From Ashes, Acid, and Absinthe

Chapters

Chapter 1. Germs, guns, and steel
Prologue
Chapter 2. A Modest Proposal
Chapter 3. Das Kapital
Chapter 4. A Place Not Called Waco
Chapter 5. Young Pioneer Camp
Chapter 6. Mistakes Were Made
Chapter 7. Doublethink
Chapter 8. Hopeless Dreamers
Chapter 9. I am not my mother's daughter
Chapter 10. Piano Man
Chapter 11. Friendship is Magic
Chapter 12. Happily Ever After
Chapter 13. I said HAPPILY EVER AFTER
Credits

Chapter 1. Germs, guns, and steel

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Prologue

Author's Note

Co-Author’s Note: Hey, it’s McPoodle, using this site (and Hope’s account) to republish another of my academic works. I wasn’t the main author, just the translator from French of the manuscript that made up most of the article. This one’s back from when nobody had any idea that ponies were real--I was in college, I zipped this thing off in a weekend, and I didn’t really realize what I had in my hands until quite a while later. It was printed in the Scientific Journal of Psychology issue of December 18, 1983. The stuff in square brackets refers to additions made by the editors.

[The Milwaukee Riots of 1970 are one of the most-mysterious occurrences connected with the so-called Psychedelic Era of the late 60’s and early 70’s. Inhabitants of a city supposedly isolated from the widespread protests and riots of the era suddenly descended into complete madness, people set fire to their own houses, and then used the wreckage to beat each other’s heads in. And then, a few days later, the populace collectively came to their senses in a matter of seconds, and worked together to rebuild the city they had nearly leveled. The only reason the Riots are not better known is because they coincided with the much-more significant events occurring at Kent State University.

[Even if unknown by the public, the Riots have been the subject of numerous scientific studies seeking to discover the cause of the transient madness. Medievalists have blamed it on widespread ergot poisoning, while mystics have tried to point to a rare conjunction of the four closest stars with our Sun. As the victims of the insanity retained no memory of their actions following the three-day period of the Riots, the answer may never be known for certain.

[The following document can be considered yet another attempt to explain the phenomenon, if not for the fact that it is an obvious work of fiction. Worse, for those of you who might be interested in this imaginary setting of “Equestria”, no other works by the anonymous author have ever been discovered. And that really is a shame, for the origin of the manuscript is a mystery even bigger than the cause of the Milwaukee Riots: it was found underneath the foundations of the St. Francis Xavier Mission located outside modern Le Pere, Wisconsin, in the year 1802. Carbon dating puts the date when it was actually written to the year when the mission was founded: 1671.]

Prologue

“We’ve learned so much from our lessons, and from the years of experiences we’ve gathered, but in the end the lessons are all temporary. What matters is the connections between us. The friendships and loves we have. We need to stick together.” - Princess Celestia, Annual Equestrian Address of 986.

Ponies surrounded the royal palace by the thousands, all singing in unison.

“Equestria, the land I love, A land of harmony! Our flag does wave from high above, For ponykind to see.

“Equestria, a land of friends, Where ponykind do roam! They say true friendship never ends. Equestria, my home!”

High above, Princess Celestia looked down upon them, a mixture of pride and worry on her face. The air filled with the magic offered up by the populace with their song, and Celestia reluctantly accepted it.

The crowd, having finished their song, stomped the pavement afterwards with their support for their monarch. The individual stomps were not particularly loud, due to each individual being drained by their offering. They then stopped, and looked up at one at the Princess.

“My little ponies,” Celestia addressed them, applying a voice-magnifying spell upon herself. “Once again I thank you for your offering of magic, to help us all in our hour of need.

“I wish to tell you that Princess Cadance has recently returned from her visit to the Heartlands.” Celestia looked back into the room behind her, where Cadance had collapsed asleep across her bed. “She informed me that she distributed the magic that you gave her to the hard-working farm ponies of the region, and is proud to tell you all that your sacrifice has paid off: The harvest will be enough this year to feed all of the ponies of Equestria!”

The crowd below cheered, before huddling together for warmth. Even though it was early Summer, the ground was still covered with frost.

“Tomorrow,” the Princess continued, “I will set out for Cloudsdale with the magic you have just given me, and we will see what can be done about the weather.”

The crowd cheered once more, somewhat fainter.

“Thank you once again. Now return to the duties I have taken you from, and do your part for all of Equestria!”

Another cheer, and the crowd began to disburse, while Celestia turned to return to her room. But not all of the gathered ponies left. About a quarter of the crowd, all younger ponies, remained standing as their elders left the square. They stood, silently looking up at the balcony. Celestia, seeing this out of the corner of her eye, paused, then slowly turned and faced them.

“Yes, my ponies?” she asked. “Is there something that I can do for you?”

The crowd parted, and from among their number emerged an orange unicorn with a mane of mixed red and yellow. She walked tall and proud, and the others looked to her with expectation and love.

“There is much you have to answer for, Princess Celestia!” the lead unicorn cried out.

Celestia sighed inwardly. “Sunset Shimmer, my most-brilliant student,” she said.

“You may have tended to the ponies of Equestria during this crisis, but what about beyond its borders?” Sunset accused. “Diamond Dogs, griffons and hippogriffs are starving from famine, shivering from cold and wasting away from diseases easily treatable by magic. While Equestria survives, the rest of the world dies! What are you doing about the rest of Equus, Princess?” The idealistic young ponies behind her nodded in agreement.

“Sunset, you do know how much I care about all of the creatures of Equus, not just the ponies,” Princess Celestia responded.

“Caring is one thing. We want to know what are you going to do about it?!”

The crowd roared with outrage.

Princess Celestia’s eyes narrowed. “How dare she!” she muttered under her breath. She began to rear up to do something rash, when a gentle hoof settled on her withers, the hoof of a tired Princess Cadance. Celestia looked over at her fellow princess, and then sighed.

“There is much wisdom in what you say, Student,” she addressed the crowd. “Come inside, and we will discuss options.”

Sunset beamed, and the ponies around her broke out in celebratory cheers. “That is all I have been asking for,” she said. Turning to the ponies behind her, she said in a normal voice, “We did it! I couldn’t have accomplished this without your support. Go home to your families now. I will tell you everything that happened after I return to you.”

With these words she walked forward to the door to the palace, congratulated for several steps by members of her group who rushed up to put an arm around her for a moment before retreating back to the slowly-disbursing crowd. When she reached the pair of imposing guards, she looked up at them calmly before they reluctantly opened the doors, allowing her inside.

“Did you really need the miniature army, Sunset?” Celestia asked. She, Sunset and Cadance were the only ponies in the throne room, the doors of which had been locked and sound-proofed. Cadance was trying her best not to fall asleep on her hooves.

“I figured it was the only way you’d be willing to see me. Oh by the way, I noticed you didn’t use the word ‘former’ when calling me your student.”

“I have no wish to see you publicly castigated for your poor decision to terminate my instruction.”

Sunset leaned forward. “You’re the one who blocked my research!”

Celestia eagerly matched her stance. “Research into dark magic. Research which surely would have corrupted you.”

“But it didn’t corrupt you!”

“You lack my experience and wisdom, Sunset. And then, you were the one to walk out on me.”

“All you had to do was apologize!”

“Apologize? Apologize?!”

“Mares, mares!” Cadance interjected. “Arguing about the past is not going to solve anything. The matter at hoof—”

“—The matter at hoof is the dramatic drop in magic levels all across Equus,” Sunset said. “Your stop-gap measures will not be enough to save this planet from utter catastrophe!”

“We can’t jump to extreme measures, Sunset. A crisis like this needs to be handled with care. We need to handle things one step at a time.”

“One step at a time?! Is it not enough that all of the dragons have been forced into hibernation? That the hippogriffs have had to permanently relocate their kingdom to the bottom of the sea after their land dominion froze over? How long will it be before you finally give in, bow down to prophesy, and make me an alicorn!”

Cadance sighed. “So that’s what this is all about.”

“I’m not demanding this for me!” Sunset insisted. “You two are worked to the bone. As the only creatures able to redistribute such massive quantities of magic, you surely realize that two is not enough. Make me an alicorn!”

“I can’t,” Celestia said, turning away. “You’d know that if you listened to me. To become an alicorn, a pony must be worthy…”

“What more do I need to do?!” Sunset demanded.

“...And there must be enough ambient magic to effect the transformation,” Celestia concluded. “That level no longer exists. Even if you were worthy, which I doubt, the act is now impossible.”

“Oh,” Sunset said, deflating. “So it’s been impossible this whole time. I...I’ve made a fool of myself.”

“Not for the first time,” Celestia said with a smirk.

“Auntie!” Cadance chided her.

“No, she’s right,” Sunset said. She turned and walked towards the doors. “If you want me, I’ll be back in my old room. At least for tonight. Is that alright?”

“Stay as long as you wish, Sunset,” Celestia said. “And if you ever reconsider returning as my student…”

Sunset looked back for a moment, her expression entirely blank. Then she pushed open the door, breaking the Silence spell, and walked away.

Princess Celestia awoke in the middle of the night, her heart thudding and a terrible premonition filling her mind. She leapt out of bed, looked ruefully over her shoulder at the figure of the Mare in the Moon peering in from the balcony window, and then teleported.

She appeared in front of a door in a remote corner of the palace. The space under that door glowed with dark magic. The door was criss-crossed with powerful locking spells that would take Celestia hours to unravel. But Celestia smirked, as she saw that the spells were only bound to each other, no physical objects tied to them. As usual for Sunset, she completely neglected to consider the other two pony races in her plans.

Celestia burst through the door using her earth pony might. On the other end of the room was the Magic Mirror. And before it stood Sunset, pulling enormous quantities of magic from the mirror’s glowing surface.

“Sunset! What are you doing?!”

Sunset turned her head, beaming in triumph. “I did it! I found the solution! I was able to tune the mirror to another alternate world, one with magic, but also one where life never advanced onto dry land, never achieved intelligence! Don’t you see? This world is full of magic, but no creature can use it, or become entangled with it. I can take all of the magic and give it to you, and no one gets hurt!”

“You can’t do this, Sunset! Your actions will lock that world in its current state, forever! What if it was meant to develop intelligent life, but much later than in the other worlds?” She reached out with her magic to wrench the stream away from Sunset’s horn.

“No!” Sunset cried, trying her best to keep control of the stream. “This is our only chance. And all it will cost is one world!”

“I forbid it!” Celestia cried back, firmly pulling the stream away. “A pony willing to commit such a vile act is unworthy to rule Equestria.”

Sunset grabbed the stream back. “Then banish me after the deed is done! I’m willing to give up everything for Equestria.”

“No!” Celestia cried once more, pulling loose the stream and flinging it back into the mirror once and for all. “We will find another solution, together!”

“There is no other solution!” Sunset screamed. She then paused and looked back at the mirror. “Unless I just go in there and get the magic myself!” She leapt into the mirror.

Celestia desperately reached out with her magic to grab Sunset and pull her back into Equestria. Sunset shot her magic back to break that magical grasp. But both magical streams reacted with the retreating stream of magic, causing a massive surge. There was a mangled scream, mixed with the sound of breaking glass…

The smoke cleared, and Celestia looked with horror at the exploded remains of the magic mirror. Not a trace of Sunset Shimmer was to be seen.

For a moment, Sunset was pulled along by the magical stream towards the primitive world of magic she had discovered. But then that stream of magic slipped away from her, and she found herself adrift in Limbo.

Sunset panicked. Without the proper magical protection, she would be torn apart by the powerful eddies of Limbo. And no magic could actually be cast in this space between realms. Desperately she flipped and writhed as she felt her form stretching and dissipating, preparing to pop like a soap bubble. Finally, she managed to grab onto something with one hoof, the miniscule opening to another dimension. Not Equestria, not the world she wanted, and not the magicless-world that the mirror had originally been tuned to. A completely unknown, possibly lethal realm. But having no choice, Sunset pulled herself into it anyway...

Chapter 2. A Modest Proposal

Two days. What Sunset wouldn’t give for one of Celestia’s droll lectures on the ability for pony spirit to persevere now, instead of the monotony of watching the dregs of society be dragged in, sometimes bleeding, broken into submission by paperwork, and then put in little cages.

Sunset had heard the phrase “let off early on good behavior”, and she was determined to be the one it applied to. But it was hard, so very hard. For one thing, she was a genius. She knew it, and normally, so did everypony around her. But these cops refused to believe her. She could have said that the sun rises in the east, and they would point in that very direction and call it west, just to spite her. At least, that’s how she felt.

She learned that the people in uniforms were not the ones to fear, not really. It was when the police walked away, and she was stuck with fellow “civvies”, that she was most likely to be hit or kicked. Always by the older ones, the ones who used “teen” as a curse word.

The first night, she’d been pulled off her cot by her feet, hitting her head on the concrete, as a fellow inmate screamed something about “red hair dye and blood on your hands.”

Every time, the cops would look away, or punish her for “snitching”. It was worse than the orphanage.

But the second day brought with it, ironically on the rising of the sun, some good news.

“It’s too expensive to keep you here, Alice,” Angles said as he kicked the bars of the cell and put his hands on his hips. “Since I found you, I’m responsible for dropping you off at your foster home.”

Celestia. They had foster homes. Sunset had been lucky, had been taken in by Celestia before she got old enough, but she had heard the stories.

Foster homes brought out the worst in pony parents, pony parents who considered the new arrivals as something much closer to slaves than actual children. Sunset had never heard of a filly or colt actually enjoying being a foster child. Maybe the happy endings were out in the country. But they weren’t in Canterlot. And they weren’t here, in this human city named Chicago.

“Oh, that was a dirty look you just gave me,” Angles sneered. “Won’t make this any easier, Darlin’. It’s your time to go. This, or real jail. I trust you don’t want real jail, do ya? Too soft.”

Sunset blanched. ‘Wait, this isn’t real jail?’

“That’s what I thought,” he said as another cop opened the bars, and Angles gestured towards the back door.

At least Sunset had clothes now, a nondescript grey and blue hand-me-down blouse and skirt that barely fit her, with shoes that she didn’t trust at a faster pace than a jog.

As she had been doing in all of her interactions with the cops, she stood passively, slightly hunched over with a blank expression, letting them do whatever they wanted with her.

In this case, that was taking her back out to a squad car and locking her in the back. The city hadn’t changed much in two days, but in the sunlight at least she could see weeds growing in cracks in the pavement, bright spots of green and then trees planted on the sides of the roads, in small patches of dirt surrounded by pavement.

But before too long, the trees spread and they were driving through more residential areas, the color of red brick taking the place of concrete.

The cruiser stopped in front of a particularly large building. Angles got Sunset out, leading her, thankfully without force or handcuffs, up to the front door where he knocked and waited impatiently.

“Coming!” a young voice called; a moment later the door opened to reveal a kid a couple years younger than Sunset.

“Is the madam home?” Angles asked, his tone bored.

“Yes, Officer Paulson,” the kid said softly. “I’ll get her.”

They waited, door open, as the kid left. The inside of the building was stripped down, empty, like a home set up for sale without any adornments or personality.

The Madam marched into view with the clicking of sharp heels, and stood towering over Sunset, looking the officer in the eye.

“Name?” she barked, her voice grating and rough like gravel concentrated into pure malice.

“She’s Alice Shiner,” Angles said, never stirring from his relaxed pose, as though the Madam didn’t pose any threat to him at all. “Have a good day, Madam.”

Then he turned and left, as the Madam turned her gaze on Sunset.

“Alice Shiner,” she said, softer but with no less cruelty. “You are welcome in my home, but on provision. You must not be useless. You must not do drugs, or drink. You must not be stupid. You must not commit Sin, or I will wipe my hands of you, and send you off to the Asylum.”

She reached out and grabbed Sunset’s shoulder, pulling her inside and slamming the door behind her, before leaning down to speak into Sunset’s ear.

“If you find you cannot obey these laws, then you will find that the Asylum treats your kind much more cruelly than I. Rather than God, they use sharp tools to fix you.”

As she spoke, she pressed a finger against the side of Sunset’s head, as she started to shake slightly.

Then, the Madam let go and stood up, stepping in front of her.

“I am Lily Marton Isle. You will refer to me only as The Madam. Charles will assign you your duties.”

Then she just walked away into the house, leaving Sunset alone.

As she waited for this Charles individual to arrive, Sunset reflected that this was indeed a very strange world that she was stuck in. She was threatened with being sent to an asylum, when “asylum” was supposed to be a term for a safe sanctuary from attack. She was told not to drink, but she was fairly certain that members of this species would die without liquid nourishment. And this was yet the latest reference to an unnamed god that was supposedly in charge of this world, but she had yet to see Him make a public appearance.

Now not being stupid and not sinning—Sunset was sure she could do those. Unless these people had insane definitions of “intelligence” and “sinning”.

‘They absolutely have insane definitions of “intelligence” and “sinning”’, she realized.

Charles walked in a moment later.

He was an older boy, judging by this species’ social standards, just under the age of adulthood. He wore blue jeans and a button up shirt, his dark skin and tightly curled hair contrasting with most of the other humans Sunset had met so far. Clearly there were humans with colored pigmentation, even if it wasn’t as varied or common as ponies.

But most striking was how tired the boy looked.

“Hey,” he said, softly and as gently as anyone had spoken to Sunset in this world. “The Madam’s already talked to you, I’m Charles. I… kind of keep everyone on task around here.”

He guided Sunset through the rooms to what looked like a kitchen, and gestured for her to sit down in a little booth, across from a wall that had a massive schedule with names on one side and dates on the top, with little slips of colored paper tucked in the squares next to the names.

“We do a lot of work here,” Charles said wearily. “No matter how old, no matter how young. We do chores. You’re old enough, you’ll be able to do a lot of different ones. It’s good, kids get worn out from doing the same ones all the time. But if you don’t do enough chores, you get put on the reprimand list. If you stay on that list for a whole week, then you have your bedroom privileges revoked, and you sleep in the garden shed.”

He looked down at the table with the blank stare of someone who was tired of giving this speech to kids.

“Breakfast is from six in the morning till six ten. You can’t be late, everything extra gets taken to the church. Lunch is at noon, but lasts an hour, so if you’re a little late it’s fine. Dinner is at sunset, and if you’re in the shed, you only get bread for dinner. Do you have any allergies?”

Sunset looked at Charles calmly, but not submissively. “No allergies,” she said, in a soft, unthreatening voice. “And thank you for the instruction. I will do all that is required of me.” She looked over at the task list. “Now, what chores are available to me?”

Charles didn’t look up at the list, they were ingrained in him, and he recited them easily.

“Sweeping the rugs and carpets, mopping the tile, dusting all of the furniture, doing the laundry, doing the dishes, folding and putting laundry away, reading aloud from the Bible during lunch, shining Madam’s shoes, and picking up groceries. Though you’ll have to wait a week of completing chores successfully before you are allowed to do the last one,” he clarified.

Sunset felt a brief moment of vertigo, dizziness washing over her as the overwhelming presence of this washed-out dreary and empty home loomed around her.

“I suppose I can start with doing laundry, and see what happens,” she said finally, picking up the one activity most likely to be performed alone. She wanted as much time as possible to think about everything she had seen so far, and to formulate her plans for her next move.

Because at some point, she was going to fight back. She just didn’t know enough yet to come up with a way of fighting back that would actually accomplish anything.

“Good.”

Charles stood, hesitating for a moment as he put a hand to his lower back, wincing in pain before nodding for Sunset to follow him as he took her on a tour of the massive house.

There were three levels and a basement; the top level had no ceiling, and a loft had been made out of the former attic, to fit more children’s beds. At the foot of each bed was a basket, where the children were allowed to put their dirty clothes, and from all together she filled one basket before the end of the tour.

She was also shown the simple straw-stuffed mattress that she would be sleeping on.

The entire time, Charles spoke with a level, tired tone, holding his back occasionally and stifling a few yawns, until finally he guided her to the laundry room, a brick basement room with one barred window that let in the light and allowed a thin view of the backyard, and two large machines.

Once Charles showed her how to use them, and helped her load the washing machine, he left her alone to wait until it was time to dry the laundry, as he had other children to check in on, although throughout Sunset’s tour she hadn’t seen any. They must have been busy doing chores or something.

The washing machine hummed next to her, emanating warmth.

And for a moment, Sunset could be calm. No prisoners harassing her, no banging on the walls. Until a young girl rounded the corner and froze on seeing her.

The girl was very pale white, with freckles across the bridge of her nose and her cheeks. Her brilliant green eyes were wide, frozen, wondering if she was about to get in trouble. But Sunset fixated on her hair. Brilliant vivid red hair, as bright as Sunset’s mane had been before she entered the portal.

Sunset blinked, her mouth agape. Is she another Equestrian? she asked herself. “Hi, I’m, um, Alice,” she said. She raised one closed hand and brought it down before her, as if she was awkwardly pawing at the ground with a forehoof. “I’m new here.”

“Christ,” the girl said quickly, slipping inside, back against the door. “New lass ought not be a wee clipe, ought not to tell on me, aye?” she said hopefully, slumping to the floor. “Madam’s got it out for me. Name’s Sam.”

“Oh, I won’t tell anyone,” Sunset replied. She looked around for someplace better to sit than the floor, but there were no chairs. If she hopped up on the washing machine she would at least be in eye contact with the girl Sam, so she tried that, but the machine suddenly went wild, bouncing up and down and side to side, throwing Sunset off. She only just kept herself from falling down.

Sam laughed.

Sunset grinned, rubbing a sore hip. “Never thought I’d be bucked by a washing machine,” she remarked.

“‘Bucked’... like it,” Sam chuckled as she put her arms on her knees and leaned her chin onto them. “Mite unco, eh…. Strange, ye? Like it though. When’d ye get chained te the Madam? Gotta be taday?”

‘Not an Equestrian,’ thought Sunset. ‘I’ve seen every kind of creature and heard every kind of pony accent in Celestia’s court, and I’ve never heard anything like this!’ “Oh yeah, it was today. Guess I’ll have to count the days until I’m old enough to walk out of here.”

The girl grimaced, shaking her head and making her tangle of fiery hair bounce as she did, before looking away.

“Ain’t so quick, eye?” she sighed. “Might be none get outta here, Charles even, nice ‘nuff, but stuck too.”

Sunset looked her desperately in the eye, hoping that she was joking. “Well...maybe I’ll figure something out.”

‘“Maybe”?’ her inner self scolded. ‘You’re Sunset Shimmer! You’ll have this whole planet eating out of your hoof in a week!’

‘Shush, you.’ Sunset looked over at a clock mounted on the wall. “Well, it’s been nice talking to you, but I think it’s coming up to dinner, and we both know it’s a bad idea to be late to that.”

“Eye, shit,” the girl scrambled to her feet, slipping a bit on the partly detached soles of her shoes before getting the door open and jogging up the stairs.

That left Sunset alone for a bit as the washing machine rattled to a stop, with a final clunk and the draining of water. She sighed. ‘Get in trouble for not taking care of the clothes, or get in trouble for being late for dinner? Well I don’t know about Madam, but I would sure be more upset about soggy clothes than whether one less kid shows up for supper.’ So she set to work transferring the clothes from the washer into the dryer.

It took several minutes, but everyone was still sitting down at the table when she got to the top of the stairs. She thought for a moment she’d made it in time until The Madam’s gaze locked onto her, and her displeasure became evident.

“Stand there, Alice,” The Madam said, a sneer in her tone as she said it.

Everyone paused, some halfway in their seats, and stared. She was the new girl. New people were unpredictable.

All those fearful nervous faces, and then Charles and the Madam. Charles was flat, neutral, as dead as an expression could be. The Madam was full of scorn and pity and disgust.

‘Alright,’ thought Sunset, ‘I can play this game.’ She stopped and stood, her eyes on the ground.

“Excellent, now that everyone is here, let us say Grace. Charles?”

They all bowed their heads, and Charles spoke in neutral tones, quickly, as though he was reading from a particularly boring script.

“Oh Lord, we thank You for this meal, and the company that we share it with. We thank You for the blood of Your only Son, for the service of The Madam, and for the protection You give us within these walls, Amen.”

As one, every child echoed the final word.

“Amen.”

“A men,” said Sunset, a half-second later than the others. With an effort, she kept in the smirk.

A moment of annoyance at her timing flashed across The Madam’s face, before she began eating.

All of the children ate, while Sunset stood there, three feet away from her meal, still not commanded to sit.

She noticed Sam kept looking to her, concerned, but unable to do anything. She wasn’t sure if humans had a way to nonvocally convey the message “Don’t worry about me,” but that was what she was trying to do with her eyes.

One of the times Sam glanced up, she slipped with her spoon, a splash of soup spilling onto the white tablecloth.

"Jesus, Fuck," Sam hissed.

Judging by the reaction of those at the table, she might as well have declared her intention of killing them all, as some of the children gasped, others recoiled, or put hands over their mouths.

The Madam's chair clattered to the ground as she quickly stood, and took two steps over, hand coming up as quick as a spell being cast, striking Sam across the cheek and sending her to the tile floor with a heavy thud.

Silence fell across the room for a brief moment.

“Alice,” The Madam snapped.

“Yes, Madam?” Sunset was just as cowed as the others at that moment.

“Sit and eat, you will take Sam’s place doing dishes tonight,” The Madam said firmly, as she bent down and seized Sam’s arm, pulling her bodily to her feet as the child whimpered.

The red spot on her cheek shone with tears as The Madam dragged her out of the room and into the backyard, everyone assumed she was being taken to the garden shed.

Charles sighed softly, and resumed eating, the other children slowly following his lead.

Sunset looked down at the remains of Sam’s meal. She didn’t even remember sitting down. Her nerves were far too shaken to have any appetite. She looked around her, but everyone was shoving food into their mouths. ‘Am I going to get punished for not eating?! Is there anything there isn’t a punishment for?’ And so, for the first time in her life, Sunset had to figure out how to hide the peas under the mashed potatoes.

But time didn’t seem to drag out as long as she wanted, and The Madam didn’t return.

Instead, after a moment they were shaken by a scream, shrill and high and desperate, which faded into sobbing that was soon inaudible.

Some of the children put down their spoons, tears in their eyes. Others ate quicker, or even took food from those who were no longer eating.

This was too much for Sunset. “Isn’t anybody going to do something? She’s killing her!”

“Better her than us,” somebody muttered in reply.

The sound of wood striking flesh rang out, and another horrible scream reverberated through the halls of the Home.

Two of the children stood and ran from the table, but now all that were left were those too scared to move, or those desperate to eat, eat every scrap of food they could, before the coming storm robbed them of more.

One of them even took Sunset’s plate, and ate her mashed potato-peas before shoving it back in front of her.

They were all animals, she realized. This is what happened, when you abused animals. The basic Psychology classes at CSGU rose to the front of her mind. Fight or Flight, resource hoarding in preparation for scarcity.

Then another sound of impact, and a scream that ended sharply.

Every hand grabbing a fork, every teary eye, every panting breath in the room fell still.

They couldn’t move, or speak, they could only wait for another sound.

The rusty hinges of the garden gate opening, then slamming shut, were their only reward.

Then the clicking of pump-heels on tile, as The Madam returned, finally coming back to her position at the head of the table, and looming over them.

Sweat beaded on her brow, a manic fury in her eyes as she took them all in, observing them for signs of weakness to exploit as she dried her hands on a cloth napkin.

“Sam,” she started, her voice trembling from excitement, “has run away.”

She seemed to wait for someone to question her, daring them to doubt her.

“I shall call upon the police to find her,” she continued finally. “In the interim, you will all be sent to your rooms, no chores but dishwashing. Charles, see the children stay in their rooms.”

Then she turned, and walked out, as the children all scrambled to get up and run upstairs, trying to get to their beds as quickly as possible, until it was just Charles and Alice.

Charles stood slowly, and followed them like a guard dog herding chickens.

Sunset lay in her bed, her eyes open. She didn’t know what to think, and she didn’t particularly want to figure out what she was supposed to think.

Sam had run away—good for her. Except she obviously didn’t run away.

Sunset needed to get out of here. Tonight. She didn’t care if she was caught, just so long as she was thrown in jail instead of taken back here. She waited until it was 1 or 2 am by her internal clock, and then got up. She was dressed—she had gotten into her bed dressed, and as she suspected, the other kids were too traumatized to notice. She picked up her shoes and went to the door.

Only to meet a pair of eyes in her gaze.

It was a young boy, his skin the same color or maybe darker than Charles’, but his eyes a rich gold, so full of fear and pain as he watched her.

He wasn’t going to speak, he wasn’t going to move, he just met her gaze, and watched her go.

She couldn’t take him with her, she was pretty sure this whole escape thing was a horrible plan. But she just knew if she stayed here another day she would do something much worse than wish that Jesus had lost His virginity. If that boy stayed… If she took him… There was no good answer here. So she shook her head, tears in her eyes, picked up a hair pin, and set to work on the door lock.

It sprung open so easily, that she wondered if the lock had ever stopped a determined escapee, and it revealed the hallway that led to the stairs, and then past those stairs to The Madam and Charles’ rooms.

But downstairs there was the flickering of a lantern, then the back door easing open, the light fading as it eased almost all the way closed.

Sunset stood there for a whole minute, wishing she could pivot her human ears around to be sure of where any stray noises were coming from. Finally she snuck over to the stairway, and stepped gingerly on the first step.

There was no squeak.

‘Well,’ she thought to herself, ‘that’s one thing in my favor.’

