How To Fix A Damaged Human
It wasn't Tuesday, but Discord sat in Fluttershy's living room, chattering amiably with her as if he had no cares in the world and no purpose for being out and about in Equestria except for the pleasure of her company. This wasn't true, but he was trying to make sure Fluttershy didn't know that.
"...said, 'I thought they were bananas!'" He laughed at his own anecdote, and Fluttershy laughed with him, the gentle sound of her giggle the most beautiful music in the world.
"You have absolutely the silliest things happen to you," Fluttershy said, smiling.
"I know! Isn't it awful?"
"I actually think maybe you like it. Chaos is pretty silly sometimes, after all."
"True enough." He leaned back in the armchair and took a sip of his tea. "So how goes things at the sanctuary?"
"Oh, it's wonderful! We just got in—"
For the second time today, something tore a hole in the thaumic field, making Discord shudder as if his limbs were made of rubber. "What's wrong?" Fluttershy asked.
"Hold that thought, Fluttershy, there's something I need to investigate." Discord got to his feet and snapped his lion paw's digits.
And then he was floating above the ground, in a clearing, where there was a bleeding human being lying sprawled on her back, her elaborate long-sleeved and tailed tunic torn and ripped, and tears on her face.
The last place this had happened, Discord had shown up to investigate half an hour after it had happened, because he'd been in his chaos dimension and hadn't sensed it the moment it had happened. There'd been nothing there when he got there. So he'd been waiting at Fluttershy's to see if it was going to happen again... and it had. Again. The first one had been a trot or two away, but still within the Everfree, as was this one. Not surprising. The Everfree was where most of the dimensional incursions happened.
He dropped down to the human's side immediately, checking to make sure she wasn't dead. Her tunic/gown/cloak-thing was magenta, with a black turtleneck underneath. Neither color showed the red of human blood well, but he could smell quite a lot of it. Her face was clammy but not yet cold like a dead thing... and she had magic. Not a huge amount of it, but most humans didn't have any, unless they were from a high-magic universe and he could tell that she was not. Her clothes had no magic clinging to them, but it lived inside her cells and in her brain.
Dead creatures didn't have active, living magic. Discord floated her up to keep her body in the same position, put his arms under her, and teleported frantically back to Fluttershy's cottage.
"Fluttershy!" he shrieked. "Fluttershy, help me!"
Fluttershy had gotten into the kitchen in the time it had taken him to go investigate the disruption and find the human. She came out of the kitchen at a gallop... and stopped dead, staring. "Oh... oh my. Is that... is that an ape?"
"Kinda, it's actually a human, I mean she's actually a human because she has breasts which is a dead giveaway that she's a human because none of the other apes do and also no coat—"
"Like the world that Sunset Shimmer lives in?"
"Those aren't quite the same kind of humans, those are more like, parallel humans to Equestria so they have cutie marks and skin colored like coats. This one's from the more common type of human, but Fluttershy! She's dying!" He set the injured human down on the couch.
"Calm down, Discord. We'll help her. Can you teleport her clothes off? I need to see the injuries—"
"On it," Discord said, and snapped, leaving the human clad only in the thin cotton panties covering her genitals and buttocks. She was a very, very pale human, with a riotous blonde mane that was simultaneously long, frizzy and a wild cloud around her head. She was also a very tall human, much taller than the average human female, somewhat taller than the average human male, with broad shoulders, a narrow waist, broad hips, and very large breasts, which along with her abdomen were bruised with giant splotches of purple, blue and almost-black. Red bubbled from her mouth with every weak breath, and there was a seeping reddish-brown wound directly under her breastbone.
"Okay. This looks like internal injuries, mostly. I could stitch up this open wound, but I can't do anything about the internal bleeding, so for now I'll just apply a dressing. We're going to need someone with more knowledge of her anatomy than I have. Go get Twilight and tell her to bring any medical information she has about humans whatsoever, and if she doesn't have any, information about great apes."
Twilight was deep in drawing up plans for the school she wanted her friends and herself to run, if she could just find an opportune time to talk to them about it and convince them, when Discord appeared. "Twilight it's an emergency life or death do you have any medical texts about humans?" he said in one run-on breath.
"Humans? In Equestria?"
"Do you have any yes or no she's going to die!"
"Who is?"
"The human!"
"One of my human friends?"
"No! She's not even the same kind of human! Sapiens sapiens, not sapiens harmonia!"
"I think you mean sapiens harmonious if you're speaking Roaman—"
"Fluttershy said if you don't have any medical texts for humans bring whatever you have about apes!"
Discord seemed uncharacteristically panicked. That was strange. He'd been somewhat weird since the whole thing with the Storm King, which he had never explained why he hadn't been present for despite the fact that he'd been promising for weeks that he would attend the Festival of Friendship and had sounded quite enthusiastic about it... but Discord was always weird in one way or another. Still, if a life was at stake Twilight didn't have time to figure it out. "I have books about apes. I don't have anything about humans, but, are you able to go through the portal? I can quickly send a message to Sunset to gather up medical texts and get them ready for you if you can go pick them up from her."
Discord rolled his eyes. "Really, Twilight. Can I go through your silly little magic portal to the land of magical humans? What do you think?"
"Well, the first time I went I lost my magic, and I would imagine that would be really bad for you—"
"Yes, but I'm not going that way. Think about it. I'm a dragon-pony; wouldn't going through that portal turn me into a werewolf?"
"A wha—never mind. I'll grab the books about apes. I'll teleport over to Fluttershy as soon as I've got them." She finished scrawling in the magical notebook. "Sunset will try to get something together for you, I'm sure." Spike wasn't here, so she had to grab the books with her magic herself rather than asking him to grab them for her.
"Arrivederci!" Discord caroled, and vanished. Moments later, Twilight teleported to Fluttershy's house.
The human on the couch was naked, except for underpants and a dressing taped directly below her ribs. Twilight winced. "Fluttershy, should we cover her with something? Letting people see their teats like that is a real taboo for humans."
Fluttershy shook her head. "Later, when she's stable. Right now we need to be able to access the injury. I think she's got a broken rib poking into a lung, and extensive internal bleeding in the intestinal region. And she's definitely got a wound here –" Her wing pointed at the dressing. "Unless you have some spells that can help, she might need surgery, but I'm not qualified to do surgery on humans. I've never even operated on an ape."
"I sent Discord to the human world to get medical texts from Sunset. If I can tell what's wrong with her, and what her body's supposed to be like, I might be able to cast a healing spell." She fired off a magic health bubble. "At the very least I've just sterilized the area so she won't have to worry about infection."
They opened up the anatomy books to review various apes. Centaurs, minotaurs, gargoyles, satyrs – oh, wait! So that was what the Storm King had been! She'd wondered – baboons, gorillas, chimpanzees... The human was fully bipedal, like the minotaurs, gargoyles and satyrs, which affected the shape of her spine and hips but didn't have much impact on her lungs or abdomen. None of the ape species had breasts; having had them, Twilight knew they were sensitive, squishy and probably didn't have much inside them aside from milk-making apparatus and fat, but she'd never actually read an anatomy textbook while she'd been in the human world. In retrospect that seemed like an oversight.
Between the two of them, and the magical scans Twilight was able to perform, they managed to figure out enough of it that Twilight could telekinetically get the rib back into place and cast a healing spell on the lungs, and suture the knife wound and mostly seal it, but there wasn't going to be anything either of them could do about the internal bleeding; it had been obvious where the lung was injured because there'd been a rib stuck in it, but it was not at all obvious where, exactly, the rest of the internal bleeding was coming from in the human's abdomen.
Then Discord popped in with a pale pink human woman with green hair, who was wearing a lab coat. "This isn't – I can't do a thing in this – wait, are those ponies? I've heard about this magic thing and that it's linked to ponies somehow..."
"I got us a doctor!" Discord said proudly. "Dr. Crash Cart, ER trauma surgeon!"
"I can't do anything here! You have no sterile field, you have no equipment, this woman needs a saline drip at the least and probably a blood transfusion—"
"Discord, would you be able to snap up the equipment Dr. Crash Cart would need?" Fluttershy asked.
"Say no more," Discord said, and equipment that actually looked like real medical equipment appeared all around them. They were still in Fluttershy's living room, but her furniture had turned into the medical equipment. "I'll have to go to the human world to get actual blood, though. None of this equipment will stick around for more than a day or two."
"Get type O negative, she'll be able to take that regardless of what her own type is. And I'm going to need an anesthetist, and they'll need anesthesia equipment." The woman shook her head. "What can we do to sterilize the field, pony people? Anything? Do you even know--"
"Uh, I already cast magic health bubble, and since you're here, I'll cast it again," Twilight said, doing so. "That sterilizes everything within the bubble."
"Oh. Well, good. For some reason I didn't expect ponies would understand germ theory."
Once Discord was back with the anesthetist and a few trauma nurses, the doctor went into action. Twilight watched intently as she cut the injured woman's abdomen open carefully, sutured holes in the woman's stomach and intestines closed, and then stitched her back together. With magic health bubble and a few healing spells, plus the blood transfusion and saline, they had the woman stable, though still weak and in need of bed rest until she was fully healed, within an hour, at which point Discord brought the human medical team back home.
They were likely to have some interesting stories, Twilight thought.
"Who is she?" she asked Discord when he got back.
Discord shrugged elaborately. "I'm sure I have no idea. I found her like this. Well, like she was when I brought her to Fluttershy."
"You went to investigate something," Fluttershy said. "And humans aren't native to Equestria. What were you looking for?"
His face was uncharacteristically series. "An incursion from another dimension." Discord turned to look at Twilight. "I sensed one, but by the time I got there to investigate there was nothing there. So I figured I'd hang around and see if it happened again... and when it did, I found this human."
