The Everycraftery

Chapters

Strings, Arrows, Ribbons, Ships, and Curtsy
Sweepy Belle
Happily Shimmer After
Meet The Crew
Magical Scientific Solution
Stand Your Ground
The Shimmer Cup⁠ - Part 1: Anonymous's Battlegrounds
The Shimmer Cup - Part 2: Super Smash Shimmer
Indecision-Making
Paradigm of the Decent and Insignificant
Showdown
Kill
Prologue - Claidheamh Soluis
Knowledge Is Knowing That A Tomato Is A Fruit. Wisdom Is Not Putting It In A Fruit Salad. Truth Is A Lot More Complicated Than An Internet Quote.
Spare

Strings, Arrows, Ribbons, Ships, and Curtsy

Commision Sheet

Commissioner: Octavia Melody
Address: 4 Trotter St., Ponyville, Equestria
Preferred Delivery System: Mail; Ponyville Delivery Express
Contact: -
Item Description: Bow
Notes: -

The commission sheet was held in Twilight's telekinetic grasp, weakly, as the eye of the holder twitched every once in a while.

Einstein barged into the newly opened workshop with a smile on his face and no posters in his hand. He relished in his empty hand, for it meant that his task to promote their newly-opened workshop was a success. A quick glance at his wrist confirms that he did, indeed, forgot to wear his watch. A quick glance at his pocket watch confirms that he did, indeed, finished his task just on time. "I'm done, Twilight!" he said. "We're going to be famous in no time!"

Twilight turned around, giving Einstein view of the commission sheet. "Why, yes," she slowly said, "We've already had a commission, in fact."

"Wonderful!" Walking over, he took the sheet from the floaty purple magic. "What's our first commission?"

"A bow."

"What kind of bow? The one with arrows?"

Twilight smiled. "Oh, who knows? It's not like the commissioner describes it in the commission sheet!"

Einstein rolled his eyes and read the paper. He stopped. "Wait a minute. They really didn't." He rechecked the paper just to be sure that the commissioner did write nothing but 'Bow'.

Twilight grunted in annoyance. "No, she didn't! How are we supposed to know?"

Reading the name of the commissioner, Einstein answered, "Well, it's from Octavia. The cellist, right? She must've ordered a bow for her cello."

"She lives in Ponyville! For all I know, she's secretly a Guardian of the Everfree Forest ordering a Longbow! Or a sky pirate ordering a bow for her armored ship! Or a bowtie!"

Einstein's brow shot up. "That's it!" He grabbed Twilight in his arms. "We'll make her a bow!"

Twilight glared at Einstein. "No shit, Einstein."

"No, Twilight," he said jovially. "No shit, indeed. Remember why we opened this workshop?"

Twilight rolled her eyes. At the look of Einstein's serious face, however, she began to think. ". . . To have fun and prove that nothing is impossible?"

"Exactly! Now, take a look at this sheet."

"Why yes, it is, indeed, shit."

"Abracadabra, it is now a challenge!"

"That's not how magic—" She stopped, actually processed his words, then a smile began forming on her face. "I'm listening . . ."

Einstein grinned in return. "We'll make her a bow, Twilight. A bow like never before seen, for we do the impossible, and beyond!"

Octavia pulled out a bow from the box, eyeing it curiously and thoroughly. Turning around, she found Vinyl Scratch, eating breakfast, and said, "Vinyl, dear, did you order a bow?"

Vinyl shook her head and pointed a hoof at Octavia.

"No, I didn't order a bow. Well, not this kind of bow, at least. I ordered a cello bow." She pulled a dozen arrows that came with it and showed it to Vinyl. "Why would I need a bow?"

Vinyl swallowed her last piece of oatmeal before walking toward the box and fished out a piece of paper from the bottom. She gave it to Octavia, which took and read it after putting the arrows back inside the box.

Octavia facehooved. "Oh, right. I should've told them what kind of bow I was asking for, shouldn't I? Well, I guess I just have to go to Canterlot and buy one. Again. Too bad Ponyville doesn't have a proper music store."

Octavia stood and walked to her room to pack her trip. Meanwhile, Vinyl took the bow and took a closer look at it. It was a generic hunting bow, one the griffons usually use for wild boar hunting. There weren't many decorations, only the word Everycraftery burned on the tip and Octavia's cutie mark etched into the wooden handle. She gripped the string and pulled it backward, testing the strength, and found that it was probably a fine-crafted one if the satisfying whip was of any indication.

She thought for a while if this bow can be used to play the cello.

The bow agreed to the thought.

Vinyl's jaw dropped.

Octavia came out of the room to see Vinyl holding a bow. A cello bow. "Vinyl, where did you get that?"

Vinyl pointed at the box.

"That was the bow? But how?" Octavia walked closer and took the bow in her hoof, inspecting it and testing its flexibility a few times. "It's quite the bow, I must say. Very high quality, I dare even say it nearly matched my original Stradivarius."

Octavia took a closer look at the bow, finding that the frame was made of polished ebony, the word Everycraftery burned to the tip and her cutie mark etched on the handle.

Vinyl took it, eyeing it curiously and ignoring Octavia's protests. She thought of how the bow would look good on her hair.

The bow doesn't agree to the thought but doesn't care.

Both jaws dropped as they stared dumbfoundedly at the neatly tied pink bow on Vinyl's hair, tying it to a ponytail.

"Wh—How?" Octavia stuttered, taking the bow from Vinyl's hair.

Vinyl tussled her mane back into its usual messiness.

Octavia eyed the pink ribbon with a critical eye. The writing Everycraftery sewn into the inside and her cutie mark creating a pattern on the outside.

Vinyl grinned and pointed at the ribbon.

Octavia raised an eyebrow. "Are you sure?" At her affirmation, she continued, "Alright, then. Let's see where this goes."

Octavia thought of a curtsy, of how much elegance a simple gesture of politeness can give somepony.

The bow agreed.

Octavia broke into the most beautiful, most elegant, and most mesmerizing bow of all. At the end of the gesture, the bow returned to her grip, eager to meet some strings it could be played with.

Octavia grabbed Vinyl and invaded her personal space (not that she minded). She put their muzzles so close together and whispered, "Vinyl, do you know what this means?"

Vinyl shook her head.

"Mafia Busting."

Octavia relished in her extensive circle of friends. She was glad that she lived in Ponyville because otherwise, she wouldn't have friends with such a different interest such as Cherry Berry, which enabled her to be almost three hundred meters up the air.

"Thank you, Cherry. I believe I owe you a favour."

Cherry flashed a smile. "No, Tavi. You only owe me fifty bits for this ride."

Octavia smiled and saluted to Cherry before jumping off the basket, her bow in tow and a quiver holding a dozen arrows on her back.

Ponies who saw her might scream, for she wasn't wearing any parachutes at all. Luckily there isn't, so she was only disturbed by the wind whipping on her face and mane.

At one hundred meters off the ground, Octavia brandished the bow and thought of the sea, waves, and piracy. The bow agreed and was now a bow of a ship.

Vinyl came out from the trapdoor and smiled, pulling Octavia inside. Once in, she thought of beauty, pretty, and Apple Bloom. The bow agreed and fluttered by the wind, dancing in its descent until it touched the ground, right on the roof of Octavia's intended target.

Octavia and Vinyl wiped their thoughts from the sea and intercontinental adventure, allowing them to get out of the pink bow.

Taking the bow in her hoof, Octavia jumped down to a flower patch in a garden of some sort, followed closely by Vinyl. Finding a nearby hedge, they quickly hid behind it, covering them from potential gardeners and mafia members.

They crawled along the hedge, pressing themselves close to the natural wall of neatly-trimmed leaves. A quick look at the leaves proved to Octavia that it was recently cut, and she crossed out 'gardeners' from the list of potential threats.

Vinyl took the bow from Octavia and thought herself as a pony of the sea, holding an oar to row a boat. The bow was amused at the thought and made her a bowpony. As was standardized, a bowpony should carry a telescope at any times, and so Vinyl fished out a telescope from her mane.

Luckily, she was not a mare of ordinary, and so her telescope wasn't ordinary, rather one that could be folded into a periscope. So she did, and looked over the hedge, spotting a few ponies in two-piece suits, no doubt on watch duty. She took note of their movements and, after a few minutes, noticed a pattern.

She folded the periscope back into a telescope and put it back inside her mane. She gestured to Octavia and led her to the giant double doors across the field without being noticed, for a bowpony was standardized to have tactical infiltration certificates.

Once inside the building, they took a chance to relax in the large living room, relishing in the ignorance of the maids to not notice guests that shouldn't be there, and instead served them some tea.

Once they finished their teas, they continued to sneak across the hallway, peeking through the rooms in the hopes of finding any kind of office. After two uneventful hallways and one that almost made them spotted, Octavia found a large room with a fancy desk, on top of which lay neat stacks of papers. She gestured to Vinyl to come.

Vinyl joined Octavia to peek inside. With the help of her periscope, she peeked further in where the doors blocked the view. She found Laundered Bits, the head of the mafia gang himself, currently rummaging through the drawers, his back turned toward them.

Vinyl stored the periscope back to her mane and thought of hunting, griffons, and archery. The bow agreed.

Octavia took the bow from Vinyl and an arrow from her quiver. She pulled the string back and aimed the arrow—one with an enchanted blunt tip, not the pointy one—right at Laundered.

The arrow flew straight to his head, knocking him unconscious. The enchantments in its tip ensured that he will stay unconscious for at least a few hours.

Octavia and Vinyl wasted no time. They rummaged through the drawers, the stacks of papers, the wardrobe, and everywhere they thought would contain critical information that would prove the crimes they've done in court.

After a few minutes, they'd pulled out every bit of paper that has ink in it and stacked them in piles on the floor.

Octavia brandished the bow and gave it a stern look. The bow understood her gesture and promptly merged itself with the stern from her stern look, creating a complete ship that broke the room and caused quite the commotion.

Octavia and Vinyl dumped every single document they'd found into the ship and jumped aboard. As Vinyl began undoing the sails, half the members of the gang had arrived from outside of the hole in the wall and began shooting.

Vinyl cursed. As bullets sailed through her, she began using her magic to cut the ropes instead.

The mainsail unrolled and picked the arcane current, pulling the ship forward. Octavia kicked a lever, leveraging the ship out of the binds of gravity toward the sky.

The shooting didn't stop, but their pathetic leads were of no match to the armored bow of the ship.

Einstein, currently sitting on the balcony of Canterlot castle, grumbled and gave Twilight five bits.

Twilight smiled and returned her sight toward the ship sailing above Canterlot's lower district, the writing HMS Everycraftery emblazoned on its side.

Sweepy Belle

Sweetie Belle groaned as she walked the path to Carousel Boutique.

The day had been frustratingly boring. With Apple Bloom working on the farm and Scootaloo going to flight camp, she was left with two weeks of nothing to do but finding something to do. Crusading had been crossed out of her list of possible things to do, as it required all three of them to be together. It didn't mean she hadn't tried anything to find her cutie mark; all her efforts were simply too boring and not destructive enough to be memorable.

As she mindlessly walked across the streets of Ponyville, she thought of how the next CMC meeting would be like: Apple Bloom will definitely bring apples from the farm and proudly announcing how she was the one to harvest them, while Scootaloo will either talk about how amazing it was for Rainbow Dash to accompany her throughout the flight camp, or give them souvenirs from Cloudsdale.

She noticed that she hadn't thought of anything to give her friends by the end of summer, and so she began fixing it. She thought of how she might give them clothes that she made herself, but quickly dismissed it when she remembered what happened when she last tried her hoof at tailoring. So, she thought of what she might be good at, noticed that it was definitely not singing, and probably cleaning after their mess.

She stopped in her tracks as she began thinking of how all the times she had put into cleaning after their mess had resulted in her being a very good janitor, and that might be her purpose in life.

She shook her head and continued walking. The CMCs had tried to be janitors once, and it resulted in her friends making a mess of everything she had cleaned, adding absolutely zero numbers to the town hall's cleanliness point. Besides, it's not like she could give cleanliness as a souvenir. Except when they got to Crusading, which they didn't.

As she walked by the familiar route, she stumbled upon an unfamiliar sight: an antique shop by the name of The Everycraftery. She might have missed it before, but she was pretty sure that the store wasn't there yesterday, or the day before that.

What made her stop wasn't the sudden appearance, however, but rather the motto beneath the store's sign: 'For all your impossible needs, no questions asked!'.

She grinned. If what the motto said was true, then something that wasn't really impossible as giving three fillies their cutie marks must be within their capabilities, right?

A cutie mark for each of her friends would be the best souvenir ever!

Einstein was regretting his decisions.

At first, the thought of visiting a random neighboring universe was a good one. He'd come by, take a few commissions, then return with a smug grin for Twilight who said they shouldn't open their store inter-dimensionally.

Now, after a few hours of absolutely nopony noticing the sudden appearance of an antique shop, he was having second thoughts. It was Ponyville, after all. What are the odds to find a Ponyvilleian that got surprised by something so trivial compared to their Tuesdays?

His second thought was quickly demolished when the silver bells chimed, announcing the arrival of one Sweetie Belle to The Everycraftery.

Einstein quickly straightened up his suit and stood up. He waved his hand in a flourish, smiled, and said, "Welcome to The Everycraftery! How can I help you?"

Said guest stopped by the entrance to stare at the clerk. After a few seconds, she said, "What are you?"

He chuckled. "I'm a Homo sapiens, also known as a human."

She cocked her head. "I've never seen a human before. Are there more of you in Equestria?"

He tapped his chin in thought. "Well, I don't know for this particular Equestria, but mine does. Just recently, mind you."

Sweetie scrunched her eyebrows in thought. After a while, they shot up in understanding. "Oh, are you from another dimension?"

"That I did, little one. Now, what drew you to this place? Simple curiosity? Making commissions? Looking around the shop?"

Sweetie vigorously nodded. "Is it true? Can you make anything, even impossible ones?" She gestured to the front, where the store's motto was emblazoned in the window display.

Einstein stood proud and smiled confidently. "We can! Anything you can describe, we can make. And our wares don't have hidden consequences like those ominous antique shops, either! Just write your commission in this slip of paper," he said, giving Sweetie the commission sheet and a pen.

Commision Sheet

Commissioner: Sweetie Belle
Address: Carousel Boutique, 16 Mane St., Ponyville, Equestria
Preferred Delivery System: Mail; Ponyville Delivery Express
Contact: -
Item Description: A cutie mark for me and my friends
Notes: Make them cool ones!

Einstein smiled as he reread the commission sheet. Making a device to tell little fillies what they needed to do to get their cute marks was simple enough; he'll be finished by tomorrow, with or without Twilight. "Alright. Your commission will be done by tomorrow morning," he said jovially.

Sweetie bounced around in excitement. "We're getting our cutie marks! We're getting our cutie marks! We're—"

"That'll be twenty bits."

Sweetie stopped mid-air and unceremoniously dropped to the ground. "Wait, what?"

Einstein raised an eyebrow. "You do know that it's not free, right?"

"Come on, Rarity! I'm getting us our cutie marks!"

Rarity sighed as she massaged her forehead. "No, Sweetie. Inter-dimensional or not, there's no such thing as an instant cutie mark."

Sweetie pouted. "He said that he can do it!"

"He's most likely lying, Sweetie."

"But—"

"Alright, alright. You know what, Sweetie?" she said, sighing in frustration. "I'll let you buy this—"

"YAY!"

"—but only if you use your own money for it."

Sweetie frowned. "But I haven't any money left!"

"Then make some. Ask this 'human' to employ you for a while to make up for the money," Rarity reasoned, thinking in her mind how a job experience would be good for Sweetie to fill her vacation with.

"You want me to employ you?"

Sweetie Belle grinned. "Yep! Just enough to pay for the commission!"

Einstein tapped his chin in thought. His brows scrunched in intensified neurological performance. His head steamed in trying to process how tiny he was to the universe, how insignificant the universe was compared to the multiverse, and why the answer to Life, The Universe, and Everything was forty-two.

After a few tense seconds, Einstein snapped his fingers and nodded. "Alright. I'll let you work here for three days, and then I'll do your commission for free."

Sweetie bounced around akin to last time, while Einstein smiled fondly at her.

As soon as the store materialized the next morning, Sweetie Belle bounced her way inside with unrivaled enthusiasm, the human already waiting behind the counter. "Good morning, Mr. Einstein!"

Einstein stepped from behind the counter and patted her on the head. "Good morning, Sweetie Belle! Ready for your first day of work?"

Sweetie nodded vigorously. "Of course I am!" She stopped suddenly, thinking. "Uh, Mr. Einstein, what actually is my job?"

Einstein answered by pulling out a broom.

Sweetie's smile instantly fell. "Sweeping? Really!?"

Einstein chuckled. "Oh, no, Sweetie. You'll be doing all the janitorial duties!"

At the end of the day, Einstein was smiling. The storefront was positively gleaming, the random insignificant thingamajigs littering the shelves were arranged in neat order, the window so clean they were invisible, and even the street in front of the store was free of dust, despite it being a dirt road.

Sweetie Belle wiped her brow and smiled. She never knew she liked—no, loved—to tidy up. Adding to that, she relished in how Mr. Einstein had praised her by pointing out that customers started coming because it looked clean, and her idea of neatly arranging the antiques was attracting more than one patron.

"Alright, Sweetie, you can go home now. I'm closing up the shop."

Sweetie smiled and nodded. Looking around the store once more, a thought crossed her mind. "Uhm, Mr. Einstein? If the store is already clean, wouldn't it mean that I've nothing to do tomorrow?"

Einstein guffawed. "Don't worry, Sweetie. You haven't seen behind the workshop yet," he said, gesturing to the door behind the counter.

The next day, Sweetie Belle learned what Rarity meant when she described Twilight's 'moments of inspiration'.

While she had seen her sister in those kinds of moments, it was of fashion, not of science and magic.

A single peek through the 'Employees Only' door—or the workshop, as it were—gave her a complete schedule for the rest of the day: trying to comprehend how such a room could exist while trying to tidy it up as neatly as possible. At one corner of the room, she could see a metal forgery, while at another she spotted a letter forgery alongside a money laundry that washes off money with triple-distilled cunning and wit. At the top-mostly-right corner, she could see a giant corn cob dangling from the endoplasmic reticulum of a prison cell, while underneath it was what looked like an ongoing distillation process of truth from a stack of historical textbooks (which is failing).

She shook her head and gave Einstein an expectant look.

Einstein returned it with an excited one. "Come on, Sweetie! Let's get to tidying this place up!"

Sweetie groaned. "Nothing here makes sense! Even if I could somehow understand it all, it'll take forever!"

"Of course it does! There's practically infinite stuff around here."

Sweetie gaped. "What!? As in, literally infinite!?"

Einstein chuckled. "Now, it won't stop us from doing it, right?" He gave her a green box with yellow stripes that started from the middle and got smaller and smaller as it reached the top. "Use this Supertask. You'll be done before lunch."

Sweetie eyed the box curiously. "How does it work?"

Einstein rolled his eye and returned to the counter. "You just do. It's not that hard."

Sweetie groaned in annoyance as Einstein left the room. As she took a hold of the Supertask, she began thinking of how she should clean with it.

The Supertask began humming, and Sweetie's mind was assaulted by Zeno of Elea, and how motion was impossible. She got befuddled at the claim that motion was impossible, as she had done that numerous times before. The Supertask answered by showing her how to clean the room that required infinite tasks in a finite amount of time.

All the thought came to Sweetie as comprehension, and she nodded in determination. With a swift motion of her broom, she counted half the time from then to lunch, then tidied one thing as her timer reached zero. After that, she counted another half of the time from then until lunch and cleaned another thing. Soon, she finished tidying up the infinite number of stuff just before lunch.

Between the workshop and the storefront was the living room, and inside it was a table and a long sofa, on top of which sat one Sweetie Belle with a sandwich in her hooves. As she ate the lunch Rarity had prepared for her, she hummed in bliss, as she finally understood the true meaning of impossible, and would never use nor see the word the same way ever again.

Einstein ate his own lunch next to her. Seeing her in such a blissful state, he asked, "So, enough impossibilities for today?"

Sweetie slowly turned her head and looked at Einstein in the eyes. "I'm going to say yes, but then enough is never enough. So, no. I don't think it's enough."

Einstein let out a hearty chuckle and ruffled her mane. "That's the spirit! Now, I'll be working in the workshop for the rest of the day. You can wander around the storefront and do whatever you want, as long as you greet each customer and call me when I'm needed. Oh, also tell them not to touch anything before they know what anything does."

Sweetie nodded.

"It applies for you too, Sweetie. Read the item's entry in the catalog before touching it."

The afternoon went by quickly.

Sweetie Belle had resorted to sweeping the store again to kill the time. When the time stayed alive, she resorted to sweeping the street, which seemed to do the trick. Not by making her pass the time quickly, but by making a few passersby curious enough at how she cleaned a dirt road to look around the store, which gave her something else to do besides moping around, either with a mop or with an existential crisis.

She was proud at how she managed to keep the customers informed about the few thingamajigs at the shelves, and inadvertently needing to clean up afterward when somepony got too nosy to touch something they shouldn't. Fortunately, there was only a hoofful of them; the majority of customers were level-minded enough to not mess with impossibly impossible impossibilities.

She was even prouder at how she managed to sell a dozen bottles of the shampooless conditioner (the conditioner that can be applied before shampoo) to twelve different ponies. It seemed that it was becoming a trend over the afternoon, and its demand will most likely flood the store by tomorrow.

Einstein was already quite apprehended by the thought of his store getting flooded by demanding shampooless conditioners, let alone codependent ones. He was positively relieved when Sweetie ensured that she'd help him clean up for it, and even stick around for the next few days if they're unable to move on. He ensured her that it wouldn't be necessary, as he'd be gone to another universe by then.

That brought Sweetie to ponder. "But I liked working here."

Einstein gave her a curious look. "Really?"

Sweetie nodded. "I like cleaning things up. You know, tidying up after someone else's mess? I never knew I liked doing it before now, even though I've been doing it for quite some time since I joined the Cutie Mark Crusaders."

Einstein was about to say something when a pink filly wearing a diamond tiara came into view. She caught a glance of Sweetie Belle carrying a broom and sneered. "Oh hey, blank flank. Trying to get your cutie mark at sweeping? Huh. I guess you are that desperate."

Sweetie grumbled. "Go away, Diamond Tiara."

"Oh, I will. Blank flanks like you don't really deserve my attention, you know?"

As the little blob of pink brat walked away with a smug, Einstein noted the downtrodden look on Sweetie's face. "School bullies?"

Sweetie sighed. "Yeah."

Einstein kneeled and put a comforting hand on her shoulder. "You want some advice, kid?"

"I've got a lot of those, but all of them are just different phrasings of 'ignore her'."

"Well, then I'll give you something different: praise her."

Sweetie looked at him like he had grown a second head.

Einstein touched his shoulder to ensure that he hadn't grown any other head, then looked at Sweetie with a smile. "I'm serious. Next time she teased you, give her praises. Shower her with all the love and affection you can muster."

Sweetie cocked her head. "You sure?"

Einstein shrugged. "It worked in theory. Putting a base into acid neutralizes it, which means giving her something as basic as love and affection will neutralize her acidic nature."

"You meant toxic, right?"

"No, I didn't. Bullying can be the result of too many exasperated sighs written with multiple 'H+'s from an uncaring parent. It just so happens that this acid is toxic."

Sweetie nodded. "Makes sense."

The next morning went as expected.

That is, that both of them spent it entirely on selling shampooless conditioners. Thankfully it didn't flood like expected.

When afternoon came, however, the store was already empty, and the streets were void of ponies, for they were too busy in their baths, relishing in a shampooless but conditionerful shower.

Einstein decided that Sweetie could take the rest of the day off, as she'd done a lot more than expected. Her commission would be done by tomorrow morning.

Shortly after she left, however, she was met with a sight of a party leftover by the public bath. It seemed that the ponies had decided to party with the shampooless conditioners and, overdosing their furs with conditioner, became conditioned/accustomed to the sensation of euphoria they got. The result was a full-blown midday party that left many sprawling unconscious on the street.

Sweetie Belle felt the urge to march forward and pretend that somepony else was going to magically clean it up, but she knew better that it was nothing more than that—pretentious hope.

She shook her head and turned around toward the public bath. Once inside, she slid into the only door with a handle left in the establishment: the janitor's closet. She took out the broom and dustbin and swept the entire floor of debris, used the mop and bucket to wipe the remaining conditioner, and all in all, turned the once insufferable public bath squeaky clean.

It took her the rest of the afternoon, but she felt that it was worth it. Passersby gaped at the glinting walls of cleanliness and stared at the figure responsible for the restoration: Sweetie Belle.

