today, or was Silver always destined to—

DarkxRedemption: That nutcracker on ice pun made me spit my drink out

Mission accomplished.

Chapter 05: Sweet Dreams (Aren't Made of This)

I paced back and forth in Twilight Sparkle’s sitting room, waiting for the Princess of Friendship and erstwhile bearer of the Element of Magic to come to a decision. For sure, this wasn’t a decision Twilight could make lightly, as the memories alone of the last time something like this happened were likely to be uneasy ones. The question? “Will you help me get over my thaumaphobia by teaching me to understand and use unicorn magic?”

See, both of my daughters were born unicorns. They got magic surges like every other baby unicorns. When you’re a thaumaphobe—for very legitimate reasons!—it’s kind of hard not to flinch every time one of them accidentally blinked herself on top of one of the cabinets, or ended up walking through a solid wall into the neighbor’s apartment. Now that they were five, I wanted to be able to interact with them without having an anxiety attack every time they practiced magic or had another post-infancy magical surge.

That’s why I came up with this transformative potion. It allowed me, if only for a few hours, to become a unicorn again. I could see the world as my daughters see it. If I learned to use magic for myself, I’d be able to practice with the girls. What better way to kick this fear of magic in the teeth than to be able to do magic in a safe environment with ponies who I know would never hurt me? I needed to be able to look at the pointy ponies and not see Aqua Regia behind their eyes.

The sitting room door opened, and in stepped Princess Twilight. “Good morning, Silver,” she said, offering a warm smile. She gestured to one of the room’s couches before sitting down herself. “It’s so good to see you again.”

“Yeah,” I replied, sitting down opposite of her. It was unfairly paranoid of me, but I couldn’t deny that my eye drifted up to her horn for a moment. “I don’t think we’ve actually seen each other face to face since Pinkie threw that “It’s a girl!” party for Cadance and Shining Armor.” I frowned for a moment before looking away. “Or was it the time I proposed the Genesis Project to Princesses Celestia and Luna?”

“It’s actually been longer than that,” she agreed, rubbing her chin with her hoof as if deep in thought. “It had to have been just after the summit a few years ago. I remember seeing you with your two fillies.”

Her horn lit, and an image of an exhausted-looking me was projected on the wall. In that image, two unconscious unicorn fillies were draped over my back. I watched the image, drinking in the details. The Silver Script of the past was sporting a unsurprised mixture of singed fur and mane, as well as a few spots where sick had matted into her fur before she could get back to her apartment to wash it out.

For a short moment, though, the eyes of my daughters were wide open and staring right at me, like four inky pools of the abyss. The Silver in the projection turned to regard me with cold, lifeless eyes. Her mouth opened, but instead of speaking, her tongue boiled out of her mouth in rivulets of vitreous black liquid. Still, the words were plain on her lips. “I left them to die.”

I blinked as the image returned to normal before fading away. What was that? I wondered, rubbing at my mildly sleep-deprived eye. Some sort of hybrid manifestation of my sleep deprivation from working too hard on Genesis and my own inherent distrust of magic? There was no way to know for sure, but I put it aside nonetheless. Twilight was a good, smart mare; she’d never torment me like that. Thinking she would is what led to that whole mess years ago.

Twilight watched me intently, seemingly gauging my reaction to her use of magic. “You’re definitely doing better with your fear response,” she comments before looking away. “That being said, you have to realize that it’s impossible to learn practical unicorn magic without a horn, nor do I have the experience or practice necessary to teach you griffon or goat magic. It’s not like I can just arrange for you to swap bodies with somepony every time we have a lesson.”

I figured she’d say something like that, which is why I came prepared. “Twilight, Twilight, Twilight,” I chided, dipping my muzzle into my saddlebag, withdrawing a potion flask. “Someone once said that one sure mark of a fool is to dismiss anything outside of their experience as being impossible.” A smirk split my face as I held the flask between my forehooves. “Do you think I would have asked you if I didn’t already have some sort of plan?”

Her eyes flicked to my flask with mixed suspicion and wonderment before a confused look crossed her face. “Didn’t you once go on public record stating that your transformatives couldn’t successfully give a non-unicorn a functional horn, just as they couldn’t give non-pegasi flight-capable wings?” That confused look sours as she realizes that I was trying to keep my work low profile. “I can understand lying to keep your research safe, but you couldn’t have even told me in our correspondences?”

I shook my head, popping the top off the flask and taking a swig. “I don’t have a dragon to securely send messages, Twilight. Anypony could intercept my letters, and as foal-proofed as my own study is, it doesn’t have anywhere the security as the labs provided for the Genesis project,” I said with a pleading tone, even as my wings pulled painfully into my body and a single point of boiling agony erupted in the center of my forehead. “I’m too high profile as it is thanks to my gene therapies and Genesis; if word got out that I could let a pony spend even a few hours in the horseshoes of one of the other races, can you honestly say those who would aim to misuse it wouldn’t take undue interest?”

Twilight’s expression softened. “You’re protecting your daughters...”

As my wings finished absorbing back into my body and the spike of bone completed its shaping, I nodded. With just the slightest motion, I was painfully reminded of my lack of wings, but that wasn’t nearly enough to distract from what I was now feeling. With every movement of my head, I could feel the ebb and flow of magic all around me. Even ignoring the gigantic beacon of magic sitting across from me, there was still a lot of magic moving all around me.

On some base level, I knew I was feeling a mixture of the Castle’s ambient magics—being magical in origin and all—as well as Equestria’s own native magical field. It was like being deaf, only to be able to suddenly be able to hear. Magic was all around me, just as it had been the day I first got here: a comforting reminder that not all magic was out to hurt me. At the same time, though, all of those instances of traumata and irrational fear screamed in the back of my mind.

How overpowering it all was must have either shown on my face or in my breathing, because the next thing I knew, Twilight was right beside me, a reassuring hoof firmly between my shoulder blades. “Breathe, Silver. You’re safe here.” I looked into her eyes and saw her the soft smile, and knew it was true. I could accidentally blow off my own horn here and I’d still be in good hooves. “It’s pretty intense, isn’t it?”

I swallowed the lump in my throat and nodded. “It wasn’t at all like this when I was in Lyra’s body,” I pointed out, staring up at the tip of my newly grown horn. “Every seems so much more vibrant...” My ears twitched each and every way, tugged in several different directions by my new state of awareness. “The crystal all around us is singing with magic, and you yourself are like a blinding beacon—no, a nova—of magic. How can I not have noticed any of this before?”

Twilight seemed to ponder my question for a while before settling on an answer. “I think that you never really noticed when you were in possession of Lyra’s body because you’d already had some of her memories and mannerisms imparted by the redundant memory backup all unicorns have because of their horns.”

Again, her horn lit up, a representation of Lyra Heartstrings appearing on the wall along with the words experience, and passive awareness. “Lyra was born a unicorn, and as such, is used to the presence of magic everywhere. Like most unicorns, it’s just a sense that they tend to focus inward for spellcasting to such a degree that everything ‘outside’ of them barely registers unless they actively look for it.”

“Kinda like the imprecise scrying those goons used the night they took me from my dorm room,” I remarked, a tear welling up in the corner of my uncovered eye. “The mage who was with the griffons wasn’t sure if I was alone or not, because Blossom and I had shared the same bed that night. We just seemed like one mass of magic.”

A nod from the princess confirmed my suspicions. “I suppose the logical first step would be to train you to shut out everything that is irrelevant,” she said. A smile creased her face, and then she clapped her hooves together. “I’ve never taught a pony magic before; teaching an adult could definitely be fun.

~ 05 ~

Throughout the scattered encounters over the years, Twilight and I had many such sessions together. We started with the basics of levitation first, and then branched out into advanced manipulation. Likely due to my own specialization in alchemy and being a pegasus at heart, I took easier to the manipulation of fluids and air compared to fire and earth. Don’t get me wrong, starting a fire or using tectonic forces to bring up a slab of granite for protection was relatively easy, but you couldn’t always be able to pull up rocks to protect yourself, and involuntary arson could easily be achieved without better control of flames.

If there’s one thing I do know about all this time practicing magic and being exposed to it in a safe domain definitely is doing a lot to supplement the therapy I’ve been receiving. Granted, my new therapist doesn’t know about the full extent of my ‘exposure therapy’, only that the famed Princess of Friendship is helping me; if I told her I was getting more comfortable with magic by becoming a unicorn, she might just have me committed... again. Needless to say, by the time my girls were ten, their mom was no longer flinching involuntarily when they’d use their magic.

I spent whatever time I could practicing in private, though potion stock limits, motherhood, and my own obligations as the primary alchemist in the Crystal Empire often meant I’d have days or weeks where I’d be unable to take the potion and keep my skills sharp. Once or twice a year, I’d travel down to ponyville on the pretense of Seeing Lyra, Bon-Bon and my god-daughter Honeydew. We’d spar a bit, talk theory, and then see if there was any new magic I could pick up. I’d never win, not for lack of trying, and I never really picked up more than telekinesis, and a range of air and water manipulation spells, but it was fun.

Today was the tenth anniversary of this whole arrangement, and Twilight had decided to do something special to commemorate it. As she led me down to the large room that had served as our practice chamber for many years, I couldn’t help but ponder what Twilight had planned. I mean, for all the times we’d sparred together since I became proficient with the domains I’d managed to learn, there were always two glaring problems that prevented us from having a real duel. Because her magic was goddess tier and therefore leagues above my own, Twilight always had to hold back to make things ‘fair’. Likewise, I couldn’t fight with the ferocity of the scared and confused mare all those years ago for fear of hurting my friend and a Princess of Equestria.

“I know we’ve both had to hold back a lot in our sparring matches, and that’s always bothered you,” she said, pulling open the door with her magic. “That’s why I decided to spend some time poring through the records in Canterlot pertaining to the Old Coltosseum. They had many fascinating spells in place to keep all ponies, audience and competitors alike, quite safe. They’re not your garden variety wards, either; spells and impacts will dissipate harmlessly against the opponent, leaving only a lasting numbness at the point of contact.”

“An energy suppression field, then?” I asked, reminded of a dueling arena in a video game I’d played so very long ago. “Were either of us to wield blades, the wards would dull the blades so that neither of us would bleed or die, but still incapacitate us to some degree, right?”

Twilight nodded, before pointing to the wards inscribed in the four cardinal compass points in the otherwise circular room. “That said, the Coltosseum kept a firm boundary on what areas were okay for combat,” she explained. “There, the wards were usually just inside the walls separating the audience from the combattants. Anyone leaving the boundaries during a match would be numbed to the point of being unable to stand, and would either be counted as a forfeit, or technical knock-out, depending.”

A smile spread across my face. “This sounds fun,” I replied, dropping my bags just inside the door and taking my potion. “That solves the problem of not wanting to hurt you, but what about you? Your magic is probably strong enough to overload these wards and pop my head like a grape.”

“Celestia and Luna used to participate in the gladiatorial games all those centuries ago.” A wry smile could never hide her mental eye-roll from me; I never ascended to alicornhood nor received a title, but damned if I’m not the self-proclaimed Princess of Snark. Plus, as a mom, I knew when my kids would roll their eyes at me, regardless of whether or not they were looking at me. “There are certain rituals that they perform in order to suppress their magic, even today, they use them so that they can keep their skills sharp without destroying entire tracts of countryside.”

I wonder when I actually realized I was dreaming, remembering? I wondered as I mentally detached from my body to watch the upcoming duel. Was it that freaky thing with the projection, or experiencing a decade of memories in moments? The scene rippled even as I watched myself step into the sparring ring. The me of the past spouted off some witty line about her not being Rainbow, but Twilight still being way too slow. In a blinding flash, Twilight entered the ring opposite of her.

It’s all I can do but to watch passively as Silver starts her routine. Rather than making any immediate aggression, she slowly circled the perimeter of the ring. Her horn aglow, she began pulling moisture from the air, condensing it into globules of water, and then into javelins of ice. The dozen frigid projectiles orbited her slowly as she focused on Twilight.

Her alicorn opponent, as was Silver’s preference in these bouts, the first to take the offense. I could practically see myself consider my options when Twilight fired off a simple magic missile aimed directly at my chest. Ideally, what I should have done that day was coalesce all that ice into a sheet and redirect it. Instead, one of her own ice bolts swam into its path, blocking the shot at the cost of my own offensive capabilities.

Next, Silver fired off a volley of frozen spears, not at Twilight, but around her. Given that they were never intended to hit her, Twilight avoided the attack quite easily whilst holding her ground, seemingly ignoring the frozen spires around her. Her response to the attack? She opened a portal beneath Silver’s hooves, dropping her from the ceiling a few feet away.

The princess was not afraid to press her advantage; the moment Silver Script coiled her body in preparation to roll and cushion her landing, Twilight loosed a gout of flame from her horn. Silver barely had time to bring her remaining seven spears to bear, blocking the attack at the cost of her remaining projectiles, which disappeared into a burst of steam.

Hitting the floor in a roll, Silver poured mana into her horn, remembering everything she could about weather science. The air around them became hazy as she pulled what moisture was in the air down to the ground. A bank of fog settled over the combattants, and I couldn’t resist inwardly smiling. What came next was easily one of my most spectacular performances.

“So, Your Highness,” the me of the past had said, smirking, even as her next spell worked to excite the air between us and the remaining ice in the room. “You reckon you could lend me a lightning bolt? Mine’s on the fritz.”

Seriously, even to this day I couldn’t believe it actually worked. Silver ducked and rolled the moment she’d spoken, keeping the air between those points excited. Her roll couldn’t have come a moment too soon, because a bolt of lightning shot out from Twilight’s horn in the direction she’d been standing, Unfortunately for Twilight, the bolt decided that rather than a nonexistent person or the wall past them, the quickest way to the ground was to do a U-turn less than a quarter of the way there, taking advantage of the excited air molecules to guide its path.

What came next happened almost too quickly for me to comprehend, even after the fact. One moment, the lightning was dancing from icy spire to icy spire, and then Silver was standing in Twilight’s place the next, just in time for lightning to slam into her on all sides. With the magical dampening in effect, the attack wasn’t outright able to do her any lasting physical harm, but the numbness that encompassed her entire body didn’t exactly prevent her from dropping like a sack of electrocuted puppies. Face met crystal flooring nose first.

“Do you yield?” Twilight asked in a sporting tone, even as she pulled what remained of the water and ice from around her opponent. “I know the energy suppression field is in effect, but that still sounded like it hurt.” That sporting attitude vanished along with the fog as soon as she laid eyes on Silver. I couldn’t blame her, either. This version of me was sporting a gushing nosebleed, and a number of capillaries in her good eye had ruptured. “Hold on a moment, we need to treat that before you slip in your own—”

A chunk of ice slammed into her side, cutting off her comment. She looked at Silver Script in disbelief—a disbelief I shared, as I didn’t remember any of this happening now. The me in the dueling ring was pushing herself up onto her hooves, shaking away the ringing in her ears and showering the ground around her in blood. “I can still fight,” she said through a mouthful of blood. “Do your worst.”

Twilight’s magic seized hold of all of the moisture and ice in the room, drawing it around her in a coat of frozen armor to rob me of any more potential watery projectiles... except... “Silver, please listen to me; I’ve heard of ponies in better health than yours who’ve died of exsanguination through nosebleed,” she pleaded. “How long until your bad heart doesn’t have enough blood to pump to your brain?”

“You sent me there to die!” Silver snarled with a ferocity I hadn’t seen in myself since Ice Blossom’s death. “I went on your behalf, and what do I have to show for it?”

What was she even talking about!? The scenery around them warped and twisted. No longer were they standing in a room in Twilight’s castle, but instead a metropolitan, human city. It was the sort of down-town area that would have been packed, if not for the pitch black creeper vines snaking all over the place, razor sharp thorns gouging chunks out of brick and concrete alike.

Worst of all was the transformation of Silver. She took on a vaguely human appearance, from the waist up appearing quite human, if unnecessarily nude. I said vaguely because whatever had happened, she looked like she’d been bitten in half and then been grafted to a spider to keep her alive. All the while, blood continued to pour down her front, transitioning from red to inky black even as her breasts became coated.

Silver gestured her hands at a crater and ruined building in a near intersection. At first, it only looked like a pile of debris, until I realized that I was looking at bodies. A teenage girl who could only have been Rainbow Dash was impaled on rebar, having attempted to shield a girl whose head was crushed beneath a chunk of concrete that had been sent flying in some sort of explosion. Nearby was Rarity, missing half her face, a black barbed tentacle still wrapped around her throat, even though the tendril had long since been severed. Applejack and Pinkie were nowhere to be seen at all; the only sign that they even existed at all being a tuft of pink hair caught in a crack in the asphalt, and a cowboy hat abandoned at the edge of the crater.

“I died hoping to give Sunset and them a chance,” Silver howled in rage, her blood lifting off of her body in strips and taking on bladelike shapes. One gestured at place along the wall covered in creeper vines, where a human Twilight Sparkle lay slumped against the wall with a hole in her chest, Sunset Shimmer’s body draped across her lap. “You know what she did? She used her friends and their power to run away. She abandoned her body and this timeline to the eater of worlds.”

Twilight, who’d looked away when she saw the fates of her friends, widened her eyes in fear as Silver brandished a blade of blood at her. “That’s enough, Silver!” Twilight croaked, unable to look away from the monster that Silver Script had become. “I know you wanted to practice your illusions, but this is going too far, and blood magic is restricted for a reason!”

“Oh, I know,” not-me said in a sensual voice, licking the edge of one blade and splitting her tongue. “It always did have certain penetrative properties that other magic just couldn’t block. Why, I bet this arena spell won’t do you any more good than your ice armor.”

The monster parading about in my skin turned to regard me, looking in the direction I’d been observing neutrally from, even as Twilight was skewered inside her icy shell by more blades than a magician’s box. “You’d do well to remember this,” it said, my body flaking away in black flames. “You may have given yourself an edge by tricking the portal into allowing you your magic, and as they say, the right spell in the wrong place can make all the difference in the world. You will see Sunset Shimmer soon, and when you do, tell her that her efforts to thwart me have not gone unnoticed, and to prepare for unforeseen consequences.”

It smiled at me one last time as the last of its face burned away. “Now wake up, child of two worlds. Wake up and smell the spirit of hartshorn.”

Author's Note

So, we have our first dream sequence/backstory section. We all knew from the last chapter that something was controlling/manipulating Flash Sentry and two other Canterlot High students for reasons yet to be seen, but it would seem that Sunset Shimmer is not the only one aware of the timetravel tomfoolery, and this otherworldly presence is not amused. Hell, it wants Silver to know it, too; why else would it show the aftermath of its consumption of the world to Silver?

This is [what I consider] the first instance where the gore tag felt necessary

Chapter 06: Unforeseen Consequences

“Welp, she’s pissed,” Silver Script declared as she set aside her bottled water and tucked her phone into the medical kit on her hip. Dabbing the sweat from her forehead with her sleeve again, she fixed Sonata with a tired look. “Um... is your boss gonna be cool with you getting back to work with fresh bruises? I mean, you’d think they wouldn’t stand out as much on blue skin, but...”

Sonata shrugged and glanced at the break room clock. “Mr. Refried knows people give me a rough time, but as long as the costume doesn’t get damaged, he won’t give me any grief about it,” she replied, adjusting one of the long costume sleeves to cover a fresh bruise on her wrist, only to wince as her other arm grazed her belly. “I’m the only one who’ll put up with wearing this thing, and I need the money...”

The gray lady’s eyebrow shot up. “Look, you’re clearly hurt, and regardless of the trouble you’ve gotten in the past, I’m pretty sure he wanted to do more than just hurt you,” she stated in a motherly tone that left no room for argument. “Call your boss and tell him about the attack, and tell him you need to take a personal day. If you need the money, I’ll give you whatever you would have earned today. After a traumatic experience like that, Luna knows you deserve it.”

She wanted to protest, to say that she couldn’t take the woman’s money despite desperately needing it, but Sonata could tell she wasn’t about to take no for an answer. “Thanks,” she murmured. “You’re probably right. If you hadn’t—”

“Don’t mention it.” Silver Script hopped to her feet, strode across the room, and placed a hand on Sonata’s shoulder. “I only did what any decent being, human or pony, should have. I shouldn’t have to be...” Instead of completing her thought, Sonata’s savior got a faraway look in her eye and trailed off. Her gray skin took on an almost bone-white pallor, and her arm fell to her side.

Sonata barely had enough time to react as the woman’s legs buckled beneath her. She slid her arm under the woman’s armpit and gently lowered her to the floor. Had this been any other person, she probably wouldn’t have had the strength to hold the person up, never mind guide them to the ground slow enough not to injure them, but the lingering effects of pegasus magic left Silver light enough to make an anorexic jealous. That much didn’t concern Sonata so much as the slow, shallow breathing of the person she held clutched against her chest.

“Oh, I am so not qualified for this,” she whimpered, looking around as panic fought for control of her senses. Sure, she had a bit of first aid training—a lot of the small jobs she did just to get by wanted someone who had such training—but it didn’t really say anything about what to do when a pony from another world pretty much dropped dead. She couldn’t really call an ambulance; too many questions would be asked, of Silver and Sonata, and the police would end up involved.

What could she do, though? Just sit there? Let her, the pony who just saved her, possibly die? No, I can’t do that, she decided as she laid pony-turned-human out on the floor. What to do, though?

Expanding her own lingering sense of magic toward the woman, Sonata had to fight back a flinch. The Equestrian magic with which Silver Script had been bursting with was but a tiny, flickering ember deep within her, but that wasn’t the worrisome part. That same, wrong presence she felt inside of Flash Sentry and his two accomplices was fighting to take root inside Silver’s head like a poisonous creeper vine.

Her eyes flicked to the medkit on Silver’s hip. Maybe she has something in there that could help? she mused, not really believing it. Even if there was, Sonata wasn’t convinced that she’d know what it was or how to use it. Sunset Shimmer, on the other hand, might. Sucking in a sigh, she reached into the woman’s deceptively spacious bag in search of her phone.

~ 06 ~

“I just can’t believe her, Rarity!” Sunset griped, throwing her hands into the wair. “She’s as subtle as a brick through your front window! I mean, would it kill her to show some restraint?”

She held her phone out to Rarity, displaying countless social media posts. One, showing a shot of Silver Script from behind, wings spread as she flew down a hallway, proclaimed, “Avenging angel sighted at Canterlot Mall!” With a flick of her thumb that flicked her smartphone over to her private messages, a number of messages from fellow students asking who the ‘ponymilf’ with the eyepatch was, and why she attacked Flash in the employee’s only hallway at the mall. Finally, she brought up a conspiracy blog that had latched onto the trending story, citing this, along with many past incidents that Sunset had been involved in, as evidence that magic existed and that otherworldly entities wanted to hurt everyone.

“This is bad!” she reiterated.

Tossing her violet locks over her shoulder, Rarity smiled. “Sunset, darling, you’re making a big to-do over nothing,” she replied, brushing off her friend’s concerns. “How many times has something like this happened—someone Ponying Up in public? How many times has that blown over?” Rarity paused as if to prompt Sunset for an answer. When none was forthcoming, she nodded. “The students of Canterlot High—and Crystal Prep, it would seem—don’t look to be in any rush to expose any of this to the public at large. Be it out of camaraderie or the need to be part of something special, everyone is keeping quiet. Have faith that they’ll continue to do the right thing.”

From Rarity’s generous reasoning and perspective, Sunset couldn’t deny that she might be overreacting—and rightly so!—but at the same time, this was still pretty worrisome. “Maybe you’re right, Rarity,” she said, heaving a great sigh before turning to her friend with a smile. “If there’s anything I’ve learned from you all, particularly the Anon-a-Miss incident, it’s that even if things look bad, we can’t assume the worst right out of the gate.”

Her pale-skinned friend hummed appreciatively, despite being reminded of what was hardly her finest of moments. “Besides, darling,” Rarity answered in that voice of faux sophistication. “In spite of her rough exterior, she seems to have a good heart. I’m not sure if you noticed, but when we were walking together through the mall, she always kept close to us, whilst also keeping an eye on those around us. Remember that group of biker ruffians outside the liquor outlet we passed?”

“Not particularly, why?”

“I don’t know what she did, but they looked like they were going to approach us until she did something.” Rarity crossed her arms before cupping her chin in one hand. “I think she doesn’t like letting bad things happen to people if she can help it.”

With a snort, Sunset ran her fingers through her fiery hair. “Chronic Hero Syndrome,” she muttered. “She fits the trope, based on her own statements... Do you think this is going to become problematic?”