"You seemed really panicked at the thought of the human dying," Twilight said.
"I wasn't panicked," Discord said, dismissively waving a paw. "I was just... concerned. I knew Fluttershy would be very upset if a strange animal died in her care—"
"And you would be very upset," Fluttershy said, taking his paw in her hoof. "I know how much you hate it when creatures die, Discord."
"Oh, well... yes, I guess that is true... I'm not a fan of death in any way, but when they're old, well, I'm used to it. But when creatures who are young die... that's not what chaos is for. That's not what it's about."
No one here had claimed it was, but Twilight suspected maybe he was responding to a very, very old argument. "Do you think she's responsible for the incursion?" she asked.
"If she was, whatever she used to do it blew up in her face. Well, literally in her chest," Discord said. "I don't know. There's something very odd about her. It's refreshing, but... potentially dangerous."
"Odd?" Discord calling something odd was... not exactly the norm. "In what way?"
"Her entire body is suffused with magic, of two different types. I didn't have time to really inspect her closely, but it seemed like one might be her own and one might be something someone cast on her. But she's a human, and she's from a lower-magic world than the one your pals come from. I've met plenty of humans with magic, but they came from high-magic worlds. Humans from low-magic worlds don't usually have magic, and they don't usually have magic done to them." He was suddenly wearing a detective hat and holding a large magnifying glass. "It's going to be fun to investigate."
"Well, not until she wakes up," Fluttershy said, "and is strong enough to answer your questions. She was in very bad shape, you know. If you hadn't gotten the human doctors here to treat her, I think she might have died." She touched Discord's paw, making him smile goofily. "I'm very proud of you. You saved her life."
"I did, didn't I?" Discord said, in a tone that sounded like he was going to start preening his wings, or grooming himself like a cat. "She was lucky I was there when she came through!"
"She certainly was," Fluttershy said. "But now that she's in recovery... can you put my living room back? Not everything, of course, I know she needs that saline drip with the poppyseed extract and of course she needs a bed, but—"
"Say no more." Discord snapped, and restored the living room, with the exception that the couch was still missing and the bed, with an IV pole next to it, was still there, the injured woman lying in it.
Twilight lifted the woman's clothes off the floor where Discord had discarded them. "I'm going to take these to Rarity to have them repaired, and if she can make a robe or pajamas or something that the poor human can wear while she's recovering... these things seem really complicated. I don't even see how she got these on in the first place." There were a pair of boots that were, disturbingly, made of leather, and they were as tall as Fluttershy was at the head. Humans used things like leather because cows weren't intelligent in their world and they were predatory omnivores, like griffins, but it was still upsetting on a gut level. "Maybe Rarity can come up with some better shoes for her, too. These boots... ugh."
There was a sudden banging on the door. Neither of the ponies had expected anyone – Twilight and Fluttershy looked at each other in bewilderment. Discord facepalmed. "I'll let you two deal with this," he said. "I have investigations to conduct."
He vanished. Twilight went to the door, figuring she'd spare Fluttershy the anxiety of answering the door for a stranger, but as soon as she put her hoof on the knob, the door swung open, narrowly missing her head, and Pinkie Pie bounced in. "My Pinkie Sense told me there's somepony new in town who needs a party, and that they're at Fluttershy's? Who is it? Where are they? Tell me!" This last was said with her face pressed up against Twilight's, somehow staring down at Twilight even though she was shorter than Twilight.
"Pinkie!" Fluttershy snapped. "Be quiet! The person you're looking for is recovering from terrible injuries and she is sleeping."
"Oh, sorry," Pinkie whispered, very loudly for a whisper. She noticed the bed for the first time. "Wow! Is – is that a human?"
Twilight nodded. "Discord says she's a different kind of human than the kind from the alternate world we know about. He found her, with life threatening injuries. We've had doctors in here to stitch her up and she's stable now, but I don't think she's going to have the strength for a welcoming party for a while, Pinkie."
Pinkie nodded somberly. "We'll just have to have a super big one when she's well enough, to welcome her to Ponyville and celebrate her getting better!"
"I'm taking her clothes over to Rarity's. Humans need clothes, they don't have coats, or tails to hide their, um..."
"Naughty bits?" Pinkie suggested.
Twilight flushed. "Yeah, those. These clothes are a wreck and I can't figure out how a human would even wear them but I'm sure Rarity can figure it out."
"I'll go with you! She's not gonna want to have a party if she's naked!"
"I'll stay here and take care of her if she needs anything," Fluttershy said.
Rarity found the outfit... bizarre, to say the least, and she had seen some very strange fashions in her time. There was a black turtleneck and bright blue leggings, with a golden belt. That wasn't too strange. There was a garment that seemed to be designed to hold and restrain the strangely enlarged human mammaries, which made a certain amount of sense; Rarity certainly wouldn't want to be running around with those things hanging off her body without anything to keep them from bouncing and jiggling. There were white silken gloves for the human's multi-digit paws. There were extremely tall boots made of black leather, which Rarity was trying very very hard not to be completely freaked out about. And then there was the... whatever-this-was.
It was... something like a tunic, with a lengthy tail, which would be absolutely normal for a pony tunic but on a creature without a tail, it seemed very strange. The sleeves trailed in a way that would be absolutely horrible on a pony, dragging in the dirt, but on a biped might just work... or might be ridiculously ostentatious. And then there was the collar... how did this even work? The sleeves were partially detached, and there was an enormous high collar that was made of a different, stiffer material, in a completely different color – blue, but not quite the same blue as the leggings. The outer surface of the tunic was magenta, and made of some sort of velvety material, and the inside was pure white and seemed to be some sort of cotton blend. None of the fabrics were anything Rarity recognized, let alone could match; she tried staining a tiny corner of the fabric to see if she could identify how best to clean the blood out, but the material was impervious to any stain she tried, whether mud, dye, bleach, or grape juice. It must have been soaking in blood for quite some time to be as stained as it got, she thought.
In any case, without being able to match the fabric, she couldn't easily repair it, and she didn't know what was safe to clean it with, so she set it aside in favor of making new clothes to the same measurements. The softness of the material told her that the human liked rich, soft fabrics, and the colors gave her some idea what the human would like. She made a nightgown in a blue similar to the legging color, with gold-colored piping, and a plush magenta bathrobe. Twilight came by with the panties the human had been wearing, which was... interesting. Panties, for ponies, were almost exclusively either sexy lingerie or protective clothing for elderly ponies who weren't quite entirely as continent as they wanted to be, but these didn't seem to fill either role. They were cotton and very utilitarian, but much too thin to protect against bathroom accidents. She asked Twilight about it, and Twilight turned bright red.
"Um... huh. So, uh. You know how you feel when you're in estrus and there's a good-looking stallion?" Twilight looked down, pawing at the ground with her hoof in the universal pony expression of "oh dear I'm so embarrassed." "Humans are in, I guess like a pre-estrus, all the time, and... they don't have a tail to keep their, uh, you know, private parts away from their clothes..."
"Oh! Say no more, I fully understand," Rarity said, turning somewhat red herself. Lacking a tail, and standing bipedally... human females would end up staining their clothes every time they experienced desire, which apparently for human females was all the time. She made a dozen of the panties for the human; it sounded like they needed to be washed a lot.
The hoofgear gave her conniptions. The blood cleaned off the leather fairly well, but that wasn't the point; no one was going to make friends with ponies while walking around with dead cow on their legs. (According to Twilight it was almost certainly dead cow; humans didn't eat ponies or use their skin, as far as she knew. It was all cows. Rarity knew cows weren't intelligent in that universe, but she felt terribly for them anyway.) But, hoofgear for a creature with such incredibly different lower paws – right, Twilight said the word was "feet" – seemed like an exciting challenge. Rarity usually stayed away from making pony shoes; it was more metallurgy than sewing, most of the time. These would be more like garments. She managed to source some very expensive ethical snakeskin, taken from molts, and made boots to the same shape as the lower part of the ridiculously tall boots the human had arrived in. Hopefully she didn't really need boots to be that tall, because Rarity couldn't get enough snakeskin to make boots that size. She made the soles out of woven bamboo and lined the whole thing with plush, absorbent cotton fabric. Twilight said that "hands" and "feet", the human equivalent of hooves, were much more sensitive than hooves, a lot more akin to a pony's face in sensitivity, so something that felt nice seemed required.
However, an injured person wearing a nightgown and a bathrobe should not be gallivanting about in boots. Twilight didn't know what kind of gear humans wore on their feet when they were lounging around at the spa – did they have spas? Of course they had to have spas, what kind of a civilization wouldn't have spas? – but she consulted Sunset via her book, and reported back about "slippers", which sounded absolutely lovely and Rarity decided then and there that she had to figure out how to make those for ponies.
"Do you think she'll like these?" she asked Twilight and Fluttershy, showing off the garments she'd made for the otherworldly visitor, who hadn't woken up yet. It had taken a day for her to make all the clothes. She hoped that didn't mean the human was in a coma. In one of the medical thriller romances she'd read, they said that a pony who slept for more than two days might be in a coma, particularly if injury was involved.
"I'm sure she will," Fluttershy said.
"I can't see why not," Twilight said. "Once she wakes up she can tell you what kind of regular clothes to make. I can't believe for a minute that complicated... thing she was wearing is normal clothes where she comes from."
"Has Discord found out anything about where she came from?"
Fluttershy said, "He said he thinks he's found the world, but not why it was generating portals. It's really low-magic but apparently there are some humans with wings? But very, very few of them. They seem to be some kind of squad like the Wonderbolts."
"How very strange," Rarity said. She looked down at the visitor. "Well, please do tell me when she wakes up. I can't wait to see what my creations look like on her. I've never designed for a human before."
