Reformation's Downside

Chapters

1. Meeting
2. Scheming
3. Bonding
4. Improvising
5. Panicking
6. Disintegrating
7. Demoralizing
8. Stopping
9. Continuing

1. Meeting

We've been feeding on the restaurant's patrons for almost a solid five minutes before I notice her.

Most of the people in the room are yelling at each other over the most ridiculous trivialities, of course, as usual. A few, stronger-willed or maybe just too lost in their own heads to lash out at others, are restricting themselves to angry facial expressions and the occasional bit of grumbling under their breaths.

And amid it all, sitting alone at a two-person table near the entrance, a girl with orange skin and red-and-yellow hair is eating while scribbling in a notebook, a small smile on her face, as though the sum of the magic my fellow Sirens and I can call up on this miserable world isn't doing a thing to her. It would be frustrating, if it weren't so interesting.

"Mind if I join you?" I ask, sitting down in the chair facing her before she can reply.

The girl chews slowly on her mouthful of human food for a few seconds before answering, while Sonata and Aria move to stand behind my shoulders. Finally, she swallows. "So you're the ones behind the fighting, then."

"We are. And you're the one who's completely resisted the effect." I stare into her eyes.

"Effect? Wait, you have magic here? I mean, magic is real?" Her brief slip of the tongue tells me everything I need to know, no matter how well she recovers afterwards.

"Obviously," Aria grumbles from my right.

"How does it work?"

"Welll, we sing, and—" I cut Sonata's answer off by putting my hand over her mouth.

"Tell you what," I tell the girl. "You tell me how you managed to avoid falling under our spell, and I'll tell you the basics of how it works." I already have a pretty good idea of the big picture—she's another of Equestria's droppings into this world, no doubt, protected from our spell by the traces of magic that remain inside her—but hearing her own response will be illuminating.

"I was wondering the same thing. When everypo- everybody started fighting, I expected to be joining in with them soon, and to need to track you down after the fact. Instead, you left me alone. Or, I suppose, I was immune? Given your question." She sounds more like she's thinking out loud than like she's talking to me at this point, scribbling furiously in her notebook as she goes. "If your magic needs to penetrate the brain-spell barrier, then that would do it, but that sort of spell design is hundreds of years out of date... but, on the other hoof, magic is much rarer here, and it's not as though the spells back home tended to be remotely competently designed even with an active research community..."

I cough, and she looks up and seems to remember exactly where she is. "That answer is more than adequate," I tell her. "Equestria just can't seem to keep its problems to itself, can it? First the three of us, now you and whatever it is you've done to get banished here."

She snorts. "Banished? As if. I came here over the objections of Princess Celestia."

Princess Celestia, is it? It had been over a thousand years ago, but I had once upon a time had reason to study Equestrian politics, and the name sounds vaguely familiar. Some pony from all the way back before our banishment? One who ended up being particularly influential, I suppose, if pony princesses are still being named after her after so many years.

The presumably-a-former-pony stares up at me. "Now then. You were going to tell me about your magic." A tinge of anger remains in her voice. The circumstances in which she came here are a sore spot for her, then. Good to know.

"Of course. The three of us, when we sing, have the power to incite animosity and conflict among those who hear us." I neglect to mention that we've been vastly weakened since our banishment; if the ex-pony underestimates us for it and thinks that our showing in this restaurant is the best we're capable of, all the better.

The ex-pony raises an eyebrow, before directing an annoyed glance at the crowd as one of its members starts screeching particularly loudly at another. "Do you want to take this conversation somewhere else?"

"Not particularly," Aria says.

"What she means to say," I tell the pony, "is that, after we put all the effort we did into starting this fight, we'd very much like to see it through to its conclusion. We would, of course, be happy to meet up to continue this discussion later. Wouldn't we, girls?"

Aria gives a half-nod half-shrug, while Sonata seems to be too distracted trying to read the pony's notes upside down to give me any response. Close enough.

"That works. Here's the address of my apartment." The ex-pony scribbles briefly on a new page of her notebook, then tears it out and hands it to me. "Tell the front desk that you're visiting Sunset Shimmer, and they'll buzz you in." With that, she stands up and leaves.

We exchange more information, over the following meeting. Sunset Shimmer, it transpires, was the student of Princess Celestia, who isn't merely a descendant of Star Swirl's apprentice, but is in fact the very same pony, unaging a thousand years later. She came here in order to learn more about the local magic, in defiance of Celestia, who she insists was trying to keep her from becoming too powerful. (To me, it sounds far more like she was trying to teach Sunset the same sort of high-powered friendship magic that Star Swirl and his cronies used to banish us; but all the better for us if Sunset has such a convenient target for her anger.) She, in turn, learns about our own history, first as the magnificent and all-beloved rulers of our domain, and then as nobodies in this backwater of a world, very slowly regaining our relevance as time goes by and large audiences become easier to cultivate and enrage. She explains her plans: to bide her time in this world, build up her resources, and when Celestia has let her guard down to return and make herself the ruler of Equestria that she thinks she deserves to be. In return, we explain ours: to regain our former power, and turn this world's denizens into our adoring thralls.