Before Rarity could contemplate the question, never mind manage a response, Sunset’s phone rang. As she pulled it out of her jacket pocket, an amused smile crossed her face. “It’s her,” she said, showing Rarity the CID. “What do you think, more trouble, apology, or did she get lost?”

Rarity frowned at Sunset, tapped the answer key on the touchscreen, and set Sunset’s cellphone to speakerphone. “Miss Silver Script,” she crooned, “It’s so good to hear back from you; are you ready for more shopping?”

The air was silent for a moment, and then an unexpected voice came through the phone. “Uh, heeey.” It was a young woman’s voice, and one that struck Rarity as familiar. “You’re Rarity, right? I’m not sure if you remember me, and if you do, it’s probably nothing good, but I’m Sonata Dusk... Your pony friend saved me from some possessed goons, but she kinda just dropped, and I have no idea what to do.”

Sunset’s eyes widened in alarm, and her fingers tightened around her phone. “That idiot,” she whispered. “Sonata, what’s her pulse like?”

There was a long pause during which Sunset thought she could hear Sonata counting under her breath. “It’s steady, but weak.” After yet another pause, she added almost hesitantly, “I think whatever was controlling that guy she beat up is attacking her.”

“I need you to keep an eye on that; she has a weak heart, and if this is what I think it is...” Sunset’s eyes widened as she processed what Sonata had said. “Wait, WHAT? Where are you right now!?”

~ 06 ~

Lights swim before my eyes, making my head throb with pain. I would tell Sunset to turn the lights off, but my mouth doesn’t really seem to be cooperating. In fact, my body on the whole seems inclined towards inaction right now, which is funny, because I feel like I need to run a marathon.

Maybe it has something to do with the nice warm blanket I’m wrapped in. But that’s not right... I usually sleep under or on top of the blankets, never wrapped in. After that time in the Ponyville hospital, when I got tangled in blankets and kissed the floor, I never wrap myself in blankets. Plus, as a pegasus, I really do not like being bound.

“Hey, I think she’s, like, coming around.”

Now where have I heard that voice before? I shift against the blanket, trying to free an arm. All I manage to do is stuff my hand up under my tank top and inadvertently grope myself. At least, I think it’s myself. When did I have hands again? “Nnn,” I groan. “What happen? Somepony set me up the bomb?”

“Easy, Silver,” comes Sunset’s even-toned reply, though there’s something off about it that I can’t quite place. “You’re experiencing the after-effects of severe mana depletion and the near stoppage of your heart. Your magical reserves are extremely drained, and that put enough of a strain on your body that it almost stopped your heart.”

“Teach me to use pegasus and unicorn magic at once,” I mumble. Feebly, I attempt to open my eye, but my eyelids won’t budge. “I don’t think these bodies are meant to channel two different kinds of magic at the same time.”

“Pssh, you think?” That’s Sonata, for some reason. How did she get in Sunset’s apartment? “It was hard enough just getting enough magic in this world to use our siren magic. I can’t imagine doing what you did.”

“I didn’t imagine either. Look where that got me.” Somehow, I manage to pull the corners of my mouth up in a smile. A pain shoots through my chest as I try to move my arms again and I stop. “Wow, I haven’t felt this weak since I had to go through the whole exposure and observation for alchemical poisoning in that safety class, and the professor fudged my slip. Even burnout from practicing magic with Twilight was never this bad.”

Though I’m not entirely certain, I could swear I hear Rarity speaking to somebody else. It sounds like a woman’s muffled, “That’ll be fifty dollars,” to which Rarity says something followed by an awkward-sounding thank-you. The fuck is going on? Are we having more pizza? I was hoping to go out to a steakhouse.

“I do hope she will be able to find these acceptable, darling,” Rarity says, much closer and clearer. “I had to guess her size based on some quick measurements for her bottoms, but when she’s feeling better, she really needs to get herself fitted up top.”

“She better appreciate it,” I hear Sunset say, as well as the crackle of a plastic bag exchanging hands. “Did you see the way that one employee looked at us when I made up that story on the fly about the washing machine ruining our sick friend’s laundry, leaving her with only what she was wearing? I’m pretty sure she was related to Applejack or something. Probably thought we were up to no good.”

There’s a moment of silence, followed by a bag of something hitting me in the face. There’s a snicker from Sonata, and what could possibly be a muttered, “Right in the face.” That’s followed by more snickering.

“Ow! Don’t hit the cripple!” I shout, drawing full-on laughter from Sonata. “It’s illegal!”

“Oh, sorry!” Sunset’s tone seems genuinely apologetic, but I can tell she’s trying not to laugh. “I can’t really tell where stuff is going to land when I put it in your bag, y’know?”

“What!?”

My eyes snap open, both of them, and I look around. I’m lying on a plane of muted pink, surrounded by various odds and ends that are definitely all of the things I brought with me from Equestria, as well as numerous shopping bags. Sonata’s sitting beside me with her legs folded under her in an approximation of the seiza position that makes my own knees twinge with pain. No longer wearing her taco costume, but rather a pink skirt and dark magenta jacket with some sort of music note badge, she actually looks kinda cute. Then again, she’s holding my burner phone, trying and failing not to laugh.

“You stuffed me in here while I was unconscious!?” I whine, glaring at the light filtering in from the top of the bag. “What the hell?”

“Miss Silver, please, you must understand.” Rarity’s voice comes through the phone in that soothing voice I’ve her pony counterpart use countless times when dealing with her sister or an unruly foal being fitted for a dress. Not patronizing or anything. “You were unconscious and Sunset agreed with Sonata that a hospital was out of the question. Our plan was to bring you back to Sunset’s apartment and let you rest. It just so happened that I wanted to get you some necessities before we left the mall.”

And of course, neither of them think to check my bag for potions that would be helpful in this situation. Rarity and Sonata I can kinda understand, but Sunset? I sigh and look to Sonata. “Could you get this off me? I’m not about to go into shock now,” I grumble, straining my arm against the blanket I am quite literally swaddled in. “Besides, I have some bad news.”

“Oh? What’s that?” Sunset asks a tone of suspicion creeping into her voice. “Sonata told us when she called me that she could feel that dark presence in you, but that it had gone by the time we got there.”

As Sonata helped me unwrap myself, I glance in the direction of my alchemical goods. “This unseen enemy, this... eater of worlds took after Princess Luna and appeared to me in my dreams,” I explain, the exhaustion heavy in my voice. With great effort, I drag myself toward the pile of potion flasks. “It appeared to me, and I think it showed me what remained of the last iteration of this world. Sunset, when you send your consciousness back in time, you leave everyone else behind. It... isn’t pretty. I’m not sure if it was trying to fuck with me, or if it was showing me what became of the previous me, but it’s horrible.”

I find one of the mana potions, and quickly knock it back before rolling onto my back. “It had a message for you, Sunset,” I tell her. Warmth floods through my system all at once as my depleted reserves begin to replenish. Even with that booster in me, I know better than to push myself, because it takes a lot more to regenerate from near zero. Of course, that’s what happens when you don’t have a horn or focus of some sort to serve as a bottleneck. “It seems pretty aggravated by the continued interference and creation of new timelines, and has had enough. I quote, ‘Prepare for unforeseen consequences.’”

Unsurprisingly, when Sonata hears this, her eyes glaze over and a bit of a vapid expression comes over her. Not surprising since she probably hasn’t been sworn in on all this. Even if she does understand what’s going on, I doubt she has the whole picture. I mean, here I am talking about timelines, eaters of worlds, etc., and she’s just sitting there like ‘I stopped following this conversation two paragraphs ago; what is going on?’

“Those were its exact words?” Sunset’s voice comes off strained. “Great, so it’s aware we’re trying to stop it and it’s getting ticked off by this?” I only manage an affirmative hum before she groans very loudly. “I don’t even remember most of what has yet to happen... and this thing today, with Sonata? I never saw this coming. It was completely new.” Her next words barely come through the phone’s speaker. “Even if I can remember things, can I prepare for something when everything is changing?”

I shake my head softly, wondering what I can do to help. If this had been some sort of game, I would probably be debating whether we could actually trust some such thing that is supposedly aligned with us because it seems too helpful or knowledgeable, because that’s how those things work. This isn’t that sort of scenario, so far as I know, and at only two days in, it’s too early to start asking myself if this is going to be one of those cases. It will only make me paranoid if I start that now.

Instead, I close my eyes and say, “Sunset, fucking relax, or you’re going to go grayer than me. We’ll figure this stuff out later; for now I want you to think on this question, ‘Are you absolutely sure you need to know the past-future if you think it is changing?’ If the answer is yes, tell me tonight. I might be able to help you.” I turn my head to Sonata. “Could you hang that up for now? I don’t wanna have to top off the minutes on that phone already.”

“Okay,” she replies. I hear her clothes ruffle as she moves, possibly to place the phone down, followed by a grunt of pain. “Ow... Stupid Flash Sentry...”

A thought occurs to me as I lie next to the potion pile. “Come over here, lass,” I say softly, even as I sit up. I glance at her from the corner of my uncovered right eye and smile. “I’ve got something somewhere in here that’ll help you feel better.”

“It’s not booze, is it?” she asks with some hesitation. “This one time, Aria made me drink some stuff called vodka this time I twisted my leg, and it kinda helped while I could remember, but when I woke up, my leg was still sore, and my head hurt too.”

I snort derisively at that. Alcohol can numb pain emotionally and physically, sure, but it can be addicting, and doesn’t actually help. “Psh, that’s an utterly archaic way of coping with pain and injuries,” I say, leaving no room for argument. I begin rooting through the pile once more. “I’m an alchemist and a healer. A damn good one, too. If I can cure a pony of dwarfism just by temporarily changing their sex, I can sure as hell heal some bruises and internal injuries.”

Her hand goes to her neck, groping at some sort of collar she’s wearing, and sighs. Her shoulders sag, and suddenly she has this faraway look in her eyes. “You don’t have to do that, really.”

Finding what I’m looking for, I get back onto my knees and crawl over to her. “Girl, I choose when or when I don’t need to help someone,” I state firmly, before laughing softly. “You remind me a lot of one of my daughters, to tell the truth, and it’s making my mom instincts go nuts. Can’t rightly let you sit there in pain like that.” I place one hand on her shoulder while the other pops the cork on the flask. “C’mon kid, let’s get you patched up.”

Author's Note

Alright, so I was honestly hoping to get this out a lot sooner, but a lot of things came up in either my life, or DarkxRedemption's life that kept this from getting edited. Dark is currently off-the-grid, so I haven't been in contact for a number of days. That said, I've done my best to self-edit this so I can get my arse back on track with writing Chapter 07.

Chapter 07: Meeting of Minds

By the time that Sunset Shimmer arrived at her apartment building, shortly after dropping Rarity off, she was beyond frustrated. Her ire wasn’t even directed solely at Silver Script, whom had caused her no shortage of grief simply by playing the good Equestrian. Neither was she entirely bothered by her exploding inbox, as annoying as it was. No, against all odds, she was frustrated with herself, both present and past.

Despite what Silver had said about being unable to rely on her memories of the future, and her offer to help her remember a possible future, Sunset still found herself bothered by the fact that she hadn’t been able to predict an encounter with this unknown enemy. Had her past self simply not encountered this particular incursion, or was whatever spell she’d used to send her memories backward through time just that imperfect and incomplete? Every time she tried to remember something to come, she’d get either a blank or incomplete picture.

There was also the possibility, she had to remind herself, that her mind was trying to protect her from something. In her opinion, it seemed fairly unlikely that she herself was suppressing the memories, which was the only real case that she could see the mare-turned-woman actually being able to help. If that was the case, though, was there something that was so horrible that she shouldn’t remember?

Putting all that aside, there was no way that Principal Celestia hadn’t heard about Silver Script’s display at the mall; it was all over social media, as it had been for hours now, and the principal and vice principal were very well informed when it came to the social media goings-on when it involved her students. That she had yet to contact Sunset regarding this incident, especially after Sunset informed her of the presence of an Equestrian, was a small miracle.

The sound of an electric guitar riff sounded off from the smartphone clipped to her hip while she stood in the elevator up to her floor. Without even glancing at the display, she knew it was a text from Rainbow Dash. Bracing herself for the butchery of the written word that was surely Rainbow’s text message, she unclipped the phone from the case opposite of Silver’s bag of holding.

Sunset read, cringing slightly at the rushed message. As she prepared to type a reply, a second message came in.

Sunset’s palm met her face and she couldn’t hold back a loud sigh as she walked into her apartment. She almost wanted to tempt fate by asking if today could get any worse. Thankfully, she remembered that it could; Sonata Dusk was still in the bag of holding with Silver Script, so she was effectively bringing her former enemy into her home. If Rainbow Dash did come along, something would go wrong.

The thought occurred to her to try to facilitate a peaceful meeting so that they could all just clear the air, but she quickly put it aside. Rainbow was, if nothing else, hotheaded at times. Sunset didn’t know how the woman in the bag would react if confronted aggressively, and by her own admission she played for keeps. If it came to blows...

With that message sent, she shut off her phone, barring her from being notified of any more messages and let herself into her apartment. Sunset knew that if she explained what she meant now, Rainbow would only get more riled up, and in turn, the others would as well. The last thing she needed was everyone showing up on her doorstep while Sonata was still there.

Putting Silver’s bag on the counter, she opened the zipper and peered in. “We’re back, and we almost ended up having com—what...” She blinked, trying to process what she was seeing. Inside the bag, Sonata Dusk was without her top or bra, smearing some sort of salve all over her bruised front, while Silver Script worked it into her back. “What are you...?”

Sonata looked up, not bothering to cover up as she worked the lotion into her forearms. “Oh, hey, Sunset,” she greeted in a cheerful, if hesitant tone. “Did you know Miss Silver has all sorts of neat things in here? She’s got a salve that makes bruises go away, and a rock that makes whatever it’s dropped in not run out! Isn’t that cool? Oooh! Do you think it’d work on taco filling?”

“It rubs the lotion on its skin, or else it gets the hose again,” Silver added in a sinister half-whisper, breaking into laughter at the end, as though it were all some strange joke. “Sorry, I’ve been waiting nearly twenty years for an opportunity to make that reference.” Her grin fell as she too looked up at Sunset. “Your peers did a real number on her, you know.” She shook her head and went back to rubbing the salve into the bruises on Sonata’s back. “I know she and her kindred goofed by trying to feed off the conflict they created with their innate talent to inspire, but you can’t rightly blame them for acting in their nature.”

Again, Sunset blinked, puzzling over Silver’s condemnation. “What do you mean?” she retorted, a hint of anger edging her voice. “Are you saying we should have let her, Aria, and Adagio get all that power and do nothing?”

The blue-haired girl shook her head as a look of pain and guilt spread across her face. “No, you guys were right to resist; we were power-hungry and needed to be stopped,” she answered, closing her hand over Silver’s as it grazed her shoulder. “It’s just, what you did to me and my sisters... it’d have been better if you killed us.”

Recoiling away from the bag opening as though she’d been slapped, Sunset’s blood ran cold. “What are you talking about? How would murdering them in cold blood made us any better than them.”

“Sirens are emotional manavores, Sunset Shimmer; they feed on, the energy generated by powerful emotions, not unlike the changelings,” Silver stated flatly, even as she handed Sonata her discarded top. “Their amulets are their magical cores, and as a unicorn who studied under princess Celestia, even you should understand what that means for Sonata here.”

Her legs gave out beneath her as Silver’s words began to impact her. Celestia had impressed upon Sunset the importance of magic to all life in Equestria; it was every bit as necessary for survival as eating, drinking, or even breathing. Magic wasn’t just some convenient force that gave ponies their race-based attributes and allowed magi to weave spells, but instead an energy that suffused every single thing that existed on their planet. Ponies whose magical cores had been damaged or otherwise prevented from processing any sort of magic often died as one would were they being starved.

Theoreticians postulated that ponies would likely die on a world without a sufficient magical field, but that couldn’t be the case here. This world couldn’t have had any real magic of its own until she brought the Element of Magic through the portal, and she had been living here for years without any ill effect; instead she’d thrived here. Surely that old theory was just bunk, right?

But if what Silver Script was saying were true, destroying the amulets prevented the Sirens from feeding on magic at all; as much as food might keep them alive in the short term, the three sirens were condemned to death the moment they lost. Sunset’s face fell into her palms as the realization hit her. Seeing how thin Sonata had become since last they’d met, her proclamation did make sense...

“How long did it take you to figure this out?” she asked, barely noticing as Silver Script extracted herself from the bag. “This doesn’t seem like the sort of thing a pony could just learn in all of fifteen minutes.”

Silver Script walked over to the fridge and opened up the freezer. “I didn’t,” she said softly. “I’ve treated a couple of freeman changelings in my time, and I understand the basic principles of manavores as a result. Sirens are a bit more obscure, and I never met one in person before today, but there are still plenty of materials on them.” She reached in and pulled out a tray of ice cubes. “Treating that is going to be another matter.”

Sunset turned to watch Silver, her hands falling to her lap, and her eyes widened upon seeing the ice-cube tray. “You might not want to do that,” she warned, watching as Silver put some in a glass began to fill the it at the sink. “Those—”

“Why the fuck would I not wanna help her?” she growled, giving Sunset a threatening glare. “Are you saying she deserves to die because of that?” Taking a pull from her tumbler of water, she looked back at the bag. “I have to at least—urp.”

She gagged and then belched a large bubble of soap. “What the fuck.” The look on her face was enough to make clear that it was not a question so much as a simple statement of disbelief. “No, seriously.”

Sunset’s face met her palm. “I think you’ve figured it out, but I was talking about the ice cubes, not Sonata,” she explained, taking the tray of ice and dumping it in the sink. “Rainbow and Pinkie pranked them a while back, and I was hoping to turn the joke back on them.” Her expression softened, and she looked to the bag as well. “Nopony should have to go through what she’s going through; by all means, help her if you can.”

~ 07 ~

For Sunset Shimmer, the next hour went by in a blur. It wasn’t that it was busy; rather to the contrary, she barely did much of anything. Sure, from her spot on the sofa she watched Silver Script enter and exit her bag of holding a few times, like it was the most natural thing in the world, and puzzled over the mischievous, almost Pinkie-esque smirk on her face. She was clearly up to something, and if Sunset had her head in the game, she might even have been a bit concerned. But no, her mind was elsewhere.

For much of that hour, she found herself looking over her journal, rereading all the exchanges she’d ever had with Princesses Celestia and Twilight. Silver Script’s words really struck deep, and she couldn’t help but be reminded of how she pitiful she felt after Twilight had purified her with the Elements of Harmony. At the same time, she felt so much worse. Sure, at that time, she’d been full of ill intent, but she’d never hurt or killed anyone. She hadn’t condemned three people to a slow, awful death.

She soon found herself writing a letter, despite the bridge between worlds having gone inert again. Sunset didn’t expect a response at all. Instead, she found herself just writing for the sake of getting her feelings out: it was for the therapeutic effect.

Dear Princess Celestia,

Having lived for thousands of years, you’ve had to make some hard choices, right? Some of those choices have likely even sentenced a few to death in order to protect many more. How do you live with it, knowing that your actions, despite their well intentions, can bring great suffering and misery to others?

A while back, Twilight, my friends, and I defeated the sirens that Starswirl banished to this world. They were gathering power, and breeding nothing but conflict with their ability; for the sake of the school, my peers, and this world, we used the magic of harmony to defeat them. All should be good, right?

I met one of them again today, and she was in miserable condition. She’s showing clear signs of mana deprivation, despite her human physiology, and she seems to think it would have been better if my friends and I had simply executed her. Why would the power of harmony magic shatter their magical cores like it did? What’s so harmonious about that? I feel... dirty, knowing that I brought someone so much suffering.

I don’t know what to think any more, Princess Celestia. I thought that we’d inherited this world’s equivalent of the Elements of Harmony, but what if the Element of Magic simply awoke some new magic attuned to the lot of us, and it has nothing to do with harmony? What, then, is this power we wield now?

Her hand trembled, and her pen slipped from her grasp. She stared at the last words she’d written, wanting desperately to finish her thought. What if I keep failing because I’m trying to wield a sword like a shield? Sunset didn’t want to admit that this might be the case, because if she did, she’d have to admit that taking another’s life might sometimes be necessary for her to protect those she cared about. It went against everything that Celestia, even if it seemed par for the course for humans, and it terrified her to think that this world could be changing, no, corrupting her.

“Here,” came a voice from her side as something cold nudged her arm. Somehow, without Sunset’s notice, Silver Script had taken a seat beside her, and was now offering a small glass of ice with some chocolate-brown liquid poured over it. “You looked like you could use something to take the edge off.”

Sunset accepted the glass, momentarily wondering how the woman had managed to make more ice so quickly, but thought better of it. She seemed like the sort to ‘walk off’ magical burn-out, as it were. Bringing the glass closer to her face, she paused; the scent of alcohol and coffee wafted up into her nose.

“You know I’m technically a minor, right?” Sunset asked, before shrugging and taking a sip. She raised an eyebrow at the creamy, sweet flavor of the beverage. “I’d have pegged you as a wine connoisseur.”

Silver waggled her hand and leaned back, sipping from a similarly filled glass. “You look old enough, and besides, with how much is in that glass, you’d have to be a field-mouse to get anything more than a buzz.” As though reconsidering her position, she leaned forward and set her elbows on her knees. “I dunno, I guess I figured I was due to make a sort of peace offering; I’ve been told that I lack tact, and I definitely saw that today when I bluntly told you what you guys basically did to that poor girl. I figured the least I could do is give you a chance to unwind. Both of us could do for it, to be fair.”

Though she imagined it made sense to Silver, the point was over Sunset’s head. “Where is Sonata, anyway?”

“There is nothing else I can do for her at the moment, so she’s gone back to her own apartment.” Brushing her bangs out of her face, she took another sip from her glass. “I’ve got some tests running on a shard she kept, and I might even be able to help her and her sisters. The rate of regrowth looks promising.”

With a nod, Sunset took a sip from her own cup. “That’s good,” she answered with a relieved sigh. “For all the trouble they caused, I never wanted them to die.”

The two sat in silence, sipping their liqueur. As much as she wasn’t fond of the burn the alcohol left in her throat, she couldn’t deny there was something pleasant about sitting here, drinking with Silver Script. Maybe it was the paradoxical warmth the drink brought to her cheeks, or the way Silver was, right then, treating her like an equal—an adult—rather than a kid, but it was... nice.

Yes, it was definitely nice to take her mind off the day’s events and revelations. Yet in spite of herself, Sunset could not bring herself to relax. Even though the woman exasperated her to no ends, the tired, unhappy look on Silver Script’s face made her want to ask her what was up, if only to get her to smile a bit. There was nothing that she could really say that would probably make her happy, but maybe she could take her mind off of it.

“Say, you mentioned being able to help me remember,” she said at random. That much was true. Though it honestly felt as though weeks had passed since the offer had been made, it had been mere hours. Would the former pony still be willing to help? “How would we go about doing that? Do you have some sort of potion in your bag of tricks there?” She gestured at the bag of holding that was once again at Silver’s hip.

Glancing down at her bag, Silver shook her head, and then, much to Sunset’s surprise, she actually did smile. “Nah, like a memory charm, those sorts of potions are only ever good when you’re trying to remember something that isn’t purposely hidden,” she said with a snort and the sort of tone she often heard the human Twilight using when explaining something she found amusing that you didn’t already know. “If there’s a mental block, it’ll cause more harm than good. Trust me; the mind isn’t something to be fucked with.”

From her bag, she produced a large indigo candle and a bronze lighter that was clearly griffon in make—that is to say it was made for someone who had digits, but bore unmistakable griffon designs. She casually set the candle on the table, and with a fluid flick of her wrist, flicked the lid open and lit the candle. No sooner had the wick lit did she slide the lighter back into her bag of holding.

“What don’t you have in that bag?” she muttered to herself. In a louder voice, she asked, “A candle?”

Rather than answer, Silver rose and crossed the room. Once at the lightswitch, she gave Sunset a shrug, plunging the room into an eerie indigo half-light. “Candle gazing is a means to achieve a meditative state,” she explained, crossing back over the room and draping herself across the back of the couch as a cat would. “Before I became proficient at doing it all with my mind’s eye, I used to use candles just like this.”

“And now?” Sunset’s eyebrow perked. “If you can do that all in your mind’s eye, why carry around the candles?”

The corner of Silver’s mouth curled upwards. “Who doesn’t like a nice, sensual, candle-lit bath?” she said, unable to stop herself from laughing. “Nah. Any good adventurer always carries a number of things, like at least fifty feet of rope, and a number of health potions. Don’t you ever read fantasy?”