"We really do all need to take a trip to Sunset's world one of these days," Twilight said. "You guys should get to try being humans for yourselves. I mean, we were all seaponies, and I turned us all into Breezies that one time, but human bodies aren't shaped like pony bodies at all. It's a real experience."
Rarity agreed. She'd love to meet her young human counterpart and give her some advice. The other Rarity didn't own a boutique yet, since she was either technically a child or just barely an adult, Rarity wasn't sure.
When Twilight showed Applejack the sleeping human, Applejack gazed down at her for a long while. "Something ain't right," she finally said.
"What do you mean?" Twilight asked.
"I don't know," Applejack said. "She feels real enough." She touched the human's arm with her hoof. "But when I look close at her, I feel like... I don't know. Double vision, but not quite. Like... there's something underneath what we see, but I can't see what it is."
"Do you think it's dangerous?"
"Anything could be dangerous, but it's important to give folks the benefit for the doubt. She ain't a Changeling or Discord would know. Right?" This was addressed to Fluttershy.
"Um, yes, he says he can detect different kinds of magic, so he'd know if somepony was a Changeling."
"So... I don't reckon there's any way to know if she's dangerous or not until she wakes up, but she's recovering from being half dead, so I don't figure she's dangerous now, anyway." She shook her head. "Just wish I knew what I was looking at."
Rainbow Dash didn't want to seem like she was really curious, or upset, or especially not scared, because none of those things would make her look cool, so her reaction to Fluttershy showing her the human was to shrug. "Another weird creature, yadda yadda," she said. "We met a lot of freaky looking folks when we were trying to defeat the Storm King. Human's a thing Twilight's seen, at least."
"Well, yes, but the friends we made while we were fighting the Storm King are from our own world. This human's from a portal to another dimension," Fluttershy said.
"Yeah, just like the other humans." Rainbow shrugged. "She's cool and all. Lemme know when she wakes up. Also I wanna talk to Discord, can you get him to come here?"
"I, sure, but, um... you want to talk to Discord? That's, um, unexpected."
"Hey, he's our friend now, right? And I talk to friends. So why not?" She shrugged again. "Sometimes we have flying contests. He's pretty good when he grows his wings out. I kick his butt every time, but he's not bad."
Fluttershy apparently had a candle that, once lit, could transmit letters to Discord the same way Spike could send them, as if the candle was dragonfire somehow. She wrote a note to Discord, and he popped in five minutes later. "Rainbow Dash! I hear you wanted to talk to me. My life is now complete!" He was suddenly wearing a ballroom gown, standing on a stage with a microphone, with paparazzi that also looked like Discord all around taking pictures. "You like me! You really like me!"
"Yeah, I don't wanna bug Fluttershy's patient so let's step outside," Rainbow said casually.
"All right, though I confess I'm just dying to know what you have to say," Discord said, and then vanished. Rainbow hovered through the door, and there he was.
"Listen, I didn't want to talk in there because I don't wanna worry Fluttershy and you don't either so I want you to be honest. How dangerous are humans?"
Discord stroked his beard. "An interesting question. Humans are inherently a much more disharmonious species than ponies. The ones Twilight encountered are... how to put this in layperson terms... their universe is connected to ours, and they're within the range of the field of Harmony that radiates through Equestria. So they're much more harmonious than the average human. This one is much more likely to be from a world where humans behave... violently."
"And you're leaving Fluttershy alone with her?"
Discord scowled. "Yes. Humans aren't particularly dangerous to ponies without their weapons. She may be bigger and stronger than Fluttershy, but Fluttershy can fly and she can't. Fluttershy is experienced with dangerous animals and knows how to keep from being attacked. Also she has a house full of animals who would lay down their lives for her. Also she has abilities that border on mind control. Also the human is naked and was nearly dead when she got here." He considered. "They're good at throwing things. I should warn Fluttershy about that. But I don't think she's capable of being much of a threat right now, or for a while after she wakes up."
Rainbow frowned. "I still don't like it. You're leaving Fluttershy alone with an animal that's as smart as a pony but more violent."
"They're like griffins, if griffins were unable to fly and didn't have beaks or claws and were significantly weaker in proportion to their size. They're not murder machines, Rainbow. They're just greedy and unpredictable."
"I'm gonna keep an eye on her anyway. You make sure Fluttershy tells me when she wakes up, and I'm going to keep my weather patrols centered around Fluttershy's house."
"And how do you expect to control Ponyville weather from a point that's as far from the center of Ponyville as you can get and still put Ponyville on your return envelopes?"
"Simple." Rainbow grinned. "I'm awesome."
Author's Note
This story takes place right after the movie, which takes place right after Season 7, and replaces Seasons 8 and 9.
First Meeting Of The Former Now Reformed Villains Who Were Used By Another Villain They Thought Was An Ally Before Being Betrayed Club
Gel Sadra rose to consciousness slowly, aware first of sounds around her – someone singing, a bird tweeting – and then of smells, the fresh smell of grass and flowers coming to her in a slight breeze. She became aware that she was lying in a bed, and then realized that awareness meant she was alive. She hadn't expected to be.
The conversation she'd had with her mother as she was dying came back to her. Had she hallucinated that, or had it really happened?
She pried one eye open, and shut it immediately against the bright sunlight. There was a window, and it was open, hence the breeze and the bright sunbeam. Gel Sadra tried again, this time keeping both eyes open but squinted to almost closed.
There was a yellow horse with wings fluttering past.
That made Gel Sadra open her eyes fully. The yellow horse was very, very small – maybe a meter tall or maybe just a bit more – and she didn't really look exactly like a horse. Her pink mane was styled as if it were human hair; her muzzle was much shorter than a horse's; she had a high forehead like a human; and her eyes were ridiculously large and set in the front of her face, rather than to either side like a horse. And she very definitely had wings, and she very definitely was hovering with them.
"You're awake!" the horse said, in a feminine voice, which reassured Gel Sadra that she had correctly assumed the horse's sex. She was speaking English, which was not Gel Sadra's best language; she was fluent enough, but she had an accent. Her native languages were Spanish and Japanese. It did occur to her that it was ridiculous to be concerned with what language a talking, flying, tiny horse was speaking, but if she wasn't hallucinating then this was happening and if she was hallucinating then she was probably about to die, because it would mean the conversation with her mother hadn't happened either and she was lying in a field of flowers waiting for death to take her. So she pragmatically decided to proceed as if all of this was happening. It wasn't as if she had the energy to freak out and start declaring that this was impossible, anyway.
"Omae wa dare ka? Nihongo ga wakaru ka?" she asked.
The horse's eyebrows went up. Gel Sadra had previously been unaware that horses had eyebrows. "Oh, oh, I know this! You're speaking Neighponese! Ah, um, Fluttershy desu," she said, revealing that her accent was far worse in Japanese than Gel Sadra's was in English... she actually pronounced the u in desu. "Sumimasen... Neighpongo o... chiisai... wakarimasu... Oh, I think that's right but I'm really not that good at it."
She certainly wasn't; she'd just said "Sorry, I small understand Japanese", which made no sense, but Gel Sadra assumed she was trying to say she understood a little. "Habla usted Español?" she tried, much more politely than the Japanese she'd spoken.
"Oh, that's Esponyol! No, I don't understand it... I only understand a little Neighponese because I'm trying to learn it to read manga before it comes out in Equestria, but I do have a friend who can cast a translation spell if you don't speak Equestrian..."
Translation spell? "I speak English too," Gel Sadra said hoarsely. "I'm just better at the others."
"Oh, that's wonderful! We won't even need a translation spell. Oh, but you're from another world entirely! You must be very confused. This is the land of Equestria, which is mostly a nation of ponies, but we do have some other species living here—there's a zebra and two donkeys in town, and a young dragon but he's very nice, not a big scary dragon at all. You're in the town of Ponyville, and I'm Fluttershy."
There was an IV in Gel Sadra's arm, and under the thin blanket she was naked. "Is this a hospital?" It didn't look like a hospital. It looked like someone's house. Also there were chipmunks in it, and a rabbit. Gel Sadra was fairly sure hospitals did not usually have such creatures in them. Although, who knew? If the horse talked, and there were also talking zebras and donkeys, then maybe everything talked. Maybe the chipmunks were the nurses.
"No, this is my house. My friend Discord brought you here to get medical treatment."
There was a bright flash of light, and another creature appeared. Where the pony was very small, this creature was very tall. Gel Sadra's first impression was of a snake on legs, before she got a better look at the creature and realized that he was covered with fur, feathers and scales, and that none of his limbs matched. Was every creature around here a chimera? The pony had wings, and this thing had traits of so many different animals it was impossible to tell what it really was. "Did I hear my name?" the creature said in a high-pitched but masculine voice, jovially.
"Don't worry," the pony said. "Discord may look very scary, but he's reformed and he would never hurt you." Gel Sadra had spent the past two years building terrifying-looking gigantic mechanical monsters to attack the nations of the world with. The chimera wasn't in her top twenty for scary-looking things.
"Yes, I'm unique! One of a kind! You can stare, I don't mind," the chimera said. "Ponies around here are a dime a dozen – aside from my friend Fluttershy here, who's in a league of her own – but I am entirely without peer."
"When he found you, you were dying. He brought you here and he brought doctors to take care of you." The pony smiled wryly. "I take care of animals for a living, and sometimes I'm a bit of a xenomedic for non-pony talking species, but I'd never seen a human before. That's what you are, right?"
Gel Sadra nodded. She wasn't human, not truly, not by human standards; Sosai X had mutated her into something greater than an ordinary human. But from the perspective of a pony, she was definitely human. The thought reminded her. "Where is Sosai X?"
"The who what now?" the chimera said.