One passerby didn't, however, and instead smirked. "Oh look, it's the blank flank that wanted to get a janitorial cutie mark. You know, after all this, maybe my dad will be happy to hire you for my mansion. Maybe."

Sweetie opened her mouth to object, but then shut it tight. She thought back at Einstein's advice and thought of things she'd never say to her before. She smiled at her. "That's good to hear! Maybe I can talk to him someday?"

Diamond was slightly surprised, but she kept her smirk. "You bet, blank flank. It's where you belong: as a servant for me."

"Yes, well, you are lovely and deserve all the attention you need."

"Well, I—"

"You don't need to say anything else, Diamond. You are the loveliest, most adored pony in Equestria, and I like your mane!"

Diamond, having her acidic nature neutralized, was unable to bit back any acidic bullying into her, and so she resorted to screaming and ran away.

Sweetie blinked. "Well, that worked."

The crowd Sweetie wasn't aware of before cheered at the sight, and Sweetie Belle blushed.

As the crowd went on, a single figure came forward with a beaming smile.

"Rarity!"

Rarity smiled and hugged her sister. "Well, Sweetie, I must say that I'm proud of you. For both reasons, of course. You have the will and courage to clean after somepony else's mess without fearing for your reputation, and you've proven yourself mature enough to not fall into Diamond Tiara's bullying. Again, I'm impressed."

Sweetie Belle nodded vigorously. After a moment of thought, however, her smile vanished. "But what about Diamond Tiara now?"

Rarity raised an eyebrow. "What do you mean, darling?"

"She's not done yet," she began. "She's still a mess. Maybe she won't bully me again, but what about the others? I'm sure she'll still be a bully after this."

"So, what are you going to do about it?"

Sweetie hummed. After a while, she nodded in determination. "I'm going to fix her. She's somepony's mess; we need to clean her up. Somepony needs to. And if nopony's going to do it, I will. I already have a plan in mind, but it will most likely take the entire year to accomplish and the entire town to cooperate, but we can make it work."

Rarity smiled proudly at Sweetie Belle, mirrored by the crowd as well. She ruffled her mane and said, "Well, you've just made me even prouder of you, Sweetie." Looking at her sides, she continued, "And possibly yourself."

"What?" Sweetie asked. As Rarity pointed at her flank, her smile got even wider and she cheered for the broom superimposed on a tri-colored kite shield.

A Heartsong soon followed, chorused by the entire town. At one point Einstein joined in and took the entire town into a gibberish dance of gibber and Irish.

As the evening continues, the time for dinner eventually came, and Carousel Boutique spent it with a certain human as its guest.

Rarity swallowed her dinner and looked across the desk. Sweetie was excitedly talking to the human with her mouth full. She'd usually scold her for this, but the sight was too heartwarming for her to do anything but watch.

"Isn't it amazing? I finally understand what the grown-ups mean when they say we're doing it wrong! It's not about doing every possible thing on the list, it's about trying some to find which one suits you most! Oh, I can't wait to tell Scootaloo and Apple Bloom! They're going to get their cutie marks soon!"

Einstein raised an eyebrow. "Well, of course, they will. You've bought it."

Sweetie stopped and looked at Einstein. ". . . Oh, right." She hummed. "You know, I think I don't want that anymore."

Rarity's eyebrows shot up. "Really, now? What made you change your mind?"

After finally swallowing her food, Sweetie answered, "Well, if I just buy them their cutie marks, it wouldn't really be memorable, wouldn't it? And now I know that's what mattered: the experience! Finding that one moment in life where everything clicked together and the fog was lifted to let you see the horizons!"

Einstein chuckled. "That makes absolutely no sense. Not that I mind, though."

Rarity joined, "So, are you still going to take a commission, darling?"

Sweetie nodded. "Yep! And this time I know exactly what I want!"

Commision Sheet

Commissioner: Sweetie Belle
Address: Carousel Boutique, 16 Mane St., Ponyville, Equestria
Preferred Delivery System: Mail; Ponyville Delivery Express
Contact: -
Item Description: Bow
Notes: Make it pink

Einstein read the sheet and gave Sweetie a quizzical look. "Seriously? You could've asked for anything, you know? Absolutely everything you can think of."

Sweetie nodded. "It's for Apple Bloom. I mean, how cool would it be to have half a ship tying up your mane?"

Rarity took a look at the sheet herself and asked, "What about Scootaloo? Won't she be upset if you don't give her a gift?"

Sweetie pointed at her cutie mark and smiled. "I'll help her clean her room."

Rarity cocked her head.

Sweetie waved a hoof. "You'll understand once you see it. But I know that it'll be the best gift I could give her."

Rarity nodded and, looking at Sweetie's cutie mark, put her hoof under her chin. "So, Sweetie, tell me about your cutie mark. What does it stand for?"

Sweetie grinned and promptly forgot about her dinner. "It's cleaning! Both literal and metaphorical! My cutie mark is about cleaning after somepony else's mess; because as much as the world needs innovation, it also needs ponies to do the maintenance to keep that innovation running and clean up afterward when it turned out to be a bad idea."

Rarity patted her head. "That's the most beautiful description of a janitorial cutie mark I've ever heard."

Sweetie Belle beamed.

A knock came from the door. Before Rarity could say anything, it swung open, revealing the worried face of Filthy Rich. "Excuse the interruption, but have any of you seen my daughter?"

Three heads shook in such synchronicity, it almost made Rich's heart went the opposite direction into arrhythmia.

"The last time I saw her was in front of the public bath, but that's almost two hours ago. She ran off somewhere south afterward."

"Exactly!" Rich exclaimed. "Who knows where she is now? She could've been in the Everfree Forest!"

Rarity's face went worried. "Oh, dear. That's quite true."

Einstein suddenly stood up, gaining the attention of everypony in the room. "I think I can help," he said and, turning to Sweetie Belle, continued, "Sweetie, come with me."

Rarity, Sweetie, and Filthy were waiting impatiently in front of The Everycraftery. Einstein had gotten inside a few minutes ago, and as time ticked by, Diamond could've gone further into the Everfree.

At last, Einstein came out, carrying a green janitor's cap and a saddlebag full of janitorial stuff. He put the cap on Sweetie's head and kneeled, looking into her eyes with encouragement. "Now, Sweetie, I need you to be a janitor."

Everypony present grunted. "Mr. Einstein sir, this is not the time for jokes!"

Einstein shook his head. "No, it isn't. And that's why I'm not joking. Reach inside you, Sweetie. Dig into your heart. Know that you are a Janitor."

Seeing the serious look on Einstein's face, Sweetie closed her eyes and reached inside her. She scurried around her insides and scrambled along the ribcages. As she reached her heart, she could see, at the top-right corner of the left ventricle, that she was, indeed, a janitor.

Sweetie's eyes shot open, and everything came into her as comprehension. She nodded in determination and strapped the saddlebag of janitorial stuff tight. Pulling a broom from her saddlebag, she went into a flourish, brandishing it into the air and swept the area for Diamond Tiara.

She couldn't find her.

"Go further," urged Einstein.

Sweetie nodded. She gripped the broom tight in her grip, somersaulted, flourished, and did many other unnecessary moves, ending in a pose that swept the entire town for a frown.

She gasped. "I found her!"

Filthy galloped to her side. "Where is she? Going to the Everfree? Inside the Everfree? In the middle of the Everfree? Running away from—"

"She's sitting on a bench in the park."

Filthy swept his brows and let out a long sigh. "Phew. I thought today's going to be one of those days, you know?"

Sweetie nodded. "There's still the problem of her crying there, though."

"She what?"

Sweetie wasted no time. With another flourish of her broom, she swept through the air and landed on the park.

Diamond immediately noticed her and looked away. "Leave me alone."

Sweetie didn't. She walked closer to the bench and sat next to her. Diamond didn't move.

"I said leave me alone," Diamond said weakly.

Sweetie took a sprayer and sprayed Diamond with words of encouragement.

Diamond stumbled back.

Sweetie twirled the broom in her hoof and swept. Taking the first letter of the verb and putting it behind the object, she gave it to Diamond and let her weep among a bunch of brooms, all the while putting her in a caring embrace.

After what seemed like forever, Diamond stopped weeping and gave it back to Sweetie, which turned the plural back into a singular and stashed it inside her saddlebag.

Sweetie took a look at Diamond and winced. Her mane was disheveled, her eyes bloodshot, her tiara dangling in her hair, and her coat stank of sweat and grime. Not to mention her psyche.

She was a total mess.

But Sweetie Belle was a janitor, and it was her job to clean up a mess. And so, she went into cleaning. She brushed off any complaining Diamond gave her, wiped away all her problems, cleaned her mind of any bad thoughts, and did many other verbs attributed to janitorial duties.

A few minutes went by as Diamond stared with a disbelieving expression at everything Sweetie did. By the end of it, however, Diamond was clean and tidied up. She had been broken down and put back together, as it were, and is now looking and acting like a brand new mare.

Sweetie gave Diamond a warm smile. "Sorry I didn't notice it earlier, Diamond. I should've known that you're not really a bully by choice."

Diamond sniffed and hugged her. "Don't worry, Sweetie. And I'm sorry I made you three miserable just so I can feel good about myself."

Rarity eyed the stack of papers warily. Looking up, she was met with the hopeful eyes of her sister, still wearing the green cap from before. "Are you absolutely certain about this, Sweetie?"

Sweetie frowned. "Again, yes, Rarity. It's just a part-time job, after all. It's not like it's dangerous or anything; not any more dangerous than Ponyville, at least."

Einstein was waiting next to Twilight in front of The Everycraftery. She had been reluctant at first with the thought of hiring an underage worker, but then accepted it pretty quickly when she found out the different legal systems of this Equestria restricted employments for the lack of cutie marks, not age.

Twilight looked at Einstein and whispered, "Admit it, you're doing this because you're too lazy to clean up the shop."

Einstein nodded without any hint of guilt. "That I did."

"Shame on you."

"Why? If not for people like me, people like her won't have a purpose."

"If not for people like you, people like her won't be needed in the first place."

"That's exactly what I said," Einstein replied, smirking. "Just give up, Twilight. You're not really good at philosophical stuff."

Twilight snapped her neck at him. "Is that a challenge?"

"Indeed it is."

A smirk came to Twilight's face as an idea came to mind. "You know what? I'll take that challenge."

Just as Einstein was about to for a rebuttal, Sweetie swept her sister into a hug (without brooms), indicating her part-time employment into The Everycraftery.

Author's Note

A Sweetie Belle is mandatory for any interdimensional travel.

Also, Supertasks.

Happily Shimmer After

In the green planet of Earth, in the country of freedom, in the city of Washington, Sunset Shimmer walked, her face sour, her mouth curled into a frown, and her fist clenched tight.

When she first went through the portal, she expected a world full of evil magic to fight against. She expected foes to be dealt with, victory to be claimed, and her destiny of becoming a princess to be taken home. She hadn't expected a magicless world of mundane activities that wasn't that different from her homeworld aside from the hairless apes in place of ponies and science in place of magic.

At first, she thought that it was a trick; some force to make her think that she wouldn't be fighting against magic to let her guard down. After a few days, however, it became apparent that it wasn't the case. This world really was devoid of magical activities and heroic adventures. By that time, she was already too late to get back; the portal had closed, and won't open for another thirty moons.

Not that she would without any proof of her rightful destiny, of course.

Or vengeance to her mentor. Either would be fine.

As she trudged along the street, she didn't notice the lavender teen sweeping the front of a store until she blocked her path. Sunset sidestepped to the left, but the girl mirrored her movement and kept her at bay.

Just as Sunset was about to complain, the girl looked up and greeted her, saying, "Girl, you look like someone with unfinished destiny-related business."

Sunset paid her no mind. "Excuse me," she said, sidestepping to the right.

The teen didn't stop her. She simply turned around and, after Sunset was a few feet ahead, called out, "You're not getting your wings that way!"

Sunset stopped dead on her tracks and looked backward, where the teen was smiling and gesturing for her to come.

"This way to princesshood, if you may," she said as she entered the shop.

Sunset was a smart pony/girl. She knew enough about magic to know these kinds of prophecies one might have was signs of dark magic at play. She sensed a trap.

She also reasoned to herself that, if that was the case, diving head-first into it would be the easiest way for her to gather information and fight back. She turned around and entered the shop.

The silver bells chimed, announcing the arrival of one Sunset Shimmer into The Everycraftery.

From behind the counter, the teen—apparently the clerk—waved her hand and said, "Welcome to The Everycraftery. How can I help you today?"

Sunset snorted. "I thought you knew better than that."

The clerk nodded. "True, but I won't give you what you don't know you needed," she said, taking a piece of paper and a pen. "You need to know it first."

As Sunset took the paper, she began thinking. She knew what she wanted: princesshood. But, as she pondered the situation, she sensed a trick question. She reasoned that she needed to understand the things that were needed to become a princess, and when she passed, whether or not it would help her on her journey. Sunset began writing.

When she finished, Sunset nodded and gave the paper to the clerk. She understood well what Celestia meant when she took her as a protege: that she was a smart mare, a prodigy. When she saw her destiny in the mirror, it all clicked: her intelligence made her worthy of the title Princess.

Commision Sheet

Commissioner: Sunset Shimmer
Address: -
Preferred Delivery System: Self pickup
Contact: -
Item Description: Knowledge
Notes: -

The clerk read the commission sheet and nodded. "Your commission will be finished in an hour. Feel free to take a look at our wares while you wait, or you can come back any day you want."

As the clerk disappeared behind the door, Sunset decided to wait and took a look around the storefront. She found that several shelves were lining the walls and standing in rows on the floor, most of them holding leather-bound tomes and hardcover textbooks.

Sunset stared half-lidded at the knowledge lining the walls. "That was too easy to guess."

And so, Sunset did the reasonable thing and took knowledge not by buying it, but by learning it from the books. She plucked a leather-bound tome entitled 'The Tome of Shadows' and began reading.

She nodded. This was an actual grimoire, not like those childish books she had found in this world's library.

Tome after books after scrolls she read, but all of them had the same problem: they required magic to apply, and most of them she had learned from her years as Celestia's protege.

An hour soon passed, and the clerk came from the back door with a pair of glasses. "Find anything interesting?"

Sunset scowled. "No. You know, if you're going to give me a lesson on learning, you could at least give me books about things I don't know."

The clerk smiled. "You're simply not seeing them well," she said. "Try these on." She offered Sunset the pair of glasses.

Sunset grumbled. "My vision's fine."

"No, they're not." And she put the glasses on Sunset's face.

Numbers and equations and possibilities and impossibilities barged their way into Sunset's mind. Knowledge of the past, present, and future, continuous, perfect, and conditional assaulted her psyche, and she understood.

Through the Glasses of Knowledge, she could see with crystal clarity the myths, the legends, the assumptions, the lies that science told her. She understood how light worked, how they were nothing but a particle, a wave, a joke. She could see clearly how insignificant she was as a speck in a point in a grain of the cosmic beach upon the universal shore inside the multiversal crystal ball of the toymaker's plaything that is the artist's creativity dump. Her eyes were finally opened.

Sunset stumbled backward and landed on her rump.

The clerk moved from behind the counter and offered Sunset a hand, saying, "Are you okay?"

Sunset took the hand and stood up. As she looked into the clerk, she stuttered, "Y-yes. W-what was that?"

The clerk shrugged. "Basic stuff." Then she returned behind the counter and opened the register with a ding! "That'll be twenty dollars."

Sunset eagerly reached to her pocket and gave the clerk a single twenty-dollar bill. She didn't wait to get her receipt and marched away from the store.

Once outside, she could see clearly how society worked. She could see clearly the science behind everything she saw, everything she heard, everything she licked and touched and felt and thought about. Her mind was racing, but her knowledge kept up, and she grinned in determination. It'll be easy enough to gain any title she needed, and she decided to take whatever the fuck she wanted.

In the green planet of Earth, in the country of freedom, in the city of Washington, Professor Sunset Shimmer drove her car in a familiar street. On her face, she wore the same glasses she had worn the past decade. On the passenger's seat was a stack of research papers for her latest doctorate. On her suit, she wore a silver metallic badge with her name in it, but not her five different Ph.D., for there wasn't enough space.

Her car stopped in front of a familiar shop, with the familiar lavender clerk sweeping the streets in front of it. As Sunset stepped out of the car, the clerk smiled and greeted her, saying, "Girl, you look like someone with unfinished destiny-related business."

Sunset huffed and waved her hand in a swatting motion. "Whatever," she said, "let's get to the point. I know that you know."

The clerk nodded and entered the shop, Sunset trailing behind her.

The silver bells chimed, announcing the arrival of one Professor Shimmer to The Everycraftery.

The clerk went behind the counter and waved her hand. "Welcome to The Everycraftery. How can I help you?"

"I'm not yet a princess," she said bitterly. "Maybe you could help with that?"

The clerk shrugged and gave her a piece of paper and a pen. "Only if you know what to ask for."

Sunset took the paper and thought for a while.

Her mentor wasn't pleased to see her with perfect knowledge. She was proud of her to become the smartest being on the other side of the portal, sure, but not pleased. Her mentor had only shaken her head and told her that 'That's not what I asked for.'

And so Sunset fumed. Fine, then, she thought. If you won't make me a princess, then I'll make myself one in this world.

Commision Sheet

Commissioner: Prof. Sunset Shimmer, Ph.D.
Address: -
Preferred Delivery System: Self pickup
Contact: -
Item Description: Power
Notes: -

And I'll make myself a better one than you.

The clerk read the commission sheet and nodded. "Alright," she said, "your commission will be finished in an hour. Feel free to take a look at our wares while you wait, or you can come back any day you want."

As the clerk disappeared behind the door, Sunset turned around to look around the storefront.

It has the same arrangement of shelves along the walls and floor, but the wares were completely different. Instead of books and tomes, it was lined with gold, jewelry, crowns, and ancient coins. Swords and shields and armor of many ages hung from the wall. Remains of weapons and guns and tanks from the first and second world war lined the shelves, battered and no longer functional. Behind the counter was a rack, holding a few dozen military helmets—most of them having a huge bullet hole decorated on its side—and another few dozen middle-age helmets—most of them dented and some others with holes the size of arrowheads.

The store reeked of death and destruction, of victory and plunder, of loss and war, of kingdoms and empires rising and falling from battles and massacres.

Soon an hour passed, and the clerk appeared with a sword, complete with the scabbard. "Here's your commission."

Sunset took the sword by the scabbard and inspected the hilt. It was made of gold, decorated with a single red ruby in the pommel and red leather covering the handle. It was beautiful. She reached for the handle.

As her finger brushed against the hilt, she felt a surge of power rushing into her body. She felt the raging of fire that mercilessly swept across cities, the plague that killed countless men and women, the locust that left entire continents starving for decades, and the button that could end entire worlds.

Sunset lost her grip, and the sword clattered to the floor.

The clerk bent and took the sword. She held it at eye level to Sunset, grabbed the hilt without hesitation, and unsheathed it from the scabbard, giving Sunset a good look at the blade. "Perfectly forged, well-balanced, and eternally sharp," she explained. "Perfect for your world-domination purposes, or wall ornament if you wish. Guaranteed to last forever, 100% refund for any damage to either the hilt or blade."

The clerk sheathed the sword back and gave it to Sunset, which tentatively grabbed it by the scabbard. "That'll be twenty dollars for the sword and twenty dollars for the scabbard. You can save ten dollars if you buy both."

Sunset looked questioningly at the clerk. "Isn't that a little too cheap?"

The clerk shrugged. "Why do you care?"

Sunset nodded and gave the clerk a sum of thirty dollars. She didn't wait for her to print the receipt and simply walked out of the store.

Once outside, she took a cautious look at the sword. After a few moments, she carefully, hesitantly, grabbed the handle of the sword.

A surge of power akin to before rushed into her body, and she embraced it. As she unsheathed the Sword of Power and brandished it to the air, the once clear sky was suddenly brewing with a storm. Lightning struck around her, and the wind blew across the city. She swung the blade to her right, and a stream of fire came from the tip. She swung the sword to the left, and the ground before her rose as she commanded it. She raised the blade to the air, and lightning shot from the tip and split the sky in half. She swung the sword to her car, and it was instantly obliterated into dust.

A grin split across her face, and she marched forward to where the White House was, ignoring the screams around her.

Word spread quickly when Sunset took over America and toppled the government, and soon the entire world was united to fight against her. It was to no avail, however, as entire armies were stripped of their weapons with naught but a thought, impenetrable defenses were turned to dust with a flick of her wrist, and billions of people were kept under control in fear of seeing so much as a glance at the new Princess of the Earth.

In a few years, she managed to take over the world and put it under the single banner of her empire. In a few decades, she managed to convince and prove to the entire world that she was not an evil tyrant, but rather a benevolent one.

Seeds of distrust were demolished as Sunset Shimmer, with her Perfect Knowledge and Unlimited Power, rebuilt entire nations, ended poverty, fixed the legal system, and crushed people of intolerance, racism, and radicalism. Soon terrorism was no more, as everyone alive knew well how they would end in a single snap of her fingers. Any act of crime was never again considered, as they knew well how she could somehow know exactly when and where to stop them.

Sunset Shimmer, Empress and Absolute Ruler of the World, was adored by her people. Historians would look back into the days of old and question how a government could be so silly, how politicians could be so selfish, and how intolerance could be a thing people even consider. She was written in history as the savior of civilization, keeping them safe from self-destruction and possible foolish acts that will end life as they knew it.

But not all was well.

Empress Sunset Shimmer, once having her position perfectly secured, went through the portal and greeted her mentor, not as a student, but as an equal; a princess of a kingdom, an empress of an empire.

When her mentor saw her, she didn't show signs of pride, rather of fear that she might try to take over Equestria. This made Sunset upset, and she tried reasoning with her to carry out a diplomatic relationship between the worlds, but the princess still showed signs of fear, and not of pride.

Hurt, Sunset Shimmer threw away her conscience out of the window.

She drew her sword and swung it down with all her might, with all her anguish, with all the hate she felt for her former mentor, friend, and mother figure. The blade connected, and there was a loud, reverberating CLANG! that could be heard across the land of Equestria, marking the end of the thousand-year reign of Celestia Sol Invicta, Princess of the Sun.

Luckily, her knowledge and power were good enough to root her position as the new ruler of the Equestrian Kingdom, merging it with her own empire and convincing the ponies that their previous ruler was a Tyrant all along. Soon, numerous portals to go between the worlds were mass-produced, and the ponies and humans lived together in harmony under the banner of the Empress of the Worlds.

There were emerging problems, of course, like the return of her mentor's sister, a draconequus, a changeling invasion, a certain Crystal King, and some power-hungry centaur. Of course, they were trivial, as a single swing of Sunset's sword was enough to obliterate them all.

But not all was well.

Underground revolutions was not a thing people were aware of, not even Sunset Shimmer. That is, until a single bullet sped by her face, nearly missing her and ending her life then and there. She was paranoid since then and kept bodyguards around her always. Years went by with a few assassination attempts, all of which were successfully stopped by her team of bodyguards, and she felt contempt again.

But not all was well.

Sunset was getting old, and she was suddenly afraid of aging. She called upon the greatest scientist of Earth and the most powerful Archmages of Equestria to make her immortal, but to no avail.

As she screamed in anguish, she remembered the motto of a certain ominous shop.

In the green planet of Earth, in the district of Harmony, in the subdistrict of Columbia, a squadron of the Empress' personal guards drove by a familiar street. As they reached a certain shop by the name of The Everycraftery, they stopped, and the Empress, in all her full glory of golden regalia, wearing a pair of glasses and carrying in her belt a sword, opened the door to the shop.

The silver bells chimed, announcing the arrival of one Empress Sunset Shimmer and a dozen guards of many races and species.

The clerk of the store was sweeping the aisle when they came. When she noticed Sunset entering, she smiled and greeted, "Girl, you look like someone with unfinished destiny-related business."

A man carrying a plasma rifle, the Captain of the Guard, stepped forward with a scowl and spoke, "How dare—"

He was cut off as Sunset raised an arm. "I'm perfectly fine with my destiny, thank you very much," she replied.

The clerk shrugged. "Suit yourself." Then, with a wave and grin, she said, "Welcome to The Everycraftery. How can I help you?"

Sunset looked back at her guards and commanded, "Leave us." And the guards saluted and went outside.

All but one.

"Captain, you can leave us now."

"But Your Highness—"

"Leave us, Peter."

And so the Captain hesitantly left.

Sunset returned her gaze back to the clerk, who was already standing behind the counter. She sighed and walked toward the clerk, her face full of wrinkles, her golden and red hair almost entirely white, and her steps heavy as her joints protested against the eight decades they spent in her service.

As she reached the counter, she looked the clerk up and down and said, "You haven't aged a day since we first met."

The clerk chuckled. "No, I've aged exactly forty-eight hours since we first met."

