“Sunburst, you know I’ve been through worse, right?”
In the three and a half years that we’ve been together, I don’t think I’ve ever heard a dumber question leave my coltfriend’s mouth than the one he just asked.
To put it very, very sincerely, it’s not as though Flash had any idea how dumb he sounded. He did not, in fact, have any clue about the complexities of the ancient magic currently suffusing through his body as he sat before me, smiling at me with that big goofy face on his face as he took a particularly big bite out of his hayburger.
I should also probably mention before continuing, him saying that he’s been through worse? That’s just his go-to strategy for when I make a mistake that involves him and he has absolutely no idea what’s there to say about it.
Or, to put it in simpler words, he’s just trying to cheer me up.
He’s a guard in the Crystal Empire post-King Sombra. We both know the worst thing Flash has been through before now was an upset stomach on our seventh night out, which was quickly followed by an intimate yet unsavoury night between him and the public outhouse. All of which happened in the first place because I thought to sprinkle alfalfa sprouts on his avocado toast, which then kickstarted his allergic reaction that I soon after wished he had told me about.
At least Flash shared a part of the blame on that one for not telling me sooner.
Not this time however. This one was all me.
“I said, you know I’ve been through worse, right Sunburst?!”
“I heard you the first time, you wingnut,” I hissed at my coltfriend from across the table, glaring around the diner and chasing away all the curious stares from all around. “Also, for the love of Faust, Flash, swallow before you speak!”
“What?” Flash exclaimed, even as he continued chewing on his hayburger. “It’s good, Sunny! Try it! Or what, you’re gonna be gloomy over me having a nice lunch, is that it?”
“I have much bigger things to be worrying about right now.”
“Nothing you can’t stomach, I hope? Maybe it’s a meal for two and you can share it with me if you want?”
My hoof would be running down my face now if it hadn’t already been stained with ketchup and mustard. “Flash Sentry,” I kindly put forth an ultimatum, “as much as I appreciate your appalling attempts at charming me with your horrendous jokes over hayburgers, I am pleading with all my love for you to take this as seriously as I am.”
“Okay, okay, sorry.” Flash shrank back into his seat with a sheepish laugh, before leaning forward to meet me again. “Alright, huddle with me, what are we looking at?”
I began to recall the events that had occurred earlier this morning. Me, in my bedroom in the School of Friendship, standing before a set of intricately-embellished concentric circles drawn on the floor with chalk. An utterance later, they light up, twisting and turning as they rise up from the ground to form a swivelling gyroscope mid-air, harnessing from each other a rattling sphere of raw, shimmering magic in its centre.
“I was testing out an amalgamation of some ancient spells,” I told him as I pushed up my glasses. “At some points during these tests, there are these discharges. Lightning bolts—which is normal, by the way, it’s what usually happens when you perform high-degree functions like these and they don’t work out. Also, by virtue of aural static, these bolts would always leap towards the closest living thing it could find, which was for a while just me. Fortunately, I had put up a bunch of shields around the room and myself before I began my experiment, so I was safe throughout.”
Flash’s eyes, which had been drifting off midway through my explanation, suddenly lit up with all the glitz and glamour of a night lamp, as if he had just realised the dire mistake he had made. “That’s until I walked into your room, right?”
I sighed, feebly nodding. “Eeeyep.”
He wanted to surprise me by paying me a visit with a cake from the Crystal Empire to celebrate our three and a half years together. I don’t know what is with his fascination with arbitrary dates of significance, though I must admit they do make nice surprises from time to time. The last time he did something like this was several months ago actually—year three point fourteen, also known as our pi-neversary. The only difference is that he had planned to get me pie instead of a cake, only to resort to pancakes because he learned that day the hard truth of the local pie stall being closed on weekends.
Anyway, back to our three and a half, I could still remember how he went about it this morning. My coltfriend. His chef’s hat and pink apron. His confident and self-assured strut into the room. His goofy smile. The cheesecake melting on the plate in his hooves. The little skip in his step as he crossed the room towards me. His goofy smile. The three candles on the cake, all clumped together due to the lack of space. His goofy smile.
All of it, sent bursting out of the room by an errant bolt of lightning in a matter of seconds.
“So now you’re keeping an eye on me,” Flash was now decidedly up to speed, “just in case anything happens.”