(Sonata, after getting bored with the history discussion, spends most of the meeting raiding Sunset's freezer for ice cream and cookies. Aria stays, but doesn't contribute anything besides the occasional pointless complaint. Sometimes I struggle to remember why I keep those two around, especially when a conversation partner who can actually keep up with me is right there.)

By the evening, a single conclusion has become clear: we can help each other. Sunset has never cared about this world except as a sandbox for her magical experiments and a refuge from her princess, and I, for my part, find ruling a backwater to be a perfectly satisfying prospect and don't see any reason to court further enmity with Equestria and its actually-powerful magic-users when said backwater is here for the taking. (Aria doesn't contradict me, when I lay our side of things out for Sunset. Even she can eventually listen to reason, given a few centuries for a point to sink in.)

It's strange, exchanging information so freely after so long with no confidantes besides the other two Sirens. Freeing, in a way. I hope this alliance, such as it is, doesn't crash and burn too quickly.

2. Scheming

"Interesting word from Equestria," Sunset's text says. I go over to her apartment somewhat earlier that afternoon than I usually do.

Sunset greets me with a hug, far more warmly than I've ever seen her greet anyone else. It's transparent manipulation, of course, given my not-exactly-hidden interest in gaining the adoration of those around me; but that doesn't make it any less effective, after so long with only Aria and Sonata as company.

(Aria and Sonata themselves aren't here, having decided after the first month or so that they'd rather complain about my after-the-fact summaries of my meetings with Sunset than actually attend the meetings themselves.)

Once we're settled down on her couch, Sunset starts telling me about what she's found.

"Equestria has gotten a new band of heroes since the last time the mirror was open, apparently. They managed to dig up some high-powered magical focuses called the Elements of Harmony and used them to fight off... the Mare in the Moon? Or Princess Celestia's vanished sister? The rumors I could get my hooves on weren't clear there, beyond that now there's a third alicorn living in a previously-unused wing of the castle and calling herself another Princess." Sunset shuffles slightly in her seat. I can just imagine how she reacted to that when she first learned about it, considering her general bundle of issues. "Anyway. The Elements of Harmony are the important part. They're some of the most powerful artifacts in Equestria's recorded history. If I can get my hands on even one of them and take it into this world, I'll be able to draw on its power and become strong enough to fight Princess Celestia directly. And even just the leaked power from its use should be enough to power the three of you up enough to take hold of most of the world, considering how little magical resistance the humans here have."

"And yet you're here telling me about the Elements, rather than having already grabbed one." I raise an eyebrow.

"Nopony did me the favor of mentioning the names of the new heroes in scrying distance of the mirror, beyond that they live in Ponyville." She snorted. "It would be too risky to break Princess Celestia's alarms around the mirror room and go there without a plan in the hopes of finding them just by wandering; I'd be on a tight schedule to get back before the mirror closes, and I'd only get the one shot before Princess Celestia realized her alarms weren't good enough and put up something with fewer holes. I haven't gotten to where I am by being impatient." She clenches a fist slightly. "Sooner or later, some time in the next few years, there will be an opportunity."

I shift over on the couch to lean against her shoulder. "How far is Ponyville from the mirror?"

"A bit under a day's train ride." She awkwardly shifts her head to rest on mine.

"Ah." Not much to plan, then; as she said, fitting two rides of that length into the two days before the mirror closes again without a plan is just too risky.

After a moment, she adds, "It's just like Princess Celestia, to have her new heroes live in an insignificant town in the middle of nowhere. Using them to keep a lid on the Everfree Forest, I suppose." There isn't the same strain of resentment that usually permeates her mentions of Celestia. Just the vaguely-conflicted tone of admiration that underlies them. Even now, I don't fully understand how she feels about her Princess.

"So what are you going to do when you win?"

"Huh?" Sunset turns her head to look at me quizzically. "What do you mean?"

"After you've deposed Celestia and the other Princesses and taken over Equestria. What are you going to do then?"

Sunset shrugs. "Go back to learning magic, I suppose. Fix everything Princess Celestia has broken, and avoid repeating her mistakes. Run her magic school the way it should be run, with students encouraged to become as powerful as possible rather than scolded when they try." She flops back against me, this time a bit more comfortably. "How about you? What are you and the other two Sirens going to do with this world, once you've taken control of everyone?"

"Me?" Suddenly I find myself a bit at a loss. I should remember that in the future, to be cautious about asking questions whose answers as applied to myself I haven't thought through. "W-well, I suppose... I'll just bask in it?" That doesn't sound right. "I mean, Aria and Sonata will probably need my help doing whatever they want to do, given their general incompetence. That'll probably take up a decent chunk of my time. And being waited on by adoring minions is its own reward, when it comes down to it. And I can always provoke people into fighting each other for me, when I get bored. But beyond that..." I wave my hand through the air. "My plans are open. I don't really do the whole 'having ideals' thing you do which sounds like it's going to be taking up a lot of your time."

"Mm." Sunset nods her head against mine, but doesn't answer beyond that. We fall into silence.

It's strange, suddenly spending my time with someone who can keep up with me and even sometimes challenge me. Not needing to do all the thinking in the room myself. I'm still not used to it, even after the past few months with Sunset, but I'm slowly getting there. It feels like I've had to think and grow more in the last few months than I did in the preceding century, now that there's someone around to actually push me into it, who might even surpass me if I get complacent. I enjoy the challenge of it.