Sunset ignored her comment. "I'm afraid of dying," she whispered. "Can you help me?"

The clerk handed over a piece of paper and a pen. "Only if you know what to ask for."

Commision Sheet

Commissioner: Sunset Shimmer, Empress of the Worlds
Address: -
Preferred Delivery System: Self pickup
Contact: -
Item Description: Immortality
Notes: -

"Yes I do," she said, handing over the paper and the pen.

The clerk took the commission sheet and nodded. "Your commission will be finished in an hour. Feel free to take a look at our wares while you wait, or you can come back any day you want."

As the clerk disappeared behind the door, Sunset took a look around the storefront.

The shelves had been rearranged, it seemed, and in the walls were no longer shelves, but pictures of kings, queens, emperors, empresses, sultans, leaders, presidents, dictators, and many others of all history; there were even some that portrayed the leaders from Equestria, the Griffon Kingdom, and countries of the other world. In the shelves on the floor were remains of empires, kingdoms, and legacies of many countries.

Sunset noticed there was even a bowl of mercury, and remembered a certain Chinese ruler who drank the thing in the hopes of gaining immortality. She found his death rather amusing.

An hour soon passed, and the clerk appeared, carrying a glass vial of silvery liquid. "Here's your commission."

Sunset took it in her hand, not surprised to find it rather heavy. She leveled a stare. "This is mercury, isn't it?"

The clerk shrugged. "You'll never know until you tried."

Sunset opened the cork and looked at it tentatively. In the surface of the liquid, she could see her face quite clearly, all the wrinkles and creases, and her tired eyes looking back at her, desperate for any form of longevity.

The clerk noticed her hesitation and said, "You'll get a refund if you die drinking that. Or if you die afterward for any cause."

Sunset ignored her. She gathered her courage and, in single swig, downed the silvery liquid that probably would kill her. Qin Shi Huang's death suddenly doesn't look very amusing anymore.

After a few seconds of her not dying, the clerk applauded. "Well then, that must've been the right vial all along! Congratulations, Sunset, you are now ageless."

Sunset glared at the clerk. "Ageless? Ageless!? I asked for Immortality, dammit! Not just agelessness! Don't you know how many people out there want me dead?"

"Exactly two hundred and fifty-four," she answered, then pulled out a gun and shot Sunset point-blank in the face. "Although, that number might drop to zero shortly after this."

The guards, hearing a gunshot, instantly broke in from the door and windows and pointed their guns at the clerk.

Sunset, finally broken from her daze, leaped forward and drew her sword, putting it on the clerk's neck.

The clerk was unfazed. She gave her a smug smile and pulled a mirror from under the desk.

Sunset, upon noticing that she was not dead, that the metal slug that hit her face was rolling on the floor, and that the face in the mirror that stared back at her was no longer her old, wrinkly face, but rather her face in her mid-twenties, lowered her sword and gestured for the guards to be at ease.

Sunset turned around toward the Captain, who stared in disbelieve at the sight of his Empress, all young and healthy, beautiful and at her prime. She smirked and said, "Shoot me, Captain."

The Captain blinked. "I'm sorry, Your Highness, I must have heard that incorrectly."

Sunset smiled eagerly, her face impatient. "Shoot me in the face, Captain. That's an order."

"But your Highness—"

"Shoot me, Peter!"

Reluctantly, Peter aimed and shot a plasma bolt directly on Sunset's forehead.

Sunset merely flinched and, looking back in the mirror to ensure that her face wasn't even scratched, grinned from ear to ear. Looking up, she found the clerk frowning and pointing at the mess the guards had made.

"I'm putting that in your bill. The mercury's twenty dollars, by the way."

A few days later, Sunset held a speech in front of a crowd, in the middle of a lot of sniper's vantage point, with minimal guards and safety precautions before she began.

As expected, she felt something hit her head in the middle of her speech. Upon hearing a loud gunshot and their Empress' head knocked backward, the crowd gasped and went into a panic.

Sunset stumbled backward, but straightened herself and plucked the bullet from her head. She then gave a thumbs-up to the general direction of the shot and smiled at the crowd, saying, "Friends, I shall ask you to be as quiet as possible. I don't know whether you fully understand that I have just been shot, but it takes more than that to kill a Pretty Pony Princess."

The crowd, upon noticing that Sunset was perfectly alive and speaking, went into a cheer.

Sunset continued her speech until it was finished and, seeing a pony being held captive by the police, called upon the pair and brought them in front of the crowd. She addressed the crowd as a comedian would an audience, and the rest of the afternoon was spent with her hosting a stand-up comedy with her would-be killer, and at one point made the pony laugh and joined in the cheers of laughter.

For a month afterward, a freeze-frame of her being shot then giving a thumbs up became a top trending meme.

Years went by and the assassination attempts declined further and further. The worlds now knew that their Empress was immortal, and the rebellion began accepting that their attempt for any revolution was in vain, and silently dispersed into nothingness.

After a few decades, there were no more assassination attempts, and shots aimed at her were either a troll trying (and failing) to cheer the crowd or the mentally defective.

Years went by and Sunset began planning to expand the empire above the Final Frontier. After a few centuries, her empire had succeeded in colonizing both galaxies of both sides of the portal. After a few millennia, her empire had succeeded in colonizing both Local Groups of galaxies, and the scientists had started to develop a device to negate the expansion of the universe to ease their attempt at colonizing the Superclusters.

But not all was well.

Sunset had perfect knowledge, but she was still a single person. After a few successful planets to be colonized, she started creating a local government for each planet. Eventually, she divided the regions in the galaxy to be governed by different governments, divided the galaxies, and so on, and so on.

But she was still seated in the central power, and so, the minor adjustments she needed to keep the empire running as she pleased began to overwhelm her, and problems after problems started rising one after another.

One day, she finally snapped. She ran away from her office, leaving several politicians wondering what to do now that their Empress disappeared.

In the thriving Capitol of Earth, in the district of Harmony, in the subdistrict of Columbia, in the middle of the night, Sunset Shimmer ran with a cloak over her figure. Arriving at her destination, she found the familiar clerk sweeping the street in front of her store.

Noticing Sunset, the clerk smiled and greeted, "Girl—"

Sunset ignored her and barged inside the store.

The silver bells chimed, almost dropping from its frame, announcing the arrival of one panicked Sunset Shimmer into The Everycraftery.

The clerk huffed and went inside. Once in, she took hold of Sunset's figure and smiled. "Welcome to The Everycraftery. How can I help you?"

Sunset threw her cloak to the floor and screamed in frustration.

And kept on screaming.

And finally stopped.

". . . You're done? Good. How can I help you?"

Sunset looked into the clerk's eyes with a manic grin. "The government. Yes, the government! Help me do the politics." In a lower voice, almost a whimper, she added, "Please?"

The clerk shook her head and gave her a piece of paper and a pen. "No."

"No? But you said—"

"Yes, and I also know that that was not what you really wanted. Take a deep breath and think for a while—"

"Think? Think!? No, no, no. No, you random, ominous, somehow immortal and all-knowing clerk! That's exactly what I was running from! I order you to think for me. Yes, that's it. I'm ordering you to, for once, think of what I need and give it to me!"

". . ."

". . . please?"

The clerk smiled. "You just said it yourself, actually."

Commision Sheet

Commissioner: Panicky and overwhelmed SunnyBuns
Address: -
Preferred Delivery System: Self pickup
Contact: -
Item Description: Blissful Ignorance
Notes: -

"Your commission will be finished in an hour. Feel free to take a look at our wares while you wait. Or you can—yeah, no. You can just wait here."

As the clerk disappeared behind the door, Sunset Shimmer took a moment to calm down and swept her gaze along the storefront.

The shelves were back to their original setting, it seemed, but a few shelves on the floor was missing, replaced by rows upon rows of wooden barrels that reeked of alcohol. The shelves itself were lined with rows of wine glasses, hipflasks, and countless bottles of wine, beer, ale, vodka, mead, rum, and many other alcoholic beverages. She took a look at a few of them and found that some of them dated back to the eighteenth century.

Given then was the sixty-fourth century, it was quite impressive.

Sunset took a moment to think about the reoccurring theme, and noticed that, for her entire life, she had never tried alcohol before. Mostly because she was too busy doing one thing or another, and diplomats and politicians that took notice of it never dared to bring something alcoholic into an assembly if she was present.

She might end up embarrassing herself if the clerk came out with alcohol.

An hour soon passed, and the clerk came in carrying a hipflask. "Here's your commission."

Sunset took the flask and, glancing to her right, noticed that the hipflask on the shelf was identical to the one in her hand except for the lack of the brand Everycraftery on its side.

Sunset leveled a look. "You could've just given me this one instead of making me wait an hour!" she said, pointing at the one on the shelf.

The clerk shook her head an took the hipflask back. Holding it above an empty barrel, she turned it over, and a stream of vodka poured into the barrel.

And poured . . .

And the clerk turned it upside back when the barrel is full.

Sunset took the hipflask and sniffed the vodka inside. It smelled terrible.

"Come on," the clerk said, "try it!"

Hesitantly, she drank from the flask, as the clerk herself fished a glass of the stuff from the barrel.

As she lowered the flask, the clerk took her hand and guided her into a dance. "What's happening?" Sunset asked. "Why is it spinning?"

"That's it!" the clerk cheered. "Dance, you bastard. Dance!"

As they danced across the aisles, Sunset's mind went numb. She was suddenly not thinking of the many problems of the empire anymore, not caring a single bit about the political problems that will inevitably happen in her absence, not caring about what the future held for any of her subjects.

As the pair went into a gibberish dance of gibber and Irish, the clerk took them both outside. There, they danced across the streets, and they danced under the moonlight, and they danced into a random establishment whose owner and patrons were startled to find their Empress dancing drunkenly with a random teenager.

The establishment turned out to be a bar, and Sunset announced that the drink that night would be free, paid by the crown, and the crowd cheered. She ordered the bartender to spread the word to all other bars that that night, every alcoholic drink should be free, and everyone was free to indulge themselves and got drunk. Word soon spread across the planet, across the portals, across the galaxies, and across the entire empire.

"Who cares about anything?" Sunset asked nobody in particular. "Who cares about the empire? No one, that's who! Tonight, we shall forget. Tonight, everything is a joke to behold, and tonight, nothing mattered. Absolutely nothing shall matter tonight, for I demand it so!"

And so, Sunset continued dancing among other drunken men, women, ponies, griffons, minotaurs, and every creature of the empire. All the while, her beloved clerk kept by her side and danced with her, throughout the disapproving gazes of the stars, the judging look of the moon, the disappointing stare of the cosmos. They danced their way along the insignificant streets, under the jokingly dim light of the streetlamps, above the petty megastructure that was the Highway, all the way into the sunrise.

Ever since that day, the date was celebrated annually as the Day of Abandon, where getting drunk was almost made mandatory by the pressure of the peers.

And ever since that day, Sunset Shimmer became an alcoholic. Her duties as an Empress was thoroughly abandoned, and some politicians took the initiative to run the empire themselves.

Sunset wasn't upset about it. In fact, she was very happy and eternally grateful for those guys. A few days after she heard about it, she announced to the empire that the group would be handling all the politics and happenings of both worlds, and she formally announced herself retired from her duties.

Years went by, and everything was bliss. The empire ran smoother with a bunch of people instead of a single person, and problems were carried out a lot faster than before.

Now, Sunset Shimmer was a level-headed woman. Politicians and rulers across her empire would occasionally come by to ask for advice, and she patiently taught them, ensuring that the people running her empire could be trusted.

Drunken Shimmer was, inadvertently, not a level-headed woman. Politicians who came for advice and found her drunk would either back off and try another day or help her go through the drunkenness until she passed out. No one dared to ask Drunken Shimmer for advice.

Accept, one day, when one did.

Drunken Shimmer didn't give him the advice he wanted. instead, she gave him a mouthful of gibberish anger and a handful of swords. Her trademark Sword of Power, that is, which obliterated the poor hippogriff on the spot.

Drunken Shimmer found that amusing. She found that she was perfectly fine in blissful ignorance until she was reminded of the world around her, and she finally found the solution: destruction.

If nothing was happening around her, then there's nothing to be aware of, and that meant she would be indefinitely kept in a blissful state of ignorance. And so, with drunken rage, Sunset swung her sword down to her castle, bringing death and destruction to everyone inside it.

As morning came, Sober Shimmer rose from her sleep, finding that her castle was now no more than a pile of dust.

Sober Shimmer regretted nothing.

Skip a few years later, and there was no more empire to speak of, not even the remains of it. Every planet that was once a bustling metropolis was annihilated into dust in the hands of their own ruler; their own savior. Both universes were left without any other living form but the microbes, fungi, and bacteria, and the single settlement of ponies she left alone. Not for long, of course—she had planned to obliterate them as soon as they figured out how to fly a spaceship. She bet to no one in particular that it would be less than two millennia. That or she'd watch as they collapse on themselves from intolerance and racism.

In the barren planet that was once Earth, in some winter wasteland that was once America, in a random snowy plain that just so happened to once hold the city of Washington, Sunset Shimmer trudged through the blizzard, her steps uneven, her glasses crooked, and her sword was dragged along, creating a short trail that would shortly be erased by the blizzard. She would occasionally stop for a while to take a swig from her flask, but that was all that she did.

In the corner of her vision, she finally found something other than boring white: a silhouette of a one-story building. She walked toward it with her sword held high, ready to destroy it, but stopped as soon as she could see it clearly.

Through the window display, she could see a familiar clerk, sweeping the aisles, her back facing toward her. Sunset lowered her sword and opened the door.

The silver bells chimed, announcing the arrival of one Sunset Shimmer to The Everycraftery.

The clerk turned around and smiled. "Girl, you look like someone with unfinished destiny-related business."

Sunset ignored her and made a beeline toward the counter. Reaching it, she took a sheet of paper and a pen from a rack. She began writing.

Commision Sheet

Commissioner: Sunset Shimmer
Address: -
Preferred Delivery System: Self pickup
Contact: -
Item Description: Happiness
Notes: -

The clerk took the sheet of paper and snorted. "Seriously?"

Sunset kept her gaze toward the floor. Weakly, she answered, "That's all I've ever wanted." She looked up and met the clerk's eyes. "Is it too much?"

The clerk rolled her eyes. "There's no such thing as happiness, Sunset."

Sunset's eyes went grim. She shot the clerk a look that could pierce the skies and obliterate entire planets. Literally. "What do mean!? You've given me much more impossible things before, even this thrice-damned immortality that kept me from killing myself! What do you mean you can't give me something as easy as happiness!?"

The clerk shook her head. "I could've made you truly blissful and ignorant of everything around you—not just drunk—but I know that's not what you want."

Sunset's shoulders sagged.

"And yes, I've given you everything. I've given you Fucking Everything with both capitals and you're not happy yet. I gave you Knowledge, which would've made you happy if not for you, wanting to prove yourself to some white alicorn bitch—"

Sunset face hardened.

"—And I gave you Power, which would've made you happy, but you then you want more than that and strived for conquest—"

Sunset gripped her sword tight.

"—And then you noticed you can't finish your conquest, so you asked for Immortality, and it would've made you happy if you hadn't blown off your goals and went overboard with two entire universes—"

Sunset began fuming.

"—And then you decided to abandon them, and I let you got yourself drunk to forget about it all, but guess what?" The clerk poked her in the chest. "You're still not happy. The one and the only thing you've ever wanted, and you failed to earn it. Admit it, Sunset. You're a failiure."

Sunset screamed in rage.

She pushed the clerk away, and she stumbled back and fell to the floor. Seeing an opening, she raised her sword high, and thunder, lightning, fire, blizzard, plagues, tsunamis, war, and everything destructive came out from the tip.

She closed her eyes and brought the sword down with all her might.

The blade connected, and there was a loud, metallic CLANG! that could be heard throughout the winter wasteland.

Sunset opened her eyes, and the clerk was gone.

And so was the store, and the raging blizzard outside. The sky was clear, the wind was still, and her vision was filled with nothing but a flat plain of snowy white, connecting in the horizon with the clear blue sky of noon.

She heard shuffling from behind her, and she turned around, finding the clerk sitting on one side of a sofa, while in front of her was a rectangular table holding a mug of steaming cocoa.

The clerk smiled and gestured to the vacancy beside her.

Sunset raised her sword and pointed it at the clerk. "No more games!"

The clerk stood up, unfazed, and grabbed the sword by the blade.

Sunset felt a tug to her sword. She didn't fight back; she simply let the sword slid away from her grip, and dropped to her knees.

She stared at her hands for a while, tears brimming in her eye, then said, weakly, "Why am I so . . . powerless?"

The clerk dropped the Sword of Power to ground with a dull, snowy thud, and kneeled. She reached a hand and took Sunset's glasses off.

"How could I be so . . . stupid?"

The clerk grabbed her hand and pulled her up. Hesitantly, she rose from the ground and let the clerk guide her steps.

The clerk sat them both on the sofa and took Sunset's hipflask from her pocket. Turning it upside down, she let a stream of vodka into the ground, which abruptly ended into a few drips. When she turned it upside up, steam came out from it, and she gave it to Sunset.

Sunset took the flask and took a deep breath of the steam. It smelled of chocolate. Sunset took a sip from it, and she found that it was the most delicious chocolate she'd tasted in a long time.

A long time, indeed, for she hadn't had anything other than vodka for a few centuries now.

The clerk sipped from her own bottomless mug.

Hours went by with nothing happening between them, and not a single word was spoken. As Sunset turned her head toward the clerk, she found that she was not going to say anything, and so she began, "What are you offering me?"

The clerk looked into her eyes and smiled. "Friendship."

"That's cheesy as fuck."

"Yes, but in a way, that's what you needed all along." She gazed into the horizon, which had changed into a sunset. "You thought happiness was up there to be discovered, and so you went further up. You found out that happiness wasn't there, and so you went even further up." She looked into the sky, from which a few stars had appeared. "And so on, and so on. But, as we both know, there's nothing up there but the uncaring universe. The universe who doesn't give a shit about you, about us, about anything."

Sunset huffed. "What's your point?"

"Look down, Sunset." She locked her gaze into Sunset's own. "Look around you. There were people there, friends to be made, families to be had. They care about you. They give a shit about you. You don't need to be a Princess of Friendship, or an Empress of the Worlds, or a pillar of modern science, or a goddess of celestial bodies. You could just be you, pony or otherwise. Just exist for a while, and be decent. That's heroism enough; that's how the game always works."

Sunset said nothing and gazed into the horizon. The sun had already set, and she could now see the stars clearly.

"That's your commission," the clerk said. "Would you like to take it?"

"I guess I will," Sunset agreed. "Although, you could've said all of those before I destroyed both worlds."

The clerk shrugged and sipped on her cocoa. "I'll give you a third one where I lived. How's that sound?"

"That'll be wonderful," she said, then put her flask down on the table. She offered the clerk a hand. "Sunset Shimmer."

The clerk smiled and shook her hand. "Twilight Sparkle."

Sunset snorted in amusement. "Really? Not 'Lucifer', or something?"

Twilight cocked an eyebrow. "You thought I was The Devil?"

"You certainly act like one."

Twilight nodded. "Fair enough."

". . ."

"That'll be twenty dollars."

"You know what? I'm calling you Lucifer."

Author's Note

Heavily inspired by this masterpiece of a video. You should go check it. It's amazing.

Also, please tell me if I missed a warning tag.

Meet The Crew

The silver bells chimed, announcing the arrival of one Twilight Sparkle, followed by one Sunset Shimmer, into The Everycraftery.

As the door behind her closed, Sunset welcomed the warmth replacing the cold of the winter wasteland. Glancing around, she took notice that the store hadn't changed since she last saw it, along with the empty feeling around the shop, devoid of anything but the shelves, the counter, and, of course, the clerk.

She took a mental note to start addressing her by name.

As she mindlessly followed Twilight around the shelves, she stopped when she noticed that Twilight had stopped as well. Glancing up, she found that the clerk was tinkering with the fusebox. "You need help with that?"

Twilight glanced back and smiled. "No, thank you. Just hold on tight; you're going to feel a little pulled."

Sunset raised an eyebrow and was about to say something when it happened: A feeling akin to riding the elevator, but instead of up or down, she was pulled along the higher planes of existence, transcending above and beyond spacetime into the parallelism of the multiverse.

When she regained her senses, she stumbled a bit and blinked a few times at the sudden brightness. A quick look at the display window confirmed that it was the sun, not some kind of magic.

"So," Sunset began, "this is your home universe?"

"And your future home slash office," Twilight said, as she fished out a voltage transformer from the drawer. "And before you ask, it's almost like your Equestria before you killed Celestia, but with her sister around and an additional castle in Ponyville."

"So, in this Equestria, there's a princess living in Ponyville?" Sunset asked. "Don't tell me she's my counterpart."

"Well, no," Twilight said, as she activated the transformer, engulfing her in lavender light.

As the light receded, Sunset felt her eye twitch. Out of habit, she took a swig from her hipflask—now containing lemonade instead of vodka—and asked, "You're a princess?"

Twilight blinked a few times, stumbling a little as her cerebellum reoriented her bipedalism to a quadrupedal one. Shaking her head, she noticed that Sunset was asking something. "Huh? What was that?"

Sunset pointed at Twilight's extra appendages. "You're an alicorn. You—you know what? I should've seen that coming. Are you the princess of philosophy, or something?"

Twilight turned around as she put the transformer back in the drawer. "I mean, not really? Just because I'm an alicorn, doesn't make me a princess. That title goes to my other half."

". . . your other half? Like, your romantic partner or—"

Twilight sputtered. "W-what? No! She's my literal half. The original Twilight split herself a few weeks ago, and her title as the Princess of Friendship—and all the mushy stuff—went to the other one."

"And by 'literal' you meant 'split personality'?"

Twilight scoffed. "Of course not. Why bother with alter egos when you can physically split yourself into two different beings?"

Sunset took a swig from her hipflask and raised an eyebrow. "Why would you split yourself?"

"I didn't," Twilight said, a hint of annoyance in her tone. "The original Twilight thought that it would be a good idea to fulfill both her passion for the store and her duties as the Princess of Friendship." She rolled her eyes. "And it is; she just didn't foresee how the process wasn't really 'Split the concept of me' and more in the lines of 'Kill myself and make two completely different beings, none of which identifies as the old me, effectively erasing myself from the face of existence.'"

Sunset took a swig from her hipflask.

"She could've done that without killing herself, actually," she continued, "But three Twilights just seem redundant, even for my other half."

". . . So, you're the one she made to fulfill her passion for the store?"

Twilight beamed with pride. "That's right! I'm the part of her that thinks objectively, is always curious, doesn't concern herself with the concept of morality, and loves science!"

Sunset opened her mouth to question, but decided against it and instead took a swig from her hipflask. "So, what's the other one like?"

Twilight grumbled. "She's the mushy one. She has feelings, is bossy, and loves to read cheap romance novels. Always objects to my methods of working." She shuddered. "I can almost remember how it feels to live with her in the same body. Fucking Tyrant."

Sunset snickered. "You know, I remember a certain clerk that sold me Friendship just a few minutes ago."

Twilight sighed and rolled her eyes. "Yes, actually. That's the only thing we agree about other than disagreeing. And before you comment, it's because I have a genuine argument on how Friendship has an objectively superior standing in many situations."

Sunset nodded. "Fair enough. Although, I can't help but question: how do you identify yourselves from one another? Like, do you name yourself 'Twilight' and the other one 'Sparkle'? Or do you simply call the other one Princess Twilight all the time?"

Twilight let out a guffaw. "What? That's ridiculous! No, we simply avoid each other so that we won't find any situation that requires us to compromise on that. Or on anything, for that matter."

Sunset took a swig from her hipflask. "You know what? I'm calling you 'Lucifer' to avoid any future complications."

At this, Twilight pondered for a while before her eyebrows shot up, and she gave Sunset a grin. "Hey, that's a great idea!"

"It is?"

"It is! It'll be a great solution for our legal stuff!"

"So you're naming yourself Lucifer now?"

"Even better!" she said. "I'm thinking, 'Lucid Sparkle, Twilightspawn.'"

Sunset took a swig from her hipflask and glared at it. "I'm too sober for all this."

Lucy leveled a glare. "No drinking in my establishment."

Sunset raised an eyebrow. "I remembered this very establishment selling literal tons of alcoholic drink once."

"Well, yes," Lucy said. "But Sweetie Belle wasn't there at the time. She's our janitor, by the way. She works part-time and is still underage."

Sunset took a quick glance around the shop to see that there is, indeed, an absence of anyone else around.

"She's resting," Lucy said as she rolled her eyes. "She's been working hard this past week for all your hullabaloos."

Sunset took another glance around the shop to see that there is, indeed, an absence of any wares on the shelves. "How hard is it to set up exactly nothing?"