"Um, I'm sorry, I've never heard of that. Or him, or her. I don't really know what you're talking about. Or who."
"I need to find him." She tried to sit up. Pain shot through her chest, forcing her back down.
"You need to get your rest," the pony said sternly. "The doctors stitched you up and my friend Twilight cast a healing spell on you, so those ribs are coming back together, but it's not instantaneous and you're going to be in a lot of pain if you try to move around before they're fully healed.
"Who is Sosai X?" the chimera asked.
She remembered what her mother had said. "I need to find the defenders of this world. The champions. Who protects this world?"
"Oh! I think maybe you mean my friends," the pony said.
The chimera scowled. "And you," he said. "Don't sell yourself short, Fluttershy."
The yellow pony didn't look like much of a fighter, but then, three of the Science Ninjas were a small slender woman, a young teenage boy, and a fat man, so that didn't mean much. "Then I need to talk to you and –" A hacking cough stopped her from talking for a minute or two. "...your friends..." she finished, weakly.
"Discord, can you go let my friends know they should meet us here? But don't teleport them. Let them come on their own."
"It'd be faster to teleport them," the chimera complained.
"Yes, but it's not very nice to just pop in on ponies and teleport them without warning or permission."
"What if I got permission?"
The yellow pony raised one eyebrow and cocked her head at him in a look of frank skepticism, and he drooped his head and pouted. "Oh, all right." He vanished.
"Now let me make you some nice tea with lemon and honey. Do you drink tea?"
"Sometimes. Usually coffee."
"Well, coffee is wonderful for waking up in the morning, but it won't do anything good for your throat." The yellow pony bustled off.
Gel Sadra tried to get out of the bed, but found herself much too weak. The yellow pony came back and helped her sit up in the bed, against fluffed-up pillows. "The kettle's on the burner now; it'll just be a few minutes."
"When can I get this IV out?"
"That's giving you painkilling potions. You'd be in a lot of pain if we removed it, and our local apothecary – she's the zebra I mentioned earlier – doesn't know how to brew for a human, so we can't switch you to oral potions yet. But you're healing very nicely! In a couple of days, we should be able to take it out, and in the meantime, I'm getting a walker made for you so you can get some exercise while you're still too weak to go full bipedal. I have an Abyssinian friend – that's a bipedal cat, not like the four-footed cats in Anugypt – who says he can get one for me, since of course Abyssinians are all bipeds so their doctors know all about what bipeds need." The kettle whistled. "Let me go put the tea on."
It slowly dawned on Gel Sadra that she wasn't wearing any clothes. Sosai had told her that going nude was shameful and embarrassing and she should never let anyone see her without her mask or her full costume and if her men knew she was a woman they would never follow her. Her voice sounded like a man's... a side effect, she guessed, of what Sosai had done to her. Or maybe he'd done it on purpose so she could pretend to be a man. But she wasn't a man and the thought of having to pretend had made her angry, so she'd adopted talking like an onnagata, a female impersonator from Kabuki theater, and Sosai had let her do it because it made her sound different and weird. Also she'd killed any Galactor who'd ever said anything derogatory about women in her hearing. She was hardly a feminist – she'd also killed or driven off all the other women in Galactor, because they were real women who looked and sounded like women and what if Sosai decided he liked them better than he liked her? But any Galactor running his mouth about the supposed inferiority of women would be a threat to her power if she ever let her gender be widely known.
The pony hadn't worn clothes. The chimera hadn't worn clothes. Maybe that was what you did in this world. Maybe nobody wore clothes. Maybe it wasn't shameful to be naked here.
On the other hand, neither the pony nor the chimera had breasts, and she couldn't see either of their parts even though the chimera was standing upright and really should have something visible between his legs. "Where are my clothes?"
"The tea is steeping," the yellow pony said, fluttering back in. Gel Sadra could see why they called her Fluttershy. Well, the flutter part at least. "I gave your clothes to my friend Rarity to repair them and clean them, but she thought they'd be too complicated for you to wear while you're recovering, so she brought you these." The pony unwrapped a linen package tied with a ribbon and pulled out a blue silk nightgown and a pair of panties. "Here you go." She helped Gel Sadra shrug into the nightgown, but Gel Sadra decided not to bother with the panties until she was strong enough to walk to the bathroom; as long as she was going to need a bedpan, panties weren't a good idea, and she could cover her parts with the blanket.
"So you're the champions of justice on this world?"
"Um... We don't really think of it like that. We're the champions of harmony, I guess. We're the Bearers of the Elements of Harmony, which are the most powerful magical artifacts on Earth."
"Earth?! Wait... this world is Earth?"
"Discord says most worlds are called Earth."
Gel Sadra fell back against her pillows. "Oh." The casual use of the world "magic" was disturbing her. "When you say magic... do you mean real magic? Like magic spells?"
"Well, that's part of magic, but usually only unicorns and alicorns can do spells, unless you've got an artifact or a ritual. Unicorns mostly use their magic for telekinesis. Pegasus magic lets us fly, and earth pony magic makes them really strong, and also bonded with the earth in some way, like growing things, or making food, or an affinity for rocks."
"Magic..." So magic was real in this world. The pony was so casual, talking about it. "You and your friends do magic to defeat your enemies?"
"Well, sometimes. We didn't really use the Elements against the Changelings or King Sombra – they were defeated with magic, just not our magic – and we defeated the Storm King with his own magic, but the Pony of Shadows we defeated with nothing but friendship. That was also how the Changelings were defeated the second time, but that wasn't us, that was our friend Starlight."
"How do you defeat an enemy with friendship?"
The pony smiled. "We have a saying here that friendship is magic." She went to the kitchen and brought back the tea. "Discord used to be an enemy. We defeated him the first time with the Elements of Harmony and turned him to stone, but it's horrible being stone, so Princess Celestia asked me to reform him with friendship, and now he's my good friend. Starlight used to be an enemy, but Twilight offered her friendship and Starlight became her student, and she just graduated a few months ago. It's always better to win with friendship, if you can." Her eyes dropped. "Sometimes you can't."
"You can't beat Sosai X with friendship."
"Maybe not, but wait until my friends are here to tell me about it. Here, sip your tea. The honey is good for your throat."
It was soothing. "Your friends are all ponies?"
"Yes, there's six of us. There's another pegasus like me, but she's a much better flyer. There's two earth ponies, and a unicorn."
"That makes five..."
"I know... I was just thinking how I could explain Twilight. She's an alicorn – a pony with the magic of all three races, so she has a horn and wings, but when I met her she was a unicorn. She ascended, oh, I think maybe four years ago? Five? It's so hard to keep track. Now she's a princess."
"So she's your leader?"
"Yes. She's the Element of Magic. I carry the Element of Kindness."
The door banged open and a blue flying pony with a short mane in various colors flew in. "Fluttershy! What're you telling the strange human all about our secret weapons for?"
Fluttershy did not quite roll her eyes. "They're not secret if you can read about them in books for foals in the library, Rainbow."
"Yeah, but the human doesn't know about them unless we tell her!"
"Why shouldn't I tell her?"
The blue pony pointed her hoof at Gel Sadra. "Because! She might be a bad guy! Even Discord says humans are disharmonious, so that's gotta be saying something! He says they're violent and stuff, and she came here wearing leather boots! If that's not a thing a villain would wear, I don't know what is."
"I'm not a villain anymore," Gel Sadra said, eyes downcast.
"Anymore! See, she admits it, she used to be a villain! How do we know she isn't still a villain?"
"Because she said she isn't, and if she was, she wouldn't have told us she used to be one," Fluttershy said patiently. "Please stop flying in her face. She's in a bed and she's very weak."
The blue pony backed off. "Okay, but I've got my eye on you," she said, obviously trying to sound threatening. It was very hard to feel threatened by a three foot tall adorable flying pony with big eyes, though. "And what's up with your voice? I thought mine was rough. You sound like a stallion!"
"My voice is just like that," Gel Sadra said. "It's always been." Another wave of anger at Sosai washed through her. She could have grown up normally, with a mother and a father, and been a normal woman, if he hadn't interfered.
An orange pony wearing a hat, with a blonde mane, trotted in through the door that the blue pony had left hanging open. "You got here before me," she said to the blue pony, almost accusingly.
"Yep," the blue pony said, smirking.
"Even though I'm comin' from practically next door and you were in Cloudsdale trainin' with the Wonderbolts."
"Like I told Discord. I'm not leaving Fluttershy alone with a human! They're disharmonious and violent, Discord said so and if he thinks they're disharmonious—"
"He is the Spirit of Disharmony, so he would be an expert," Fluttershy said. "But he also said he doesn't think our new human friend is a threat."
"Wait, I'm your friend?" Abruptly Gel Sadra remembered that "friend" was sometimes a figure of speech for "someone I know." "Or are you just saying that?"
Fluttershy smiled, but it was the orange pony who said, "Well, is there a good reason you know of why you shouldn't be our friend? 'Cause we've made friends with a lot stranger than you, ma'am."
"No, but... I don't think I've ever had a friend before..."
"Right, because humans are disharmonious and violent!" the blue pony said triumphantly.
Fluttershy glared at the blue pony. "Humans do have friends, or she wouldn't know what the word means." She turned to Gel Sadra. "My friend is very overprotective of me. She's the Element of Loyalty, and her name is Rainbow Dash."
"And I'm the fastest pegasus alive, thank you very much," the blue pony boasted. "So don't go getting any ideas."
"I'm Applejack," the orange pony said, tipping her hat and ducking her head in acknowledgement. Wait, how was she doing that? She just touched the hat with her hoof and the hat moved like it was glued to the hoof. She didn't have fingers, she was a pony.
"So," the blue pony said to the orange one. "Can you tell if she's lying about anything?"
