Well Ain't That a Conk in the Head
With time being of the essence, quite literally in this case, they had to get in, grab the Time Twirler and get out of dodge before security or the like would be on them for the very reason they’d been kicked out for; mad fans storming their favorite band backstage. Having made it through the festival grounds and backstage, Sunset lunged for the door for the band readying room. As expected, the hefty, knob hardly budged.
Lucky that Pinkie Pie was her one constant companion throughout this day on repeat, for it didn’t even take a word when her pink, exuberant friend stuck a wad of taffy against the lock, the confectionary fizzing and sparking like a lit fuse.
With a sparkling burst and puff of pink smoke, the door was blown open. Just ahead, staring flabbergasted at the literal breaching into their little sanctum were Post Crush; K-Lo and Su-Z. Knowing her favorite musical duo was behind her plight of being stuck on the same day for around three weeks stung. Sunset would have once upon a time been ecstatic to see them, let alone how this was to be their final show together, but after seeing it three weeks straight; the novelty had severely worn off. She wanted her life back.
“Sorry to interrupt, buuuut~” drawled Pinkie as they entered.
“You have something that doesn’t belong to you,” stated Sunset sternly. More than one would think; the time, the lives and autonomy of all the people outside unaware of the time loop. The Time Twirler was a marvel of magical artisanry, but by all accounts, it was a dangerous and vile tool.
Su-Z gasped in disbelief, dropping her compact, “Who let you two back in?”
Sunset motioned at the duo, “Give us the Time Twirler, now.”
K-Lo sneered, “You wouldn’t dare!” She stepped forth in defiance, being the more forward of Post Crush, “If you were real fans; you’d want this show to be perfect.”
Sunset crossed her arms and lightly shrugged, “Eh, nothing’s perfect.” It was fortuitous that Rarity was not within earshot. “Right, Pinkie Pie?”
Pinkie bounced up eagerly, “Eeyup.” She produced something from her hair; specifically, one of Puffed Pastry’s star-crusted cinnamon-dipped churros. Possibly the hardest baked good Sunset had ever seen.
Pinkie grit her teeth and grunted as she miraculously managed to bend the crowbar-hard piece of deep-fried dough into a slanted shape.
“You just gotta make the best with what you got!” And with those words of wisdom, she flung the impromptu boomerang, Su-Z and K-Lo easily avoiding, though not for lack of wincing as it flew past them
Of course, it was only part of the plan, when the churro turned around in an arc and went flying back towards K-Lo, right towards the Time Twirler affixed to the bow on the back of her head… When the projectile went a few degrees too low and socked the guitarist square on the back of the head with an awful metallic-sounding conk, dropping her to the floor.
Everyone in the room froze as K-Lo of Post Crush hit the floor, crumpling like a heavy sack. Sunset grit her teeth, wincing at how hard Pinkie had inadvertently struck the greatest guitarist and vocalist combined she knew. Pinkie, still frozen in the pose after throwing the churro, stared wide-eyed at what befell before her; it was like the Camp Everfree dock all over again.
A cacophony of shrill screams permeated the ready room the moment the rivulets of red started to show, beginning to slowly pool under K-Lo’s head.
“Kiwi! Oh my god, Kiwi!” Su-Z screamed at the top of her lungs, falling on her rear, her hands clawing at her face like the sting would wake her from the moment.
Sunset’s hands found themselves grasping at her hair, “Holy shit! Pinkie! You killed Kiwi Lollipop!”
It was Pinkie whose screaming was the shrillest of the bunch, “How the fork was that even possible?!”
“You tell me! You’re the one always breaking reality when you feel like it!”
“Ohmygod-ohmygod-ohmygod!” And with that rapid repetition Pinkie was back to screaming.
Sunset knew perfectly she hadn’t meant it. She was Pinkie Pie; physics only obeyed her when she willed it. There was just no way a churro, a fricking churro, no matter how solid, could have the mass to generate terminal impact like that! Apparently, against all logic, both physical and… Pinkie, the thing struck so hard it had become embedded in K-Lo’s skull to-
… Skull … The Time Twirler!