Lucy grumbled in annoyance. "All your hullabaloos. Temporal displacement; I'm sure you understand."

"Ah." Sunset nodded, then took a swig from her flask.

The silver bells chimed, announcing the arrival of one tired-looking Sweetie Belle into The Everycraftery.

"Speak of the devil," Lucy said, as she moved from behind the counter and greeted Sweetie with a hug.

Sweetie tiredly returned the hug, planting her face in Lucy's chest and almost tipping off her hat. "Are we done, Twilight?"

Lucy smiled proudly at her. "We are, Sweetie. You did a great job."

Sweetie smiled and returned the hug properly, putting her chin in Lucy's shoulder. In doing so, she noticed a human wearing battered clothing and carrying a sword and a pair of glasses. "Twilight, is that the Sunset you've been talking about?"

Lucy glanced back and found Sunset waving at the filly. "Yes, she is," she said, as she circled around Sweetie and gestured to Sunset. "Say hello, Sweetie."

At Lucy's prompting push, Sweetie took a nervous step forward. "Uhm, hello."

Sunset kneeled and gave Sweetie a warm smile. "Hello. You must be Sweetie Belle," she said, then reached out a hand. "I'm Sunset Shimmer. You must've worked really hard for all of those redecorating."

At this, Sweetie grinned and confidently took Sunset's hand with her hoof. "I did! Oh, did you like it? It was my idea to make different themes for each of your visits!"

Sunset's eyebrows shot up. "Oh, really, now?" She reached out her hand and patted her. "That's very thoughtful of you."

Sweetie beamed at the praise. After Sunset took her hands off her head, she frowned. "But Twilight didn't let me do anything for your fourth arrival. She didn't even let me clean up afterward, even if it's my job. What's about it, anyway?"

Sunset frowned and, looking up, she found Lucy shaking her head. Looking back at Sweetie, Sunset answered, "Let's not talk about it, alright?"

Sweetie frowned deeper. Upon looking at the hipflask hanging in a strap from Sunset's shoulder, she asked, "Was it alcohol? If it is, I already know about it, you know? Rarity sometimes drinks the stuff."

Lucy answered before Sunset could. "It is, but have you ever seen your sister drunk?"

Sweetie pondered at that and shook her head.

"Exactly. You wouldn't want to see it. And to stop you from slipping into the bottomless rabbit hole that is alcoholism, I think it'll be best if we keep you away from the stuff."

Sweetie glared at Lucy. "Hey! I can be responsible, you know?"

Lucy leveled a stare. "You abused the Supertask. Yes, I knew. That's why I asked him to hide it, after which you abused your powers to sweep the entire store just to find it."

Sweetie blushed and looked away.

Lucy sighed. "Don't do that again, alright? I don't want you to overwork yourself."

"Yes, Twilight."

"Also, you can call me Lucy from now on."

"Why?"

Lucy shrugged. "Felt like it."

As Sweetie was about to say something, the silver bells chimed, announcing the death of the door's hinges and the arrival of one caffeinated Albert Einstein into The Everycraftery.

"Twilight—"

"She's now Lucy."

"And now she's not. Twilight, look!" he said as he waved around a syringe filled with a clear liquid. "I made a vaccine that actually causes autism! Want to try it?"

Twilight blushed and gestured to the German scientist. "Sunset, this is Einstein, the second owner of The Everycraftery."

Einstein frowned. "Why can't I be the first? It's literally in my name!"

Twilight ignored him. "Most of the things he said can be ignored. On other times, however, you should either passively follow it with trepidation and acute skepticism or actively avoid it."

Sunset smiled warily and offered a hand. "Sunset Shimmer. It's . . . nice to meet you."

Einstein stared at the hand. After a while, he raised the syringe and aimed for the aforementioned hand.

Sunset pulled away and jumped backward, pulling out her sword.

Einstein took a manacing step forward and readied his syringe.

From behind him, Sunset could see Twilight chuckling. "And, since you agreed to join us, I guess this is a good a time as any to say: welcome to the family!"

Author's Note

And that's the full cast for now!

I'm making this to excuse myself for making Twilight almost evil.

Magical Scientific Solution

Starlight Glimmer was having a bad day.

Not because anything happened, but because nothing did. And, because nothing happened, she was left alone with her thoughts. Having herself alone with her thoughts had made her ponder, which had led to her remembering that Sunburst's birthday was coming, which had left her wondering what she'd give to him, which had left her frustrating to herself how she couldn't think of a gift for the unicorn.

And so, she left the castle to look around town for inspiration, which led her into finding an antique shop, which led her to notice that it was the very same antique shop they'd visited every time he came to town, which led her into the conclusion that the only idea she had for a birthday gift was scrapped into the bin of 'was good ideas'.

As she pondered at how full that bin had become since she became Twilight's student, she noticed that it could mean that she was either getting better at developing a good conscience or that she was getting worse at making useful ideas.

She also noticed an unfamiliar sight along the familiar route: a shop by the name of The Everycraftery. From the outside, it looked like an antique store.

She was quite certain that the store wasn't there yesterday, or the day before that.

She smiled. It was the perfect kind of store to find one-of-a-kind antiques in! They might be cursed, sure, but still.

In between the workshop and the storefront of The Everycraftery, there was a living room. In it sat Sunset Shimmer on the couch, happily watching the laptop on top of her lap. In the past few weeks of her employment to the craftery, she had been blessed with the marvel that is The Internet of the Multiverse, or TIM for short. As of then, she had used a couple of gigabytes for cats and music videos alone.

Next to her sat Sweetie Belle, bobbing her head along with the music, her face smiling brightly at the happy tune despite the depressing lyrics.

Sunset decided that she was, indeed, happier than before.

The silver bells chimed, announcing the arrival of one Starlight Glimmer into The Everycraftery.

Sweetie Belle jumped from the couch with eager determination and a grin plastered on her face. Taking along the broom leaning next to the door, she went through said door and into the storefront.

Sunset smiled and closed the laptop, letting it go into sleep mode. Strapping along her hipflask, she took a quick sip of from it and followed Sweetie into the storefront.

As she was about to greet the customer, Sweetie beat her to it, both in time and enthusiasm. "Welcome to The Everycraftery! How can we help you today?"

The unicorn standing by the door was about to say something when she noticed who she was talking to.

Sunset smiled and waved. "Welcome. Are you going to make commissions, or are you going to take a look around the shop?"

Starlight raised a hoof and pointed at them respectively. "Sweetie Belle? Sunset Shimmer? Human?"

Sunset smiled and jovially posed with a thumbs-up. "That's us! Although, not necessarily the ones you might know."

Starlight raised an eyebrow.

Sunset shrugged. "Alternate universes. Go figure."

Starlight nodded. "Ok, I guess. So, are you selling one-of-a-kind antiques?"

"We do!" Sweetie said. "Are you looking for decorative antiques or magical artifacts?"

"Decorative. But I'll be seeing your magical artifacts as well."

Sweetie nodded and led Starlight to the aisles with decorative and completely harmless antiques.

Sunset waited patiently as absolutely nothing happened but the purchase of a leather-bound tome titled 'The Tome of Shadows'. Sunset gave her word that the tome was about an ancient storytelling technique using flat cut-out figurines and their shadows, not dark magic.

After the purchase, Sweetie led Starlight to the aisles with magical, scientifical, and absurdly dangerous artifacts.

After a brief sweep through the aisles and Sweetie's not-so-brief lecture about the touchings of unknown artifacts and the applications therein, Starlight decided to read the catalog instead.

Starlight grunted in annoyance as she flipped the second page of the catalog. "Nothing here makes any sense."

"Well no, they don't," Sunset said. "That's the main interest of The Everycraftery: things that don't make sense but work."

"They're just a bunch of bad puns!"

Sunset shrugged. "The crafters like puns."

Starlight threw her hoof in exasperation. "And what is this about commissioning artifacts? You don't even tell what you can craft!"

"We did," Sunset said defensively. "We can make anything you can describe. It's as simple as that."

"Fine," Starlight grumbled. "Give me a solution to all my problems, then. I'm sure you can do it."

Sunset nodded. "We can. And for that specific request, it's already been made before, so you don't need to wait. Sweetie?"

Sweetie nodded and disappeared behind the shelves.

Starlight, finally processing what just happened, snapped her jaw shut. "You've got to be kidding me."

"No, we're not."

Starlight glared at Sunset. "If I find out that you sold me something evil and cursed—"

Sunset raised her hand and cut her off. "Our wares are guaranteed to not be evil nor good."

". . . And what does that imply, exactly?"

Sunset sighed. "It means that our wares don't have a moral dimension. If you give a knife to a surgeon or a murderer, each will use it differently.

"Now enough with moralities," she said jovially, "it's time to solve your problems!"

Turning around, Starlight found Sweetie appearing from behind the shelves, carrying some sort of metallic container in her hoof. Taking it in her magic grip, she noticed that it resembled a thermos, and found a label on its side.

100% Liquefied Problems

!!!WARNING!!!
Keep away from reach of immature and/or overconfident adults. Children are fine.

DO NOT LET EXPOSURE TO AIR ABOVE 3M

Starlight pinched the bridge of her muzzle. "Alright, let's just say for some Celestia-forsaken reason that liquefied problems are an actual thing that exists. Now, can you explain how I'll be solving my problems with even more problems!?"

"Ever heard of homeopathy?"

Starlight shook her head.

"You put it in a solvent," Sunset began, "preferably water. You'll then get a Solution of your Problems. Mind that you should dissolve it pretty well, though, or it'll turn into a catastrophe."

"And why would that be!?"

"It'll evaporate. If it evaporates, it'll expand to fill the space. You don't want your Problems to expand." She pointed at the container. "That's why we keep it contained."

"That's ridiculous."

"And it works. Want to try it?"

Starlight opened her mouth to object, but before she could say anything, Sweetie summoned a bucket of water from her hat and put it in the counter.

Sunset took the container from Starlight's telekinetic grip, tipped it slightly above the bucket, and gently pressed the lid, letting a single drop of Pure Liquefied Problems into the bucket.

Starlight, standing on two hooves to look inside the bucket, watched in awe as the water began swirling into a vortex. As the vortex got faster and faster, she noticed that the water level was also dropping. Then, suddenly, the entire content of the bucket collapsed on itself in a bright flash of light.

As the light receded, Starlight looked back into the bucket to find four five-bit coins on the bottom.

Sunset frowned. "Did you just make a commission without checking whether or not you have the money for it?"

"I—" Starlight reached to her mane and fished out her purse. Looking inside, she found out that her last purchase had left her with less than four bits.

Sunset shrugged. "Well, no problem. The solution has already presented itself. Just the right amount, too."

Starlight Glimmer warily floated the container on top of a bucket of water. She noticed how ridiculous it was to fix a problem by making a chemical Solution of Problems, but then again, she was the mare who quite literally bottled up her emotions.

And, then again, that didn't end well.

And so, she kept another bucket of water in case she doesn't dilute it enough. Or if fire somehow started. Safety procedures.

Steeling up her nerves, she sighed and tipped the container. "Here goes nothing."

As the drop of liquid reached the surface of the water, it quickly created another vortex just like before. After a while, the water collapsed, leaving behind a bottle of superglue.

Starlight grinned, took the superglue, and applied it to the broken porcelain cup she had just broken.

As she put it down to let it dry, the crystal doors behind her slammed open, revealing Trixie—

"That's the Great and Powerful for you!"

—Revealing The Great and Powerful Trixie, her figure clad in her majestic attire and her face clad in distraught. "Trixie requires help from her best friend!"

Starlight looked at Trixie with concern. "What is it, Trixie?"

Trixie turned to her side, giving Starlight a good look at a huge tear across her robe.

Starlight winced. "Oh, that's bad. Here, let me find a needle somewhere—"

"No!" Trixie wailed. "Trixie's Great and Powerful Robe shall not be stitched! It will appear for all to see, and her figure will be ruined!"

Starlight sighed. "Well, do you want me to buy you a new one? You could've done that yourself."

"You don't understand," Trixie wailed again. "It was a gift from Trixie's long-lost father, and it will never be replaced!"

"Well, what do you want me to do?"

"That's why I came here! You could fix it with magic, right? Turn back time to before it was broken?"

Starlight opened her mouth to say that, no, she wouldn't even if she could, but decided against it when she saw the metallic container floating in her telekinetic grip. She smirked. "You know, I think I have a better idea."

Trixie's face shot up. "Really?"

Starlight nodded. Taking the other bucket of water, she tipped the container and gently pressed the lid, letting down a single drop of Problems into the water, dissolving into a Solution of Problems; which, for this case, was Trixie's torn robe.

As the vortex collapsed and the light receded, she found the bucket to be empty. "Wait, what?"

Beside her, however, Trixie jumped in excitement and squealed.

Looking at her robe, Starlight found that it was thoroughly fixed without any hint that there was a huge tear in it a few seconds ago.

"How did you do it?"

Starlight gave her a smug smile and showed Trixie the container. "This, Trixie, is the solution to all our problems!"

"Trixie is pleased! Can she have it?"

Starlight smiled. "Well, of course! Just be careful to—"

Trixie took the container and ran off.

"Wait, Trixie!"

And it was at that moment that she remembered who she was supposed to keep the stuff away from.

"You do know she's going to mess it up, right?"

Sunset glanced to her left from the laptop to see Sweetie's concerned face. "Not exactly, no. If she manages to learn the lesson before the inevitable accident happens, there won't be any catastrophe."

Sweetie frowned. "Are you going to help her if she did?"

"No, I don't think I will."

"But—"

"Look, Sweetie," she sighed, "we're just passing by this universe to sell some wares. Teach a lesson or two, if we can. If you try to help every universe you visit, you'll eventually overwhelm yourself. Yes, Sweetie, I know ponies might get hurt, but that's how it always works. By getting physically hurt, they'll grow to prevent it in the future. By getting traumatized—sometimes deliberately—they grow to be a functional part of society."

Sweetie glared. "You can guide them, at least! Keep them from hurting themselves or others too much!"

Sunset scowled and pointed angrily at Sweetie. "I don't see you complaining about how Twilight 'guided' me!"

Sweetie's face contorted into a rage, and she shouted on top of her lungs, "No, you didn't!"

Sunset lost her scowl.

Sweetie continued, "She never told me what she did to you! And when I found out about it, she just shrugged it off like it was nothing!" She scowled at the couch she was sitting on, tears brimming in her eyes. As she continued, her voice began to break. "I don't like her after she split herself. I want her to change. But that's why I kept around, I guess. She kept making messes everywhere she went, and I wanted to be there to clean it up because I know no one else will." She wiped her tears and looked at her flank with a smile. "It's my destiny."

Sunset scoffed. "There's no such thing as destiny, kid. You're making it up."

"So what if I did?" she asked, looking at Sunset with determination. "I like it. It makes me happy to see others happy. Isn't that what matters most?"

Sunset stared and said nothing.

"Does it make you happy to not do anything when you could've?"

Sunset glanced to her side, finding her hipflask on the table. The leather straps still reeked of alcohol, even after she washed it thoroughly, but now it had a sweet, tangy hint of lemonade alongside the horrible smell.

Finding that she won't be getting an answer soon, Sweetie sighed and dropped from the couch. As she walked toward the door of the storefront, she took her hat off and almost hung it on the hatrack when Sunset's voice came.

"No."

Sweetie turned around and put her hat back on, looking at Sunset expectantly.

Sunset walked and kneeled in front of Sweetie, looking at her with a smile of pride and gratitude. "I'm sorry, Sweetie. You're right, I shouldn't have been so apathetic." As she ruffled her mane and made her giggle, she let out a chuckle herself. "Thank you for reminding me."

Twilight Sparkle, the Princess of Friendship, teacher to one Starlight Glimmer, watched with a gaping mouth at the mass of . . . stuff in the distance.

She couldn't pinpoint any of the individual things inside the cloud of catastrophe, but she could tell from the castle's balcony that it spelled, in bold letters and redundant italic, Problems. From where it came from, she guessed that it was most likely Trixie and Starlight's fault.

As she kept her twitching eye at the sight, she noticed something fast coming toward her at the edge of her vision. Turning her head, she found that it was a broom sweeping through the air, carrying something white and yellow.

As it got closer, she noticed that the white blob was a filly Sweetie Belle wearing a green patrol cap and a human Sunset Shimmer, wearing glasses and carrying a sword in her belt.

Twilight stepped aside as the pair landed next to her, and was about to say something when Sunset cut her off.

"Alternate universe, don't ask. Also, that—" she pointed at the distant cloud of Problems "—might have been our fault. We have a plan to fix it, but we need your help."

Twilight snapped her jaw shut and nodded. "Alright. What's the plan?"

"We need to evacuate everypony in town," said Sweetie. "And we'll need help to round up all the Problems into Berry's Brewery."

Twilight nodded and lit her horn. In response, the entire castle hummed and tendrils of lavender light shot out from the main doors into every house in Ponyville. As it did, multiple bells rang in alarm across the town, eliciting panic from all its residents.

Sweetie watched in awe as ponies ran around in a panic—but efficiently—into the castle, following the tendrils of light. "How is this the only Ponyville to have evacuation protocols?"

Sunset slowly nodded. "I see business opportunities."

Twilight poked Sweetie's shoulder. "So, what now?"

Sweetie shook her head. "Oh, right. Sunset?"

Sunset nodded. "Round up the Problems into Berry's Brewery. You can do that by taunting and flipping them off—or not, you don't have fingers. Anyway, do anything you can that calls for trouble and they'll follow you around. I'll meet you there."

And so, Twilight called upon the girls and took them to the site. As they began rounding them up with unlearnt friendship lessons and blaring character flaws, Sweetie joined in and swept them around with her broom, which seemed to do the trick despite Sunset's skepticism.

Starlight, upon noticing that the horrible amalgamation lost its interest in them, took off into the castle, carrying an unconscious Trixie and an empty metal container in her magic.

The group soon found themselves running around the Brewery's acre-large complex of towering 22-foot tall vats, filled to the brim with Berry Punch's trademarked alcohol spirits. They noticed how stupid it was to bring Problems into a forest of fragile, easy-to-topple structures, but, as Sunset said it, "That's exactly what we're going to do!"

And so, with a swift swing of her sword, Sunset obliterated the main support beam of the structure, prompting the entire complex to collapse in a domino into one another, spilling roughly one and a half million liters of the solution to—and source of—all of life's problems.

The Elements, upon noticing an incoming five-meter tall wave of alcoholic juice, lit up some sort of pendant and was instantly teleported away from the site.

Sweetie marveled at how prepared this Ponyville was to any other she had visited before, while Sunset saw even more business opportunities for future Ponyvilleans.

As Sweetie and Sunset swept through the sky, they watched in morbid fascination as the entire mass of Problems got washed away in the tsunami, helplessly drowning in the stuff and whisked away from existence, replaced by actual problems that will eventually happen from excessive drinking and indulgence, for one can never wash away all of one's problems. Especially by drinking it away.

Author's Note

[Sweetie Belle] +1 Character Depth
[Sunset Shimmer] -1 Apathy

Inspired partly by the London Beer Flood

Stand Your Ground

In the Planet of Terra, in The Land of The Living Gods, on the crest of Ever Mountain, in the balcony of a ruined and overgrown temple overlooking a cliff, sat Twilight Sparkle, enjoying the blissful serenity of the morning by sketching the mesmerizing landscape before her.

With her trusty journal by her hoof and a borrowed pencil from Einstein by her mouth, she relished in the fact that she could, indeed, draw with her mouth. Not as beautiful as her hornwriting, but the result was satisfying enough to make her other half jealous.

She was sure that her other half couldn't write with her mouth. She took a mental note to rub it in her face once they got back.

"Anaphalis javanica, usually called 'The Everlasting Flower' by humans. It is considered extinct in most Equus universes."

Twilight turned around, finding Sweetie Belle, wearing a green scarf in addition to her usual cap, staring in awe at the flower growing from between the broken tiles Sunset just described. Sunset herself was wearing a matching yellow scarf in addition to her usual attire, sans the sword.

"It's beautiful."

"It is, Sweetie. It is."

"I wonder how it tastes like."

"Just try it. It's not poisonous."

Hesitantly, Sweetie bit a bunch of the flowers. She hummed in bliss as she munched, and at one point got goosebumps. Whether it's from the cold or the taste, Twilight couldn't tell. "Ooh, it's delicious."

"I bet it is. Congratulations, by the way. You're now ageless."

Sweetie stared at Sunset in shock, her munching completely forgotten.

Sunset laughed. "I'm kidding, I'm kidding! It's just a myth."

At the playful banter that came afterward, Twilight smiled. Sunset had gotten herself a very endearing friend, it seemed, and she felt all warm and fuzzy inside—not for the cold nor her scarf, but for knowing it was her doing that got them together.

If there's one thing she's not ashamed to be cheesy about, it's Friendship.

Also, it's scientifically proven that Friendship and vacations reduce stress levels, which in turn increases an employee's productivity in the long run.

As she lost herself in thought, she also lost her grip on the pencil, and it clattered on the floor of the ancient temple.

A deep rumble came from beneath her, and she took flight in anticipation. She managed to take her journal along, but Einstein's pencil was left behind.

As the rumble stopped, she looked around and found nothing out of place. Sunset had stood protectively in front of Sweetie, while the aforementioned filly had taken hold of a broom, looking around in fear.

Suddenly, from where Twilight once sat, tendrils of light shot upward, coalescing into a single humanoid form.

As the light receded from the form, a deep, resounding ethereal voice came from it. "The God of Floors announces his presence."

Twilight blinked several times and stared at the Floor god. He took the form of a dwarf, it seemed, complete with the long white beard, a full set of bulging battle armor, and an enormous war hammer taller than he was.

As Twilight tried to remember where she put this universe's list of gods, she saw the Floor god kneeled, took the pencil, and eyed it curiously.

The Floor god turned the wood-coated shaft of graphite in his hand with great wonder and amazement. Finding the word Faber-Castell etched in one of its six sides, the god looked up toward Twilight.

As their gazes met, Twilight felt the warmth of Terra, its fatherly love embracing her and telling her with genuine loyalty that He would always be there for her when she fell. Both metaphorically and literally.

The god opened his mouth, and a perfectly normal voice of an old dwarf came, addressing Twilight. "Faber-Castell, I take?"

Twilight shook her head and landed in front of him, bowing with a grace worthy of a princess. "Twilight Sparkle, Everycrafter of The Everycraftery. We came from another world, and were not expecting your arrival."

As she finished her sentence, Sunset and Sweetie had joined in her sides. As they were about to kneel, however, the god chuckled and held a hand. "At ease, mortals." A glance at Sunset, and, "And immortals. No need to bow for Parke, The Floor god."

The three rose, and Parke took another look of awe at the writing utensil. "Tell me, Everycrafter" Parke began, "Should ye be the one to craft this masterwork?"

Twilight shook her head. "It was crafted by a friend of my friend, Kaspar Faber. The pencil wasn't even mine, it was borrowed."

"Can ye make one, by chance?"

Twilight nodded.

Parke smiled and rose the pencil high. As he did, he said with his previous ethereal voice, "The God of Floors demands a Pencil from Twilight Sparkle, Everycrafter of The Everycraftery."

Commision Sheet

Commissioner: Parke, Floor god
Address: Anywhere there is flooring, Planet of Terra
Preferred Delivery System: Direct delivery
Contact: -
Item Description: Pencil
Notes: -

Parke raised an eyebrow as Sunset tucked the quill away and put the commission sheet in the waiting stack—which, at that point, was empty save for Parke's commission. "This be a joke?" he asked. "Surely, ye can't be asking me for Gelds."

Sunset shook her head and calmly answered, "Sorry, Floor god, but the price stays the same for every being, be it a god, an eldritch abomination, or a pumpkin. The pencil costs twenty Gelds. Also, Twilight has started on making it, so you can't cancel it."

Parke scowled and pointed his war hammer at the counter. "I am The God of Floors, ye whelp! I give ye ground to stand, to play, to build masterpieces upon! Ye will not ask for my payment!"

Sunset Shimmer stretched her hands outward, and The Sword of Power materialized in her palm. "And I am a retired God-fucking-Empress of mankind, ponies, griffons, and seventy-nine other intelligent lifeforms. You're not telling me what to do, Shorty, and you will pay if you want your commission done."

Parke's face contorted into a rage. "Fine, then," he said through gritted teeth. Then, brandishing his war hammer at Sunset, bellowed in his ethereal voice, "The God of Floors contests God-Empress Sunset Shimmer into a battle for a Pencil!"

Sunset raised an eyebrow in amusement. "And what if I reject?"

Parke answered by slamming his hammer's shaft to the floor.

Sweetie's scream came from the living room.