"I haven't heard her say a darned thing other than she never had a friend before, and I don't get any feeling she was bein' dishonest about that, but who knows? I can't tell with Discord either, and I couldn't tell with Capper, so for all I know it doesn't work on folks who aren't equine. I'd need to hear more."
"Which should wait until we're all here," Fluttershy said. "Our human friend's lungs were badly injured; she shouldn't talk more than she has to."
A pink pony bounced in. She and the orange one must be the earth pony kind, since they didn't have wings or any visible horns. "Hiii! I'm Pinkie Pie! I'm the Ponyville welcome committee and local party pony, and I'm going to throw you a welcome party as soon as you're better! I thought it should be a surprise, but then I thought, no, you were in a bad fight and you got badly hurt and what if that means you're one of the people who panics and runs when they get surprised, or worse, tries to fight? So I thought I should tell you about the party in plenty of time to not surprise you, and if I'm not surprising you then I don't have to keep it a secret so I should tell you right now!"
"This is Pinkie Pie. She's the Element of Laughter, and Applejack is the Element of Honesty."
"What's your name?" the pink pony asked. She turned to Fluttershy. "Did she say what her name is? Are we right that she's a she? Am I misgendering a living creature?!" The last was almost shouted in a tone of mild horror.
"I'm a woman," Gel Sadra said, and then wondered if she could lay claim to that, given that she was only five years old. Should she say she was a girl instead? No. She'd been living as an adult for two years, she was stuck with this body, she was going to call herself a woman.
"Nice to meet you, Awoman! I'm Pinkie Pie but I said that already!"
Applejack facepalmed – wait, hooves didn't have palms, was that a facehoof then? Fluttershy said, "That's the human equivalent of a mare, not her name. I don't think. Oh, but if it is your name I'm sorry, I don't want to presume."
They wanted to know her name. The thought occurred to Gel Sadra that they didn't know her name. She could have a clean break with her evil past. She could take back the name she was born with, be Samantha Pandora –
--no. She sagged slightly. She didn't get that luxury. She couldn't erase her past; she couldn't pretend she hadn't been the murderous leader of Galactor for two years. "Gel Sadra," she said in a soft voice.
"That's a pretty name," Fluttershy said.
Gel Sadra shook her head. "No, it isn't."
"Well, you don't have to keep it if you don't like it," Applejack said. "Us ponies are big on having names we feel are right for us."
Fluttershy nodded. "My friend Bulk Biceps was born Snowflake, and Muffins has three different names she'll go by, though I think the other two are mean so I don't like to use them."
"It's the name I have to have," Gel Sadra said. "I don't deserve to change it."
"Well, if you did deserve to change it, what would you want to change it to?" Fluttershy asked.
"You don't need to deserve to change a name! You can just do it!" the pink pony said. "It's your name, you should like it!"
"It's up to you," Applejack said. "You think you should keep your name, go ahead."
"Tempest Shadow did the same thing," Fluttershy said.
"Yeah, but Tempest Shadow is objectively a much more awesome name than Fizzlepop Berrytwist," Rainbow Dash said.
"But that wasn't her reason."
"Her reason for what?" Two ponies entered, a purple one with wings and a horn who was noticeably bigger than the others, and a white unicorn. There was also a short purple reptile who looked like a human toddler. It was the purple pony who had spoken.
"Tempest's reason for not changing her name!" Pinkie Pie said. "This is Gel Sadra and she wants to change her name but she doesn't think she's allowed to!"
"I'm allowed to," Gel Sadra said hoarsely. "But I don't deserve to."
There was a flash of light, and the chimera appeared, wearing a white lab coat and a pair of reflective glasses. "Good news, everyone!" he said. "I've found the world Gel Sadra comes from!"
Rainbow Dash scowled. "You weren't here when she said her name, so how do you know—"
"Shh," the chimera, no longer dressed in his costume, said, laying a finger – a talon? What did you call the digit on a bird foot when it was on someone's arm instead of foot? – against Rainbow Dash's lips. "Loose lips sink ships, soldier. That's need to know only, and you don't need to know."
"Tell us what you found out, Discord," the purple one said. "That'll save Gel Sadra some time and energy with stuff she won't have to explain to us."
Gel Sadra pointed at the reptile. "What's that?"
"I'm a dragon," the reptile said, implausibly, in the voice of a boy, maybe slightly younger than the Swallow of the Science Ninja Team. "My name's Spike." Dragons looked like young children here?
"I'm Twilight Sparkle—"
"Princess Twilight Sparkle," the white unicorn said. "And I'm Rarity. I brought you your clothes, darling, but your boots are... well, they're not politically correct here. I understand that where you come from, cows don't talk, but here they do, so you really don't want to be wearing cowskin leather." A pair of snakeskin boots floated in front of Gel Sadra's face. Right, the yellow pony had said the unicorns had telekinesis. Gel Sadra had had telekinesis herself one time, but she'd been wearing an amplifier. She winced, remembering. That hadn't worked out well. "I made these for you as a replacement. The snakeskin comes from molts, so no animals were harmed to obtain these materials."
Tears abruptly stung Gel Sadra's eyes. If these ponies were so sensitive they wouldn't even kill snakes, what would they think of her once they knew of the terrible deeds she'd done? They said she was their friend now but surely that wouldn't last. Maybe she didn't have to tell them all the details... maybe she could tell them the basics of her villainous career without telling them how many people she'd killed. "Um... thank you."
"I also brought you some slippers for when you're feeling well enough to walk." The white pony looked very proud of herself, showing off the slippers, which were white and fuzzy. "It was quite the challenge designing for your foot, darling. Nothing on our world has feet quite like yours. We have apes, of course, but apes have feet shaped like your hand. Hand is the correct term, right?"
"If we're all done with the fashion show?" Discord said impatiently. "I said I had news and that was everypony's cue to start ignoring me?"
"Of course, we're sorry," Twilight said. "Please go on?"
"After I let you guys know to gather here, I went back to the incursion point Gel Sadra came through, and then checked the other one, and triangulated to the origin point. As I thought, it's a low-magic human world, and..." He hesitated. "Well, perhaps Gel Sadra should tell us her side of it first, before I get started."
No. That was a horrible idea. If Gel Sadra had to go first, and she said anything that tried to downplay how terrible she had been, the chimera could contradict her. She coughed, deliberately. Fluttershy said, "No, Discord, I think you should definitely go first. Gel Sadra should have some more tea for her throat."
He snapped the fingers on his paw, and a hot tea appeared on the table by the bedside. "There we go. I... have to admit, I'm a little uncomfortable talking about this... human societies in general are dreadfully inequine, but this particular one... Let's put it this way. Humans are well practiced at killing each other."
"Killing?" Pinkie Pie gasped.
"And even still, the level of violence I saw in this world was high even for a human world." He suddenly had a child's bubble blowing wand in his paw, and he blew a bubble that grew larger and larger until it was bigger than one of the ponies. Within the bubble, she saw one of the giant mecha she herself had created rampaging, firing lasers that caused buildings to explode. "This monster is artificial. The things that are exploding? Humans are inside them, being killed."
"That's horrible," Applejack said. "Why on Earth would anypony ever do a thing like that?"
"How awful!" Rarity exclaimed. "What sort of brutes... no, I cannot even imagine!"
"Anypony wouldn't," Discord said somberly. "Even Sombra never caused death and destruction like that. And the sort of brutes you get here on our world wouldn't either. Nothing you've fought ever has. The Storm King took slaves, but the people behind this mechanical monster – not a nation, but an organization, called Galactor – just killed."
The tears spilled over from Gel Sadra's eyes, and a single sob escaped her before she could hold it back. "It's all right," Fluttershy said gently. "You're safe now."
"No!" She shook her head wildly. "That's not – that's not why..."
"Mm, I should imagine not," Discord said. "A bit of a guilty conscience, perhaps?" He was floating in the air above her head, his head dangling down in front of hers.
"Guilty conscience? Why would you say that?" Twilight asked.
"Because, the leader of this organization – who is currently believed to be dead – is, or was, named... guess. Just take a guess."
"Justtakea Guess is a weird name for an evil leader of an organization that kills people!" Pinkie Pie said.
Gel Sadra shook her head wildly. "No. No." She knew the pony was probably just joking but this was not a thing to joke about. "The name of the former leader of Galactor... was Gel Sadra. That was me. I designed that thing in the image. I sent it to destroy innocent people, people who'd never done anything to harm me. I killed – I killed so many—" She had to force down another sob.
All of the ponies gasped, along with the dragon, and stared at her with expressions of shock and horror. Except for the blue pony. "Called it," she said.
"Why?" Twilight asked.
Gel Sadra looked around the room. "First you must understand... I hate who I was, I hate ever having been that person. I feel nothing but guilt and sorrow over what I've done. But I did those things because a greater villain than I could ever be made me do them... No. He didn't make me. He told me, and I obeyed. Maybe I could have disobeyed from the beginning, but I didn't understand enough to know better, or to want to. But I did those things for him, because he was my... my master. The closest thing I had to a father, or any parent, for all the life I can remember. And... and I'm here, today, because that monster, the thing that ripped me from my parents and made me into a monster, might have come to your world as well, and I want to help you fight it." She looked around. "I can only atone for what I've done by preventing it from happening to your world."
"Oooh, I know where this is going," Discord said. "Scuse-moi! Be right back!" He vanished.
"If you know now that what you did was terrible, how come you didn't know then?" Applejack demanded.
"To tell you that, I need to tell you about Galactor, and Sosai X, and how I came to be as I am."
Discord reappeared with an improbably long arm wrapped around the barrel of a struggling pony the purple-dark color of a bruise, whose horn was broken. "Get – off!" she yelled, her horn sparking. "Discord, what—why have you brought me here?"