It was still there, undamaged and unstained. Sunset could grab it, stop the time loop and run. But no, if she did so it wouldn’t be but a moment before security would be on her, detain her, and she and Pinkie would be in line to be fitted for orange jumpsuits. No, she had to do the right thing. But Post Crush would still remember her, and she would be barred for life from Star Swirl. She’d be stuck in the time loop possibly forever, as far as those two would be concerned with their perfect concert.
Resigning herself to being unable to escape, Sunset rushed over and bent down to press the switch atop it. The eye over the pendant inscribing the time magic flared open; the loop was set to begin again.
With that, Sunset could barely drag Pinkie along as her very pink and traumatized friend insisted on standing, pointing at the temporary corpse that was Kiwi “K-Lo” Lollipop with the churro improbably embedded in the back of her head. It took dragging her away with both arms until Pinkie finally let some modicum of sense take over as the two took off running.
“I’ll never be able to look at churros the same way aga-ha-haaaain!” Pinkie wept as the two got out of dodge into the woods.
“You won’t even be able to remember once the loop begins again,” remarked Sunset. At least her friend can live in blissful ignorance for the impending eternity of repeats.
“Then tell me to never, ever touch another churro in my life for what I did!”
Sunset sighed sadly as poor, sweet innocent Pinkie clung to her for comfort over her misconstruing of the lethality of Puffed Pastry’s churros. If she somehow ever escaped the time loop, she was going to file a very strongly worded letter about the insane tensile strength of those things.
The Post Crush jingle of her alarm rang for the 25th time. True enough; she was back in Rarity’s enormous camper in her jammies. This time… There was literally no point to even try, was there? She walked out, all drive and will drained. There was Rarity playing with Spike. Getting smacked in the rear once again by Rainbow’s paddle. Applejack getting sprayed by Fluttershy over a chicken pun.
“What do you call a Post Crush fan with three I’s?!” shouted Pinkie over the OJ drenched Applejack.
Everyone looked at her quizzically, Sunset just couldn’t bring herself to say anything, knowing it would all be the same. Day in, day out; she wouldn’t even be able to at least vary it up in the concert grounds. Now she was going to be stuck alone, at the camper, no doubt insanity would come to claim her.
Ignoring very much everything said to her, even when stepping in that puddle of mud and Twilight inquiring if she was alright, all Sunset could do was mutter, “Fine.”
There it came; that same security guard, a man most dedicated to his profession, a real revolutionary in the art of surveillance and guaranteed safety. This time he was going to toss her out without needing to snip off the bracelets. It was her turn in line.
Here it comes…
“It’s uh… It’s your turn, ma’am,” he said, looking down upon her over crossed arms, a quizzical brow raised over his authority glasses.
“Huh?” Sunset muttered.
“It’s your turn,” said the man. Firm, but not aggressive: Formal, and professional. “Line’s holding. While as I always say; security is an art form; it can’t be rushed, but I think everyone else is looking to get in, so…”
She wasn’t barred? “Uh… Oh! Y-yea! Sure! Sorry.”
“Tough Friday, huh?” asked the man. “That’s good; shows you care about your prospects.”
Slap, beep, crank. She was in. She was no longer feeling like her life was pretty much over, but rather, most curious… Steeling her resolve; perhaps there was still a chance to save herself.
Without a word, she took off running, leaving her friends further confounded.
“Hey, Sunset! Wait for me!” cried Pinkie, running on the spot before zooming after her.
Post Crush’s tour bus was where it was meant to be. Sure, they had to duck to avoid security, but their progress went unhindered. To Sunset’s surprise, Su-Z was already waiting for them. She’d said nothing as she bid her and Pinkie aboard the tour bus, one of many a fan’s biggest dreams.
It was the furthest from a dream.
There was K-Lo, alive and well. At least physically: She was sitting on a quite decently sized bed at the back of the bus, across from which was no doubt one for Su-Z. But unlike her bandmate, she was still in her quite revealing night gown, her vibrant cerise and magenta hair cascading down over her back and shoulders, her Post Crush hearts under the eyes not applied. Overall, she looked like a mess. And seemed wholly unresponsive. She was just sitting there, hunched over and hugging her legs against herself, rocking ever so slightly in place, whilst she seemingly stared into space. The only sound was the humming of the air conditioning.