I'm going to miss it, once Sunset has vanished through the mirror to rule Equestria.

After a few minutes, I reorient myself to lie on Sunset's lap, enjoying as she starts softly running her fingers through my hair, and still wondering how I'll be able to go back to not having anyone like that once she's gone.

3. Bonding

It's a clear night, with all the stars visible. I'm just in the process of settling down and relaxing for the next few hours' wait when Sunset hurriedly pulls her head out from the portal and turns to look at me. "It's here!"

"What?" This is my first time seeing her this frantic.

"The Element of Magic! It's in literally the same building as the mirror! And the mirror has been moved to somewhere with even fewer alarms around it than usual, to boot. It's like they're just asking me to take it."

"And you're sure that that's not exactly what they're doing? If your Princess Celestia is anything like Star Swirl was, she knows how to bait some very tempting traps."

That brings Sunset up short. I don't need her flubbing the plan out of excitement now, not when she's this close to getting us both everything we've always wanted.

(And Sonata and Aria, of course. They're still important, even if they've been annoyed with me lately for spending so much of my time with Sunset.)

"Right. Right. That would be just like her, wouldn't it. I can't just go straight there, I need to scry more to make sure there's nothing I'm missing. Go get the fake Element of Magic, while I'm scrying." She turns back to the statue.

"Don't order me around." I clench my fists and don't move from where I'm standing.

Sunset turns back to face me, looking confused for a moment as she processes my response before realization dawns on her face. "Oh. Right. Heh. I guess I'm a bit too focused on this, huh?" She looks down and steps toward me, and as far as I can tell she's genuinely apologetic about her slip-up, but the problem with being in a relationship with someone who I know fully well is a manipulator not too far off my own level is that 'as far as I can tell' isn't necessarily a reliable indicator of genuineness.

Sunset must see something of my thought process on my face, because she goes on. "You know that I'm not just using you, right? Really. You think like me, more than anyp- anybody else I've met, and that's not something I'd ignore just for the sake of another disposable minion."

I nod slowly. "That's... almost convincing. Except I'm pretty sure you could bring out that exact speech even if you really were just using me."

"That's fair." She shuffles awkwardly in place. "How about this? You know that I'm not just using you because I wouldn't need to, for our plans to work. With Flash, I was dating him because he wouldn't have been nearly as useful to me if I hadn't, but you would be helping me anyway, even if we'd stayed purely as allies in world conquest. I spend my time with you beyond that because I want to."

I let out a breath at that. "That's true, isn't it." I step forward to hug her. "I'm more on edge than I'd realized, if I'm missing obvious things like that."

"You?" Sunset sounds vaguely incredulous. "You're never on edge. You're the one who always spends my freakouts calmly asking questions to calm me down. What's wrong?"

"Oh, I'm not on edge about the plan, if that's what you mean." She backs off from the hug enough to watch my face. Wrong instinct, if she wants to catch me lying, but then she is used to spending her time with incompetent high schoolers. "Even if you were to get captured grabbing the Element, it wouldn't be hard for me to go through the portal after you and sing to give you a chance to escape, then leave before anypony could arrange a counterattack." I'm deflecting. I can see on her face that she knows it. I'm not even trying to. Social instincts tuned for interactions with Aria and Sonata and the occasional uninteresting victim don't leave much room for the sorts of admission of emotional vulnerability that keeping up a solid relationship with Sunset entails, here. "The real thing getting to me," I force myself to say, "is what happens after the plan is done. You off ruling Equestria, the three of us dividing up this world, the portal closed. No contact between us except for a few days each year. You... probably don't think like me more than anyone else I've met, because I've lived for a very long time, but you're the most like me of the people I've actually talked to. And it makes spending time with you relaxing in a way that spending time with the others isn't. And that doesn't make me not want to go through with the plan, because it still is fulfilling both of our dreams, but... well. You get it."

"Wait, that's what's been bugging you?" Sunset sounds a lot less sympathetic than I'd expected, which, given her in-fact-convincing case for caring about me, most likely means I'm missing something she thinks is obvious. "I've had a plan for dealing with that since even before we started dating, back when I'd just expected to need to stay in contact with you for diplomatic purposes and stop you from invading my world if you tried to reach too far."

"Oh? What's the plan?"

"Back when I was still Princess Celestia's obedient little student, she gave me a book, magically paired to one of her own. When I wrote in it, the text would appear in her copy too, and the other way around. I haven't touched the thing in years, but I'm planning to leave it with you once I go through. Then I can write to you using Princess Celestia's copy, after I've deposed her. It won't be like being together in person, sure, but it's not 'no contact' either."

"And the paired books work even between here and Equestria?"

"Judging by the messages Princess Celestia sent me in the years immediately after I came here, pleading for me to come back? Yes." A vicious smile works its way onto her face. "All these years, and she's finally going to get her wish tonight. I wonder what she'll think of me now."

I roll my eyes and let her enjoy her little vindictive moment before I respond. "I wish you'd mentioned that plan to me sooner, so I wouldn't have had to waste time worrying about an already-solved problem."

Sunset nods. "I'd have mentioned it if I'd realized you were worrying about it."