A soft laugh echoed through the cracked back door, followed by a male voice murmuring words she couldn’t make out.

Sunset stopped and weighed her options. Whoever was out there could come back at any time. Should she wait in the bedroom? She thought of that boy and his sad stare. No. But the basement could work.

Quickly she made her way down the stairs. She resisted the temptation to look out the windows to see what was going on, crouching down to be out of sight. She hugged the walls as she made her way around, and down the cold concrete steps into the laundry room.

“To be quite honest, if I could cull the Irish from this town to a one, we’d see civilization return in leaps and bounds,” The Madam’s voice came through the basement window, low to the ground and only a single layer of glass thick.

“Sure, but then where would I get my entertainment from? Here…” The male voice was familiar, very familiar, as the sound of a car door opening echoed in the small garden.

There were some temptations that were too much, even for a bright mare like Sunset Shimmer. So she edged over to the wall under the window and looked up. She didn’t see much of anything, so she climbed up on the washing machine. Slowly, she raised her head up so she could get a peek.

The scene was perfectly framed in the style of Frogonard by the garden flowers and trees, with the garden shed just behind the subjects to the right with the door open, yawning black.

To the left was a police cruiser with the trunk open, and then three subjects huddled around that open trunk.

One was The Madam in her nightclothes, one hand grasping the handle of a black plastic bag, the other holding aloft a flickering lantern that lit the scene in stark shadows.

The second was “Angles”, Officer Paulson in his uniform, both hands grabbing the heavy bag as he lifted it towards the trunk.

But the third subject of the scene, painted in stains on Sunset’s mind that would never fade in their vivid contrast, was the black plastic bag, from the top of which sprung bright orange curls of hair, tangled in the knot where the bag was tied shut.

And that third subject did not move, as it was heaved up and into the trunk of the police cruiser.

Sunset wanted to scream, to scream so loud that she’d wake up the sleeping God of this universe, so He could make everything right, punish the wicked and reward the innocent, and bring back poor Sam while He was at it, because gods were good at those kinds of things. But nothing came out of her open mouth.

With the realization that this was the universe that she would be spending the rest of her life in, Sunset Shimmer, the earnest little pony of Equestria, died. Ponies didn’t belong in a world so devoid of harmony.

But something had to be done.

So Alice the human took over. She looked around the room for objects she could scavenge. Perhaps sell on a street corner for money. She saw some copper pipes in a corner, and a discarded pillowcase with a hole in a corner. She hopped down from the washing machine, put on her shoes, tied the corner of the pillowcase to fix the hole problem, and stuffed the pipes inside. A dark cap went over her head.

Then, as she was gathering those things, she spotted on a shelf in the corner a toolbox.

Heavy, yes, but bound to be full of goodies, all painted dark green and durable.

She opened the box, transferred a rather sharp-looking screwdriver into her pocket, and closed it again. Then she walked up the stairs and out through the front door. Right into the street lights. She glared up at them, daring them to do something.

One of them went out.

Putting her free hand in her pocket, Alice sauntered away, away (hopefully) from the police station, the graveyard, or anywhere else where unwanted bodies were dumped at 2 am.

Chapter 3. Das Kapital

The first time that Alice met the girl named Starlight, she was caught stealing a book from the University of Wisconsin at Madison.

Starlight looked at home in a university, a young woman with a business-like skirt and blouse, covered with a no-nonsense sweater and carrying a messenger bag over her shoulder, the only things that stood out about her were the unexpectedly lower-class looking floppy hat she wore, and the boundless buttons on her messenger bag, each of which had a statement on it.

End War. Peace at any cost. Unity Against Fascism. Daughters of Bitilis. Dyke. A button that shone bright red with a hammer and sickle crossing each other, and another that showed a flower that seemed to be on fire.

“You look like you’re going to steal a book. Do you want me to carry it out, since they’re probably going to search you?” the young woman asked Alice calmly.

Alice gave the woman a cold look, and then flashed her all-purpose student ID card. “Don’t worry, I’ve got this,” she said.

The woman looked Alice up and down.

“You look like you’ve been sleeping on the street. How are you attending college?” she asked, seemingly more out of academic curiosity than any accusation.

She wants banter, Alice thought with an inward smirk. Say hello to the Queen. “Hey, the tuition’s through the roof, and nobody’s hiring. A girl does what she can.”

“That isn’t what I asked,” the woman said, sticking her hand in her bag and pulling out a flier.

It read “United States Communist Party. Help your fellow man, at any cost.”

“If you found a way to game the system, I have some friends who could use the help,” she explained. “If it’s a fake ID, I would pay to get some of those too.”

Alice blinked. “Tin foil,” she said, finally, opening her bag and showing the inside. “It tricks the sensors. The rest is just a confidence game. This card looks like the one used in a dozen different universities. It’s just a piece of laminated paper.”

“Fascinating. Street Smarts, I guess you’d call it. My name is Starlight Glimmer.”

For a brief moment, Alice’s heart caught on hearing an obvious pony name. A long forgotten part of herself started to wake up, but she quickly pushed it back into its box so it wouldn’t be hurt again. She knew from bitter experience that the name would have a rational, non...other place explanation. Something like...

“My parents are hippies, trust me I didn’t get to choose my name. How would you like to talk about your street smarts? I've got a lot to learn. Oh, and I’ll pay for your time of course,” she said with a casual chuckle.

Alice smiled. “Sure, why not? Are you looking to get any of your own books out of here?” She opened the bag once more, showing how much room was left in it.

Starlight looked into the bag, pulling out an issue of the Scientific Journal of Psychology. “Ah, I see you have good taste,” she said. “My parents have a subscription to this one. Me too, technically.” She then pulled out the book.

“Rituals of the Native Tribes,” she read from the spine. “Oh, my friends and I know more about those than that book could teach you. I’m here for chemistry,” she said as she waved a book titled Organic Reactions Under High Pressure before trading it out for Alice’s, which she put back on the shelf. “I’ll introduce you to them, we could even do some of the rituals if you want, they’re not hard to reproduce.”

Alice frowned. She wasn’t after Rituals for the mescaline recipes, or to see some white people hopping around like idiots. She was after the truth behind the rituals, what died when the conquistadors wiped out these particular tribes. It was one of the few areas where she saw some evidence of actual human magic. But there was a good chance that this Starlight girl might have a much more forbidden library than the university’s, so…

“OK. Might be fun.”

Starlight nodded in approval, and they left the library at a casual stroll, taking a turn into the University’s main park, which was cut in half by a river.

The side of the park closest to the buildings was clean, pretty, and camped out by college students having lunch or studying in the sunlight. But the wall of foreboding trees flanking the river kept the other half out of sight, until they crossed over the bridge to find Starlight’s Friends.

They were a collection of homeless adults who were doing their best to stay out of the way, people of college student age but who looked poor or otherwise uninterested in attending college, and a single adult that actually seemed put together and clean.

He was dressed in “nondescript” clothes and by Alice’s reckoning could only be some sort of cop or scientist, someone who wouldn’t care if all of the others dropped dead, and who was currently talking politely with one of the homeless people, writing down answers in a notebook.

“Everyone, this is Alice, a new friend of mine,” Starlight said confidently as she walked into the group.

A few of them waved, some of the younger ones greeted her and offered their own names. Alice didn’t bother to remember any of them—she had no intention of staying with this group of pie-in-the-sky idealists any longer than necessary. The man with the notebook just made a single note before turning back to the homeless woman he was interviewing.

“She wants to learn some of the Old Rituals,” Starlight told some of the younger ones, amused.

“Oh, can we do a Communing? I miss those, they’re so comforting; bring a real sense of peace,” one of the girls said with a wistful smile.

“Something flashy like a Brightening would impress her though,” a boy pointed out. “She looks like she is waiting to be impressed.”

Starlight set down her messenger bag and put her hands on her hips, looking to Alice.

“Well, I suppose it’s only polite to ask. Are you looking to be impressed, or feel nice?” Starlight asked.

“I don’t mean to put pressure on any of you,” Alice said with a friendly smile as she pulled a small plastic baggie out of her pocket filled with a green shredded substance. “But I have this when I want to feel nice. I don’t have anything for feeling impressed.”

A wave of laughter rippled through the group as Starlight admired the bag of green.

“My new friend… What was your name?” Starlight asked as she took out a leather wallet and opened it to remove a baggie that contained a piece of metal with little pieces of paper on it.

“Alice. Alice Walker for now, but if we really get on together, I’ll even tell you my real last name.”

“Or I might uncover it in the ritual,” Starlight said with a smile as she opened the bag and selected four people, giving them each a little piece of paper they stuck in their mouths, before holding one out to Alice.

She noticed Starlight was putting the bag away, not taking one herself. This did not improve her confidence.

“You put it on your tongue,” Starlight explained. “Let it dissolve while we start the ritual; you’ll be the ‘target’ of the ritual, so you don’t need to do anything but sit.”

She looked cooly at Starlight, studying her confidence. Realizing that there was no doubt in this group, she shrugged and did as she was told. The worst that could happen was a bad trip, and she had already had the bad luck to go through one of those a few months ago in Buffalo.

Once she had it in, Starlight led the group of six deeper into the woods, away from the group as a whole, until they found a small clearing. The trees loomed large overhead, as though wrapping them up in their embrace. Starlight then situated the group around her, five subjects in a circle with Alice a bit further away.

“I ask you to give me your soul,” Starlight finally murmured, as the others stood still. “Just for a little while, in the whiling of the time upon the way, untold spinning minds upon the threads of all the fates, I ask only please, to give to me your soul, for a little while.”

The five began to hum, as the world wavered around them, Alice steadying herself a bit as she recognized the effects of the drugs, the trees coming alive a bit and a tangible feeling of energy in the air around her.

This, she could explain away, it was a trip, a particularly enjoyable one but nonetheless it was not magic.

The humming of the five continued, until Starlight sang a note, and the five split their own tones into perfect harmony; without even trying they seemed to hit the perfect pitch to accompany the bookish woman in the center of the circle, who turned and moved slowly, her arms tracing lines and patterns in the air.

‘Are these lines reminiscent of spell circle sigils?’, Alice wondered.

“Oh Alice, down the wishing well you’ve traveled far,” Starlight sang as her eyes began to glow, a purple light that was reflected in the eyes of the other five. “Not human any more than beast, an idea, I know you are. So here pronounced by five in harmony, I sing the truth for you, for all who have eyes to see. Thou art the phoenix upon the ash, old and frail and dead, but towers rise so great as lies become your honey and bread.”

The humming and singing of the other five was beyond loud, it shook the ground, and rattled Alice’s firm grip on what was to be expected when taking drugs, this would all be explained away, it could all be just so much artificial feeling and observation, but she could feel that energy she’d missed for so long, as though…

“Remember now, and always in your heart, the feeling of the sun rising, being risen by the mother of your heart.”

The song was pulling her memories out of her, she was sure of it, tempting away bits of her to be glorified in song, and the worst part was, she desperately didn’t want it to stop.

Starlight, connected by glowing strands of light to the other five, stepped forward and up to Alice, the song woven around her like a cloak as she put her hand to Alice’s cheek.

“Come now, brave warrior,” she whispered. “Come to fight for your people, thy duty shall be done, thy battle shall be won, in your own land, as it is in mine.”

Tears appeared in Alice’s...no Sunset’s eyes, as she remembered the masses of suffering creatures who depended on her alone to save them. “How do I get back home?” she blurted out, not caring about the consequences of revealing too much for the first time in over three years.

“Oh Phoenix,” the swirling glowing entity of light before her said, in a tone rich with pity. “When the stars align, and theft of royal lineage is on the line, a path shall be cut for you to follow.”

What? What kind of...Oh. Oh. “You had me going for a while there,” Alice said with a sigh. “A very good act, though. But unfortunately for you, I’m a little too acquainted with the old ‘vague prophecy that doesn’t really mean anything.’”

Alice rolled her eyes and looked up, trying to judge the time from the positions of the constellations. Although, come to think of it, wasn’t it supposed to be early in the afternoon?

She fell to her knees at what she saw: the stars and constellations of Equestria, complete with Nightmare-Night moon.

At the same time, the glowing light of Starlight’s eyes narrowed, and she felt power surging around her.

“Then let this be specific,” she said sharply. “To impress thee. There lays a nexus of power upon the grounds of this college, upon which a great artif—”

Abruptly, and impossibly, there was a man standing just behind Starlight’s shoulder, and all the threads of light around her shattered like sugar-glass off of him.

“No…” Sunset cried out, as the familiar sky faded away.

Many of the things that Sunset had assumed were aspects of the drugs she was on were suddenly gone. The sunlight shone down around them. The trees were ordinary, plain birch and oak. Starlight stood calmly in front of Alice, looking confused as she turned around to face the man, and recoiled in shock.

“Good morning, my acolyte,” the man said, patting the top of her head like she was a loyal pet. He was a tall, thin man with thick, dark hair on his head. He had a full beard and mustache, neatly trimmed, and slicked-back eyebrows with ends that pointed back. He had a high forehead and a sharp nose. His eyes glinted because of everything he knew that you didn’t. He wore a common accountant’s gray suit, and somehow made it look like the garb of an aristocrat. And he couldn’t have been more than thirty years old.

“Marcus!” Starlight snapped. “You of all people know better than to interrupt a channeler in the middle of her work!”

The other five, dazed and unfocused, stumbled to sit or lean on trees nearby.

“This channelling was inauspicious, my little Dove. Now, who is she?”

Starlight looked away, crossing her arms across her chest.

“A new friend, someone with the street smarts you and I both lack. I thought that she could assist us a great deal in our dealings with the Worldly people,” Starlight explained, her tone still a bit cross.

“Perhaps. Perhaps,” he said with a patronizing tone. Turning to Alice, he made a theatrical bow. “You’ve seen a bit of how we work, Miss. I am not above asking for help when we need it. Are you interested in our little ensemble?”

Alice rose to her feet. “I...I am, Mr….?”

“Marcus. Just call me Marcus.” He held out a hand. Alice took it, and he shook it warmly. “A pleasure to make your acquaintance. And you are? Your true name, please.”

“Alice. Alice Shiner.”

“A pleasure to meet you, Miss Shiner.”

It was actually Starlight that laughed at Alice’s name.

“Sorry,” she said apologetically, turning to help one of her followers stand. “It just seems so obvious now,” she mumbled.

Marcus looked thoughtfully back and forth between the two women. Alice guessed that the man did not like being left out of the joke. “Your spirit name can remain yours for now,” he said.

Alice honestly wasn’t sure if the man was guessing, or if he had somehow intuited the words he was speaking.

“Regardless, why are you here, Marcus?” Starlight demanded as the other five started back towards the group. “I was going to find you at the River Bend campsite next.”

“The River Bend has moved permanently into the past, as have all of the other campsites,” Marcus proclaimed in a loud voice. “Gather around, my children, for I bring glad tidings for all of you.” From an inner pocket he produced a piece of stiff paper, folded into thirds. “This here is a deed. A deed which I have just purchased, for our new home. For...The Compound.”

Starlight stepped up to him and took the paper from him, unfolding it to read it as quickly as she could, eyes wide.

“A… hundred and sixty acres,” she whispered in awe. “How… Where is this, Marcus, where did you find a hundred and sixty acres and who did you kill to get it?”

Alice couldn’t tell if that last question was a joke or not.

“Kill?” Marcus said with a jolly laugh. “Kill! Ha! Do you still take me for a common mountebank, after all of these years? This land was legally begotten. Gifted in kind for services rendered.”

“What kind of services?” Alice asked suspiciously.

“Never you mind, child. Or would you like me to ask you about your recent services?” Marcus’ whisper seemed to appear in Alice’s ears alone, despite being a dozen feet away from him. She looked around, and it almost seemed like time had frozen to prevent anyone else from hearing the criticism.

Starlight studied Marcus, looking for something, before she finally gave him back the paper.

“Do we have supplies? Is there a building?” she asked as she took a step back from him.

“Everything will be waiting when we arrive. We will have to construct the building ourselves, but that is no matter, as it is no ordinary building that will serve our extraordinary need. I have the plans drawn out, the lumber arranged just so, enough nails, enough tools. It will be fun!”

“Your definition of fun typically means that I need to encourage my followers to do a lot of work,” Starlight said grimly. “But this is good work. The work to house and shelter them. I think… if there is any work that is worth doing, this one is it. Fine, let’s go tell them all. Should we bring the Supplier? I know enough to make my own, these days,” she said vaguely.

“Not yet, the time is not right. And there would be nothing for him to do until the building is done anyway. And look at you, Dove! Is there any other so diligent at organization, so good at balancing the play with the work? Is it no wonder that you are my acolyte?”

Starlight’s cheeks flushed a bit, but she didn’t reward his compliments, as she held out a hand to Alice.

“It’s time to go see the world and all it has to offer, Phoenix. We’ve got a place to build. If you want to come, I can promise food, shelter… Maybe some answers,” she offered.

“I would like that, very much,” Alice said. Leaning in close, she whispered, “Your vision is very good, but just a little bit off. Philomena’s the phoenix, not me.”

“Thou shalt rise again, I think is the gist,” Starlight hissed in return before turning to lead her into the woods.

Alice stayed in the circle for just a bit longer, looking around her and trying in vain to summon the vision she experienced back into reality. “I’d like to believe you, I really do,” she said quietly to no one. “But people who die in this world stay dead.”

And then she walked out of the mystical grove and rejoined reality.

Chapter 4. A Place Not Called Waco

The bus rattled through the hills, surrounded by pine trees that reached into the sky, blotting out the sun.

Sunset was plastered to a window of that bus—she hadn’t seen anything this beautiful since leaving Equestria.

There was an old train station they passed, but the rails were still maintained, right next to a camp of some sort with a large lodge, which was all boarded up and likely abandoned.

The bus didn’t stop until several miles later, in the middle of the trees, at a solitary cabin that stood off the road by a hundred feet or so cloaked by a wall of bushes and trees.

“Alright, everybody off! I’ve got saws and branch snippers, we need to clear a spot to park the bus next to the cabin first,” Starlight said, smiling with the confidence of someone who knew how to lie.

The bus was loaded down with non-perishable food, water, and other supplies like pop-up multi person tents, but Starlight was clearly doing the math in her head, calculating their money, their supplies, and how long they could last without more income.

Sunset by contrast was tired of the long-term planning, so for once she was in the moment, looking up at the tall trees, and nearly tripping on some of their roots.

“Hey, friend,” one of the followers said as she stepped up next to Sunset, holding a hand saw out to her. “Want to tackle some together? I’m… I’m new,” she said with that awkward smile that seemed commonplace in the young and inexperienced who wanted to make friends.

“Sure!” said Sunset, eyeing the tool carefully. It looked identical to a mouth saw, except for the smaller grip at a 90-degree angle to what she was used to. “You can call me Alice.”

She had thought that last sentence through with care on the bus. If Starlight knew what she was, her true name was going to come out sooner or later, and she wanted to forestall arguments about her deceiving anyone. But at the same time, she still wasn’t comfortable using the name “Sunset” with other...no, with humans, period. It was scary sometimes how easily she slipped into the fantasy of being a permanent human, with Equestria as a poorly-remembered dream of ridiculous fantasy.

“My name is Claire,” she said happily. “Nice to meet you, Alice.”

They set about cutting wood until the light got too dim to see by, at which point the cut wood was trimmed and put into the cabin’s stove to burn. While a pair of the more long-term followers cooked the meal, everyone else started making a fire pit. Sunset took the opportunity to meet several of the other followers. For the most part they would respond with stories about how they realized the evils of society and how they were found by Starlight or Marcus. Sunset would simply nod in response to these stories, but say nothing about herself, deliberately cultivating an air of mystery.

This worked largely until dinner was served and the group gathered around the fire pit, at which point Starlight seemed to shoot Sunset’s mystique down.

“We’re going to go around the circle and tell each other about ourselves,” Starlight said with a friendly smile, nodding to her followers.

Sunset narrowed her eyes slightly before turning to Claire, who was sitting to her right. “You should tell your story first,” she said. Looking around to the others she added, “if she hasn’t told it to the rest of you already. It’s really good.” This stunt pretty much guaranteed that she would be last to speak, and in this way judge just how candid she needed to be when it was her turn.

Claire laughed nervously but sat up a bit straighter.

“Well… I don’t know if it’s that good, but… So my name is Claire Rockefeller, yeah uh… my family has a lot of money, and that’s sort of all they think about. They just care how much money I’ll make in the future, how much money they have in the bank… They don’t live, they just… feel empty inside. So when I turned eighteen, I took my savings and I left. I’ve been traveling the country, at first by car but I realized to really know this country, I had to leave that car. I had to be in the world. So I sold my car and started hitchhiking. Made it across the entire country, and I’ve met so many amazing people, but… This group, I finally felt like it was a good place to stay. I feel like this is home.”

With that, she looked to the next person in the circle, and the storytelling continued.

The common theme between them all was that they’d been lost, wandering, and found Starlight. She didn’t ask them to stay or demand it, but she seemed to draw in people like gravity.

And Sunset Shimmer for one had no objections to this arrangement. It was clear that nobody else was looking out for these people’s true interests, and Sunset had seen no trace of selfishness in how Starlight chose to use the power that she had been given.

But now it was Sunset’s turn to speak. “Come on, Alice,” a young man named Sam said from the other side of the circle. “Tell us how you got here. Tell us how you got so tough!”

“‘How I got so tough?’” Sunset asked, stroking her chin. “Let’s see...the beginning of my story doesn’t fit into any of yours: rich, poor, lucky, unlucky. I found myself in a situation, and I did the best with it that I could. I...may have made a mistake or two—although she made the biggest mistake when…” Sunset caught herself. “Let’s just say that it’s a long story, and really won’t make much sense to most of you.” She gave Starlight Glimmer a significant look at this point—she wasn’t completely sure how much the psychic knew, but it was more than enough for her to understand why she wasn’t saying any more about her youth.

“Skipping ahead a bit, I was arrested.”

“For what?” asked Claire.

“For disrespecting The Man?” asked Sam.

“For suddenly being in the wrong place at the wrong time, with the wrong dress code.” A few of the young women laughed in understanding at that last bit.

“I was put in a rather rotten foster care home, where...certain wrong things were going on.” She stopped to dismiss the memories. “I don’t want to go into specifics. I escaped from there as soon as possible.”

“Did you do something to stop those...things?” Starlight interrupted. From the look on her face, she had come up with some rather lurid guesses about what Sunset wasn’t saying.

Sunset suspected that Starlight wasn’t even close in guessing that had actually happened. “Directly...no. The woman running the place had things set up so she’d never be caught doing those...things. But I’ve come to learn that people like her value money more than freedom or reputation. And she was cheating the federal government out of a couple million dollars of tax revenue over the past fourteen years...So I used the big oppressive organization to take out the little oppressive organization. She lost every dollar that she had, was thrown into the street where she had to beg for food and a place to sleep, and when all the charitable organizations of her own religion turned her down, she was taken in by a group of Irish Catholic nuns…”

There was a look on Sunset’s face at that moment, a look of satisfied retribution, that was more than a little terrifying. If any of Starlight’s disciples thought that they might take advantage of the new girl, that thought withered on the vine after seeing that look.

Eventually, Sunset dropped back down from her memory-induced high, to see the others looking at her in amazement and a bit of horror. “Oh, um...and I made sure the big oppressive organization never found me again. The end.”

“Quite the ending,” Starlight nodded sagely. “Wrapped up neat like a bow, and then you came with us because… Well, I know things,” she said coyly. “Knowledge is power, is it not?”

Sunset blinked in a mock-innocent manner. “Me? Wanting something from you?” She shrugged. “That can wait. Right now, I’m just interested in helping. ‘Quid pro quo,’ as the lawyers might say.”

“And helping each other is great!” Claire said, putting a hand on Sunset’s shoulder. “And Alice can help us all, just as much as we help her.”

Starlight looked to Claire as she spoke, and something glinted purple in her eyes, before she smiled. It was the smile of someone who had just spotted something they were looking for.

“Claire… How would you like to take your initiation rite?” she asked with an even, unemotional tone.

Claire blinked back at her with wide, innocent eyes, smiling.

“Oh… Now? I’d love to! If it’s alright?”

The circle all joined in, encouraging her, rejoicing. Many of them recounted their own initiation, but Sunset knew enough from her studies to see this as what it was. Love bombing, a way to turn the ritual into an exciting joyful experience no matter what it actually was, and a way to emotionally bond someone to a group.

It could be innocent, it could be nefarious.

But soon Starlight was leading Claire to the cabin, but she paused at the door and looked to Sunset.

“Would you like to watch?” she asked Sunset, grinning.

“As an outside observer?”

“As an academic,” Starlight countered.

Sunset smiled. “Sure. I could even tell you what you’re doing wrong.”

Starlight laughed and held the door open for her, joining Claire in the cabin.

After digging around in a backpack, Starlight set out a dark green bottle on the table, followed by a special metal spoon with slots in it and a hook on the end, a pale green glass cup, a plastic bag of sugar cubes, and then two other plastic bags.

“And you’re certain you want to follow me?” she asked Claire.

Claire nodded happily. “I want to be together with all of you. Do good, and… save the world.”

She clearly felt the words were a little silly, but she meant them.

Starlight nodded, and turned to Sunset.

“Have you poured absinthe before?”

“I’ve only read about it in books. I’ve always wanted to. Lord Byron’s a hero of mine.”

Starlight chuckled a little. “He wasn’t bad, I think I’m better,” she said with a wink. “The key, firstly, is that it has to be the right Absinthe. Wormwood based, and if you add some things it works better.”

She held up the bottle, showing some remains of mushrooms and strips of bark at the bottom of it, half disintegrated.

She put the spoon on the lip of the glass, and set a sugar cube onto it.

“You have to pour slowly, I’ve made a song to measure the time it should take to fill the glass,” she told Sunset, Claire listening along intently.

“Life is a joy in Our Town,” Starlight sang softly, in a somewhat sad tone until she looked up to Claire. “We're all equal here. No one is superior, And no one shakes in fear.”

The last drop of absinthe fell through the spoon, now clean of sugar, and the shot glass was full.

Starlight then took the other two bags and opened them, gesturing for Claire to lean forward.

“This is where it gets a bit more intense,” Starlight said with a kind smile, as she stuck a finger into one of the bags and drew it out, covered in black ash. “Claire, do you give me permission to lay claim to your soul?” she asked gently.

Sunset might have been worried by this question, if she believed in the existence of a soul. Oh, she did believe in the immortality of the spirit, but that was so different from the Christian conception of a soul that...look, just ask an expert on Egyptian mythology to explain the difference between the Ba and the Ka without getting your eyes to glaze over.

Claire took a shaking breath. “Yes. If anyone, I give it to you.”

Starlight marked a six pointed star on Claire’s forehead with the ash, then drew a line down over her left eye onto her cheek.

“Now, Claire, I need you to give up your Self, your Strength, so I can use them,” Starlight said as she dropped a stamp of acid into the glass, and held it out.

A spark of impossible light shimmered across the surface of the liquid, as Claire drank it, eyes closed.

Sunset stopped breathing.

When Claire opened her eyes again, they were shimmering with the same color as the liquid. She sat perfectly still, perfectly obedient.

Starlight smiled, and looked to Sunset.

“What do you think?” she asked, putting the ritual tools away.

Sunset pointed at the glass. “That was octarine. Pure, unfiltered octarine!”

Starlight smirked. “That’s what you’re going to focus on?”

“But...octarine!”

“Humans aren’t supposed to be able to see octarine,” Starlight said, her smirk growing into a cheshire grin.

“I...but...Then how come you’re able to see it?”

“I can’t, normally,” Starlight said, before bringing her hand up in front of her eyes and snapping her fingers.

Her pupils shimmered purple, and then glowed.

“But… I don’t stay normal, normally.”

“Good,” said Sunset. “I like that color better than the other one.”

Starlight blushed a bit and looked away, before clearing her throat and looking to Claire.

“Thank you for joining, Claire. You can go out and celebrate.”

Claire stood and nodded. “Thanks, Starlight!” and she jogged out of the door to the cheers of the group, another wellspring of magic linked to Starlight Glimmer.

“This is all so different,” Sunset said, mostly to herself. “The flows are all through the minds, but turned orthotically...I can almost see it.” She blinked out of her trance and looked over at Starlight. “Your eyes are too small.”

“What?”

“Not you personally. It’s a human problem in general.”

“And what were you then, if not human?” Starlight asked curiously.

“I thought you knew. I thought you saw right into my heart and saw me as I really am.”

Starlight bit her lip, and nodded slowly.

“I could tell you what I saw if you want a very long description, but it’s not physical. I didn’t get an anatomy diagram, I just got… I saw your Fates and Destinies, your Names and your Heart. None of that tells me what shape you had before you came here.”

Sunset grinned. Finally, here was something she had over the person who intimidated her so much. “Well, it was close enough to human for your purposes. The two realms are linked on a rather deep level. Similar folk stories. Same shape for teacups. That sort of thing. We just sling around magic like you do electricity.”

“But you had bigger eyes,” Starlight pointed out. “You said humans were too small, so yours were bigger?”

“Oh, yeah. Great big, ‘see into your soul’ kinda eyes. The eyes are a direct extension of the brain, you know. Has to support three entirely separate systems: one for thought and motion, one for the direct manipulation of reality, and...we never did figure out what the third one did. Maybe it’s for faster-than-light travel or something.”

Starlight grinned. “I bet you’re embarrassed by how adorable you were before, so you don’t want to say. Faster than light bunnies.”

