Sunset Shimmer was sitting on her bed, studying for her AP Physics exam and listening to Tiësto, when her phone buzzed with a text.
The 'From' number read 000-0000.
"Hmmmm," she said, then read:
Hi Sunset: Please let me know if you get this. It's not easy to text from Equestria (I had to enchant a typewriter). Long story and I'm not ready to tell Twilight about my idea yet, so I can't borrow her journal to write you. Love, your friend, Starlight Glimmer
"Ohhhh-kaaay," Sunset said. Starlight Glimmer—well, the several days Starlight had had visited after the whole mirror magic incident had been excellent. Starlight was most certainly a friend... but what didn't she want Princess Twilight to know?
Sunset texted back, "Got your message. What's up?"
"Can you come to Ponyville?" Starlight replied. "We have a business opportunity, but we need some expertise from you and some supplies from your world."
"What supplies?" Sunset texted.
After reading Starlight's reply, Sunset muttered, "I hope she has a good lawyer."
Sunset, back in her unicorn form, trotted into the Castle of Friendship's kitchen.
"Isn't this Spike's kitchen?" Sunset said.
Starlight—wearing a chef's toque and apron—turned around, galloped to Sunset, hugged her, and said, "He moved to Canterlot with Twilight. My faculty and I are the only tenants, now."
Sunset closed her eyes, raised her nose, and sniffed. "That's steak. I've never smelled steak in Equestria before. Do you have any idea how much troub—"
Starlight crammed a piece of meat into Sunset's mouth. "Less talking, more taste testing."
Sunset glared at Starlight as she chewed. "Bland. Did you season it? It's cooked tough, well done, has no sear, and you cut it along the grain. Ponies can't chew tough steak with these teeth. You need to cut across the grain. I can't believe you murdered a cow just to ruin her steaks."
Starlight frowned and drew herself up to her full height. "I didn't murder—"
"And I say murder because this is Equestria, where the cows are full citizens. I eat steak in the mirror world, but this is evil, Starlight!"
Starlight crammed a hoof in Sunset's mouth to silence her. Starlight charged her horn and blasted a crystal plate with her magic.
The plate, with a dusty bone sitting on it, glowed for about five seconds, and then a perfectly marbled tomahawk-cut ribeye appeared in the bone's place.
"Magic," Starlight said. "Not murder."
Sunset blinked several times, and Starlight removed her hoof from Sunset's mouth.
"Well," Sunset said. "What's your plan?"
Starlight sat down and panted. "Not sure. That spell is really exhausting."
"Did you invent it?"
Starlight shook her head. "No. I found it in an old book in the restricted section of the Castle of the Two Sister's library."
"Restricted section."
"Yeah, Spike melted the lock off a few years back. This spell hasn't been seen by pony eyes for at least eleven hundred years."
"Restricted section."
"Stop saying 'restricted section.'"
"Restricted—"
Starlight put her hoof in Sunset's mouth again.
Trixie trotted into the kitchen, and levitated her saddlebags onto the prep counter. She glared at Sunset. "Trixie demands to know whom Starlight has invited into our compartmentalized, best-friends-only conspiracy."
Sunset removed Starlight's hoof from her mouth. "The Great and Powerful Trixie, I presume?"
"The very same!" Trixie said, standing on her rear legs and extending her forelegs above her head. A smoke bomb exploded.
"Sunset Shimmer. And I'm not sure I want to be part of this conspiracy."
"It's not a conspiracy!" Sunburst said, trotting in behind Trixie and adjusting his glasses. "This is a business-sensitive product development– SUNSET?!?"
Sunset and Sunburst stared at each other for a few seconds, jaws slack, and then ran to each other. Sunset tackled him, knocking him down and landing on top of him, belly-to-belly, sending his glasses flying.
She nuzzled him, cheek to cheek, and then kissed his nose, and gave him a bear hug that emptied his lungs with a yelp! "Sunburp! What—what are you doing here?"
Sunset stood up, and offered a hoof to Sunburst to help him stand. He levitated his glasses back into place.
"Me? I live here! I'm the vice headmaster of the school! What are you doing here?"