Sunset didn’t rise to the bait. Instead, the redhead turned and fixed her gaze upon the flickering flame. “So how does this work?”

~ 07 ~

As I walk Sunset through the basics of a meditative, self-hypnotic trance, I observe a visible change in her demeanor. Since I came to this world, she’s always held herself like she’s carrying a too-large burden while she walks the razor’s edge, but now, that tension is gone. She no longer looks like she’s afraid of hurting someone or in turn being hurt. Instead, her shoulders have slack, and a soft, genuine smile is perking the corners of her mouth.

It hits me that, from her perspective, it has only been a few scant years since she abandoned the guidance of Celestia to seek power in this world. With all Twilight tells me she’s been through, Sunset’s probably able to look back at the times before she broke that bond with a newfound fondness. How many times did she sit alone with Princess Celestia, learning by candle-light?

“By this point, you should be deep enough to move into the real work,” I say, conscious of how my tone has slipped into an approximation of Celestia’s own soft, even voice. “Rather than force a construct and risk breaking your relaxation, let your mind construct the mental blockage into something you can interact with.” After a few more moments, a look of confusion takes her smile away. “Describe what you see.”

Though I know most of what’s going on is unconscious for her, it still takes her a while to answer. “I’m standing in a riverbed before a large dam. The sluice is blocked by a wall of ice, but there is a trickle of water coming over the top,” she says in near monotone. Her brow furrows, and her body is wracked by a momentary shiver. “I barely can see... my friends in the ice, like it’s a film on pause.”

Her friends, huh? That probably means the mental block has to do with the endgame scenario in the previous session. If so... “Sunset, you have a choice now. If what I suspect is true, you will see something terrible if you try to break the mental barrier. You might very well witness the deaths of your friends, and your past self.” I watch her expression as she battles the idea turning away. “You can turn away now, and decide that we don’t need to build upon the knowledge of the previous timeline, or you can face what is in store for you, and likely bear witness to your friends horrible demises in exchange for knowledge we otherwise might not have.”

Sunset lets out a drawn-out, shuddering breath before nodding. “I won’t let their sacrifices be in vain.”

~ One Won’t Be Forgotten ~

She’d been here before, Sunset realized suddenly. This intersection, which she’d passed through regularly on her way to school, was the very one she stood near at the countless ends of this world. It was almost funny to think that she’d be standing here again before the next doomsday, but then again, it was doomsday.

A rainbow ribbon of solid magic orbited her body, even as the light of the magical explosion faded. Even though she’d cast her spell, it occurred to her that it had always taken time for the spell to separate her consciousness from her body. What was worse was that her body had been almost completely unresponsive during the process; she remembered that much.

“Guh, this isn’t good,” she said, or had said. “I can’t move while the spell does its thing, girls, and I need more time.”

Sunset knew at once from their sad nods that they knew what she had asked of them, even before her past self had truly realized it. All of them took up position in front of her, interposing themselves between her and the unholy mass of writhing tentacles. Pinkie Pie, Applejack and Rainbow Dash were front and center, while Fluttershy and Rarity took up position behind them. Twilight, however, kept close to Sunset: her last line of defense.

As Rainbow, Applejack, and Pinkie kept the tentacles at bay, with their kicks, agility, and whatever they could temporarily weaponize, Fluttershy and Rarity conjured up magical projectiles reminiscent of their pony counterpart’s cutie marks. Diamond-shaped projectiles tore through any tentacles that attempted to flank the group, while the butterflies intercepted, shielding the others from grievous blows. The group actually worked really well as a team, Sunset came to see, despite how unprepared we all were and knowing they were all going to die...

This defensive display went on for many minutes before a roar of frustration erupted from the gaping maw still struggling to burst free of the portal. A tentacle, longer and thicker than any they’d yet seen, surged out of the rip in space, tearing into the nearest building. Even though its eyestalks had been destroyed, it clearly had no issue in the slightest determining where the group was.

Rainbow Dash was the first to react; though she was by no means a math prodigy like Twilight or Sunset, sports had given her an advantage in estimating trajectories on the fly, and didn’t like where the first volley of thrown projectiles were going. Spinning on the spot, she threw herself at Fluttershy, knocking the pink-haired girl back a number of feet. Inwardly, Sunset flinched as a piece of rebar caught Rainbow through the chest at an angle, pinning her atop an unharmed Fluttershy.

“Hfff, I got your back, Flutters,” she wheezed, even as blood trickled from the corner of her grinning mouth. Her breaths were incredibly labored, and there was no doubt that one of her lungs had been utterly destroyed in the attack. “Rainbow Dash never leaves... her friends...”

Sunset couldn’t look away as the tears welled in Fluttershy’s eyes; she’d once been told that Rainbow and Fluttershy had been friends since they were little, and now here her friend was slumped over her, dead before she could finish her boast. The pale girl’s hands came up and cradled Rainbow’s head to her bosom, even as a strangled sob worked its way out of her throat.

“Look out!” came Applejack’s warning.

Sunset tore her eyes from the scene just long enough to spot the large tentacle tearing into the sidewalk. This time, when it loosed its load, it didn’t seem to be bothering to aim; chunks of concrete rained down at random onto the group. In the end, it didn’t really need to aim anyway. With Fluttershy pinned beneath Rainbow, bereaved but otherwise unharmed, she couldn’t do a thing to escape.

Her friends all froze upon hearing the sickening crunch signifying the death of another friend. Even if none of them had looked directly at what had happened, it seemed as plain as day to them all what had happened. In the blink of an eye, the party had gone from six to four.

The first retaliation came from a most unlikely source: Rarity. With a most unladylike scream of “You fucking monster!” she began firing off diamond-bullets like a machinegun. Her firing was wild and mostly unaimed, but many a diamond struck one or more tentacles, cutting through them like butter. “She never hurt a soul, you heartless piece of shit!”

Emboldened by her rage, Rarity strode forward, ignoring the flailing tentacle that batted Pinkie through a storefront, seemingly intent on firing into the beast’s body from the edge of the crater. So blinded by tears and hatred was she that she didn’t even hear Twilight’s cry of warning as one of the barbed tentacles lashed out from the side, wrapping itself around her throat and digging into her face.

She was dead the moment those barbs sank into her throat, Sunset thought, watching as Applejack kicked at the appendage. Rarity let out a shrill scream that trailed off into a gurgle as AJ’s kicks began to force the tentacle to withdraw, ripping her face and throat. She didn’t stand a chance.

Out of the shop’s display window, Pinkie dove at the tentacle now holding Rarity’s body a foot off the ground. Swinging a makeshift poleax fashioned from a length of rebar and a huge meat cleaver, she cut cleanly through it. The indigo-haired girl dropped to the ground, unmoving but bleeding.

There was no time for Applejack and Pinkie to grieve the loss of another friend. Urged on by the fresh kill, the eldritch abomination seized the pair with as many tentacles as it could: two for every limb. In no time, the two girls were wrenched into the air above the crater, where they hung perilously above their death.

“Twilight, I need you to snap out of it!” Applejack yelled, despite the grip the thing had on her throat. “You gotta get Sunset outta here so her spell can finish and all this can be turned back!”

Jerking out of her shock at all of her friends dying, Twilight nodded. In a display of strength Sunset wouldn’t have thought possible for the girl, she swept the redhead up into a bridal carry and began to run. “I’m so sorry,” she murmured, casting a glance back at Pinkie and Applejack. “This is all my fault.”

Sunset Shimmer couldn’t see the deaths happen, as Twilight’s body was between them, but the wet ripping sound that filled the air and the screaming told her all she needed to know. Rather than eat both of them whole, the duo had been torn into pieces.

Her vision began to dim as her consciousness began to part from her previous body. As her senses become more and more vague, she became conscious of the fact that she was crying, and that Twilight was crying too. Before the memory came to an end, she could make out just one more thing. “This all happened because of me.”

~ 07 ~

“You’re sure those were her exact words?” I ask curiously after listening to Sunset’s account of the events. “‘This is all my fault,’ and ‘This all happened because of me?’”

Sunset nods, wiping tears from her eyes with a handkerchief for the fifth time. “I’m not sure if she was talking about them all dying, because she froze up, or if she was talking about something else.”

I extract my bottle of coffee liqueur from my bag and take a pull from it, not bothering with a glass. “Fuckin’ hell,” I whisper. “I thought what I saw in the dream was awful, but to actually see that happen.”

Now, I already have my own theory as to why Twilight might actually think she’s responsible for all of this, but Sunset’s clearly distraught by having seen all that. I’m not about to postulate that her friend is literally responsible for all of that happening because her fuckery with magic opened the door to something interested in this world. I’m not about to announce that Twilight brought the destroyer of worlds to their doorstep.

“Did it work, though?” I ask, wiping excess alcohol off my lips. “Did you get any memories back?”

Sunset sits there for a few moments, seemingly lost in thought. She nods to me, slowly. “We have a little over a week before the next attack,” she says numbly before unclipping her phone and flipping through her contacts. “Unfortunately, you and I are going to have to have a sit-down with Principal Celestia, Vice Principal Luna, and Dean Cadance.”

I blink upon hearing Cadance’s name. “I thought you said she worked at Crystal Prep Academy.”

“She does, and that’s why she’s gotta be read in on this.” Sunset puts the phone to her ear. “The next attack is going to be at the Friendship Formal, an interschool event that has been in the works for months to promote better relations between our schools. It’s being held at Crystal Prep.”

Chapter 08: Preparations

If anybody had told me that I would be having an off-the-books parent/teacher meeting for a kid who isn’t even mine, I would probably tell them they’re full of shit. My life is full of a lot of queer and unfortunate happenstances, but this is pretty out there, even for me. That said, I can understand why this has to happen. Without this meeting, there’s no real way to get myself in as a chaperone at this dance, and there’s no way Celestia and Luna can be convinced that Sunset and her friends need the week off to prepare for the possibility that there will be trouble.

That brings me to my current quandary; Sunset insists Celestia and Luna aren’t going to judge me if I show up in jeans and a t-shirt—and believe me, I’d love to wear those denim capris that show off my arse—but at the same time, this world’s Cadance will be appearing in a semi-official capacity representing a no-nonsense academy. I don’t expect her to be a hard-ass, but at the same time I need her to see that I want to, as much as possible, be professional about all this.

I swear, it’s not like I intended to get weirded out halfway to the coffee-shop we’re to meet them in so that I could get changed in a gas station bathroom. Isn’t it bad enough I’m getting self-conscious about the eyepatch without worrying about my clothes as well? I have to remind myself that as long as I’m without magic, my eye is as mundane as my fingers. It’s for that reason that, when I exit the bathroom, I’m dressed not in jeans and a tee, but the plaid skirt I bought yesterday, a smart white blouse with a black ribbon threaded through the collar, white knee-highs and a pair of nice flats.

With my bangs tucked away with some bobby pins, Sunset barely recognizes me. At first, I think she’s going to laugh, or make some sort of comment about how silly I look. Instead, she gives an approving nod and says, “You know, if you had glasses and lost the streaks, you would have the teacher look down pat.”

That gets a laugh out of me. “Here I was thinking you were going to say I looked like one of those fetish costumes,” I reply, idly applying some lip gloss as we continue on our way to the shop. “Not that I’d necessarily mind; I’ve always wanted to try out cosplay, but it’s something I’d probably freak out about again and have to change again. Even if you say it’ll be casual, you have to remember I’m meeting this world’s equivalent of my old mentor, my not-my-boss-even-though-she-technically-is, and the one who could easily destroy the world if she so chose.”

Sunset lets out a sigh and looks away. “I guess I know how that is,” she says as we reach the entrance to the shop. “I got so used to Princess Celestia that I started off calling the principal that. She thought I was doing it to be a sarcastic brat, so I received a lot of detentions for it.”

“Indeed.” The voice comes from behind us and a cold chill goes down my back. “I’m proud to say that you’ve really turned yourself around, Sunset Shimmer.”

Holy fuck, if that isn’t the most uncanny likeness in the world, I don’t know what is, I think to myself as my hand freezes on the door handle. In the reflection on the glass door, I can make out two tall women, both unmistakable in spite of their human forms. She doesn’t have the same regal tone or the crown and regalia, and she still has an aura of ‘I am not to be fucked with.’

I turn on the spot to face them, and give them a calm smile. Hooking my left thumb through the belt holding up my bag, I offer her my right hand. People here shake hands, right? “I’m certain your counterpart on the other side of the mirror would be elated to hear such praise for her former pupil,” I say with sincerity as I take in their attire: Celestia in a mellow yellow sundress and Luna in blue-jeans and a purple polo with a horseshoe emblem on the left breast. “Principal Celestia, Vice Principal Luna, it is a pleasure to meet you.”

Luna glares at me, but Celestia accepts my handshake without hesitation. Even so, having worn enough of them in my own life, I can spot a fake smile a mile away. They don’t like me already, and it certainly isn’t hard to guess why. I did kinda-sorta technically attack one of her students, even if I was completely justified, and if she’s anything like her Equestrian counterpart, she’s likely very protective of her wards.

“I have to admit, you aren’t at all what I first expected,” she says, after the handshake lingers a bit too long. She releases my hand and produces a printout from a pocket in her dress. Plain as day, even if the shot is a bit blurry, I can be seen just as my foot slams into Flash Sentry’s flesh marbles. I won’t even ask how anyone got such a shot to begin with. “Based on this image, I expected...”

“A maniac?” I offer, my smile becoming one of apology. Opening the door for the women, I usher them into the cafe. “I don’t deny that I may have used a bit more force than was necessary, but considering the circumstances, I simply could not stand by. Where I come from, three men don’t corner and rough up a young woman like they were unless they were up to something... unsavory.”

Neither administrator responds as they enter, and Sunset gives me a look of discomfort. I follow behind them, and am left doing a double-take as I spot a face that, though it is my first time seeing it, is also eerily familiar. A pink-skinned woman in a casual blouse and skirt—Cadance, I have to remind myself—waves to our group from a large booth in the back corner, and Celestia and Luna make a bee-line over to her.

As Celestia and Luna greet their friend and catch up, quickly, Sunset and I take a seat on the opposite side of the booth from them. An attendant quickly comes by and asks if she can get us anything, and then it’s back to awkward silence as she buggers off to get us our drinks. Really, the woman can’t come quickly enough with my iced coffee, because I’m still pretty bushed from yesterday’s events.

“Sunset Shimmer,” Luna finally says, over her mug of coffee. “Perhaps you can explain to us why we are all gathered here. Not that I mind an opportunity to catch up with Cadance, but some of us do have things that their time could be better spent on.”

I catch Sunset’s eye and nod gently. No point in holding back. “When I took Friday morning off after this pony came through the portal—” This draws a strange look from Cadance, who, despite being at least somewhat aware of magical happenings surrounding Canterlot High, doesn’t seem to know about Equestria. “—I promised myself that I would keep you appraised of the situation as it developed, despite my assurance that this wouldn’t be like what happened with the Dazzlings or at the Friendship Games...”

As Sunset summarizes what has happened over the last few days, as well as going over the basics of this time loop, I’m casually flaunting the vaguely implied Interschool Statute of Secrecy to reinforce that I am a magical lady. For starters, I show off my larger-on-the-inside bag by pulling out a record sleeve—a copy of my performance at Canterlot University so long ago—and then hinting at the record player that might also be in my bag. Then, I drop one of my numerous Cornucopia Stones into my iced coffee and pouring some into Sunset’s empty cocoa mug, noting that my glass never diminishes despite having poured out more than the original contents of half-full glass.

It occurs to me as Cadance’s eyes light up that the display that she’s probably thinking that a few of these stones could easily end world hunger and drought, which leads to my little sidebar half-way through Sunset’s recitation of yesterday evening’s events to explain the limitations of the stone. After all, the magical cost of using it is proportional to both the composition and quantity of the cloned material—though I don’t point out that I can cheat through technicalities with a stone and a mana potion—and the stone doesn’t keep things fresh. An unending soup-kitchen would still have to regularly prepare soup, and rely on someone with a lot of magic.

“That brings me to why I asked you to bring Dean Cadance in on this,” she says, with a tired breath. “The next time this otherworldly force attacks, it’s at the Friendship Formal.”

“Then it would be in both school’s interests if we were to cancel it,” Luna and Cadance reply in unison, eliciting an exchange of half-amused looks and a playful, “Jinx,” from the pink admin.

Hearing this, I can’t help but snort. “That actually won’t help as much as you think,” I say, my voice laden with dry humor. “Oh sure, it’ll theoretically keep the students out of danger, but then we have no idea what might happen.” I glance at Sunset. “Did anyone die or get injured in the attack during the previous timeline?”

“No,” she answers in a determined tone. “The girls and I made sure of that last time, and we’ll make sure of it again this time.”

Principal Celestia makes to speak, but I interject before she can raise an objection. “It’s all well and good to cancel the event, where we can say with some certainty that nobody is injured, but if the event is canceled, it doesn’t prevent the enemy from attacking. All we’d be doing is forcing its efforts elsewhere, where we cannot predict it, meaning that we’re going from no injuries to the possibility of people being injured, spirited away, or outright slain.”

That puts a damper on their protests for a few moments. Leaning close to each other, the begin to confer among themselves in whispers, seemingly debating whether any of this is true, and why we bothered coming to them. More than a few suspicious glances are thrown my way before they finally compose themselves.

“Let us pretend for a moment that we believe you,” says Luna, having elected to speak for the group. “It sounds as though it would have been in your best interests to keep us in the dark, knowing that we might cancel the Friendship Formal, yet still you came to us. That would mean that you have some other motive coming here.”

I nod.

“Might you share with us the motive?”

“Firstly, the girls need practice,” I say. “By Sunset’s own accounts, they’re all largely inexperienced controlling their abilities, and control is exactly the sort of thing they need if they are going to defeat this world-eating entity this time around.” Placing my hands on the table, I give them a pleading look. “I’d be asking for the week to train them so that they might be better equipped to protect everything they hold dear.”

Celestia offers up the photo of me sacking Flash again. “You speak as though these girls are soldiers, when you seem better equipped to deal with this threat,” she says with a cool edge in her voice. “These girls are living beings, not weapons.”

“Truth be told, ma’am, I’m just a woman in her forties in way over her head; I can say I’m not a solder, but this old mare plans on being on the front lines with them,” I say clasping my right hand over my chest. “Even if it kills me, which it very well might, given how much Ponying Up puts a strain on my heart. That said, I have other uses other than working with them and fighting dirty.”

“Silver Script is an alchemist with a speciality in restoratives,” Sunset continues for me. “She can help those who might become injured, which is why I’d like to ask that she chaperone at the event. She wants to help, but she can’t help anyone at the event if she can’t be there. Silver can help keep an eye on the students, and in turn, if you don’t trust her, you can keep an eye on her.”

~ 08 ~

The rest of the day was rather hectic for Sunset. Much of it was spent briefing the girls, ensuring they’d bring clothes they didn’t mind working out in or possibly having ruined, and soon after that, making arrangements for their training trip. Applejack’s family was more than willing to offer up the hills beyond their orchard, but Granny Smith was more than a bit curious what was taking them out of class for an entire week. Likewise, parents weren’t going to buy any old spiel Sunset could come up with on her own.

Luckily, Silver Script had no such compunction with coming up with a lie. She’d successfully come up with a convincing story—one that could be altered on the individual basis if need be—that was able to convince all parents or guardians relevant to the situation that Vice Principal Luna was willing to back up.

“Hello, is this Twilight Velvet?” she asked, pausing to await a response. “My name is Silver Script, I’m a parent volunteer with Canterlot High, and I see here that your daughter has applied to take part in a youth camping retreat.” Again, she paused as Twilight’s mother responded. “Yes, that’s correct ma’am. It’s in the hills near Sweet Apple Acres, and the Apples will check in from time to time to make sure all is well.” Another question. “Yes, I am chaperoning the event, and I can assure you that there will be no underage drinking.” ... and some more. “My ward, Sunset, tells me that Twilight needn’t worry about her grades anyway, but Principal Celestia is waiving any missed tests or assignments.” A smile spreads across her face. “Thank you, ma’am; that would be lovely.”

Sunset raised her eyebrow. “How do you manage to do that every time?” she asked, crossing her arms as she reclined on the sofa. “After hearing about what I used to be like, everyone’s parents took a lot of work getting them to trust me, and yet this is the first any of them have heard of you and they’re buying into it just like that.”

Silver Script’s smile evolved into a full on smirk.

“If I didn’t know any better, I’d say you were using a charisma potion or a glamor spell to influence them,” she continued, narrowing her eyes at the bag on Silver’s hip. “But I know for a fact that both of those require the influenced to be physically present.”

“Putting things into geeky terms, you could say that their difficulty class for bluff was low enough that regardless of my roll, I would always beat the skill check,” Silver replied, idly reaching her hand into her bag. “Sunset, I’m a mother of two. I’ve dealt with my girls enough both to be able to bluff really well, and I know what a parent does or doesn’t want to hear in regards to what equates to a camping trip in the woods.”

Still mulling over what she was sure to be a reference to Oubliettes and Ogres, Sunset barely noticed the potion Silver Script had fished out of her bag and knocked it back. “So basically, you’re saying that you’re very good at lying to get what you want?” she intoned carefully, so as not to sound accusing. How much of anything you’ve said is true?

The smile on Silver Script’s face faded slightly, but if she was otherwise bothered by the question. “You’re probably asking yourself how much of any of what I’ve said is true,” she ran her fingers through her hair, which was growing out at a surprising pace, quickly revealing that the streaks in her hair weren’t natural like those many ponies had. “The only lies I recall telling since we met are lies of omission, and even then, the only one comes to mind is regarding your parents, because, honestly, it seemed more tactful to let whatever memories you have of your father to remain untarnished.”

Sunset recoiled as though physically slapped. The mention of her father, whom she found out yesterday was deceased, stung hard. It also brought back something else Silver had mentioned. Your parents were the ones who had that feud with the Bluebloods after your disappearance... the ones who tried to fake my death almost twenty years ago. That’s what she’d said, and hadn’t she said that someone had conspired to set house Blueblood up by kidnapping her and hiding her in prison? Then...

“It sucks, doesn’t it—realizing something you’d held on a pedestal for so long wasn’t as flawless as you remembered?” Silver asked, cutting her hair down with a pair of scissors and placing the clippings into a shopping bag. “It’s like a gut-punch that you feel in your heart, shaking you to your core. I felt the same way when Princesses Luna and Celestia let me down that day.” Once it was short enough, she evened her hair out and pulled it into a bun. “But you know what? Focus that anger constructively. Let it give you purpose. You’re the true heir of House Shimmer. If we defeat this thing, and you so desire, you can go back, take control, and restore honor to your family’s name.”

Silver Script rose from her spot on the sofa, crossed the room, and placed her hand on Sunset’s shoulder. “I’m going to go get the tents for the trip. You gonna be alright by yourself, or should I call up one of your friends?”

“I’ll be fine. Go do your thing.”

~ 08 ~

I spend much of Monday morning setting up the tents mostly by myself while Sunset meets up with the rest of the girls down at the farm. Applejack’s brother, Big Macintosh stands back watching, and I can tell that he’s dying to offer a hand, but he’s already helped just by showing me the way up here. I’m responsible for the girls right now, so I may as well make sure they have as much time as possible to enjoy themselves before I start testing them.

While I refuse to let him help with the work, I do keep a relatively steady conversation going with him. With a bit of prodding, he tells me a bit of the local layout, the wildlife, and things to look out for. There’s a nearby lake fed by a waterfall, and though it’s mostly deer and smaller predators such as foxes and coyotes, there’s supposedly bears and cougars—and he probably doesn’t mean me—that prowl the area from time to time. No poison ivy or oak though, which is good, because I didn’t bring anything to treat those.

By the time Sunset leads the rest of her party up to the site, I’ve got all the tents set up and a fire pit dug. Reclining against a log by the fire pit, I call out as I hear the girls making their way up the path. “Thanks for keeping me company, Mac,” I holler after him, even as he starts off back towards the farm. “I’ll keep them out of trouble.”

“Eeeyup,” he calls over his shoulder, never once looking back.

Shortly after, I get my first glimpse of the rest of this world’s Elements of Harmony. No kidding, I spent this whole time having avoided seeing any pictures of the rest of them. Still, I’m not really all that surprised. First up is Applejack in her trademark stetson, a flannel shirt, jeans and cowboy boots, spurs and all, and a rucksack over her shoulder. Next it’s Rainbow, who for whatever reason is wearing a white martial arts gi with a black belt, but no shoes. No bullshit. Rarity’s up next in a plain tee and hiking shorts, but all of it is put into shadow by a ridiculously wide-brimmed straw hat. Similarly, Fluttershy is wearing a plain tank top, what looks like Japanese gym shorts, and tennis shoes. Pinkie is just... No. Let’s pretend she’s not dressed like she doesn’t know what you’re supposed to wear in the woods.