“Bunnies? Bunnies! That’s despicable. I’ll have you know that they based Duck Dodgers on me!” And then she laughed out loud. “Just kidding.”

Starlight squinted at her. “Mmmmhm. Let’s go tend to the Cult,” she joked. “Then it’s bedtime, missy. We’ve got a compound to build.”

“Will, do, Princess,” she said with a formal bow.

Starlight hesitated much longer, cheeks red, and almost asked a question, before she ducked out of the cabin and tended to her flock, leaving Sunset alone with the table all laid out with her ritual supplies.

Sunset frowned for a moment at her inability to comprehend human magic, then followed her out into the night.

When she finally slipped into her sleeping bag several hours later, it was with a sense of satisfaction with how this group she had fallen into had turned out.

‘At least there aren’t any actual children in here. Everyone is clearly making a free decision to submit to Starlight. Add some kids and this turns into a cult.’

Chapter 5. Young Pioneer Camp

The kids arrived the next day.

Sunset had been up early, ostensibly to forage for berries. Her true purpose was to try to find a use out of what she had learned the previous night. She walked out in aimless directions, trying to detect ley lines or any other signs of magic.

After nearly an hour of searching, she looked up in the direction of a dragging sound, and detected two strong magical sinks approaching her. Restoring her natural vision, she waited until two figures emerged from the woods. Two girls with straight strawberry-blonde hair, wearing matching striped long-sleeve shirts and blue jeans. They couldn’t have been more than twelve years old.

“Hey, are you a Friend of Starlight?” the taller of the two asked. She looked back at the very full suitcase she was dragging, and the other girl was pushing. “This thing is really heavy.”

Sunset checked them again, just to be sure. Both of them had been completely drained of their natural stores of this world’s magic, and rather recently. “Yes,” she said, finally. "Let me get the wheelbarrow.” As she was walking away, she stopped suddenly and whirled around. “Who are you two, anyway?”

“I’m Ellen, and this is Mary Jo,” the shorter one said. “We’re Marcus’ daughters.”

Sunset turned back around quickly, so that the girls would not see the scowl on her face. ‘As if I didn’t trust that old buzzard already,’ she inwardly fumed. ‘He’s been draining his own daughters’ magic for himself!’

Ellen let go of the suitcase and ran towards Sunset as she turned to leave. “Mary Jo can watch the luggage,” she said happily. “I smell pancakes! Oh, and you didn’t introduce yourself.”

For a moment, Sunset was strongly—and strangely—compelled to tell the girl her actual name, but the thought of who her father was dissuaded her. “Alice,” she finally said in a curt manner. She then began walking quickly over to the cabin.

“Wow, that was a quick turn,” Ellen commented, catching up with her. “What’s wrong, do I smell or something?” She took a whiff under one armpit. “OK, maybe I do. You try to smell like a spring day after dragging fifty pounds of clothes through the mud.”

“So I guess I’ll stay here,” Mary Jo exclaimed sarcastically, sitting down on the suitcase.

“You do that!” Ellen called back.

“You brought fifty pounds of clothes?” Sunset asked. She suspected that the contents were a good deal more suspicious than that, given who must have packed that suitcase.

“Yes, Alice—if that’s your real name,” Ellen said, squinting her eyes at Sunset, “we did bring fifty pounds of clothes.” Then she laughed. “Just kidding about the name thing. Yup, fifty pounds of clothes. At least, I think they’re clothes. Marcus locked the suitcase and wouldn’t let us see what was inside. Said that ‘innocent children like yourselves will be perfect transport for this innocent cargo of garments.’” The last part was said with a fair approximation of Marcus’ voice. Ellen’s eyes then suddenly went wide. “Hey, that sounds really suspicious when I repeat it like that. You don’t think it’s full of counterfeit hundred-dollar bills, do you?”

Sunset rolled her eyes. “No, I really don’t think you’re smuggling counterfeit bills.”

“Good. Are we close to the cabin? I’m hungry.”

Sunset pulled a single blueberry out of her basket and offered it to the teenager.

It later turned out both of them were right: the suitcase did not contain fifty pounds of clothes, and it did not contain fifty pounds of counterfeit currency.

It contained fifty pounds of peyote.

The luggage lid clicked closed as Starlight, stony-faced and grim, looked over the top of it at the two children, who looked annoyed more than upset or scared.

“We’ll have the church built soon, but for now I’ll give you my room in the cabin,” Starlight said finally. “At least until we can figure out why your dad decided to bring you here. Nothing’s finished yet, so this place is not much fun for a couple of kids.”

“He sent us here to spy on you and prove you’re up to something,” said Mary Jo flatly.

“He sent us here to get rid of us while he did something illegal,” Ellen said at the exact same moment.

The two sisters glared at each other.

“You’re wrong!” they both then shouted at each other.

Sunset sighed as she watched all this. “Father of the Year material for sure,” she muttered.

“Great,” Starlight said with a forced smile. “Either way, that means you’re going to be stuck here, spying on me as I babysit you for a while. So I’m going to tell you some rules, and if you don’t follow them, I’ll mind-control you to make you obey them, capiche?”

“Can she do that?” asked Ellen.

“What does ‘capiche’ mean?” asked Mary Jo.

“I think it means she’s in the Mafia,” said Ellen. “And she can totally do that. I mean—look at her eyes!”

“Those are freaky eyes,” Mary Jo admitted reluctantly.

Starlight’s smile got a bit more genuine, even if it was more of a smirk now. “Yeah, sure. Mafia, and yes my glowy eyes mean I can totally mind-control you, no effort. So! The rules are as follows. You will not go anywhere near the construction. This means that if you can see the construction, you’re probably too close. I don’t want you two eating nails or something.”

The sisters rolled their eyes.

“Two, you will not open any of the containers I keep in the cabin. If you do, I won’t even have to mind-control you, you’ll just instantly die,” she lied.

The sisters looked silently at Sunset for confirmation. Sunset grimly nodded her head.

“Three, you are required to eat at all three group meals; and four, if you’re bored, tell me so I can find something for you to do. Okay?”

“Fiiine,” Mary Jo said for the both of them. “Now please tell us you have a stereo, because if I can’t play my records I will trip.”

Starlight relaxed a bit. “I’ve got a stereo and a record player. Do you two know how to use a record player?”

“We know how to use a record player,” Ellen said, a bit insulted.

“Marcus listens to those Crowley speeches on his stereo all time, and we’re the ones stuck turning the platters over when he’s too stoned to move,” Mary Jo added.

“Of course he does, the pompous bastard,” Starlight said in a kind tone. “Come on, the stereo is in my room.”

Starlight guided them to her room, took a few things out of her room, and then shut the door, leaning her head on the wood with her eyes closed for a moment before turning to walk away and almost running into Sunset.

“Jesus, Mary and Joseph, I forgot you were there. You’re quiet when you want to be,” she swore softly, straightening her shirt.

“Well how else are you going to overhear how the god-empress created the planet?” Sunset quipped.

Starlight stopped, squinting at Sunset for a moment.

“Even in a spirit world, I don’t believe you’d have a planet creator thingie, nice try,” she said before brushing past Sunset. “Fucking Peyote, of course he sends… You know how impure this stuff is? Well… Not impure, but tied up, the residual energies are so… specific, so easy to be snared in conditionals.”

Any reply by Sunset was cut off by the trippy music coming through the closed door.

“Lime and limpid green, a second scene
A fight between the blue you once knew.
Floating down, the sound resounds
Around the icy waters underground.
Jupiter and Saturn, Oberon, Miranda and Titania.
Neptune, Titan, Stars can frighten.”

Sunset banged loudly on the door. “Some of us are trying to have a conversation here!”

The music got noticeably quieter.

“Pink Floyd,” Sunset said after a moment. “They have good taste, I’ll say that.”

“Good music,” Starlight agreed.

“As for the drugs thing, I’ll trust their judgement. Also, what are the chances that Marcus was just dumping it on you because the fuzz had gotten too close?”

Starlight resumed walking, brow furrowed. “It’s… possible, but I’ve never gotten the impression he gives me access to anything that he doesn’t intend for me to use. I’m a… conduit for him, a power source. You don’t put coal into a furnace for safe keeping.”

She arrived back in the living room, to look at the suitcase, which she popped open again, running a thumb over a bulb of the cactus and biting her bottom lip in contemplation.

“Oh how I could burn, if only I could figure out a proper target. Too many things in this world are just… distractions. They look real and valuable until you press them, and then it’s all fool’s gold.”

“Well, that’s just sort of a general thing,” said Sunset. “Sometimes I think that my world was nothing but a big mass of distractions.” She pointed at the two of them. “Now this—this is the good stuff.”

“I’m not good stuff,” Starlight said as she stood abruptly, facing Sunset. “I’m not, I can’t be good or bad, that’d… It wouldn’t work. I’m just… a force. A vector, that’s it, ok?”

Sunset opened her mouth to say something, but stopped herself. After a few moments she finally said, “I know this sounds immensely hypocritical from me, but you think too much.”

Starlight laughed, and shook her head. “I have to think. I’ve got too many brains not too. Come on, let’s check on the church.”

As they turned to walk away, part of the next song started seeping out of the closed room behind them.

“Ginger, ginger you're a witch.
You're the left side
He's the right side.
Oh, no!
That cat's something I can't explain.”

Starlight closed the suitcase and strode outside, sweeping along the dirt path until the church came into sight.

So far it was just a cleared spot between the trees, cradled by the old oaks and pines with a short wall of stones marking the foundation’s borders, forty one feet by forty one feet, with the digging beginning on a small cellar in one corner.

“Well, even though its height isn’t impressive, I do like the look of it,” Starlight admitted, a few of the working members glancing up with smiles, a purple glow shimmering across their eyes, or possibly just a trick of the sunlight.

Sunset frowned a bit at that last part, before looking over the site and nodding. “It’s compact. I like that. Not like those Catholic cathedrals in New York City. All that opulence while the masses are begging for bread in the back alleys.”

“I want to burn down a cathedral some day,” Starlight said, grinning. “I feel like it’d be thematically appropriate. But all we need is one big room, and then we’ll start building more cabins. One room for each person is my goal. One room, three meals, one prayer a day,” she recited as though she’d been holding it as a precious ethos for a very long time.

“Sunrise or sunset?” asked Sunset, having a very clear mental image of the masses of ponies beseeching Celestia at sunrise the last day before Sunset left Equestria forever.

“Sunset,” Starlight said firmly. “Prayers offer a calmness that helps us sleep.”

“Oh,” Sunset said with a smile. “I like those kind of prayers.”

Starlight stepped forward and started walking through the worksite.

“Our mother, who art with us always,” she began, as members of the group spoke the next words in sequence, as they worked as though they’d practiced it a hundred times.

“Give us the strength to serve our fellow man.”

“Give us the love to be content as we are.”

“See our souls through the pains of this world.”

“And deliver us to the freedom that comes only from loving one another.”

As Starlight reached the other side of the construction, she turned back to look at Sunset with a grin, her eyes seeping purple smoke into the air.

“If Marcus tries to take this from me,” she said coolly. “I will rip his heart out.”

Sunset blinked several times as she was broken out of the trance caused by hearing the prayer. “Way to ruin a mood,” she muttered under her breath. Nevertheless, she looked nervously over at the room where Marcus’ two daughters, his two visible symbols, were staying.

“I have no intention of hurting them, ‘Alice’ as much as they are his children. They… shouldn’t carry the blame for their father,” she said as she started walking back to Sunset’s side.

Sunset nodded deferentially. “Of course.”

“Now, this wouldn’t be fair, if we just stood here and watched,” Starlight said with a grin, leaning down and picking up two rough sacks. “We need rocks!”

Sunset put down the spare hammer she had just picked up. “Rocks?” She pictured in her mind some sort of imaginary earth pony temple, where purposely-placed rocks balanced on each other, causing whole continents to float into the sky.

“Well yes, we aren’t going to buy concrete, only mortar. So we need rocks to form the foundation and fireplace,” she explained. “Can you believe some people actually buy rocks in bulk? There are plenty out there in the forest.”

“Oh,” said Sunset, feeling foolish. “Yes, that’s exactly what I was thinking of.”

“Oh come on, you’ve got to have rocks where you come from,” Starlight said as she led Sunset out into the forest, heading towards a rocky hill in the distance.

“No, we have to make them from scratch out of sand every time,” Sunset said flatly.

As they walked, they passed by a quartet of barrels full of water, and a series of planter boxes with small sprouts or divots for seeds in them, being worked on by three members of the group.

“Sand makes glass, not rocks,” Starlight said, rolling her eyes.

“Are we really having a discussion about geology right now?”

“If you’d rather talk about magic, I can do that too, but we are out here looking for rocks, so it’s a pertinent topic of conversation.”

“Fine,” Sunset said with some exasperation, then grabbed one of the sacks from Starlight and started filling it. “Rock, rock, rock that turned into dirt, rock, snack, rock…”

The “snack” was a pine cone.

Starlight squinted, but didn’t say anything as she started gathering rocks as well, though she focused on only getting a few large ones, before they had to head back to the church, not wanting to overload themselves.

As they headed back out for another trip, she finally took the bait.

“You’re not actually going to eat a pinecone are you?”

“Not on a full stomach I’m not,” Sunset replied. “Maybe with a full hindgut, but that’s neither here nor there.”

Starlight fully stopped walking as she took in what Sunset had said, and tried to process it.

“Hind…. Gut. Like… Like cows?!”

“You did NOT just call me a cow,” Sunset stated. “Wow. How rude.”

Starlight, cheeks bright red, turned and charged off into the forest with her sack, searching for rocks again and trying not to meet Sunset’s gaze.

Sunset made an imaginary mark in the air. “And another point for me.”

Dinner was a bit of a spooky affair, in Sunset’s eyes. It was well after the sun had set, and there weren’t enough light sources to illuminate everybody now that the campfire had nearly burned out. Also, Sunset was keeping an eye on the girls sitting next to her, and so saw their apprehension at the unfamiliarity of everything going on and sort of absorbed a bit of it herself.

“Well, with William’s car arriving, that means everyone is here,” Starlight declared as dinner was spooned up into bowls, a rich stew over rice. “Which means I must introduce everyone to everyone! After all, many of you were at Raven Creek waiting for me, so… Let’s start off with those of you who have been here the longest.”

She didn’t even have to say any names, as an old woman with ratty grey hair nodded and sat up a bit.

“Hello… all. I am Esme. Been… sticking around Starlight for about three years now. Someone’s got to look after her.”

There was a round of soft laughter around the campfire, and Esme smiled.

“Joined with her two months ago, when the getting was good for the chems and all that, and… Well, guess I’m sort of the seamstress of us, till we get a better one. Need clothes fixed, I’ll help.”

She nodded to the group, and focused on her bowl, as the rest of the group introduced themselves in similar style, how they were connected to Starlight, how long they’d been around, how they could help the group even if it was just being a good listener.

It was easy to notice that only a quarter of the group mentioned being “Joined” specifically, and Sunset knew what that meant.

But eventually, their eyes all looked to Sunset and the children. Repeating last night’s ritual of introduction didn’t sound very appetising to Sunset, though.

Once again, she had to fight to get her false name out. “A...Alice,” she finally said. “And I’m not really sure where I am with this group. I have skills, but they don’t really apply here. I guess I’m here to learn about the true nature of reality.”

“A noble goal,” Starlight said, smiling. “And you, girls?”

The shadows made Starlight seem more than sinister, they etched her face into something inhuman, grinning as if waiting for the children to make a mistake.

“M...Mary Jo. And Ellen,” the elder sister said, standing in front of and speaking for her sibling. “And we’re here to see that the true purpose of this assemblage has not been forgotten.” She looked shocked after she had spoken these words, as if they had not come from her by choice.

Sunset appeared to notice this, giving the pair a new, sympathetic look.

A cool breeze blew through the clearing, and Starlight laughed, slow and soft, shaking her head.

“It’s alright Mary Jo,” she said sympathetically. “We know the true purpose of it all is to get you fed and happy.”

But behind her words were eyes of furious hot steel, as something hardened in her.

The bowls of stew were delivered around the circle, and one of the assembly sat on the other side of the children from Sunset, talking to them about music in happy tones as Sunset noticed Starlight abandon her bowl on a rock and stand, striding slowly out into the darkness beyond the forest, hands clenched in fists beside her.

Sunset excused herself and found a roundabout way to join Starlight. “Back on my world, I’ve got a spell called ‘Lifting the Veil’. Very useful. Sadly, it doesn’t work here.”

Starlight said nothing, refusing to turn to look at her.

“...Right,” Sunset said after an awkward few minutes. “I’ll go back and keep the group together while you think through this.”

As she did this, Sunset reflected that Starlight’s earlier threat to mind-control the sisters was way too on-the-nose.

“Sunset?” Starlight whispered, before turning to see if she was still there, seeing Sunset had already made it halfway back to the campfire.

“Yes?” Sunset said as she backtracked.

“Tell me at least in your world, magic doesn’t get used to make kids into puppets?” she asked, voice cracking as she did, cheeks shining from the distant light of the campfire.

Sunset sighed. “Once. Only once, long ago. And the king responsible lost his whole kingdom as a result.”

Starlight nodded sharply, and looked away again.

“Some day… If we build a way there, can you show me your world?” she pleaded.

“Yes,” Sunset said, reaching out to take Starlight’s hand. “I’d like that very much.”

Starlight held her hand tightly as she wiped her eyes on her sleeve.

“God I fucking hate that Marcus has his claws in my heart. He’s not here, and I can be true, I can be pure, but the moment he shows up…”

She laughed bitterly, looking up at the stars.

“I’m just a power source again. I’m just a tool, and I want to die.”

Sunset turned to look Starlight in the eyes. “We’ll get through this together, Starlight Glimmer. That human has no power over me. And if he wants to pervert your pure purpose, he’ll have to do it over my dead body.”

Starlight turned and hugged Sunset quickly, before pulling away and nodding.

“Yeah… Well… We’ve got a week before he shows up, probably. So let’s do some good for these kids until then.”

“Yeah,” said Sunset, leading Starlight back towards the others.

“Oh and Sunset?” Starlight asked, hanging back a little.

“Yes?”

“Earlier, when I called you, you must have been fifteen, maybe twenty feet away.”

“So?”

“I whispered your name, Sunset. How did you hear it? Or did you read my mind?” there was an odd tone to Starlight’s voice, as if she wanted Sunset to be able to read her mind.

“Oh I heard it,” Sunset said. “I have really good ears.” She reached up, her fingertips momentarily closing on nothing a few inches above her head before lowering to momentarily grip the tops of her ears.

“Sure,” Starlight chuckled. “Not gonna fall for that again.”

She touched Sunset’s back as she passed her, headed for the campfire.

“Fall for what?” Sunset asked nobody in particular.

Starlight was awakened in the middle of the night by the sound of a young woman screaming. The scream was then cut off, as if someone had covered the screamer’s mouth.

She had no hesitation, jumping off the couch in the cabin and running towards the sound, flinging open the door before a moment of disorientation reminded her that this was her room, the room where the kids were staying.

“You can’t have her!” screamed the voice of Mary Jo.

“It’s alright, I’m here, it’s ok,” she said, without even thinking, as she slipped closer to the bed, blinking sleep out of her eyes.

“S...Starlight?” Ellen asked, after prying Mary Jo’s hand off of her mouth. “It’s just Starlight,” she told her sister.

“Yeah,” Mary Jo said sheepishly. “I can see that now. We’re...we’re sorry we awakened you.”

“Hey, hey, sorry I scared you,” Starlight said, kneeling by the bed and holding out her hand. “Come on, hold my hand, it’s alright. It’s alright. I… I have nightmares too. Everyone does, okay?”

She vividly remembered some of her followers having nightmares that spread like wildfire through her own mind, and always the solution was physical contact, humans were simple creatures.

It was with some confusion that she looked down to see that the hand she had taken was no longer there. She hadn’t felt the hand sliding out of hers. It was just at one moment it was there, and the next...it wasn’t.

“I’m sorry,” Mary Jo said. “It’s just the way we were raised. Marcus forbids us to touch anyone but each other. Weird, I know.” She seemed to have no awareness of the supernatural aspect of how Ellen got her hand back.

Starlight’s face fell, in pure grief and sorrow. She looked into the eyes of the two children, and she saw something of the pain being brewed inside of them like a seed, primed to sprout and destroy them. But half awake, she didn’t have the eloquence to do anything about it.

She licked her lips and blinked slowly, looking away, before standing and shuffling to the corner, opening her book bag, an old battered one covered in pins and precious iconography, before she found what she was looking for and walked back over to the bed, kneeling again and holding the object out.

It was a stuffed snake, soft as velvet with little bead eyes, and a stitched pattern in the back. It even had a little capsule in the tail with a couple of small seeds inside, to act as a rattle.

“Snakes aren’t people, so… So maybe he can help,” she said in a rough tone, with a hollow smile.

Ellen looked at the toy, tilting her head. “That’s nice,” she said, politely taking the stuffed animal. “But we’re not exactly children anymore.”

“No,” Starlight sighed as she stood. “No, but adults are allowed to hold hands. Be hugged. Have comfort. So… Until then? Until things get better for you? I’d say hold onto the things that helped when you were kids.”

“We don’t have anything from when we were kids,” Mary Jo said, her eyes on the snake. “Not since...the bonfire. But thanks for the gift.” She looked back at Starlight and smiled. “We really appreciate it.”

“Yeah. You’re welcome. I… hope someday I can actually help. Do more… I…”

Starlight looked back at the kids, and in their eyes she saw Marcus, and she knew anything she said could get back to him, and if she showed any doubts of him that he could crush her.

“Sleep well, kids. Don’t be scared to call out. I’ll be on the couch.”

Then she stepped out and closed the door, walking numbly to the couch before curling up on it and crying herself to sleep.

She never heard the sounds of the rattlesnake tail rattling, or the gentle giggles that followed.

Chapter 6. Mistakes Were Made

The repainted white school bus rolled into the snowy mountain town of Mukwonago with a hissing of brakes, and Starlight led a handful of people off it and onto the grass of the park in the middle of town.

All around them, families were eating picnic meals and relaxing in the shade, utterly unaware of her.

Some of the cultists departed her side immediately, going to pick up supplies and groceries, their orders given by Starlight without words or effort.

“I’m looking for lone men, too young for the draft but old enough not to be missed from their families,” Starlight said aloud as she walked through the park, eyes drifting across the locals in their little groups until she spotted a man sitting on a park bench, watching the families idly as though wishing he could sit with them. “Like that one, see him? Men can be pretty dim, but think very highly of themselves, easy to make them feel they’re the ones calling the shots.”

Claire nodded attentively, hands clasped behind her back.

“So we want to convince him to come have a drink with us, be friendly and open, and once we get back to the bus, I’ll induct him. I’m certain he’ll be happier,” Starlight said casually, looking away and scanning for more targets.

Claire took her word for it and stepped up to the young man.

“Um… excuse me,” she said with a nervous smile, tucking her hair behind her ear. “Are you thirsty?”

“Huh?” the man said, looking up at her as his eyes slowly focused on her. He was wearing a grimy oversized t-shirt over a ragged pair of bell bottom pants. “Am I thirsty? Like, I’m always thirsty.” He reached over to a pile of papers sitting beside him on the bench and removed a page to hand to Claire. “My dog is missing. He’s like, my best friend in the whole world. We had a fight over a pickle sherbet sundae and...have you seen him?”

Claire tried to make some sense out of the flyer she had been given. The central xeroxed photo of a large animal was almost completely unintelligible, largely because it had been taken using a Polaroid while the animal was trying to knock over the photographer.

“Oh that’s a shame,” Claire said as she tilted her head and tried to read the flier. “Um… Well, maybe my friends could help you look for him? If you come with me, Starlight is my best friend, she knows all sorts of tricks for finding people.”

She turned to gesture back at Starlight, who was almost to the bus.

“Oh, OK,” the young man said brightly, standing up. “I really appreciate this! Name’s Rogers, by the way. Like the Mister.”

“Mister Rogers,” she chuckled, grinning. “I like that. Hey Starlight! We’ve got a lost dog!” Claire said as they approached her.

Starlight turned back, smiling a little as she took in the pair.

“Oh dear… A lost dog? Well, how long has he been missing?” Starlight asked politely.

“Three days!” Rogers wailed. “I’m so worried for him.”

Claire pouted at Starlight, who looked back to her with a slight air of incredulity, before she sighed, and gave in.

“Well… Have you tried praying for him to return?” Starlight asked, leading them back to the bus. “I know some prayers that actually work.”

“Yeah, well...wait, what? Are...are you talking about magic? Isn’t...isn’t that...blasphemous?” He looked nervously around him, then up, just in case God was listening in on their conversation.

“Not if you’re praying to God when you do it,” Starlight said honestly and openly, as she slipped her hand into her pocket and pulled out a silver cross, from the small cluster of holy symbols within.

She gestured him closer, and pulled her bag down to the bus steps, drawing forth a green bottle and a wine glass, putting a few drops into the glass and offering it to him.

“So, you pray to Jesus, or God, to find your dog, then you take the sacrament, you drink the wine, and God may answer your prayers,” she said as Claire stood next to them, smiling eagerly.

“Huh.” He scratched his head as he looked at both the cross and the glass. “Um, that sounds right to me.” He made the sign of a cross on his chest with a finger and bowed his head. “Hey, uh...God? It’s me, Rogers. It’s...been kind of a while, and I’m sorry for forgetting about you for so long. Like, there’s this dog, see? He doesn’t believe in you, but I’m sure if he’s back with me, I can like...take him to church or something. So, could you find it in your heart to find him for me? I’d be really grateful.” A few seconds passed as he looked around him. “Oh, and amen.”

Starlight, smiling beatifically, reached out and handed him the wineglass.

The young man grabbed it, and then threw back the small amount of liquid again with a single gulp. “Ah!” he exclaimed, looking down at the hand holding the glass—there was a small fracture in the glass, which had cut into the side of his thumb when he drank. “Uh, sorry about staining your glass,” he said, gingerly handing it back. He then sucked on his thumb to stop the bleeding.

Starlight took the glass and set it into her bag, before looking back to the young man. Her eyes briefly changed color.

At a nearby supermarket, the automatic door opened and the manager walked out, holding a dog nearly as big as he was by the scruff of its neck and its backside. “Now get out, and don’t come back!” he yelled, tossing the animal to the pavement right in front of Rogers.

“It...it worked!” Rogers exclaimed. “Thank ya, God!” he exclaimed to the heavens.

“You’re welcome,” Starlight said smoothly, before stepping aside, leaving the stairs into the bus open, an inviting entrance, where Rogers and his dog would be safe.

“Yeah, sure…” the man said, his voice somewhat distant. “As long as you don’t have a no-dogs policy, I’m in. Come on,” he addressed the canine, “I’ve found us a new place to live.”

The dog looked at the man for a few moments before mutely following him onto the bus.

From inside the bus, Sunset Shimmer pursed her lips in thought. She had watched the entire scene, but she was not entirely sure what she had seen. At least, she hoped it wasn’t what she thought she had seen.

Ellen sat across the campfire from Sunset, squinting at her, examining her, a rattlesnake plush held to her own chest with both arms hugging herself.

“You’re not braindead like the rest of the dummies that follow Starlight,” Ellen grumbled.

Well, maybe I at least got to choose to be here. That’s what Sunset wanted to say. But as always, she knew to keep a tight control over what she said around either of Marcus’ daughters. So instead she chuckled weakly. “I recognize that line of thought,” she said lightly. “‘I’m the only smart girl in the room,’ eh?” From the look on Ellen and Mary Jo’s faces, she knew she was on to something. “Yeah, that was me, oh about seven years ago. That was fun, feeling oh so superior to the rest of my species. And collecting an overwhelming supply of evidence to back that belief up. So sure, go ahead, feel superior, if that gets you through the day.”

“And then comes the lecture…” Ellen said quietly, but still intending Sunset to hear.

“Now I grew out of it eventually.” Sunset sighed before gesturing to the other followers of Starlight out of earshot. “Most of these folks got themselves into trouble from thinking too much—that’s why they’re here. Between you and me, I do agree that most of them should be thinking a little more, though.”

“So are you gonna overthrow Starlight and tell them all to think for themselves?” Ellen asked with an eager smile at the idea of an assumed bloody revolution.

“Ooh...power. Hm...nah. Running this group doesn’t interest me. I’ve got...I think the equivalent expression is ‘bigger fish to fry’? Yes, that.”

“Marcus says you’re a traveler,” Mary Jo chimed in. “You don’t have an accent.”

Sunset laughed again. “Oh I have an accent. It just happens to be from the one other place with the exact same accent as this place.”

Mary Jo squinted at her suspiciously, but Ellen seemed less troubled by it.

“Soooo like… Are you from Canada?” Ellen asked curiously.

“Can-a-da. Isn’t that in Asia?”

Ellen giggled, but Mary-Jo just got more suspicious looking.

“Noooo, no! It’s north of America. You must be from a place with bad schools,” Ellen accused her.

“Or homeschooled like us,” Mary Jo muttered bitterly.

Sunset shook her head. “There’s nothing north of here but the frigid wastes. Overrun by yaks, I think. And yeah, definitely homeschooled.” She was trying her best to hold in her grin.

Mary Jo lost interest at the bit about yaks and went back to the funky looking stick she’d found, while Ellen had never been more engaged.

“Yaks are the big fluffy ones with horns, right?! I saw them on Mutual of Omaha’s Wild Kingdom.”