"I invited her, Sunburst," Starlight said. "You two know each other? How do you two know each other?"
Sunset punched him in the shoulder with a forehoof. "My baby brother. I call him 'Sunburp.' You two should call him 'Sunburp.'"
Sunburst turned red. He whispered, "Not in front of these two!"
Starlight said, "Wait! If you two are siblings, why didn't I know you as a foal?"
"I went off to Celestia's school before your family moved to Sire's Hollow, I guess. I'm a lot older than Sunburp, but time passes weird on the other side of the portal."
Starlight frowned, but nodded.
"All right, if Sunburp says it's not a conspiracy, I'm in. But tell me... why are you three cooking non-murder steaks?"
A charcoal grill smoked under a ventilation hood, and the tomahawk steak slowly cooked over low coals. "You see," Sunset explained, now also wearing a toque and apron, "to get the middle of a thick steak cooked right, cooked medium-rare, you have to start it low and slow, and then..."
She levitated a spatula and flipped the steak onto another grill, and then slashed with a spell. The grill was suddenly filled with lava, glowing bright orange. The steak sat on a metal grate, mere inches from the molten rock. Sunset galloped back a few steps, squinting against the heat, and levitated the spatula from almost ten feet away. "Sear it at the last minute! Smell the black pepper infusing? You didn't even season that first steak you had me taste, Starlight."
Starlight nodded, her toque bobbing, and wrote down some more notes.
Sunset flipped the steak every ten or fifteen seconds, until it had a crispy sear, and then levitated it to a heavy wooden cutting board.
Trixie levitated up a knife.
"No!" Sunset shouted, and smacked Trixie across the rump with the greasy spatula. Trixie yelped in pain, and a red burn formed over her right cutie mark. "No, no, no! You have to let the meat rest for five minutes for the juices to redistribute. Pour the wine and plate the arugula, sweet potatoes, and mushrooms."
Sunburst prepared four plates, Starlight poured from a bottle of Prench red they had opened earlier and allowed to breathe, and they all watched the clock.
Trixie rubbed the burn on her bum.
"Pony teeth are no good for meat. Cut it thin, and across the grain. That's important." Sunset cut thin slices off the steak and arranged them onto the arugula, then shaved parmesan cheese onto the steak, and finally lifted up the cutting board and poured the drippings over the steak and parmesan.
Starlight poked her fork in and took a bite of steak, arugula, and parmesan. "Oh. My. Luna."
Sunburst took a bite. "This is the best thing I've ever tasted."
Trixie sniffed at a bite of steak, arugula, and parmesan, and then bit down. Her eyes widened, her levitation spluttered out, dropping the fork, and she buried her face into the plate and ate like a starved earth pony.
Sunset took a bite of her own. "Damn, that's good. All right, you're now the first ponies in history who can cook a cowboy-style steak. Explain to me why you have acquired this knowledge."
"It's time," Starlight said to the other three, a few weeks later.
They stood in the kitchen of the small restaurant space they were renting in central Ponyville. "The others are with Twilight's post-coronation tour of the allied kingdoms for a few weeks. That means this is our chance to get this started and prove our concept before they get back and spoil our business plan."
Trixie made a cough that sounded a lot like Applejack.
"We also need to get this up and running before the students get back from summer break, or else we won't have time to work the bugs out."
Starlight smiled, and clapped her forehooves. "Let's make some customers happy!"
"That was a great and powerful pep talk," Trixie said. Trixie wore her wizard's cape and hat, and levitated up a waitress's notepad. "I'll go put the 'open' sign up."
Sunburst doubled as waiter and cashier. In the back, Starlight converted old bones to fresh, non-murdery meat, and Sunset cooked. She put some steak fat, chicken skin, bacon, and a hunk of tuna onto the grills to begin filling Ponyville with the smell. She had earlier slipped twenty bits to Flitter to redirect the wind around their smokestack downward, to ensure the town square got the full olfactory assault.
Sunburst walked past the outdoor tables and levitated down the tarpaulin that covered their sign:
GlimGlam's Restaurant
Live the carnivore life!