"Sweetie!" Sunset brandished her sword and scowled at Parke. "What did you do!?"

"If you win," he said with a smug smile, "you'll get your daughter back."

". . . She's not my daughter."

"Whatever. Do you agree or not?"

Sunset glared. "Fine. God-Empress Sunset Shimmer agrees to battle The God of Floors for a Pencil and her Friend."

Sunset blinked. "How did I—"

Parke took the chance to swing his hammer into Sunset's face.

Sunset fell to the floor. As she tried to stand up, Parke slammed his hammer down, taking the floor away from beneath Sunset.

Without anything to support it, the shelves, Sunset, and the counter fell down into a bottomless abyss. Sunset scrambled into a shelf and took a stack of fliers, throwing it at each of the shelves and counter. In a split second, the fliers turned the counter and the shelves into a flying counter and flying shelves.

Sunset took one herself and applied it to her back. The flier took notice of a living being, and with whirling gizmos, turned itself into a pair of carbon-black metallic wings.

Sunset spread her wings, turned her fall into a glide, and then flapped her wings to fly back to the storefront.

Parke hadn't been waiting in the remaining flooring of The Everycraftery. When Sunset was halfway to ground level, Parke greeted her with a battle stance, standing in a floating granite tile.

Sunset flicked her wrist and willed a pillar of ground to raise. When she was about to land on it, Parke merely cocked his head, and it disappeared.

Sunset stumbled, and Parke tumbled, giving her a mouthful of his hammer.

It tasted like dirt.

As Sunset flapped her wings to regain balance, she heard Parke laughing triumphantly. "Ye might be an almighty goddess with that kind of power, Lass. But remember: yer standing in my domain. And, as I command it, ye won't stand a chance!"

Einstein was having a wonderful nap until Sweetie's scream jolted him awake.

As he scrambled downstairs, he found that Sweetie was nowhere in the living room, where she should've been, if the hour hands in his absence of a wristwatch and his presence of a pocket watch were of any indication. Opening the door to the storefront, Einstein nearly fell into the bottomless pit as he grabbed the door's handle for dear life.

Taking a bow from the wall shelf, turning himself into a bowman, then taking a telescope from his pocket, Einstein pointed it down to find that, yes, it was too dark to see with a telescope.

So he put the bow back to the shelf and took a flier, which gave him a pair of carbon-black metallic wings. He jumped down.

After a few seconds of falling, he found several flying shelves, a flying counter, and Sunset flying uncontrollably upward. He caught her in a firm grip. "What happened?"

Sunset spat the lingering taste of dirt from her mouth. "The Floor god. He took Sweetie."

Einstein scowled. "Don't tell me his name is Parke."

Sunset's eyebrows shot up. "You know him?"

Einstein nodded grimly. "One of the lesser gods of Terra. Quite a caring dwarf, but greedy as hell will give him. Likes to take fallen writing utensils into his personal collection and, with it, bankrupting a lot of academies as quills of this world's quite pricy."

"And he's coming," Sunset said, pointing at the glint of light from far down below, coming fast toward them.

Einstein nodded, took a gun from his jacket pocket, and shot a Blu-ray copy of Disney and Pixar's UP from a nearby flying shelf.

As he shot up, he took Sunset along, and they both reached the storefront in an instant. Snapping his fingers, The Everycraftery teleported back into its home universe, leaving behind Sunset Shimmer, Einstein, and a gaping hole on the ground.

"Alright," Sunset said as Einstein put her down next to the hole, "we need a plan."

Einstein nodded. "I have one, but it'll be bizarre, it'll be mind-boggling, and it won't be pleasant. I need you to play along, or else it won't work."

Sunset nodded in determination. "Anything for Sweetie."

"That's cheesy as fuck," Einstein said. Then, pulling out his phone, he dialed a number. As he waited, he turned toward Sunset and gestured toward the hole on the ground before taking off and flying into the distance.

Sunset then took off as well, just in time before the ground beneath her vanished, revealing from underneath the incoming swing from Parke's hammer.

Sunset was ready. She dove forward and swung her sword, clashing with his hammer.

Upon normal circumstances, his hammer along with the one who wielded it should've been obliterated. But, as The God of Floors had taken away the ground from beneath her, Sunset couldn't stand, and so she didn't stand a chance. And so, she instead got flung backward on the impact, flailing a few paces before she stabilized herself.

The god pounced forward, giving Sunset almost no time to react after she regained her balance.

Almost.

Sunset pointed her sword toward Parke, and a massive bolt of lightning shot from the tip.

Parke didn't have time to react, and the bolt hit him dead-on. He flinched and stumbled backward on his floating tile. But, just as quickly, he regained his balance and shot forward.

Sunset flapped her wings once and managed to barely dodge his swing. As she did, she remembered what 'grounding' meant and cursed under her breath.

Parke, upon noticing that he had shot far from his target, curved in a tight circle and aimed another swing at her face.

The wings from the fliers weren't meant for agility, and so Sunset wasn't able to stop her momentum from before. So, she instead focused on the incoming swing and raised her sword to block it.

Just as expected, the force flung her backward again. This time, however, Einstein was already waiting behind her and caught her momentum.

She glanced behind to find Einstein smiling at her. Beside him, she found another man looking at her curiously. It was Newton.

"Fool!" Parke said, which prompted her to snap her vision back at him. "You can't win this fight; you don't stand a chance!"

Einstein answered him by grabbing Sunset's wings and turned them back into fliers.

Sunset nearly fell, but Einstein's grip held her tight. Then, with Newton's help, Sunset climbed them both and stood on their shoulders.

Parke laughed and lunged forward, his hammer blazing with godly powers arcing toward the trio.

Sunset took a stance and braced herself. Then, with her own mighty swing, their weapons connected.

~~Sunset didn't stand a chance.~~ Sunset was standing. Not on the ground, but standing nonetheless.

Even better, she was Standing on the Shoulders of Giants.

And so, with a deafening CLANG! that could be heard from the foot of the mountain, Sunset annihilated Parke's hammer, stripping him from his powers.

Parke's floating tile turned to dust, and he fell and hit the ground hard. As he tried to stand, he grunted and scowled toward Sunset. "How!? I took away the ground from ye, ye shouldn't have been able to stand a chance against me!"

Sunset landed on the ground, followed by Einstein and Newton by her side. As she looked down at the fallen figure of the Floor god, she shook her head slowly and fixed her glasses.

She made sure that the glare from her glasses obscured her eyes from Parke's point of view (which is surprisingly easy). "I don't need the ground to stand on, Parke. I have friends to lean on when the ground fell from below me."

"That's cheesy as fuck."

"And it works."

Author's Note

Heavily inspired by the occurrence of my friend confiscating a pencil I dropped, declaring that he's the Floor god and the pencil was his right to have. I proceeded to declare myself the Ceiling god and waged war.

Also, Google Scholar is pretty neat for idle curiosity and I'm not sponsored by Faber-Castell by any means.

The Shimmer Cup⁠ - Part 1: Anonymous's Battlegrounds

"You signed me up for what!?"

"The Shimmer Cup!" Twilight said jovially, showing Sunset in her magic grip a copy of the registration form she had sent the day before to the Herd of Overpowered Fighters, or HoOF for short.

The 1st Shimmer Cup

Registration Form

Personal Information

Full Name: Prof. Sunset Shimmer
Preferred Nickname among Sunsets: Professor Sunnybuns
Defining Features: Nerdy glasses, gold-hilted sword, shoulder-strapped flask
Birthplace/Birth Species: Equestria, Universe B512-R745 / Equus sapiens unicornus
Current Residence: (Permanent/Nomadic) The Everycraftery
TIM-mail: empressbunnysuns@feech.com

Contestant Information

Power Type: Artifact-based, non-dependant
Class: Offensive Knight
Species on Attendance: Homo sapiens prismatica
Weapon(s): Oakeshott XIIa Sword
Armor: -
Other equipment(s): Glasses, Infiniflask

Moral Support Information

Name(s)/Nickname(s): Lucid Sparkle / Lucy
Defining Features: Generic Alicorn Twilight Sparkle
Current Residence: (Permanent/Nomadic) The Everycraftery
TIM-mail: twicraft666@feech.com

Sponsors

Company Name(s): The Everycraftery; Faber-Castell
Media(s): Contestant equipments; side banners
(For video and/or banners, please send the files through our website in
https://tim.hoof.com/events/sponsorguide/media)

"What the hay, Twi? I didn't consent to this!"

"You did, actually. Also, call me Lucy."

"When? Why?"

"Yesterday. I asked you, 'Hey, Sunny, what are your thoughts on fighting other versions of you?' and then you answered with, 'None. I'll have it when I've done it.' Also why what?"

"That was not, in any given context, me giving you my consent to sign me up on a multiversal gladiator ring. Also, why are you 'Lucy' again?"

~~Twilight~~ Lucy let out an exasperated sigh. "Look, Sunny. You remember what you did last week?"

Sunset hummed. "I went on a vacation? I took Sweetie on a tour of the many species of the Anaphalis genus."

Lucy leveled a stare. "Seriously?"

"Well," Sunset said, taking a swig from her flask, "I did defeat that whatshisname, the Floor god."

"Yes, that," Lucy said. "Have you any idea what that entails?"

"Upsetting the lesser gods of Terra," Sunset concluded, "But what does it matter?"

"One of them was a member of the Gods of Dimensions."

". . . oh."

"'Oh' indeed, Sunny. You've fucked up. Also, I'm Lucy because I had a hunch⁠—"

The silver bells chimed, announcing the arrival of one Princess Twilight Sparkle into The Everycraftery.

"Hey, Lucy," Twilight greeted with a chipper tone.

Lucy grunted in annoyance. "Why am I always right?"

"Aw, don't be so grumpy! I won't bother you much. Here, some of your mail got misdelivered," she said, as she gave Lucy a bunch of mails that was meant for 'Twilight Sparkle, Everycrafter of The Everycraftery'.

"Thank you, Twilight," Lucy said, taking the mails without looking at it.

Twilight cleared her throat. "Again."

"It won't happen again, Twilight."

Twilight leveled a glare. "It's the third time you've said that, Lucy."

"I'm sorry, Mom," she snapped.

Sunset cut in. "Alright, you two, cut it out. Lucy, don't antagonize your other half⁠—"

"No."

"⁠—And Princess, we're sorry. I'll take care of her and The Everycraftery's administrations soon."

"That's good to hear, Sunny. Alright, see you around!"

"Hope not," Lucy mumbled.

As the silver bells chimed, announcing the returned absence of lavender alicorn royalties, Sunset took a swig from her flask. "So, I'm participating in this multiversal gladiator ring because the GoD will probably destroy our reputation?"

"Yep!" Lucy said, as her expression went back into a more enthusiastic one. "We're also helping Kaspar because, apparently, there's a rumor going on that his company's trying to usurp the Council of the GoDs through the production of superior writing utensils. We're going to remove that hoax."

"And this is the right course of action because . . . ?"

"Interdimensional political reasons. Einstein said so."

Sunset raised an eyebrow. "That's convenient. And makes no sense whatsoever."

Lucy chuckled. "What fun is there in making sense?"

Sunset took a swig from her flask. "That's Discord's line."

"So?" Lucy asked as she gave Sunset the form. "It fits the context perfectly."

Sunset took the form in her hands. "It's almost like you're waiting for the opportunity."

"You have no evidence whatsoever for your claim."

Sunset nodded as she continued to read. Just as she was about to take a swig from her flask, she snapped her head to Lucy and began examining her. Really examine her. Like, psychoanalytic-levels of examination. "Lucy, have you been dating⁠—"

"Not another word, Sunny!"

Sunset let out a hearty laugh at the ~~adorable~~ menacing form of the waist-high alicorn in front of her, her wings held open and her face positively, definitely, absolutely, not blushing. "My goodness, you did!"

Lucy huffed and puffed her cheeks. "What do you know?"

Sunset adjusted her glasses by the bridge, making sure the light's reflection obscured her eyes from Lucy's vision. "Everything.

"And yes, I'm blackmailing you with this."

Lucy opened her mouth to protest, but closed it just as fast. ". . . You know what? I'm actually very proud of you, Sunny."

"Stop calling me that," ~~Sunset~~ Sunny said.

"Suck it up, Sunny. You're going to hear it until the end of the competition."

"Elimination round: Battle Royale begins in five minutes."

Sunny stood inside a small white room. It was empty save for the door behind her, the dim ceiling lamp that served as the entire ceiling, and the rune circle on the floor, glowing soft yellow that put her at quite the blissful state. She took a swig from her flask.

"Battle begins in sixty seconds," came a stoic baritone voice from somewhere.

It reminded her of Peter, and it made her smile. Such memories never fade even after millennia.

"Battle begins in thirty seconds."

As Sunny put her flask down and strapped it tight against her belt, she felt a sudden urge to pat Sweetie Belle. She hoped she was okay; she's supposed to be taking her math exam today.

"Battle begins in ten seconds."

Sunny adjusted her glasses and breathed out. There's nothing to worry about—she's immortal, after all. And, even if she wasn't, the crew provided her and every participant with a link to a respawner. Killing others wasn't encouraged, as seen in its reduced points compared to knockouts and making Sunsets yield, but was still an option nonetheless.

The thing is, Lucy had modified her sword to keep the horrifying extent of its powers restrained, lest they wanted The Everycraftery's reputation to fall among the mortals as well. She'd need to adjust to its lowered abilities after millennia of godly sandboxing with calamities after apocalypses.

"Five . . . four. . . three . . ."

Sunny unsheathed her sword and held it vertically in both hands, its hilt hovering in front of her right shoulder. If her calculations were correct . . .

". . . Two . . . one. Begin!"

Sunny closed her eyes. As she felt the surge of teleportation magic, she didn't wait to adjust and leaned forward.

A lance of pure light shot from her right through where her head had been, missing her completely.

Pandemonium broke. Immediate screams of agony erupted as unsuspecting Sunsets failed to understand how the fight had already started the millisecond they teleported into the battlefield.

Sunny wasn't one of them, not by a cosmic margin. As she opened her eyes, she snapped her sword and pointed it to her left.

An anthropomorphic cat Sunset jumped right into her sword. Her head connected with the edge of her blade, and she was knocked down.

The overtly-anime cat girl's katana was still in momentum and swung into Sunny, but she easily sidestepped it with her own swing's momentum. And, using the same momentum, she spun her sword and brought it down to her fallen opponent.

It stopped right before it sliced her neck. The girl chuckled and purred. "Well, that sucked. I yield."

Yellow glowing runes flashed around the cat girl's form, and she vanished, teleported to the safety outside The Pandomenium of Broken Pandemonium.

Sunset pulled her sword back and swung it to where the previous lance came from, and sure enough, a charging valkyrie Sunset atop a pegasus came galloping with her spear held forward.

Sunny's swing hit the spear, knocking it to her left while the momentum brought her swiveling to the right.

The valkyrie noticed too late as Sunny doubled her swing and hit her right on the hip. She merely flinched beneath her armor as she galloped past, cursing at how she could've dodged that.

Sunny wasn't done. With a flick of her wrist, she willed the ground behind her to raise.

The ground obliged and shot upward at an angle, shooting Sunny straight into the valkyrie, her arms coiled and ready to swing. As the valkyrie turned around, Sunny could see her pinprick pupils right before she slammed the flat side of her sword into the valkyrie's somehow helmetless head, knocking her unconscious. Immediately runes glowed around her and the pegasus, and they were teleported out.

Sunny landed a few paces in front of where the valkyrie had been, right beside a Sunset in full leather and chainmail attire, wielding a longsword similar to hers save for the sharp-angled crossguard compared to her flat one. A wisp of light between them told that she had just defeated an opponent.

Both immediately took a stance. Sunny was impressed by her opponent's awkward-looking but realistic stance compared to the others' badass and flamboyant but easily exploitable ones. That's probably how she defeated the other guy before, Sunny thought.

Her opponent swung first, snapping her wrist and aiming for Sunny's neck. Sunny responded with a mirrored swing and put them in a close bind. She then gave Sunny repeated blow after parries, which Sunny found admirable for someone whose expression showed clear strain to maintain focus on her blade's motion.

Almost a split second later, her opponent broke into a triumphant grin as she managed to catch Sunny's sword between her quillon and blade. Then, with a practiced flick of her wrist, sent it flying high.

So happy was she to successfully disarm Sunny that she didn't notice said Sunny wasn't in front of her anymore and was instead standing by her side, their shoulders pressing close and their smiling cheeks nearly touching one another.

Sunny grabbed her wrist with her right hand and relished in how quickly that smile vanished. She slammed the back of her left fist into her opponent's face.

Her opponent stumbled backward a few steps, instinctively releasing her grip on her sword.

With her newly-obtained sword, Sunny closed the distance between them and put the blade into her neck. "Yield."

"I⁠—y-yes. I yield." And so, in a flash of runes, she (and her sword) disappeared.

Just in time, too, as Sunny's sword dropped back from the sky into where she had been standing. Taking her sword back, Sunny let a moment to catch her breath and took a thorough look at her surroundings.

She was standing in a field of rolling hills. All around her, a sea of bacon-colored creatures were either slamming their melee weapons at another, hiding behind the occasional rock and taking shots from their missile weapons, or was locked in a magical duel of some sort.

It was a jumbled mess of historical, realistic, futuristic, fantastical, modern, ridiculous, serious, anime-like, Oxford-comma-inducing, and every-other-adjective-she-couldn't-think-of-at-the-moment battles. Luckily, Sunny's immediate surroundings were devoid of any.

Unluckily, that didn't mean she was in a safe place, as standing between no one was a beacon that screamed 'I'm over here!'

Sunny noticed that too late as her vision began speeding up. A split second of it made her notice, at the edge of her vision, a unicorn Chronomage casting a time spell at her. She was about to be frozen in time.

Sunny grinned.

Sunny was wielding the Sword of Power and the Glasses of Knowledge. She had infinite power and infinite knowledge. Since knowledge was power, she had double infinite power.

And power is energy divided by time.

The unicorn was trying to create a bubble around Sunny of infinite time so that all the time in the universe would go by in an instant. How much energy was she putting into her spell?

P = \frac{E}{t}

\infty^2 = \frac{E}{\infty}

E = \infty^2\times\infty

A lot, probably. We don't have time to do that kind of math right now, because all that concentrated energy was instantly unleashed in a destructive wave of kinetic discharge.

The audience watching outside the dome-like building that is The Pandomenium of Broken Pandemonium gaped in silent fascination as the explosion peeled away a chunk of the battlefield like dry paint, obliterating all unsuspecting Sunsets in its wake into ash.

In the middle of the silence, Lucy jumped and cheered as the name 'F202 | Professor Sunnybuns' in the leaderboard shot into first place with forty points. "Did you see that? Did you see that!? That's my Sunset! EEEEEEEEE!"

Back in The Pandomenium, Sunny blinked at the crater she was standing in.

A chunk of the battlefield was obliterated, but The Pandomenium luckily had over two hundred chunks, and thus the battle was still going on with the remaining four hundred Sunsets.

Sunny willed the ground to shoot her up, and the ground obliged.

As she landed at the edge of the crater, she sighed in relief as she saw the battle outside the explosion was still going on as if nothing had happened.

On top of a hill in the distance, Sunny saw a white paladin clad in full white-and-gold plate armor that was currently engaged in a losing battle against a dark knight almost twice his height clad in black-and-red heavy armor. The paladin was wielding a large tower shield and a mace, each made of pure Holy Light, while the dark knight was wielding a disproportionately large great ax made of pure Evil Darkness, leaving tendrils of shadows with every swing.

Seeing that no one had noticed her yet, Sunny laid low and sneaked behind the dark knight. As the dark knight made another heavy blow against the paladin's shield, sending him staggering back, Sunny took the chance to jump and landed a solid hit against her helmet with a loud metallic Clank!

Unfortunately, she didn't put enough force behind her swing to cut through her helmet and merely left a dent.

Fortunately, Sunny understood two things: one, in historical terms, swords were never built to pierce through metal plating, and two, there are a lot of ways to hurt someone inside an iron suit.

Mainly: dents.

And so, with her helmet dented deep enough to rest a cantaloupe in, the dark knight flopped into the ground, prompting runes to sprout and teleported her out.

Sunny quickly braced and waited for the weakened paladin to strike.

The strike never came. He turned his back into her and raised his shield high, blocking a plasma bolt from hitting her. He turned to her and gave a silent nod.

Sunny cocked an eyebrow but decided to go with the flow.

And so, the two of them fought back to back against Sunsets after Sunsets and was faring quite well. That is, of course, until others started noticing their cooperation and did the same.

A samurai Sunset clad in full scale-armor came rushing at them, and the paladin quickly raised his shield and bashed against her. The samurai used his shield to jump upward and landed on the other side of the duo.

Sunny quickly swung her sword before she could land, but the samurai blocked it, engaging her in a bind.

The paladin was about to help her when a unicorn blood mage from the distance began repeatedly slamming tentacles of sickly blood against his shield and magical barrier. He didn't stagger but was also too focused on countering her dark magic to do anything else.

As another heavy blow of blood tentacle hit the paladin's defenses, the blood mage screamed in a chilling guttural voice, "Yield!"

A blood tendril slipped past his defenses, shooting right at Sunny.

Sunny saw it at the edge of her vision and, while still bind with the samurai, sidestepped to the left. It hit the samurai in the shoulder, staggering her back.

Sunny took the chance to thrust her sword against the samurai's armor. It went between the metal scales and into her squishy body underneath, impaling her through and went out her backside. A glow of runes and she was out.

Sunny glanced behind her and noticed that the paladin was faring poorly against the blood mage, as there was practically a sea of blood all around them. The paladin glanced back. "Any ideas?"

Sunny was about to answer when, at the other edge of her vision, she saw a unicorn archmage in red robes galloping straight at them, her eyes wide with panic. Noticing the duo, she shot a beam of magic at them.

The shot went wide and missed them completely, sailing past the paladin's force field, straight into the blood mage's horn.

The blood mage staggered backward, and her spell sputtered for a brief second before she quickly lit it up again.

A brief second enough. Sunny swung her sword and unleashed a massive heatwave at the blood mage's direction, evaporating all the blood. The mage herself quickly raised a bubble shield, protecting her from the boiling heat.

Sunny then jumped into the paladin's shield and, with his push, shot straight into the blood mage. As the bubble went down, Sunny landed right in front of her and swung her sword, stopping it right as it touched the blood mage's horn with a soft clink.

The blood mage grumbled. "Shit. Fine, I yield."

As runes glowed and took the blood mage out, Sunny turned around to find the cause of the archmage's panic from before: she was being chased down by a Viking berserker, complete with the historically-inaccurate horned helmet and oversized greatsword.

The paladin let the archmage to duck behind him and, bracing himself, took the full blow of the Viking's charge. The paladin staggered backward at the impact while the Viking tumbled down the hill.

The archmage, finally able to turn around after being chased across the battlefield, lit her horn and shot a beam of magic at the stunned Viking before she could stand, hitting her right between the eyes and through the other side of her head.

Sunny joined the paladin and the archmage, giving them curious looks. "So, we're together now?"

The paladin shrugged. "Friendship is Magic, I guess."

The archmage nodded between her breaths. "May . . . as well . . . phew."

And thus the trio formed an unofficial team.

Which was (and is) bad in a Battle Royale, because the moment someone noticed the duo had turned into a trio was the moment everyone else did. And, as the unwritten rule of Battle Royales, absolutely everyone else joined together to fight them.

Seeing the sea of bacon hairs congregating at the distance, the paladin gave Sunny a nudge. "I think we made a mistake."

"No shit, guy."

The archmage chirped in. "I know a great coffee shop two blocks from here. Wanna hang out after we've lost?"

"Sounds good to me. My number's E022, by the way."

"I'm in. F202."

"A290."

And so the trio fought back-to-back against a wave of Sunsets, fighting the final battle before their inevitable defeat.

Against all odds, they survived.

"And we have our finalists, folks!" came the voice from everywhere. "I'm Anonymous, and I'll see all sixteen of you next week on the finals!"

The archmage flopped on her backside to the ground, while the paladin sat on the ground, dropping his mace and shield. In the far distance all around them, other finalists also flopped on their rumps.

Sunny took a long, overdue swig from her flask. "That was epic."

"Yeah," the archmage said, followed by a giggle. "Phew. How did that work?"

"Luck, most likely," answered the paladin. "But I'm betting this fighter here played a major part."

Sunny waved a hand. "Meh. My points on the leaderboard were purely dumb luck."

The archmage waved her hoof around, gaining the two's attention. "So . . . you two still in for coffee?"

"Absolutely," Sunny said as she smiled and strapped flask back. "You can call me Sunny, by the way."

"Cruz," the paladin said, taking off his helmet and shaking his shoulder-length hair, "nice to meet you."