“Yeah, that’s them. Real big guys. Bad tempers like you wouldn’t believe!” She glanced over at Mary Jo. “I’m sure you two must be dying of boredom. I’d tell you some fairytales, but I think you’re just a little too old.” She got up. “Maybe I can find a Monopoly set around here somewhere…”

“I like fairy—” Ellen huffed as Mary Jo elbowed her in the ribs.

“Monopoly, yeah,” Mary Jo snapped. “Sure.”

Sunset found the battered box and began to set the board up on the little table in the center of the room. The thimble was an actual thimble. She held up the substitute for the terrier, an arts and crafts project that honestly looked more like a pony. “Ah, this is adorable!” she exclaimed. “Dibs!” Then she took a closer look at it, and found that it looked exactly like King Sombra, right down to a piece of red string sticking out of its head. “On second thought, I think I’ll go with the thimble, instead.”

“I’ll take the horse,” Mary Jo said, holding out her hand.

Sunset used a pair of scissors to snip off the “horn”. “Just to be safe,” she said as she handed it over.

“Is there a racecar?” Ellen asked, her elbows on her knees, hands on her cheeks, looking for all the world like she was one minor disappointment away from pouting.

Sunset looked around, and dug a Matchbox ambulance out of another box. “This is the closest I can find. Ambulances are pretty fast, though.”

It easily dwarfed the pony and the thimble.

Ellen smiled a little, setting the ambulance on the start square, before the ground and building around them rumbled slightly.

Ellen immediately, and without any hesitation, crawled under the table and clasped her hands behind her neck.

Sunset looked around to try and find a source of the sound, and not spotting anything immediately, crouched down to be at eye level with Ellen. “Are you alright?” she asked.

“Haven’t you ever had Earthquake drills?” Mary Jo asked, admiring her little pony figurine.

“Well I usually rely on the ea...experts to tell me how bad it is,” Sunset admitted.

Ellen had her eyes closed, but seemed… calm. She wasn’t crying, just curled up under the table, waiting for something uncontrollable.

Sunset changed her crouch into a sit. “I guess we’ll wait it out,” she said. She looked around at the sturdy walls. “I think this building will stand..”

The cabin door opened, and one of the cultists stepped inside, spotting Sunset with a nervous smile.

“Alice? Starlight needs your assistance if you have a moment.”

“I’m coming,” Mary Jo said, standing and seeming to surprise even herself with the declaration.

“Are you going to be okay?” Sunset asked Ellen. “One of us should stay with her.”

Ellen looked up, and then looked at Mary Jo. They seemed to share something, briefly, before Ellen got out from under the table and took Mary Jo’s hand, hiding in her shadow like she had when they first arrived.

“We’ll both go,” Mary Jo declared.

Sunset led the pair out of the cabin, and towards the church, which was about half finished.

The roof wasn’t yet covered, open rafters letting in the sunlight into the walled off area: a flat stone platform where the Altar would eventually be. On that Altar Starlight was kneeling, facing away from Sunset and the kids.

But strewn all around her on the wooden floor were beakers, mortars and pestles, even a battery-powered grinder and a bunsen burner.

The bags and bags of Peyote which were open and spilling out onto the floor looked depleted, Starlight had clearly been working on purifying them into something usable.

“Starlight?” Sunset said gently, positioning herself behind and to the right of the young woman. She was close enough to reach out and touch her, and far enough to run away if necessary. She had, after all, seen some pretty bad trips.

“I hate Peyote,” the woman growled, her voice rough and low, almost not even sounding like her.

She coughed, and black mist swirled around her face before dissipating.

“I’m not connected… It’s too natural for me.”

Starlight turned and just barely looked at Sunset, her face still hidden from the girls. Her eyes were black with glowing purple pupils, and she had a nosebleed, her veins standing out bright on her face. It looked like she was straining herself, just sitting there.

“Siphon?” she rasped hopefully.

Sunset took in a couple deep breaths. “Horseapples,” she muttered under breath. This was black magic, and if there was one thing Princess Celestia told her over and over again never to mess with, it was black magic.

Never mind the fact trying to mess with black magic was exactly how Sunset wound up on Earth. No in fact, that makes a much better point—black magic was so messed up that it sent innocent Equestrians to Earth!

But Starlight was in trouble. It didn’t matter how suspicious Sunset had grown over Starlight’s activities recently, because at the end of the day, Sunset thought her friend had a good heart.

Sunset took in a deep breath, before letting it out in a huff. “Girls, this might get a little messy. So...at least try to keep your distance. I know better than to try to order you two around.” She didn’t bother to look back to see if her words got through to them or not.

“Awww, did our little Channel take a sip and not like what she got?” Mary Jo asked, her voice low and cruel.

“You know what? If she explodes, I’m not blocking you from absorbing the blast.” She then walked up to Starlight and raised a hand, nerving herself to go through with this.

Then she firmly grasped Starlight by the shoulder and spun her towards her, putting her face right up in front of Starlight’s.

There wasn’t any mortal emotion in Starlight’s eyes. No fear or anger, just a cold emptiness in inhuman pupils. She beheld Sunset, and waited, clenched fists trembling.

“I got you, Human,” Sunset assured her. When nothing happened, she shook her head. “Of course it’s going to be through the mouth. Why did I expect anything else?”

So she kissed her.

The pain was exquisite. No physical sensation, or bodily reaction. It was like her soul was being sandblasted and polished smooth by the friction. The black magic flowed out of Starlight and she fainted, collapsing to the floor of the church with a sigh, while Sunset stood tall, filled with power and the pain that had been ripping at her ever since that night when she’d first seen callous death on the planet called Earth.

Sunset shook, fighting to convert the darkness into something safe. She didn’t know what to do, so she did what Celestia did: she lectured the evil in her mind into submission. She’d save feeling stupid for later. Only then did she dare to release it.

Starlight blinked as the darkness left her eyes, as much the lack of light as the hints of corruption in everything she saw. She looked at Sunset, but she couldn’t see her, the glow being so intense as to be nearly blinding.

The girls certainly couldn’t see anything clearly through the glow.

But, with an effort, Starlight could see something. A silhouette, with flowing hair. She squinted to try and see better, and gasped at what she finally could see, in the brief moment before she became human again.

Sunset felt drained, so very drained. But she needed to be sure that nobody else was hurt. So she turned around, to see all of the magic rushing into the two sisters.

When they finished twitching, Mary Jo opened her eyes, but they were Marcus’s this time, as he smiled and took in Sunset through his daughter.

“You can convert it. Excellent. I’ll be there in a few days.”

Then, he was gone, and Mary Jo was blinking at Sunset with an expression of confusion, holding her sister’s hand tightly. “What happened to your ears?”

“What?” asked Sunset, reaching up. But all she found were her own pair of human ears.

“N...never mind.”

“Thank you,” Starlight whispered from where she lay on the floor.

“What were you thinking?” Sunset muttered in bitter disappointment, clenching her hands into fists. She then looked down callously at the young woman who had exposed her to the most-dangerous man on the planet. “I’m surrounded by idiots,” she snarled, before stalking back to the cabin, slamming the door shut behind her.

Starlight, despite being exhausted, slowly got up after watching Sunset go. She stumbled more than walked her way into the cabin.

Sunset was consulting a map, memorizing the landmarks. “‘In order to resist evil, you first have to experience it,’” Sunset quoted from memory, without looking up. “That’s what my mentor told me. And I said to myself, ‘Oh, I’ve been naughty plenty of times, I can handle it.’ But I was wrong, I didn’t know a thing about evil before I came here. But I’ve experienced plenty of it since I arrived. It looks like I’m pretty experienced now. You on the other hand absolutely can’t handle it. Which is too bad. Because I’m leaving.” She turned around, prepared to walk right out of the cabin.

“If you leave, then you’ll never have a chance to seize the casting as it is performed, and return to your world,” Starlight whispered, leaning against the wall, hugging herself.

“Oh, don’t try to use your honeyed arguments on me, Missy!” Sunset retorted. “From what I’ve seen, I’m not entirely sure that you’re substantially better than him!”

Starlight looked away, lips pressed into a thin line and tears in her eyes. “Maybe I can get better,” she whispered, pleading as if it was out of her control. “I… I want to be better.”

Sunset looked around her incredulously. “Then do something! You’re free on this world! That’s one of the very few advantages of being in a place without Harmony! Nobody’s forcing you to be bad or good.”

“No I’m not!” Starlight roared in response, staggering closer. “I’m not free! I never have been! Maybe you grew up in a land of magic where being good was just… there, always there at the edge of everything you’ve ever done, but I was raised by a raised fist and a cruel word, and until today, I had never felt harmony!” she sobbed, finally looking away. “When you took that natural magic out of me, I felt it. I…” she stopped, losing the words, falling silent and weak.

Sunset grabbed Starlight by the wrists, refusing to allow her to slump down. “You felt Harmony? I…” She let go of Starlight, looking into the distance in awe with unfocused eyes.

“I felt the joy I have brought people, and all their pain too,” Starlight whispered. “Not just one, or the other. Not… Not a punishment. It was just… There. Roger’s joy as he hugs his dog. His emptiness, as I told him to get on the bus. Facts, but… Beautiful facts. I felt how much better I could be, and for once in my life, I wasn’t being taunted with it. I just had to reach out…”

She held a hand out, as though grasping something in front of her.

“That better me was right there. So close...”

Sunset turned her head to look helplessly at Starlight. “Marcus is coming back. If I had the time, I could finally get the hang of this, and we’d be able to stand up to him. But now...why does happiness keep slipping from my…” She held up her hands, looking as if she couldn’t even remember what they were called.

“He’s mortal,” Starlight said softly as she slipped a stiletto switchblade dagger from her clothes and held it out to Sunset.

It shimmered purple, and carved by hand into the blade were three words.

“All My Loathing,” Starlight said out loud. “I put it… here. For him. I don’t… I’m trapped unless he goes. But now I know I can’t do it alone. I’ll die.”

Sunset’s eyes welled up. “Please don’t ask me to do that. It’s all I have left, all that keeps me from being the worst kind of you. If I do that...I don’t think I deserve to go back if I do that.”

“Then help me do it,” she pleaded, closing the blade. “Put me in position, and my rage won’t fail me. But alone? Alone… that stuff will own me. I won’t be anything but magic. And magic… doesn’t care,” she said, haunted as she looked down at her hands.

Sunset sighed. “And then you’d throw away everything you just accomplished. And besides, I can’t be sure he couldn’t take me over as easily as he did his girls—I’m human here, with all of the human vulnerabilities. On my world, there would be a counterspell, but here…? That’s what I’m afraid of, Starlight: that he’ll use me to do what he wants. And that might include killing you.”

“Blood,” Starlight said as she collapsed onto the couch. “He works from blood. He doesn’t have my blood, but he has theirs. My ritual… I bond people to my blood, there’s a drop of it in the absinthe. That’s how it works. No counterspell, no resisting it, no freedom… Ever,” she whispered as she sat down and looked at her switchblade, contemplating her own harmony, and whether killing would be too much for her, if all her rage had been stored for nothing.

Sunset sat down hard into the nearest chair, her face in her hands. “It’s dark magic,” she grumbled. “It’s aaallll dark magic. This world can’t even seem to sustain the other kinds for more than a few seconds at a time.” She thought for a few moments.

“I wish we could,” Starlight whimpered, as tears started streaming down her face. “I want… I want magic that feels good,” she admitted, lips trembling. “I want magic that makes me happy, that doesn’t…. eat away inside of me, but this is all we have, Sunset. Even this...harmony I just experienced, it’s just so...painful. And wonderful. And I can’t pull the two apart. So...this is it. Just… just the worst kind of thing, for the worst kind of world.”

Sunset got up with purpose, grabbed Starlight, and kissed her again. And shared some of the unicorn magic she had kept for herself.

Starlight clung to Sunset, gasping as the magic shimmered across her mind, and some dim spark in her heart was reignited. The switchblade dropped from her hand, forgotten on the carpet.

“W… what?” she asked weakly. “What was that?” Starlight asked, putting a hand to her racing heart. “Like… You… fixed something in me.”

“It needed fixing,” Sunset said simply. “That was my job before: find and fix the little problems so the Princess could worry about the big ones. That was the second kind of magic, by the way. We...we just called it ‘magic’, since that was the one native to my species.”

“Why did you do that?” Starlight asked. “I saw that make you weaker. You were going to leave a few minutes ago… What made you do that for me?” She blinked up at Sunset in awe.

“I just remembered,” Sunset said, her eyes sparkling. “Dark magic is pathetic, compared to real magic, and I just proved I can summon that kind just now. I think there’s a small chance that we can pull this off.” Her eyes hardened as she thought about what Marcus could do with dark magic, what Sombra had come so close to accomplishing. “And if that doesn’t work, I’ll absolutely help you slip your dagger into his heart.”

She didn’t mean it. At least, she was pretty sure she didn’t mean it. Violence was never the answer on Equestria. But...this wasn’t Equestria, was it? There was no amount of magic big enough to generate a sustainable Harmony Field on a world with this many intelligent life forms on it. For a brief moment, Alice and Sunset warred for supremacy in her mind. The ever practical version of herself won out in the end: Decide on using the dagger when all hope is lost. Don’t let the thought corrupt you before then.

Starlight watched silently as Sunset warred with herself—it was something she was well familiar going through herself. She coughed softly when it looked like Sunset’s thoughts had gone as far as they were going to go. “Then…Then I guess I’ve got some work to do.”

All My Hate, the switchblade which lay on the carpet in front of Sunset, hummed softly with dark magic. It was potent, and eager to be used.

Ellen looked back and forth between the copse of trees before her and her sister. “It’s not just me, right?” she asked. “The cabin absolutely was right there, right?”

And then she looked again as Sunset and Starlight walked out of the cabin.

Later that night in the church, Starlight resumed the work she was required to do.

Fifty pounds of cactus which she first stripped the skin from, before grinding into a fine paste. The paste was pressed to split fluids from solids, and then the solids were dried, the magical potency extracted through a sieve of copper threads.

She evaporated the liquids slowly, keeping the temperature low and just barely creating a steam that filled the half built church with the pungent smell of the earth, and something strange within it.

But by the time the cult was serving dinner at the fire pit outside of the cabin, Starlight had abandoned her vest and her hat, and her sweat streaked face at least held a smile, while she very gently and carefully ferried three glass bottles into the church’s basement. She set a guard and finally walked over to the campfire to sit down heavily next to Sunset, trying to stifle a yawn.

“Probably potent enough to level a city,” she mumbled to Sunset proudly, quiet enough that noone else would overhear.

Sunset rolled her eyes. “Invent a formula for un-levelling a city, and I’d be impressed. But yes, that should do it.”

“Okay, okay, I get it,” Starlight agreed, eyes sparkling a bit as she got a bowl of stew. “Creation and healing over destruction, I’m sure I’ll figure that stuff out someday. Maybe I can figure out how to grow plants in a certain way,” she pondered.

The girls sat down across the fire from them, talking to each other about their music, a plush rattlesnake again tucked under Ellen’s arm.

“So, when is somebody going to pass the potatoes?” asked Sunset. She reached forward, her hand clenched a bit like a hoof.

Starlight gasped.

“What?” asked Sunset.

Starlight looked around at her followers. “Oh, nothing,” she said, deciding to bide her time.

That time came when Sunset was getting ready for bed. Starlight stepped into the room, and closed and locked the door behind her.

“Hey,” Sunset said nervously. “Just because we kissed a couple of times doesn’t mean that I think about you that way. I don’t think I can think romantically in this form anyway. A rather unfortunate limitation, if you ask me.”

“Oh, I wouldn’t assume you would be attracted to me,” Starlight said casually. “After all, your kind usually go after young virgins, right?”

Sunset reached up to tap the tip of her non-existent horn and then, after a thought, moved it out to where human’s conceptions of unicorn horns extended. Sort of like if she was an alicorn. That put a smile on her face. “I knew the guessing game would have to end eventually,” she said. “Oh, and everypony’s a metaphorical virgin on my world, so I’m not even going to correct you on that last part.”

“Oh no,” Starlight snickered, covering her mouth with one hand, before biting her lip. “No no… Every…. Pony?”

Sunset swore. “I knew I’d screw up on the pronouns sooner or later. And yes, pony. As in ridiculously cute. But you knew that already.”

Starlight wheezed as she put her forehead on the wall and both her hands clasped together to her mouth.

“Okay but… God, there’s such a huge difference between seeing a magical glowing spirit in the form of a small horse and then having them tell you they’re called ponies!” she insisted.

“That’s racist,” Sunset said as seriously as she could, before bursting out in a loud guffaw. “I...I almost said that with a straight face.”

“Then I’m firmly racist,” Starlight replied, laughing along with her. “Okay, okay….”

Sunset cracked her knuckles. “Alright, this won’t take too much, so I might as well try it.” She put her hands to her temples and concentrated.

As Starlight watched, the motes of dust in the air began to rearrange themselves and change colors. In a few seconds, there was a semi-transparent pony sitting on the bed next to the human Sunset Shimmer. “There, did that work?” the two of them asked in unison.

Starlight walked closer, no longer laughing but awestruck as she kneeled next to the bed and reached out, her hand brushing the ghostly unicorn’s mane ever so carefully.

“Yeah,” she whispered.

“Ah,” Sunset said, opening her eyes. “It’s good to see me again.” She looked at the way the pony leaned into Starlight’s hands. “You know, I’m seriously considering taking you back with me when all of this is done,” she mused. “Equestria really could use a human with hands. You could probably take a couple hundred years off of the Princess with just one massage session.”

Starlight chuckled a little, but her eyes were fixed on the pony still.

“I don’t think that I’d last long, even if I want to explore a world full of ponies, it sounds glorious,” she said softly. “I’ve been human too long. Maybe you could find some kids. Take them, they’d grow into it.”

Sunset sighed, as the pony faded away. “Now why did you have to make this serious? I can’t just take ‘some’ kids. I’d want to take all of them.”

“I’m a naturally serious person,” Starlight said with a wry smile. “And I dunno, kidnap every kid from Earth and take them to a better world? Doesn’t sound toooo evil to me.”

“Believe it or not, the law of supply and demand also works on perfect little pony worlds. Also, if I did that Earth would declare war on Equestria. And if there’s any race capable of inventing trans-dimensional travel just to beat up on some poor innocent ponies, it’s you guys. No offense, Starlight.”

“My human instincts want to point out that just saying ‘poor innocent ponies’ makes me wonder what heinous activities ponies get up to,” Starlight said, smirking while she stood and brushed off her knees.

Sunset turned around and picked up the yarn version of King Sombra, and handed it over to Starlight. “Oh, we can get pretty bad. It’s just that your scale is so, so much wider than ours. I’m pretty sure you can also be much better than us—it’s just that I’ve never actually witnessed that kind of goodness in person. In pony. Whatever.”

Starlight looked over the little pony as she sat down on the bed, frowning a bit.

“You probably had a heart attack when you found out about the World Wars.”

“I dunno,” Sunset said, putting her chin in one hand. “The second one eventually boiled down to being a pure good-vs-evil scenario. Well, as close as humans can get. We’re used to that. It’s kinda weird—you have so many crimes we don’t have, but then we’ve got attempted genocide. Only twice, but any number greater than zero is really unacceptable.”

"Attempted Genocide," Starlight mulled over the words. "What, the warm colored unicorns against the cool colored unicorns?"

“Oh, sorry about that. We’ve got more than just unicorns on the planet that the unicorns named after themselves. Pretty much any fantasy creature you can think of? We probably infected your minds with it. Maybe. Assuming that’s how it worked. And even then it gets screwed up so you confuse the alicorns with the unicorns. So more like the unicorns trying to magic the earth ponies and pegasi out of existence.”

Starlight pondered it all, before squinting at Sunset.

“Okay, so cute little ponies waging war, fair enough. I still find your pony form… very cute, very huggable. I bet we could fully shapeshift you if we used a bit of Octarine.”

Sunset smiled. “That would be nice. But...I still have these ‘street smarts’ for a reason, and they’re not to ‘cute’ every human I meet into doing my bidding.”

“It’d be effective,” Starlight nodded firmly. “Very effective. You’d rule the world within a week.”

“If that was true, why isn’t Mickey Mouse your President for Life?”

Starlight laughed. “Alright. But… Maybe when we’re done with this, before you go home… We could spend a day hanging out as your real self?”

“Sure. I’ll definitely put that play date in my calendar. In pen, even.”

Starlight hesitated, her hand on the doorframe. "Promise?" She asked softly.

“Promise,” Sunset replied.

Chapter 7. Doublethink

Starlight was pacing back and forth in front of the church, as the last of the shingles were being nailed into place.

The rest of her little cult, minus two (and one dog) who she’d released and allowed to return to their families, were hard at work. But the nervous atmosphere she was radiating was nearly overwhelming, her hands behind her back and eyes fixed on the ground in front of her while she paced.

Sunset was standing behind her, firmly massaging her neck and shoulders. “Relax! We’ve still got at least an hour. He’s not even trying to hide himself—that’s how over-confident he is.” She looked over to confirm that Mary Jo and Ellen were inside the church, and therefore out of earshot.

“He has reason to be. He knows me inside and out, and has been yanking me around for so long I’m having trouble being certain which parts of my little group were even my idea,” she groaned. “I’ve got a spellcraft network-blood-bonded to me, and now, for the last week, I care about them more deeply than I care about myself. Do you know how easy it would be to twist me right now if he could tell I… I… have empathy?” she finally found the words, whimpering.

Sunset paused briefly. “That all sounds pretty bad. Makes for good surface thoughts, as I’m pretty sure he does know all of that thanks to his involuntary pair of spies. You just have to disassociate. Now, I’ve read your psychologists saying how that’s a bad thing. But you’re just so good at it! I mean, 1984 alone...no, stop Sunset, you’re gushing again. Focus.”

“Yes, but it is kinda cute when you gush,” Starlight said with a faint smile. “Imagining you gesturing with your hooves…”

Sunset knocked gently on the side of Starlight’s head with her knuckles. “There, free preview. Now focus. Or rather, split your focus: completely useless on the outside, resolute on the inside. Hold on to what I showed you. And hold on to this thought: These people are your herd. You exist to protect them from danger. And I will do everything in my power to help you. Because you are my friend.”

Starlight paused, and her smile grew.

“I have an idea for a diversionary thought,” she declared mischievously.

Sunset rolled her eyes. “It involves kissing, doesn’t it?”

“Hey now!” Starlight objected, cheeks red. “He has no way of knowing that we aren’t interested in each other! So it’d be a great diversion! Disguise friendship with classical infatuation.”

“Not to mention that he’d probably either be squicked out by it, or turned on. At least, that seems to be men’s reaction every other time I kissed a female.”

“I’d never kissed anyone before you, so I’ll take your lead,” Starlight admitted casually.

A moment later, Starlight processed what Sunset had said, and frowned a little.

“So… you kiss lots of females, not just those that inundate themselves with dangerous magic?” she asked with a slight pout.

“Kisses are multi-purpose,” Sunset said with a smirk. “For example, they are fantastic at shutting someone up.”

Starlight fell silent as she clearly struggled with whether that was an invitation or a threat, before she cleared her throat and nodded.

“That… Well… Street smarts,” she finally concluded.

Sunset chose not to reply to that, resulting in an awkward silence. A silence broken by…

“Sun...set?” Claire asked.

“That’s what you choose to question, out of this entire conversation?” Sunset asked incredulously.

Claire shrugged. “Being privy to Starlight’s thoughts involves a lot of just trusting there’s a reason for things. But I’ve been calling you Alice!”

“I’m touched!” Sunset exclaimed, as she patted Starlight on one shoulder. “All this time, and you haven’t once told them my ‘nickname’, not even by accident! Also, thank you for proving to me that you are human, and therefore an expert at disassociation.” She looked over Starlight’s shoulder and Claire’s questioning face. “I’ve had to go by a lot of names, Claire, in order to stay ahead of the more corrupt forms of law enforcement. Alice is one of my names. Sunset’s another. ‘Sunset’ sounds kinda silly out of context, so I went with Alice this time around.”

“I think it sounds very cool though, very… gone with the wind,” Claire said with a wistful sigh.

Sunset looked away, very intent in thought. “Billy Ortega told me that Gone With the Wind was extremely sappy. I hate sappy!”

“Okay, but it’s also very romantic and wistful,” Claire said with a huff. “It’s a complex and thoughtful movie and it’s themes go far beyond the surface viewing!”

“Claire is very invested in her childhood media,” Starlight said by way of explanation.

“It’s also the most popular film of all time,” Claire retorted. “That has to count for something.”

“Actually, it was beat by The Sound of Music a couple of years ago,” Benjamin remarked from the top of the church, in between hammering in shingles.

“Isn’t that one sappy too?” Sunset asked.

“I’ve cultivated a diverse group,” Starlight said flatly. “Modern pop culture, older pop culture, anti pop culture, truly an organization to revolutionize the world.”

“Your favorite movie is Bedknobs and Broomsticks, from 1969, I happen to know, so you don’t have any room to talk,” Claire said with a grin as Starlight crossed her arms.

“Any movie where a witch marches on a Nazi regimen with animated plate armor deserves to be commended,” Starlight retorted.

“I need to see that one,” Sunset declared. “Purely for research purposes, of course.”

“There’s an 8 mm reel in my bag,” Starlight muttered to her. “We can watch it tonight if we have time. You’ll absolutely love the way their magic works.”

“What are you doing with a film less than a year old?” Sunset asked.

“I stole it,” Starlight said, as though it was obvious. “It’s my favorite film Sun— Alice.”

The smile suddenly left Sunset’s face. “Alright, fun’s over.” She stepped up to be beside Starlight, and took her hand in her own. “We know you’re here, Marcus! Show yourself!”

A voice came from behind a particularly large tree. “You seem to have me somewhat at an advantage, Miss Shiner. There are ever so many of you, while I only have a single guest to bring to this particular party.”

Starlight looked at Sunset in confusion, mouthing the words “a guest”. “And who might that be?” she asked.

“You’ll see. Although I doubt you’ll figure out his purpose. You see, it’s a bit of a surprise. You’ll find I’ve brought plenty of surprises with me tonight.”

“Marcus,” Sunset said in frustration, “are we going to be spending the entire evening conversing on the other side of a tree?”

Marcus laughed heartily. “And who says I’m behind a tree?”

Sunset’s eyes went wide, casting her eyes around her. “He can displace his aura?” She turned to Starlight. “Why didn’t you tell me he can displace his aura? He could be…” She turned slowly to face the church, from whose windows a light had been steadily growing. “Oh no…”

“Damn it,” Starlight swore, as she let go of Sunset’s hand and ran towards the church, her “herd” of cult members missing, nowhere to be seen.

Just before she reached it, something burst through the doors, knocking it over. She was horrified to discover that it was the corpse of a man, dressed in rags.

“Ah, Miss Starlight, I see you have met Howard. A very interesting individual. I wish you could have met, before he stopped being useful to me.”

Starlight was screaming, trying to push the body off her as Sunset caught up to her, the dirty body pinning Starlight to the dirt. But she had to look up to confirm the insanity communicated to her by the corner of her eye: Marcus was floating, and slowly levitating towards her.

“Sunset,” he said in a strangely echoing voice. “There is something I need from you…”

Sunset shook her head. “What?”

Marcus shook his head. “Hm...I was sure I’d be able to get you with your true name. If you had any intelligence, like you keep telling yourself, you should have tried to fake submitting to me, for a chance to use that little dagger that Starlight entrusted you with.”

“Leave her alone!” Starlight shouted. “I’m the one you want, I’m your channeler!”

“Correction, Starlight. You were my channeler. But now, you are unemployed.” He held aloft an empty blood vial. “I got this little gift from the Santa Anna blood bank. It was eight years old, but age really doesn’t matter under the present circumstances.” He gestured behind him, where the flock was standing still, their eyes glazed over. “And like poor Howard, I no longer have need for your services. In other words: you’re fired!”

And with that, streams of fire shot out of Marcus’ hands, only to be blocked by an invisible shield summoned up by Sunset.

“Run!” she said, looking back at Starlight. “I’ll hold him off!”

Starlight could easily see that Sunset was not going to last long.

With a roar of anger, Starlight shoved the body off her, and stood up next to Sunset. She reached into Sunset’s pocket and pulled out All My Hate, opening it so the blade shone bright purple against the fire blasting towards them.

“I… I love Sunset! I care so deeply for your poor daughters! And no one, no one on this planet or any other, will take my Herd from me!” Starlight screamed, before she took the blade in one hand, the handle in the other, and snapped All My Hate in half, exploding with power which she then lashed out with.

Black and purple magic flowed from Starlight with force, around Sunset’s shield and then slamming into Marcus.

“I deny you, Marcus! I deny you my heart, my soul, and my flock. Now kindly FUCK OFF!” Starlight roared.

Marcus pulled up a shield of his own. Unlike Sunset, he did this with absolutely no effort. “I see,” he said coldly.

With a gesture of his hands, he wrapped the shield around Sunset, Starlight and the body, trapping them in place.

Sunset tried in vain to blast through the shield with her magic. This effort caused her to drop to her knees, and very nearly drop unconscious.

“If it will not be death, then I have a more fitting punishment for my wandering associate. Starlight, you will have the great privilege of seeing my plan come to its fullest fruition. Perhaps then you will beg me for death.” He turned and walked back into the church, the doors slamming shut behind him.