"I'll... try to actually let you know, then, next time I'm worrying about something like that."

Sunset comes back in for another hug, and we stand like that for a few moments before separating again. "Anyway," she says. "Could you get the fake Element of Magic for me, while I scry?"

I nod and head into the school.

4. Improvising

I'm keeping watch outside the portal, waiting for Sunset to either come back or stay gone for long enough that it's time to go in myself and rescue her, when a bus pulls up in front of the school. I don't know what a bus is doing here in the middle of the night, but by the sound of it, it's filled with teenagers, so I can only assume there's some sort of school event happening that Sunset wasn't aware of.

If the other two Sirens were here, it would be an easy situation to resolve. Sing until the teenagers are too busy fighting each other to worry about the fact that three girls they don't recognize are loitering around the grotesque horse statue, and enjoy a nice meal while we wait for Sunset. But they're not here. It's just me. For all that I've been alone with Sunset pretty often lately, I'm not used to the other two not being around when it comes time to execute a plan. By myself, on this magic-choked garbage dump of a world, I doubt I can get even half the group distracted fighting each other, never mind the actually-strong-willed ones.

If I can't use brute force, the next-best approach is persuasion. I step out from behind the statue and make a beeline for the blue-skinned adult who seems to be leading whatever this is. "Excuse me," I say, putting on my best Trustworthy Smile.

It takes a moment for her to give me any attention, amid her efforts at ensuring that the teenagers are all off the bus and grouped together, but eventually she does. "Sorry about that. Yes?"

"I just wanted to check in, and make sure that I won't be in the way of your event if I sit under the horse statue and sing to myself. I don't go here, obviously, but this is my favorite place to relax at night, and I'm hoping I'll still be able to stay here despite whatever event you're holding right now?"

"That should be fine, yes," she says. "We will be out here only briefly, and the school building is soundproofed well. I very much doubt your singing will prove any disruption to us."

There's a clinking sound from the direction of the portal, but a quick glance shows no sign of Sunset, only some miscellaneous wandering students, one bending over to pick something up.

"Thank you," I tell her, and return to my vigil next to the portal. The yellow girl who picked up whatever made the clanging noise walks past me towards the woman I was just talking to.

Just a moment later, Sunset herself comes back through, looking slightly tired but far more satisfied than frustrated. She ran into trouble but managed to get the Element anyway, then.

Sunset briefly glances around the ground around the portal, then at the students standing nearby (none of whom saw the moment of her appearance, fortunately), before turning to me. "Do you have the Element?"

"Me? How could I have gotten..." I put the pieces together. "The yellow girl. That's what she was picking up." Sunset ran into trouble. Of course. Throw the Element through the portal at the first chance, to put it out of her pursuers' easy reach and to alert me that something is wrong. Except I wasn't at the portal. I was busy negotiating with the blue woman. Which meant...

I point Sunset in the direction of the pair of them, now standing together and talking, and then I start singing. I don't have any ability to harmonize vocals, being on my own like this, but if I'm lucky my voice will still be enough to drive the two into a fight and open a chance for me or Sunset to grab the Element. I sing about how mysteries can be dangerous, about how it's best to pass unfamiliar problems off to others who can take the brunt of the risk rather than facing it oneself. I permeate the song with imagery of enchanted or cursed jewelery from throughout this world's mythology.

The two of them seem at least mildly entranced by my voice, enough to watch our approach, although not enough to stop whatever conversation they're having. But the blue one, who's now holding the crown, shows no sign of an impulse to push it off onto anyone else. She just starts walking with it to the school building, and—

And I've been an idiot. Of course she doesn't have any urge to pass it off; she thinks it's the perfectly familiar crown from the Fall Whatever Dance, not a mysterious unknown bit of jewelery. I should have anticipated that, and found some other angle instead. That was an Aria-tier mistake, which means the stress of the night has gotten to me more than I'd realized. But it's going to be hard to pivot my song convincingly at this point, especially when my target has already shaken off her enchantment and walked off. I wave Sunset forward, instead, hoping that her familiarity with the school and its staff will let her win out where I failed.

But, after a few moments of discussion with the blue woman, Sunset comes back to me, looking frustrated. "Luna is locking the crown away until the Fall Formal. Looks like we're putting the plan on hold for two days, while I crush the competition here for the last time."

5. Panicking

Sunset texts me a few times over the next two days, but we don't meet up again; she's still a bit upset about my mistakes in guarding the portal, plus she needs to put all her focus on handling matters at the school, because apparently Celestia sent her latest student through the portal to chase after the Element and said student is doing her best to sabotage Sunset's chances of winning the Fall Formal. I offer to come by with the other two Sirens and just charm the Element directly from whoever is guarding it, but Sunset says that she has things handled and tells us to hold off. It stinks of overconfidence, but I don't push the matter; after all, she's not the one who made two major tactical errors in immediate succession just a short while ago, unless her recounting of events on her side of the portal was eliding over something. Pushing will just annoy her.

The night of the Fall Formal, I'm sitting with the other two Sirens outside a coffee shop, just two blocks or so from the school. If anything goes wrong, I want us to be able to sweep in with minimal fuss to resolve things. Even at the pathetic level of power we're currently restrained to, the three of us together will be able to control the key figures of the school well enough to ensure that everything goes our way.