Magically synthesized, ethically sourced meats!
Sustainable and cholesterol-free!
"You're doing this because you love Starlight," he muttered to himself. "It's important to her to build something of her own, and not just run the Princess's school."
Gabby, Gallus, Silverstream, and a yellow female hippogriff Sunburst didn't know all landed in front of him and tucked their wings. "Table for four?" Sunburst asked. "I thought you were all home for the summer."
"What is that smell?!?" Silverstream demanded, grabbing Sunburst around the neck with her claws and shaking him. His glasses flew off. The tips of her talons pricked his skin, drawing tiny drops of blood.
"Magical, ethically sourced—"
"It's tuna!" shouted the second hippogriff, adding her talons to Silverstream's around Sunburst's neck. "I smell tuna! The Storm King exterminated all the tuna near Mount Aris and I haven't had tuna since I was a chick please oh please oh PLEASE can I have tuna?!?"
Sunburst choked and the world was going gray as his knees got weak.
Trixie trotted up and levitated the four sets of talons away from Sunburst's neck. "Great and powerful table for four, right this way. Silverstream, who's your friend?"
"My cousin, Princess Skystar! Skystar, this is Counselor Trixie!"
"Hi! I don't need to be 'princess,' I'm on vacation! Cousin time!"
Silverstream and Skystar turned to face each other, clenched their eyes, made squeeeee! sounds, and pumped their rear legs up and down.
Gabby grinned and clapped.
Gallus frowned and rolled his eyes. "What are you teachers doing running a restaurant?"
Trixie flirted her tail at him as she led them to a table. "The faculty don't sleep in coffins all summer break. We keep busy with our own projects."
Trixe passed in the order to the kitchen. Sunset read out loud, "Two tuna steaks, both seared extra rare, one beef ribeye steak, seared extra rare... and one whole chicken, seared extra rare."
Starlight arranged some cow, chicken, and tuna bone fragments onto a large plate.
Sunset fired up a spell to melt some lava in a crucible. "They want seared? I can do seared! I have a burning sun cutie mark..."
Soon, the kitchen smelled of steak, tuna, and chicken. After Trixie served the four, the griffons and hippogriffs ate their lunch and left, praising the restaurant, and leaving a huge gratuity.
Their sweet potato and mushroom side dishes came back, uneaten, but every scrap of meat, fat, and sinew was gone. Sunset took a minute to scrub the dishes.
Then, Mayor Mare barged in.
"What in the holy green fields of Equestria are you doing to my town square?" shouted the mayor. She looked at Sunset. "And who are you? Are you responsible for bringing this... this atrocity to my town?"
Starlight said, "No, Mayor, Sunset here is a friend of mine I called in for a favor. Here, watch."
Starlight levitated a beef bone onto the large plate and zapped it with her spell, turning it into a beautifully marbled porterhouse. Sunset levitated it up and rolled it in sea salt, cracked black pepper, and a dusting of finely ground coffee, and then tossed it straight onto the glowing lava in the crucible, for maximum sear and medium-rare interior.
The mayor frowned, but then sniffed. "Wow... that smells... wow..."
"On the house," Sunset said, plating it a few minutes later. "Let it sit for five minutes and we'll cut it up for you."
The mayor's eyes grew dreamy and her glasses slid an inch down her nose as she inhaled.
Starlight and Sunset looked at each other.
Starlight smiled and mouthed, Got her!
Three days later, the restaurant was bumping, the busiest in Ponyville. Savoir Fare glared across town square at them, Café Hay abandoned. Mr. and Mrs. Cake sobbed, visible through the window of Sugarcube Corner.
"I'm sorry," Sunburst said to Rumble and Thunderlane, "We're not going to be able to seat anyone else today."
"But my brother's a Wonderbolt!" Rumble shouted. "You can't treat us like this!"
"Whoa, there, little bro," Thunderlane said. "We don't deserve special treatment. But we are willing to wait. It's not even six o'clock, why can't we get on the waitlist?"
"Honestly?" Sunburst said. "Starlight can only cast the magical meat spell so many times per day. She's getting pretty worn down. We don't want to seat any customers who might end up not getting their order because she gets magically spent."