“I don’t...I don’t like that guy,” Sunset tried to joke. She then looked down at the body, and tried taking his pulse. “This guy’s alive, by the way. Just barely.”

The doors re-opened. “That reminds me,” Marcus remarked. “I need to fulfil my part of the bargain.” He raised his hands and shot a beam of fiery energy through the shield and into the body, which then disintegrated. Marcus then returned to the church.

Starlight screamed.

Sunset reached up to grab her hand. “Relax,” she assured her. “He was just teleported. And no, I have as little idea as you do what this ‘bargain’ might have been.”

“I want to kill him,” Starlight said, wide eyed and frantic. “More than ever in my life, I want to kill Marcus. I want to choke him to death myself. My herd, my flock, what is he doing to them in there?!”

A glow came once again through the windows of the desecrated church. The pair heard the screams of the people within, and then those screams changed. The doors sprang open, and Starlight’s former followers ran out, passing on either side of the force bubble containing Sunset and Starlight, and fanning out into the woods. Starlight saw that they were hunched over as they ran, and the look of ferocity that Claire gave her as she passed burned itself into her mind.

“Be free! Be free!” Marcus called out in triumph. He then sat down on the steps of the church.

“Why?” Starlight asked softly, looking at him in horror. “Why would you rip their minds from them?”

Marcus shook his head in disappointment. “I gave them what they wanted. What they all wanted you to do with them. Every last one of them had their lives ruined by thought, by dwelling on the past and the future, instead of living in the present. After all, every last one of them gave their free will to you. I just brought the process to its logical conclusion. And my gift will be passed on to every human they meet.”

“They wanted guidance,” Starlight said as she fell to her knees. “They wanted… less agency and more stability, I… They couldn’t have wanted this,” she insisted.

Marcus walked over and gently patted the force field, looking down upon Starlight like he would a wayward child. “And I will give them these things. Once mankind has been reduced to a race of animals, all of the human sins will be erased. And as their kindly zookeeper, I will ensure that their happiness will not be blocked by their animal nature. The world will be at peace, for the first time in ten million years.”

Starlight’s hands clenched into fists. “While taking a few of your favorites as pets, right?” she whispered.

“Always, my little dove,” Marcus replied, smiling cruelly. “Now don’t think that I am a cruel opponent. This field will dissipate in a couple of days, before you have time to die of dehydration. In the meantime, I have much to do, so much to do! Come girls!”

Another force bubble floated out of the church, containing the unconscious forms of Mary Jo and Ellen. They floated up with him into the sky, flying slowly out of sight.

Starlight looked down to see that Sunset had finally lost consciousness. She cradled her form lovingly. Her mind was empty, as there was nothing she could think of to do.

Before her sat the empty form of the church, the Light of the Stars’ Compassion, lit by a single candle sitting forlorn in the center of the floor.

Chapter 8. Hopeless Dreamers

“One room, three meals, one prayer a day,” Starlight explained to the sleeping form of Sunset as tears streamed down her cheeks. “How could I be so naive… I just… Everything felt good for a bit there.”

It was nearing the end of the second day and the moment of their freedom, assuming that Marcus was telling the truth. Sunset had passed in and out of consciousness during that time, and had not spoken once.

Starlight thought about what she was saying as she looked over the empty church for the thousandth time, the evening light fading into the dark of night around her, the calls of owls in the distance echoing through the trees.

“I felt… like I was finally doing something that didn’t have bad parts to it. Count on Marcus to prove me wrong,” she sniffled, as she brushed Sunset’s hair out of her eyes and reached out to test the magical barrier around her yet again.

“Fine mess I made of things. Now we’ve got to save the whole world, not just my little cult,” she said with a soft laugh, and a hiccup.

There were small piles of dirt where she’d dug down, trying to see if the barrier could be circumvented, but they were basically trapped in a clear egg, through which no living thing could pass. She could certainly toss little bits of dirt through, but it was solid as stone to her hand.

“Fuck, I’m hungry,” she whispered, closing her eyes. “I wonder if Claire’s okay… She always bruised easily…”

Starlight fell backward as the barrier suddenly vanished, causing her head to bump against the ground. She slowly rose to her feet, her muscles unsteady after going so long unused.

She was startled when Sunset suddenly and loudly gasped. As she watched, Sunset dug her hands and feet into the dirt. The air seemed to thin, and for a moment she couldn’t see the trees or the brightening stars. And then everything was back to normal.

Sunset coughed twice, and then sat up. “That bastard!” she screamed. “He completely blocked our mana intake!” She spent a few moments taking some deep breaths. “And now I know that that works the same way as home. Good to know.” She looked over at Starlight. “So, how screwed are we?”

“We haven’t eaten in two days, around this time the first of the corrupted will be reaching rural towns, and I’ve spent my octarine, assuming Marcus used all three bottles, I’m a useless human woman who can make her eyes glow,” Starlight said softly. “I’m debating whether…”

She paused, she couldn’t even say it.

“I had been considering ending the lives of my flock, to save humanity, but I can’t. I’ll have to find a way to free them from his influence…” she finished.

“That’s way too many words on an empty stomach,” Sunset said. “Come on, there’s food in the cabin. If there’s one thing I know about megalomaniacs, it’s that they always stumble on the details.”

Starlight led the way to the cabin, and opened the cabinets, finding the canned food they’d picked up on the last trip to town. Soon enough they were both eating undiluted Campell’s chicken noodle soup, in between drinking gulps of bottled water.

Sunset was filled in on the details of Marcus’ plan that she missed.

“Wow,” she said as she sipped some more soup. “That sounds just like the nuts the Princess and I had to deal with on a regular basis. If this keeps up I won’t have to come home.” She immediately grew serious. “I have no idea what he did in the church, but somehow Marcus got up to an incredibly high magic level. He didn’t just absorb what his daughters had. I think he used that to tap into something much bigger. Something cosmic.”

Starlight slurped the last of her soup and stood, grabbing another can and looking at the door.

“I’m going to go into my church,” she said with as much bravery as she could muster, before using the can opener to pop a triangle of the can open, and slurp some of the broth.

She then started out the door with a flashlight in hand.

Sunset followed closely. She stopped at the spot where the bubble they had been trapped in had sat, staring down at the disturbed dirt. “Hold on a second,” she said to herself, kneeling down and passing her fingers through the soil.. She walked over to the leftover building supplies, and returned with a stake and a hammer. She then hammered the stake into the ground, marking the spot.

With this accomplished, she walked up to the doors of the church. This time, she was distracted by seeing the empty blood vial that Marcus had discarded—she put this in her pocket. Finally, she tried to step into the church, but stopped as Starlight walked out.

“It’s gone,” Starlight informed her. “All three bottles of Octarine. He had enough power to… to get you home, probably. Assuming we could have found it.”

Sunset looked back at the stake. “We don’t have to worry about that anymore. What could he do with it? Tear the world in half?”

“No, the bottles are there. Empty. He used them.”

“Oh,” said Sunset. “So, sort of good news...and bad news. The fact that he needed the octarine on top of his daughter’s absorbed powers tallies up with what I got from the spot where that body disappeared. He got basically unlimited power from my world. ...Or an alternate universe version of it. So...this is really, really personal now.”

“What power sources would be available in your world which would respond to him?” Starlight asked, sitting down on the steps of her church.

Sunset sat down beside her, trying desperately to hide her nervousness. “Well, what he got he shouldn’t have been able to access. Yet another reason why I want to know the terms of this ‘bargain’ of his. Basically, it’s Magic Source # 3 of my world. The one we know the least about. Chaos magic.”

Starlight turned to face Sunset.

“Chaos magic.”

“Yeah,” Sunset said, trying to sound sarcastic. “Because that was definitely what your world needed more of. Chaos.”

“So… I had a theory when I found magic,” Starlight said as she turned back to the cabin, remembering her past. “I found this… painful magic, I call it Nature Magic, you call it Dark Magic. But I had a theory because every legend, every old Tale from the ancient races has a higher form of magic based on self sacrifice and emotion. I called it Chaos magic because… Well, I didn’t feel emotions were stable enough to be used by any caster who wanted to have a predictable result. It’s just a funny coincidence.”

Sunset smiled. “Congratulations—you telling me that just doubled what I know about chaos magic.”

“That’s frankly terrifying,” Starlight admitted. “I’m hardly a… Well… I’m being mean to myself. But I don’t think I know that much anymore.”

“Now don’t say that, Starlight,” Sunset assured her. “Your pharmaceutical skills are second to none.” She stood up and looked around. “But right now we need to get back to the cabin.”

Starlight stood as well, sweeping her flashlight around to illuminate dozens of pairs of eyes in the distant trees by reflection. By their height, they were surely human. “Al...alright.”

“Play it calm,” Sunset told her, gently taking the flashlight from her hand.

Starlight picked up her soup can and followed Sunset, lost in thought, barely noticing the stake in the ground and not commenting on it.

They locked themselves into the cabin. Since it had been built with storms in mind, there were pre-made boards which could be put over the windows. They were supposed to be nailed into the outside of the cabin, but inside worked well enough.

Sunset waited until Starlight was asleep to get the flashlight, go into a far corner, and examine the blood vial. Marcus’ story was suspicious—who keeps donated blood around for eight years? But a sticker on the vial provided the answer: the blood was marked as experimental, to be studied by the Stanford Linear Accelerator Center. It must have gotten lost in transport after that. There was no longer any trace of blood inside, so Sunset discarded the vial.

Starlight had only pretended to be sleeping, and had watched Sunset’s actions with one eye open. She did nothing to reveal herself as Sunset returned to bed.

It turned out that neither one of them got much sleep that night. The howls were too human.

As the sunlight poked through the cracks around the window, Starlight spoke for the first time all night.

“Do you think I’d be a unicorn?” she asked quietly.

“Does it sometimes feel like your thoughts are running so fast they’ll escape out of your head?”

“Yeah,” Starlight nodded.

“Unicorn,” Sunset concluded. “Definitely a unicorn. Welcome to the club.”

“What would I look like? My hair is dark brown, but you looked… Your hair was multi-colored,” she rambled.

“You’re being racist again,” Sunset said lightly. “Colors don’t matter. Your...uh, personal symbol—that’s the important part.” She summoned up a spectral version of her own. “That’s mine. And this is yours.” A second symbol appeared, showing a swirl emerging from a star shape. “Now see, the star is a symbol for generalized magic. Most unicorns only know a single spell, tied to their destiny. The swirl...well knowing you, I’d say that represented mysticism. But don’t quote me—I didn’t know that many mystics before you. I’d say Marcus’ little symbol was another swirl, annihilating his brain.”

Starlight chuckled a little. “He once told me his symbol would be every religious symbol, overlapping, or something like that. He made it sound cool at the time.”

“Yeah, I don’t know the symbol for pretentious twat.”

Starlight sat in silence for a bit, quietly chuckling at the joke. “So I was wondering: is Pony a different language from English. Because I notice you having to change your words sometimes.”

“No, not really. Or, to be more accurate, the same spell that turned me into a human also gave me Star Trek’s universal translator. I do sometimes swap out the more technical terms, though.”

“And what was the ‘more technical term’ for ‘personal symbol?” Starlight asked

Sunset said nothing.

“Pony Pic?” Starlight asked, her smile slowly growing. “Spirit Horoscope?”

“You know what? Both of those are perfectly acceptable.” Sunset said quickly.

“OK, you know what? You’ve been showing off your magic all this time. Now it’s my turn.” Starlight leaned over to face Sunset, and stared deep into her eyes, before she started laughing. “‘Cutie mark’? Seriously?”

Sunset groaned. “And I’m one of the Princess’ top diplomats, so of course I’m the one that has to explain that term to all of the non-ponies. With a straight face. It just wouldn’t do for one of Princess Celestia’s diplomats to laugh at what we call our special little butt tattoos.”

“No, no, it’s totally dignified,” Starlight said with a smirk. “I mean, originally ‘cutie’ was a word meaning ‘of culture’ and a ‘cultural mark’ is very accurate, and in no way is ‘cutie’ a word that has evolved into something completely different in the modern era!”

Sunset sat up. “Do you hear anybody outside? I don’t hear anybody outside. Now is a perfect time for us to get going, and to never, ever continue this particular conversation, ever again.”

“Lucky you,” Starlight laughed as she got out of bed, rubbing her eyes as she tossed everything she could into her backpack.

Despite Starlight’s grin, they were both wary as they finally stepped out of the cabin, backpacks loaded down with all the supplies they could take, and the green bottle of absinthe, Starlight’s only remaining source of magic, clutched in one hand like a weapon.

Of course, Sunset was holding a water bottle in her hand, much more realistic as to what they would need to survive.

The church still stood, empty and half-finished, with the planting beds of crops meant to feed Starlight’s followers in the future now untended, the soil starting to dry up, the little divots that contained seeds now up to the fate of rain to survive.

The bus was gone, and Starlight looked up and down the road, trying to remember any other houses but couldn’t think of any before they started walking.

The pine trees loomed far overhead, old growth trees that shaded the entire road even at noon, in the middle of undisturbed wilderness among the mountains.

Starlight held her green bottle closer, eyes darting from shadow to shadow, as Sunset walked confidently with her head held high.

“This is all my fault, right?” Starlight muttered.

“No,” Sunset said simply.

Starlight was quiet for a while, but she couldn’t let go of it.

“Why not?” she asked, adjusting the straps of her backpack.

Sunset sighed, looking over at her briefly before resuming her steady walk, eyes on the road ahead.

The trees would feel protective and beautiful, if it weren’t for the fear of what could be hiding behind them, but the birdsong and calm breeze tempted Starlight with a false sense of security.

“Do you think you’re the only person on this planet that Markus could have found who would figure out blood magic like this?” Sunset finally asked her.

“It’s unlikely,” Starlight nodded. “Three and a half billion people, there must be more out there like me.”

“So sure, part of it is on you,” Sunset shrugged. “Don’t be evil. Don’t trick people into your cult. Don’t be cruel, but you were already learning those things when everything went sideways. So—”

A howl that devolved into a laugh signaled that they had been spotted, and they broke out into a jog, spotting a field that rolled down to the freeway, their path to town.

But as they broke the cover of the trees, the howls multiplied into dozens, maybe a hundred or more, pouring out of the ditch on the other side of the freeway, the trees, the broken windows of a cabin just off the road.

Like a wave they couldn’t outrun, the wild frantic humans surrounded them as Starlight held out her bottle like a weapon, Sunset standing tall and glaring at them all while the circle closed in bit by bit.

“You all followed me!” Starlight shouted, though she wasn’t sure of that anymore.

There were too many of them. Her panicked mind could admit there was nowhere near a hundred, but still there were faces she didn’t recognize.

“You were my family!” she still insisted, finally spotting one she did recognize. “Benjamin! You love movies, you love—”

He laughed, like a hyena, looking up at the sun before shuddering. His whole body shook, and then he reached out towards Starlight, gnashing his teeth.

Starlight whimpered, her back against Sunset’s.

“Stop,” Sunset commanded Starlight, who recoiled, suddenly not knowing if she could rely on her friend either.

But Sunset stood tall and glared at each person surrounding them. Meeting their gaze one by one as they looked away and faltered.

Then Sunset pointed at the forest, jaw set firmly before giving them a command so loud, so confident and sharp, that Starlight winced, looking up at her in awe.

“Begone!”

They all fled. As though scattered on the wind, the crowd of feral humans ran away from them, leaving the women alone in the field of grass.

“Wow,” Starlight exclaimed. “What exactly was that?”

“Ponies are cute little herbivores. In a world of fire-breathing dragons and cunning, intelligent carnivores. This is how we survived, how we took over an entire world that thought we should have been the main course.”

“By… yelling at them,” Starlight stated flatly.

“By asserting dominance over them,” Sunset explained. “Haven’t you ever owned a dog? Too bad it won’t work if we get anywhere close to Marcus.”

“So…” Starlight stared at the ground, appearing to have a crisis of faith. “So ponies are basically capable of acting as higher-power figures to any other creature,” she said with dawning horror.

“It’s not like we put them in concentration camps. Or even run their countries. We just draw the borders.”

“I wanna be a pony,” Starlight declared, shouldering her backpack. “Let’s get to town, and see if we can corner one of them to experiment on.”

Sunset put her hands in the air in exasperation as she followed. “What part of ‘we don’t put them in concentration camps’ did you not understand? I did see Judgment at Nuremberg, you know.”

“I meant ‘experiment’ as in ‘try to free them’, not as in ‘see what other horrible things I can do to them’, Sunset!” Starlight told her, raising a hand to point upward, as if marking her declaration in midair. “My blood-magic domination requires a certain level of coercion! With pony command influence, I could bypass that when needed! Not that I would or anything, I’m totally reformed now.”

“I’ve noticed that you can’t make jokes about Abraham Lincoln,” Sunset said, seemingly out of nowhere. “I will now add ‘concentration camps’ to the taboo list.”

“Alright, fair enough,” Starlight nodded. “So you think you could command Marcus’s influence out of a captive feral though?”

“Well, I couldn’t, but you could, if I gave you a little ‘help’,” Sunset answered.

“Like…” Starlight walked for a bit, thinking, smiling a little. “Like, no joke giving me a pony aura or something? Not joking, I could be pony-like?”

“Let’s not get ahead of ourselves. I still have to find a way to build up that much energy myself. Although…” She looked back towards the church. “I’m not quite sure what I did to revive myself when that bubble burst. By all rights, I should have been lying there helpless for hours.”

“You dug your hands and feet into the ground as though trying to reach through it to the earth below, and you pulled in all the magic around you, I could feel it fade and the air get pulled out of my lungs, and then you were better,” Starlight recounted. “It was… awe inspiring.”

“No,” Sunset said, shaking her head. “That’s impossible. You’re describing earth pony magic, and I’m a unicorn.”

Starlight didn’t reply, walking in silence for a bit before they got to the top of a slope and could look down on the small town that she’d sent Rogers and his dog back to a week before, about a dozen miles distant. The town was eerily still, with no signs of cars or even lit street lights visible.

“If they catch us, do you think they’ll be able to corrupt me too?” Starlight asked quietly.

“No,” said Sunset. “Not with that piece of me inside of you. You still feel that, right?”

Starlight put one fist to her chest, and closed her eyes.

Deep within her, despite all her pains and fears, she felt something, a tiny little spark within her that didn’t hurt or tear her heart open, it was just good.

“Yeah,” she whispered. “Yeah, it’s still there.”

Chapter 9. I am not my mother's daughter

Starlight and Sunset emerged from the forest, and made their way down the slope, across a narrow field of wild grass, and up a small embankment to reach the highway. This would lead into the town, so they followed it from the shoulder.

The highway was eerily devoid of the sounds of cars, but was almost as alive with the sounds of animals and insects as the forest was. The two walked side by side on the shoulder of the highway for a few minutes, saying nothing, before Sunset asked Starlight to stop for a second.

Starlight watched as Sunset sat down on the edge of the blacktop, removed first her shoes and then her socks, tied the laces of the two shoes together, and then stuffed the socks into the shoes. She then hung the tied shoes around her neck, leaving her barefoot. “I want to try something,” Sunset explained, climbing back down the embankment, ending up at the edge of the field of grass. After lifting and dropping her feet in the grass a few times, she smiled. “OK, let’s keep walking.”

Starlight watched her walking through the uneven field—which she knew from experience was littered with rocks as big as her hand—as if she was still on the paved road. She quickly scrambled down so she could walk beside Sunset, but found it impossible to maintain the other young woman’s pace. “Hold on!” she demanded, causing Sunset to turn around and walk back to her.

“Something’s going on here!” she said, pointing down at Sunset’s bare feet. “Those are the feet of a city slicker—I didn’t see a single callus when you took off your shoes. Is this another pony thing? Another...earth pony thing?”

“Yeah,” Sunset said in a serious voice. Starlight waited for nearly a minute, as Sunset gathered her thoughts. “When I first got here,” Sunset began, “the transition from hooves to squishy feet was pretty rough, so I always made sure to keep them covered. I couldn’t tell you for sure when it stopped. But I think it was during the Chicago Riots—the cops had poured gasoline across the street and ignited it to try and herd us towards the paddy wagons. I thought I saw a gap, so I led a group running right across it. I was in front, so I faced the brunt of the fire. My tennies melted, but I didn’t feel a thing.”

Starlight blinked in a sudden realization. “Wait a second. Wait...one...second. The Chicago Riots? Do you mean the Democratic National Convention protests from two years ago?”

“Yup!”

Starlight hopped in the air in her excitement. “No way! Every protester in the country wanted to be there! The only reason I stayed back was to protect my flock, but you better believe every single one of them wanted to go! So, were you one of the Yippies?”

Sunset shook her head. “No, I just wandered in with my fifteen-year old friend Cathy, to see what was going down with my own eyes. A vital bloodstream of mostly-female protestors, opposed by clots of male police and National Guard.”

“You haven’t become sexist now, have you?” Starlight asked.

Sunset shook her head. “There were plenty of men joining the protests later, and plenty of women at home rooting for the police on their televisions. But at that crucial moment, it was the women who stepped forward first, and the men who followed. Getting back to Chicago, Cathy and I managed to get right into the thick of it, right in front of the Conrad Hilton on the 28th, demanding that Candidate Humphrey listen to our complaints about the Draft and the War. The National Guard rushed us, armed with M1’s.” Sunset became incensed as she allowed the memories to come rushing back. “They looked like monsters with their gas masks on, turning day into night with all of the tear gas grenades they were lobbing at us. Cathy and I got separated, and when I finally found her again I saw her get deliberately shoved right through a plate glass window by a cop. She wasn’t the only one—lots of cops were pushing protestors through windows, breaking into shop after shop. They were breaking the windows, not us! And then that cop stormed through that window, and beat Cathy with his baton, deliberately battering her bare skin into the broken glass as she screamed for mercy.” There were tears in Sunset’s eyes as she remembered. “There were so many of them between me and her—there was nothing I could do. I looked away, unable to witness any more, and I saw the television cameras, recording everything! I pointed at the brutality being commited, and I cried, ‘The whole world is watching!’ The other kids took up the cry. It was only then that I saw a few of the cops looking guilty. But the beatings and arrests continued. Cathy was taken away to the police vans, bleeding, and I couldn’t save her. I stayed the night, trying to think of some way to break her out of jail.

“The next day Eugene McCarthy, the true candidate of the people, spoke to us, and invited us to his headquarters. But by then I had figured out that there was nothing more I could do, so I snuck out of the city to keep from getting arrested myself. You know the rest: The police cut the phone lines before storming the McCarthy HQ and beating everyone other than McCarthy himself unconscious. Humphrey won the nomination for blindly toeing the party line and refusing to have anything to do with us, and then of course Nixon tarred him as a traitor, along with the entire Democratic Party, riding a wave of generational fear into the White House.”

Sunset looked down at the ground. “At the time, I didn’t think I had done all that much. I didn’t hook up with Hayden, Hoffman, or any of the young women running the Yippies and MOPE, the ones the press called the Chicago Seven. I didn’t stay and let myself get arrested, so I could present my case to the American people like they did. I ran away, so I thought of myself as a coward.”

Starlight put an arm around her shoulder. “You weren’t,” she assured her. “Your alias would have fallen apart under federal scrutiny. You never would have made it to trial—they probably would have picked some random country to deport you to. It’s a favorite tactic of the Feds, when they find somebody the law can’t protect.”

“Yeah,” Sunset said softly, “I figured that out, eventually. There were plenty of people later in my travels who came up to me and said that I saved their lives. I wasn’t a major force of leadership in the riot, but I guess for a handful, I was in the right place at the right time.

“But I’m still curious how that changed your feet,” Starlight says, shifting back to the earlier topic.

“There is a process,” Sunset said, “not at all well understood, where one pony has been changed by Harmony to meet the needs of ponykind. There was a prophecy that said that that would happen to me one day, that I might one day stand beside Princess Celestia as an equal. When the Princess asked me about this prophecy I initially scoffed at it, because I knew in my heart that I was not worthy of her power.” She looked over at Starlight. “Inside, I was terrified—our nation had a long history of ponies, mostly unicorns, who sought that ultimate power, for good or for bad, and every one of them was corrupted by it. Every one of them had to be taken down by Princess Celestia and helpers throughout the centuries such as myself. Only Celestia, and later Cadance, proved themselves able to resist the temptation.”

Sunset sighed, shading her eyes with one hand as she looked up at the cloud that the sun was hiding behind. “But then one day our land was struck by the first great crisis not caused by a single bad pony. One that Celestia and Cadance were powerless to stop. That’s when I tried to become like them, to lend them the power to save our land from starvation and riot. And that quest...led me here.

“An alicorn...a princess...is earth pony, pegasus, and unicorn in one,” Sunset explained. “I think...it feels like such blasphemy to even say it out loud...I think I might have become an alicorn, during my time on Earth. I got what I was looking for.”

It seemed to Starlight like Sunset had somehow grown in stature during that last sentence, although she certainly didn’t change in height. Perhaps it was the air of genuine confidence which she had put on. “So that’s a good thing, right? Aren’t your princesses all-powerful? You ought to be able to take on Marcus easily!”

Sunset shook her head and sighed, sinking back down to normality. “It’s not that simple,” she explained. “A princess can do great things because she can hold so much more magic inside of her, and knows all of the new ways she can use it. My knowledge of pegasus and earth pony magic is woefully inadequate, and a good deal of it is almost certainly wrong, given that it was written by unicorn supremacists. And this world...you’d have to cover all of Colorado with peyote to give me enough magic to take on Marcus in a face-to-face battle. I’m sorry to disappoint you.”

Starlight put a hand on Sunset’s shoulder. “Don’t worry,” she assured her. “You have what you need to save your world now. Marcus is my problem. Even with your help, it has to be me that faces him.”

Sunset smiled, and put her hand over Starlight’s. “And I’ll give you all the help I can.” She bent down to pass her fingers through the grass. “And I think I might actually be getting a tiny bit of magic through direct contact with the earth. An ant’s worth every step.”

“I’ll take every little bit of help I can get,” Starlight said, matching Sunset’s smile. “Now do you mind if I do my walking over there next to the highway? This natural walking is murder on my feet.”

They both had a small laugh over that.

As they got closer to the town of Mukwonago, it became easier to hear the sounds it was making. Animal and insect sounds, like the forest and the highway, but also the sounds of fighting and screaming.

The sounds of Marcus’ “paradise”.

As the highway crossed a creek just prior to entering the city limits, Sunset beckoned Starlight to join her as she waded her way across the creek. “I don’t know how much Marcus enhanced their senses,” she explained. “And right now we stink pretty bad.”

Starlight made the mistake of testing that hypothesis, and wrinkled her nose in disgust.

After the pair had crossed the creek, they stripped down to their underwear and washed off the grime with the freshwater.

As they dried off in the early morning sun, Sunset turned to Starlight. “So, what was it like to grow up in a town named Santa Ana with a name like ‘Starlight Glimmer’?”

“Do you really want to know?” Starlight asked. “You haven’t asked that much about me before now.”

Sunset leaned back. “Well before I wanted to maintain your mystique, but now that you’re follower-less, I thought I’d satisfy my curiosity.”

Starlight laughed, and then bit her lip as she thought on how to explain her childhood.

“In pony towns, do you have those strange people… There’s always one or two, that don’t connect to anyone else? They just take up space, act like they’re better than everyone else, and make absolutely sure everyone knows they don’t belong?” she asked Sunset after a bit.

Sunset’s silence spoke volumes.

Starlight nodded. “My mom believed that she was a star that had fallen to earth. My dad took care of her, and believed she was… practically god on earth. Men can be pretty dim. I found out when I was fifteen that she’d taken so much LSD she had stolen from her psychiatrist when they first met that she almost died of malnutrition. She didn’t think she needed to eat, because she was a star. Well… I was her light. Her little Starlight,” she said softly, but slightly bitterly. “Thankfully for the duration of my… incubation, she remained sober. Or I may have been a very different person.”

Sunset nodded sympathetically. “That would explain where your particular powers come up. I always thought that this world would be very different if the various kinds of psychic and magical powers described in your fiction were real, even if they were extremely rare. LSD was only invented in 1938, so there hasn’t been much time for individuals affected by it to grow to adulthood.”

“Wait, so you’re saying I only have magic because my mother overdosed on LSD?” Starlight asked, grimacing.

“No, I’m saying that you humans as a race are broken, because you can’t use the magic that life naturally generates,” said Sunset. “Your mother is one of the rare individuals who managed to fix herself.”

Starlight gave her a look. “Didn’t you say earlier that only unicorns can use magic?”

Sunset’s eyes went wide. “Um...well, the long-term goal is obviously to teach every creature how to use magic.”

“So…. My mom…” Starlight stared at a nearby rock, processing a lot of potential information. “My mom fixed herself. And the way that fixing herself…. Manifested…. To the wider world… was believing she was a star.”

Sunset bit the inside of her cheek for a bit. “I really only wanted to impress you with the positive aspects of Equestria, but the fact of the matter is...like 80% of all powerful unicorns are clinically insane. The power just messes with your brain. That, uh, includes me. But I’m one of the lucky, functional crazy ponies.”

“That makes a frighteningly large amount of sense,” Starlight sighed, rubbing her forehead. “So… So I don’t need to respect her insanity, but she did find power, so I inherited some form of compatibility with magic without having to be driven insane, or at least no more insane than you are, because we both seem somewhat functional.”

“Yeah, there you go! You’ve even got a handle on your megalomania. That one took me years to get over.”