I'm just starting to get antsy when a gigantic beam of blue light projects from the ground at the school into the sky, accompanied by a rush of perceptibly-increased ambient magic. I send Sunset a text, "Success?", but she doesn't respond. If, fifteen minutes from now, she still hasn't responded, I'm going over there; if she's decided to backstab me and not share the Element's power like she promised, I fully intend for us to reach the portal before it closes and make her regret it.

(Or is the increased ambient magic her promised sharing? No, I decide, after the three of us enact a quick test on a few passers-by; it's boosted our power mildly, but not nearly enough to take even the city, let alone the world.)

Ten minutes later, another beam of light blasts into the sky, this time rainbow-colored, before twisting down towards a point on the ground and bringing with it yet another rise in ambient magic. I text Sunset again. Still no response. Just give her another five minutes...

When the three of us arrive at the school, whatever was happening is over. There's a crater in the lawn near the portal, and a large hole in the school building's facade; despite that, to all appearances, whatever is happening is just a normal school dance. Nobody tries to stop us as we enter the grounds, despite the dance being a private ceremony, which is the first sign that something is off. Sunset Shimmer is nowhere to be found, which is the second. And, in the middle of the dance, there's a purple girl wearing the Element of Magic, at which point things suddenly slot into place. Sunset didn't betray us; she lost. Celestia's new student actually beat her, despite all her confidence, and now the girl has the Element and the portal is closing in under an hour.

We need to find Sunset. The purple girl is secondary, right now. A brief song to the crowd gets them focused on dancing, ready to pressure anyone who stops dancing into continuing, which should hold the girl in place while we search. Getting the Element won't do anything, if Sunset isn't there to use it; I haven't got the slightest idea how to use it myself.

But Sunset is nowhere to be found. When we ask a few students, the answer is the same: the last they saw of her was at the bottom of the big crater, following her "turning to a demon" and then the purple girl and some others blasting her with a rainbow; since then there's been no sign of her.

I text her again. Nothing. I call her. Nothing. I have Aria and Sonata help me charm half a dozen students to search around the school and text me if they find her, then set off at a jog towards Sunset's apartment. She has to be somewhere. We can still salvage this. I just need to get Sunset back from wherever she's vanished to so she can do her thing with the Element.

When we arrive at the apartment, Sonata panting slightly from the exertion of the jog, I don't even bother trying to get in the mundane way. I sing into the intercom, and the other two follow my lead, and the door is unlocked for us a moment later. The increased ambient magic is already making things easier; we won't be able to take over the world just from this, but it's certainly helpful in charming large numbers of humans in sequence without any bouts of feeding in between.

Sunset doesn't answer when I start banging on the door of her apartment. There's no ringing or buzzing inside when I call her phone again. I half-expect Aria to suggest kicking in the door, but she just shrugs, instead, as I scream in frustration. Under twenty minutes left. I take us back to the school, still at a jog near the limits of Sonata's stamina, despite the impulse to give up; I've salvaged doomed-looking plans at the last minute before, and if Sunset is there, I don't want to squander the chance.

But there's nothing. The dance is beginning to fray around the edges, the purple girl pushing her way slowly through the crowd despite their efforts to the contrary, and still with no sign of Sunset and no contact from any of the minions I charmed to look for her.

I sigh, and lean against one of the school walls on the edge of the courtyard, watching as the purple girl makes her way to the portal, trailed by a group of teenagers and a dog. Aria and Sonata are complaining, telling me to give up already, but I'm not ready yet. We still have one last chance. If we charm the purple girl, and Sunset shows up in the next ten minutes, we might still pull this off; and if she doesn't, well, that still leaves the Element of Magic with us and Equestria none the wiser about what went wrong.

I walk over to the girl and her entourage, and the other two Sirens follow behind me, as they always do in the end despite their complaints. We sing to them about how beautiful the world is, how tragic it would be to leave it and go somewhere else. The students nearby nod along.

The purple girl and her entourage look at us in confusion. One of them, blue with rainbow hair, moves to the front of their group and asks, "who are you supposed to be?", while the others continue to hug out their goodbyes.

...the song did nothing. They're immune somehow, probably for reasons related to their collective victory against Sunset. Piled on top of everything else, that's finally too much for me; I stop singing and sit down in defeat. I ignore the blue girl's continuing questions, and I ignore the other two Sirens' worried prodding, and I just stare at the purple girl until she vanishes through the portal with seconds to spare. If I wanted to invent a tactical justification for my behavior, I could probably come up with a plausible one—that I'm just faking weakness to make our future targets here underestimate us, or trying to draw out sympathy to distract them, or something—but the truth is that I'm just tired. We've been running around the city for over an hour, repeatedly using our magic without ever pausing to feed, beating our heads against the aftermath of a plan which failed for reasons I still don't understand, and it's all amounted to nothing. The Element is gone, and there's no word from Sunset either.

6. Disintegrating

When we return to the Canterlot High School campus several months later, it's with the benefit of several months' research into everything we can possibly learn about the school. Detailed profiles of every student and teacher we can identify as such. Reports on the school's culture and history. Even physical blueprints of the building, surprisingly easy to take from City Hall with our newfound power from the increased background magic. (Sunset Shimmer is still going there. She's sent me only a handful of texts since that night, none telling me where she is when she's not at school or anything else of use, the most recent simply being "i'm sorry" devoid of any context. It's taken a bit of effort to avoid rushing our plans, knowing that.)