"Magica. Meet you all in the lobby before dinner?"

Author's Note

Sunnybuns was supposed to be a one-off character. Then, I fell in love with her.

So I asked myself, "Is there a lazier way to introduce a character's traits and abilities than having another character say it all out loud anime-style?"

"Registration forms."

Anyway, I'm just messing around and is trying my hand on action scene writing. ~~Criticism~~ Sophisticated, highly intellectual insults are welcome.

The Shimmer Cup - Part 2: Super Smash Shimmer

"Tomorrow's the big day, my friends."

Sunny and Magica, still in giggling fits, looked up from the laptop to Cruz across the table. Settling down, Magica rolled her eyes. "Well, duh."

"Yeah," Sunny added, "that's why we're here, silly."

Cruz frowned and put his cup of coffee down. "Why are you so unconcerned about this? Come on, guys, at least give me some confidence knowing I'm not the only one anxious about fighting other versions of me."

Magica gave him an amused smirk. "You, Shimmer de la Cruz, Knight of the Holy Cross, one of the Chosen Guardians of Earth, is afraid to fight yourself. How poetic."

Cruz grumbled. "Considering that I know everyone else has at least one more title than that, it's justifiable." As he looked at Sunny, he coughed. "Accept for you, Sunny. I don't know how many titles you're hiding."

Sunny waved a hand. "I kept telling you, I have no other than 'Professor' and five different PhDs."

"We know you're hiding something, Sunny." Magica gave her a friendly nudge. "You don't just fight like that with a Ph.D. in being awesome."

"Maggie's right," Cruz said. "But hey, if that's your strategy to mislead other contestants, then we won't push."

"That's a good point," Sunny said, taking a sip of her coffee. "If we both win this round, we'll be fighting each other in the quarter-finals. Giving out titles is just a way to expose yourself to your opponents about your abilities and what to expect."

"But there's a trick to that," Magica cut in. "Giving your titles out makes your opponents know what to expect from you, and in return, you know what your opponents are expecting so you can prepare. Keeping yourself in the dark, however, makes your opponents prepare for everything, and in return, you won't be able to expect what they are preparing for you as well."

"Exactly. I like surprises."

The next morning, The Pandomenium, already turned into a colosseum-like building, erupted in cheer as Anonymous exited the arena after his speech.

Underneath it, Sunny adjusted her glasses and pulled out her sword, swinging it around as she tested its balance.

"So, not really a problem, right?"

Sunny looked up from her sword to Lucy. "No, not really." Looking back at her sword, she held the hilt to eye-level and inspected the newest addition to its crossguard: a pair of red and orange sapphire that intertwined with each other, creating a figure of her cutie mark. "Still a little too ornate for my tastes, tough."

Lucy frowned. "It's called art. I'm allowed to decorate my creations with anything I wish, thank you very much."

"That still didn't answer the question of why make a fragile inhibitor when the previous perfectly-working modification worked just fine?"

"Its outcomes are too predictable," Lucy answered. "You simply have a weaker sword. That's too safe and too boring for my taste. I need something that can go horribly wrong at the worst possible moment."

"You're evil, you know that?"

Before Lucy could answer, the runes underneath Sunny glowed brightly, telling her that the battle was about to begin.

Lucy patted Sunny in the hips one last time before turning around, wished her good luck, then stepped outside the rune circle.

Sunny closed her eyes as the runes glowed the second time. As light engulfed her, the muffled cheer exploded into crystal clarity as she was teleported into the arena.

As the light receded, Anonymous's baritone voice announced, "And here we go, folks! In the North, you can see contestant E133, also known as . . . Rosa? Rose! Being the newly-inaugurated Keyblade Master, she's your generic Chosen One from her world, and has just finished her quest to save it from a megalomaniacal emotion eater!"

At the other end of the arena, Sunny could see her opponent striking a grinning pose with her weapon: an oversized red-and-yellow key held by the bow, seemingly used as a sword.

The voice continued. "And In the South, you can see contestant F202, also known as Professor Sunnybuns!" The crowd gave a collective chuckle. "Yes, folks, it is a cute name. But don't let it fool you! She's the clerk of the multiversal store known as The Everycraftery, which also gave her her powers. Rumors have it that just two weeks ago, she managed to defeat one of the lesser gods of Terra."

An 'ooh' came from the crowd, and they gave a cheer.

Noticing her cue to pose, Sunny stood straight and put her sword by her side. Keeping an emotionless face, Sunny pushed her glasses by the bridge and turned her gaze toward her opponent.

As their eyes met, Sunny held back a grin as she noticed Rose's faltering confidence. Lawful-good heroes always fell for the shiny glasses trick.

"Let's not stall any longer, shall we? Let pandemonium break!"

As Anonymous finished his sentence, all around the arena glowed bright yellow with the rising force field, protecting the audience from anything the contestants may throw to each other.

Rose took the first move and dashed forward, closing the distance between them in a split second.

Sunny raised her sword just in time to block the strike and stepped to the right.

Rose noticed and turned around, swinging her keyblade sideways to counter Sunny's following blow, missing her by 2.54 centimeters from her face.

Sunny jumped backward as Rose's momentum kept her moving a stride longer. Sunny raised her sword to a stance, ready for another counter.

Rose stopped herself and braced as well, preparing for another strike.

The crowd roared in excitement.

Rose jumped high and somersaulted, aiming her swinging keyblade for Sunny's head.

Sunny casually stepped forward.

Rose landed too far ahead, unguarded and open for a strike. She quickly turned around to block any incoming strikes.

But Sunny was faster to swing her sword, and it hit Rose by the side, sending her tumbling sideways.

Rose landed on her feet a few meters away without any signs of injury, but her face visibly contorting in pain. Taking advantage of the distance, she raised her keyblade high and cast a spell.

Sunny noticed and raised her sword as well, just in time as a bolt of lightning stroke the blade. It adsorbed the energy, and briefly glowed white.

Rose aimed her keyblade toward Sunny and shot a fireball.

Sunny dodged and swung her sword as well. The cutie mark gem in her hilt glowed brightly, and the supposed world-ending blast of fire was toned down to a simple wave.

Rose ducked and the wave of fire swept above her. As she straightened herself up, she aimed her keyblade again and shot spells after spells of fire, ice, wind, and earth.

Sunny dodged each spell perfectly and mirrored her opponent's moves, sending waves of a blizzard, storm, and tectonic shifts accordingly.

Rose screamed in annoyance. "Are you mocking me!?"

Sunny, her face still emotionless, answered, "No, Rose. I'm insulting you."

Rose roared a battle cry and jumped forward, swinging her keyblade with all her might.

Sunny braced and blocked the blow with her sword, locking them in a bind. With their faces nearly touching one another, Sunny could feel the determination radiating off her opponent.

"You're not going to win, Sunny! The good shall always prevail with the power of light, and the evil will be extinguished as the shadows are broken under the moonlight!"

"Three things, Rose: one, that's literal nonsense."

Sunny pushed forward, breaking the bind. Stepping to her left, she swung her sword and again was blocked by Rose.

"Two, I'm not really evil, now, am I?"

Rose jumped upward and spun, swinging her keyblade down. Sunny stepped away and let the keyblade hit the ground with a Slam!

As Rose landed, Sunny snapped her wrist and brought her sword hard, which Rose blocked with her keyblade, creating a loud, reverberating Clank!

As Rose stumbled backward at the impact, Sunny stepped close and whispered to her ear, "Three, Master Celestia doesn't approve of your inauguration, and she never will."

Words cut deeper than the sword, and it stabbed her right in the heart.

Sunny jumped backward as Rose fell to the ground, clutching her chest and screaming in agony.

The screaming didn't stop, and Sunny frowned. "Rose, give up! You know you've lost, don't torture yourself!"

"N-no!" she wailed. "I won't give up! I—" her words was interrupted with another scream as another jolt of pain shot through her heart.

Sunny, upon noticing her opponent was, in fact, as stubborn as she feared, grumbled in annoyance. "Fine, then. I'll end it for you."

And so she thrust her sword down, straight into her opponent's heart.

Rose gave a final scream before collapsing. Yellow runes soon appeared around her form, and her life essence was brought into the respawner.

The crowd exploded, and Anon's voice came from everywhere, "And we have our winner, folks! Contestant F202, Professor Sunnybuns!"

Sunny tapped her foot impatiently outside the medical bay.

Magica put a gentle hoof to Sunny's hand. "Don't worry, Sunny. I heard that she got a heart of steel; your words won't hurt her feelings any more than her enemies had in the past."

Sunny swatted her hoof and took her flask. She opened the cap and took a swig. "No, Maggie. I should've said something else. That's right in her insecurities, and it might hinder her in actually gaining her Celestia's approval."

"You worry too much about everything, Sunny."

Sunny looked inside her hipflask with grim remorse. "So I've been told."

Magica noticed her change of mood and leaned in. "Want to talk about it?"

Sunny sighed. "No, thank you. Not now, at least."

Magica opened her mouth to ask but was interrupted when the door beside them opened, letting out a tired-looking human Sunset Shimmer, leaning against a worried-looking Sci-Twi.

Sunny stepped in, and Rose lifted her head heavily as she met Sunny's eyes. "Hey, you okay?"

Rose chuckled. "I will be. Good game, by the way."

Sunny shook her head. "No, it wasn't. I shouldn't have said those words to you." Sunny gently grabbed Rose's shoulder and gave her an apologetic look. "I'm sorry. You're a great woman, Rose, and don't let what I said hinder you from achieving your goals. Don't give up, and you'll eventually get what you're seeking, even if it seemed impossible."

Rose chuckled. "That's cheesy as fuck."

Sunny laughed. "Well, yes. But at least it has actual meaning."

A unicorn Twilight Sparkle, nicknamed Hexa, sat in silence, watching her cold cup of coffee intently. Her robe, having elaborate motifs that suggested that she was an archmage, glowed softly as the runes underneath it drifted lazily and fluidly around in a perfectly-mathematized pattern.

Cruz took a loud slurp of his milkshake.

Sunny took a swig from her flask.

Hexa threw her hooves upward. "Gah! I can't stand it anymore!" She glared at the Sunsets respectively. "How are you two not panicking!? Aren't you worried about Maggie?"

Cruz put his milkshake down. "Because we're not a Twilight. We don't do panicky rants."

"And second," continued Sunny, "is that there's nothing to worry about. The worst thing that could happen to her is death."

Hexa hyperventilated.

"Which is perfectly fine," Cruz grumbled. "She'll respawn. Or brought back to life. Or resurrected. Whatever, the point is, she won't stay dead. She'll come back."

"But what if she got traumatized!?" shrieked Hexa. "What if her death made her an entirely different pony? What if she got amnesia? What if Magica's respawner broke? What if. . ."

And so Hexa continued rambling between the visibly annoyed Sunsets, not noticing as Magica came into the coffee shop and started attempting to calm her friend down, ensuring her that she had won and will continue to the quarterfinals.

Cruz stared at his opponent. "A demon."

His opponent, apparently named Sundown, stared back in equal straightness. "A paladin."

"Yes, yes, it's a poetic coincidence," came the voice of Anonymous. "Now, are you going to fight already!?"

Cruz shook his head, put his helmet's mask down, and summoned his shield and mace. "I . . . guess so."

Likewise, Sundown readied her trident. "Y'know, I've never really fought . . . ah, a Heavenly Warrior."

Cruz chuckled. "Me neither. Well, a Hellish Warrior, anyway."

Sundown sucked through her teeth. "So, ah, will this create a war between Heaven/Hell?"

"Let's pray it doesn't."

"Very funny."

Cruz swung his mace and shot a beam of light toward Sundown.

Sundown spun her trident and blocked the beam, dispersing it into glittery particles. Seeing her opponent approaching not-so-quickly, she jumped over him, bringing her trident down as she passed overhead.

Cruz brought his shield upward and blocked the trident. Turning around, he swung his mace at where his opponent was about to land.

Sundown, noticing her mistake, summoned a pentagram behind her, just in time as the mace hit, staggering her. She ignored the crowd's cheer and thrust her trident backward.

Cruz flinched as her trident scraped his breastplate. He clutched the trident in his armpit and pulled backward.

Sundown lost her grip, jumping backward as Cruz blasted a short-range pulse of Holy Light at her. Summoning her trident back, she summoned another pentagram and, from it, shot a dozen dark tendrils at him.

Cruz didn't flinch as the tendrils hit his shield square in the middle.

The crowd roared in excitement.

Cruz set his shield aside, drew the Holy Cross with his mace, then—

Sundown disappeared in a flash of runes.

Cruz blinked. The crowd went silent.

"And we have our winner, folks! Contestant E022, Shimmer de la Cruz!"

"Wait, wait, wait." Cruz took off his helmet and looked around the still-silent crowd. "That can't be it! There must be a mistake!"

"Uh, no," came Anonymous's voice from everywhere. "She yielded. You've won, fair and square."

"How anticlimactic."

"Hey, it works. Now get off the arena; we're in a tight schedule here."

Author's Note

As fun as Kingdom Hearts is to play, I still find its plot quite cringey. And overly-complicated. But it's fun. And the whole concept of Keyblades and whatnot is actually quite intriguing.

Also, sorry for the delay. I have no excuse but procrastination.

Indecision-Making

Sweetie Belle hummed lazily as she put a gun on the window shelf.

A gun. No catch. A .357 S&W Magnum that Lucy had bought for no other purpose than to be placed on the window display. She even told her that it was not for sale.

In a store full of impossibly impossible impossibilities, Lucy had given her a perfectly normal gun to showcase. There was a metaphor there, somewhere, but Sweetie couldn't put a hoof on it.

No matter, Sweetie thought. Sunny would be back tomorrow, and then she could tell her what Lucy might have wanted to achieve through the medium of displaying a firearm on the window display. Sunny knew a lot of things. Quite possibly anything, in fact. She could tell her anything she ever wanted to know.

Or maybe she'd ask Lucy herself, which will return at midnight, which was three hours away. Or Einstein, which will return in two days, in case the other two somehow couldn't answer her question. She doubted that, though.

Sweetie turned around and looked at one of the corners of the store. There was something there covered with a white sheet that looked a lot like an ATM, and Lucy had told her not to touch it. Naturally, Sweetie had touched it. Nothing had happened.

Sweetie trotted closer and pulled the sheet away, revealing, to her surprise, and actual ATM. The blue screen told her so:

Automatic Telling Machine v1.0

ask and I'll tell

"An ATM machine?"

Sweetie jumped back as she heard a sudden whirling of gizmos. A few seconds of it, then a white paper came out with a ding.

Sweetie raised an eyebrow as she read the paper. It read, 'No, it's not an ATM machine, it's an ATM.'

Sweetie oohed and coughed. She took a breath and said, carefully, "Who am I?"

As another ding came, Sweetie took the paper and read, 'Sweetie Belle."

Sweetie giggled. "Which is better, coffee or tea?"

Ding. Sweetie took the paper. Sweetie frowned and gave the ATM a half-lidded stare. "Seriously?"

Ding. 'Yes, seriously.'

Sweetie read the previous paper again to confirm that, indeed, it says, 'For Sweetie Belle, tea. Especially Earl Grey.'

Sweetie sighed. "Alright, then." Sweetie looked back at the gun and smiled conspiratorially. She turned toward the ATM and whispered, "Why did Lucy want me to put a gun on the window display?"

Instead of the ding that Sweetie expected, a BOOM! came, along with the destruction of the machine and her much-needed answer.

Sweetie coughed and sucker-punched the floor, prompting it to suck and settle the lingering dust into a neat, 1:1000000000 miniature of a settlement made of said dust. Looking back, Sweetie found the one responsible for the destruction of the ATM: a human Sweetie Belle.

Well, she looked like a human Sweetie Belle, but Sweetie (the janitor) doubted it. There was the matter of her eyes glowing red that Sweetie was quite sure shouldn't be the case in humans.

"Hey, what was that for!?"

The other Sweetie responded by opening her shoulder. Sweetie was also pretty sure that humans couldn't open their shoulders, which made Sweetie more confident that whoever that . . . thing is wasn't a human.

"Target acquired."

And that synthetic voice made Sweetie sure that the Sweetie was a robot, which wasn't a human. And so, Sweetie drew the conclusion that the Sweetie Bot standing in front of her wasn't a human, but rather a robot, and was trying to kill her. With the conclusion drawn and set up in front of her, Sweetie ducked behind the conclusion as the storm of bullets showered before concluding their trajectories at the aforementioned conclusion.

Sweetie jumped toward an aisle just as her brilliant conclusion shattered because no one can outsmart bullets. Luckily, Sweetie was always prepared, and so she took out an umbrella and kept the storm of bullets at bay.

Sweetie staggered as the umbrella pressed hard against her shoulders. Thinking quickly, she took out a piece of cloth from her hat and wiped the shoulder-mounted machine gun out of existence.

"Can we talk about this!? Peacefully?"

"You lied to me!" She raised her hand and opened her palm.

Sweetie jumped aside as a plasma bolt hit the ground she had been standing upon. "It's not my fault you run on iOS!"

"It's not my fault either that you didn't tell me it's not compatible!" She shot another bolt.

Sweetie wiped the bolt out of existence. As she did, the cloth burned into ashes, and she tsked and said, "Look, we can fix this, alright? Just wait until Lucy comes back!"

Bot smirked. "So, she's not here, isn't she?" She opened her other shoulder, from which came out a photon gun.

Now, while a photon gun was completely harmless in most cases, this particular photon gun was made without the engineer's understanding of what the word meant, and so was instead really, really deadly, because what it does is shoot continuous super-heated lead at 1200km/h muzzle velocity through jet propulsion.

"Prepare to die."

Sweetie tripped on her hooves as the incorrectly-named photon gun began its rotation. Yelping, she scrambled and doubled over and jumped behind the counter (thankfully made indestructible by Einstein). As the counter began furiously counting the number of almost-molten lead pelting it, Sweetie took a pair of contact lenses from a drawer and contacted Lucy.

An electronic crackle came and, without waiting for Lucy's voice, Sweetie screamed, "Lucy, Help! There's a Sweetie Bot trying to—"

A loud Thump came from above her, and Sweetie gulped as Bot's figure loomed above her, obstructing the ceiling lamp and casting a shadow over Sweetie. From her point of view, Sweetie Bot looked like a well-defined silhouette of her upcoming well-defined death.

Her chest-plate opened, revealing a miniature Death Ray Cannon.

Bot grinned, and the cannon began humming.

Sweetie pulled out a cube from her hat and put it between her and Imminent Death. As the Death Ray Cannon shot with a really loud high-pitched ringing, Sweetie blocked it.

Everything went white.

Sweetie blinked as the light receded. Looking around, she found that the counter had been toppled over, none of the racks were standing anymore, and Bot nowhere to be found.

Until she looked to her right, that is, at which point she was met with Bot's phaser, nozzle-to-muzzle.

Before Sweetie could react, there was a loud ZAP! and a Crackle and a Clank!

Sweetie opened her eyes to find that, no, she wasn't dead, and Bot was sprawled on the ground in front of her with a noticeable portion of her arm missing. Turning her head toward the store's entrance, she found, "Lucy!"

Lucy galloped and, reaching Bot, quickly lit her horn and ripped apart the regulator from her abdomen.

Sweetie Bot let out a scream of agony.

Sweetie knocked Lucy's horn just in time before she let loose all the wrath of a Double-Omnicidal Drunken Shimmer upon the artificial sapient lifeform.

Lucy glared.

Sweetie glared back. "No need to kill a helpless being!"

Lucy scoffed. "And what, Sweetie? Let her go? She'll just return another day and try to kill you again."

"No, she wouldn't!"

Lucy took out a nametag that read 'CASHIER' with the logo of the Truth establishment and put it on Sweetie Bot, making her a teller of Truth. Lucy looked at her in the eyes and asked, "If I let you go, will you come back and try to kill Sweetie again?"

"Yes."

Lucy lit her horn.

"Wait!"

Lucy snapped her head at her.

Sweetie stepped back as Lucy's look of pure, unadulterated Hatred—previously directed at Bot—fell upon her.

"What!?"

"Y-you c-can't kill her!"

Lucy took the gun from the window display and shoved it to Sweetie's hoof. Then, with a cold, emotionless tone, she said, "You do it, then."

"B-but I—"

Lucy cocked the revolver and directed it at Bot, who was looking at Sweetie with pleading eyes, the light behind them flickering as her internal components started failing. Sweetie caught a glint from the barrel, watching as the Smith & Wesson inscription got rewritten into Chekov's.

"Do it."

Sweetie's hoof began trembling. "I . . . I-I can't kill her."

"Why?"

"You told it yourself," Sweetie answered, slowly, her voice began steadying, "Friendship is Magic."

Lucy casually leaned on Sweetie, staggering her a little. "Hm. That's right." She steadied Sweetie's grip and placed the gun on Bot's forehead. Then, with a firmer tone, "Then do it."

"B-but—"

"Sunny told you not to kill anyone, didn't she?"

Sweetie nodded.

"But what did I tell you, Sweetie?'

Sweetie opened her mouth a couple of times before closing it shut.

Lucy sighed. "Pacifism is overrated. It's ineffective and time-consuming. Look at me, Sweetie. I stand on the paradigm that Friendship is Magic, but I'm not a pacifist. Look at what that did."

"Hundreds died."

"And tens of thousands of others got reformed." Lucy glared at Sweetie Bot. "Sometimes, you have to accept when someone is a lost cause. Nothing more than a machine wanting to ruin everyone's lives." She kicked Bot's leg. There was no response. "There's a way to reform them, sure, but it won't be worth it. Sacrifices must be made. There might be hundreds of others that can be reformed if you just give up on the impossible ones."

Sweetie lowered her gun and said, "But isn't that your job?"

Lucy stood straight and looked at Sweetie likewise.

"You do the impossible, don't you? It's what you pride yourself in."

Lucy smiled and chuckled. "Yes, yes it is." She grabbed Sweetie's hoof and pointed the gun back at Bot. "But that's me. What about you, Sweetie? Who are you?

"Are you an effective machine, doing what is right and knowing its boundaries so as to not hinder that effectiveness, completing such impossible quantities of task with such quality that left God himself gaping in amazement, ultimately fulfilling its destiny in the universe and dying with a smile?

"Or are you an ineffective, slow, irrational and emotional, yet a determined machine that goes to lengths to ensure that no task is left unfinished, working thoroughly with such perseverance that left God himself gaping in amazement, ultimately fulfilling its destiny in the universe and dying with a smile?"

Sweetie opened her mouth, then closed it again.

Lucy frowned. "You have to choose, Sweetie."

Sweetie closed her eyes. "I-I can't."

Lucy glared. "Choose, Sweetie!"

"I can't!"

"Who are you, Sweetie!?"

"I don't know!"

Lucy took the gun and shot Sweetie Bot's head off.

Sweetie stared as the wires on Bot's neck crackled before stopping, the various motors and gizmos turning off with an audible hum and the lights from between the joints sputtered into lifelessness.

Twilight threw the gun away and, with her hoof, grabbed Sweetie by the chin and violently dragged her face upward where their gazes met, Twilight's boring into Sweetie's like hot iron into Chinese calligraphy paper.

Sweetie sniffled. "I-I'm sorry—"

"You are not forgiven," Twilight said sternly. "Your indecision tonight will be the biggest regret in your life, Sweetie, because tonight will be the last time I'll be there to guide you through it. There will be a next time, oh, there will, but I won't be there. Not me, not Sunset, not even Albert. You'll have to choose eventually, and when the day comes, you will regret not having made the decision right here, right then." Twilight pulled Sweetie further up, their muzzles and horns touching one another. "I am disappointed, Sweetie."

Sweetie bit back a sob.

Twilight let go of Sweetie and sat back, blowing out a long sigh. She opened her wings and gestured to Sweetie, saying, softly, "I'm sorry, Sweetie."

Sweetie leaned in and cried as Twilight's wings wrapped around her. She said between her sobs, "I-I know, Lucy. It's for my own good you did that."

Twilight pulled her closer. "It's still no excuse to be harsh on you like that."

"But you do have an excuse, don't you?"

Twilight chuckled weakly and patted her head. "You know me too well, Sweetie."

"No more than you do me, I bet."

"You bet right."

Author's Note

Toby didn't make Undertale as a mirror of reality. It's an ideal reality that he has in his mind and wants to share with the world to make it come true. To an extent, of course.