“I don’t think either of us are actually fully over our megalomania,” Starlight said flatly, giving Sunset a meaningful look.

Sunset looked shiftily around her. “Well….I haven’t got any megalo at the moment to mania over, so I’m fine! Perfectly fine.”

“Oh? Yeah?” Starlight grinned. “You mean like… how just because I’ve lost control for the moment over my mind-control hive-mind cult of people who see me as a living god I must be totally fine?”

“Exactly. Every addict is functional so long as it’s physically impossible for them to get their fix.” She said this with a completely straight face.

Starlight reached over and shoved Sunset off the rock she was sitting on.

“Ow,” Sunset muttered. “Turns out my newfound earth pony powers are not enough to make me immune to rock damage.”

“Sorry,” Starlight sighed, offering a hand. “That was mean of me. But you’re always so poised! Even when you’re messing with me!”

Sunset got up and dusted herself off. “For five years, I was the very public personal student of the ruler of the known universe, with no protection whatsoever from the press. I’ve learned to live my life as if my privacy was dead and buried.” She let a small fraction of a mountain of regret leak into that statement.

“I’m sorry,” Starlight said, frowning. “If I ever go to Equestria, I’m going to slap your princess lady for not protecting you from that. Though I don’t think I’m ever going to have the chance.”

Sunset chuckled. “Oh, I would have been so shocked if I had heard anybody suggesting that when I first came here. Now though...sure, I’ll let you do it. I know for a fact that she won’t be mad—and it won’t hurt her a bit, being a frickin’ alicorn and all—and even an all-knowing princess needs the occasional course correction.”

Starlight grinned a bit, putting her hands on her hips. “Would you kill me if I tried to make out with her? Once in a lifetime opportunity.”

Starlight could actually see Sunset’s brain short-circuit at having to consider the possibility that Princess Celestia might be a sexual being.

“Buh….”

Also, this was pretty clear proof that Sunset was at least bi, if not homosexual.

“Nonono,” Starlight said before Sunset could process it. “I’ll steal a kiss from her and then tell her I’m disappointed in her!” she crowed.

“Stop that…” Sunset said weakly.

“But it’s meaningless to me! For once there’s something that’s harmless, but gets you flustered, that doesn’t affect me!” Starlight said proudly.

Sunset suddenly recovered her composure. “Yeah, sure,” she said smoothly. “Mess with the pony who controls the sun for a living. What’s the worst that could happen?”

Starlight contemplated the question for a moment. “Banishment back to my world?”

Sunset paused for a bit before nodding. “Yeah. That is literally the worst thing she could do to you.”

“I win!” Starlight cheered. “Worst case, go home. Best case? I get to flirt with the biggest powerhouse in all of reality, and she’s amused by my ego before teaching me uhhhhhh….”

Starlight paused, looking at Sunset. “Friendship. She’d teach me something about friendship.”

Some lines of appropriateness even Starlight wouldn’t cross.

Sunset nodded, either ignoring or missing where Starlight was about to go.

“Anyway,” Starlight shook her clothes out. “You might be fine with being naked but I like clothes. I think mine are dry enough.”

Sunset sighed and started getting dressed as well. “In the abstract...yes. In rural Wisconsin at the end of winter—no thank you.”

“Yeah, nudists in general seem to bow to the demands of nature when it gets cold,” Starlight said, pulling on her clothes. “So are you considered attractive in your world, or did the portal give you a conventionally attractive body on top of language skills?”

Sunset stopped zipping up her pants to give Starlight a raised-eyebrow expression. “I think the rule is pretty universal: powerful people are attractive, regardless of how they look. I never had the chance to ask an unbiased individual how I looked, not since I was a filly.”

Starlight looked like suddenly she understood all of her prior relationships, and grimaced. “Wow, it’s really that simple, isn’t it?”

“Yeah. Sick as it sounds, I imagine there are loads of people who were into Marcus...before he took that decision away from them.”

“I briefly fantasized about trying to find a way to make him female,” Starlight confessed miserably.

Sunset finished her dressing maneuver, before looking up at Starlight and smiling sympathetically. “I think there’s a phrase...you can take the mud off of a warthog, but you can’t take away the stink?”

Starlight laughed and finished getting dressed, before grabbing her bag and bottle, unscrewing the cap and taking a sip.

Sunset said nothing.

“Let’s go find someone to save,” Starlight said confidently, before starting up the hill.

The urban landscape was mostly abandoned. Most of the windows were smashed in, but not all. And rarely were the goods inside those vandalized shops taken from their places. Sunset looked around her carefully as she walked. She stopped when a missing door revealed a flight of stairs. As Starlight watched, she slowly crept inside and looked around.

“Up here,” Sunset said with a beckoning motion. “We’ll be able to see more from a rooftop.”

The pair slowly made their way up, pausing at any strange sound, or when the wind would move around the curtains in an open room. The balustrade was broken in a few places, but otherwise it was an easy climb, up until they reached the door to the roof, which was secured with a padlock.

Sunset went through her things. “I’d ask you to show off right now, since I’ve been doing everything for the last few minutes,” she quipped. “But then you’d say something boring like ‘I’m saving my strength for when I need to use my magic to save us all from a horrible, horrible death,’ so I guess I can handle this difficult problem just this once.” By then she had already picked the lock with a couple of wires. She opened the door, peeked outside, and then gestured grandly for Starlight to precede her. “After you, Your Highness.”

Starlight, blushing faintly, took a deep bow, before taking another sip of the green bottle and stepping out onto the roof.

“Sufficient, my knight,” she declared with a giggle.

The wind was particularly loud at this elevation, pulled through the artificial canyons created by the buildings. Knowing that there was no way that her casual sounds could be heard below, Sunset walked confidently to the edge of the roof, and then looked down.

“Whoa!” she exclaimed, falling back and sitting down. “I hadn’t realized that we were so high!”

“Then don’t look over the side. Don’t worry, I’ll keep you safe,” Starlight said, walking over and mussing Sunset’s hair, looking out across the city. “Keep you from falling off… or… whatever.”

“Some alicorn I am,” Sunset muttered to herself. “I’ll have to spend all my time back home strafing everypony anytime I try to fly.” After a few moments of catching her breath, she sat down solidly on the top of the building with crossed legs, grabbing tightly onto the top of the railing. Only then did she feel confident enough to look over the side at the street below. “So...far…”

Starlight crossed her arms, leaning on the railing, and looked down at Sunset with a raised eyebrow.

“Not the weakness I thought you’d have.”

“Well...at least this means I can’t look down on the lesser mortals,” Sunset joked, still rather weak.

“Just make them kneel,” Starlight said with a smirk, offering the green bottle to Sunset.

Sunset held up a hand to forestall Starlight’s offer, then put her head in the other hand with her eyes closed, taking several deep breaths through her nose. “Let me just...I don’t want to just vomit it back up…” She took a few more breaths, then she got out a bottle of water and drank half of it. “All right,” she said at last, holding a hand out. She took the absinthe, opened the cap, and took a swig. “Whew!” she exclaimed breathily after a moment. “Still packs a kick!” She then handed the bottle back.

“Yeah. Worse without the sugar,” Starlight said numbly, looking at the bottle.

“You know, I just realized,” Sunset said. “Mary Poppins is Princess Celestia.”

Starlight frowned, and looked at Sunset, then back at the bottle. Then she sat down next to Sunset and narrowed her eyes, studying Sunset closely. “I don’t even want to hear the entire rationale behind that statement. Give me one line that supports your thesis.”

“‘I never explain anything.’” Sunset said confidently. “That is absolutely both of them.”

“Okay, fine, but on another note…. Why can’t I feel you, even a little? This stuff has my blood… I forgot, but… Nothin’.”

Sunset shrugged. “I’ve got human blood in me—I’ve seen it on multiple occasions. I’m going to say that it’s the unicorn magic I’ve managed to accumulate. Unicorn magic and black magic are diametrically opposed according to Classical theory. And we’ve already established that Earth blood magic is the same as Equestrian black magic.” She paused for a bit. “Of course, if that was absolutely true then Equestrian history would have been a lot smoother than it has been. So how about this: ‘I am rubber and you are glue. Whatever you say bounces off of me and sticks to you!’” And then she stuck out her tongue like a little girl.

Starlight leaned back against the railing and swirled her bottle of Absinthe, grinning.

“I should get you drunk sometime,” Starlight said happily.

Sunset frowned. “Not unless you drain me first. I’m an angry drunk.”

“Sounds good. Twofer,” she replied before standing again and stretching, putting the lid on the bottle. “So… how do we lure one up here?”

Sunset took another look over the ledge and then crawled on hands and knees over to another side of the building. “I don’t know,” she admitted along the way. “I never took anthropology. Didn’t think knowing how to herd chimpanzees would come in handy. Shows what I know. I figured we’d try to find one of them separate from the rest and work on her. Or him.” She crawled over to another ledge and looked over. “Somebody like that.”

Starlight looked in the direction that Sunset was pointing. There was a narrow alley, not wide enough for two people to walk shoulder-to-shoulder. A lump of flesh with a puke green shirt was huddled in the back, behind the dumpster.

“Ooooh it’s Mr. Rogers,” Starlight whispered sadly. She remembered that he had never gotten around to telling her his first name. “Should I…. throw something at him? Or should we go down there?”

Sunset carefully scanned the surroundings. She didn’t seem to see anybody roaming the street outside the alleyway, and nobody was leaning their heads out of any of the broken windows that looked into it. “We have to go down there,” she said. “He’ll surely run if we do anything from up here. And I really don’t think this is a safe environment for a high speed foot chase.”

“That’s true, alright, we can do this,” Starlight told herself before setting down her backpack and slipping down the stairway slowly, anticipating something jumping out of the shadows and pouncing on her.

It turned out that there were two figures standing in the doorway separating them from the first floor exit. Both of them looked extremely emaciated, and they were swaying back and forth.

Sunset sighed in sympathy. “There were probably like this before Marcus,” she said to Starlight.

“I… We can’t just leave them though,” Starlight whispered. “Just… a second.”

Starlight went back up to the roof, and a moment later she came back down with a can of soup, already open, holding it out to Sunset, then gesturing to the two figures.

Sunset had looked in the store on the first floor while Starlight had been gone, and had found both a skateboard with a bent wheel, as well as the water dish that had been meant for the store’s canine mascot. Soup went into dish, dish went onto skateboard, and the skateboard was pushed towards the two figures, who fell upon it with a vengeance. At first to kill it, but then to drink the nourishment inside.

Sunset then led Starlight into the shop, and out of the busted window, in an area where it was possible to do so without cutting yourself.

If there had been any noise outside whatsoever, Sunset wouldn’t have been able to hear Starlight’s whispered self affirmation as she followed behind her.

“I’d be a good pony,” Starlight whispered to herself, weakly.

The two walked around the building, their eyes alert to any movement. At one point they saw it, as a lone human dashed from one distant building into another one, crashing right through the window. The sound attracted more ferals, leading to a fight.

Starlight was frozen in place.

“Come on!” Sunset urged her, pulling at her arm. “This might be our only chance!”

“But… they…”

Starlight was looking at the human who was fleeing, and she didn’t know what to do, until she gave into Sunset’s urging and stumbled after her to the alleyway.

Unfortunately when they got there, Rogers was no longer alone. A feral boy, maybe 15 or 16 years of age, was smashing a trash can lid into Rogers’ head. Rogers bellowed a cry that was meant to be intimidating, but it failed to have any effect.

Sunset was about to advance into the alley. This was a fight that she felt confident she could win, even with the enhanced strength that Marcus’ changes gave to its victims. But at the last moment she was yanked out of the way by Starlight.

A large shape rushed into the alley from the street, flying through the air and landing on the boy. Sunset eventually realized that it was a dog, Rogers’ dog, still the biggest dog she had ever seen in two separate worlds. Against that, the boy didn’t have a chance—the lid was ripped from his fingers in seconds, and the dog’s fangs briefly bit into his arm. It was released a second later, and the dog positioned itself between Rogers and the attacker, growling furiously. The boy twitched in place for a few seconds in indecision, before dashing back out of the alley.

He stopped on seeing the two young women. Judging Sunset to be the weaker, he ran forward, his teeth on display.

Sunset back-handed him to the ground and gave him a look.

The boy whimpered and scurried away.

The pair then advanced cautiously into the alley. The dog was pushing Rogers, trying to get him on his feet. The human in contrast was completely confused, and kept trying to push the dog away.

Sunset tried to get further into the alley, to get the two separated so that Starlight could cast her spell successfully. But the dog immediately positioned itself between her and Rogers just like before, growling in warning.

Sunset retreated slowly, hands in the air. “So...what’s the worst thing that would happen if you zapped both of them?” she asked.

“Um, complete brain death in both; I’ve never ever brought an animal into my fold,” Starlight said. “But… I bet I could cleanse the dog first, it used to be friendly.”

Sunset looked at Starlight in disbelief. “I keep forgetting that you were never a dog owner. This is friendly, just the extreme version. If he were infected he wouldn’t protect anybody, same as the humans. Also, he absolutely would have killed that boy and torn his intestines out.”

Starlight stared at Sunset in horror for a bit before nodding.

“Alright, so… zapping both of them and hoping that it doesn’t kill them,” Starlight said before pouring a bit of absinthe into the palm of her hand and giving the bottle to Sunset. “Beast of mind and feral of heart, I command you to rise, to meet my mind on equal terms,” she said as her eyes shimmered purple and her voice reverberated through the alleyway.

Then, a surge of purple-white magic flowed out from her and washed over the two figures in the alleyway.

Rogers swayed, and then fell hard against the wall. The dog just collapsed.

Sunset rushed over, stepping over the dog for now to take the human’s pulse. Then on second thought she turned around and put her fingers against the dog’s neck. “They’re both alive,” she reported. “Always a good sign.”

Starlight was leaning against the wall, flexing her right hand, the palm stained purple.

“Now we just have to hope… that their minds are in just as good shape,” Starlight said with a nervous smile.

Sunset bent over, picking up the trash can lid. Part of one edge had been torn off, leaving it sharp. She hefted it a bit, then nodded, walking past Starlight. “I’ll stand guard,” she said, positioning herself in the alley’s shadow, where she could look out without herself being seen.

Starlight walked over to kneel next to Rogers.

“Hey,” she said as she lifted his head off the ground and brushed his hair out of his eyes. “Hey, um… Mr. Rogers, are you okay? Can you hear me?”

Rogers groaned. “Cousin Betty Lou? Is that you? And could you get me the number of the bus that just ran me over?”

“Nah, it’s…. It’s me, Starlight. The… crazy lady that took you out in the woods for a couple days?” Starlight said, trying to smile. “Someone else messed with you, and… I’m trying to help.”

Rogers sat down on an open trash can. “Oh...that’s OK,” he said distantly, a hand to his head. “At least you were nice about it…” His eyes settled on the dog. “Scooby!” he exclaimed. “Scooby-Doo! How are you!”

The dog itself shook its head slowly, looking up at Rogers. It made a sound. It sounded an awful lot like “shaggy.”

“Oh no,” Sunset muttered to herself.

“Yeah, that’s me! Shaggy!” the human exclaimed. “This is great!”

Starlight’s eyes went wide and she backed away. “Time to go! It worked! Not dealing with that!” she insisted to Sunset.

The two made their way out of the alley and down the street, hands in pockets, whistling.

“So,” Sunset said after they had turned the corner. “What’s the worst case scenario with a talking dog on this planet?”

Chapter 10. Piano Man

Sunset and Starlight trudged their way into the city of Milwaukee to make their final stand.

[The scholars who have studied the manuscript over the past two centuries are split on the reasons why the pair chose to make their final stand here of all places. Some claim that there was no better reason than the fact that this was the closest city to the origin of the outbreak. Others, more cynical, claimed it was so they would have plenty of beer for their eventual victory celebration. As for me, I think they were there to sightsee the future filming locations for Laverne & Shirley.]

Sunset grabbed a newspaper from a smashed-in machine. It was dated May 1, 1970—three days ago. The lead story was so incredible that Sunset suspected that the editor may have already been succumbing to Marcus’ madness: the three-month long stand-off between the U.S. Army and several thousand mothers of soldiers serving in Vietnam to end the war immediately had ended, as President Nixon had ordered a squadron of bombers to “nuke that fucking school into the Stone Age.” Casualties were expected to reach one million, and included all of the soldiers that Nixon had refused to evacuate, just to ensure that there would be no survivors.

"Are we sure that Marcus knows we're here? No groaning hordes of zombified former friends wandering around to remind me of how much of a failure I am," Starlight said as she kicked a can out of the street with a clatter.

Sunset slapped her on the back. “Congratulations!” she said. “You managed to fill yourself with self-pity without us having to be confronted by a bunch of zombies. Now we can skip that plot point altogether!”

"It's not self pity, it's a general disillusionment with power structures, there's a difference," Starlight said as she tried to brush her long tangled hair out of her face to take another sip of her green bottle of absinthe, once used for magic and now used for the much more mundane art of obliterating a young woman's ability to feel.

Sunset snatched away the bottle. “I think you’ve had quite enough of that, young lady.” She took a sniff of the air. “Besides, the air is so saturated by alcohol that you might not need any other help in that department.” With a frown, she held the bottle up to the light and tapped it on the side a few times with a fingernail. “I keep expecting the fabled ‘green fairy’ to show up in there.”

Starlight pouted as she reached out one hand towards the bottle.

"It's hallucinogenic," Starlight sighs, wiggling her fingers towards the bottle but not causing it to zip into her hand like she'd hoped. "The green fairy's what some people see. I see octarine instead," she said proudly, putting her hands on her hips and sashaying down the deserted street.

Sunset put the bottle away in her knapsack, which let Starlight pull ahead of her. After a shrug, she followed at a small distance, improvising a little dance as a counterpoint to Starlight’s “sashay” as she went.

"So," the partly-inebriated woman declared, loud enough for it to echo. "We find a place, hole up, then when He and His army show up, we turn 'em all back, right?"

“Well yeah, but you’re not supposed to say it out loud!”

"Oh, right," Starlight giggled as she stopped walking. "So… pretend I didn't. Ooohhh, that's a nice skirt."

Without consulting the pony-turned-human who had kept her alive this far, Starlight dashed into a thrift store to examine the clothes on display, talking loudly about Communist Color Theory.

“I thought Communist Color Theory was ‘everything goes great with red, Comrade,’” Sunset quipped.

Starlight just grinned in response, holding up a very short skirt with a red stripe on its purple. She then started stripping off her more modest skirt to try it on.

Sunset blushed and turned away.

"I think we find a bank to set up at," Starlight declared as she hunted for a belt to hold up the too-loose skirt. "Big heavy walls. Lots of room for brainwashed minions."

“Again, I’ll pretend you didn’t say that out loud,” Sunset said, her head still turned away. “I should have taken the bottle away an hour ago.”

"Right," Starlight groaned.

She then fell very quiet, as clothes rustled and she clearly made 'getting dressed noises' until finally she put a hand on Sunset's shoulder and turned her around, revealing Starlight with a bit of duct tape over her mouth, a very short skirt held up by a black studded belt, and a trench coat that went down to her ankles, grinning behind her makeshift gag.

Sunset looked, then blanched—there were some very forbidden spells in Celestia’s private library that looked exactly like duct tape over a mouth, despite the absence of duct tape in Equestria. She grabbed Starlight by the shoulders, kissed her gently on the tape-covered lips, and then ripped the tape off while Starlight was still stunned. “Please don’t do that,” she said.

"You kissed me," Starlight observed in a daze. “It’s been awhile.”

“It was a while coming,” Sunset said after a pause. She then paused again, as the words she said shocked her a bit. “And you really needed it right now.”

"Okay," Starlight said with a slight smile, nodding. "Lead the way, my Femme Fatale."

Sunset looked out the window of the store. Above was gray sky, from which snowflakes were steadily falling in a gentle stream onto black asphalt piled with white snow. It was a black and white world, perfect for a film noir. “I can live with that title,” she declared. She then picked up and donned a fedora and walked out of the door of the store. The image was marred a bit by the price tag dangling from the back of the hat.

Perhaps utterly shattered by the young drunk woman following after her in a riot of bright colors, grinning in a way that noone ever grinned in a film noir.

A few hours later, a couple dozen zombies pushed their way into the bank that the pair had picked out. Sunset, hiding behind some curtains at the front of the bank, stepped out to close the door behind them, while Starlight appeared in front of them from out of the vault.

Quickly, Starlight poured some absinthe into her hand while reciting the verse.

The zombies slowed down to look at each other for a bit, before advancing slowly towards her with menacing expressions and animalistic groans.

“Quick, Sunset, I need a magnifier!” Starlight declared.

Sunset looked around her, and the zombies who separated her from Starlight. “We can’t touch,” she said.

“You’ve got something else, you’ve got to! Chant a spell!”

“Bricka bracka, firecracker, sis boom bah! Bugs—”

Starlight stamped her foot in frustration—sometimes Sunset just didn’t know when to be serious. “...How about a chant that didn’t come from a Warners Brothers cartoon?”

Sunset pouted. “But I really liked that one,” she said. “Seriously though, Equestrian chants are more of a zebra thing. I don’t know any.”

Starlight thought for a bit, walking backwards so the zombies couldn’t reach her. The warmth of the bank seemed to be slowing them down. “Why don’t you sing? Ooh, can you do magic through singing?”

“Yes,” said Sunset, with a bit of a pout that Starlight didn’t notice.

“Then sing! Something Equestrian.”

“No,” said Sunset. “A human song for humans.” She took in a rapid breath through her nose, creating a sort of reverse snort...in the key of F.

“When the night...has come,” she started to sing as she closed her eyes. “And the land is dark. And the moon...is the only...light we see.”

Starlight’s jaw dropped open in awe. Sunset’s speaking voice was raspy, and really it sounded best when she was using it to yell in anger. But her singing voice...her singing voice was the voice of a genderless angel.

And more than that, the voice was somehow accompanied by the strumming of an ethereal bass. Starlight noticed that Sunset had one hand upraised, and its fingers were moving as if to hold down the frets of each note.

The zombies froze in place, utterly silent. And then, when Sunset hit the chorus and began to gently sway, they began to sway as well. There was a bright glow all around Sunset, making it hard for Starlight to see clearly. Through the aura, Starlight was not entirely sure that Sunset was still completely human, ears peeking up from her hair, and was that a tail?

“If the sky...that we look upon,” Sunset said, beginning the second verse of Ben E. King’s “Stand By Me”. She opened her glowing eyes and started pointedly at Starlight.

“Oh!” she exclaimed, and went back into her own chant. This time, she had to work to hold back the magic, to free instead of to re-enslave.

By the second verse the zombies, now human again, were singing the chorus along with both Sunset and Starlight.

When Sunset reached the orchestral interlude she gestured to Starlight like she was throwing something. A semi-transparent violin and bow appeared before Starlight, so she “grabbed” them and started playing. She was both in control of the instrument and at the same time not as the melody pulled her along. The violin disappeared when its part was finished.

The entire group sang and danced through the rest of the song in celebration. When it ended, the freed humans sank down to the ground to rest. Sunset’s aura faded, and she was human again.

Starlight nodded. “Their time as animalistic zombies must have taken a lot out of them.” She walked through the group to confront Sunset. “Now how come I never saw you sing before?”

Sunset visibly shuddered. “I…” she sang. She coughed, and then resumed in her speaking voice. “I don’t really like singing. It’s kind of a drug for ponies.”

Starlight leaned against a desk. “Tell me more…”

“Well,” Sunset explained uneasily, “ponies are herd animals, like you’d expect ponies to be. And that means they like being told what to do, what to think...what to feel. And songs are basically how they brainwash each other. If a pony fell in love, they’d celebrate the fact by pulling the whole village into a happy song...whether they like it or not. Way too many ponies get off on being in song trances. I consider Princess Celestia’s most-noble trait to be the fact that I have never heard her singing. Since of course if she did she could make any pony in Equestria do whatever she wanted.”

Starlight held up a hand for Sunset to stop as she tried to fully absorb this information.

"If she wished, through no fault of her own, your leader could bond together your entire species into a singleminded purpose and drive their actions to accomplish it," Starlight interpreted. "Right?"

“Until she stopped singing,” Sunset answered.

"The sheer self control…" Starlight whispered. "I… you know that singing is enjoyable on it's own, right? Singing and dancing make humans feel good. That's just a fact."

“Yeah, well ponies are fueled by cookies and pastries, and we turn musical numbers into reality-altering miracles. We’re basically a Rankin-Bass special come to life,” Sunset quipped. Starlight could see though, how much this troubled her. How it might not have even occurred to her back when she herself was using her voice to get whatever she wanted.

Starlight nodded, setting aside the thoughts for now to take Sunset's hand.

"Okay. I'll try not to ask you to sing again. I can tell it bothers you a lot."

Sunset put on a wan smile. “But I saw how much you enjoyed it,” she said, squeezing Starlight’s hand back. “Maybe when we’re alone—it’s less overpowering that way.”

"Yeah," Starlight nods, smiling. "Yeah that'd be good. Then maybe when you take me to ponyland, I'll ask Celestia how she keeps herself from singing occasionally."

Sunset nodded, looking away so Starlight could not see her dismayed reaction—she had just realized that Starlight was probably going to have to stay.

“Well, the good news is that Step 2 of our plan went off without a hitch. Easy peasy.” Then Sunset looked over at the group of humans, their joy during the song now turned to sorrow, who were now their responsibility. “Oh,” she said in realization. “New problem. What do we do with these guys?”

"Listen up!" Starlight barked, getting all of their attention easily. "After bringing about the end of the world, I'm rethinking my positive stance on cult behavior and mind control. I know, shocking. But I'm basically out of magic now! And Sunset has been teaching me uh…"

She paused as she tried to figure out how to sum it all up.

"The magic of being unified, but not so unified that you all literally hear me in your head," she spread out her arms apologetically. "So! If anyone wants to chill here or go rough it on their own out there, I get it. I'll still love you, you can still come back to the compound once it's safe, and I'm not doing the whole brainwashy thing. But! If any of you actually genuinely want to help…"

Starlight took a slow breath, and clasped her hands in front of her, wondering if her former friends would just hang her.

"I'm completely powerless, and linking up with me would help me save more people again…"

A big burly man still wearing the work jumpsuit belonging to the Pabst Blue Ribbon brewery stepped forward. “Hey, I don’t know exactly what you’re talking about, but you just saved us all from slavery. I wouldn’t mind helping you out in trying to save the rest of humanity.” A number of other men and women nodded in agreement.

"It's somewhat more morally complicated than that but I see your point," Starlight nodded. “We’re looking for the headquarters of a man named Marcus, who—”

“Hey, is that the guy responsible for this?!” the man I’m now calling “Pabst” asked. (Hey, let’s be grateful the guy didn’t work for Schlitz.) “Let’s get that guy and smash his face in!”

The rest of the crowd quickly and enthusiastically agreed with this plan, picking up pens and random desk planners for use as weapons.

Starlight was stunned, and couldn’t come up with something to say to diffuse the situation.

“Whoa, whoa, whoa!” Sunset cried, stepping in front of her friend. “We’ve got a way to go before we can just ‘storm the castle’.”

“Let’s storm the castle!”

“I just said…” Sunset calmed herself. “We can’t jump to extreme measures, Sunset. A crisis like this needs to be…” She stopped herself on realizing who she was quoting, word-for-word, then turned to look back at her friend. “Mark this moment, Starlight,” she said ruefully. “For it was the moment I realized that I had turned into Celestia.”

The mood of the angry mob had been broken, more by confusion than by good logic.

“Alright in that case, how can we help?” asked a woman holding Pabst’s arm. Pabst’s woman, I guess we can call her.

Starlight sighed, gently pushing Sunset aside. "Okay, so first off magic is real, as you've seen, and I have the ability to borrow magic from other people."

The woman seemed even more confused, and seemed to tune out the conversation, her mood turning a bit blue. Pabst's blue woman, if you will.

As she spoke, Starlight walked around the group, having each one sip from the green bottle she'd stolen back from her friend, the word "friend" here standing in several times for the much longer phrase "potential love interest who you care for so deeply you would deny your own feelings to retain their friendship" as is well known throughout the historical and archeological community.

But as she had them drink, she paused, realizing two of them had no need to do so. Claire and Sam, two of her cult members. Claire was still wearing her robes, but Sam was dressed in jeans and a hoodie, half-hidden under the hood, but he didn’t look away from Starlight. She almost stopped right then to talk to them, but she wanted to get the group on board first, so she just clasped their hands and smiled instead of having them drink, when it came their turns.

"So as long as you all stick with me, and…" Starlight hesitated a moment. "And believe in how much I care about all of you, it'll help me be more powerful, able to free more people. But it means we have to stick together… Like herd animals! Like p—"

“Like a herd of big powerful Clydesdales,” Sunset added.

“Oh, like those ones on the Budweiser commercials?” one of the other men asked. “I love those commercials.”

“Budweiser isn’t made in Milwaukee,” Pabst grumbled. “But yeah, OK, I get what you’re saying.”

"Great! Let's get going and find—"

Sunset was cut off by Starlight putting her hand over her mouth, grinning.

"I thought we weren't supposed to say the plan out loud?" Starlight asked cheekily.

Sunset giggled, but then stopped. Starlight wished she hadn’t stopped.

Slowly she let her fingers fall away, and she turned back to the group.

“Alright,” Starlight said, clearing her throat. “Let’s go to the town hall, see if he’s there, then we’ll figure out where to head next.”