"Because I sense friendship coming," Discord chortled in an exaggeratedly excited voice. "I believe it's going to be time for the very first meeting of Former Now Reformed Villains Who Were Used By Another Villain They Thought Was An Ally Before Being Betrayed!"
The broken-horned pony scowled. "Are you mocking me?"
"Maybe," Discord said. "Or maybe I recognize a slight degree of commonality between your story and a certain regrettable event in my own life, a few years back, and so I think we should both be here to give Gel Sadra moral support as she tells her own tragic tale of villainy and betrayal."
"Tempest... he's not wrong," Twilight said. "This is Gel Sadra. She's a human from another universe, where apparently she was in charge of an organization that created artificial monsters that killed hundreds of humans, and she's about to explain to us why, and why she reformed."
It was more like hundreds of thousands of humans, but Gel Sadra wasn't going to admit that if she didn't have to. She thought for a moment about what she was going to tell the ponies – should she admit her age to them? Wouldn't that lead them to start treating her like a child? But she had to – her story made no sense if she didn't.
"Many, many years ago, I don't know how many, Sosai X came to our world from a far distant one," she said. "He influenced history in many ways, eventually creating the Galactor organization. It operated from the shadows for most of its existence, but about six years ago, it launched itself on the world stage, under the leadership of a person named Berg Katse. Katse was a mutant created by Sosai; someone who was both male and female and could change from one to the other. But the true ruler was always Sosai X."
"And where were you, then?" Rainbow Dash asked accusingly.
"I'll get to that!" No. She couldn't lose her temper; she deserved these ponies' accusations. More calmly she went on. "Katse served Sosai, carrying out his plans, in order to achieve world domination, for a little bit more than four years. But then Sosai found out that his homeworld had been destroyed, and without it, there was no reason to conquer Earth. So he just decided to destroy it and leave. He tricked Katse into making a machine that would destroy the Earth. When Katse found out, he killed himself. But the Science Ninja Team stopped the destruction." She took a deep breath. "The Science Ninja Team – they're also called Gatchaman, although I think maybe that's really just their leader's codename – are the champions of justice of our world. They stopped Berg Katse and Galactor, over and over. They have technology that might also come from an alien world; there were rumors that an enemy world of Sosai's homeworld might have given them the technology. There were – still are, I hope – five of them, and they wear suits with wings that let them fly. Well, maybe only glide, but still."
"Pfft. That's not all that," Rainbow Dash said.
"It actually is," Twilight said. "On a low-magic world, wingpower has to be entirely about strength and wingspan, and humans are big enough that the wingspan needed to get them off the ground would be enormous. They'd never be strong enough to lift it."
"I didn't know any of this," Gel Sadra said, trying to hold back tears. "If I'd known sooner – we had the data, we stole it from ISO's archives, but Sosai said I didn't need to worry about it, and I believed him..." Fluttershy handed her a handkerchief, and she blew her nose into it. Several of the ponies winced. "There was a year of peace, after Sosai left and Berg Katse died. But then Sosai came back. He crashed into a cruise ship and killed almost everyone aboard. I was aboard, too, with my parents... I was a baby. Three years old. I don't know how old that is for horses."
"Ponies," Rarity corrected. "We are ponies. Not horses."
"Just like you're not an ape," Fluttershy said. "Horses are to us what apes are to you... is that right, Discord? They are evolved from apes, right?"
"Yes. As for the age, it's about the same," Discord said. "Three year old foals are generally better able to take care of themselves than three year old humans, but by adulthood it's all come out in the wash."
"Sosai took me, and... grew me. I don't know how long it took, I wasn't awake. It looked like minutes in the video he showed me of it, but maybe he sped up the tape."
"Tape?" Twilight frowned. "Do you mean film?"
"Yes, they're similar. When I woke up I was like I am now – an adult woman – and there was nothing in my head but what Sosai put there. He gave me languages and he gave me the knowledge I needed to design mecha, but he didn't teach me anything about compassion or kindness... the opposite, in fact. He told me that people's lives didn't matter, that I had to be ruthless. He mocked me when I spared lives and praised me when I killed." She clenched her blanket tightly in fury and grief. "I didn't know any better! He was the only thing I knew! And he told me – he told me, when I ruled the world, I could have everything exactly the way I wanted it, and I wanted that. I wanted a world where I could have everything I wanted and no one would ever say no to me. And all I had to do was be evil, and when I was evil, Sosai X said he was proud of me, and that was the other thing I wanted more than anything else."
The broken horned pony said, "That's even worse than the Storm King. I was an adult when he recruited me – a young adult, a teenager really, but not a toddler."
"I fought the Science Ninja Team, and their mentor, Dr. Nambu, and his assistant, Dr. Pan – Pan—" She couldn't say the name without starting to cry again.
"Sip your tea, it'll help," Fluttershy advised.
Gel Sadra tried that, and it did. "Dr. Pandora," she managed to say. "And every time I saw Dr. Pandora, I had a weird feeling of recognition, like I'd met her before. And then I started to have psychic flashes where I could see through her eyes. And then I had a dream, a dream about when I was a baby and Sosai took me. That was when Sosai explained to me what I am. And he said my parents were dead, but I was sure my mother was alive... and she was. Then." She swallowed more tea to keep back the tears.
"She was Dr. Pandora?" the little dragon said.
Gel Sadra stared at him in shock. "How did you know that? Are you psychic?"
"No, I just read a lot of comic books. You get a sense for how these things are gonna go."
"So you learned your mother was your enemy," Twilight said. "What happened then?"
"I made the – the most terrible mistake of my life," she said hoarsely, barely above a whisper. "I trusted Sosai, and I told him." She hung her head.
"Yeah, that sounds like a bad idea," Rainbow said.
"Rainbow," Fluttershy snapped.
"How long ago did this happen? Your being turned into an adult?" Twilight asked.
"Two years. About two years. I can't really be sure, I'm not good at telling time."
"Wait, so you're five?" the dragon asked.
"Yes. I think."
Rarity shook her head. "So horrible. You poor thing."
"If you got turned into an adult two years ago and you never had a birthday party, that means we have to have two birthday parties for you! As well as a Welcome to Ponyville party and a Congratulations On Getting Well party!"
"I've never had a party..."
Pinkie Pie gasped. "Never?"
"Don't distract her, Pinkie. She was telling her story," Twilight said.
"Yes." Gel Sadra bowed her head again. "I told Sosai. He said – he said we could recruit her. We should capture her, and then tell her I was her daughter, and she would join us." She squeezed her eyes shut. "I was a fool. I didn't understand why the Science Ninja Team, or Dr. Pandora, fought Galactor. I had no idea that right and wrong even exist or that people can be driven by a desire for justice and peace. I thought they were all fighting for revenge, and Dr. Pandora would be fighting for revenge for my death, except I wasn't dead, so of course she would join us..." She shook her head. "So stupid."
"It's understandable," the broken-horned unicorn – Tempest? Was that her name? – said. "You get drawn in close to a creature like that, they can make wrong feel right and up feel down. And you were only a foal."
"It's child if it's a human," Twilight corrected.
"Go on," Applejack said softly. "What happened?"
"Of course she refused. So – so Sosai – he, he—" She hyperventilated, dimly aware of Fluttershy's hoof stroking her back. It didn't feel like a hand, but it felt too soft to be an animal hoof, more like a palm than an actual horse hoof. "He put her in a rocket, and he – he sent it up into the sky, and then – and then he blew it up..."
"That's horrible," Twilight whispered. She seemed to be voicing what the group felt; they all had expressions of shock and horror on their faces.
"The last things she said to me, she'd told me Sosai was lying to me, and that the Solar Shift Plan – that was the thing we'd been working on for two years – would destroy the Earth, and the sun. So I looked into it. We had the data from ISO that we'd stolen, but I'd never looked at it because Sosai said I didn't have to. I read about what happened to Berg Katse, and I read about the Solar Shift Plan." She looked around at all the ponies. "What we'd been doing – what I'd been helping him do – would have created a wormhole and pushed our sun into it. The wormhole would empty out in another solar system, I think maybe Sosai's enemies who destroyed his world, and Earth would have been left without a sun, to drift in the cold and darkness, forever."
"Sounds something like Nightmare Moon, but a lot worse," Applejack said.
"Yeah, Nightmare Moon didn't wanna destroy the sun, she just didn't want to raise it," Rainbow said.
"And she had a contingency for ponykind's survival; when I went to the world where she had conquered, with Starlight's spell, it wasn't even very chilly, and plenty of things were growing. It was just nighttime. I think maybe she put the moon in front of the sun and kept them moving together, so the planet got plenty of heat, but no light." Twilight turned back to Gel Sadra. "Go on, I'm sorry we interrupted you."
"There isn't very much more for me to tell. I turned against Sosai. I sabotaged his Main Beam Cannon, and left the base, where I ran into Gatchaman – their leader the Eagle, and their number 2, Condor Joe. Condor Joe had a bomb inside him that was supposed to blow up Sosai X, so I went with him to help him reach Sosai, but I got stabbed by one of my men. And then the rest of the Science Ninja Team showed up to fight. I exposed Sosai's weak point so Condor Joe could blow it up, and Sosai shot me, and I fell into a pit and broke my rib, I think."
"Yes. Your rib was broken," Fluttershy said. "It should feel better now, but you're not at 100% yet."
"I felt like all of my insides were broken," Gel Sadra said. "Everything hurt, but I didn't want to die in the pit where Sosai had made me fall. I wanted... I wanted to see the beautiful world again. So I crawled out, and I climbed up a hill... and then I saw my mother."
"Your dead mother," Applejack said with a note of skepticism.