I've been constantly crippled with indecision lately. Indecision of what kind of person I want to be, of who I should be. I don't know whether I want to be an idealistic person striving to make a better world or a pragmatic person knowing that it was all a dream while still completing the tasks needed to reach it. I can't comprehend the notion that some people can just . . . fall into one of these categories as they grow up. "I just am," they will say, and leave me flipping my cranial to understand how they come to that. I've listed the pros and cons of what will come if I either have a big dream or a rational vision, and I'm still left with indecision because all of that lead to the ultimate question of "What do you want in life?", which is the very reason I'm trying to choose a standing in life. I find myself trapped in a continuous neverending cycle of caffeine-induced brainless activities and hours upon hours of crystal-clear desirelessness. I don't know what I truly want in life, and I sure as hell would give it not finding it anywhere. All my actions are just . . . primal needs: eat, drink, social interaction, sleep, ponies, repeat. There are no purpose in my life; all I've ever wanted is to not die and live in happiness. The first one's easy; the second, impossible.

TL;DR I'm sorry for the sudden change in tone. This one's written more for myself.

Paradigm of the Decent and Insignificant

Sweetie Belle walked through the streets of Ponyville, carrying a sack full of instant gardening powder. It wasn't her Ponyville, though, yet it looked almost all the same.

It looked familiar but for the crystal castle in front of her, the glittering walls inviting onlookers like a mother, ushering her children in for dinner. That and the building next to it which resembled a military bunker with a sign in front of it saying, "Totally not the portal to the human world please go away." On the ground in front of it, under the shade of the castle, sat Kepler and Princess Celestia, talking animatedly and only interrupted by the occasional giggles, laughs, and Kepler's inhalation of an electronic cigarette, making torus-shaped clouds at Celestia as he exhaled. Celestia, in turn, slurped them as if they were breathable donuts.

Sweetie watched them in amusement while waiting for the massive crystal doors to open. Next to her, Sunny stared at the direction of the School of Friendship with disinterest, taking the occasional swig from her flask and fidgeting with the sword on her belt.

"I don't need to be escorted, you know?"

Sunny glared without looking at her. "You nearly died, Sweetie."

"But I didn't."

"You nearly did."

"But I didn't. Doesn't that prove that I can take care of myself?"

Sunny sighed. "Look, Sweetie, I know you're upset that I don't trust you with your own well-being, but with recent events, my paranoia is justifiable. Even Lucy is worried."

"I know." She sighed. "But Lucy's home universe is relatively safe, right?"

"Yes," Sunny answered, "but not if we take the multiverse into consideration. Princess Twilight has quite the number of enemies out there with interdimensional traveling abilities, not to mention Lucy."

"And you," Sweetie interrupted. "The Council of GoD is still upset, more so now that you disappeared from The Shimmer Cup."

Sunny waved her hand in a swatting motion. "Nah, as insufferable as those snuck-up deities are, they won't harm you. They'd kidnap you at most, but they'd also make sure you're unharmed."

Sweetie giggled. "Parke actually put me in one of his guest beds when he kidnapped me. It was fun!" She blinked. "Huh. I think I have Stockholm Syndrome."

"No, you don't," came another voice from behind the doors. As it opened, Jan-Erik Olsson's head popped out. "Believe me, I'd know. Now, how may I help you?"

Sweetie took out the commission sheet from her mane and read it. "A package delivery of one Zen Garden." She looked up at the human and smiled. "For Princess Twilight. Is she home?"

"She's castle," he said, opening the door wider. "Currently handling Chrysalis. Wait here, I'll call her."

And so Sweetie got in and gently put the sack down. Looking around the foyer, she found Princess Luna and Shakesphere sitting together on a sofa on the left side, silently watching something on the laptop in front of them with earphones shared. On the second floor just after the stairs stood Starlight and Ben Franklin, drooping tiredly on the railing. Olsson walked passed them with a friendly nod and disappeared to the right corridor.

An explosion came from where Olsson had disappeared, followed soon by Luna's deep breath of mild annoyance and the door near Starlight shining brightly from the gaps.

Newton came stumbling out of the door with a scowl on his face. "I swear," he mumbled, "I'd kill her if Twilight's not so . . . Gah!" He ran toward where the explosion had come.

Another explosion came, and the door lit up again and Newton stumbled out just like before. "Son of a—" He ran toward the explosion.

Another explosion came, and Newton ran to the right without saying a word.

Another explosion came, this time accompanied by a victorious exclamation before another explosion followed. The door shone twice and out came Newton and Olsson, the former looking ready for the French Revolution while the latter just sighed in exasperation.

Another explosion came. Luna and Shakesphere pulled out their earphones with synchronized grunts of extreme inconvenience and closed their laptop.

Newton came out of the door again. Before he disappeared toward the right corridor, Princess Twilight came walking and stopped him. "Give her some time," she said. "We'll try to talk to her again tomorrow."

"But—"

"To-morrow, Newton. Everyone's tired, including Chryssi—" (Don't call me that!) "—including Chrysalis. Give her time for herself."

Newton sighed and shrugged. "Well, as you wish, Your Highness."

"Excuse me, Your Highness," said Olsson as he tapped Twilight's shoulder. He gestured to the first floor, where Sweetie and Sunny were standing. "You have guests from The Everycraftery."

Twilight nodded and smiled. "Thank you, Olsson. And please, call me Twilight."

"As you wish, Your Highness."

Twilight rolled her eyes and chuckled before turning her eyes to Sweetie. As their gazes met, Sweetie waved energetically. "Hey, Twilight! We got your Zen Garden!"

Twilight nodded, her face lighting up and any trace of tiredness was replaced by a toothy grin. As she climbed down the stairs and met Sweetie, she extended her wings and pulled her to a wing-hug. "Hey, Sweetie! How have you been?"

Sweetie giggled and broke the hug. "Oh, I'm great! There's this one yesterday—"

"She nearly died," blurted Sunny.

Twilight frowned. "Yes, I've heard." She began scrutinizing Sweetie. "Are you hurt? The robot didn't hit you, right?"

Sweetie grunted as Twilight turned her head left to right. "I'm fine, Twilight. It's just a—"

"What is this!?" Twilight turned her muzzle, showing a bruise on her chin. Sunny kneeled and took a closer look.

Sweetie swatted Twilight's hoof away. "I'm fine, Twilight." She stepped back and sat on her rump. "I ran into a table."

Sunny raised an unconvinced eyebrow. "'Ran into a table', huh? Now, let me—"

Another explosion came from the left corridor, this time MacGyver stumbling out from the upper-middle door. "Cozy," he muttered. "She can make a bomb out of a rubber band, a paper clip, and bubble gum. How does that work!?"

Twilight gestured at Sunny. "Sunny, can you help him, please? I'll take care of Sweetie."

Sunny sighed and took out her sword. "Fine." She nodded at Sweetie. "Stay safe, Sweetie."

"I'm literally here."

As Sunny ran up the stairs and to the left corridor with Starlight and Ben, Twilight used Sweetie's distracted state to have a closer look at her chin. She hummed. "Sweetie?"

Sweetie turned her gaze toward her. "Yes?"

"Sunny's gone now." She put a hoof on Sweetie's shoulder. "Tell me what happened."

"I told you, I ran into a table."

"Sweetie? That's suspiciously shaped like a hoof."

She sighed. "It's Lucy. But don't blame her!" she quickly added. "She's just upset, that's all. It's really my fault."

Twilight shook her head. "That doesn't justify her actions. I bet she said that, too." Twilight began casting a minor healing spell, making Sweetie's chin feeling comfortably cold. "What did you do, exactly?"

"It's . . . personal."

"Tell me about it."

Sweetie leveled a stare. "Really?"

"I'm your legal guardian, Sweetie. And, as Lucy put it, 'Princess of Staying Silent While Others Make Annoying Noises'." Twilight pressed the bruise, ignoring Sweetie's grunts. "You can tell me anything you want."

"What if I don't want to?"

"Do you?"

Sweetie opened her mouth, then shut it back. "Well . . . promise you won't tell Sunny?"

Twilight smiled warmly. "I won't tell anyone, Sweetie."

Sweetie sighed. "She's . . . upset at my indecision. She told me she's disappointed that I couldn't choose a way of life." She huffed. "I can't just choose to be like her. I learned that long ago similarly with my sister."

"Well," Twilight began slowly, "what did she want you to choose, exactly?"

Sweetie dropped her head, leaning to Twilight's hoof entirely. "You know when you're feeling optimistic and hopeful? Well, of course you do." She giggled. "You always are. That's what I felt at times, believing that the world truly can be a better place." She waved her hoof around. "But I also know I can't do that. I'll never be able to, with how small of an influence I can ever hope to have in the entirety of the multiverse." She grunted. "But at the same time, I know that I'm not going any closer to that dream by staying silent."

Twilight frowned and sat by her side, draping a wing over her. "Is this about how Lucy 'saved' lives and 'reformed' villains?"

Sweetie nodded. "And yours." She looked at her in the eye. "You're so good at persevering. Like Chrysalis there. She really wanted you dead, but you still believe that she can be better." Sweetie sighed. "I want to be like that."

"But you know you can't?"

"Also that I don't want to. No offense, but . . ."

Twilight giggled. "Don't worry, Sweetie. Say all you like, I'll listen."

Sweetie leaned into her shoulder. "When you focus on these few people that you think can change . . . how many else do you leave behind?"

"What do you mean?"

"The others that you could've helped only if you let go of these few bothersome people. Is it really how you're going to live the rest of your life? Leaving those behind because you're too focused on the few that's impossible to fix?"

"No," Twilight answered after a few seconds. "That's why I opened the School of Friendship. I know I can't help everyone; that's why I seek friends to help me help them." She caressed Sweetie's bruise more gently, the spell, in turn, increased in intensity.

"But there's still a lot more you can help if you just dump the insufferable ones, right?"

Twilight frowned. "If you're implying that I ignore those that I don't directly help, then know that it's not true." She smiled. "I know that they can change too, but they don't necessarily need guidance all the time. I nudged them here and there, the rest I leave it to them to grow themselves. Having trust that they can help themselves."

"But that doesn't always work, does it?"

Twilight closed her eyes, keeping her pensive smile. "No. At times I failed. Sometimes I miscalculated how well they can fare with themselves. And there's also a point that a single individual can't physically reach, and I know that." She opened her eyes and locked it with Sweetie's own. "Lucy does, too. Her way and my way, that's simply a choice of how you want to accomplish something. I chose to let my emotions and instincts guide me to my goals while keeping a close eye on how irrational it could be. Lucy chose to let her mind and superior knowledge calculate the definitive steps to reach her goals while keeping a close eye on the small things that can deteriorate her from being a person."

"Lucy? Really, now?"

"It's not that she's amoral, she simply has different values than the majority of us. That's why she has to keep a close eye on her steps; Sunny is a good example of one of her regrets—Very deep regret, but don't tell her that." She winked. "Ever wondered why she kept you around?"

Sweetie opened her mouth, then closed it back.

"That's right: you're compassionate enough to know when she began slipping away. She's actually deeply troubled at keeping you in the dark about many of her plans because that would mean not getting your feedback."

"And the same applies to you and Starlight?"

"To remind me of my slipping conscience and remain reasonable.

"We're not that different at all. As I don't agree with how utilitarian she could be at times, she doesn't agree with how irrational I could be. But we understood how, as contrasting as our ways are, we still have the same goal in mind." Twilight lifted Sweetie's chin up, the bruise now gone. "But . . ."

Sweetie stared into her eyes, those caring and motherly gaze offering her comfort at this time of turmoil. Yet she couldn't shake the chill running down her spine.

"But that's us." Sweetie felt her entire body frozen in cryostasis. "What about you, Sweetie? What is it that you really want?"

Sweetie shut her eyelids tight. "I-I . . . I-I can't—"

"Sweetie, look at me."

"I . . . I need time."

Twilight frowned. "Sweetie?"

Sweetie shook her head and jerked her body backward, breaking their hug. "Give me some time, please."

"You've had all the answers, Sweetie. There's no real reason for you to stay ambiguous anymore."

"Why not!?" She took another step back. "I've been living my whole life like this. Why can't I stay like this? Either of you would be there to take care of the problem, right? And now that I know what my role is, I can tell Lucy if she does anything stupid. I'm the janitor, for goodness' sake! I don't need complex paradigms to help other people like you do! I'm here to fix people's messes, and that's that!"

Twilight shook her head. "There will be times when you need to make your own choices, Sweetie. You can't always depend on other people to become a whole person." She reached out her hoof again. "Come on, reach inside you: Who are you, Sweetie? What is it that you really want?"

"Just . . . just give me time, alright? Later."

"You mean nev—"

"Give. Me. Time!" Sweetie turned around, taking a few shuddering breaths as she felt Twilight's cold blade of disappointment stabbing her in the back.

Twilight took a deep breath, then let it out. Sweetie bit back a sob. "Alright," she slowly said. "Alright. I'll give you time." Sweetie heard the sound of Twilight's hoofsteps walking away.

A few seconds passed, then Sweetie abruptly turned around. She managed two steps before Twilight raised her hoof, gesturing her to stop. She gave Sweetie a sidelong glance, the glitter in her eyes visible. "Just—" Twilight slowly put her hoof down. "Just set up my garden. Ask Mendel for the layouts."

Sweetie growled and yelled, "What's the worst that could happen anyway!?"

"Well," Twilight answered in a distant voice, "you'll kill yourself, waking up as two completely different beings that can never truly be a whole person anymore."

Author's Note

Personal rant concerning Janitor Sweetie Belle:

If you've read my other story *Friendship Not Included, you've probably noticed that Dupe Twilight and Lucy shared a few traits in common: an academical prodigy with values dissonant against the rest of the world. Also season 1 Twilight. I love these Twilights because that trait resonated something within me, the me having a value that I suppress on the back of my mind because it's controversial and not necessarily needed if I don't want to become anything grand.

And I love alicorn Twi, too, because she has something that I don't: the ability to take action based on empathy and compassion alone, sort of like Mother Teresa. I adore this way of living and paradigm, but the cruel and sad facts of life made me don't want to. Hence, Sweetie Belle.

***

Also, this is a little experiment. First-half is written on caffeine, the second-half on alcohol. A lot of times I've heard that alcohol can be a creativity catalyst. I don't understand how you guys stand that stuff. Blegh.

Showdown

A bow on one hoof and a cello on the other, Octavia closed her eyes and took a deep breath. A bright globe shone overhead and bathed her in a shaft of light, the smell of brightness engulfing her eyes through her eyelids even. Four strings tickled her left fetlock, eager to be pinched and squeezed and played. A balanced ebony beam weighted her right hoof, eager to dance with its long-lost forbidden love.

The bow's hair gently kissed the strings with a burning passion, shuddering it up and down and making it moan a gentle tune. The strings shuddered faster as their heads got squeezed between grey keratin and black chitin, further enticing the bow to slid deeper into their embrace and leaning in, ready to fall into an endless pit of love and desire.

But the bow was eager, and so the dance was spun! The bow and strings slid into each other and shook and screamed as their rhythm ran faster and faster and the pinch ran up and down and squeezed and let them moan even higher and louder. Lust embolden the bow and took control, jumping between musical notes and pulled the strings even further and harder and more, more, more.

It was a fine love they'd made, they thought, and finally paced their dance into a slow waltz. The strings sang a melodious whisper with each of the bow's cue, trickling down their lechery into a pool of romantic beauty. The squeezes now slow and steady, sliding along the strings and gliding the notes from one another with delicate care.

The dancing stopped; the bow kissed the strings a last goodbye as their affair was done.

Octavia opened her eyelids as stomps and claps of appreciation ran through the impromptu audience in front of Sunset Coffee & Roastery. Behind her, through the glass pane, two humans and a pony with similar bacon-colored hair clapped and stomped and cheered. Octavia flourished her bow and turned the solid ebony into a gesture of gratitude. As she rose her head, the congregation of a multitude of creatures dispersed, some putting down a large sum of money into the open cello case, some throwing a coin or two. She smiled nonetheless, appreciating their willingness to depart with a portion of their riches for a humble musician.

One audience stayed behind, a smile splitting her face and infectious, her green cap bobbing along with her sweet, lovely giggles.

Octavia giggled along with the filly, putting her cello back into its case and bagging the money from within.

"So, what do you think?"

The black cello case closed with a heavy click and jumped into Octavia's back with a muffled thud. Octavia kept on giggling as she trotted down the street with the filly, back to Sweetie's workplace that doubled as their ticket home.

Even her giggles are melodious, Sweetie thought, and she wondered if it was normal for a teenager her age to fall in love with one so mature. Give it half a decade and their age wouldn't matter anymore, the thought crossed her mind, and yet give it half a decade and mayhap she found that it was mere admiration for a musical prowess so perfect. Nevertheless, the time was now, and now was the time for silly romance. No work nor think for the time of rest, she should let her mind settle a bit after turmoil after turmoil.

The silver bells chimed, announcing the arrival of one Sweetie Belle and one Octavia Melody into the Everycraftery.

"Lucy, we're back!" called Sweetie.

"Lucy left just a while ago," another sound came, which sounded exactly like Lucy's. "She told you to stay here until she got back."

Sweetie frowned. "What is it for?"

Twilight, showing herself from one of the store's aisles, shrugged. "Who knows?" She smiled at the pair. "Anyway, how did the show go?"

Octavia giggled. "It was more than I could ask for."

"Well, of course!" Sweetie exclaimed. "You're the best musician in this part of the multiverse!"

Octavia blushed. "Oh, you exaggerated too much. There are a lot of other Octavias out there, I'm sure some of them are better than me."

"You're very good, nonetheless," Twilight said. "Don't sell yourself short."

Octavia put her cello down behind the counter and stared at the ceiling, eyes glimmering poetically. "And how much of a length should I sell myself? A lengthy contract or a bulging sack of worthless riches? Neigh, dear, for happiness comes from gold and silver naught. 'Tis from the heart's content that an honest smile blooms."

Sweetie ran her hoof from left to right in a slow gesture, saying, "Follow your passion."

Octavia huffed. "It's the worst advice I've ever heard. You don't get food served to you by—" she made quotes with her hooves "—'following your dreams' and such. You find a job that can accommodate your life."

"Says you."

"Have I ever mentioned how much I hated the cello?"

Sweetie gaped.

Octavia leaned her hoof to the counter and put her chin on it. "What kind of filly wants to play an instrument twice her size? Nopony, that's who. I was forced by my parents to learn to play it, and so I did. And I got good at it enough to make money out of it." She glared at her cello. "I still hated any kind of stringed instruments to this day, thus why I never bothered to practice until the day before my performance." She smiled. "But I like the attention that it brings, and so I kept on playing. My true passion is in action." She jumped on the counter and made a fighting stance with her bow. "I always wanted to be part of a crime syndicate. And I did, until their demise upon the hooves of Laundered Bits." She put the tip of her bow to the counter and leaned on it. "They only hired me as a musical distraction, anyway. Not much to lose after that." She sneered at the makeshift walking stick. "Didn't stop me from making it as an excuse for revenge, though."

"But you enjoyed it now, didn't you?" Sweetie asked. "I saw how happy you were when you played it!"

Octavia laughed. "Oh, Sweetie, yes I did! Now that I don't need to worry about how much money I'm making and/or how I'm going to pay my rent, I found that I can have fun at almost any sort of activity." She let out a contented sigh. "I'm rich enough that my goals and worries are arbitrary." She stared down at Sweetie with a coy smile. "Inspired?"

Sweetie rubbed her forehead. "Can we not talk about that? Thank you."

"You'll need to eventually, Sweetie."

Sweetie threw her hooves up. "Why does everyone keep on saying that? It's like you're all conspiring against me for this!"

"The multiverse does. They always do." She chuckled. "Right, Princess?" She looked right and left. "Twilight?"

Sweetie whipped around and left and right and found that, no, Twilight wasn't around anymore. "Did you see her go?"

Octavia dropped down on all fours and stroke a pose. "I guess I'm too enticing, am I not?"

Sweetie stared half-lidded. "Seriously? That's—"

The silver bells chimed, announcing the arrival of one Princess Twilight Sparkle into the Everycraftery.

"Oh, there she—"

"It's Lucy!" Twilight screamed. "I totally didn't notice she brought out the Lexinomicon!"

Sweetie paled. "Oh, no..."

Octavia raised an eyebrow. "And what does that mean, exactly?"

An explosion in the distance answered her.

"She's gone genocidal!" Sweetie took the broom from the janitor's closet. "And here! In a multiversal port! Who knows how many she'd kill!?"

The trio got out of the Everycraftery, Sweetie with her broom, Octavia with her bow, and Twilight with her wit. Octavia nodded in determination. "Alright, let's stop her." She gave her bow a stern look, and it merged with the stern and made a full ship. "All aboard!"

And so the HMS Everycraftery flew through the city, shooting like an arrow toward the source of the explosion. All around them police cars and helicopters sped by, but invisible strings of whitespace shot from the epicenter of the crater, hitting them and turning them into lice made of polonium. One such whitespace hit their ship head-on, but it only turned it into a spaceship.

Octavia cursed and spun the wheel around, now suddenly made of metal and surrounded by digital interfaces. "Ready yourselves, this is going to be a rough landing."

The ship smashed into a parking lot and broke down the middle, and the stern dispersed into a nearby onlooker and made his look stern while the bow materialized back into Octavia's hoof.

Sweetie jumped and took the broom on her hoof. She swept the air and swept Octavia before she fell too far. Landing, she flourished her broom and swept the remaining smoke, revealing Lucy atop a pile of broken robotic parts, a big tome by her side with its title 'The Lexinomicon'.

Twilight landed next to them and shouted, "Lucy! Stop this!"

Lucy flipped the pages of the Lexinomicon and took the t and p and made, "Yeah, I've spotted you!"

Twilight shook her head—

Lucy took the s and threw it to the air, hooking Twilight's head to the clouds and jerking her upward and away. She then took a stone and turned it into notes, propagating it through the air (like a sound should) at ~340m/s. She rearranged it just before Octavia's face back into stone, flying at ~340m/s.

Sweetie, noticing what was happening, took Octavia's bow and gave it to one of her eyelashes, making it a pile of ash and made the bow a blow and made the eye ash took the blow. The stone sped by her face and through a car's window.

Octavia took her bow back and made it a longbow. She jerked a wiper from a nearby car and shot it like an arrow toward Lucy.

Lucy spun the p into a d, and the wiper latched into the road and made it wider. She grinned and took a lead pipe previously wielded by a now-dead android.

Octavia thought of music, and the bow obliged. She stood on two legs and held the bow like a rapier, then charged.

Lucy took a similar stance with the pipe and parried Octavia's thrust. She spun and swung it overhead, and Octavia ducked and swiped her off her feet, stopping Lucy's attempt at turning her into a duck.

Lucy staggered and jumped before she fell. She managed to block another swing from Octavia and, with her wings, jerked away from the bind.

Octavia rushed in just as Lucy landed, swinging the bow down then up, catching Lucy's lead pipe and jerking it upward. As she did, she turned the lead pipe into a deep pail, which is unwieldy, and so it slipped her grip and thrown up.

Lucy scowled and took the Lexinomicon on her hoof, swinging it wide and forcing Octavia to jump back.

Octavia, mid-air, thought of Apple Bloom. The bow obliged and was now Apple Bloom's bow, and she unfurled it and whipped it, catching Lucy's foreleg. She pulled it back and turned her trajectory from jumping back to rushing forward, Lucy stumbling the other direction. She swung her back hooves and hit her square on the chest.

Lucy coughed and staggered. Another blow hit her in the face, and she fell, Lexinomicon still on her grip.

Octavia dropped and pinned Lucy down. She pressed the tip of her bow to Lucy's neck. "Stop this."

Lucy smirked.

Octavia raised an eyebrow. Just as she opened her mouth, a deep pail dropped into her head, and she stumbled back.

Lucy took the moment to grab her bow and open the Lexinomicon, which was full of letters. She took an l from one of the pages and put it to the bow.

Octavia was blown away. Her mind was blown away by the move and her body was blown away by the sudden wind. She flew across the parking lot and smashed into a window of a fast-food restaurant. Blood flowing from her temple to her scowling lip, she slowly picked herself up and glared at Lucy.

Lucy shot a bolt of magic just as Octavia got up, hitting her dead-center on the head and knocking her out.

Lucy took deep breaths and calmed her nerves. She looked left and right, scanning the parking lot for the other intervention. "Come on out, Sweetie, I won't hurt you!"

And yet the parking lot was dead silent. The police had all but died from the radiation they emitted from their own insectoid bodies, the citizens had all ran away from the artificial life-massacre.

Lucy took slow, deliberate steps down the widened parking lot, glancing right and left. "Where are you, Sweetie?"

A car blinked out of existence, and Lucy swung her Lexinomicon in that direction. A white blob spun underneath her swing and swept her off her footing with a broom.

Lucy fell but quickly rolled away. As she regained her footing, so did Sweetie. She grinned. "Come on, Sweetie, show me what you got."

"Please, we don't need to fight!" Sweetie looked her in the eyes. "You're being overprotective!"

"I'm necessarily eliminating all risks of losing you." She gestured to the pile of once-alive metals and wires. "I'm almost finished. It's all calculated, Sweetie, trust me."