Rumble pouted. Thunderlane nodded and asked, "Well, can you put us down for a reservation tomorrow?"
Sunburst levitated open the reservation book. "Our next available reservation is two weeks from Thursday, at... four forty-five. Shall I put in a table for two?"
"Make it a table for four. We'll see if Rainbow and Scootaloo want to double-date. Or maybe Rarity and Sweetie Belle."
Rumble's eyes crossed. "Apple Bloom..." he whispered, drooling slightly.
"No, Applejack hates me," Thunderlane said.
Sunburst wrote the reservation down. "Two weeks from Thursday!"
Rumble and Thunderlane flew off, and two unicorn stallions trotted up to Sunburt's podium. Possibly twins, but not identical, they wore matching blue-striped shirts and straw hats. One had a red moustache.
"I'm sorry," Sunburst said, leaning against the podium, "But we've no more—"
"We're here to help you," said the first stallion, without the moustache. "He's Flam—"
"And he's Flim. Together, we're the—"
In harmony: "Flim Flam brothers!"
Flim continued, "World famous culinary supply ponies extraordinaire. And we—"
"Can help you with your supply bottleneck," Flam continued.
"Simply for a fraction—"
"A reasonable fraction—"
"Of the profits you increase thanks to our help—"
"So there's nothing but—"
Together: "Upside!"
Flim finished, "To your quaint and tiny little operation here."
Sunburst pushed his glasses up his nose and called, "Starlight! You got a second?"
Flim and Flam grinned.
Two weeks later, GlimGlam's Restaurant—now on Restaurant Row in Canterlot—was even busier than it had been in Ponyville.
Zesty Gourmand smiled, actually smiled, from a booth near the front.
Prince Blueblood, Fancypants, Fleur de Lis, and the Griffon ambassador sat in the private dining room in the back, and the rest of Canterlot's richest and most influential ponies sat at tables in the dining room or waited outside for their seats. Even with the prices inflated by a factor of ten compared to Ponyville, the restaurant was still over capacity nightly.
"Wait, what?" Starlight said, looking at the order Trixie had written down. "Blueblood wants the 'special.' We aren't offering a 'special.'"
Flim and Flam traipsed in. Flim said, "We spoke to the Prince's majordomo this—"
"Afternoon," said Flam. "He'll pay five times our standard per-plate—"
"Cost. Here's the special." Flim levitated a bloody paper-wrapped package out of his saddle bag. "Cook it gently or it will dry out."
Sunset unwrapped it. "What is this, veal?"
"It's... conceptually similar to veal," Flam said, and his levitation pulled on his collar.
Sunset touched her tongue to the unwrapped slab of meat. "It's still warm. What are you two—"
"Just cook, Sunset," Trixie called, her tail whipping back and forth. "We're getting in the weeds and the guests don't want appetizers."
Sunset used her spatula to toss the slab of meat onto a grill.
A few minutes later, Sunburst sidled up to Sunset and whispered in her ear. "Remember when we were kids?"
"Not really, Sunburp. I took a lot of drugs when I first hit the mirror world."
"We would go off in the woods and pretend we were tracking bad pony criminals. You carried me on your withers."
"Yeah, I remember that, sorta."
"Flim and Flam say they learned Starlight's meat spell..." Sunburst said.
"...and that they know a cave deep in the mountain that amplifies magic."
"Do you believe them?" Sunburst asked.
"I did at first. But now..."
"After we clean the kitchen," Sunburst said, "let's follow them."
Sunset nodded. "Are we bringing Starlight and Trixie?"
"I think we should."
"Are you and Starlight an item, little brother?"
"Yes, we are. Starlight and I have agreed to get engaged at Hearth's Warming."
"I'm concerned we're going to learn things from following Flim and Flam we won't want to learn. It might break up our little circle of friendship, here. You willing to risk that?"
"I screwed up by letting Flim and Flam in the front door," Sunburst said. "I just—I just wanted Starlight's restaurant to go well, and she was getting so exhausted with casting that spell over and over! She was going to get sick."