I’m a bit taken aback by the sight of Twilight, who is at the back of the pack with Sunset, burdened by a large backpack that looks to be full of her own camping equipment. I honestly expected her to look like a geek, and I’m not disappointed, but at the same time, I’m still surprised. When I think Twilight, I don’t usually think glasses, yet this world’s Twilight has glasses that definitely look to be prescription. They also look kinda funny paired with the pith helmet and khakis.

Still, I can’t complain about anyone’s attire, given the layered black tee, white longsleeve shirt, and jeans setup I’ve got going. Hell, the red neckerchief just makes me look like something out of an anime I watched as a child. Hmm, maybe I can start shooting laser beams out of my finger tips? Nah.

“Hello girls,” I call out, not rising to greet them. “Welcome to your home for the next week. I’m Silver Script, and I’m here to make your lives hell before the enemy has a chance to.”

Unsurprisingly, Rainbow Dash lets out a derisive snort. “Pffft, this is the pony who beat up Flash?” she comments to Applejack as she drops her bag by one of the tents. “She doesn’t look so tough. Look at her! She’s like Celestia’s age, and that eyepatch doesn’t make her look the least bit tough.”

Applejack gives me an appraising look, to which I respond with a raised eyebrow. “I dunno sugar,” AJ replies in an even tone. “I reckon she could take you. Not sayin’ the fight would be fair, but if she came to help, I reckon she can hold her own.”

The scoff from Rainbow is all the hint I need that this would be a great learning opportunity for everybody. “Y’know, I think AJ’s right on the money, Skittles,” I say in a teasing voice. “Pretty sure this old lady would have no problem knocking you down a peg.” I hop to my feet and brush myself off. “How about it?”

To my surprise, there’s a gentle touch to my elbow, followed by a concerned Fluttershy being at my side. “That wouldn’t be such a good idea, miss,” she says, casting a glance at Rainbow. “She’s a black belt in Karate and she’s never lost in a tournament...”

Before I can answer, Sunset steps in. “It’s alright Fluttershy.” I smirk at her and nod. “If she breaks her, I’m sure there’s enough in Silver’s bag to put her back together again.”

Pinkie Pie pulls a bag of popcorn out of nowhere and sits down on a camp chair I don’t recall setting up, while Twilight gives Rainbow an alarmed look. “You really think Rainbow would hurt her that bad?”

“Nah, I was talking about Silver,” Sunset replies, giving Rainbow a playful smile. “No fighting in camp though. There’s a clearing over there you can play in.”

I nod and make my way across camp and through the treeline. Sure enough, the clearing here is plenty big enough for me to spar with the cocky rainbow chick, as well as for all of the girls to practice magic later on. Rainbow Dash is right behind me, adjusting her gi and looking pretty arrogant about this all.

At the far side of the clearing, I turn to face Rainbow. “I hope by the end of this week, you all will have learned something,” I say, angling my body, and bending my knees in such a way that my feet would make an L if there were imaginary lines extending from their backs. I raise my own hands. My open left hand is closer to Rainbow, held loosely at shoulder level, while my other is held closer to my breast.

Rainbow Dash’s eyes narrow as she sinks into her own fighting stance. If my guess is right, she’s probably thinking that I have some sort of training, or wondering how a supposed pony would know such a stance. I grin at her and incline my head in such a way as to expose my throat. In other words, come at me.

Her approach is a cautious one, which means she’s trying her best not to underestimate me. Good, maybe this will actually be some fun. That said, I’d never let an opponent I don’t have a measure of dictate the terms if I could help it. In response to her cautious approach, I begin circling her in a counterclockwise manner watching not her hands and face, but her feet.

Much like her pony counterpart, when she makes her move, her strikes are fast and hard. It would seem that I am right in assuming she has taken the wrong measure of me; she’s a far more experienced fighter, but she’s telegraphing her moves in the way she shifts her weight between her feet, making it easy to redirect the first punch and then catch her follow-up kick on my forearms.

This, unfortunately clues her in that I’m reading her feet and she clams up, as it were. She backs off a measure and begins circling clockwise around me. It’s obvious that she’s going to try to strike from the blindspot of the eye-patch, but it’s cute that she thinks I don’t want exactly that.

Smiling inwardly, I begin focusing on balancing body and magic, while not Ponying Up completely. It’s much easier to do, having done it a couple of times now, and a day to relax between uses. Magic begins flowing freely through my body—something I still need to learn to control myself, so not to hemorrhage magic and tire out so quickly—and I can tell my cockatrice eye is back.

“Hey Rainbow,” I call out just as she crosses into my blind spot. In one swift motion, I pull off my eye patch and look in Rainbow’s direction. “Think fast!”

Her eyes widen, even as she inadvertently locks gazes with me. It’s almost comical how quickly she turns to stone. Rainbow barely even recognizes what is happening before it’s too late, and she’s stuck in a slack-jawed pose, one of her hands wide open. The others let out an alarmed cry from the far side of the clearing.

I quickly shift the balance so that my magic goes back to being inert, and then stretch. “Eeesh, that’s hell on my knees,” I comment, even as I begin walking up to Rainbow. “Just goes to show I’m getting old.

“Lesson one, girls,” I call out, as I reach into my bag. I withdraw a can of whipped cream and begin liberally applying it to Rainbow Dash’s hand. “Our enemy has no interest in playing fair. It’s not going to fight honorably, so you need to be ready for anything.”

Convinced I’ve got enough whipped cream on her hand, I re-apply my eye patch once more, and begin reaching into myself for my magic. Once I’m sure my eye is active again, I lean in and give Rainbow an open-mouth kiss, making sure to gently close my teeth on her bottom lip. Once the stone begins flaking off of her and I’m certain she’s cognizant of what’s going on, I shutter my magic once more, and quickly withdraw to a safe distance, giggling.

Rainbow quickly begins to blush and brings up her open hand to wipe her mouth before she becomes aware of the cream. “Eugh, what the—” Everyone except Fluttershy and Rainbow begins laughing as Rainbow gives herself a whipped cream facial. “Oh come on! Really?”

“Lesson two,” I say, sliding the whipped cream canister back into the bag. “Don’t fuck with a person’s ice cubes.” This is going to be fun.

Author's Note

AKA: the chapter in which the ice cubes are avenged.

Chapter 09: Wilderness Sabbatical

Adjusting for Local Date
Monday April 3rd, 2017
Entry #1

I never thought I’d be keeping another very informal research journal, but to channel my old mentor, this is some really fascinating material. Yeah, it’s kinda-sorta amoral to be treating seven teenagers as test subjects, and I suppose in the grand scheme of this whole outing, I’m just as much a subject, but that’s beside the point. I’m going to keep a log of things as they progress, but the scientific method has already gone out the window.

Firstly, I need to get this off my chest: I crossed a line I had no right crossing. No, I’m not talking about embarrassing her because of some soapy ice cubes she left for Sunset. This isn’t even about taking such a huge risk petrifying her when I wasn’t even sure depetrifying her would work in this world, though I definitely need to stop doing risky shit like that. There were any number of innocuous places I could have gently bit down on to break the curse, but no. I had to kiss her on her lips.

Anybody reading this probably isn’t aware of this, and, honestly, whoever is going through my journals should feel lucky I’m not skilled enough to bewitch my journals like some of the really dark wizards out there, but Rainbow Dash is a lesbian. Stop the motherfucking presses, so cliche, I know. In Equestria it isn’t so bad because the skewed gender ratio there makes same-sex relationships relatively normal, so she never had a reason to really hide who she was. Her Equestrian counterpart never ended up getting together with AJ, but she’s been in a steady relationship with Cloudchaser from the Ponyville weather team for years.

That’s Equestrian Rainbow, though. This is a human world, and I unfortunately know all too well how unaccepting people can be. Fluttershy pulled me aside while everyone else was getting their shit stowed in camp and explained just how far in the closet this Rainbow is. Of course she’d know, having been her best friend since childhood. Unfortunately, Dash’s had her pro athlete father’s image to watch out for, and she has her own image to be paranoid about.

I can definitely see where she’s coming from. Word gets out that she’s a lesbian, and all the heterosexual girls on the soccer team are going to start feeling uncomfortable around her in the locker room, worried she’s got wandering eyes or considering copping a feel. Suddenly her dad’s getting unwanted attention from the paparazzi, and maybe he’s not accepting here like he is in Equestria. And I just kissed her in front of all of her friends, only one of whom actually knows with some certainty.

So she’s hurting pretty bad, and avoiding me... which is pretty counterproductive when I’m trying to help them learn their magic.

On the topic of teaching them, the first day hasn’t been a complete waste. Most of the girls—which is to say Sunset, Twilight, Rarity, and Fluttershy—have all taken quite well to the meditative method, although Twilight seems reluctant about her transformation. I can kinda see why.

Unlike Rarity, who only seems to exhibit pony ears, or Fluttershy, who exhibits pegasus wings and ears, Twilight manifests a pair of wings reminiscent of a bird of prey, a spike of raw magic surging from her forehead, and what seems to be a tangible aura surrounding her eyes. The symptoms do remind me a lot of depictions of certain dark mages from Equestria’s history. At least she’s not alone in standing out. Sunset shows a similar transformation, though her wings are pure magic. Note to self: sit down with Twilight and see if you can’t help her with her confidence.

Rainbow Dash might actually do okay with meditation after we get over this whole ‘I kissed her’ thing, but until then, she’s obviously uncooperative. Applejack and Pinkie, though? I don’t think they can sit still long enough to enter a proper meditative trance. We all know Pinkie’s gonna Pinkie, but AJ is a bit of a unique case. She’s got a good mind on her, but she’s not all that imaginative. More of an in-the-now sort of gal, which makes her more perceptive, but too perceptive for any meaningful trance. Gonna have to find some alternate triggers for both her or Pinkie.

For now though, I need to start dinner. There are eight ravenous people here, myself included, and regardless of how pissed some of them are at me, I’d rather not have them going mutinous.

Entry #2

Damn it all. I bought equal portions meat and vegetarian products because I figured at least some of these kids would have a normal human diet. The only meat eaters in the group were Pinkie Pie and AJ. Seriously!? Why didn’t Sunset think to mention that only two of her friends ate meat when I hit the supermarket? Now I have more meat than we can eat, and now the girls need more food. Nothing to do about it now, but I’m gonna have to send out for Big Macintosh tomorrow afternoon and have him pick up some things on my dollar.

The only good thing to come out of any of this is that Pinkie and AJ somehow managed to pony up in the middle of a fight over the last hamburger. I don’t even know why, though! Was Applejack being honest about that being her burger? Was Pinkie only doing it for a laugh? These kids’ll drive me to drink, I swear.

Ugh... This is not turning out to be a good day.

~ 09 ~

Tuesday April 4th, 2017
Entry #1

Right, so it’s three in the morning right now, and I just got back from Twilight’s tent. Even though I told everyone I was providing the tents before this started, she still showed up with her own tent among her camping gear. This can be put off on account of this being Twilight Sparkle we’re talking about, because overpreparedness goes hoof-in-hand with that girl. Unfortunately, something I’ve noticed about her interactions with the rest of them, just over dinner, tells me that she still feels a bit like an outsider. I can relate.

Anyways. Twilight’s tent. I was doing a short patrol around camp—you know, cleaning up any litter missed from dinner, keeping an eye out for unwanted guests, and all that—and I heard whimpering coming from Twilight’s tent. Nobody has to tell me that it wasn’t my place to wake her up and talk to her about it... but goddamn if these kids don’t press my mom button. Surprise, surprise, the poor girl is having nightmares about what happened at the Friendship Games.

It’s ~~kind of a shame~~ fucking awful that she’s all tied up in this, because right now, what she needs is gentle therapy, not confrontation. She’s fucking terrified of her magic, the consequences of what she did, and she’s convinced that the Elements of Harmony didn’t completely purge that darkness, this ‘Midnight Sparkle’ from her. That’s why she’s distant from her friends, and that’s why she’s been hiding these nightmares from her friends since the games. The long and short of it is that she’s suffering post-traumatic stress disorder, and it’s influencing her interactions with her friends.

Fuck only knows how good of an idea this all is, but I decided to talk to her in depth—mostly—about my experiences with thaumaphobia and my own sanity slippage. Our situations are different in that she fears what her magic could do and how it makes her an outsider from the group, while I feared how magic could be used to abuse me, but they are fundamentally similar enough for me to make two points to her.

The first point was that ponies, and similarly people, can be surprisingly forgiving when it comes to things done when not in one’s normal state of mind, and most of the time, it’s only a matter of forgiving yourself. Just like how I was put into an impossible situation and crumbled under the pressure, Twilight was pressured to do something she had no understanding of, and was ultimately corrupted by the power she seized. In both cases, we both almost did things we would have regretted, but still others forgave us. For me, it took a long while before I recognized that and forgave myself. For Twilight, her friends have forgiven her, and are just waiting for her to forgive herself.

The other point was that she’s already shown that she’s already shown she’s not about to go mad with power again and attack her friends. Let me just say that, for such a smart lass, she has a tendency to be particularly obtuse at times. She didn’t get it when I compared her awareness of the capacity to hurt her friends to a gun owner being aware of how careful they need to be when handling their firearm, so I had to reword it into something a bit more philosophical. That’s when it hit me that I’d heard something similar so long before, something that resounded with me. “Insane people are always sure that they are sane. It is only the sane people who are willing to admit they are crazy.” Was it Nora Ephron who said that? Either way, she was starting to get it, so I decided to hammer it home by pointing out that by questioning how safe she was with magic in her hands, she was showing that she’d be able to handle it responsibly.

I’m not certain that I got through to her, but at the very least she seemed to relax a little bit. All that I know is that she didn’t cry out in her sleep this time. Welp, I’m going to go get a little bit of shut-eye before I wake up to start breakfast.

Entry #2

Things went a lot better today in the magical training than it did yesterday. I’m not sure if AJ and Pinkie were practicing before bed, but both of them were actually ahead of the game when I tried to work the others through tapping their magic and transforming. Once everyone in the group—well, mostly everyone—had done so, and everyone knew how to channel their magic well enough, I was able to let the more experienced unicorn talk everyone through some basic stuff like levitation and light.

That, unfortunately, meant I had to work with Rainbow, who had yet to Pony Up at will. I don’t think I pointed it out in my previous entries, but since the whole farce yesterday, she’s not said two words to me. In fact, she’s been pointedly avoiding me, often going off on her own. Unsurprisingly, she slipped off while I was working with the others this morning, and I found her a fair bit away working at turning a dead tree into firewood.

She didn’t say anything or even act like she noticed I was there when I found her, but she didn’t have to. I could see the change in the way she was cutting the wood. She was splitting logs with far more force than was strictly necessary, and actually had to work to get the maul out of the stump serving as her chopping block. Were she a pony, I’d even say she’d worked herself into a lather, yet in spite of it all, she hadn’t even broken a sweat.

So I just stood there, watching her split wood for half an hour. It wasn’t until the handle of the splitting maul was starting to grow slick with her blood that I called a stop to it. Oh sure, she struggled and fussed, just like a filly will when it comes to putting on ointment, but in the end, I got through to her enough to relax and let me lotion and wrap her hands. Turns out that questioning her loyalty to her friends, and how she can possibly protect them with her hands all fucked up is still a good way to manipulate Dash, even when she knows she’s being manipulated.

Bringing the firewood back to camp, I apologized to her in a drawn-out roundabout sort of way. You know how it goes, I started out by telling her a story about a pony who really enjoyed a good prank, even if others didn’t share her enjoyment. How she decided to prank everypony in her town, only for the townsponies to turn the prank around on her in such a way that she genuinely thought she was in mortal peril, just to prove that a prank is only fun if the victim can laugh too. I explained to her that this pony was her Equestrian counterpart and that like her, I could sometimes take things too far. Then I told her I was sorry for nearly outing her to her friends.

She’s still not too pleased with me, and I can’t blame her for feeling violated, but she did admit that I pulled a good one on her, kiss notwithstanding. That opened the door for me actually working with her. It’s pretty much as I figured, as far as meditation goes. For all the brashness on the surface, she has enough self-discipline to not scoff at the ideas I put forth this time, and she had enough inner focus that it only took an hour for her to Pony Up. From there, I gave her a short tutorial on manipulating her energy before sending her to join Sunset and the girls to catch up in learning practical magic.

By that point, it was late afternoon, so I took that opportunity to call in a suppertime pizza order, and walked down to the farm so I could wait for the food. During the wait, I took the opportunity to hand off a grocery list and some money to Mac to bring by either tomorrow morning or afternoon. Given that he was to keep the substantial change, he didn’t complain.

I also took the time to check in on the pendant I was regenerating for Sonata. It was definitely doing a lot better than it was before it came into my possession. It looked more like an actual gemstone instead of a pile of ruby shards. Not only that, but it was also beginning to interact with the minute flow of magic around it, searching to feed. Soon enough, I’d be able to pass it back on to its proper owner.

Again, though, I must confess to something very... amoral. The sirens are emotional manavores, that much is true, but they seem to thrive off the energy generated by conflict—a sort of antithesis to changelings, who thrive off love. I may have used a bit of changeling DNA to treat the stone during its earlier phases of regeneration, and while I’m almost certain this should allow her to thrive off positive emotions in addition to the negative ones, it definitely shows that I’ve tampered with it: it’s purple.

I’m thinking about coming clean to her about it when I pass it off to her. She’s not stupid, but from the sound of her sisters, she’s probably the least likely to be upset. Hell, if this works, she might ask me to help them without telling them. It’d be better for them, that way, right?

When did I become such a horrible person? When did the greater good become the Greater Good? I suppose when a person breaks, there are just some things you can’t fix; instead, you can only fake it by making a conscious choice to do it.

~ 09 ~

Wednesday April 5th, 2017

Today was the first major experiment for the group, myself included. The idea was that we needed to test our limits, as well as determining whether or not we can increase our magical reserves by pushing ourselves. Especially the girls, because this is their world... their home.

First test consisted of simply Ponying Up and going about as normal until we could go no longer. Guess who was the first one who had to stop. Yeah, that’s right; me. It took me about a half-hour fully transformed, without doing anything else, before I had to tap out and pop a restorative. Any longer, and I’d have been at risk of having a repeat incident of Saturday. Admittedly, it’s longer than I expected, but the girls all went an hour and a half before they even broke a sweat. Pretty sure it’s this damn heart that’s holding me back.

Considering we started at dawn, it was a good opportunity to feed them all some restoratives in addition to breakfast. The girls—yes, even Rainbow—were all concerned by how pale I was, which apparently meant my skin was near translucent. I had to reiterate that using magic in this form was putting a strain on my already weak heart, but that I wouldn’t let that get in the way of helping.

Applejack chose that moment in the meal to live up to her element. “If’n your ticker’s that bad, and you have no stake in this here world, why’re ya pushin’ yourself so darn hard? It seems kinda stupid riskin’ your health preparing for a fight that ain’t yours when you got kin back home y’all should be protectin’,” was what she said to me. Even now, I’m not sure that I have an answer. It seems pretty stupid in hindsight, showing up here just because I got a letter from my alternate future self. Hell, if anything, I should’ve taken it as a warning to stay away. So why did I do it? Why would I condemn myself to possibly facing the same death as the other me? Penance?

I didn’t have a legitimate answer, even now as I write this before bed I have no idea. So I told them all simply, “I am not a clever pony, nor a good pony. Haven’t been for a long time. I try not to let it keep me down.”

After everyone had recuperated and was back up to full strength, we moved on to active magic use duration. This time, I had the girls creatively use what they’d learned from Sunset to push themselves. It was definitely a neat thing to watch... especially when they started doing things Sunset hadn’t taught them. AJ and Dash both figured out how to use their magic to augment their strength, stamina, and speed. Gotta admit, it was kinda funny seeing them trying to run as fast as they could and while carrying their own body weight in stone. Leave it to them to make it a competition. AJ’s totally a tank, and Dash is definitely DPS.

In addition to flying, Fluttershy managed to create a small butterfly-shaped shield; it’s nothing like what my Twilight can do, but a defensive role suits her. Gotta wonder if Sunset couldn’t teach her how to do some minor healing magic, because that’s the sort of shit any party needs, especially if we’ll be facing real combat. I don’t even know what’ll happen if we don’t have a white mage in our party. I’m not expecting miracles like resurrection, but at the very least she could help stave off death... and if she could, for lack of a better term, buff the rest of the group, they could become nigh unstoppable.

Pinkie... she’s definitely the group’s rogue, with a magical twist. Since tapping into her magic at will, she’s gotten far more Pinkie like. If I didn’t know better, I’d say she was actively using a blink spell, but Princess Twilight says that whatever our Pinkie does, it isn’t anything like her teleportation spell. Human Pinkie is now doing Pony Pinkie’s inexplicable reality displacements... which honestly scares the fuck out of me given that I’m basically helping these kids prepare for war. Do I dare suggest she learn how to debuff?

Rarity basically did what Pony Rarity does. No, not making dresses, though she certainly does enough of that for it to be misinterpreted as her sole character trait. She was manipulating multiple objects with telekinesis and weaving them through the air in pretty patterns that’d make a butterfly jealous until it realizes it isn’t made up of sticks, mud, stones and a bag of feminine hygiene products Dash thought would be funny to attach to a rock.

Sunset, on the other hand, spent that period of time not trying to push herself, but working with Twilight on some more advanced magic, namely the actual blink spell. Rather than testing on herself—which just isn’t safe outside a classroom setting with a specially trained unicorn who can fix it if you end up half inside a wall—she was having her move objects... which was going pretty well until she blinked a boulder inside a tree. I’ve never seen a tree explode like that before.

As for me? I decided to test a theory about magic output and directing energy flows to certain parts of my body. For whatever reason, I got it in my head that I lacked a focus in the same sense that the girls do. It’s hard to explain in words when their magical focus is a concept rather than something tangible, but for me, I don’t have a natural focus because my magic isn’t native to this world and I have no links to anything like the Elements of Harmony. Still, I noticed during the first session that the girls didn’t have the same raw output that I seemed to, as though they had some sort of valve that I lack. That really got me thinking.

For my little experiment, I transformed and started channeling a spell that covered whatever I touched into ice. With a bit of mental discipline—read playing with more mental constructs—I managed to isolate the spell output to my feet, and walked out onto a nearby lake. I don’t imagine myself to be some Christ-like figure, but the ice spell certainly made it look the part. I immediately noticed the difference with the increased focus. I wasn’t using nearly as much power as I was before.

Not content with just standing on water, I decided to do the tai chi exercises I learned to destress when my daughters entered adolescence. It’d allow for more manipulation of the water beneath my feet, which only froze enough local water to hold me up, without lowering the overall lake temperature. It worked out pretty well for me, and I was actually at it for more than two hours before any of the others came looking for me.

I was only sorta surprised that I lasted longer than Pinkie, Rarity or Fluttershy, but then AJ and Rainbow showed up, all sweaty and roughed up. When Twilight and Sunset finally showed up, I actually laughed. I’d been at that for two hours, and I hadn’t even exhausted more than half of my magical reserves. It was as if I’d finally discovered how to use my magic without straining my heart, and had shown up a bunch of young whippersnappers in the process.

At that point, I finally got cocky. Not content with just dancing on water, I decided to start playing with water as though I were some character from an American not-anime I watched only one episode of more than two decades ago. Water rose up out of the water in two thick tendrils to encompass my arms. The pull of gravity no longer held any sway, allowing the water to behave more like a whip-like extension of my very body than something that belonged with the rest of the lake.

For the next fifteen minutes, I continued my laketop dance at an increased pace. As graceful as it probably looked, it was a pulse-pounding experience, and took a lot more magic than I’d have liked. I quickly burned through the magic that had lasted me hours. Sweat poured off me, and I could feel my heart in my eyes.

I suppose I shouldn’t be too surprised that I blacked out. I mean, I went at that for hours without tiring before switching it up and increasing the drain. It was probably the change and sudden surge in magic that did me in.

No, what surprised me wasn’t that I blacked out, but rather who dove in to save me. I know I smoothed over that whole kiss thing with Rainbow Dash, but honestly? I’d have expected one of the more powerful telekinesis users to pluck me out of the water before anyone else could swim out to grab me.

Of course, the first thing Rainbow said to me when I regained consciousness mid-CPR? “We’re even.” Smartass.