"Yes. My dead mother. She appeared to me in a sunbeam and she said... I could join her. I could let go and stop fighting and finally have peace, if I just let myself die. But part of Sosai X had escaped to another world, and she said, I had a choice. I could join her, if I wanted to, or I could go to your world to help you fight Sosai. And—" Her fists clenched in the fabric of the blankets again. "I haven't atoned enough to be worthy of dying and being at peace. I wanted to join my mother, but even more than that, I want to make up for the crimes I've committed. She said your world was full of people that looked like animals from our world, but that you can think, and talk, and love, just like humans, and that there were champions here but you wouldn't know how to fight Sosai X. So I said I wanted to come here... and then I blacked out."
"I'm not going to lie," Twilight said. "The things you've told us about what you've done are really disturbing. None of the enemies we've ever fought have killed people in large numbers. Changelings drain people to death eventually, and Sombra killed Princess Amore, and the Pony of Shadows probably would have killed ponies if we hadn't stopped him... but nothing like what you describe." She took a deep breath. "But it's always been our policy that if someone wants to reform, and make up for their crimes, then we accept them and we help them learn the ways of friendship. We did that for Discord, we did that for Tempest, we did it for two others you haven't met, Starlight and Sunset; we freed Princess Luna and Stygian from the darkness warping their minds and helped them find their way back to friendship... Starlight even helped the entire Changeling species become our friends. Then there's the fact that you were a child—"
"Technically she still is!" Pinkie Pie said.
"—taught to do evil by someone you trusted, and as soon as you realized you were doing evil things, you stopped. So... I can't speak for all of us, but I for one would be happy to have you as a friend."
"I agree," Rarity said. "We must make allowances for what you were taught, and the nature of the world you grew up in."
"You sound to me like someone who's genuinely sorry for what you've done, so I can accept it," Applejack said.
"Do you even need to ask? More friends are always the best thing!" Pinkie Pie bounced as she practically yelled what she was saying.
"I don't know if my opinion matters, but I'd be a hypocrite to say no, given what I've done," Tempest said.
Discord hugged her and Gel Sadra at the same time with improbably long arms. "Wonderful! We can have our Former Villains Who Were Betrayed By Another Villain We Trusted Stupidly club after all!" He didn't smell like an animal. He smelled like spices and ozone.
Tempest twisted free of him, but Gel Sadra didn't. No one had ever hugged her before, and he was warm and furry, and when Tempest got free he floated closer to Gel Sadra for a moment before letting her go.
"OK, fine, if everyone else believes her and is okay with her story then I guess I am too," Rainbow Dash said. "But I'll be watching you!"
Spike said, "What I want to know, though, is more about this Sosai X guy. What is he? Is he another human, or... you said you were showing off his weak point, so..."
"Sosai X was a machine, a very very large machine," Gel Sadra said. "But he talked to me in my mind sometimes, so I think he was more than that. Maybe – maybe a spirit, inside a machine. I don't know what part of him came over here, so I don't know what he looks like or where we'll find him."
"Ah, I wouldn't be too worried about it," Discord said. "When I investigated the other incursion point there was nothing there. If only part of him entered our world, it's a small enough part that it didn't disturb anything."
"I hope you're right," Twilight said. "But we'd better let the Princesses know, and we need to stay alert."
Gel Sadra started coughing again, her throat irritated by so much talking. Fluttershy guided her to try to sip more tea, but she ended up spilling it because she was coughing so hard. "I think Gel Sadra needs her rest," Fluttershy said, as Discord snapped her up a cough drop and gave it to her. "We can talk later, once she's a little more recovered."
The ponies seemed to take that as a dismissal, and filed out. Discord remained. "Fluttershy, what can I do to help?" He was literally hovering over Gel Sadra.
"I'm sure the cough drop was very helpful," Fluttershy said. "Gel Sadra, you need to rest."
Her throat didn't hurt as much, since she'd taken the cough drop, but despite her physical exhaustion she was too keyed up by remembered grief and shame to sleep. "I don't think I can. Sosai X is out there somewhere. As long as he's alive, I can't rest."
"Yes, you absolutely can," Fluttershy said firmly. "You will never be able to help us defeat him if you drive yourself into exhaustion because you refuse to rest."
"I'll do some searching," Discord said. "I suspect the entity's got magic, and that's where the external magic I sensed on Gel Sadra came from – whatever he did to her to make her an adult."
"It wasn't magic, it was science," Gel Sadra complained.
"Around here, magic is science. It's just a force that affects the world, that's highly responsive to minds directing and guiding it. I think in your world they call it psychic powers, or psionics, or something."
"Oh." That explained some things.
"Here, I have an idea." Discord snapped his talons again, and two soft, fuzzy doll versions of himself and Fluttershy were suddenly in her lap.
"What are these for?"
"You're actually five. Children sleep better with plushies, am I right, Fluttershy?"
"I don't need to sleep with dolls!" She tried to pick them up and throw them, but they just reappeared back in her lap, magically.
Fluttershy said firmly, "Maybe you don't need to sleep with dolls, but you've been through a terrible trauma and you've lost your mother and you're in a strange world where you're the only of your species, and maybe your emotions are more similar to the five-year-old you are than the adult your body seems to be. You need to rest. You can try sleeping with the plushies, and see if it helps."
Resentfully, Gel Sadra let Fluttershy put the plushies into her arms, and lay her back in the bed. "This is stupid," she complained. "It won't help. There's no way I can sleep."
The last thing she saw was Discord snapping his fingers again, the ones that looked like an eagle's talon. "Is that a challenge?" he asked, and then she was sinking down into a wonderful, thick, dark warmth, surrounding her, pressing against her everywhere and making her feel safe for the first time in... she couldn't remember. She couldn't remember ever feeling safe, until now.
Asleep, she held the plushies tightly to her body, unconscious of what she was doing or of the inhibitions that told her not to do it.
Twilight was somber, lost in thought, as she and Spike headed back to the Palace of Friendship. "Is something bugging you?" Spike asked. "I mean, aside from we might be facing a new bad guy we don't know anything about."
"It's just... I had plans, Spike. Big plans." She shook her head wistfully. "After all the traveling we did recently, and all the friendship missions we were directed toward by the map, I thought to myself... the biggest thing that's wrong with this world is how many ponies don't really understand friendship. How many people don't. I wanted to open a school to teach friendship, where my friends and I would be the teachers, but with a new enemy looming on the horizon, I don't think I can let myself be distracted by setting that up."
Spike gave her a look. "You mean your friends who all have other jobs were going to drop everything and become teachers, which none of them are trained or technically qualified for? Sounds like a great idea to me."
"Don't give me that. No one knows more about friendship than the six of us, after all we've been together."
"And no one knows more about chaos magic than Discord, but I notice you trying to read books about it rather than asking him. Because knowing a thing doesn't make you a good teacher." Spike sighed. "Twilight, you're a good teacher. You had a good teacher. But just imagine Rainbow Dash trying to teach anything. Well, except for stunt flying to a motivated pegasus or griffin who already knows the basics of it. But what she's good at, she's too advanced, and what she's not good at, how would she teach it?"
"Well, she's been studying friendship along with me for years."
"Right, but... when you were in the School for Gifted Unicorns, you went to regular school at Canterlot Academy to learn all the basic stuff like reading and math, and you had regular unicorn teachers for the basics of magic, and you didn't do the advanced stuff with Princess Celestia until you had the basics down. What are you gonna do with your School of Friendship, send all the students over to Ponyville Elementary to learn their math and their Equestrian history, and you just focus on friendship lessons?"
"I... guess I was thinking we'd teach them those subjects too."
"Then I think you need a rethink, Twilight, because that's a really dumb idea. Fluttershy and Applejack might be patient enough to be decent teachers, but can you really imagine Pinkie sitting still long enough to teach a class? Plus Rarity has three boutiques and is still doing designer work for her clients; is she supposed to give up her dream to go teach friendship? Is Fluttershy gonna give up the sanctuary? Or are you going to figure out how to cast a spell so that none of you need sleep, so you can do both things? Maybe reopen the Mirror Pool?"
"Yeah, I... guess you're right, Spike. I just – my friends know so much about friendship, and the world needs a school that teaches friendship..."
"Well, you can open one yourself in the future, but your friends can just be guest lecturers or something. You could take students who actually know something about teaching, to be your friendship students like Starlight was, and then when they're trained and they know everything you do, then you can open a school and they can teach at it."
"That's a great idea!" She looked down at him. "How did you get so smart, Spike?"
"I had a great teacher," he said, grinning at her.
As they approached the palace, walking up the path, Discord appeared, floating in air. "Twilight! I've just had the most marvelous idea!"
Twilight managed not to facehoof. She continued onward into the palace, making him follow her. While she didn't know this for certain – he'd never admitted it – she thought that the palace might inhibit his otherwise nearly limitless powers. "What would that be?"
"I should take Gel Sadra as my friendship student!" he offered, touching down gently on his dragon foot and then walking normally. "Just like you did with Starlight! Who better to teach a reformed villain about friendship than another reformed villain?"
"That's... not really a great idea," Twilight said carefully, which was greatly toned down from her immediate mental reaction of Oh no you don't.
Discord frowned. "What, do you think I wouldn't be a good teacher?"
"No, it's just that... look. You're the only one with any familiarity with her world. The rest of us aren't going to know what she doesn't know, and what she might confuse for something else. I mean, Spike and I have been to a human world, and I've been a human, but you said that her world was very different from that one." She turned to face him, now that they were both inside her palace. "What you need to teach her about isn't friendship – not by having her as a formal student, anyway. I can't see you wanting to give someone reading assignments and making them write essays!" Twilight laughed, somewhat forcedly.
"So... what are you suggesting?"