But the increased background magic is, ultimately, a minor change. We can enchant larger groups with less effort than before, but still only on the scale of hundreds, not the billions that are our ultimate goal. Which brings us to the true objective of our plan: getting the rest of the Equestrian magic. Those six girls at the school were all immune to our song, much as Sunset was when we first met her, and all evidence suggests it was for the same reason: that they had a native reserve of magic to help shield them from our song's effects. Separating that magic from them, and absorbing it into ourselves via our feeding, ought to be a far more significant power boost. We have no way to know whether it will be enough of a power boost to let us take over the world, but it will certainly be far more than we can get any other way.

(And if Sunset doesn't have a good reason for her apparent abandonment of the plan—if she has betrayed us, after all—well, then she can join the pile of people to be fed on too.)

The first step is to convince the school's principal and vice-principal that we've already submitted valid transfer paperwork and been accepted. We hand them some crudely-falsified paperwork, to support the deception; any serious audit would see straight through it, but by the time they're no longer under the direct influence of the spell, they should be so accustomed to our presence that they won't have any reason to check it closely.

The second step is to be officially shown around the school, and ask some pointed questions to start probing for weaknesses in the school's social environment. We wait in the entry hall for our tour guide to show up, and—

"Hi. Are you the new..."

Sunset.

Our tour guide is Sunset Shimmer.

"Adagio?" Apparently I wasn't the only one briefly stunned in surprise. "Aria? Sonata? You're the new students here?"

"No, we're a different three girls new to the school waiting here for a tour," Aria says, arms folded.

"Wait, we're not the three new students? Although I suppose we are the oldest students here, so we're really the least new, now that I think about it," Sonata says.

Our tour guide is Sunset Shimmer.

I'd been expecting that she'd be avoiding us, that we'd actually need to look for her. Instead, she's here, right now.

"W-well," Sunset says, "follow me, then. I hope you enjoy your time here. And, uh. Don't get everyone here fighting too badly? Please?"

I walk up to her, grabbing her attention before she can turn around to lead us to somewhere less secluded. "Sunset. Tell me what's going on."

She looks as uncomfortable as I've ever seen her, and takes a few moments to reply. "I... made friends here. Real friends, not just 'friends' who stay with me because I'm popular or because I've manipulated them into becoming infatuated with me. I realized how terrible I used to be, back when we spent time together. And I didn't want to keep doing that to you, so I... just stopped. Which, now that you're here, I'm starting to realize was... maybe not the least worrying way I could have handled it." She wrings her hands.

I laugh, but it feels wrong. Forced. "You're saying you broke off from talking to me, even to explain what had gone on, because you felt bad about manipulating me?"

Sunset hangs her head. "I tried to give you something over text, but... that's pretty much exactly what I did, yup."

Everything is wrong. Sunset is wrong. She wouldn't feel bad about something like that. She has to be lying for the sake of some greater plan, be under watch by some means we're not seeing, something.

But even as I tell myself that I know I'm just making up excuses. She's serious. She's not so bad at covert signaling that she wouldn't have been able to make it clear, if she were being watched.

"Did you even try to finish the plan?" My voice comes out wrong. Quieter than I'd intended.

"Finish the plan?"

"After the purple girl and her friends blasted you into a crater with the Element. There was time for a second shot. You could have grabbed the Element from her when she was distracted, or called us in to enchant her and get it for you. You could have had Equestria, just like you'd planned! We spent almost an hour running around, tiring ourselves out looking for you!"

"I... no. They didn't need the Element to beat me. I was wearing it. Its power went out of control, turned me into a rampaging monster. I would have killed them, if their friendship hadn't been able to shield them from me. And even if the plan were salvageable, it would have been a mistake. I was a power-hungry selfish jerk even before the Element's magic got into me. I wouldn't have had any place running Equestria."

"I... see."

"You see?" She looks hopeful, for some reason.

"Yes. I see. Now, you were going to show us around the school?"

I'm not done with her. Not anywhere close. But there's no reason to let her in on exactly what I'm thinking, not when I'm thinking in large part about how satisfying it's going to be to collapse this school's entire social structure down on her head and make her regret turning into this person she's become.

7. Demoralizing

It's almost pathetic, how easy it is to get practically the school's entire population at each other's throats. They even have a school-wide musical event prepared, just waiting for us to turn it into the school's first Battle of the Bands. Sunset remains nearly immune, thanks to the protective influence of her magic; if she's a little more on edge than usual, it's not enough for me to distinguish from more general reaction to our appearance in the school. Her newfound 'friends', who turn out to be none other than the group the purple girl teamed up with to fight her (and who, I note as I watch the crowd, she doesn't in fact seem all that close to), are similarly resistant, even all these months after using the Elements. On the one hand, it's inconvenient, having such a large group (especially hers) remain outside of our control; but, on the other hand, it makes our objective even clearer. Those six are the ones who we can drain in order to get a fraction of the Element's power for ourselves, to become (if Sunset prior to her transformation was to be trusted) powerful enough to take over the whole world.