The group flowed out of the bank, but Starlight stopped Sam and Claire before they could pass her by.

“You… You could leave if you wanted to,” she told them, Sunset pausing at the door.

“I never wanted to leave you,” Claire said angrily. “I never wanted… anything but to be part of your group, to help people, to be part of something.”

“We could feel it when you gave up,” Sam added softly. “It… hurt, like you didn’t really think we could be saved.”

Starlight nodded and took their hands again, holding them firmly.

“I was wrong,” Starlight said, with as much confidence as she could manage. “I was wrong to give up, I was wrong to think we couldn’t do this, but at the same time… I was in your minds, I had too much control, and if you are with me again, it’s never going to be quite like it was. It’ll be more… a circle of friends caring for each other.”

Sam smiled and squeezed her hand. “I like that.”

“I would have kept with you even if you were going to go right back to what it was before,” Claire shrugged. “I knew what I was getting into. But this sounds fine. I’ll be by your side, Starlight.”

With a smile and a nod, Starlight, Sunset, Claire, and Sam brought up the rear of the team as they walked down the center of the street towards City Hall.

“I know it’s a little cold out here,” Sunset called forward. “Maybe you can sing to keep your spirits up? It’s a little late for Christmas carols, but…”

“Jingle bells, jingle bells, jingle all the way…” the youngest of the men started singing. The others soon joined in.

Sunset quite deliberately did not join them.

"Christmas carols," Starlight muttered quietly. "The closest thing to song-brainwashing you'll get here. Christmas is bourgeois propaganda and I hate it."

Of course, the word "bourgeois" here stood in for "all the people who Starlight didn't like" in addition to signaling the ownership of the means of production.

Behind them, the crowd started to grow, surrounding the core group of four. Zombies, attracted by the noise, would come running towards them, but would gradually slow down, straighten up, shake their heads, and in the end join the others as free human beings.

Sunset took Starlight’s hand. “Life is an act of interpretation,” she told her. “Rudolf the Red-Nosed Reindeer might be used to sell wrapping paper and empty proofs of one’s love, but you can choose to ignore all that and focus on a little runt who decided to step forward and do the right thing, despite the fact that the reindeer he had to work with were the same ones who bullied him his entire life.”

"So what you're saying is that if the chance ever presents itself, I shouldn't enact Plan Number Sixty Six, and cast a spell wiping Christmas from the public consciousness?" She sighs in response.

“Could you shift it to just eliminating Black Friday?”

"Sadly no, Capitalist greed is more baked into human culture than even religion," Starlight explained as they finally walked up to the stairs of town hall.

Sunset shrugged as she followed her—Equestrian wisdom could only go so far.

Chapter 11. Friendship is Magic

The crowd murmured softly around them as Starlight looked out of a window, her eyes shimmering with purple light, one hand tight in a fist as she held herself back tightly; her newly learned care for not using her magic so often was taking tangible effort.

"I swear I saw headlights," Starlight whispered.

Sunset surveyed the crowd behind them. A couple of dozen men and women were crammed into the room, with the rest of the nearly one hundred people just outside. “I don’t really see any further reason for delay,” she said with a sigh. “It’s not like we ever had the element of surprise.”

"So… I, we should go out there," Starlight concluded grimly. "Face him if he's there. Get it over with. I'm starting to like that idea."

"I'll come with, to watch your back!" Claire declared firmly.

Starlight turned, surprised, and looked at the young woman, wondering how far Claire would go, if she was even thinking about the potential repercussions.

"I don't want you or anyone else to get hurt," Starlight admitted, opening her left hand and showing the sparks that danced from finger to finger. "I'm already borrowing so much from you all…"

"Sure, but—"

"No," Starlight sighed, putting her other hand on Claire's shoulder. "I appreciate it, but it's just too dangerous."

Without waiting for a reply, Starlight went to the door and slipped outside, the wind tossing her hair as she looked around for Marcus or more zombies.

The streets were empty.

“Our luck just ran out,” Sunset announced when she noticed the emptiness. “Marcus must have finally figured out that we take every zombie he sends our way. I think this is all we’ll have to work with.”

Starlight grimaced, looking back at her.

"But how do we find h…"

She paused, looking at the glowing magic in her hand, and chuckled, raising it high above her head.

"Light of stars and light of dreams, tell me where Marcus hides."

Then she snapped her fingers, a spark of magic shooting up into the sky. The spark floated in the air for a moment, before slowly drifting northeast.

“Follow me!”

Starlight and Sunset stopped in front of the building where the mote of magic had stopped. It looked like a giant brick on stilts. The Milwaukee County War Memorial, dedicated to the Wisconsin dead of World War II and the Korean War.

“He picked the spot for dramatic effect, just you wait,” Sunset told Starlight.

Starlight held up her hand. With a flourish, the spark of magic returned to it, illuminating her face and the small crowd behind her. With a start she looked back at the former zombies and the woman who led them. Claire.

"Okay, maybe I wasn't clear, this is dangerous," Starlight hissed at her.

A new voice spoke up, Pabst’s woman.

"You two clearly have magic, but that won't help if like… you need someone to drag you out of harm’s way! We want to save our city, and this gal was even part of your cult!"

Starlight felt tears threatening to spill in her eyes, as she realized that for once she wasn’t the one pulling people out of dark places, but rather people were standing at her back ready to pull her out.

"Why… okay," Starlight sighed. "Okay. We're doing this. Stay low and think of that song we sang if he tries to twist you."

Shaking her head in incredulity, Starlight started walking towards the museum.

The massive building had a central open area, with an open view up to the stars, which was ringed in pillars that held up the ring of structure that made up the bulk of the museum. Instead of a lobby, past the doors they were faced with a pool of water from the edge of which the stairs ascended, ensconced in glass, to the second level which was 15 feet above the lobby and at least 30 feet tall.

A perpetual flame made of a propane torch burned bright, the only light still shining, from the left side of the enclosed stairway, lending the stairs an eerie shadowy quality and casting the walls and floor-to-ceiling windows in flickering half-light.

The lobby was large enough for the entire crowd to fit in.

A large executive chair was placed on one side of the top of the staircase, overlooking the ground floor, and suspended overhead was Marcus, looking down at them. “Are you gathered here for battle?” his amplified voice carried down to them. “Here in this temple to peace? How dare you!”

The crowd looked up, startled.

Sunset leaned over to Starlight. “See, told you he picked the spot for dramatic effect.”

Starlight’s attention was more drawn to the two figures behind and on either side of the “throne”. They were obviously Mary Jo and Ellen. They were wearing matching white shifts. What made the identification difficult was the rather unnerving fact that they had no faces. Instead, streams of energy traveled from where those faces should be and into the body of their father.

“We don’t want to fight, but we will if you don’t stop!” Starlight called out, pulling in power to her hands, the sickly purple glow lighting her up like neon.

“Yeah!” a few of the crowd called out in support, perhaps confusing the dangerous magical conflict for a sports event.

“I haven’t done anything since the ceremony,” Marcus replied arrogantly. “My followers are doing the work of spreading my Good News to the masses. The Gospel of Marcus.”

“The gospel of being insane? Of losing their humanity and tearing each other apart? I think this museum would gladly support us opposing you,” Starlight laughs. “So if I just stand here, and keep you occupied, you won’t do anything? You won’t try to stop me from changing people back? How convenient.”

“Oh you are free, my little Starlight. Perfectly free to do anything you wish. In this museum, and nowhere else.”

Marcus waved his hands, and a wave of magical energy shot out to the walls and windows of the first floor. Quickly, all were changed into one solid wall of lead, sealing the doors shut as well.

Starlight cursed, and in a moment of reflexive anger she lashed out with her blood magic, sending a blade of purple energy to try and cut Marcus’s arm off, snarling as she did so.

With but the slightest gesture from Marcus, Mary Jo shot forward to receive the blow instead.

Starlight quickly canceled it with a gasp, desperate not to hurt the children in whom she saw herself so deeply.

“Coward!” Sunset accused.

“I do not deny it,” Marcus replied. “It is the obligation of a god to take on all of the sins that he has erased from his flock. All sins are mine now.” He gestured Mary Jo to withdraw to her former position. Her movement looked like she was a chess piece being slid back by a giant unseen hand.

Starlight looked to Sunset, as she struggled to think of a way to win, before looking back up at Marcus, narrowing her gaze.

“All sins, including pride. So why do you share your power with your children, when you could take all their power, and release them without even a hint of it left in them?” Starlight asked as she shifted her stance to hide one hand just barely out of view, gathering her power into it tightly.

Marcus rolled his eyes. “Ask your little equine mount to explain it to you.”

“‘Equine mount?!’” Sunset repeated, enraged. She stomped a foot and snorted loudly.

"So you aren't using blood magic at all anymore?" Starlight concluded, seeing the connection between Sunset's magic and the children being held as tools. "I already knew that, but I didn't know that you needed the twins to keep using it."

“Yes, well the fact of the matter is that I am still human, at least for now. And humans can only hold so much of this new magic at once.” He gestured at the two girls. “These are my batteries, plugged into the energy source of an alternate reality; giving me all the energy I could ever need, and enough left over for the necessary spectacle of being a god. Who knows? In another year or so I should have drained that dimension dry. I wonder how many ponies that will kill?”

Sunset screamed out in rage and dashed up the stairs.

With a snarl, Marcus sent a lightning bolt into her chest, knocking her back to the ground. “I did not give you permission to cross to my level!” he cried.

Starlight gasped and lost her focus as she saw Sunset hit the ground, but before she could rush forward, Sam was already picking her up, dragging her back as Starlight also fell back to hide behind the eternal flame’s mounting pillar, shaking with rage.

“Sunset,” she whispered, checking her friend’s head and pulse as Sam kept an eye on Marcus, standing in between him and his two friends protectively, even though he was shaking in fear. “Sunset, are you okay?”

Claire had stepped forward to shield them, alongside a handful of other people as the rest of the crowd tried to find a place to hide.

Sunset waited until she was out of Marcus’ sight to look up at Starlight, grin and wink. “Pegasi are immune to lightning,” she whispered. “And alicorns apparently get power-ups from it.” She then groaned dramatically for Marcus to hear.

“You better pull through,” Starlight said firmly, before offering her a smile and stepping out from behind the pillar, looking up at him.

She didn’t speak, as she examined him, and she looked around for the first time at the four who stood with her, protecting Sunset. Claire, Sam, Pabst and Pabst’s woman…

In the search for a way to defeat Marcus, she’d been considering blood magic options endlessly, but she already had been told that it wouldn’t work. ‘Maybe I was stubborn, maybe everything I’ve ever done has been out of sheer stubbornness,’ she thought.

Starlight let go of her blood magic, letting the purple light fade from her hands as she slowly breathed to calm herself. Sunset had shown her there was more to magic than blood magic, and blood magic...human magic wasn’t going to solve this situation. She would need something more.

She still had that small spark inside of her heart that made her feel pure, like being a good person was a gift she’d already opened and found that it fit. She reached out and took Claire’s hand in her own, and she tried to pass along that thin spark, to give it away even though she wanted so badly to cling to it.

“Marcus,” she said as she closed her eyes. “You have to know that you’ll lose. One way or another.”

“No, I don’t think so,” he said. “Another of my sins is pettiness. I would gladly destroy the whole of Milwaukee and everyone in it rather than survive my defeat. And, being the center of the universe, a world without me in it really doesn’t exist, so I can’t be said to be defeated.

“Face it, Starlight, for all of your innate magical ability, you have nothing that can defeat me on terms that you’re willing to live with.”

“You’re absolutely right,” Starlight nodded, eyes still closed as Claire gasped softly, her eyes going wide as she looked to Starlight, and then to her right at Sam.

“No!” Marcus snarled, seeing the Equestrian magic pass from Starlight to Claire. He raised his hands to obliterate the group before they had a chance to do anything more.

Sunset, knowing that this was going to happen, plunged her hands into the eternal flame, and reshaped it into a dome that covered the first floor, deflecting Marcus’ attack. Sunset, her eyes glowing with magic, got up and slowly backed her way to Starlight’s group, her attention on maintaining the shield against increasingly desperate attacks from above.

“You will not stop me!” Marcus bellowed. “You shall not defy your god!”

Claire wrenched her eyes away from the magical battle to take Sam’s hand. Sam grinned. He reached out to Pabst, but then frowned when nothing happened when they joined hands.

From above, they could hear the sounds of Ellen and Mary Jo screaming, as Marcus tried to pull more magic through them than their bodies could stand.

Despite it all, Starlight turned to ignore Marcus, reaching out and taking the man’s hand herself, speaking as though nothing dangerous was happening.

“My name is Starlight,” she said with a smile. “I’m… I used to be a bad person, but I’m getting better.”

Pabst’s woman laughed, smiling. “Name’s Wendy. I’m a mom. Mom of three.”

“David,” Pabst man said, softening as he also shook Starlight’s hand. “Dad and… Bit of a joker. Nice to meet you, Starlight, and you.” He looked over at Sunset.

“Sunset,” said the pony, looking at him as she effortlessly held Marcus’ magic back. “I’m a bit of a visitor to these parts.”

“Yeah, I can tell,” Wendy said, pointing at Sunset’s equine ears.

“Wait, did I change?” Sunset asked. She looked around, and spotted the pair of wings coming out of her back. “Sweet!”

“It’s nice to meet you too, David and Wendy,” Starlight said genuinely. “Now… I’d like you both to be our friends.”

A shimmer glanced across their eyes, and it was like a sigh of relief went through their hearts, Starlight closing her eyes for a moment to take in that brilliant spark of Equestrian magic that once again found its home in her heart.

“You’re right,” Starlight addressed Marcus, staring him down through the bubble of flame. “I have nothing that can defeat you. But I think that we can give it a shot.”

Sunset took that moment to drop the shield, swiftly separating Starlight and David’s hands to insert herself into the magical circuit.

Starlight first lifted off the ground in a shimmer of her trademark purple, as Marcus’s next attack hit her dead on and it splashed away like so much water.

Then, one by one the rest of the six hovered into the air, holding hands as tight as they could.

“I reject you!” Starlight shouted, voice reverberating through the hall. “I reject you from my heart, Marcus, I reject your magic, your control, and every twisted bit of you. Now BEGONE!”

Marcus cried out in shock and fear, expecting to be obliterated. But instead he felt an immense amount of energy surge into and through him, through Mary Jo and Ellen, and back into Equestria. This was then followed by another surge of blood magic, as every zombie on the planet was reverted to human. This magic did nothing but sicken him. He felt himself age two decades. When it all was done he sank down into his borrowed office chair, unconscious. His two daughters collapsed silently to the ground at the same time.

Starlight and the rest gently settled down on their feet, the silence nearly overwhelming, until Claire laughed softly and turned to hug Sunset. A moment later, all six of them were enveloped in a group hug, chuckling in relief and catching their breath. The crowd watching all this burst out into raucous applause and cheering.

“We did it,” Starlight said to Sunset, smiling more genuinely and happily than she ever had before.

“That was the most incredible display of magic that it has ever been my privilege to witness. And I’m including my own spells in that tally,” Sunset gushed.

“Listen, I… I want all of you to come to our house,” David said, wiping his eyes. “You deserve a god-damned parade!”

“We can get you all fed; you can grill them up something, Dave,” Wendy said fondly, fixing some of Starlight’s hair behind her ear. “You can all sleep over if you need, alright? We’ve got the room.”

“What, all of us?” asked a random man from the crowd, crawling out from under a desk.

“No, Charlie, the ones of us who actually stood up to the god-guy.”

“Oh.”

“Shucks, we’ve got a backyard,” Wendy said softly, sympathy clear on her face. “Everybody else can camp out!”

“Yay!”

“I’m bringing smores!” Charlie declared.

Chapter 12. Happily Ever After

Starlight sat on the roof of her cabin in the woods. It was very late at night, with a faint glow showing where the sunrise would eventually occur. She was laying back, wrapped in a blanket and looking up at the stars when Sunset flew up to join her. The changes to her ears and the addition of functioning wings appeared to have been permanent.

“Hey pony gal,” Starlight said with a smile, looking over at her.

“Hey pet human,” Sunset said with a smirk. “I just got back from the hospital. Mary Jo and Ellen are conscious, at least part of the time. They don’t appear to have remembered anything that happened. I’m all in favor of not telling them.”

“I agree fully,” Starlight sighed. “The poor girls… I… I’ll do my best to help them, make sure they can grow up and survive on their own, but I don’t think I’m the right person to adopt them. Maybe Claire will bond to them more…”

“Yeah,” Sunset said simply.

“What about Marcus?”

“Well, the legal system doesn’t know what to do with him. Anybody from Milwaukee and the surrounding area will believe what he did, but the court’s in Madison, so…”

“So he gets off with nothing?” Starlight asked indignantly.

“Well, there is the matter of that homeless man he used in his ritual, Howard. Marcus is currently in custody for his murder. I’m hoping they can make that one stick, but with no body, my hopes aren’t very high.”

“Then I’ll make sure that he can’t get his slimy hands on any magic,” Starlight said as she looked back up at the stars. “That’s the least I can do. That’s the best I should do. Anything else and I’d be playing by his rules, not mine.”

“I’m way ahead of you—especially since I know you can’t do that, and I can. The police let me have all the time I wanted with him. I think they expected—and wanted—me to kill him, but I just sealed him off from all forms of magic, Earth and Equestrian. I think I might have taken away his sense of smell while I was at it, but that was absolutely not intentional. I am no sadist.”

“You did all of that...looking like that?”

“Well, no,” Sunset admitted. “I figured I would have to spend too much time explaining the ears and the wings, so I shut them off.” She settled down on the roof for the first time as those features disappeared. “I figured out that being an alicorn is kind of like Legos—there’s a bunch of pieces, and you can take off the ones you don’t need any time you’d like.”

“Go back,” Starlight instructed her.

“Alright,” Sunset said, obeying as her wings blossomed back into being behind her, before the change continued past just her wings, a horn shimmering onto her forehead and hands blunting into hooves, golden fur spreading across her body [Though many people, mostly horse people, would point out that it is a coat, not fur.] and she came to rest on all four hooves in front of Starlight, fully a pony and fully an alicorn.

Starlight gasped and reached out to touch her cheek, feeling Sunset as she actually was, not as a human disguise forced on her.

“You’re beautiful,” Starlight whispered.

“You’re something special yourself,” Sunset said gently, rearing up to give Starlight another kiss.

Starlight felt herself filling up with Equestrian magic, and something akin to pure joy. She pulled back to see a bemused smile on Sunset’s face.

“I think they look good on you,” Sunset said, summoning a two-foot mirror in existence to show Starlight her new pony ears.

Starlight was very wide eyed indeed as she beheld lavender ears which, when she reached up to touch, flicked slightly at the contact before she stopped them from moving. They peeked up through hair that was now multiple tones of purple, instead of brown and black, and she felt like it suited her very well. She looked from the mirror to Sunset with a laugh and a few tears in her eyes, kneeling down to pull the pony into yet another hug.

“I swear,” she giggled. “I’m going to dye my hair like this forever. From now on. I love it. So, why didn’t you make me a full pony?”

Sunset shook her head. “It wouldn’t be you, just a pony doppelganger. This is you, the way I’ll always remember you.”

Starlight slowly smiled, leaning back to look at her. “I knew I liked you for a reason,” she said softly. “Shame you’re leaving. You have to.”

“Yes,” Sunset said simply. “Equestria still has a problem, and arrogant little me is still convinced that I’m the only pony who can fix it.”

“And I can’t go with you,” Starlight concluded with a sigh. “Because… as much as I love the idea, I think I’m needed here more than ever. I’ve got to look after the twins, care for my cult, those that have come back at least… And maybe I can actually do some good here in my own world… In your world, I’d just be in the way.”

Sunset, who had realized this fact days ago, frowned. Seeing so intrinsically cute a creature so sad was heart-breaking to Starlight.

“And arrogant little you is probably right,” Starlight said quickly, to keep Sunset from thinking too much about their upcoming separation. “What puzzles me is why you took so long. Isn’t your world dying or something?”

Sunset nodded. “It is. And that’s the important part: it is. Marcus’ drain of the magic of my universe was never actually felt by any creature, because it happened between moments of time. That’s because the universes are disconnected; with your magic I can connect them together at any moment I want in Equestria’s timeline. All that causality demands is that it be after I left. But there’s no reason I can’t go back to a millisecond after I left.”

“So you’re really going back then,” Starlight said, sadly.

“I’m sorry, Starlight, I really am; my universe needs me to save it. It’s the only reason to ever leave your universe, really: to save it.”

“Even this one?”

“Even this one. Starlight, you’re human, and you need to embrace that. Imagination is your superpower. It’s so much greater than mine. And it’s infinite. Sure, as a species you’re good at imagining the darkness, because with your limited senses darkness is so much easier to see. So many of you are corrupted by that darkness. But you are saved by your hope. And when I return to Equestria, hope is what I’m taking back with me.”

Starlight smiled as she turned and put her hand very carefully on Sunset’s cheek. “I’m never going to see you again, am I?”

“I doubt it,” Sunset said, leaning into the hand. “My arriving at this universe was an immense cosmic accident. I’ll have no way of getting back here once I leave.”

“Then…”

Starlight scooted closer, and very cautiously kissed Sunset on her big pony lips, before wrapping herself around the pony in a hug, curled up against her on the roof of that little cottage in the woods.

Sunset wrapped her wings around her, holding her close.

“Go save your world,” Starlight whispered. “Before I try to make you stay.”

Sunset looked over Starlight’s shoulder at the rising sun. “I promised you a song first,” she whispered, before gently pushing her to arm’s length.

“Oh I could hide, ‘neath the wings, of the bluebird as she sings,” she began, raising one of her own wings for emphasis.

“The six o’clock alarm would never ring. But it rings, and I rise. Wipe the sleep out of my eyes. My shavin’ razor’s cold, and it stings.” She accented that line with a smirk and a wave of a leg, telling Starlight something she didn’t know about her morning habits back when she was a human.

“Cheer up Sleepy Star. We can go so far. With a daydream believer and a homecoming queen.” She pointed to Starlight as the former, and herself as the latter.

“You once thought of me as a white knight and her steed. Now you know how happy I can be. Our good times start and end, without dollar one to spend. But how much baby do we really need?”

“Cheer up Sleepy Star,” the two of them sang together. “We can go so far. With a daydream believer and a homecoming queen.”

Under Sunset’s magic, Starlight found her own voice changing to be just as beautiful, and a perfect counterpart, to Sunset’s own singing voice.

And the looks they were giving each other. It was true: they were brainwashing each other. Two addicts drugged up on the song, hoping that if they overdosed, at least it would be together.

The rest of the song was just the chorus, repeated ad nauseum. But neither of them seemed to mind.

In a fairy tale, dead time doesn’t exist. Something exciting or dangerous happens, and the next thing happens right after that.

In reality, it took two days to get from the cabin back to the school with the statue of the rearing horse. They used trains, buses and a taxi. And nearly the entire time they were surrounded by strangers, so they couldn’t really be themselves. Even in the hotel rooms the walls were so paper thin that their neighbors would start inserting themselves into the pair’s conversations.

Finally, during another sunrise, the two of them were standing in front of the statue.

Sunset was wearing a trench coat, and nothing else. She didn’t need Earth possessions in Equestria, and she wasn’t sure that any of them would even survive the trip. With no one around, she manifested her ears and wings. She spent a few moments running her hands over the sides of the plinth she had emerged from, strengthening its connection with Equestria as much as she could.

“I’m sorry no one was here to rescue you when you came through,” Starlight said, taking her sunglasses off.

“I’m sorry too,” Sunset said, turning to face her. “I was forced to experience the worst of humanity before I was allowed to glimpse the best.”

“I think a lot of us got it in that order,” Starlight said, wiping tears off her cheeks before nodding. “Don’t forget Hope. Don’t forget the good we did here. If you do ever find your way back here, know that I’ll always be waiting to hear from you, number in the phone book, magic on the wind.”

“Oh, that reminds me,” Sunset said, reaching over to take the newspaper tucked under Starlight’s arm. “I need to know when to reconnect the worlds.” She opened the paper to read the headline: Nationwide Protests Force President Nixon to Resign.

Starlight gave it to her, and tilted her head curiously. “You’re saying if you mess it up, you could end up coming back far far in the future, if at all?”

“Or before you’re even born. The two are equally possible.”

“Well then… I hope you find your way back to me sometime soon,” Starlight sighs. “Goodbye, Sunset, and good luck.”

“Thank you,” Sunset said, mentally preparing herself. “I’ll never forget you, Starlight Glimmer.”

“And I’ll never forget you, Sunset Shimmer.”

Starlight stepped forward and gave her a quick chaste kiss on the cheek, before stepping back and turning away. There was a flash of light and a whooshing sound, and then...silence.

Starlight stood there for a bit, watching the trees outside the school blow in the slight wind, and then finally she looked back, verifying Sunset was gone before she put her sunglasses on and walked away.

Chapter 13. I said HAPPILY EVER AFTER

Princess Celestia sat in her throne two months after her student’s apparent death, brooding and largely ignoring the stream of simpering supplicants who were trying to use the magical crisis as an excuse to increase their own power.

The doors opened, and Celestia noticed that all sounds in the throne room ceased. She looked up, and was utterly stunned to discover the unicorn Sunset Shimmer.

“Mares and gentlecolts,” she announced to the curious ponies, “I have returned from my expedition.”

“Expedition?” asked Prince Blueblood.

“Yes, an ultra-secret expedition on Princess Celestia’s behalf. I have learned much that will help us solve the magic problem.”

Celestia looked around her for a moment, then stood up. “What Sunset Shimmer says is true,” she announced. “I said what I did so as not to jeopardize her chances of success. Now please leave us, so I can debrief her on her activities.”

The nobles left with some reluctance, closing the door behind them.

“You survived,” Celestia said, allowing her shock into her voice.

“I figured out how to traverse through the void,” Sunset told her, still standing just within the door. “I did not end up in the world I was aiming for, and that is for the best.”

“So you did not take a world’s magic from it,” Celestia surmised, picking up and mirroring the formal tone that Sunset was using.

“That is correct,” Sunset said. “I returned to Equestria as soon after the moment I left that I could. I was in the other world for almost four years.”

Celestia rushed forward and pulled Sunset into an embrace, breaking the formality. Sunset seemed much more muscular than she had been before, and Celestia saw traces of scars around one of her ears. “I’m sorry for any misfortune you may have experienced.”

“I needed to experience it,” Sunset said, remaining still and not returning the embrace.

Celestia stepped back. “And did you find a solution?” she asked.

“I found a suspicion,” Sunset replied. “I need to do some research to be sure. Please delay my re-introduction to society until I am sure that I’m right.” She turned to go.

“I’m glad that you’re back, Sunset,” Celestia said. “I missed you.”

Sunset looked back over her shoulder, seeing not only Celestia but also the stained glass windows behind her. “I’m sure you did,” she said in a neutral voice.

And then she left.

Celestia did not see Sunset for the rest of the day. She sent a message out to Princess Cadance of Sunset’s return. Cadance was currently in Cloudsdale, performing the duties that Celestia had planned to do herself before the apparent tragedy.

After an uneasy sleep that night, Celestia walked out onto her balcony. She brought the moon with its Mare down to the horizon with her magic, where it refused to set. She gathered her magic…

“Stop!”

Celestia turned, to see the silhouette of Sunset Shimmer standing in the light of the outer door of her room. “Sunset?” she asked.

Sunset ran into the room, clambered up the railing of the balcony to be level with the Princess, and reached out a hoof to touch Celestia’s horn, putting out her spell. “It’s you,” she said, breathless and teary-eyed. “You’ve been taking the magic out of Equestria.”

“Explain yourself,” Celestia said coldly.

Sunset dropped down onto the floor of the balcony. She pointed over at the setting moon. “The Mare in the Moon is no mere mark. It is the essence of Nightmare Moon, the actual being your corrupted sister Luna transformed herself into. Those are the guardian stars marking out the span of one thousand years before she can be released, a thousand-year period slated to end in another decade. And your nightly spell is artificially prolonging that period. It’s a spell you’ve been casting for decades, if not centuries, and the magic required is constantly increasing.” Sunset took in a deep breath, straightening up and looking her monarch straight in the eye. “And if you keep it up, you will remove all magic from Equestria.”

“And without magic, she can never return,” Celestia said coldly.

“But what about all of the magic creatures on this world? They’ll die!”

“Not all of them,” Celestia replied. “I was weaning the ponies, getting them used to using less and less magic every year. Eventually, they would have broken their addiction, and therefore would have survived into the era of no magic that is to come. A transition that was not helped by you teaching the ponies to give me their magic!”

“How was I to know?” Sunset asked. “You never confided in me! Did Cadance know?”

“No!” Celestia replied. “I would never have another pony subjected to the knowledge of what is to come. Besides, she and I will not survive the transition.”

“But why cast the spell at all?” Sunset demanded. “You defeated Nightmare Moon once. With time to prepare, with ponies like me at your side, we’d be able to defeat her when she returned.”

“You would not be able to beat her!” Celestia insisted. “There was only one weapon that could stand against her, the Elements of Harmony. And my use of them against my own sister destroyed them forever. When Nightmare Moon returns, she will slay the princesses and institute Eternal Night. But all light magic comes from the interaction of sunlight with living beings, so eternal night will kill all magical creatures just as surely as you would have killed that first world you tried to use dark magic on!”