Tomorrow, I’m going to run them through it all again until noon, and then it’s back to the farm. As much as I’d love to push them right through ‘til Friday, they need to at least get one day of school in this week, on top of all the prep work they need to do for the Friendship Formal. That reminds me that I need to find something to wear that’ll fit in, but not restrict my movements...

~ “This is how the world ends, not with a bang, but a whimper.” ~

People and ponies alike always told me that their lives flashed before their eyes in a moment of near death. The last time I died, there were no visions of the past, or anything. I just died, showed up in the Nexus of Souls, and then returned to the land of the living.

This time was no different; I didn’t relive my entire life in a single moment as I plunged towards the great maw straining to burst through the portal, nor did I have any major epiphanies about my life. Only two things crossed my mind, and they weren’t even world-shattering revelations.

The first thing to cross my mind was that I had failed my daughters. Even if the great devourer couldn’t move on to Equestria because of all the timeline tampering, my Aqua Pura and Aqua Clara will grow into adulthood never knowing what happened to their mother. All they’d know was that I’d vanished without a trace checking out another world for Twilight. As bright as they are, they wouldn’t understand, and they’d probably start to resent the Princess for something that was so outside her control it couldn’t have even been predicted, never mind prevented. I’d never see them in their primes, or forming their own herds, finding the loves of their lives.

The second thing to cross my mind was the fact that I would finally be returning to the afterlife, and I’d be going on to Elysium. I remembered what future me told Ice Blossom, what she’d repeated to me. “Time isn’t made of lines; it’s made of circles. That is why clocks are round.” I’d be going to the afterlife, but how long would I have to wait until she’d show up for me to spring that Cabooseism on her?

Except, as I fell towards the gaping maw of this great eldritch abomination, the fang-filled death I expected—the one I’d earned through foolhardy arrogance—never came. Rather than bite down on me and end my life, it opened up wide and I plunged into the black void within. Would I fade into nothingness until not even my soul remained? Would I simply cease to be? Or would I achieve terminal velocity, only to find something solid to strike, here in the abyss?

I just fell, on and on, as though that was my sole purpose now. In the arbitrary beneath me, I saw the light of the human world seeping through the distant mouth of the enemy, and though I plummeted further and further into the black expanse, that mouth seemed to grow ever wider. It was almost as though it intended to swallow the world whole.

With a lurch in my stomach, gravity reasserted itself, and before I knew what was happening, I began to fall back the way I came. It could have been hours or minutes before I hit the hood of a car with an impossibly soft thud. Somehow, I was back in the same intersection I’d been consumed in.

Sprawled on my back, facing the sky, I saw a great column of inky blackness writhing up into the sky. The moment it shot past the cloud layer, the end of it spread out in all directions, quickly blocking all light from the sun. Belatedly, it occurred to me what in the world was actually happening. The portal opening wasn’t inside the realm of our enemy; it was inside the enemy itself. Those tentacles weren’t some sort of defense mechanism, they were part of its digestive tract.

All those incursions... all those deaths... We’d thought it was trying to gather enough magic to break the barrier between this world and its own, I thought dryly as the world was plunged into darkness. It wasn’t trying to do anything like that... Something weakened the boundary between this world and a point inside the creature and it knew about it.

“So this is how the world ends,” I whispered with a dry laugh, “not with a bang but a gulp.”

After a few moments, the street lights flicked on, and I became aware of a whimpering nearby. It took a lot of effort for me to get up off the hood of the police cruiser; I was losing a lot of blood from all the punctures and slashes I’d accrued from my fight at the portal, and unless I sought a first aid kit, I’d bleed out within a few hours. Still, I wasn’t out of the woods yet, and the crying could be a trap.

In the blinding light of the halogen street-lamp, I discovered that the shotgun I’d borrowed had landed very close to me. It even looked to be in working order. With a limping gait, I stalked over to it and snatched it up. Without a second thought, I flicked on the mounted tactical light and took aim in the direction of the piteous sound, off in the darkness.

I almost wished I hadn’t; the shadows weren’t as empty as they looked, and the grotesque spider-like creatures that had attacked countless times since I came to this doomed world skittered out of sight. Even now, they gave me the creeps, and I had no doubt that they would be prowling in even greater numbers now that the world was inside the belly of the beast.

The urge to blast one of the head-sized monstrosities was hard to suppress, but the urge to see to it that any civilians that hadn’t evacuated the area could get to safety won out. Besides, surely someone could stitch me up in repayment for saving their arse, right?

Not far off, near an alley mouth, was the human Twilight Sparkle. She was just sitting there, clutching the still form of Sunset Shimmer close to her, sobbing and whimpering. There was no reaction from her as the light hit her eyes. No hand shot up to block the light, nor did she call out. The pitiful young woman just clutched her friend harder to her breast.

As I drew nearer to the girl, I realized that she was talking to Sunset. “This is all my fault,” she’d whisper, brushing a lock of fiery hair out of Sunset’s slack face. “This all happened because of me, and now I’m all alone again.” I paused and listened as she spoke. “Why did I get so greedy with the magic? If I’d just left things alone, this... thing would never have found us. Yet I reached out, and tore the boundaries between worlds asunder. It felt me, and wanted me, and now I’ve doomed the human race.”

In that moment, those words were the worst thing I could ever hear. They struck so hard, deep inside me in a way I never thought possible, and from that wound in my spirit, a fury that eclipsed anything I’d ever felt before erupted in my belly. Not even when I had been raped and forced to witness the death of Ice Blossom had I felt so out of control.

She’s the reason you’ll never see your daughters again, the darkness in my heart whispered, and like a guitar string wound too tight, something in me broke. This child, who worked alongside us never once stopped to think that things might work out better if she had just said something. I might never even see the afterlife now, because of her!

My grip on the pump-action tightened until my hands began to tremble. No, I will not allow this child to prevent me from seeing my loved ones again. It was crazy how easy that thought came to me. Judgement is upon you, Twilight Sparkle.

I leveled the shotgun at her chest, and pulled the trigger.

The deafening bang that echoed off into the darkness was a pale shadow of the sound of the last of my humanity dying with that girl. I would not die here if I had anything to say about it, and if I was lucky, I’d get the chance to make sure she paid again. That would have to wait, though. First I had to live through the night.

Author's Note

This chapter took a lot longer than I'd have liked, and for that I apologize. This is, for the most part filler, which pretty much everybody hates, myself included, but as much as I'd love to do a training montage, this felt like the right way to go.

Now, you're probably wondering about the end there. Yes, that is exactly what you're probably thinking. Bad Future Silver survived her apparent death, and now is just plan Bad Silver. How, or when, will she strike? Is she really foe, or friend? Find out on the next episode of Dragon Ball Z? Wait, I feel like I've done that joke before.

Chapter 10: Deaf to All but the Song

For as long as Sonata Dusk could remember, music had been a part of her life. She may not have been a pony or had a cutie mark to prove it, but music had been her talent, her magic, and, in essence, a part of her very soul. The day that Sunset Shimmer and her friends had stripped it away from her, she knew that she’d been robbed of an integral part of her very being. Just hearing music while at work had turned her once passion into daily torment.

Worse than that, worse than being condemned to a slow death of magical starvation, she’d been robbed of her sisters. Throughout the years spent on this world, Aria Blaze and Adagio Dazzle had been the two constants in her life. Aria, ever the epitome of brazen boldness, was there for her when she could not speak for herself, and when she could not think for herself, there was Adagio to fill in the airheaded blanks. In return, she was their innocence and kept their hopes up when they were but urchins on the Equestrian streets, barely scraping by. As a group, they were unstoppable, but without their magic and condemned to death, her sisters had abandoned her, choosing to die alone.

She resented Sunset and the others for the longest time, and why shouldn’t she have? The pony-turned high-schooler had taken everything from her—magic, income, family, life, even her home—and now she could barely afford to feed herself and still make rent in her new, awful apartment. If anyone had the right to hate her, it was Sonata, right?

In spite of it all, she simply couldn’t bring herself to hate. Aria and Adagio might have no issue hating the girl, but not Sonata. Disproportionate though it might be, everything she now faced was her karmic retribution for the crimes of her and sisters. This she believed with all her being. She’d burned her bridges, and her innocence was gone. There was nothing left worth saving. Sonata Dusk had resigned herself to her fate.

When this new pony—this Silver Script—came into her life, she was nothing, if not confused. In Sonata, she saw something that the supposed Elements of Harmony had not: something worth saving. Her crimes, horrible though they were, were not so horrible that she deserved to die. She was willing to treat her like just another human being, deserving of dignity and respect. In her actions, she felt all of this, but she felt more than that; she felt a mother’s warmth and hope.

So here Sonata was, sitting in a cafe on a Friday morning, waiting for the pony who promised her life back.

Part of her told her not to expect any miracles. Even now, the black seed of cynicism, nourished by months of abuse, whispered darkly in her ear. It promised the woman would either let her down, else she expected something out of her. There were worse things in store, of course. She probably just wanted to build her up before tearing her down spectacularly. That’s what the people of this world did, after all.

She’s not like these people, though! she screamed internally as she stared at the table in front of her. She didn’t have to help me or give me one of those potions to keep me going a bit longer, but she did.

She looked from her arms, folded atop the table, to her waistline. In addition to patching up all her bruises, she’d given Sonata a draught of something that had bolstered her magic reserves, and had actually allowed her to put on a few more pounds in the short time since they’d last seen one another. One didn’t just waste such a valuable asset on someone they knew had nothing to offer in return if they were hoping to later abuse them. That was too much like... it was too much like what she might have done when she was with her sisters.

Admittedly, Sonata knew very little about the pony-turned woman, but even without much of her empathic siren abilities, she could feel that Silver Script meant her no harm. There wasn’t a doubt in her mind that Silver had her dark side, but it’d probably take a lot to bring her to doing something evil. Now that’s a scary thought. Just the memory of her descending upon Flash Sentry like an avenging angel without the bloodlust was enough to elicit a shiver from the siren; how scary a villain would she be?

The touch of a hand on her shoulder roused her from thoughts. “Did I keep you waiting long?” came Silver Script’s soft greeting moments later. “Sorry I’m late.”

Glanced up at the gray woman from the corner of her eye, but shook her head. “If you hadn’t done this for me, the only thing I’d have been waiting for...” Sonata cut off that unpleasant thought, choosing instead to take in the changes in Silver’s appearance since last they’d spoken.

Her hair, formerly two-toned with streaks of blonde interspersed with silvery white locks, was now a gleaming silver that came down to her shoulders, though the fringes were tucked out of her eyes. That was another thing that Sonata quickly took note of: she could see both of the woman’s eyes, including the unnervingly blood-red one. Though the color difference caught her off guard, it was the brown frames she wore in place of the eye patch that was surprising. If she could see with both eyes, why did she wear an eye patch to begin with?

Then there was her outfit...

“Are you going to some sort of party or something?” Sonata blurted out.

Silver looked down at her turtleneck dress and absently plucked at her green shawl. “Oh, this.” She shrugged and took a seat across from Sonata, placing a steaming mug of coffee down as she sat. “I’m chaperoning a semi-formal dance this evening, so I wanted to look nice.” The corner of her mouth perked up for a moment, and for a second Sonata saw anticipation in those eyes. “Besides, if something goes down, I gotta look stylish while I’m kickin’ arse.”

The younger woman’s eyebrow arched upwards, but she didn’t want to go in the direction of possible fights. After everything that had ever happened with Starswirl, Sunset Shimmer, and the aftermath of the Battle of the Bands, she didn’t really want anything to do with fighting. Instead, she glanced in the direction of Silver’s hip, where her bag of holding would have been, had she been wearing it.

“So, you said it was done, right?” she asked, unconsciously licking her teeth, even as her free hand reached for the empty collar at her neck. “Like, I can start wearing it and stop starving to death?”

Silver Script nodded, though her eyes quickly broke contact. “Yeah, it’s done,” she said, sliding a fist-sized amethyst out of her black sleeve. Placing it on the table, she slid it across to Sonata.

“It’s purple,” Sonata deadpanned, narrowing her eyes at it, as though the color offended her. She picked it up, and she could immediately feel it interacting with the ambient magics around it, including a fair trickle of emotional energy, despite the lack of conflict around them. There was no accusation in her next words, but she still caught the alchemist’s wince. “What did you do to it?”

Scooping up her mug of coffee, Silver leaned back in her seat and looked up at the ceiling. “I gave you a chance at a better life,” she answered with a sigh as she sipped her beverage. Setting down the beverage, she locked eyes with Sonata once more. “You’re a good kid, Sonata Dusk; sure, you and your sisters did some pretty awful shit, but from where I stand, most of it was done in order to keep yourselves sheltered and fed. I might not approve of the method, but you girls didn’t have a lot to work with in the first place.

“You feed on the energy born of conflict and negative emotions,” she explained in a flat voice, “and while it can be plentiful in this human world, it’s also far more risky to collect. Too little effort, and you don’t get near enough strife to replenish whatever you spend influencing everyone, but too much, and you might find yourself in the middle of a full-on riot, right? You could even go live in a rough neighborhood or a war zone, but there’d be even more risks there.”

A nod from Sonata prodded her to continue. “I treated your pendant with changeling DNA. Like you sirens, they feed on emotional energy, but on the energy generated by positive motions.” Silver leaned forward and clasped her hands around her coffee mug. “With this, you don’t need to sow discontent wherever you go. And if you really wanna gorge yourself, you’ll probably find adoration to be far more filling than making people bicker ever did.”

Turning the gemstone over in her dainty blue fingers, Sonata frowned. What the woman had done disgusted her on the most instinctual level. Wasn’t she basically forcing Sonata to ‘be good’ for her own good? Had she taken away her freedom of choice? Mentally, she slapped herself. Manipulation was what the sirens did best—Sonata and her sisters were guilty of similar crimes—and Silver had pulled a masterful con over on her. Why, then, did she not feel angry?

The answer hit her like a tonne of bricks. For Sonata, none of it had ever been about the power or manipulating people; the thrill she’d gotten out of everything had always come from singing with her sisters, and knowing people loved her voice. All Silver had really done was given her back a part of herself and made it so she didn’t have to do awful things to get the most out of life.

Her sisters might not see it exactly her way, and maybe they’d never feel the way she did, but maybe Silver was right. Maybe they didn’t have to make everyone love them and fight. Could making music really be enough? It just might be.

Sonata smiled softly, tears rimming her eyes as she carefully fitted the stone into the clasp of her collar. “Thank you,” she whispered. “Thank you for giving me my voice, my magic, and my hope back.”

Finishing her mug of coffee, Silver nodded and rose from her seat. “Don’t mention it, please,” she responded in an uncomfortable tone. “If you can convince the other two to consent and hand off a fragment of their old focus, I’d be glad to do the same for them.” She started towards the cafe’s exit, but paused to look back at her. “Oh, while I think of it, I think that Vinyl Scratch girl was looking for someone to do a vocal track for some mix she’s planning on using at tonight’s dance. Maybe give her a call. Pretty sure you can find the number on her social media page.”

~ 10 ~

I don’t know why I chose to give her that little bit of information, I think to myself as I walk back to Sunset’s apartment. If she has to show up at the dance, people could make a fuss, and the blame might be shifted towards me. That is something I definitely don’t want; Celestia and Luna’s trust for me is in the red to begin with; sacking one of their students kinda does that.

Then again, the Equestrian Vinyl seemed pretty chill that one time I hired her for Pura’s cuteceñera, so as long as they get along, they’ll probably be able to work something out. Besides, that’s only if Sonata even contacts her. She might just want some time to herself so she can come to terms with the fact that she’s not going to die of mana deprivation, or she could be on the phone with one of her sisters right now, breaking the good news.

I guess I just figured, being a singer and all, she might like to have a chance to sing again, I mentally answer my previous question as I cut through an alley to get to Sunset’s apartment building. It’d be like if I lost my wings, and then someone gave me the chance to fly again—not that I couldn’t do that myself.

A chill runs down my spine as I feel a presence appear behind me. “How adorable, you found a pet...” There’s an unreal quality to the voice, as though it is both simultaneously there and not there. It’s vaguely familiar, but the way her words are muffled prevents me putting my finger on where I heard it before. “Ah yes, the little dead girl is not so dead; my, you have been busy...”

“Who are you? What do you want?” I demand, spinning to face the speaker. Curiously, there is nobody there. The only sign that anyone has been here at all is a fresh carving on the alley wall: three slashes that would almost resemble an anarchy sign, had they not been angled to resemble an angled X with a slash through the top. Like the voice, the marking too is familiar, but I simply could not place it. “Quit fucking around and show yourself.”

But nobody comes.

“You have a chance to make this right, you know,” comes the whisper right behind my ear.

I spin on my feet, throwing all of my weight into an elbow blow that never connects. Like the previous attempts to discern my opponent, I’m met with an empty alley, spinning off-balance. There is neither hide nor hair of my quarry, leaving me wondering if I’m not the prey.

There’s just the quietest puff of displaced air that reminds me very much of a certain unicorn’s signature spell in the direction of the alley mouth. As I regain my balance, I just catch sight of someone slipping around the corner. By the time I follow suit, however, they’re gone—lost in the crowd.

“All you have to do is kill Twilight Sparkle and all this will stop,” the woman’s voice whispers in my ear, chilling my blood to near absolute zero temperatures. “You tried once before with not even half the options you have now, and would have succeeded had someone not intervened. She’s just a girl on the cusp of wielding power she doesn’t understand. Killing her now will save your daughters from your hubris...”

I stand stock-still, my nails biting into my palms from how tightly my hands are clenched. People pass me by, shooting me concerned glances. Then again, I imagine I probably look like I’ve seen a ghost... one that I may possibly wish to kill.

Who are they, though? I ponder, stepping back into the alley to observe the marking. There are only seven people here who even know I nearly killed someone who would be one of my dearest friend-slash-mentors. I don’t think Sunset or the others are pissed about Twilight’s role in the friendship games enough to kill her, or else they wouldn’t even associate with her. I don’t think Twi is about to ask to commit suicide by Silver after confiding in me like that in her tent.

Another thought occurs to me. What if I’m just losing my fucking mind? Wouldn’t that just be perfect; the world here is on the verge of being eaten by some monstrous entity beyond mortal comprehension, and I’m losing my shit. What are we, fighting Cthulhu?

With a sigh, I shake my head and withdraw my phone from my sleeve and snap a photo of the marking. It’s a simple few motions to send it off to Sunset, but it’s a bit harder to come up with an explanation of what just happened.

There’s a scant few moments where I wonder if she’s not in the shower, but shortly after I get ready to shut off the display and make my way back to her apartment, her reply appears in the SMS window.

Things will get very bad quickly if a third party gets involved tonight. There’s no ifs ands or buts about it. If it’s like Sunset says, and we’re just fighting off little spider monsters that give the trites from Doom a run for their money, it should be a cakewalk tonight. They managed just fine without the control they have now, but if the timeline is changing because of us, we might not be able to keep the record of zero casualties for this event.

Do I have everything I need for combat stims? I ask myself, going over a mental checklist of the ingredients necessary to make the stuff. Normally, I wouldn’t be allowed to make them without crown oversight, but I want to give us every advantage we can tonight, just to be on the safe side.

~ 10 ~

After Silver Script left, Sonata was beside herself with what to do. Even now, she could feel the magic and, foreign though it was, positive energy around her. She had to admit, the good vibes coming from the couple in the booth behind her felt amazing after almost a year of being unable to feed; conflict had always brought an adrenaline rush that made her feel unstoppable in that moment, but love was... it was like being wrapped up in a warm blanket in front of a fire, being told she never had to worry again.

Would Aria or Adagio enjoy this feeling? If they weren’t technically changelings after Silver’s little treatment, couldn’t they feasibly subsist entirely off each other? Admittedly, she’d have quite a job getting them all together again, just to try... and that was if she could even convince them to accept Silver’s help.

A soft sigh escaped her throat as she imagined getting together with her sisters again and just singing for the sake of singing. Even as she wondered if the ability to sing again would be as enticing for them as it was for her, she unconsciously started the breathy vocalizations that she’d done in concert with Aria while encouraging the students of CHS to go for a battle of the bands.

Sonata realized what she was doing quickly enough, and realized that Silver’s efforts had done what she’d promised; she had her voice back and it even sounded better than ever. She chanced a look around the cafe, and to her alarm found all eyes were on her. Yet, none of her accidental crowd looked like they were about to gang up on her and lynch her. In fact, many of them were smiling, and not in that derisive way the CHS students who tormented her often did.

She continued on only a few minutes more before she she forced herself to stop, and when she did, she was greeted not with negativity, but warmth and applause that brought even more warmth to her than the love she’d sampled mere moments before. They liked her singing, and not because she was using magic to make them like it—they liked her for her!

Tears rimmed her eyes, and threatened to spill down her cheeks before she quickly mopped them up with her sleeve. “Thank you,” she cried, not just to the crowd, but to Silver Script as well. “Thank you so much.”

Author's Note

Took a bit longer than I'd have liked to finish this, and I mostly blame Overwatch. Junkrat husbando and so many waifus, y'know?

In all seriousness though, the next two or so chapters are ones I've been looking forward to writing for a long time now, and it will be great to finally work on them. That being said, we're coming to the end of the first story arc. Though it might have seemed like I was building up to the date of the 'bad future' at the start, and I still kind of am, everything has been leading up to this.

As many of you have probably already figured out, the Silver from the bad future is now in the present day. Has she been corrupted by the enemy and is on the bad 'team' now? Or is she working to her own ends? Find out next time on Silver Script Z.

What? I need to stop using that schtick?

Make me.

Chapter 11: We Can Make the World Stop

That evening, they all arrived at Crystal Prep Academy in a limousine contracted by Silver Script. None of the group was particularly upset by the fact that Silver had gone ahead to help Cadance and Luna oversee the setup of the event. Well, everyone but Pinkie, Sunset reflected as she reclined in her seat, watching the pink devil fidget over an event she wasn’t helping set up. I swear she’d insist on helping set up her own partying intervention if it didn’t defeat the point of it being a surprise.

Her eyes swept across the inside of the limo, taking in the postures of her friends. They were all clearly on edge about the upcoming battle, but there was no denying that was a good thing; it meant they wouldn’t be caught unawares.

Unsurprisingly, Rarity looked the most uncomfortable, but Sunset wasn’t sure whether it was because she wasn’t wearing her very best outfit—they’d ultimately agreed their attire should be functional rather than showy—or because she was uncomfortable with the idea of fighting for real. Sure, Rarity had it in her to be a one woman army, but could she draw on that ferocity without witnessing Fluttershy’s brutal slaying? Regardless, she kept fussing with the hem of her ‘combat dress’.

Then there was Fluttershy. She had a sort of glazed look to her eyes, as if she experiencing some sort of pre-traumatic stress episode. As long as she kept to the plan and kept the others covered, she probably wasn’t going to have to kill anything; if she did, it’d break her little heart.

Applejack and Rainbow, on the other hand, looked almost eager. Since Silver Script had helped them all tap their magic at will, and Sunset had taught them both some practical spells, the two had been going on like this was all just one big game to them. Surely they’d start taking it seriously once things actually started; they couldn’t possibly try to keep score... right?

The one who worried Sunset the most was Twilight. On top of clear signs of being uneasy about the idea of seeing Principal Cinch once more, there’s what Silver mentioned regarding her being anxious about her magic. Now that Silver had pointed it out, it seemed obvious in retrospect, but there was something else in the way Twilight held herself that she didn’t believe the older woman had noticed: guilt.

“Twilight, what’s wrong?” she asked in the softest voice manageable over the sound of the background noise of the limo. “What’s bothering you?”

This comment drew the attention of the others. Everyone’s eyes were locked on the young woman, but Applejack was the first to respond. “Ya know, now that she mentions it, you’ve looked like ya had a bee in your bonnet for some time now, sugar,” she noted, reaching across the gap between them to put her hand on Twilight’s. “We’re yer friends, Twi. Y’all can tell us if’n anything’s botherin’ ya.”

The young woman shut her eyes, looking down at the hand clasped over her own. Her discomfort was obvious enough that none of the girls had to be a changeling or siren to feel the emotion radiating through the enclosed space. For a split second, Sunset swore she was entertaining the idea of fleeing from the moving vehicle.

No such action came, of course. Twilight sucked in a shuddering breath and stared out the window behind Applejack. “It’s just... ever since what happened at the Friendship Games, things have been beyond strange. I’m not talking about the nightmares I’ve been having, or the fact that I’ve been distancing myself from you all because I was afraid my magic might hurt you all,” she said, panic edging into her tone with every word.