When she shows up to the pre-Battle party, things are a dicier. She's somehow managed to get the purple girl back, despite my having seen her vanish through the portal which shouldn't be anywhere close to reopening yet, and the girl (who turns out to be named Twilight Sparkle) tries to lead her friends in magically blasting us, presumably the same way they blasted Sunset. It's not something I'd considered might be possible, and for a moment I'm afraid we're going to be blasted into a still more remote dimension where we won't have even a chance to get our magic back.

Their failure, which seems to be as much of a surprise to Twilight and Sunset as it is to me, proves a perfect opportunity to turn the whole school against the six (or, now, seven) of them as well.

"You're never going to get away with this." Sunset glowers at the three of us from the little dead-end segment of hallway she's cornered herself in.

"Aren't we?" I put on a faux-curious expression.

"My friends will stop you. Just like they stopped me, when I was trying to do the same thing."

"Oh, yes. Your friends. Your 'friends' who leave you to stand on the sidelines while they play against us, despite all your musical talent. Your 'friends' who do nothing to shield you from the resentment of the rest of the students. Your 'friends' who remind you of all your regrets every other conversation, not even for any deliberate reason, but just because they're too unconcerned with your feelings to avoid it." Seeing Sunset's face fall in response to my tirade is absolutely worth the time it took to get a few students to tell me everything they knew about her group. "Do you really think they trust you? Do you really think they care about you at all beyond the way that their 'friendship' prevents you from taking another shot at ruling Equestria? You used to be so good at reading people. But then, claims of intimacy can blind a person, I suppose."

"You're lying," Sunset says after a moment, her face still downcast but her tone defiant. "Don't think I don't know how you approach things. You're trying to plant a seed of doubt, get me to fight them. It won't work."

"You really have changed," I whisper. "I keep hoping that it's all a ruse, you know. That the Sunset I loved is still in there somewhere, that you're just working on some scheme which I haven't put together yet. But no. It's real, isn't it." My voice has risen to full volume. "Everything that let us work together is gone. Did you know that you were the best thing to happen to me in decades, if not longer? Someone I could actually connect with, who could follow where I was going when I thought about things, whose goals were compatible enough with mine that we weren't doomed to eventually fight... But no. You were manipulating me, just like I was manipulating you, so obviously our relationship must have actually been bad for me." I snort, holding up a hand to Sonata to preempt her predictably-incoming confusion over my sarcasm. "And now look at you. You've traded in everything you used to have in order to become the school's punching bag, gotten attached to the world the three of us are going to rule, blindly follow a group of girls who are blatantly using you, and still think that we're the ones who are going to come out worse from this situation."

Sunset is quiet for a moment. I can see her swallowing down whatever her first response is, and then her second, before she finally raises her head to answer me. There are tears in her eyes. "I'm sorry," she says. "Is that what you want to hear? Because it's true. I was stupid. I kept putting off having any real conversations with you after I was beaten, even though I knew I needed to, until it passed entirely from my mind, because... I don't even know. I was afraid you'd be upset with me for changing my mind? I was afraid my friends would be upset with me for keeping up a relationship with someone so obviously like I used to be? But I should have. Maybe we wouldn't have been able to keep things up anyway, because I do regret who I was and we probably wouldn't have been able to keep going like we did before. But I'm sorry that I didn't make more of an effort than I did, and that I hurt you as a result."

"Is that all you have to say?" I notice that my fists are clenched, and deliberately relax.

Sunset opens her mouth to respond, but I raise my voice to speak over whatever she's trying to say. "I refuse your apology. You did hurt me, more than I'd thought you'd be able to. However sorry you might be now, I'm going to make sure that you're sorrier before this is all over. Come on, girls." I turn and start walking out of the hallway.

"But she—" Aria starts to object.

"Come on."

That conversation went on for longer than I'd wanted it to. We barely make it backstage in time for our turn.

8. Stopping

Midway through our song, we stop gaining power.

Oh, we're the strongest we've been in over a millennium. We could probably take over a city without much trouble, and maybe even a country given some politicking to ensure the right sort of interpersonal climate. But we were getting stronger, and there was no sign that the girls below the stage were running dry, and now suddenly we're not. It's not so worrying as to be worth stopping the song over—the assembled CHS students and faculty are a very satisfying meal, as well as a chance to stretch abilities we've become rusty with since losing the ability to use more than the barest fragment of them—but it's something to pursue as soon as the song is over. I'm not letting Sunset slip away and destroy our plans again. This time, we're going to spread out our search parties all across the city, and when we find her—

She's right there. On a hill overlooking the stage, with her friends and with more audio hardware than she should have been able to cobble together this quickly.

When the magical horse bears down on us and shatters our power-focusing gems, Sunset is too busy smiling at her friends to even look at me. Somehow, that's the worst part.

"I've got a new plan!"

Aria and Sonata turn their attention towards me from whatever petty squabble they were having on the couch together. "A new plan?" Aria asks.

"To get our magic back, and to make Sunset Shimmer regret having ever betrayed us."

"After what her and the others did to us last time? You seriously need to let it go."

Sonata nods vigorously.

"A single win doesn't mean they're unbeatable. Are you both just giving up? We're still closer to getting back our magic than we were for over a millennium!"