"Be her friend. Model friendship to her; teach by example, not by lecturing and giving assignments. And be her teacher about Equestria, and the rest of our world."
"That sounds like a good idea," Spike said. "Also, she's the only human here, and you're the only draconequus, so you have something in common besides being reformed villains."
"True," Discord said, nodding.
"She probably has something in common with Tempest Shadow as well, which you noticed before anyone else," Twilight said. "But... try not to irritate Tempest too much? She doesn't have much of a sense of humor."
"Oh, I've had my own interactions with her," Discord said.
Twilight wasn't sure if she liked the sound of that. She decided not to address it. "Anyway, I think you could be really helpful in getting Gel Sadra integrated into our society, and you could teach her a lot about friendship – but not as a teacher. Show her friendship. Show her what it's like and how it feels to have a friend, and what you should do for your friends. As a former villain you'd be one of the most sympathetic to her struggle, and like Spike pointed out, you know what it's like to be the only one of your kind. Show her our world, teach her about it. Maybe if you can figure out how to help her access her magic, too."
"I am a big enough draconequus to admit when someone else has a better idea than I do," Discord said. "And I will admit it, Twilight. That sounds like a marvelous idea."
"I'm glad. I think you could be really helpful to her."
"Wonderful! So glad we had this talk. Adios!" He vanished.
"Whew," Spike said. "That was close."
"That's not very nice, Spike," Twilight said, privately agreeing with him. But Discord's emotions were so volatile and he so easily slid into believing Twilight wasn't really his friend, she had to be very careful about what she said. He couldn't read minds, but he could see, and hear, things that had happened in the past, if he chose to. "But I do think Discord shouldn't be trying to present himself as an authority on friendship. He should be more like... an older fellow student, who's been on the same path and has moved forward on it."
Spike began laughing hysterically. "What's so funny?"
"You ever read any comic books from Neighpon?"
"Yes, I have. They call them manga, right? Fluttershy's a big fan of them."
"Well, they're comic books. So I read a bunch of them, mostly the ones Fluttershy has, and there's this whole thing about older students, they call them sempai, and the younger students always have crushes on their sempai and want sempai to notice them..." He laughed. "So you just described Discord as being Gel Sadra's sempai."
Twilight chuckled. She was familiar with the trope Spike was talking about. "She's only five. Let's hope not."
Equestria was mostly a very safe nation, but there were monstrous hazards as well as accidents; occasionally a foal was orphaned. There were very few orphanages, though, because ponies were big-hearted and generous, and frequently reached out to care for abandoned foals, often loving them as much as they would their own foals.
But there were some foals, for whatever reason, who could not find a home, and for those, there were orphanages. For example, if a filly drugged her own parents with sleeping potions and then set fire to their house, killing them, because she was mad that they wouldn't take her on a promised trip to the Pony Island amusement park after work obligations made it impossible to go, it was entirely possible that her closest relatives, while not actually aware of her crimes, would pick up something odd and unsettling about her, and refuse to take her in. According to Cozy Glow, this was because her aunt was selfish and mean, and she much preferred living in the orphanage. According to Warm Hearth, her aunt, "that filly's not right".
This was probably the best possible decision for Warm Hearth and her own children, who likely would not have all survived taking Cozy in. By this point in her life, Cozy had killed two of her fellow orphans. One, she'd poisoned because she was curious as to what would happen if a pony ate yew, after she'd been told it was highly poisonous. Turned out it was! Always good to check things like that. The other was her roommate, an earth pony she'd lured up to the rooftop and then shoved off, because she didn't want to have a roommate, and because she wanted a pretty jeweled hairclip her roommate owned. After that, she'd felt that it wasn't safe to kill any more of them; being a foal kept ponies from suspecting her in murders, but that only went so far.
Cozy was sick of the orphanage. She was meant for better and greater things, she was sure. So when she got her hooves on a book that would supposedly allow her to summon magical spirits to her aid, it didn't particularly bother her that the magic the book required was blood magic, absolutely illegal in Equestria. She didn't need to kill ponies to summon spirits; the death of any creature who had blood would do. Cozy took to going out in the nearby woods, trapping small animals, and then stomping them to death with horseshoes on, to power her ritual. She did it more than once, despite the fact that it didn't seem to work. It was easy, it was magic – she could feel the power, even if it didn't result in getting a magical servant, and Cozy craved magic, resenting her status as a pegasus instead of a unicorn – so she kept it up.
Today all of that changed.
As soon as she completed the ritual, as soon as her circle was charged with the blood of the mole she'd killed, she saw a flame in her mind. It flickered, as if in danger of being blown out. "WHO ARE YOU, TO CONNECT TO MY MIND THIS WAY?" a voice demanded.
"I'm Cozy Glow and I'm a pegasus, and I'm supposed to be summoning a spirit servant. Are you my spirit servant?"
"X IS NO SERVANT!" the voice shouted.
"Okay, okay! Cheez whiz, you don't need to get so upset about it, I'm just asking. If you're not my spirit servant, then how come I can talk to you?"
"...YOU SUMMONED ME. SOMEHOW. MY BODY IS... DESTROYED. DAMAGED. ABANDONED. I NEED A HOST."
"Huh. Well, maybe I can help you out, mister! But what can you do for me?"
"YOU SEEK POWER?"
Cozy smiled, the uncontrollable smile of someone whose greatest desire has finally been voiced. "I sure do!"
"THEN GIVE ME YOUR BODY AS A HOST, AND I WILL MAKE YOU RULER OF THIS WORLD."
"Uh-uh! I may be young, but I wasn't born yesterday, Mr. Flame in my Head. If I let you into my body you'll take it over!"
"WITHOUT A BODY I WILL DISSOLVE INTO THE AETHER. I MUST HAVE AN ANCHOR. GIVE ME ONE!"
"Don't get so impatient! I can definitely get you a host body but you're just going to have to hang on a bit, okay?"
Later, when the entity that called itself X was firmly situated within the body of a stray cat Cozy had captured, she detected a distinct feeling of deep humiliation from him, and rage. "It's not easy to get a pony," Cozy told him, holding him on her lap and petting him. "Most ponies aren't going to come out and join my ritual just because I asked them to! They'll be creeped out by the dead animals!"
"I REQUIRE A HOST WITH MORE POWER. AND MORE MIND. I CANNOT HELP YOU TO RULE FROM INSIDE THIS CREATURE."
"Okay, so let me ask you some questions. Can you take over a grownup pony if they don't agree to let you in? Because I don't think I can risk any more of the other orphans disappearing, but I bet I could trick a grownup into touching the circle."
"...NO. I WOULD REQUIRE A WILLING HOST... OR A VERY YOUNG CHILD, BUT CHILDREN HAVE NO POWER. I CANNOT HELP YOU FROM INSIDE A CHILD."
Cozy grinned broadly. She had just recently learned about the Crystal Empire in school, including current events. "What if I could get you into a palace, and inside that palace, there's a really really powerful baby? A baby with so much magic, she destroyed an ancient magical artifact when she was, like, weeks old, and nearly made an entire city destroyed by winter storms and stuff?"
"...I AM LISTENING."
"Her name is Flurry Heart, and she's an alicorn princess in the Crystal Empire," Cozy said. "All you have to do is help me steal enough money to take a train to the Crystal Empire, and I'll sneak you into the palace. Do we need to do the ritual or do you just need to get your cat body to her so you can take her over?"
"THE RITUAL SHOULD NOT BE NECESSARY."
"Great! And then once you have your superpowerful baby body, you're going to help me take over the world, right? Because I know a lot of stuff about this world that you don't. Including who protects it and what kind of powers they have. And I know about magical artifacts, and lots of stuff." She leaned forward. "I'm pen pals with the evilest centaur who ever lived, so bad they locked him in Tartarus."
"YES. GET ME ACCESS TO THE BODY OF THE POWERFUL CHILD YOU SPEAK OF, SO I MAY HAVE A POWERFUL HOST, AND I WILL SHOW YOU HOW TO BRING THIS WORLD TO KNEEL BEFORE YOU."
Cozy smiled. "Ooh, I like the sound of that."
Author's Note
Gel Sadra is much more polite in Spanish than in Japanese because it is her first language; her father's name was Domingo Pandora, so I assume her family is Spanish, or perhaps Argentinian (she's really pale to be Hispanic, but a lot of people from Argentina look European). So she spoke it as a little kid. She then learned Japanese because it was dumped into her brain by Sosai X, and what she was taught was intended for use by the leader of an organization of thugs. What she says to Fluttershy is "Who are you? Do you understand Japanese?" but in the manner of a superior talking to an inferior and without the polite register. Fluttershy's response, while incorrect Japanese, is polite. ("I'm Fluttershy. I'm sorry, I small understand Japanese.") Then when Gel Sadra speaks Spanish and asks "Do you speak Spanish?" she is using polite you, Usted. English doesn't have any of these distinctions.
Gatchaman is one of those series that takes place in "real time", one year of show supposedly equalling one year of the show's time. This would be great for MLP where there are at most 26 episodes. But Gatchaman did 52 episodes a year, which would work out to fighting a new giant mecha every week, all of which got blown up. I don't care how big your evil organization is, that's too many resources being burned through too fast, so in my headcanon it's slowed down to 2 years for every 1 of show time. Likewise as you probably know already, my MLP universe moves at the rate of 1 year per 1 season, rather than the ridiculous pace they imply in the show of 3 seasons a year.
As presented in the series, the Solar Shift Plan is unbelievably stupid and non-scientific. Somehow beams on Earth, Mars and Venus are going to push the sun out of the solar system and send it crashing into another planet in a different solar system. I have tried to make the "science", not exactly plausible, but at least comic book levels of plausible.
Gel Sadra is five. She may be physically an adult but I am not going to ship her with anyone in this story.