With a slump of her shoulders, she heaved a sigh. “I didn’t mention any of this to Silver Script when we spoke, but I feel like something’s been... observing me ever since the games. I’d initially put it off as my discomfort regarding my magic, but then there’s all the unusual happenings,” she continued. “The number of people going missing has been slowly rising since then, and the number of violent incidents has been on the rise as well. The police haven’t been saying anything officially, but even they’re on edge about it all. Then there’s Flash Sentry’s apparent possession.”

Sunset held up her hand in a silencing gesture. “Hold on a minute,” she said, her eyebrows arched. “You’re not implying that—”

“I think that whatever this thing is, I think that I brought it here when I stole your magic.”

~ 11 ~

Remember how I said I wouldn’t know what to do if I ever met anybody I knew from Equestria—from my old social circle? I recall debating whether or not their lives were, on the whole, better without me or some variation therein. After all, this world’s Ice Blossom is still alive, and Aqua Regia is not—at least, not yet—a murderer-slash-rapist.

Funny how life is in that way. It’s like, if I decide not to go down a certain path, life will do anything to ensure that I don’t have any real say in the matter. I can cry and scream all I like, and I can dig my fingers in deep until my nails are torn out as I’m dragged along with the flow. It never seems to change.

Of course I would end up at Crystal Prep, where people I knew and cared about in the other world would be. Even if I never intended it, I’m ending up in their lives again—on the eve of a world-shaking event for them, no less. Doesn’t that make me like some kind of bad luck penny?

“Miss Silver Script, would you mind giving me a hand setting out the refreshments?” Dean Cadance asks, snapping me back to reality. She’s standing a few feet away from the tables I’ve just finished dragging out into the school’s auditorium. “Almost everything else is taken care of, and I thought I’d take this opportunity to ask you a few questions.”

My body involuntarily freezes at her words, even as my eyes flick to the bags of snacks and beverages held in her arms. I know what a kindhearted person Cadance probably is because of the way her pony counterpart is, lovingly leading the Crystal Empire and all, and having displayed abilities and tools that could really help this world, I imagine that she’s probably planning asking more about magic or something. It’s probably what I’d do in her shoes, after all.

“I’m listening,” I reply, accepting one of the bags. “What’s on your mind?”

“It’s just...” She pauses, fumbling for the proper words. “Twilight said she met another her a few months ago; a pony from your world, right? And when you met with Celestia, Luna, and myself just days ago, you spoke with us all as though you were seeing an old friend, rather than meeting strangers.”

My shoulders relax, and I let out a breath I hadn’t realized I’d been holding. “Wondering about pony Cadance, are you?” She nods a bit hesitantly, and I can’t help but smile. “Well, I don’t know much about your role as dean at Crystal Prep, but the Princess Cadance I know is the leader of a beautiful protectorate I call home, on the fringes of Equestria’s northern borders. It’s called the Crystal Empire.”

Her eyes widen at the mention of her being a princess, not that I really blame her. Imagine being told your alternate reality horse-self is royalty and try not to be surprised. It’s nearly enough to make her drop a veggie tray on the ground “Just a princess?” she prods, her voice rich with interest. “Not a queen or empress?”

“Nah,” I reply with a laugh. “I don’t much know the history of the choice of Equestrian royalty to use princess and princes as opposed to queens and kings, but I think I have the gist. When you’ve got tyrants like King Sombra the Shadow Usurper, and Chrysalis the Insatiable Changeling Queen cropping up, trying to enslave crystal ponies or use all of Equestria as food for her emotion-eating brood, the terms kinda become synonymous with evil, y’know?”

There’s barely a reaction when I mention those names, but it’s clear in her eyes that she has her own history with their counterparts in this world. “Does ‘Princess’ Cadance have a, er, special someone?”

“Fishing for answers as to who your mister right is?” I tease, upending a bag of cheese puffs into a large glass dish. “I’d be genuinely shocked if you’re not dating the counterpart of the pony who gave Cadenza two wonderful daughters.” Her cheeks turn this adorable shade of scarlet. “So how long have you been seeing Shining Armor?”

Her cheeks go from scarlet to an almost bruised color. “Oh look, we’re all done here; I better go to the restroom before everything begins.”

Okay, maybe I overdid it, I think to myself as she scampers off out of the auditorium. Forgot how embarrassed she could be about sex, which is still pretty funny considering she’s practically a sex symbol.

With all of the setup work out of the way, I make my way to the wall nearest the DJ booth to recline against it. It’s only 7 p.m. at the moment, so there’s probably a good fifteen minutes to half an hour until Sunset and the crew show up. Given that things don’t really kick into gear until around half-past nine, there’ll be a little time for me to mingle-slash-fuck around if I so choose.

As the young woman who could only be Vinyl Scratch sets up her equipment, I debate striking up a conversation with her to pass the time; I’ve always enjoyed good synthetic music, and while her Equestrian counterpart makes do with what she’s got—and it’s still impressive what ponies can make without a computer—there is just a certain quality of sound you can’t replicate with magic alone. It’s probably better if she’s left undisturbed though. Regardless of whether or not she’s at risk of fudging something because of a distraction and thus damaging her gear, I know from experience how annoying it can be having someone pester you while you’re doing prep-work for a demonstration.

Instead, I’m simply left to watch as students, distinguishable only for the curious looks and gaping from the CHS crowd, filter in through the auditorium doors. At first, I attribute it all to them visiting their rival school for the first time; I’d certainly have been awed to enter this fancy auditorium back in my youth, after all. But the more students file in, the more I find that many of the curious looks are directed at me.

It takes me a moment before it clicks. Flash Sentry, two goons, and Sonata Dusk in a mall hallway. Oh, right. I kinda nutted one of their peers, didn’t I? Then I recall some of the comments on the pictures that have been circulating, and my own cheeks flush pink. If nothing else, I’m pleased in my choice of a modest black dress and a green shoulder cape—easily mistaken for a shawl, but no, definitely not the cloaks people mistakenly call capes when they think of superheroes. Basically, even if I happen to be a MILF, I’m not going to be fueling any fantasies with this getup.

Plus, the cover hides the bandoleer of alchemical flasks that I wore in lieu of my bag. If the cops somehow get involved or the bag is separated from me, it’d cause a lot of questions. That’s not even mentioning the chaos that could be caused with my stores of potions, bombs, and spell essences.

After a few minutes pass and the trickle of students slows, I spot Sunset and the girls as they enter. Almost immediately I can see her looking to make straight for me, but at the same instance she starts to peel away from the group, Celestia, Luna, Cadance, and a pale, cunty looking woman enter behind them. Even as the authority figures signal for everyone’s attention, I mouth the word “Later,” to her.

“Okay, everyone, I know you’re all eager to get started, but before Miss Vinyl Scratch starts the music, I want to go over a few basic ground rules,” Cadance says into a microphone, eliciting a near unanimous groan from the crowd of teens. “First of all, please don’t wander the halls; everywhere but the hallway to the foyer and bathrooms, and the areas directly outside the main entrance and marked emergency exits—” She gestures at a few of the doors. “—are out of bounds.

“Next, there’s to be no smoking or drinking on Crystal Prep grounds.” She looks to a specific group among the crowd and raises an eyebrow. “You know exactly what I’m talking about, Lemon Zest. Any students caught will be removed from the dance.” Many of the gathered teenagers begin to laugh, the chastened one included.

The microphone is passed off to Luna, who cheerfully adds, “But most of all, remember to mingle and have fun, everybody!” At that, the sound of an electric bass guitar begins to fill the auditorium as the party begins.

~ 11 ~

Early on in the evening, I’m approached by Sunset. In no uncertain terms, she relates that Twilight believes our foe, whatever it is, is drawn to her. Honestly, were it anybody other than Twi, I’d probably call them paranoid and suspect them of narcissism. But this is Twilight fucking Sparkle, goddamnit; if something’s leading one of the brightest, analytical minds out there to believe C’thulhu is after them, it may very well be true.

Our goals haven’t changed tonight, though—just some of the parameters. If our adversary is drawn to Twilight, but not attacking her outright, then we should observe first, prioritizing preventing or minimizing casualties. That said, if the lives of the girls are in danger, I will put their lives above all else, even if it means watching people die. They are all needed if Sunset is to help fix this or at least create a new loop.

“Such a dark look for a beautiful face,” comes a smooth voice from beside me, interrupting my brooding vigil of the dance. “I can tell that I’ve never met you before; one community minded as I am never forgets a chance meeting, yet there is a striking familiarity about you. Do you have any relatives in this area?”

I glance to my left, mentally facepalming as I adjust to account for glasses I’m wearing. Upon seeing the man’s face, my stomach clenches. Skin whiter than the whitest kid you know, and blond hair with blue eyes that’d make Adolf Hitler proud—even without fur or a muzzle, I’m looking at the face of the bastard that is partly to blame for all of the bad shit that happened to me, to say nothing of whatever twisted shit he and his family put his sister through to fuck her up that badly.

Yet, as I look at the man, I can see in his eyes that he is not the same Blueblood the Forty-Second that I remember. While his crisp suit indicates he’s still clearly a self-styled sophisticate and incredibly well-to-do, his face doesn’t hold the same arrogant self-importance of the Blueblood I know. The outstretched hand he’s proffered as way of greeting, although well-manicured bears the calluses of hard work.

It’s... kind of unnerving, as well. The way he’s looking at me, he clearly knows something. Is this a game to him?

“You must be Blueblood the Forty Second,” I say, gingerly taking his hand and giving it a light shake. Let’s see if that puts him off balance. “A pleasure to meet you.”

Though he returns my shake with a firm squeeze, his eyebrow darts upward even as he grins at me. “I’m afraid you have me at quite a disadvantage, knowing not only my name but also my heritage,” he says as he reclines against the wall beside me. “Though I suppose if we’re dispensing with pretenses and showing all our hold cards before we’ve even dealt the flop, I’m very curious about you, miss avenging angel.”

Upon catching my confused look, his grin only broadens. “There’s very little that gets by my little organization of concerned citizens.” Oh, hell; this Blueblood’s some sort of mafioso? “So when a curious woman appears out of the blue, immediately associating herself with the septette of mysteriously magical girls hailing from CHS, and begins defending the downtrodden, of course my organization is going to take interest. That you know my name as well only compounds that curiosity.”

Stiffening, I shift away from him ever so slightly. “Concerned citizens, you say,” I reply in an even tone, even as I start looking around for anybody who might like to shank me. Although I don’t notice anybody on the first pass, I spot a man lurking near the unmistakable dancing figure of Aqua Regia. Tall, ashen skin, shaven almost completely bald except for a silvery goatee... What are the odds that the eyes behind those shades are a vivid blue? “So... what, you police those the police don’t?”

“In a manner of speaking.” From the corner of my eye, I watch as he flags down Aqua Regia’s shadow. “Now, I imagine you’re thinking I’m some kind of film noir mobster, but that’s as far from the truth as you can get. My people merely regulate the criminal elements so that the Canterlot PD has an easier time of things. We are protectors of the people and mete out justice of the social sort. That it is a profitable objective is of little consequence.

“Canterlot was lawless before my organization was formed,” he explains. “Crime ran rampant, and the were police overburdened and near breaking. Almost no public morals to speak of, one might say.”

As the apparent bodyguard joins us, I have time to marvel at just how tall this man is. When I was a young man, way back when, I wasn’t exactly short, but this guy stands at least a head taller than I would have been—compared to me now, he’s easily a head and a half. Really takes me back to when Mother would complain about how short she was.

The man takes notice of me, as well. Even as he gives Blueblood a respectful nod, turning his head in such a way that reveals the earpiece in his ear, I can feel his peripheral gaze on me. The muscles in his neck clench visibly as his jawline tightens, as if he doesn’t like what he sees. Hell, he looks like his 40s, so he’s probably seen some shit.

“Take my associate Silver Script for example.” Blueblood gestures almost indifferently at the tall man. “He grew up in one of the more out-of-control neighborhoods. When he was old enough, he formed a gang of youths that attempted bring some order to the chaos. Of course, as gangs are prone to, someone else had a ‘better’ idea of how things should be run, and the group turned to the same sort of action they’d formed to stop. When he hit adulthood, he erased his identity and became a mercenary of sorts, taking whatever jobs he thought might help clean up the scum.”

“Yeah, yeah, boss,” my apparent counterpart replies in a familiar voice that I never thought I would hear ever again. “I don’t think the little lady wants to hear my tragic backstory or how I went from a murdering vigilante to becoming your chief enforcer. Why don’t we just cut to the fucking chase and ask her what she knows about all the disappearances, the supernatural shit, and why she’s here already.”

I shake my head in amusement, watching my tall doppelganger over the tops of my frames. “We never really were one for bullshit, were we?” I said just loud enough to be heard over the music. The pair shares a confused look that elicits a loud laugh. “Say what needs to be said, bluntly if necessary. Yeah, it’s a pain in the arse to dance around the topic, so let’s cut to the chase.” I gesture to the hallway exit and start making my way out of the auditorium. “My name is also Silver Script, and your lives just got so much more fucking complicated...”

~ 11 ~

The dance continued on for some time before Sunset lost track of Silver. One minute the woman was there, near Vinyl’s equipment setup, and the next she was gone. Where could that blasted pony have gotten to? she mused as she made her way over to the wall with the snack tables. I know she’s an adult and everything, but sometimes she’s more of a teenager than I am.

Unfortunately there was someone at the tables that Sunset really did not want to deal with. Doubly unfortunate for her, that person did have words she wished to have with Sunset. “Miss Shimmer, was it?” Principal Cinch called out, halting the girl in her tracks before she could so much as think of backtracking. “I’m to understand that things of a ... magical nature may be happening tonight?”

The young woman could help but flinch at the disdain in Cinch’s voice, but she reminded herself whose turf this was. “Unfortunately, yes,” she replied in an even tone. “I—”

“I don’t want to know the details,” Cinch interjected, looking sternly down her nose at Sunset. Taking a sip of punch from a paper cup, she turned her eyes out to the students of both schools, dancing in harmony. “Dean Cadance has assured me that this is for the best that you’re here, despite my objections. Given my showing at the Friendship Games, however, I do not believe it wise that I have a say in matters pertaining to your abnormalities.”

At that moment, Vinyl Scratch chose to make an announcement over her speakers. “Hey, everybody, you sound like you’re really enjoying yourselves out there!” she called out, the response to which was a high-energy cheer from the audience. “Now, I’ve got something really special planned for you all tonight. A new friend helped me finish and perfect a new track for tonight, so I decided we’d treat you to its first airing with live vocals instead of something spliced together!”

When the crowd went berserk, Sunset and Cinch momentarily forgot their conversation. A stagelight illuminated one of the open emergency exits and standing there in the doorway was a woman in black motorcycle leathers and a yellow cat-eared helmet that hid the woman’s face. It interested Sunset especially, because this was something new. Whatever was going on, they’d officially gone off script as far as her time loops were concerned.

Silence fell over the auditorium as she timidly made her way through the parting crowd, the light keeping pace with her. Almost imperceptibly, a seemingly glitched synth track began pumping from the DJ’s equipment. It rose in volume and intensity until it gave way to a single, clear melody. A second synth instrument began playing behind it, rising to a quick climax as the biker reached Vinyl’s stage.

“You ready, Sona?” Vinyl called out?

Rather than acknowledge her verbally, the woman began tapping her toe as she gave Vinyl the thumbs up. “In comes the dawn,” came the singer’s voice over the speakers, though she held no mic. “I’ve fallen asleep with my head pressed against your flaws, all my love.”

A laugh escaped Sunset’s throat as it dawned on her who was singing. Indeed, as she looked closer, she caught the glint of a fist-sized gem hanging from the woman’s neck. “She did it,” she whispered in amazement as the crowd began to clap along with the percussion track. Sonata Dusk was singing again, but it was clear that the girl wasn’t using her powers to control the crowd at all; if anything, she was reinforcing the bond between schools with her voice and the power of the lyrics alone. “The crazy mare actually did it!”

“Ahem.” Principal Cinch cleared her throat, to draw Sunset’s attention away from the spectacle of the music. “As I was saying, Cadance assures me you have prioritized student safety above all else. All I ask is that you try to minimize property damage. If this is even a fraction as... hectic as the Friendship Games were, I dare say things will be rough on my school.”

“I can’t speak for our mysterious adversary, but I can promise we’ll do our best.”

With a sigh, Principal Cinch walked away. “That’s all anyone can ask.”

Once the Crystal Prep principal had retreated a fair distance, Sunset poured her own cup of punch and went back to crowd-watching, occasionally directing her gaze up to the ceiling, where the first attacker would come from. She could still see the girders and the inside of the roof—they were safe for now—but that could change in the blink of an eye, and it wasn’t the sort of thing she’d feel coming.

“Hey, Sunny!” Pinkie exclaimed, clapping her on the shoulder. “Why aren’t you out enjoying the party while it lasts? This song is totally amazing!”

The redhead merely laughed and shooed her friend with her free hand. “Go enjoy it for the both of us, Pinkie.” She glanced over to the hallway exit and sighed. “I just can’t enjoy this night after seeing it through so many times.”

That comment caused her friend to deflate a bit, but then she inclined her head in the direction Sunset was looking just as their missing ‘chaperone’ returned accompanied by two men. “At least someone’s making the most of things,” Pinkie noted with a giggle. A wry smile twisted her face and she leaned in and gently nudged Sunset in the side with her elbow. “But I wonder what kind of fun she could be having in the hall with a handsome mobster and the bodyguard who could be her brother? Do you think it was both at the same time?”

The choked laugh and ensuing spray of punch narrowly missed the pink comedian. “Pinkie ew!” Sunset cried, wiping punch from her face with a napkin. “If he looks like he could be her brother, why are you insinuating she... eugh.” She shook her head and glared at Pinkie. “Also, I’m pretty sure she doesn’t swing that way.”

Cocking her head in confusion, Pinkie looked away from Silver Script, her possible worldly-counterpart, and the blond man. “What, you don’t think she could tell jokes to two people at the same time?” Pinkie wrinkled her nose. “Ew, you have a dirty mind, Sunny.”

That was when the screaming started.

Author's Note

... and Sunset Shimmer was immediately acquitted in a court of her peers, for nobody can stand being trolled by the pink menace.

Yeah, I know, late late late. Yada yada games.

Look on the bright side. It's probably NOT going to be five months until the next posting.

Alright, a few things about this chapter for reals this time. I've had 'All I Ask of You [Feat. Penny]' in my head for this chapter since the very beginning, when I'd mentally toy with how scenes would play out. Hell, even before the story was first posted, I knew this song was going to be played at this specific moment in time. A lot has changed about how the scene was approached. In the original mental layout of the event, Sonata wasn't even supposed to be singing this song; Twilight was. Silver was supposed to have been brooding about whether or not she should meet human world Ice Blossom, and the song was supposed to have her almost ready to do so before the record scratch as chaos broke out. Obviously, Blueblood and Human World Silver Script weren't anywhere in the original draft at all.

Those of you who recognize the song that opens the dance probably realize that the chapter title is a reference to another of the Glitch Mob's songs, 'We Can Make the World Stop'. Between some of the BlackGryph0n & Michelle Creber songs, some Persona 3 songs, and various background tracks from anime, Glitch Mob accounts for a fair bit of the background music I like to have going when I'm writing.

Hope you all enjoyed this short return to your regularly unscheduled programming.

... on the next episode of Silver Script Z. You fuckers thought I would forget to reference it, didn't you?

Chapter 12: Our Demons

“You’re asking us to believe an awful lot,” Blueblood says, rubbing his jawline and shooting his associate a worried look. “Do you have any means to substantiate these claims?”

With a snort of laughter, the Silver Script beside him crosses his arms. “You have to admit that this is all pretty far-fetched, even with the pictures,” he adds in agreement. “I mean, you expect me to believe my alternate reality counterpart is a woman, and a horse from another world on top of it?”

You ever get a feeling of deja vu you just can’t shake? It’s like, you’re in a situation that is just so profoundly familiar that you could swear you’ve lived it before in another context? I kinda feel like that right now, like I am reading the newest Daring Do novel, and she’s in a situation very similar to one in the very first book. It really and truly makes me want to laugh out loud, but I’ve worked too hard to be mistaken for a madmare now.

Rather than risk making them feel like this is all some kind of hoax by adding my own laughter to the mix, I nod my head. “I felt the same way when I found out that a cartoon show for little girls was a reality in and of its own,” I answer in a soft voice, pulling all of my magic into my core. “I could give you a little demonstration, but truth be told, I need to conserve my energy; got a light?”

Neither of them answers verbally, but Silver Script reaches into the pocket of his suit jacket and returns with a fanciful lighter and a pack of menthols. Flicking the lighter open and igniting a small flame, he grins. “Pretty sure Abby will have a fit if she finds you smoking out here in the hallway,” he comments, his tone rich with the sort of sass I had a long time ago. “Thrilling, isn’t it?”

Rather than accept a cigarette as he might be expecting, I shrug and channel some magic out through my outstretched arm. In an instant, the flame turns green, leaping out from the lighter to sit on my outstretched palm. There’s no pain from the heat, though; in fact, it’s kinda cold. “Never really was good at creating a flame with magic,” I explain as I roll my palm to face the ceiling. “Water and air came naturally, and earth only put up a minor fight, but I could never get the feel for the way the spells worked in the flame creation part. I blew up Twilight’s training room enough times that she barred me from practicing fire magic while working out my phobia. Definitely easier to keep and maintain a flame, though.”

In one swift movement, my fist clenches around the flame, smothering it. Rather than ceasing my channeling, however, I probe outward, toward my counterpart, searching him with a gentle magical caress until I find what I seek. To be honest, I’m kind of surprised as I levitate two large caliber handguns from the twin shoulder-holster beneath his suit jacket. It’s not so much that he is armed in the first place—he is a bodyguard and/or enforcer for what is basically the Human Equestrian Yakuza—but that I was able to take them without any resistance at all, as if there were no catch on the holster to secure the weapon.

Both men tense as the pistols, though handcannon might be the better term, float between us. It’s an understandable response when you’re suddenly at the mercy of your own guns. That tension loosens a bit when I magically depress the magazine release button on each weapon, and said magazines drop into Silver Script’s waiting hands.

A bemused expression crosses his face as I eject the chambered rounds and then pluck the weapons from the air. “Christ, and you fire these akimbo?” I say aloud, wincing at the weight. I hold the weapons out slightly, angling the muzzles at the floor to examine them and frown as I read the inscriptions on the slide. Purity and Clarity? My eyes shoot up to him. “It’s fuckin’ creepy that you gave your guns similar names to my daughters.”

“They may as well be his kids with the way he babies them,” Blueblood jabs, slapping Silver Script on the back before policing the ejected rounds from the floor. A softness fills his eyes as he tosses them back to Silver. “Judging by the way he looks after my sister, though, he probably would be a good father.”

My stomach clenches at Blueblood’s words. Even after all these years, and even though I’ve come to terms with all of the hurt, what my world’s Aqua Regia did still pains me. The thought of my counterpart watching over Aqua dredges up the old doubts that led to my research for the Genesis Project. How would my world’s Aqua have fared if I’d become her friend? Would I have been enough to balance and heal her broken mind? For my Aqua Regia, Genesis was her redemption, but if this world’s Silver Script could have helped, then maybe I could have made an earlier difference, before I pushed her to her breaking.

I shake my head, twirling the handguns by the trigger guards and presenting them to him grip-first. My eyes feel suddenly wetter, and I’m forced to look away as he reloads his weapons and stashes them away. I don’t have the heart to mention any of this to Blueblood or Silver, of course. There’s no way I can really say “Your family’s counterparts in my world were horrible people, and your little sister grew up to be a psychopath who raped me with my own research and murdered the one I loved,” with any form of kindness or tact.

Turning to make my way back into the auditorium, I shoot Blueblood a halfhearted smile. “If he’s anything like me, and I have no reason to doubt that he is,” I say, thumbing in my counterpart’s direction, “Silver Script is reckless as all get-out, and though he tries, he can and will find ways to fuck things up and come out better for it.”

Neither of them say a word, but I can practically feel them giving each other a look as they fall in step behind me. Then something occurs to me, rooting me to the spot. Reaching beneath my shoulder cape, I withdraw a pair of alchemy flasks and hand them to the boys. “In case someone is grievously wounded, drinking this should keep them alive and moving long enough to receive medical treatment.” Without waiting for a response or bothering to point out that they’re some of my last, I continue on back into the crowd. “The girls all have one, but it might be important that you guys do too.”

I don’t know why I’m so certain I should be trusting these two as much as I am. Maybe I’m hoping to mitigate the work the girls will have to do by themselves. Things are so much more complicated this time around. Yes, from everything that Sunset has told me the girls are progressing with their magic far faster with my interference this time around, and I’ve even gotten one of the Sirens... not quite on Sunset’s side, but mine. At the very least, Sonata’s willing to try to make peace, and I can’t quite remember how much she knows, but she can tell something big is going on.