“It’s not really an ‘if’ and more of a ‘when’ at this point,” I pointed out as I scribbled with my quill one observation after another into my salt-sprinkled notepad. Be it an eye twitch or a wing flap, it all gets jotted down, no matter how minuscule or mundane they would be. “You’ve basically absorbed the full force of a multitaxonomical combination of ancient spells. A mixture of centrifuged arcane essences extracted from spells created by Mistmane and Somnambula, synthesised with classical draconian greed magic and heated over kirin balefire. It would be a miracle and a half if nothing happens to you in the end.”
“Yeah, uh, you lost me when you brought up taxes all of a sudden?”
“Multitaxonomical.”
“Though I liked the part where you talked about miracles. I could use a couple of those right now.”
I tried and failed not to chuckle at his little quip. “Your idea of miracles is probably just getting a slap in the face by the wind with a stray voucher for a lifetime supply of corn dogs.”
“Exactly!” A brisk bout of hearty laughter burst forth from the depths of my coltfriend’s chest, his boisterousness once again catching the attention of everyone else in the diner. “Wow, wait, like, are we on the same frequency today or what? Are you actually thinking exactly what I’m thinking?”
“I just want you to be safe and sound so that you can enjoy your lifetime supply of corn dogs, Flash. We are not the same.”
“Well, we can’t all be winners, can we?” At the rolling of my eyes, Flash rewarded himself for his comeback with another chomp of his half-eaten hayburger. “Remind me, by the way—”
“Swallow before you speak, Faust’s sake.”
Flash heeded my advice, if only partially. “Remind me,” he asked me in between muted nibbles, “what’s this spell thing actually supposed to do again? Like, are the changes physical or mental? Anything I should be looking out for? Are the gills actually gonna be growing on my neck instead of my thighs like last time? Or is this gonna be some kinda blowhole situation where I need to surface every three minutes like a pensioner rationing his inhaler?”
“I truly have no idea,” I admitted. “I wish I could tell you, Flash, but honestly, this is all new to me too. A recent discovery, by every account. That’s kinda why I’m here, you know? To make sure nothing happens to you for the time being.”
Flash took another proper bite out of his hayburger, stewing on his thoughts as he chewed. I watched him throughout, wincing inwardly as dollops of red and yellow dripped from his lips and splattered onto his tray.
“Sometimes, I feel like a guinea pig,” he said once he swallowed.
“I’m hoping that’s the only thing you’re feeling right about now.”
“It’s nice though. Being a guinea pig.” Flash paused to linger on his words. “Well, being your guinea pig, at least.”
“Probably not your best pickup line, but I’ll give it to you.”
A loud guffaw at my rebuttal, characteristic of the carefree pegasus he is. All eyes around the diner once again fell upon him. “So I guess you’re just stuck with me for the rest of the day now.”
“That was the plan anyhow. Three and a half years, remember?” I smiled at him, if only to take my mind off of how panicked I was really feeling. He smiled back at me like the goofball he is, a detail which I do not fail to include in my observations. "This is certainly going to be an anniversary to look back on,” I remarked.
“You tell me.”
“I just did.”
“No, I mean it like—” he began to bluster, much to my amusement. “Like, I see what you mean. Like, I’m voicing my agreement about what you said about our anniversary, about how it’s going to be one to remember for the history books. But not every history book though, of course not! Just ours! Like a, like a photo album or a personal diary annnddddd you’re making fun of me.”
“I can’t help it,” I said, letting out the snickers I had been desperately holding back all the while. “You’re adorable when you try to make sense of things.”
“Har dee har har.”
“It’s good though. That we can still laugh about this somehow.” Tucking my upper lip, I continued scribbling on my notepad, occasionally glancing up at Flash as he set himself up to scarf down his fries. “Still feeling okay?”
“Right as chocolate rain,” Flash said as he looked over his form. “You know, I’m starting to think the spell was harmless after all.”
“Hey, careful now.” I shot a frown, my glasses sliding down to the bridge of my snout. “Those are some dangerous words you’re playing with right there.”
“Hey. I’m just saying what I’m thinking, Sunny. Faust forbid me to voice out my opinions.”
“I’m just really not in the mood to tempt fate today.”
“I don’t know, I thought the whole temptation bit comes naturally to you.”
“Look, I really don’t want to worry about you any more than I already am, alright?” I snapped before I realised it. “Especially since I’m the one who put us in this situation in the first place.”
“Right. Sorry.”