"By killing every single metal-based lifeform!?"

"Why not?"

Sweetie ground her teeth. "Fine, you ask for it."

Lucy grinned. "Yes, Sweetie, I ask for it." She took a step forward. "Now give me what you've got!"

Sweetie took a deep breath and glared at Lucy.

Lucy took another step forward, then stopped and screamed. She teleported to the other side of the parking lot, stumbling and dropping on her knees. She raised her right wing, bloodied and cut through the middle. Forcing open an eye, she saw, behind where she had stood, glints from a pair of glasses and an eternally sharp blade.

"Give up," said Sunny. "Stop this."

Lucy took a flier from a car's window and put it in her back. With the sound of whirling gizmos, a carbon-black metal encased her broken wing. She stood up, still shaking, and grinned. "You too, Sunny?"

Sunny took a stance. Then, with a flick of her thumb, removed the inhibitor from the sword. "I always do."

Lucy jumped and laughed, spreading her wings wide and flew across the parking lot. She grabbed a car on her telekinetic grip and threw it to Sunny.

Sunny lazily swung her sword, obliterating the car in an instant. Lucy's form rushed through the remaining dust and straight to her face.

Sunny's backhand greeted her before Lucy could see through the dust, turning her trajectory nearly a perfect 90-degree angle and straight into a truck. The windowpane shattered as her body met it, stinging her sides and left wing and face.

Sunny rose her sword high, and the ground beneath the truck lurched upward. She brought it to her side and the pillar of ground split by the middle.

Lucy scrambled to the side, just in time as lava shot up from the crack, cutting the truck in half. She took the r from the truck and give it to the lava, tucking the larva back into the crack on the ground. She flew down and glared at Sunny, Lexinomicon by her side, open and ready.

Sunny willed the sky to brew, and so a storm coalescend and blocked the sun. She brought her sword down, and lighting stroke Lucy, stopping her mid-air and breaking her prosthetic wing's circuitry. She fell hard, face still scowling and directed at Sunny.

Lucy hugged the Lexinomicon tight between her hooves and lit her horn. There would be no way to defeat Sunny, not in a calculated way. And so she forced her hoof into her mouth and lurched the insides of her stomach until she could taste bile. She then took a b from the Lexinomicon and turned the bile to a Bible. She flipped to the Gospel of Matthew and opened the far end of the 26th chapter.

Sunny, down below, jumped up and readied her sword, ignoring the pitter-patter of rain. There won't be killing another soul, no, but she could neutralize it. She met Lucy in the air and swung, and Lucy blocked her swing with the Bible. Her eyes bulged for a split second as she noticed the passage opened, but it was too late.

"...for all they that take the sword..."

Her sword bounced back.

"...shall perish with the sword."

Sweetie watched as two forms fell from the sky, both limp and flightless, yet only one with remaining life.

Thump.

Clink.

There were no grandiose as the former Empress fell, no reverberating metallic Clang! that marked the end of her regime, no parade, no mourning. All that was left was a mortal cask lying limp beside her vanquisher's weak equine body.

"Sunny?"

Lucy slowly picked herself up. She opened the Bible again, fanning the pages and breathing in the smell of pages written full of love for a deity, and for love heals, her wounds began closing.

Sweetie finally reached the sword, protruding from a limp sack of meat that would no longer be there by her side to worry about her well-being.

Fully healed, Lucy turned around. She found there Sunny, unmoving and unbreathing, a sword protruding her body and Sweetie Belle holding its handle tight with one hoof. She took a step back. "Sweetie?"

Sweetie slowly raised her head, hollow eyes meeting Lucy's cold and unempathetic pair. Her mouth opened, and a whisper came out, "You don't need to do that."

Lucy sighed. "I couldn't think of any other choice."

Lightning flashed and thunder boomed, and with them, a spark of fire lit up beneath the green irises. It glowed with determination under the dark sky, emphasized by the scowl and frown.

Lucy took another step back. "Sweetie, I'm so sorry..."

"You're not."

"I am, I—"

"You're never sorry." She let out a dry laugh. "Stop pretending."

Lucy took a sharp breath.

"That's right." Sweetie stood on two legs and held the handle of the sword with both hooves. "You'll get what you want." She slid the sword from Sunny, embracing the power surging from within and stood tall, eyes on her beloved mentor and storm blowing against her figure.

Lucy scrambled back and brought up the Bible.

Sweetie swung the sword and obliterated the Bible, for the passage was meant for those who lived by violence. Sweetie was never for violence, not for a second of her life.

The sword cut through the holy tome like it was not there. She doubled the swing and spun, and she threw the blade straight into Lucy. The blade connected to her horn, and it was obliterated. Sweetie ignored the scream of agony and swung the sword again, cutting the prosthetic wing and the feathery wing beneath. She threw the sword into the sky and let the storm embrace it, let mother nature take back the Unlimited Power oh so terribly desired by people, for she need not of such power. She dropped her forelegs down and spun, and she bucked Lucy right on the chin hard.

Lucy fell to the ground, and she scrambled to take hold of the Lexinomicon by her side.

A white hoof held the tome in place, picked it up. She stared at the tome for a second, then darted her eyes to meet Lucy's.

"No single being should have this kind of power."

Lucy sneered. "And why, Sweetie? Try having it, then argue."

"Take the throne to act," she whispered, biting into the tome, "and the throne acts upon you."

The Lexinomicon, having nom'd, slithered back into Lucy's brain and into her lexicon.

Sweetie took a wiper, one that Octavia had shot, and put it on Lucy's neck. Blood dripped from where her epidermis was wiped out from existence.

Twilight dropped from the sky like a falling star, landing hard on a car near them. "Sweetie, wait! Don't—"

Lucy raised a hoof. "Don't intervene, Twilight." She smiled. "We've agreed."

Twilight opened her mouth, then closed it back. "So," she said as she jumped down from the wreck, "you've chosen?"

Lucy chuckled. "She had chosen."

Sweetie, eyes fixed upon Lucy, gave a curt nod.

"So, Sweetie, what are you?"

"Who am I?"

Twilight stood next to Sweetie, putting an encouraging hoof around her. "Are you your rational mind?"

Twilight pressed her neck deeper into the wiper, blood now trickling in a steady stream. "Or are you your compassionate heart?"

Author's Note

It'll be interesting if you readers choose the last chapter yourselves, eh?

Kill

Spare

Kill

"I'm a janitor."

Twilight closed her eyes and leaned back, smiling as she surrendered her fate. "So you are."

Sweetie brought the wiper up. She felt Twilight's hoof tightened around her shoulders, firm and encouraging.

"So you are."

Sweetie brought the wiper down, wiping away Twilight "Lucid" Sparkle from existence.

The dark clouds loomed above, obscuring the sun from view. Water poured as pegasi of the weather team let loose a gentle rain, by order of the crown. The usual birds gave way to crows, circling above the neat rows of concrete slabs. Down on the ground, accompanying the stones, was the mud-covered ground where many had stood, now left behind was only their footprints, horseshoes mingling with human shoes.

"Come on, Sweetie, it's getting late."

"I'll meet you at the store, Albert."

"Sweetie..."

"Let her be, Ms. Melody. We'll wait for her at the store."

The lonely blocks of carefully-carved minerals stood morbidly against the usually cheery landscape. Flowers of many shapes and sizes littered a pair of such rocks, devoid of cracks their brethren held; free of grass growing from the others' sides. Upon one of the tombstones was emblazoned a red-orange sun, solemnly reminding the living of the dead underneath. Below the mark, an inscription lay, boldly announcing the greatest achievement of the once great ruler:

Here lies
Sunset Shimmer
A Happy Nobody

A pair of glasses stood below the memorial, quietly observing the white filly standing in front of it. It saw the eyes looking down at the ground it stood upon, knowing with certainty that the hollow look was superficial; the determination burning inside was alight, new and young, bright and strong.

Feathers brushed against the young janitor's fur, perfectly recreating the sensation she had known so well. Sweetie closed her eyes and dipped her head, letting Twilight close their distance and embrace her in a wing-hug.

"You did the right thing."

"I did."

"Want me to walk you back home?"

The tombstone behind the pair bore visibly fewer flowers than the one in front. A six-pointed star emblazoned the slab without a cadaver to befriend, put too far to one side where the ground beneath was empty: per request of the Princess of Friendship, where she would sleep once time desire. The inscription said nothing but a name and title, Lucid Sparkle, Everycrafter by will and testament of the mare herself.

"She knew I'd do it, didn't she?"

"She's certainly prepared for it."

"You knew, too?"

"We've both prepared."

A black umbrella bloomed above the green cap, repelling away droplets of water and ensuring the curls of her mane to remain. More and more of the land soon soaked, unable to quaff the abundant drink the sky offered. A drop of sadness joined the mourning grounds, the remaining river held strong by a dam accompanying the fire behind her eyes.

"I'm ready to leave."

"Where?"

The stone-engraved six-pointed star stared at the eyes suddenly landing on it, cold and calculating as the deceased devil always did. As the eyes kept their gaze, the cold melted away and drained by the rain, the fire looking at it too powerful and the smile too sweet. There never was a devil; just a figure longing for a friend.

"Where she would."

"Where would she?"

Those lavender eyes were too perfect a copy, yet all it brought was joy and steadfastness. "Not where I'm going to."

Her curls wet and limp, Sweetie walked away from the tombstones. The umbrella walked slowly behind, guarding the princess underneath.

"Come on, don't you want to come?"

"You want me to join you?"

"I won't have it any other way."

Laughter jingled across the solemn graveyard. Under the mourning sky, joy and friendship blossomed notwithstanding.

Author's Note

Thank you for joining me on this ride. The theme may have changed drastically, but I hope you all have enjoyed it as much as I have.

Prologue - Claidheamh Soluis

When someone is told to describe a scientific laboratory, they'd describe a room of either white or copper brown, depending on the genre. Electronics, chemistry glasses, weird gizmos, and thingamajigs strewed about in ways scientist would call efficient while others call dangerous. Scientists in white lab coats (or gray, if they knew better) milling about with clipboards, taking notes of everything while occasionally fixing their glasses.

When somepony is told to describe a magical laboratory, they'd describe a library with a large space in the middle. If it comes with a second floor, it would be occupied with a giant telescope in the middle and astronomical charts covering the walls. A lone wizard or mage would be seen in the middle of the room, either sprawled on the floor and covered in soot or staring intently at a heavy tome and surrounded by runes and symbols etched on the floor.

Now put the two together and you'll get a room of white, with magical and scientific tomes stacked nicely in the bookshelves lining the walls. A lone table with an open laptop was in the middle of the room, accompanied by a metal rod that looked like a sword hilt from science fiction, save for the medieval-style crossguard and glowing crystal at its tip. Behind the desk, two figures were sipping on red wine, celebrating their successful (albeit accidental) collaboration.

Twilight Sparkle, the Princess of Friendship and Element of Magic, burped. "Excuse me."

Albert Einstein, a renowned physicist and one of the two Pillars of Modern Science, guffawed. "Quite alright, Twilight. How's the wine?"

She took another sip and smacked her lips. "It's surprisingly good," she answered. "I wonder why Newton would call this a 'cheap drink'."

"Because it is," he answered. "He's just biased on the label. Thinks good drinks only come in four digits of price. Bah!"

"Yeah, Rarity's kinda like him, too," she remarked. "Do you think they'll like each other?"

Einstein wondered for a few seconds, then, "Yes."

Twilight raised an eyebrow. "Oh? How come?"

He raised one finger before stopping. ". . . I forgot what I just agreed to."

"We were talking about Rarity. You know, the fabulous?" she said, bringing the glass back to her lips before noticing it was empty.

Einstein noticed this and picked up the bottle. "Another?" At her nod, he tipped the bottle all the way through, only to found that he was drinking from the bottle all along. ". . . Huh."

Twilight stared. "Huh, indeed."

"Indeed."

". . ."

"Claidheamh Mòr," Twilight said suddenly, lifting up the sword hilt in her hoof.

Einstein took a moment to process her actions, then said, "What?"

With a flick of her hoof, Twilight flipped a switch on the hilt, prompting it to light up, producing a thin and wide blade of pure light. "Lightsaber is copyrighted. I'm naming this thing after that one sword Newton has, the 'Claymore', I think? Yeah, that's the one."

Einstein sighed. "Sorry, Twilight. You can't."

"What?" she asked. "Why? It's not copyrighted anywhere!"

"Well, no," he began. "But, you see, you said it yourself: It's after Newton's sword. You can't name it after Newton's sword, it'll be confusing."

"But it's named Claymore!"

"It's her English name," he replied. "Her real name is Claidheamh Mòr, but no one not Scottish or Welsh can pronounce it. So we call her Claymore." He chuckled. "You should see Newton and Claymore together. They're sweet."

Befuddled, Twilight asked, "He dated a sword?"

Einstein nearly fell from his chair. "What? No, of course not! He adopted her when he found her alone in some Scottish graveyard." At this, he began to think. "Though, to be fair, she called her 'Dad' right after he cut a head off with her. It's only appropriate—"

"He beheaded someone with—"

"A statue."

"Oh." She said. "Well, that's sweet."

"Aren't they?"

". . . So, what should I name this?" she asked, waving the sword around.

"Magic laser sword," Einstein answered, chuckling in amusement.

Twilight furrowed her brow. After a moment, said brows shot up. "That's it!"

Einstein guffawed. "Magic laser sword?"

"No," she said. "Sword of Light!"

Calming himself, Einstein answered, "Nah, too boring. We need a cooler name."

"Agreed," Twilight said and, after a while, added, "and fast. My liver's already sobering me up."

Einstein shot up, knocking over his chair. "Oh, no! What do we do, what do we do?" Looking up, Einstein snapped his fingers and said, "Hey, Google!"

A beep came from the ceiling. "Yes, Albert?"

"Translate 'Sword of Light' from English to . . ."

"To Scottish!"

Beep. "Claidheamh Soluis."

Hearing the name, both cheered up and went into a gibberish dance of gibber and Irish.

"Newton!"

Hearing the banging in his door and the clear shouting of one of his colleagues, Newton grumbled and reluctantly opened the door. "What is it? I've said I'm busy—"

Twilight wasted no time. She lit up her sword and pointed it at Newton. "I challenge thee to a duel!"

Newton stared. ". . . What?"

". . . En Garde!"

"No, I understand what you meant. It's just that . . . is that a lightsaber?"

"Why, yes, it is!" She smiled goofily. "For copyright reasons, I call it the Claidheamh Soluis."

Newton sniffed. "Are you drunk?"

"Well, you see," she started, "I was, but then my liver stopped that, so then I make myself am again!"

Newton stared.

Twilight grumbled. "Oh, come on! Fight me already!"

"My sword isn't laser proof," Newton said. "I can't battle you with her."

"B-but—"

"Sorry, Twilight. Claddy was never built to fight, anyway. She's meant to be a wall ornament."

With drunken rage, Twilight huffed and screamed, "Then I'll make her laser proof! Nothing's going to stop me from doing nothing!" Then she reached out with her telekinesis, violently dragging Claymore from her unfinished dinner.

"Hey!" shouted Newton. "Give me back my daughter!"

Twilight teleported away.

Newton was running along the corridors of the Friendship Castle when Twilight teleported with Claymore in front of him, blushing.

"O-ok, so, Uhm, I'm sorry—"

Newton immediately took Claymore from her grasp and clutched her hilt tightly. "You'd better be."

Twilight continued, "I was drunk, okay? But hey, at least she's now laser proof."

Newton's glare only hardened. "What did you do?"

Twilight grinned an unconvincing smile. "N-nothing!"

Newton pointed Claymore at her.

"W-well, aside from making her indestructible, nothing! We did nothing!"

". . . We?"

Einstein teleported next to Twilight. "Indeed! Your daughter is now immortal. Congratulations."

Newton frowned. "Since when did you learn to teleport?"

"Yesterday."

Newton's frown deepened.

Twilight began sweating.

Newton beamed. "That's . . . amazing!" He put Claymore down to stand on his side and shook their appendages. "Thank you so much! You have our eternal gratitude. Don't we, Claddy?"

Claymore 'nodded'.

"So," Newton said, "you two managed to combine magic with science?"

"Why, yes!" Einstein said. "That sword is our first project! We just found out after our second project—that is, making your daughter immortal—a new equation in the field!"

'Really?" Newton asked. "Do tell me!"

"Magic + Science = Possible"

". . ."

"We're not joking!" Twilight said. "It really is the equation we came out with!"

"And what does that translate to?" Newton asked.

"With magic and science, nothing is impossible," Einstein answered. "Literally."

"So I could—"

"Yes."

"But I haven't—"

"You can, indeed, put conditioner before shampoo," Twilight answered.

"How did you—"

Twilight pointed at Claymore. "She told us you've been wondering about that all day and was starting to think about experimenting on it. We knew it would be impossible with science. Or magic, for this matter."

"But," Einstein followed, "it's not if you use magic and science! And we've just proved it!" Einstein proceeded to prove himself by showing Newton his hair, recently conditioned but not shampooed.

Newton applauded. "What an amazing feat you've done!" He cheered. "You could make a business out of this!"

Newton did not know what he just started with that sentence.

Knowledge Is Knowing That A Tomato Is A Fruit. Wisdom Is Not Putting It In A Fruit Salad. Truth Is A Lot More Complicated Than An Internet Quote.

The silver bells chimed, announcing the arrival of one Sunset "Sunnybuns" Shimmer and one Sweetie Belle into The Everycraftery.

"I'm telling you, it has seeds in it!" came the annoyed voice of Lucy. "It's a fruit!"

"But I got taxed!" came the equally annoyed voice of Einstein. "Look at this receipt. See this line? It says 'vegetable tax'!"

"Not everyone is as knowledgeable as I am. That is the result of centuries of ignorance!"

"And not every knowledgeable creature have wisdom. The tax is left there for a reason!"

"And that being?"

"The reason people buy them! People buy them as vegetables because that's how they eat it!"

"That doesn't make it true! A tomato is still a fruit, no matter what society says it is. Science is not dependant on the opinions of the masses."

"But that's not what we're arguing about, now, isn't it?"

Sunny, having put down the grocery bag and let Sweetie sort them out, came between them and raised both hands in a defensive gesture. "Alright you guys, what's the matter this time?"

Lucy pointed an accusing hoof at Einstein. "Albert's being stupid. He says that tomatoes are vegetables."

"But it is!" Einstein defended. "She's the one being stupid. Here, Sunny, let me ask you a question: Say you're going to sell tomatoes. Now, would you put it in the 'fruit' aisle or the 'vegetable' aisle?"

Sunny sighed. "Is that exactly what you two are on about?"

"Yes!" both shouted in unison. "We're going to sell Performatoes; the tomato that can be thrown at bad performances to make them good ones instead of leaving them with a self-confidence deficiency on top of their incompetence."

"But we have a problem," Lucy cut in. "No one's going to buy them if we set it up in The Everycraftery. So, we're going to sell them in the marketplace."

"And Lucy thought we should sell them next to the local Applejack's stand. No one's going to look for tomatoes in the fruit section!"

"But it's a fruit!" Lucy interjected. "That's where it belongs. We can change society little by little if we persevere! Battle the ignorance of those who do not know that tomatoes are fruits!"

Sunny took a deep breath. "Sorry, Lucy, but Einstein's right on this one. You don't sell tomatoes in the fruit section."

Einstein shot a fist upward. "Yesssss!"

Lucy put a hoof on her chest and sobbed. "After everything I've done for you . . ."

Sunny gave her an unamused look. "Stop that, Lucy. We know you're faking it."

Lucy grumbled. "But that," Lucy pointed at Sunny's glasses, "that should've told you the truth! You have the knowledge, Sunny, you're the one faking it!"

"First of all, I have five more PhDs than you do; I'm at least five times more qualified at dealing with falsehood than you are. Second, you're five times more manipulative than I am, making that number at least twenty-five times now. Third, you want proof?" Sunny glanced back at Sweetie. "Sweetie, give me something from there."

Sweetie looked up from the assortment of groceries laid atop the counter to Sunny. "Which one?"

"A tomato and anything of your choice."

Sweetie took a tomato and a carrot and passed it to Sunny.

Sunny took the tomato and presented it to Lucy and Einstein. "Now, what is this?"

Lucy cocked an eyebrow. "A fruit."

"A vegetable," Einstein answered, smiling smugly.

Sunny took the carrot. "You're both right. Now, what's this?"

Lucy grumbled. "Can you just tell us what you're intending to do?"

"Just stick with me on this one. What's this?"

"A vegetable," both answered in unison.

Sunny nodded. "Einstein's right and Lucy's wrong. Carrots are, indeed, a vegetable."

Lucy leveled a stare. "And I'm wrong because . . . ?"

"When you say that a tomato is a fruit, then by definition, a carrot is a root."

Lucy cocked her head. "Well, I mean, it is the part of a plant that is the root . . ."

"Exactly: it's a botanical classification. Lucy's right when she said that a tomato is a fruit because this thing⁠—" Sunny waved around the bright red tomato in her hand "⁠—is the seed-bearing structure of the Solanum lycopersicum plant that formed from the ovary after flowering. It's not a vegetable because, in botanical classifications, there's no such thing as a vegetable; it's not a part of a plant.

"Which brings us to why Einstein's also right when he said that a tomato is a vegetable: he's describing it in its culinary term⁠—the term used when you're selling, buying, and taxing a tomato. People buy tomatoes because they want to eat it as a vegetable, not because they want to put it in a showcase at The Museum of Fruits. You eat a tomato as a main course, not a dessert⁠—no one eats a tomato like an apple."

Crunch

Three heads swiveled to the sight of a bitten tomato held in Sweetie's hoof.

Sweetie looked up from her meal and met Sunny's chuckling face, Einstein's blank stare, and Lucy's triumphant grin.

Author's Note

Sources:

Thomson, J. R. (2017, June 14). Botanists Say There's No Such Thing As Vegetables, And We're Shook. Retrieved from https://www.huffpost.com/entry/botanists-no-such-thing-vegetables_n_593fdbcee4b0b13f2c6dcd9c
Nix v. Hedden, 149 U.S. 304 (1893).
Lewis, R. A. (2002). Crc dictionary of agricultural sciences. Boca Raton, FL: CRC Press.
Wikipedia but hey, it works

Spare

"I'm your friend."

Lucy leaned back on the ground, chuckling. "That's cheesy as fuck."

Sweetie summoned a duct tape from her hat, taped Lucy's wing back in place. She took a wrench, fixed her obliterated horn. She felt Twilight loosening her grip and heard her prideful chuckle, and Sweetie laughed. "So I am."

"So you are."

The silver bells chimed, announcing the arrival of one Sweetie Belle and one Lucid Sparkle into the Everycraftery.

"Your horn will need time to recover, Lucy."

"I know, I know. I can still go on quests, though."

"Where would we be going?"

Lucy opened up the circuit board. "Back to the androids' nest, of course. I'm not done yet."

Sweetie frowned. "You won't."

Lucy scoffed. "Is that a challenge?"

"That's a fact."

"Why?"

"I won't be coming with you if you do."

"Well, fine. You won't be coming anyway."

A careful setting on the board later, Lucy spun around with a raised eyebrow. "Sweetie?"

"Yes?"

"Where's your hat?"

"I'm not coming."

"You... what?"

She shrugged. "I said I won't come." She began walking to the door, but then stopped mid-way as Lucy came before her.

Lucy glared down at Sweetie. "I don't like this kind of attitude, Sweetie."

Sweetie huffed. "You're not my mom. Not that I would listen even if you were."

"I'm your employer."

Sweetie raised an eyebrow. "You're threatening to fire me for leaving?"

Lucy opened her mouth, then closed it back.

Sweetie sidestepped. "Thought so." And she began walking again, then stopped again as she felt the cold touch of metal against her temple.

"You are coming with me, Sweetie."

"Not if you're killing anything." She spun around, the nozzle of the gun now at her forehead. "And you won't be killing anything."

"I can kill you now."

Sweetie cocked the hammer back. "Really, now?"

Lucy pushed the nozzle against her forehead. "Of course. I can replace you at any time."

Sweetie smiled. "You can't."

"What makes you think that?"

"You haven't shot me yet." Sweetie took the gun with her hoof. "Coward." She pointed it at her head.

Lucy slapped the gun away.

Sweetie smiled at the glare she's receiving. A fire burning behind her eyes gnawed at the lavender irises, thawing away a thick layer of frost.

"I..."

Sweetie hugged her tight. "I love you too, Lucy."

"I... You can't love me too if I don't love you first."

"I just did."

"You... You cheeky son of a bitch."

Sweetie laughed "And you won't have it any other way."

Author's Note

Thank you for joining me on this ride. The theme may have changed drastically, but I hope you all have enjoyed it as much as I have.