At the very least, things will be in place if something happens to me.

~ 12 ~

When the screaming started, nobody was quite sure what was going on. The music came to a halt with a stereotypical record scratch, and then one of the girls from the CHS botany club pointed up toward the ceiling, yelling, “It’s the end-times! We’re all going to die!”

Though she didn’t need to look up to the blackness that had overtaken the auditorium’s ceiling to see what Rose was screaming about, Sunset still found her eyes drawn upward. The sheer number of times she’d seen this same event play out did nothing to diminish the revulsion upon seeing the spidery creatures emerging from the darkness. Truly these creatures could only have crawled out of the bowels of Tartarus for how wrong they looked and felt.

Although the creatures had eight legs, and some even seemed to descend from the middle of the ceiling on thin strands of spider silk, Sunset knew the similarities to spiders ended there. In place of the two-segmented body, the abominations simply bore heads that appeared to be some sort of deformed amalgamation of a pony and a human skull, with a bifurcated jaw that revealed a maw that wouldn’t be out of place on a lamprey. The worst part was the eyes, however. Rather than blank with soulless hunger, they were distinctly human, widened in perpetual terror, as though terrified by what it was being made to do.

It took Sunset a mere moment to put aside her disgust and call out to everybody in the auditorium. “Everybody listen up!” she bellowed with a quick amplification spell. “I need you all to stay calm and exit the auditorium in an orderly fashion. We’ll cover the evacuation, and then handle this once everyone is safe.”

She looked out to the crowd and managed to make eye-contact with the rest of her friends. “Fluttershy and Rarity, you two cover the evacuees making for that—” She pointed to the emergency exit nearest the pair. “—exit. Applejack and Pinkie Pie will cover the other emergency exit.”

As she watched her friends transform and begin moving out, she waved Rainbow Dash and Twilight over. “Rainbow, I need you to close off the hallway exit; they won’t bother with the closed door, but I’d rather this not turn into a bug hunt,” she said after taking a moment to dispel the voice amplification spell. “Once that’s done, link up with Rarity and Fluttershy. They’re alright with projectiles and barriers, but they’re not brawlers like you or AJ. Twilight and I will help out where needed.”

“You got it, Sunset,” Rainbow replied with a nod before taking to the air.

The rainbow-haired youth had no sooner cleared the crowd than did Silver Script and her two new acquaintances move to join them. “Where do you want me, Sunset?” she asked with a grave expression. “I might not be as spry as you kids, but I’m not going to sit by when I know someone or something is after Twilight.”

“You’ll be with us.” Sunset nodded. “Try to use those spell essences and alchemical bombs you brought before you use any of your own magic, though. I’d like to keep your mana potions in reserve for the future.”

It was Silver Script’s turn to nod, but to Sunset’s surprise, it was to the two men with her. “Blueblood, are you armed as well?” she asked the blond man. When he shook his head side to side, Silver frowned. “I want you and Silver to get Aqua Regia and her peers to safety, then. Silver Script, once they’re all safe, I want you to shoot anything that’s not human that comes through those doors.”

The tall bald man glanced at the creatures descending on spider silk strings and the teenage girls slinging spells before shuddering. “Better you than me,” he muttered, drawing a pair of pistols from beneath his jacket. “At least we’ll have some back-up. Surprised the pigs were able to respond so quickly.”

Sunset and Silver looked to the center of the room, where the crowd had cleared a circle around an armored figure. It was roughly the height of the silver-haired woman, but it was near impossible to gauge their sex. The flak jacket and body armor bearing the emblem of the Canterlot Police Department did a good job of obscuring most of the facial features and secondary sexual characteristics of the wearer. The only hint that it might be a woman was the wider hips and narrower waist.

The figure strode across the auditorium toward them, casually slinging their shotgun against their shoulder in such a way that gave Sunset pause. It was impossible to fathom, but that looked to be the very same weapon the Silver Script of the previous timeline had liberated from a police car mere minutes before her death; it even bore marks from where the tentacles had gouged into the metal of the barrel. But it couldn’t be that Silver! She’d seen the woman die.

But as the armored figure drew closer, she began to notice other things about it. They weren’t wearing gloves at all, but their hands had instead blackened and become chitinous claws. Warning bells started going off in her head as the figure’s gaze lingered on Twilight a bit too long. It seemed that Silver Script had noticed this as well, as her hand had darted up to her bandoleer of flasks.

“Hello again, Twilight.” The figure dropped their weapon into a ready stance, aimed straight at Twilight and yelled in a chillingly familiar voice, “It’s like you just don’t want to stay dead, but you can hardly face the punishment for your crimes if you just won’t fucking die!” The clawed finger on the trigger squeezed so agonizingly slowly, and the gun’s blast was a dragon’s roar to her ears.

What happened next occurred in the blink of an eye, but it played out as though in slow motion in Sunset’s mind. Silver Script surged forward, for just the briefest moment appearing with wings and pony ears, knocking Twilight Sparkle to the ground. The slug caught Silver clean through the side, tearing right through and ripping into the table behind them. The stricken woman dropped atop the fallen girl, bleeding from both sides of her abdomen.

“I’ll kill each and every one of you if you get in my way!” she bellowed, glaring down at the downed Silver Script. “Even you, if I have to!”

Silver’s male doppelganger turned, training his weapons on the armored attacker, but whatever it was that drove and altered the attacker must have made her faster as well. Before he could squeeze off more than a single round, which caught only the side of the attacker’s helmet before whizzing off into one of the arachnoid monsters behind her, she pumped her weapon and fired off her own retaliation into his belly. He too slumped to the ground.

The terrified screams of the students and chaperones began anew.

~ 12 ~

Somewhere in the back of Sonata Dusk’s mind, she instinctively knew that something terrible was going to happen if she did nothing. It wasn’t that niggling little thing called hindsight, which insisted that seeing Silver Script and the armed man gunned down in front of her was terrible enough if it meant Silver could no longer help Adagio and Aria. It also wasn’t the newfound desire to help people as the gray woman had helped her.

From atop the DJ’s stage, she could see the CHS and Crystal Prep students lose their composure. The first to fall victim to the shoving was a younger red-headed girl Sonata had seen at Canterlot High during the failed Battle of the Bands plot. Wasn’t she Applejack’s sister? The next to fall, landing directly atop the first girl was a pale foreign girl whose mismatched eyes stood out more than her ice-blue hair.

Before Sonata could act, however, a tall young woman with luxuriously long blond hair swooped in to help the foreigner and the redhead up. While Applejack’s sister was wary of the girl that had helped her—and quite reasonably terrified, all things considered—the pale girl was quick to wrap the red-skinned girl in a hug that brought her no shortage of apparent discomfort. Rather than lead the pair into the thick of the crowds fighting for the exits, the girl led them both to take shelter beneath the snack tables.

To her right, Vinyl was crouched behind her DJ equipment, staring up at the eldritch abominations creeping down the wall toward them. Rainbow Dash remedied that threat in a hurry, streaking by in a flash of prismatic glory, shooting forks of lightning from her fingertips at the creatures. The DJ shrieked as the bodies of the stricken terrors tumbled from the wall, but to both Sonata’s and Vinyl’s relief, the creatures dissipated into black smoke before they struck the delicate equipment.

“You guys should get out of here with everyone else!” Dash called out before flying over to the exit Fluttershy and Rarity were guarding. The blue athlete delivered several similar killing blows to a number of writhing foes pinned to the wall by needles of crystal. Even Rarity took no pleasure in this, it seemed.

Sonata frowned, even as she watched Fluttershy launching the spidery monsters back into the gaping abyss above. There was no comfort in seeing that the creatures didn’t come back down elsewhere; the panicked students in the crowd couldn’t make the same observation, and their renewed terror tainted the air with the acrid taste of terror. Her newly amplified sense of ambient emotions made it all so intense that it didn’t matter that she was wearing a helmet.

Sucking in a deep breath, she looked once more to Vinyl. “Someone’s going to get hurt, or worse, if everyone doesn’t calm down,” she said into the inbuilt microphone in the helmet, broadcasting her message to the entire auditorium. “Vinyl, pull up some music, please.”

Using the same sort of magic her sisters had used so many times before, she channeled her spell through her voice. Despite the terror around her, Sonata’s thoughts were of calm, and her intent was peace. A pale green aura flooded the auditorium. Unlike the previous times she used such a spell, however, the aura came not from the crowd, but radiated out from herself. “It’s no wonder, you’ve got demons...”

~ 12 ~

Twilight shrieked, staring down at the woman bleeding across her lap, breathing with the shallowest of breaths. It’d take forever to get the blood out of her dress, but her brain was quick to point out that she was in shock, and that the important thing was getting the woman medical treatment. For that to happen, however, she’d need to overcome the fear-induced paralysis that had overtaken her senses.

There was also the matter of the shotgun-toting foe that seemed intent on taking her life to consider. Despite all the practicing channeling magic and transforming, none of the girls—Twilight least of all—could transform and channel a spell in the instant it would take their attacker to take aim and execute them. She had all of them at her mercy.

So why wasn’t she firing? Was she taking a moment to gloat? To savor a surefire victory? Surely they weren’t expecting the girls to not attempt to redirect their focus in the face of this new foe... except Twilight knew that was exactly why. For all the speed and improved magical skill the girls now possessed, none of them could abandon those who couldn’t defend themselves to aid their friends, no matter how dire it might seem. Sans gloating, that’s how Twilight would do it.

Sunset had seemingly had enough and dared to move a muscle, but to Twilight’s surprise, she didn’t witness the pointless slaughter of a friend, despite the earlier warning. As Sunset manifested pony ears with accompanying aethereal wings and horn, the armored foe flipped her weapon around and clubbed Sunset about the side of her head. The transformation was interrupted, and the former pony dropped unconscious to the floor.

“You don’t even know how badly you fucked everything up, do you, Twi?” Her attacker laughed, arrogantly resting her firearm against her shoulder as she crouched down to Twilight’s level. The woman then reached up with her free hand and pushed up her visor. “I imagine seeing my face isn’t going to make any more fuckin’ clearer, is it?”

Twilight felt her jaw clench as she sucked an involuntary breath through her teeth. Her eyes darted from the face of the enemy to that of the woman bleeding all over her. Save for a chitinous growth over her right eye and a few wrinkles and scars, it was a perfect match. The same petite nose and blue eye, the same cocksure smile, even the worry-lines were the same. Somehow, she was looking at an older, corrupted version of the woman that had trained her friends in magic—the same woman that helped ease Twilight’s fears of the resurgence of her own inner darkness.

The Corrupted Silver’s eye lit up and her grin grew, baring sharklike teeth to the teenage girl. “Oh yeah, now your brain’s firing, isn’t it? Probably leaping straight to paradoxes, alternate reality, and maybe string theory, right?” She shook her head, even as Twilight tensed. “Don’t worry about that at all. Let’s just worry about how you fucked up and how, while it won’t fix anything, your death will make me feel better.”

Finally, Twilight found her voice. “I know what I did,” she said in as non-confrontational a tone as she could muster. “Drunk on the newfound power I gained from the stolen magic, I tore a hole in the space-time continuum, giving something outside our reality a taste of our world. You came as a favor to my pony counterpart, and now you cannot see your daughters again. It’s not just me that you blame, though. You blame Princess Twilight as well, and lacking the means to get at her, you’re channeling that rage and grief back into your loathing of me for creating this situation.”

The smile on the woman’s face faded slightly, but didn’t diminish entirely. Instead, it became the pitying smile of a teacher that knew something the student didn’t. “Gotta say, full marks for working that much out based on what she told you,” she said, pointing down at her wounded counterpart, not noticing as one bloodied hand reached up beneath her cape. “But this is so much more personal to me. See, your rape of space-time didn’t just invite something dark into this world... it took something pure and innocent, and created that darkness.” She gestured back at herself with her thumb. “We created it. All because your tampering ruined an experiment of mine so many years ago.”

Silver Script—the wounded one—jerked her hand out from the concealed bandoleer, brandishing a flask that roiled with blue intensity. Twilight didn’t even need the warning of “Eyes!” to know that things were about to get hectic. She slammed her eyes shut in preparation for a blinding flash... but it never came.

Over the din of the crowd and Sonata Dusk’s efforts to calm the remaining evacuees, Twilight could just make out the tinkle of shattering glass and the momentary ring of a spell discharge. Then came the pop of a rubber stopper, and the simultaneous clatter of gunmetal hitting the floor as the Silver on her lap shifted.

“Oh for fuck sake, are you seriously still willing to fight in that condition?” Twilight opened her eyes to find that the corrupted Silver had discarded her shotgun. The trigger, the trigger guard, and even the now-depressed safety button were all encased in ice. “I know I don’t give up, but could you just die with some fucking grace?”

~ 12 ~

In spite of the searing agony filling my belly, I sneer up at myself. The empty vial of combat stimulant slips from from my grasp as I wipe some blood from the corner of my mouth. “You know exactly why I can’t let you do this,” I respond. “This isn’t what she would have wanted.”

Twilight attempts to stop me from rising, wrapping a hand around my forearm, but I pull away. Pain is like an old, abusive relationship in that it’s left its scars; you never want to think about it, but at the same time, it’s the one thing that can give you strength in your times of need. Right now, it’s giving me the strength to fight through the very pain giving me strength.

The other me scoffs and looms over me, even as I roll off of Twilight struggle to my knees. “You think she honestly cares about me at this point?” she cackles madly before gesturing at a snack table surrounded by the spider abominations. Underneath the table cower three girls, all of whom I can recognize with heart-clenching ease. “You honestly think the spirit of that scared little girl’s counterpart gives a fuck about me? Even if any of this matters in that chronologically fucked up afterlife, you and I both know it won’t be me that Blossom meets at the gates of Elysium. So what the fuck do I care? I just wanna watch the world burn over and over for what she did.”

I glance at Twilight and the unconscious Sunset Shimmer and then incline my head at the table and the girls beneath. “Twi, get Sunset and those girls out of here,” I groan through a mouthful of blood. She looks like she’s about to object, but I cut her off. “She’s my responsibility; you worry about everyone else.” Raising my voice to a bellow, I call out. “Rainbow! Table, far side of the auditorium, three stragglers are cornered! Help Twilight escort them out!”

There’s no response, but as the rainbow blur zips by, there’s a pat on my back as I find myself back on my feet. Instead, I move to place myself between my duplicate and my allies. “I’ll face myself,” I whisper to myself, even as retrieve a lightning spell essence from the bandoleer, before making the sign of the cross. “The almighty God is no longer with me, but damned if I’m not going to purge your sin from this world.”

The Judas of a Silver Script in front of me flexes her chitinous fingers, clearly balking at me. “You’re going to fight me with your guts torn up like they are? You’ll bleed out.” she says with a laugh. “And what’s with the religious shit? We haven’t worshiped anyone in years, least of all the God we were forced to worship as a child.”

Part of me wants to continue the banter and keep her distracted for as long as possible. Biding time would give the girls the opportunity to finish off the spiderlings and regroup. After all, I’m no match for the seven of them even with all my spell essences, bombs, and dirty tricks, and Judas Silver doesn’t have the benefit of half of what I have available.

That said, she also has however many shells are still left in her shotgun; the ice bomb I used to disable the firearm won’t last forever, and my counterpart knows that. In fact, I can count on her trying to bide her time as well. She knows the limitations and dangers of the spell essences and bombs, and she knows me. In itself, that makes her my most dangerous foe.

Unfortunately for her, there’s one thing she didn’t count on: me using magic. I still don’t know why she never figured out how to pony up in her world iteration, or if she was even able to at all. She has been keeping tabs on me, but there’s no way she could have seen it all, least of all the training. Besides, I’m already critically wounded and the combat stim won’t keep me functional forever; there’s no reason to not go all-out.

“Hey, Silver! What did the five fingers say to the face?” I ask, knocking back the lightning essence. When she merely raises an eyebrow, I frown. “Humor a dying mare, would you?”

“What?”

The syllable is barely out of her mouth before I tear off my bandoleer and thrust it into her hands. In that same instant, I manifest my wings and kick off from her belly to soar backward toward Twilight. “Surprise, motherfucker!” I glibly reply, discharging the lightning spell from my fingertips into the bandoleer.

The stunned Judas Silver doesn’t even have time to drop the collection of vials or hit the floor; magical lightning shatters the containers, detonating them all indiscriminately. One not versed in Equestrian magic would call the ensuing explosion a ball of fire, but the light given off is mostly attributable to spell-backlash mixing with the few alchemical explosives I brought with me.

As the spell vapor clears, I can see the damage done. Most of her body armor has been burned or melted away, while chunks of ice adhere to the underclothes in places. The exposed parts of her body not covered in chitinous growths are showing signs of extreme spellburn. Other than that, though, she’s mostly unharmed. No big surprise there.

“Are you fucking kidding me? That doesn’t even make sense!” she screams. By the pain in her voice, it definitely hurt like a bitch, even if it didn’t do any serious damage. “Did you seriously think that’d work?”

I shrug. Looking back to Twilight, it looks like she’s trying to snap Sunset out of it, which would definitely be a major help, but it’s not what I asked her to do. What happened to getting her and the three students out of here? You’re a certifiable fucking genius, so why can’t you follow simple instructions?

To my displeasure, Judas Silver has retrieved her shotgun in my moment of distraction and rid the trigger and safety of the ice. The blast probably even helped in that regard. It’s a mere trifle for her to release the safety and level the weapon with my chest. So why am I not worried? Oh, yeah.

“You should have gone with some sort of Naruto bullshit,” says my doppelganger. “Just ‘Chidori’ your hand through my chest. But no, you gotta stick to your pony morals and avoid the bloodlust, right?”

Again, I shrug and use a levitation spell to wrench the weapon from her hands. I fully expect her to start running her mouth off or find some other way to fight—hell, she’s right next to the man with the same name as us, so Purity and Clarity are well within her reach—but she doesn’t budge.

Biting her lip, she lets out a shrill whistle, and the remaining dozens of spiderlings freeze where they stand. All at once they disengage from whatever they were doing and march backup the walls or strands of webbing they’d descended from. “You win this time,” Judas Silver says spreading her arms placatingly. Looping her arm into one of the silken strands, she quickly adds, “This isn’t the last you’ve seen of me, though,” as she begins to rise.

To her right, a voice responds, “Yes, it is, bitch.”

The crack of gunfire echoes through the auditorium, and blood blossoms from the left side of Silver Judas’s head even as her face—my face—disintegrates. Somewhere, in the back of my head, I can recognize someone screaming near one of the exits... Fluttershy, probably. I kinda share that sentiment.

In the near eternity between the gunshot and her body dropping to the floor, my eyes dart to the source of the gunfire. Sitting there on the floor, still clutching his own unbleeding belly with one hand, is Silver Script—no, the male one from this world, not my evil duplicate. The nearly psychotic smile on his face says nearly as much as the smoking gun in his hand.

“Holy fuck,” I whisper, walking over to my evil doppelganger’s body. Common sense tells me that I’m in shock, and that I’ve dawdled for too long without medical attention. “He actually fucking killed me.”

Even as I come to stand over the failed timeline’s Silver Script, I can hear a commotion to my left. The red-skinned form of Aqua Regia rushes over to Male Silver’s side and begins fussing over him and the hole in his suit. He pulls up his shirt to reveal a flak jacket, from which he removes a large plate that’s nearly cracked in half. Seeing that her bodyguard is unharmed, she wraps him in a hug.

I barely notice the exchange, if I’m being honest. There’s just something incredibly... fucked up about standing over your own dead body, even as you yourself are bleeding out of a hole in your gut. “There’s nothing I could have done,” I say aloud, to nobody in particular. “I don’t know what sort of hell you went through in the previous world, but we were always one giant ball of fucked up. At least it was quick.”

A mournful sound, like the cry of wounded animal fills the auditorium. At first, I am sure that I’m crying, but the gasps all around me alert me to the fact that I’m not even breathing. In fact, I haven’t been for several moments; heart’s stopped, too, so the sound definitely isn’t coming from me.

No, the sound is coming from above us.

I look up, and in that moment, I sincerely wish that I hadn’t. A large, bloodshot eye hangs out of the darkness that encompasses the ceiling, and it’s staring. Not at Twilight and the girls, or this world’s Silver and his charge. It’s staring down at both of me, dead and dying.

A smoky tendril descends from the darkness, and as my legs give out and I fall across my dead counterpart, I feel its touch. It... doesn’t take me? No, there’s something more to that touch. In it, I experience the terror of another, familiarity, and a great sadness. In the back of my mind, I hear the crying of a foal.

“Mo... mmy... no...”

As blackness takes me, it all slides into place: what the other me said, what Twilight did, everything.

~ You’ve met with a terrible fate, haven’t you? ~

I stir where I lie, surrounded by a warmth I’ve felt only once before. With ground as soft as a downy blanket and the smell of flowers all around me, there’s no doubting that I’ve returned to the Nexus of Souls: where all souls go to find their afterlife, and later depart from for rebirth. This is an absolute fact that I can feel without even opening my eyes.

Unlike my previous visit, however, the Nexus island is a lot more noisy. The din of a million voices muttering overpowers the river and waterfall.

I open my eyes and look about, and a frown creases my equine muzzle.

To my right, a sea of miniature humans waits before the figure of a skeletal man in a cloak. He frequently gestures, and a person will depart from the crowd to cross the river at either side to enter one of the many wrought-iron gates dotting the far shores. Occasionally, though, he merely walks into the crowd, plucks up one of the small people, and they are engulfed in flame, scattering their essence to the depths of the Hell at the bottom of the waterfall. As I watch the spectacle, I realize that a number of the people there are duplicates of themselves. There are even a few of Sunset’s friends there.

At my left is a full-sized human, lying nude on her back—the spitting image of what I looked like in the human world. She doesn’t move beyond covering her eyes with one arm, sobbing like a child. I don’t even need to see her eyes to feel the guilt radiating from her. She knows what she’s done and now that she’s here, she’s clearly resigned herself to her fate.

“Greetings, little pony, and welco—Oh no, please tell me it’s not happening to Equestria too, now.” A pony, bay coloring and robed in black, coalesces before me. Epona, the guide into the afterlife for ponies, has arrived, and she doesn’t look the least bit happy. “This isn’t supposed to be happening!”

“Tell me about it, Epona,” I reply, stretching and pushing myself up into a sitting position as I take relish in being a pony once more. “I get the impression that I wasn’t supposed to be here for another decade or so.”

She looks from me to my still-sobbing counterpart before covering her face with a hoof. “You have no idea how unprepared for this we all are,” she says, taking a seat next to the human me. A shudder racks her body as she stares up at the starry expanse above us. “This only ever happens when the Great Old Ones get loose in a reality or somepony plays with time, but I’ve never seen it this bad before, and never without warning!”

With a sweeping of her hoof, she points out the sea of humans the skeletal guide is dealing with, and then at me and myself. “The worst part of all of this is that so many splinter-realities have been created and destroyed in recent times that the Nexus of Souls is in a state of flux as it tries to accommodate all of these simultaneously living and dead souls.” She looks back to me. “To say nothing of the reality the two of you came from, which is both the prime existence of that world, and a splinter reality at once.”

I look down to my human self and sigh. “This is, in part, our fault, I believe.” It has to be. “I mean, yeah, this is mostly the result of one of the hugest coincidences in the multiverse, but both Twilight Sparkle of the human Equestria and I have a hand in this mess as well.

“Twilight gained power she couldn’t control, and though she and Sunset are yet to realize it, I’m pretty sure they’ve both achieved their world’s equivalent of alicornhood.” I stare up at the sky, and in it I see my dead body, surrounded by friends. Sonata Dusk is crouched over me, and I think she’s pouring magic into me. “That’s beside the point, though. Twilight tore reality asunder and created unstable rifts between her world and Equestria. At that same point in time, Equestria was in a state of temporal flux as Princess Twilight and Starlight Glimmer waged war in the past. I think that in those moments of flux, something dark slipped into one of the rifts.”

A frown crosses Epona’s muzzle as she seems to puzzle over what I’ve said. “How does this link to you, then? By your own statement, this seems to be on the Twilights and Starlight Glimmer, not you.”

“I created that darkness,” I reply with a hollow laugh. “Or rather, I helped. I was in the process of creating an artificial lifeform, a homunculus, to help me both with my experiments, and raising my daughters during all of this. All I needed to do was give it some pony DNA to give it shape and it would have been done. I thought the experiment merely failed, which was why the bottle it was living in exploded, but I think one of those rifts formed inside, sucking it out into the void between worlds, where it met something dark and took on its properties.”