"Are you sure getting our magic back is the thing your plan is about?" Sonata asks in a tone of voice I would take to be innocent if I hadn't known her for as long as I have.

"Yes. If I didn't think it had a chance of working, I wouldn't be telling the two of you about it."

"Adagio." Aria has a look on her face that I've rarely seen before. Pity. "You're bad at noticing when you let personal things get into your plans, but that doesn't mean you don't do it. Do you really think everything you did at the school is the same as it would have been if you didn't have your whole obsession with Sunset Shimmer?"

I resist the urge to clench my fists. "Yes," I tell her. "That's exactly what I think. Breaking apart her group was always part of the plan. And earlier, the night she messed everything up, we needed to find her to have any chance of salvaging the situation. And I don't need to defend myself to you." Why am I letting myself get sucked into her argument? It's never been a good idea to do that. I've been off my game, since our defeat at the Battle of the Bands.

"And almost missing the first round of the Battle of the Bands because you were busy monologuing at her about how much you missed her and wanted to hurt her, or whatever?"

"That was..." I struggle for words. "I was using our history to help demoralize..." I can't bring myself to finish that sentence. Even as I try to put together arguments against her, I can feel my conviction fading. If I'd really just been trying to demoralize her, or to turn her against her friends, I could have pushed harder on the angle where they were just using her. (Even now, I find myself genuinely unsure whether they really were just using her or not; I never a got a good enough look of my own at their group dynamics, not mediated by our spies, to tell with any confidence. But she was buying it, at least a little, as I laid it out, enough that she blustered about trust rather than listing off concrete counterpoints, so it was a clear vulnerable spot.) Instead, I... went off on a rant about my personal issues with her which actively sapped the impact of my initial attack. "You're right."

"Yes. I am. So, is your plan really going to work? Or is it just another flailing attempt to do... whatever it is you want to do... to Sunset Shimmer?"

"It's..." I sigh. "It's a long shot. Long enough that it's probably the second thing. You're right, I shouldn't be dragging you two into this. If I want my revenge on Sunset, I should just get it myself."

"Orrrr," Sonata says, "you could just forget about her. At this point you've spent longer worrying about and then hating her than you spent dating her! Find someone else to spend time with while ignoring the two of us, and forget about Sunset."

"Or," Aria interjects, "even better, don't. Get over her and start hanging out with us again. We miss... I mean, having you ignore us has been annoying."

Just forget about her. I reflexively flinch from the idea, but I of all people know perfectly well that they're right. If I were trying to steer a copy of myself into making bad decisions right now, this would be such a blatant weakness that it wouldn't even be hard. Even if it feels wrong to abandon my feelings towards her, it's obviously the right call.

"...Okay." I sit down on the couch next to them. "No guarantees. But I'll try."

9. Continuing

We don't usually get anyone knocking on our van's door. The bouncer keeps the fans out, and strategic use of Aria's eternal grumpiness keeps the venue staff out.

When I open the door, I find myself suddenly face-to-face with Sunset Shimmer.

"Adagio." Her voice is small. "It's... been a while."

I don't say anything. If I did, it would most likely be something stupid and unproductive.

"I didn't realize the three of you were going to be at the festival, but I heard your song. It was good."

"That's all you have to say about it? You did that to us, you know."

"I know. And... well, I would probably do it again, if it came down to it." I slide the van's door slightly shut, indicating that she should get on with it. "But, even so... I'd like to try again?"

"What." What is she even saying.

"Not dating," she says hurriedly. "Not even necessarily spending time together regularly. But... meeting up somewhere, at least once? Chatting about life? Seeing if there's anything we can connect over, still, even though we've both changed? I messed things up between the two of us once. Trying to fix it seems like the least I can do."
My old abandoned plan comes back to me. Becoming 'reformed' like Sunset did, becoming her 'friends' until we get the same power that those other five girls somehow got, and thereby regain our old power even without our focuses.

"I... am very tempted to just slam the door in your face right now," I tell her. "I'm also tempted to pursue a half-baked almost-guaranteed failure of a plan for revenge that I came up with a month after the Battle of the Bands." I might as well be honest, since I'm not going to actually do it. Honesty builds trust, after all, and we're going to need all of that we can get for this to go anywhere other than straight into an incinerator. "But okay. One meetup. And keep in mind that, if Aria or Sonata wants me around whenever we plan our meetup for, I absolutely will skip seeing you in order to stay with them. I may or may not send you any texts warning you about it. Understood?"

Sunset nods, looking slightly overwhelmed, but with a smile growing on her face nonetheless.

"Great. Well, then, here's my current number. Text me after the festival is over."

I scribble my backup burner phone's number on a piece of paper, hand it to her in a crumpled mess, and then slam the door in her face.

I have no idea how our meetup is going to go, or even if I'm going to end up going at all. But somehow, nonetheless, I find myself looking forward to it.

Author's Note

I hope you enjoyed reading!

This is my first time publishing a piece of prose fiction to the broader internet, as opposed to sharing it purely within a small and limited social circle. My editorbrain is insisting that the story is awful; but I'm pretty sure that it would be insisting that even if it were, in fact, good. If anyone has feedback in either of those directions, or any other, I welcome it.