Sunset inclined her head towards the cacophony of the restaurant's dining room. "She's proved her point and succeeded. We've made a bundle of money. Even if we skip out after tonight, well..." Starlight flipped Fancypants's tuna steak, and sprinkled it with sea salt.
Sunburst nodded. "Starlight wanted to prove she could do something on her own. The semester starts in a week—I bet she'll be happy to lock the front door, put up a 'closed' sign, and move back to Ponyville."
A few hours after midnight, the four watched from the shadows as Flim and Flam levitated paper-wrapped hunks of meat from a cave onto a wheeled cart. The brothers closed and locked a heavy wooden door that sealed the cavern, Flim hooked up to the cart, and they trotted off, in the direction of the restaurant.
Once the brothers were out of sight, the four snuck up to the cave and tried its door.
"Locked," said Sunburst, trying the knob.
Starlight and Sunset charged their horns, preparing to blow the door off its hinges.
"Stop!" Trixie said. "The Great and Powerful Trixie is an expert lockpick. Do you have any idea how many times I've had to get out of hoofcuffs?"
"You do hoofcuff escapes in your show?" Sunset asked.
"No," Trixie said, leaning close to the lock and levitating up some metal tools. "I didn't say anything about my show."
After about five minutes, click!, Trixie opened the lock.
"Oh!" Sunburst said, walking in. "Cold!"
Their breath fogged and all four unicorns lit their horns.
Sunset looked around at the fresh carcasses hanging from meathooks: cows, pigs, chickens. Three gutted yellowfin tuna sat in tubs of ice. She levitated up a gleaming cleaver from the bloody butcher's table, and honed it against a steel. "I suspected as much."
"We're all going to Tartarus," Sunburst said. "Even Twilight can't save us. And we'll have to listen to Flim and Flam sing in two-part harmony from their cells for eternity."
Trixie looked at a pegasus filly's carcass. "Blueblood's 'special,' I presume."
"I have a solution," Sunset said with a glare.
Tears rolled down Starlight's nose as she stared at a hanging side of beef. "We've been advertising 'cholesterol-free!' We've—we've been lying to our customers! What if one of them has a heart condition? I feel so violated."
"So here's the plan," Sunset said, after dealing with Flim's body. "Going out of business sale tonight. Sweet meat pie and one ten-ounce patty, five bits. We'll sell out, and we can use my lava spell to dispose of the bones and clothes. We'll cook the patties well-done to disguise the taste."
"Well-done will be dry and tasteless," Trixie said.
"Add a balsamic glaze. It's Canterlot haute cuisine, who will notice if it tastes bad? We have Zetsy Gourmand's approval, it's supposed to taste bad. We'll cast a glamour over the door to the cave, make it look like mountainside, and no one will find it for a thousand years."
Sunburst, looking pale, asked, "What about the...eh... stallion oysters?"
"Charge five hundred bits each, call them a limited-time chef's special, and Blueblood is guaranteed to order all four."
Sunburst passed out.
"Good plan," Starlight said. "I'm ready to move back to Ponyville and get back to the school. Spending the summer running a restaurant was fun, but I'm a headmare at heart, I think."
Sunset, wiping her blade on a towel, moved to Flam's body, which was suspended upside down over the floor drain.
"Trixie demands to know why Sunset is so skilled at this."
"So," Sunset said quietly. "The mirror world had its own Sunset Shimmer, you know?"
Trixie's eyes widened, and she plopped down to sit on her rump. "You—do you mean—"
"She worked in a steakhouse, in the kitchen. Breaking down the sides of beef, cooking the steaks. I lived with her, she and I switching back and forth, switching who went to work, who went to school. We were able to hold down the job full-time, make more money, if one of us also attended school. No one knew any better! She was about the nicest human I had ever met, before I met their Twilight, anyway."
Trixie stood up, and flicked her tail. "Oh! Oh. For a second there, I thought you meant—"
Standing under Flam, Sunset honed the blade on a steel. "So, anyway, this is how I ended up disposing of the original Sunset's body."
Author's Note
Comments always welcome!