Yep. I can actually say it with utmost certainty; I, Silver Script, created a world-eating monster in an attempt to make a babysitter and lab assistant. Go me, right? Unfortunately, this is still my mess, and since Sunset and the girls aren’t having any luck, I’ve got to clean it up.

As a warmth fills my chest, I look back to Epona. “I know that you lot in the afterlife tend to keep in contact with the guardians of all the worlds under the Nexus coverage—it’d be stupid if you didn’t—so I need for you to get into contact with Celestia.” My hooves begin to tingle as I start to lose cohesion in this realm. “Tell her that I need everything from my homunculus project locker and a dose of Genesis sent to Twilight’s castle. I’ve got a mess to clean up.”

You know, it’s kinda funny seeing a guide to the afterlife look indignant about being treated as an email server. “And her?” Epona pokes the Silver lying beside her. “She can’t go to the Elysian Fields after what she’s done.”

I shrug before I disappear entirely. “Give her to Charon, for all I care. He looks like he could use a stress reliever.”

Author's Note

I hate the new lack of google documents import. That is all.

Chapter 13: Wander My Friends

A lot of things unnerved Sunset Shimmer right now. Obviously she could start with the fact that her bed was being used in lieu of a real hospital bed. While it was true that she was no stranger to back-alley medicine—her arrangement with Flim and Flam, and Blueblood's organization by association, was a necessary part of living in this world without an ID or health card—she'd never expected her apartment to become an infirmary. At least the occupant had been treated somewhere more sterile, sparing her bed the inevitable bloodstains a surgery would have left.

Next came the occupant of her bed. Silver Script, for all intents and purposes, had died from her injuries right there in the auditorium, and only the quick actions of Sonata Dusk and Twilight had brought her back from the brink—and kept her there—long enough for some of Blueblood's doctors to whisk her off to a private clinic to stitch her up. That the woman was alive at all was a testament to just how much a factor sheer luck and magic played in her survival; against all odds, the slug managed to slip through her small intestine leaving next to no damage, while tearing through two muscle groups in her lower back and nearly obliterating a portion of her large intestine upon exit.

How it had missed any major veins or arteries honestly had the doctors astounded, but Sunset suspected it had a lot to do with the magic used to keep her stable, as well as the combat stimulant Silver had concocted. She had suspicions that the stims were layered with a minor regenerative, but she couldn't say with any certainty; it had been a number of years since she'd even thought about alchemy. She wasn't averse to deferring the question to someone qualified these days, but seeing as the only person in the room was working on her seventh day of uninterrupted sleep, she was stuck for an answer.

That, however, was the biggest problem. The woman had been unconscious for several days now, and she'd made no sign of stirring. Had she any experience with dream magic, Sunset would have attempted to make contact, but for now, all she could do was wait and see.

It wasn't like she was caring for Silver all on her own, though. Sonata Dusk—Silver's pet, as Rainbow had taken to calling her—rarely left the woman's side since that night. The bitter part of Sunset insisted that the siren only cared about keeping Silver around long enough to restore power to Adagio and Aria, and then out come the daggers. Deep down, however, she wasn't so sure. Watching the girl reminded her of a photo she'd seen of a dog that won't leave the side of its deceased master; she could see where Dash got the pet analogy. She couldn't bring herself to ask Sonata why she cared so much, because she had her suspicions about the answer.

All-in-all, though, Sonata wasn't that bad a house guest as far as guests went. While she was on the Pinkie end of the ditz spectrum, she was tidy, didn't make a whole lot of noise, and didn't use up all the hot water. More importantly, she was making an effort to do better by helping care for Silver. The girl wanted to redeem herself.

Her friends had all stopped in from time to time to check in on her, and to see if she needed anything. Twilight had researched how to change an IV bag and maintain a drainage bag and was more than willing to teach both of them how to keep it going until Silver Script awoke—if she ever woke at again. Even with the valuables Silver'd brought with her and the money the mare had acquired, Sunset wasn't keen on finding out how long it would last if it was put solely toward maintaining a coma patient.

As it stood, the only thing keeping Sunset from gathering the girls, casting the time spell, and starting again from zero was the fact that their foe, whatever it was, hadn't made a peep since the dance. In all the timelines thus far, including the one the previous—and now verified dead—Silver Script had been present for had experienced further sightings of the strange, spiderlike horrors by this point. In fact, half an hour ago, the girls should have been clearing out an abandoned factory of the things. Aside from the photos taken by braver CHS and Crystal Prep students, which were now 'old news' as far as the social media went, there was just... nothing.

It was terrifying knowing that the ax was once again hovering over her neck, but no longer having a sense of when, or even if the next strike would come.

With a sigh, she stared down at Silver. It was important that she ask the woman what her link with the creature was, so being unable to get the answer she needed was eating away at her already frayed nerves. What was it that Silver Script had been making so long ago that, even today, the pain of its loss festered within her—even driving her to hate Twilight enough to want her dead? More chillingly, why had everyone heard the same, haunting call within their minds after both Silvers had died?

There was a rapping on the door—three gentle knocks—before it opened to reveal the tired face of Sonata Dusk. "Um, Sunset?" she murmured, still somewhat uncomfortable that she was imposing on her former foe. "I finished making your dinner. If you wanna break for food and then have a rest, I'll watch over her for a bit."

"What about you?" Sunset asked, arching her brow. "I haven't seen you eat once since you started watching over her. You must be exhausted."

A frown creased the siren's face, accentuating the bags under her eyes. "Haven't been hungry," was her reply. Her hand drifted up to the gem hanging at her neck, and her fingers danced along its edges. "It probably seems like I'm being selfish, but I really want her to wake up." She let out a gentle whimper as she took a seat at the bedside, wrapping the woman's hands in hers. "She's been so kind to me in spite of who I am and what I did, and she gave me something I haven't had since you and your friends defeated me and my sisters: hope for a better life."

Tears ran down Sonata's face, even as she buried her face in the bedding. "Seeing her like this, it's like watching hope die, because I know that if she dies before she can help them, my sisters will die too..."

~ 13 ~

"Aren't you tired?" whispers a small voice in the back of my mind.

That is to say, I suppose, the voice whispers from 'behind' me. Here I am, trapped within my head, not unlike the time I spent fading in and out of consciousness when the Aqua Regia of my Equestria did all those unspeakable things. Though, I suppose that isn't quite accurate either. Although it's roughly the same room, black obsidian walls and all, it's also different. It's much cleaner, and though the bookcases still appear scorched, they're cleaner and filled with books and moving photos—memories, really.

Rather than a disturbing face-like wall before me, I can see the world outside in a third person perspective. I don't know how long I've lain in that bed, but both Sunset Shimmer and Sonata Dusk are there, caring for me. It feels like I've been here forever, alternating between watching and waking, and every time I look out at the world, it's a different time of day. I want to—I need to—wake up, but it's just so hard.

I turn to face the voice, only to find another new addition to my mind: a fifth wall and matching door. Curiously enough, this wall reminds me almost of those rice-paper and bamboo walls so prevalent in Neighponese architecture, and rather than an outward opening door, I can see a sliding door that blends almost seamlessly into the wall. The only reason I even know it's there is the patterning of an unfamiliar marking on the paper. As I look at the door, I can see it's slightly ajar, just enough to allow me to see darkness beyond.

"Every time you die and come back, it's a bit harder," comes that familiar whisper. "Nopony is supposed to come back from death at all. Yet here you've done it three times, and each time you have, you've changed. How do you keep going on like this? Why are you so determined?"

I blink and rub at my eyes with a limb that momentarily transforms from hand to hoof and back again. "Three times? No, see I've only died twice."

There comes a giggle I haven't heard in ages. It couldn't be, though. "Maybe in the literal sense you've only died twice," it croons, each intonation reminding me more and more of my own voice. "But was our becoming Silver Script in the first place not a death in and of itself?"

I nod, catching their meaning. If there is anything left of Soren Friedrich in me, it hides itself very well. After all, humanity and maleness aside, I had to evolve and become someone else—someone more—in order to fit in with my new home. Based on that line of thinking, the second time I changed following death was when I ended up with my cockatrice eye, and I regained hope in addition to the obvious.

"Good, so we haven't suffered brain damage yet," the voice states clearly, as though reading my mind. "Can you guess how we've changed this time?"

Now I know why this all seems so fucking familiar.

"The real question," I say, striding up to the door and sliding it open, "is when the fuck this all happened."

Standing before me, looking rather smug, unicorn. No, it's not Lyra; it's me, or at least, the unicorn me I'd gotten used to seeing reflected on the walls of Twilight's castle whenever I'd transformed myself to get over my phobia of magic. It's not entirely the same pony that I'm seeing, however. For one, her eyes aren't heterochromatic. Whereas only my left eye is blue because of the cockatrice magic concentrated in the right, both of her eyes are blue like they were when I first became a pony.

I mean, I kinda get why she doesn't have wings; she's a goddamned unicorn, but not an alicorn. I just don't get why I would suddenly be having a unicorn memory redundancy, never mind one so damn chatty. Dying doesn't just fucking change what species you are in another world, at least, I don't think so. Certainly not literally, right?

"This is fucking bullshit, I know," she agrees before I've even spoken. She steps out through the doorway and saunters into the center of the room. Conjuring a cushion, she sits down and smiles at me. "Though if you think about it, it might make sense. The mirror portal seems to be designed to adapt your body to a form appropriate to this world, but the one thing it can't do is change a soul because it would be literally changing who you are."

That's right; the soul is the integral part of who you are, and the only real way of changing how it is reflected is to accept such changes as a part of who you are. But if I'm still in the human world, wouldn't my mind and soul become more human again, rather than a unicorn, complete with a memory redundancy despite the absence of a horn?

"Nah, don't overthink it," she replies, knowing full well my thought processes. Conjuring up another cushion beside her, she pats it and invites me over to sit. "What have we been doing a lot of since we got here? Have we been doing much to acknowledge our nature as a pegasus?"

Upon sitting down beside myself, I realize that, aside from bursts of horizontal momentum, I haven't been very pegasus-like at all since I got here. Instead, I inadvertently exploited a loophole with the mirror, allowing myself access to my magic reserves in a way that the previous me couldn't. Even though I was using the magical energies of a pegasus pony, I was wielding it like a unicorn would.

"Bingo!" The unicorn me claps her hooves. "We've been spending so much time playing the unicorn that when we crossed back over from the Nexus, our first thoughts were of resolve to continue using magic to help this world, so that must've altered a big part of our being."

I suppose I'm not really surprised by all this as I could be, though. I spent enough time as Lyra that I still have some lingering memories, which carried over when I was 'playing unicorn' with Twilight for my own benefit. In effect, I've taken my fear, conquered it, and made it reality multiple times. I honestly should've expected it sooner.

"One question though," I ask myself, turning to look her in the eyes. "How come your eyes are normal?"

She just grins at me and giggles like an idiot. "We can't all be paint-huffing subnormals, or we'll never tell each other apart." Turning to the viewport, she frowns. "You gotta wake up now, though. We've got shit to do."

She might be right, but I know what she's really trying to distract me from—that concern that's been lingering in my deceased counterpart's mind up until this world's Silver killed her. Somehow... it doesn't hurt knowing that I won't be the iteration of Silver Script that Ice Blossom will meet on the other side. Stupid wibbly-wobbly timey-wimey afterlife.

Maybe it's for the best, though. If I'm no longer weighed down trying to be the me I know she'll meet, maybe I can actually move on and evolve as a person and pony. I'm probably not the prime iteration of Silver Script any more, but maybe that's a good thing. Even if I'm not the 'prime me' as far as the universe is concerned, any more, I am who I am.

~ 13 ~

The repeated swearing of Silver Script drew Sonata out of her nap with a mixture of elation and alarm. It took her a good couple of moments before it registered in her mind that Silver was sitting up in the bed, clutching her belly in pain. That alarm quickly faded into annoyance when she realized that the pain the woman was experiencing was self-sustaining; because of the tissue damage, sitting up on her own volition was straining unhealed wounds, forcing her to tense and strain more.

"Lie down, please," Sonata instructed, using bit of magic to calm the woman. From her chair beside the head of the bed, she leaned closer. "You're only hurting yourself more by trying to sit up."

"It's a good thing that other me is fucking dead, or I'd be murdering the fucking shit out of her," responded Silver, who'd bitten down on her lip hard enough to draw blood. Her pained rictus faded slightly and she became more aware of her surroundings as Sonata eased her back.

Reaching out with her free hand, she gave Sonata's hair a weak tousle before letting her arm fall limp. "Heya kiddo, g-great work out there," she rasped. "You're a real star..."

In spite of this praise, Sonata couldn't bring herself to reflect the pride in herself that was present in Silver's voice. No matter how hard she tried, she her mind kept drifting back to her earlier conversation with Sunset Shimmer, and how selfish her motivations sounded. That doubt had lingered and festered over the last week, and no matter how hard she tried, she couldn't quite convince herself that she did it because it was the right thing to do.

"Easy, kiddo." There was a pained smile on her face. "I've been in this sort of position enough times to know what you're probably thinking." A cough wracked her body, and in spite of the blatantly obvious surge of pain, the smile on her face didn't abate. "Doesn't matter why you do the right thing so long as you did the right thing without any expectation of reward from those you helped."

Tears flooded Sonata's eyes, and soon enough she'd buried her face in the blankets. "But I did." She sobbed into the bedding, and when the woman's hand returned to her head. Even as her head was lifted back up, her sobbing and trembling intensified. "I helped because I wanted you to be proud of me... so you'd help my sisters. Since everything fell apart, you're the first person to really give me a chance, and... and... there's just something about you that makes me want to do better."

Silver closed her eyes and patted the bed beside her. "Come, sit."

Sonata nodded and then moved onto the edge of the bed. Before she could even ask why she needed to be closer, magic seized hold of the collar of her shirt and yanked her down into the open arms of Silver Script. Almost immediately, she pulled her into as strong a hug as she could manage.

"Never delude yourself into thinking that helping your family is a selfish thing to do," said Silver. It was hard for Sonata to turn her head in this position, but she could see the tears in the woman's eyes when she managed it. "A long time ago, I listened to my parents and left and never returned; I couldn't stay on that planet without dying from mana deprivation, and they couldn't come to terms with what I'd become.

"I left and let them live out their days in denial, and they convinced themselves that I'd merely gone missing," she continued. "They're probably dead now, and they'll never get to meet their granddaughters." She sucked in a breath and released Sonata, who quickly returned to her chair. "It's one of my biggest regrets, not trying harder to get them to accept me. In everything I went through in my first years in Equestria, I never had the support I didn't realize I needed the most. I just let them push me away because I thought it selfish to do otherwise.

"It's not selfish to want the best for your sisters at all." Her body shuddered and she broke into a coughing laugh. "You helped others because you thought it would help the ones you love, in spite of how you've been treated by them, right? That's the most admirable thing of all. It's why I prepared the stones for your sisters in parallel, based on your own."

She cracked open her right eye and looked to Sonata. "Go on and get Sunset. She's gotta have all sorts of questions, and there's a lot I need to tell her. Hell, get Twilight as well. She'll probably be intrigued." As Sonata rose, she seized her wrist. "Food, first, though. I'm fuckin' starving."

~ 13 ~

You probably know what a homunculus is, but for the sake of those of us not in the know, I'll explain. A homunculus is an artificial lifeform created through the use of alchemy. Next to a philosopher's stone, it's the single most difficult thing an alchemist can create. Depending on the conditions of its creation, it can take on the form of a pony, a griffon, or a dragon... hell, if you somehow have access to the genetic material, you could even make it take the form of a human being. They're capable of whatever their genetic base would have been.

Homunculi are very intelligent, mature quickly, and once they've reached peak maturity, they simply stop aging. To put it plainly, they never die from natural causes. This makes them ideal assistants for busy alchemists, or for those who've lived long enough but never had kids, a homunculus can become as close to family as you can get. If treated right, they can be the most loyal companions out there and will care for you well into your Twilight years.

With how useful they sound, you'd think you'd hear more of them; fact of the matter is that most ponies go their entire lives without even hearing of them, never mind seeing one. There are a couple of reasons for that. As mentioned before, they are the single most difficult thing an alchemist can legally make, primarily because conditions for their creation have to be kept perfect up until their genetic infusion, but also because they require permission from the crown to even attempt, and if they don't approve of your choice in genetic material, your work is seized. Somepony attempted to create an alicorn homunculus in an attempt to seize power a few hundred years ago, until Celestia put the kibosh to it and enacted the restrictions we have today.

That takes me to why we're talking about homunculi. When my girls Aqua Pura and Aqua Clara were really young, I was still kind of a mess. Given the conditions of their conception, I spent much of my pregnancy in a mental health facility in Ponyville, and even after I was cleared for release, I wasn't entirely stable. I found it hard to connect to others, and trusting strangers was practically out of the question. Ideally, I probably should've stayed in Ponyville with Lyra, Bon-Bon and their daughter Honeydew, but I wanted to make a fresh start and accepted a position offered to me by Princess Cadance and her husband.

So I was practically all by myself up in the Crystal Empire, trying to finish my alchemical doctorate, all while raising two unicorn fillies when I was still very much traumatized by magic. Even if she didn't have an empire to run, Cadance was dealing with her firstborn, Etherea, at the time so I couldn't ask her for help. I was really out of my depth, so I applied for permission to create a homunculus to help me raise my foals and whatnot.

Lo and behold, Celestia granted me permission without a second thought. For a long while, things were going great. The girls weren't too problematic, even if I was running on coffee and homemade stimulants almost nonstop when sleep wasn't an option, and I managed to keep ahead of my workload. I'd even managed to connect with a local circle of mothers and make some friends.

One day, it all went wrong. I went into my lab, like I'd done countless afternoons prior, to check the readiness of the homunculus for genetic infusion. It had finally developed consciousness and was even beginning to pick up on speech, despite remaining little more than black mist in a thaumic containment vessel. I was writing down my findings when suddenly I was floored by intense physical pain. Not only did I feel like I was literally being torn apart at the atomic level, but l was able to observe that I was becoming transparent. It went on for what felt like hours, and even the world around me flickered as if time itself was trying to stop me from existing.

Then, just as suddenly as it began, it stopped. Almost everything in my lab was untouched, but the containment unit had shattered, and the incomplete homunculus was gone. I was gutted, sure, but the screaming of the twins pushed it from my memory. It was just a failed experiment, and whatever had happened to me had also affected the girls, even if they have no memory of it today. So my work on the matter was packed up and put into storage.

What I later found out about that day in particular was that a number things had happened concurrently. Firstly, rips in reality were torn between this world and Equestria. While not enough to compromise the containment unit alone, the added temporal skirmish between Starlight Glimmer and Princess Twilight putting me and everything I'd ever done into a state of momentary flux was enough to compromise it.

I figured at the time that my homunculus had just stopped existing, but something one of the guides in the afterlife said to me when I died again struck me as odd. She mentioned the Great Old Ones. Now, I dunno what that means to all of you, but when I hear it, I think eldritch abominations from beyond the reaches of space and time. It's just a theory, but I think that this... this thing that's been attacking this world time and time again is my homunculus. I think it merged with a Great Old One in the rift between realities during a moment of temporal flux.

~ 13 ~

The three young women gathered at the table gape at me as I down a glass of water with gusto. It's not hard to imagine why they're staring. After everything I've just said, there's probably a lot going through their heads. Twilight's probably freaking out knowing that she helped create a hybrid Lovecraftian abomination that has the potential for childish intellect AND doesn't die naturally, in addition to whatever powers such a thing possesses. Sonata, obviously, looks lost and wondering why she's a part of the briefing at all. Sunset, though...

She looks to be struggling with admiration for the fact that I created a successful homunculus, while fear for what it's become. To some extent, she might even realize the implications of all of this, and what I'm likely to ask her to do. That in itself is going to be a big point of contention for her, because it's going to mean opening the portal to Equestria, and putting her home at risk as well.

Rather than wait for her to speak up, however, I make use of the wheelchair that has been loaned to us by the Bluebloods in order to visit the stack of pizzas on the counter. Of course the meat lover's pizza is on the bottom, but it's not that hard to get all four boxes onto my lap. It'd be so much easier if I could walk, but the three of them insist I shouldn't even be sitting upright, never mind walking. Fuck that noise, though.

Fighting back a wince, I wheel back to the group of girls and dole out the individual pizzas. "Look, Sunset," I say, sitting the vegetarian in front of her. "I know why you'll object to breaking the lockdown you put on the link between this world and Equestria. It's tied into the setup for the spell you used to loop back to your save point so many times, and it uses a lot of magic, doesn't it?"

She nods, taking a bite of vegetarian pizza, even as I continue to speak. "You have something we didn't have this time: my potions." I pause to demolish an entire slice of pizza before spreading my hands emphatically. "I know for a fact that there's enough mana regen potions for the seven of you to completely burn out several times before running out of potions. You'd only need to break the lockdown, send me through to get what I need to fix this mess, and then just shut down the portal from your end. When I'm ready again, I can get Princess Twilight to open it from the other side and come back through."

"You don't even know that it'll work!" she growls, gesturing at the wheelchair. "You could hardly defend yourself when you were on your two feet, and now you're asking me to just let you shoulder everything yourself when you can't even stand."

I look away. "That was a cheap shot, and you know it." True on both fronts. The me from the failed timeline did get a cheap shot in on me, and that's the only reason I didn't do more; if life were an anime or video game, there would likely have been a drawn-out battle and a shitload of collateral damage. Her statement is also a cheap shot in the fact that she's hitting me while I'm down. "Besides, I'm not going to let this world be consumed again. There's more at stake than just the fates of here and Equestria.

"Between the offspring of my mistake and your meddling with time, the entire afterlife is in flux." Another slice of pizza disappears into my ravenous gullet, and I barely miss a beat. "So many duplicate souls from the aborted timelines of this world have flooded in that the guide for departed human souls, Charon, can hardly keep up. Epona, the guide for ponies, panicked when she saw two of me, worried that whatever was happening here was happening to Equestria now, too."

"Wait, you've been to the afterlife?" Twilight whipped out a notebook and a pencil, her eyes wide. "What's it like? How many of the guides have you met? This is—"

"Not relevant at this time," Sunset and I both say in unison, giving her a look. Our gazes shift toward one another, and we share a hollow laugh.

I wheel away from the group and get as close to the window as I can. It's already dusk, so there's no way we'll be going anywhere today. Not that I should. I'm still fucking wrecked after being out for several days, and the only reason I'm not using magic to push myself around is because I am stubborn like that. Ideally, I should still be in bed, but this can't wait.

"Anyway, Sunset," I say, peering over my shoulder at her. "I need to do this, and not just because I hold a part in being responsible for all of this. The homunculus seems to have retained some memory of the previous timelines, and it recognizes me as its mother or maker to some extent. Whereas it'll likely react poorly if you force a confrontation, I think that I can resolve this without any further bloodshed."

It goes unsaid as I stare her down, but I brought it into the world, and circumstances beyond its control made it into a monster. It was forced to take a form before it was intellectually ready, and it became little more than an instinct-driven monster because of it. If I can fix this, I have to try.

After several moments of apparent internal debate, she nods. "Alright; we'll play it your way." With a tilt of her head, Sunset indicates Sonata. "What about her?"

I shrug. "After she gives her sisters the modified crystals I made for them, I'd actually like her to come with me to Equestria."

Sonata gives me a wide-eyed look as she nearly drops a slice of taco pizza. A chorus of "What? Why!?" erupts from the trio.

"If you want the practical answer as to why, I'm going to have a hard time getting around until I can get some honest-to-God medical attention from experienced mages." I look down at my legs, which—while functional—don't have the strength to hold me up, even without all the mending muscles eliciting pain with every movement. Thank fuck for painkillers, I tell you. "Sentimentality wise, I thought I'd repay her for helping to take care of me by bringing her home, if only temporarily."

Author's Note

So here we go. Silver feels like she's responsible for the mess threatening both worlds, so she needs to try to stop it before things get worse.

Unlike many previous chapters, which have been named for music already linked in the chapter, no song is included in this chapter. That said, there is a melody that I had in mind while writing this chapter. 'Wander my Friends', which shared a leitmotif with other songs across the re-imagined Battlestar Galactica TV series [the other tracks being 'A Good Lighter', 'Reuniting the Fleet', 'Admiral and Commander', and 'Farewell Apollo']. It's always been a favorite of mine, because despite the almost somber melody and lyrics, it's a song of hope. I also chose the name because it because it indicates a breaking of the fellowship, so to speak.