“Look, I said I didn’t know!” Sunset countered. “But it can’t be so cut and dried. There has to be another way to defeat Nightmare Moon.”

“There is no other way!”

“Hmm...you’re beginning to sound just like me.” Sunset reached out a hoof. “Look, I want to make a deal with you: stop casting the spell while I look for a way to deal with Nightmare Moon. It won’t take more than a month. If I fail, then go back to casting it, and I’ll work with you to find ways to transition all magical creatures into existing without magic, if at all possible. Even you and Cadance.”

Celestia looked down at the offered hoof and frowned. “What good would stopping the spell do in the long term if you’re just going to fail?”

“In the long term, probably nothing. But in the short term, it will fill every creature with magic, and hope. And I’m really banking on the latter. So, do we have a deal?”

Celestia looked down on the offered hoof for a moment, before finally grasping it.

A week later, Sunset was finally ready to set out on her expedition, “to find any sources of lost magic.” The press was there to document her departure, as they had been for every day of her preparations. Sunset had planned on this, so that the communities she planned to visit in her search would be prepared for her coming.

“Ponies of Equestria!” she cried out to the gathered multitude of ponies from Celestia’s balcony. “I, and the magical researchers I have gathered, have dedicated ourselves to the mission of discovering any lost sources of magic, anything which might stop the drain of magic we have all experienced. As Princess Celestia informed you a few days ago, she has found a way to temporarily halt that drain, but that is a one-time solution, one that might cost the Princess a great deal.”

The crowd below groaned in sympathy, even though they all knew this.

Sunset looked back at the group she had gathered, consisting not only of unicorns with promising magical talents, but also prodigies among pegasi, earth ponies, zebras and a visiting hippogriff.

She turned to face the crowd once more, reflecting that her whole momentous journey began with her looking up at this very balcony, demanding justice for non-ponies. She scanned the crowd, and for a moment thought she spotted a very familiar mane color combination. But then it was gone. She decided to abandon the rest of her speech. “We’re leaving now. Wish us luck!”

The crowd roared out its support. They sounded so much louder than the semi-defeated crowd of ponies she had led more than three years ago, by her personal accounting. They were energized by the return of long-accustomed levels of magic, and by hope.

Sunset led her team out of Celestia’s room, through the hallway, down the stairs, and out of the palace, where the crowd split in two for the group to walk through. At the other end was a bridge, leading over the chasm that separated the palace from the city of Canterlot. In front of the bridge stood Princesses Celestia and Cadance.

“Good luck,” Cadance said, stepping forward to pull Sunset into an embrace, which Sunset gladly returned.

“I’m sorry I’ve always treated you so badly,” Sunset whispered into her ear.

“You were just jealous that I had the alicorn status you sought for so long,” Cadance replied. “I forgive you.”

“Well if you’re willing to keep a secret, that little problem has already been resolved.”

Cadance pulled back in shock, and Sunset winked at her.

Now it was Celestia’s turn to hug her. “I truly hope I am wrong about Nightmare Moon,” Celestia whispered.

“I also hope you’re wrong,” Sunset said with a smirk.

“Oh, and feel free to reveal those wings any time you’d like.”

Now it was Sunset’s turn to be shocked. “I never could pull one over on you, could I?”

Celestia shook her head with a laugh.

The two princesses stood aside to allow Sunset to cross the bridge.

But she couldn’t, because somepony was standing in her way.

At the top of the bridge was a newly-cutied unicorn. Her eyes were aglow with magic, and her mane streamed all around her, carried aloft by a magical wind generated by her nearly-blinding horn. “I won’t let you take him!” she screamed.

The Princesses began to charge their horns, but Sunset waved them down. “Won’t let me take who?” she asked the intruder.

“Him! Sunburst!”

Sunset turned to look back at her lead researcher, a brilliant unicorn who was still technically a student at Celestia’s School of Magic.

“Starlight?” Sunburst asked incredulously.

Sunset whipped her head back around, trying her best to make out the features of the unicorn on the bridge despite the bright light she was giving off. One thing she did see was the tears flowing down pony Starlight’s cheeks.

“Starlight,” Sunset said gently, beginning to walk across the bridge towards the unicorn. “I need Sunburst in my expedition. He’s very important to me, and I promise that he won’t get hurt.”

“But you’re taking him away from me!” Starlight screamed. To Sunburst she yelled, “And you never even said goodbye!”

“What?” Sunburst said incredulously. “I didn’t know you even cared about me.”

Sunset stopped a couple of strides away from Starlight. She looked her straight in the eye, despite the discomfort of staring into such a bright pair of lights. “Stallions,” she said with a smirk. “They can be so dim sometimes.”

Starlight’s magic disappeared in an instant. “W...what?” she asked. “I say that all the time!”

“I know, Starlight Glimmer,” Sunset said calmly. She glanced over her shoulder at Sunburst. “Look, I can see the two of you have a lot to talk over, and you have really impressed me with that display of yours. Why don’t you join the expedition? You two could talk, we could talk. Interesting things could happen.”

Starlight blinked, thinking it over.

“Haven’t you ever wanted to travel?” Sunset prodded her. “See Equestria and everything it had to offer?”

Starlight, once again hearing words that had frequently fallen from her own lips coming from this pony that just seemed to know her, nodded mutely.

“Well then,” Sunset said with confidence. She walked past Starlight, and the other ponies in the expedition followed, Starlight falling in beside Sunburst.

“Seriously,” said Sunburst. “You didn’t once let me know that you had a problem with me leaving.”

Starlight shook her head incredulously and started walking.

Somewhere out there they were going to find magic, friendship...and maybe something more.

Credits

List of References

{Co-}Author’s note: Err...imagine that this whole chapter is in square brackets, because you all know that I’m the only person crazy enough to write this stuff.

{Hehehehehe}

Stuff coming from the show, owned by Hasbro: Sunset Shimmer, Starlight Glimmer, Celestia, Cadance, Nightmare Moon, Luna, Philomena, King Sombra, Sunburst. Equestria, Canterlot, Cloudsdale. Diamond Dogs, alicorns, the Mare in the Moon, CSGU.

List of references by chapter:

Preface

Kent State University: A reference to the “Kent State Massacre” of May 4, 1970, when the National Guard killed four students of Kent State University in Ohio that were protesting the Vietnam War and injured seven. As will be revealed later, the events at Kent State University in this universe went a different path that more than justified the label “massacre”.

Ergot Poisoning: This is a condition caused by the ingestion of bread made from rye or other cereals that have been contaminated by alkaloid drugs produced by a particular class of fungi. In 1976, Pr. Linnda R. Caporael wrote a popular article blaming the Salem Witch mania on this disease.

Rare conjunction of the four closest stars with our Sun: Yes, this is exactly what you think this is.

Actually written in 1671: And if you flip the “6” upside-down, what do you get? The tragic ending to this story.

Prologue

“Equestria, the land I love”: Song sung by Coloratura in the episode “The Mane Attraction.” It is never stated outright, but this is pretty much Equestria’s national anthem, so that’s how it’s being used here.

Equus: I suppose I should point out that this term to refer to the planet where the nation of Equestria is located was never used by the show, only by the fans.

Chapter 1

{Germs, guns, and steel as the chapter title is a reference to the book by the same name published in 1997, in which Jared Diamond takes a crack at trying to understand the rise, fall, and fates of nations, ultimately concluding that the power distribution of most societies is due to pure luck as to the geography they pick and whether it ends up having the resources needed to survive or thrive.}

Police codes used, in order:

10-20: “What is your location?”
10-19: “We are returning to the station.”
270: Being a vagabond—Prior to 1993, the state of Illinois was governed by the Illinois Revised Statutes, a collection of laws dating from statehood through 1874, and occasionally amended since then. Ill. Rev. Stat. had no specific law against indecent exposure, instead throwing it under the general definition of being a vagabond, Section 270, which I will now quote in full because it amuses me that a law with such language was still in force in 1967 (the only applicable part in bold):

All persons who are idle and dissolute, and who go about begging; all persons who use any juggling or other unlawful games or plays; runaways; pilferers; confidence men; common drunkards; common night-walkers; lewd, wanton and lascivious persons, in speech or behavior; common railers and brawlers; persons who are habitually neglectful of their employment or their calling, and do not lawfully provide for themselves, or for the support of their families; and all persons who are idle or dissolute and who neglect all lawful business and who habitually mis-spend their time by frequenting houses of ill-fame, gaming houses or tippling shops; all persons lodging in or found in the night-time in out-houses, sheds, barns or unoccupied buildings or lodging in the open air, and not giving a good account of themselves; and all persons who are known to be thieves, burglars or pickpockets, either by their own confession or otherwise, or by having been convicted of larceny, burglary, or other crime against the laws of the state, punishable by imprisonment in the state prison, or in a house of correction of any city, and having no lawful means of support, are habitually found prowling around any steamboat landing, railroad depot, banking institution, broker’s office, place of public amusement, auction room, store, shop or crowded thoroughfare, car or omnibus, or at any public gathering or assembly, or lounging about any court room, private dwelling houses or out-houses, or are found in any house of ill-fame, gambling house or tippling shop, shall be deemed to be and they are declared to be vagabonds.

The modern Illinois Compiled Statutes has a specific law defining indecent exposure, 720 ILCS 5/11-30, so a modern Illinois police officer would have used “11-30” instead of “270”.

10-45: “What is the condition of the patient?”
10-9: “Please repeat your last transmission.”
10-4: “Acknowledged.” (I figure this is the one everyone knows.)

Alice: The name of “Alice Shiner” as an alias for Sunset Shimmer was plucked from the air, but if you must have an Alice to be on the poster in order for your suspension of disbelief to work, how about Alice Crimmins? She went on trial in New York City in 1968 for the crime of murdering her two young children, and that trial was widely reported. Crimmins ended up going through three trials over five years to determine her guilt—most of the films inspired by the case concluded that she was not guilty.

Chapter 2

{A Modest Proposal as the chapter title is a reference to Jonathan Swift’s book published in 1729, in which he satirically proposes that poor starving Irish children be fattened up and then killed to feed the rich.}

“I’ve never heard anything like this!”: I don’t believe I’ve ever heard an Irish accent in Friendship Is Magic, have you? [Note to Hope: if anybody actually answers “yes” to that question in the comments, change “Friendship Is Magic” to “Canterlot”. And then whistle innocently if anybody tries to call you on it.] {Note taken, if they press the issue, I can also go on a long rambling explanation about how in Equestria, all Irish people are represented by some fantastical creature we haven’t met yet.}

CSGU: Celestia’s School for Unicorns.

Frogonard: Pony version of Jean-Honoré Fragonard, who is best known for his painting The Swing.

Chapter 3

{Das Kapital as the chapter title is a reference to both Starlight and Hope being DIRTY COMMIES!} (McPoodle: This is probably the point where all of the readers who spend their free time telling everyone else that they are the only “true Americans” gave up on this story. Good, because if they got to the part with Nixon in it, they would probably end up choking on their own bile.)

The Daughters of Bilitis: Also called the DOB or the Daughters; it was the first lesbian civil and political rights organization in the United States. It was formed in San Francisco 30 years before GLAAD. The name of the organization was chosen so as not to attract attention from bigots: Bitilis was the name of a fictional contemporary of the historical poet Sappho, invented by French poet Pierre Louÿs in his 1894 The Songs of Bitilis. The Songs were supposed to be a recently-discovered set of lesbian poems written by Bitilis and translated by Louÿs; the work was still well-regarded even after the fraud was revealed.

“Bright red with a hammer and sickle crossing each other”: These were the symbols on the flag of the Soviet Union, the joke being that Starlight Glimmer is a devout communist, {although ten years later when the Gulags become more common knowledge, she will probably switch to wearing a Marx pin, because she isn’t willing to excuse the crimes of any state, even those with a political system she believes would function better than capitalism.}

A flower that seemed to be on fire: McPoodle: I absolutely see this as a reference to the infamous “Daisy” commercial of 1964. {Amazingly, this is a better reference than the original, which was a reference to the famous “flower in the barrel of a gun” picture, which depicted a gay man standing up to state violence. Let’s say it represents both!}

“A little piece of paper they stuck in their mouths”: I didn’t feel the need to explain the marijuana reference, but I’m not sure all of the readers would be aware of acid stamps, sheets of paper perforated like stamps, and coated with LSD. Acid stamps are rather strongly associated with the hippy movement, and are the source of the word “Acid” in this story’s title.

“Oh Alice”: You put a character in the same decade as the song “White Rabbit”, and you are going to get Alice in Wonderland references. There’s no avoiding it. (Link is to the trippiest video of the song that I could find on YouTube. It’s not trippy enough.)

Marcus: Oh hey! You’ve reached the part of the story where you begin to wonder if this has any connection to my (McPoodle’s) fanfic At the Inn of the Prancing Pony. {And of course, the point where you realize that this is part of the MCPOODLEVERSE, THE FIRST FANFICTION UNIVERSE TO RIVAL MARVEL!!!!}

River Bend campsite: The River Bend RV Resort, located in the town of Watertown, Wisconsin, is one-third of the way between Madison and Milwaukee.

The Supplier: {Hope: This character drop was a vague implication that Starlight was being monitored and aided by an agent participating in the late stages of COINTELPRO, and being supplied with LSD by them.}

Chapter 4

{“A Place Not Called Waco” is a reference to the book published in 1999 called “A Place Called Waco” and, through that, a reference to Waco TX where a cult violently defended themselves against the police, after gathering a massive stockpile of weapons.}

Rockefeller: John D. Rockefeller (died 1937) is still considered the richest American of all time when adjusted for inflation. Claire Rockefeller is fictional.

Tax evasion: Rather famously, the gangster Al Capone was so good at covering his tracks that he was unable to be convicted for any of the violent crimes he was responsible for. Instead, he was convicted and sentenced to eleven years imprisonment, most of which was served in the Alcatraz Penitentiary, for tax evasion. {Fun fact and/or Hope drawing conclusions from nowhere, Al Capone lived in relative luxury, in part to convince him not to bring his connections to bear in an attempt to escape, which could result in many deaths and more people getting out!}

Absinthe: In reality, absinthe is merely a liquor originally flavored with extract of wormwood; it has a high alcohol content, it tastes like licorice, and has a neat green color. But thanks to the hyperbolic claims of the temperance crusaders, it came to be seen as hallucinogenic, with the most-famous hallucination being that of the “green fairy”.

Lord Byron: George Gordon Byron, 6th Baron Byron (1788–1824) was an English poet, held up as a role model for his dissipated lifestyle and liberal crusading, both of which of course was blamed by his detractors on absinthe. And then his admirers in turn started drinking the stuff hoping it would make them more like him.

“Life is a joy in Our Town”: {Hope: It’s basically the only part of the song that doesn’t explicitly refer to ponies, or make it clear how evil Starlight is. ‘You can’t have any nightmares if you never dream’ would be really hard to justify in this fic.}

Ashes: Ashes are commonly used in the Old Testament as a symbol of repentance.

The Ba and the Ka: Basically, the Ba is your personality, while the Ka is your life force. After death, the Ba and the Ka spend every night in your corpse...as long as that corpse is intact. Every sunrise, the Ka leaves the body to spend the day in Egyptian Paradise, while the Ba floats unseen around your descendants, protecting them from harm.

The six-pointed star: This symbol has many different meanings in different religions. In occultism, it is a protective symbol.

Octarine: A fictional impossible color, the combination of green, yellow (or orange) and purple, that is supposed to be the color of magic. It is used prominently in the fiction of Terry Pratchett.

The third nervous system: Another dropped plot thread, this one deliberately so.

“That’s despicable”: Quote by Daffy Duck from the Chuck Jones Warner Bros. cartoon “Rabbit Fire”, from 1951. (Yes, I am linking to the entire cartoon instead of just the relevant excerpt. It’s required viewing.)

Duck Dodgers: ...in the 24 1/2th Century (1953), another Chuck Jones cartoon starring Daffy Duck. Also the name of a great 2005 animated series.

Chapter 5

{“Young Pioneer Camp” as the title of this chapter refers to the USSR’s child camps because, once again, COMMUNISM!}

Ellen and Mary Jo: The moment when you knew for a fact that this story was tied to Inn of the Prancing Pony.

Peyote: Source of the hallucinogenic drug mescaline. Wow, a story set in the late 60’s with lots of psychoactive drugs in it...who would have guessed?

Capiche: American slang derived from the Italian capisci, “do you understand”.

The Mafia: Yes, of course. Because the use of any Italian word means you belong to the Mafia. (Wrote the Italian-American.) {The French-American just sat back and laughed.}

Crowley: Aleister Crowley (1875–1947) was the most-famous Satanist who ever lived. The quote I always attribute to him is the Law of Thelema: “Do what thou wilt—then do nothing else.” In other words, civilization is a sham, and you should do whatever you want to whoever you want, damn the consequences. Rather crucially, note that the story does not supply Crowley’s first name. Given that this story shows the origin of the gender-swapped human world of Inn of the Prancing Pony, that could make Crowley an Alice rather than an Aleister.

“Lime and limpid green...”: The opening lines from “Astronomy Dominé”, the opening song from Pink Floyd’s debut album, The Piper at the Gates of Dawn, 1967. A classic psychedelic album and song. It should surprise no one that recreational drug users adopted the song for their own use.

“the fuzz”: Hippy slang for the police.

“Ginger, Ginger, you’re a witch”: Start of the second verse of “Lucifer Sam”, the second song from The Piper at the Gates of Dawn. Here, have a Pink Floyd-inspired cartoon. Those are always fun.

“Our mother, who art with us always”: A contrast to the Lord’s Prayer, where the Father spends His time up in Heaven.

"...causing whole continents to float in the sky": A reference to Avatar: The Last Airbender

Raven Creek: Nope, this one was totally made up, so don’t try to find it on a map of Wisconsin.

“Only once, long ago”: This is a Sombra reference, in case you didn’t catch it.

Chapter 6

{“Mistakes were made” as a title here is a reference to how powerful people such as Nixon, Bill Clinton, Starlight Glimmer, and countless generals throughout history have used the phrase to excuse their wrongdoing.}

“Name’s Rogers...like the Mister”: Mister Rogers’ Neighborhood. If you don’t know what that is, google it. {Then watch all of it and become a happier person.}

Mutual of Omaha’s Wild Kingdom: Mutual of Omaha is an insurance company, founded in 1909. Wild Kingdom was a nature-focused documentary television series sponsored by that company that originally ran from 1963 to 1988. It was hosted by zoologists Marlin Perkins and Jim Fowler.

“I usually rely on the ea...experts to tell me how bad it is”: I can never tell in cases like this if all of the readers can figure out what the character caught themselves almost saying. In this case, Sunset was going to say that she gets her earthquake warnings from the earth ponies.

Mickey Mouse: Bound and beholden servant of the great and powerful Walt Disney Corporation.

Chapter 7

1984: More properly Nineteen Eighty-Four, the 1949 dystopian novel by George Orwell which has as one of its concepts “doublethink”: “To know and not to know, to be conscious of complete truthfulness while telling carefully constructed lies, to hold simultaneously two opinions which cancelled out, knowing them to be contradictory and believing in both of them, to use logic against logic, to repudiate morality while laying claim to it, to believe that democracy was impossible and that the Party was the guardian of democracy, to forget whatever it was necessary to forget, then to draw it back into memory again at the moment when it was needed, and then promptly to forget it again, and above all, to apply the same process to the process itself—that was the ultimate subtlety: consciously to induce unconsciousness, and then, once again, to become unconscious of the act of hypnosis you had just performed. Even to understand the word—doublethink—involved the use of doublethink.”

Billy Ortega: Made-up name.

Gone with the Wind: By 1970, I doubt anybody was reading the 1936 novel, so this a reference to the 1939 movie directed by Victor Fleming for MGM. And it was the most-popular film of all time, until...

The Sound of Music: 1965 musical directed by Robert Wise for 20th Century Fox. In 1971, Gone with the Wind was re-released for the sixth time (MGM milked this film for all it was worth), which bumped that film back up to #1 grossing movie of all time. The Godfather became #1 in 1972, Jaws in 1976, and Star Wars in 1978.

Bedknobs and Broomsticks: This film, which Robert Stevenson directed for Walt Disney Productions, was released in 1971 in our universe, but the reference was far too good not to use, so in the universe of AAA, it’s a 1969 release.

Chapter 8

{Hopeless Dreamers as the title is a reference to both the general concept and to MakeWar’s song by the same name.}

Star Trek: The original series had finished its broadcast run in 1969. Executive producer Gene Roddenberry, distributed by the American NBC network.

Three and a half billion: That was the world population in 1967. It’s nearly eight billion now.

Judgment at Nuremberg: 1961 courtroom drama directed by Stanley Kramer for United Artists, about the trial of four Nazi judges and prosecutors for crimes against humanity.

Chapter 9

{The title “I am not my mother’s daughter” is a saying and title used in many places by many people who have been broken or abandoned by their mother figures. Here, it’s a herald to the pains both of our main characters share about their past.}

Chicago Riots: The term “1968 Chicago Riots” is usually used to refer to the reaction to the assassination of Martin Luther King Jr. on April 4. The Vietnam War protests timed to coincide with the Democratic National Convention in late August of the same year gets the much less punchy title of “1968 Democratic National Convention Protests”. The protests themselves were largely peaceful, but the Chicago police, the Illinois National Guard, the FBI, the Secret Service, and the Democratic Party itself made sure that it was very much a riot...a police riot. The rallying cry of the protests, recorded live on national television, was “The whole world is watching.”

Yippies and MOPE: Nickname for the Youth International Party, the group that organized the protests. The group liked to be confrontational, making dangerous threats that it had no intention of carrying out, like spiking Chicago’s water supply with LSD. The group was led by Abbie Hoffman and Jerry Rubin. Meanwhile the more-radical wing of the Democratic Party ran the National Mobilization Committee to End the War in Vietnam (abbreviated MOBE), run by David Dellinger, Rennie Davis and Tom Hayden. They participated in the protests in hopes of getting a sympathetic candidate, Eugene McCarthy, selected as the Democratic president for the 1968 election. In this alternate universe these five men and two others became seven women, the Chicago Seven who would be charged with the crime of using interstate commerce to incite a riot. They were acquitted of this charge, but Davis, Dellinger, Hayden, Hoffman and Rubin were found guilty of crossing state lines to incite a riot. The simultaneous trial of eight police officers accused of brutality ended with no convictions.

Mary Poppins: Fictional character created by P. L. Travers in 1934, portrayed by Julie Andrews in the 1964 Walt Disney Productions film directed by Robert Stevenson.

Scooby-Doo and Shaggy Rogers: In our universe, characters from the cartoon TV show Scooby-Doo, Where Are You! (1969, created by Joe Ruby and Ken Spears, produced by Hanna-Barbera for the American CBS network), but real in this universe.

Chapter 10

{Piano Man is a reference to both the song “Piano Man” and also “the regular crowd shuffling in” in connection to the zombie horde!}

Laverne & Shirley: Television sitcom, a spin-off of Happy Days, about two friends and bottle-cappers at the fictitious Shotz Brewery in late-50’s Milwaukee. The opening credits feature scenes from the city. Executive produced by Garry Marshall, Thomas L. Miller and Edward K. Milkis for the American CBS network, it ran from 1976 to 1983.

May 1, 1970: This is three days before the Kent State shootings in our reality. See the Preface reference note for the bare details of the historical event. Also, the original protesters were male students, not mothers. As for the use of an atomic bomb, William Westmoreland, commander of U.S. forces in Vietnam, had actually proposed the use of nuclear weapons in 1968 in that country if affairs ever warranted it. Why would Richard Nixon order his own country to be nuked in this alternate reality? Ergot poisoning, obviously.

Femme Fatale: A stock fictional character type, the beautiful woman who uses her sexuality to lure powerful men to their doom. She was very popular in film noir such as The Maltese Falcon (1941), Double Indemnity (1944), Mildred Pierce (1945), Leave Her to Heaven (also 1945), Gilda (1946, no relation to the griffon), The Killers (also 1946), and many, many more.

Film noir: A genre of film made starting in the 1920’s, but with the American heyday in the 40’s and 50’s, about innocent characters venturing into unexpectedly-seedy settings. The look and feel of the genre are heavily-dependent on black-and-white cinematography, in order to best symbolize black-and-white morality giving way to a world all in gray.

“Bricka bracka, firecracker, sis boom bah!”: During a scene from Chuck Jones’ Warner Bros. cartoon “Super-Rabbit” (1946), Bugs Bunny manages to briefly trick the villainous cowboy and his horse into rooting for him.

“When the night has come...”: Here’s a link to the song “Stand By Me”, by Ben E. King, 1961.

A Rankin-Bass special: Rankin-Bass was a television animation company founded by Arthur Rankin Jr. and Jules Bass in 1960. They were best known for a series of stop-motion musical holiday specials that aired annually almost without interruption from 1968–1981, most-famously the series that began with Rudolf the Red-Nosed Reindeer in 1964. They also made traditional cell-animated specials and theatrical movies, including The Hobbit (1977), The Return of the King (1980) and The Last Unicorn (1982).

“Storm the castle”: Did you know Jonathan Young released a song with that name this year? “Rise now, stand and sing. Storm the castle, kill the king!” Anyway, the phrase has a ton of uses, but due to my age the one that always comes to mind is Billy Crystal in The Princess Bride (1987).

Pabst Blue Ribbon: This is a lager beer sold by the Pabst Brewing Company of Milwaukee, starting in the year when the brewery was founded, 1844. Its current name comes from the blue ribbons that were tied around the bottle necks between 1882 and 1916, in honor of the awards the beer had won in a multitude of competitions at fairs across America.

Clydesdales: This large breed of draft horse has been associated with the Anheuser-Busch brewing company since 1933, when a team of them pulling a wagon was used to celebrate the repeal of Prohibition. They were featured in the “Here Comes the King” commercial for their Budweiser lager, which started airing in 1967, and that commercial in turn was featured in the film Close Encounters of the Third Kind (1977). The brewery was founded in 1852 by Eberhard Anheuser and Adolphus Busch, and is based out of St. Louis, Missouri.

Jingle Bells: A Christmas carol, the best-known of all Christmas carols, written by James Lord Pierpont in 1857. There’s a million recordings I could link to, so how about its use as the first song ever sung in space, by Gemini 6 astronaut Wally Schirra on harmonica and Tom Stafford on sleigh bells, on December 16, 1965.

{Bourgeois: Noone can spell it, everyone can say it, and half the people who say it don’t seem to understand it’s actual meaning.}

Rudolf the Red-Nosed Reindeer: The character originated in a 1939 coloring book written by Robert L. May for the Montgomery Ward department store chain, given away to customers as an act of holiday good will. The story was first adapted in animated form by the Jam Handy advertising firm by Max Fleischer in 1948, made the subject of a Gene Autry song by Johnny Marks in 1949, and became the star of his own Rankin-Bass special and shared holiday universe, 1964–1979.

{Plan 66: Reference to Order 66 given by the clone troopers to wipe out the Jedi, not because it’s thematically appropriate, but because the image of Starlight ordering a bunch of clone troopers to murder the reindeer and elves of Santa is just too enjoyable to pass up on.}

A spell wiping Christmas: Reference to the Friendship Is Magic episode “A Hearth’s Warming Tail”. You know, I feel a little dumb pointing these show references out, but I guess if there’s one person who didn’t get it, then it’s all worthwhile.

Black Friday: I expect that everybody knows what this term means. It was independently invented multiple times starting in 1951, the approximate year when the use of Santa Claus in Thanksgiving parades cemented the idea that the day after the holiday was the official start of the Christmas shopping season. For the first few decades of its use, the use of “black” before the weekday name always had negative connotations, just like the “Black Friday” which launched the Panic of 1869, or the “Black Tuesday” which launched the Great Depression of 1929–1939. The exact meaning varied: it could mean the day when everyone called in sick so they could get a four day weekend (bad for the employers), or it could mean the day when bargain-crazy shoppers caused trampling and traffic accidents (bad for...well everyone caught in the chaos). Around 1981, when the term had become well-known across America, it was rebranded as a positive event, the moment when the “red ink” of retail losses would turn into the “black ink” of cumulative profits. This leads to a very negative connotation: that the irrational “buy your love with presents” holiday of Christmas is the only thing keeping the great majority of stores from being swallowed up by their normal expenses. (See Jingle All the Way, 1996).

Chapter 11

The Milwaukee County War Memorial: This building was designed by Eero Saarinen, and dedicated on Veterans Day, 1957. (Link to a photograph on Wikipedia, taken by Peter Alfred Hess.)

Chapter 12

Legos: The LEGO Group, founded in 1932 by Ole Kirk Christiansen, are manufacturers of the buildable toys. In 1970, the American and Canadian branch of the company was managed by Samsonite, the luggage makers.

“Oh I could hide...”: The song “Daydream Believer” was written by John Stewart for The Monkeys in 1967. The music video has 48 million views for a reason. If this was 2015 I’d throw in a quip that John Stewart of The Kingston Trio is not to be confused with Jon Stewart of The Daily Show, but I figure everybody’s forgotten the comedian by now.

“Or before you’re even born”: See the depressing reference note under the Preface.

Chapter 13 didn’t have any references, other than Nightmare Moon stuff from the FIM series premiere.

Author's Note

A lost note among the original manuscript has been attached for completeness:

October 31, 1984. I’m sorry, but it’s the earliest date I can manage. Los Angeles, PonyGameCon X. The Champion’s Showcase. Dress as yourself. You can’t miss me.