The realization was quick to dawn on Sunset as she watched the normally “cool” Kiwi Lollipop just rock in place. She grit her teeth in deep regret.
Sunset felt certain the guitarist probably hadn’t even noticed their presence. Su-Z stood beside her, arms crossed, forlornly looking at her bandmate. She hadn’t expressed any animosity of scorn towards Sunset nor Pinkie (not that the latter could remember the previous loop’s events, thank Celestia), just bidding them inside.
“She’s been like that all morning,” said Su-Z, hugging her arms over herself.
Sunset looked at the shorter Su-Z empathetically, nervously running a hand over her own hair with a hissing breath. “I’m guessing she can remember everything…”
Su-Z merely nodded, sighing dejectedly, “Somehow I just knew this time loop thing wasn’t going to end well, but she just had to keep on going and going. I didn’t want to be proven right, not like this at least.”
Sunset was uncertain of what she could say. K-Lo’s abuse of the Time Twirler had ostensibly trapped the entire world, perhaps even beyond, in a repeating time loop, just because she wanted their swansong concert to be perfect. It just happened that Sunset, possibly due to witnessing the artifact make its way to their world, or her Equestrian origins, or whatever twist of fate kept landing those accursed artifacts on their lap, was fortunate, or unfortunate, to retain her memories of each loop. Hence she became the only one able to oppose.
But now, all because of one tiny little variable, it ended up becoming her own undoing. Sunset didn’t want to imagine what it was like remembering what she ended up experiencing in the last loop. Frankly, she’d wished there could have been a better way this could have been resolved.
She had to be nudged out of her ruminations, Su-Z presenting her the Time Twirler itself.
“Here. Just take it,” said Su-Z. “I think our last show is… cancelled.”
Sunset frowned, nodding empathetically as she took the artifact. Once she and the girls got back home, she’d have to make a return trip to Equestria and take it back to Princess Twilight for safekeeping.
“If only we had something to take the memories away,” remarked Pinkie. “You know, kind of like some sort of Memory Stone-”
Sunset was prompt to nudge her quiet with an elbow to her arm.
“Well, I guess that’s that then,” remarked Sunset, idly scrutinizing the little magical gizmo that had brought her three weeks’ worth of madness and despair. “Another adventure in the bag, for better or worse.”
“Well, at least you don’t have to relive the same day over and over and over again,” said Pinkie, with a chummy hand around Sunset’s shoulders.
Sunset pursed her lips, putting the Twirler in her pocket for now, “I’m so sorry that you didn’t get to see Post Crush. And I got to see it a dozen times before I just got bored.”
Pinkie shrugged, “It’s just like what my Nana Pinkie always said; you can’t always get what you want.”
Sunset was incapable of not smiling at the bouncy pink anomaly that was Pinkie Pie. “Too true, Pinkie. Too true.” She crossed her arms, looking contemplatively across the festival grounds, all the people mingling, in exactly the same way as for what was three agonizing weeks for Sunset.
“Sometimes we just have to take what life throws at us, you know: I mean in our case it’s bound to be the next invasion of extra-dimensional magic coming to try and screw up our lives or the lives of others. Still, to save the world, we, or rather; you had to give up something you wanted so much to see. But maybe something better will come of this, and-”
That’s when Sunset noticed Pinkie was missing. Only to then hear to crackle of a paper bag and a very specific, cinnamon-y sent to assail her nostrils. That awful, awful smell…
“Sorry, what?” asked Pinkie absently, her eyes focused heavier on the bag of frier-fresh Puffed Pastry’s star-crusted cinnamon-dipped churros.
Sunset’s eyes darted between Pinkie’s face, and the bag. To Pinkie, then bag. Pinkie, bag. Pinkie, bag. Bag, Pinkie. Pinkie, bag. Her eye began to twitch, which might as well might have sounded like a guitar string reaching its snapping point.
Everyone at Star Swirl Music Festival jumped at the cry of absolute despair and fury towards the heavens.
Author's Note
Trying my hand at comedy as I get back into the writer's groove, what with having done mostly drawing and more recently voicing auditions. Hopefully I will get the ball rolling now.