"Because of course I did, right? Like, like, I could be doing a simple teleportation spell. Like, poof! Just like that! But no, I thought ‘why not spend the afternoon doing something dangerous? Something that no one ever tried before’. Brilliant idea! Surely nothing could go wrong, Sunburst, nothing!”
“Are you—” Flash had stopped rummaging through his fries at some point, his eyes widening when he noticed me furiously scratching my quill at my notepad. “No, okay, you’re definitely hyperventilating.”
“I’m definitely hyperventila—of course I’m hyperventilating! You could be dying right now! And it’s going to be because of me! I’m going to be the one who—”
“Sunny? Sunny, look at me—”
“I can’t! No, don’t, I really—I’m just—”
“Look at me.” Flash seized my scrambling hooves, stopping me as I was about to turn a whole page black. “Sunny, look at me. If this is gonna be it, then here’s my dying wish, okay? Look at me. Please.”
I did.
After a few more seconds of huffing and panting, I eventually did.
Flash grinned when I finally met his gaze.
Before he uttered the dumbest question I had ever heard from him in my entire life.
“You know what would be weird? If I just died? Like right now?”
My jaw dropped. “Are you kidding me right now?”
“Of course I am! I think. Maybe. Still, like, wouldn’t it be cool though?” he continued, much to my consternation. “Like, damn, I could finally predict the future in my last moments! Go out in a blaze of glory, that kinda thing! Ooh, have it carved on my tombstone! Mom and Dad would throw a fit when they see it!”
“Flash, I genuinely have no idea what you’re on about.”
“Well, okay, back to my original point, since it looks like you’ve lightened up a bit.” Flash’s outrageous tangent certainly did that for me. Whether it was a fortunate accident or by slipshod design, I don’t think I’ll ever know. “What I was gonna say was that this wasn’t entirely your fault, Sunny. You couldn’t have in any way known I was going to walk through that door, yeah?”
“Yeah, I…” I swallowed. “I-I couldn’t have.”
“So it shouldn’t be your fault just because you didn’t know something was gonna happen, right?”
“I-I guess.”
“So it’s not your fault then! You did everything you could to make sure nothing went wrong! You’ve considered every possibility you can think of and you’ve prepared every precaution against it! Yeah?”
“Yeah.”
“Yeah!”
“Yeah!”
“Yeah, exactly!”
“Like, you could’ve at least written to me that you were gonna visit!”
“Okay, wait, I mean,” Flash laughed awkwardly to himself, “it was meant to be a surprise.”
“You could’ve knocked.”
“It was meant to be a surprise, Sunny!”
“I’ve had a lifetime of surprises, Flash Sentry. I don’t need my coltfriend being another one on the list.” I reached out to hold his hoof. “The last thing I ever wanted on our three-and-a-half is for something to happen to you.”
Flash smiled at me again. There’s nothing goofy about it this time.
“Look, when it comes down to it, I know you didn’t mean to hurt me, babe,” he said to me. “Yes, I should’ve told you I was coming, I should’ve knocked, I should’ve done both those things and then some. But all that stuff happened and we’re here right now, aren’t we? We can figure this out. I know we can.”
“That’s what I’m hoping for.”
“Well, you mostly! Not me, let’s just get that out of the way!” he declared haughtily, once more catching all the eyes from across the room. “You know how bad I am with these kinda things.”
I laughed regardless. “Part of the plan, don’t worry about it.”
“Umm, excuse me, sir?”
Both of us turned to find that one of the diner’s waitresses had at some point approached us. Well, approached Flash more like, as she leaned down and came between us, staring right at my coltfriend with a grave frown on her face.
“Is everything okay?” she asked him, looking extremely worried. Somehow even more worried than I was. “Do I need to get somepony for you?”
“I don’t know? Maybe?” Flash looked over her shoulder at me. All I could do was respond with a confused shake of the head. “What’s going on? If it’s about the ball pit incident again, just tell your manager that I’ve learned my lesson and I promised to stay at least six feet away.”
“It’s not that, sir. It’s just…how should I say this…” the waitress bit her lip. “You’ve been talking to yourself for the past half an hour now and the rest of us are a little worried.”
Both of us blankly stared at her for the better half of a minute. I was waiting for the moment they suddenly burst out in laughter and declare that I had been pranked. Sneaking a glance at my coltfriend, however, it seemed that he might have had the same thought as well.
“So you can’t see me?” I called out to her first, only to be met with a cold shoulder, unwittingly so. “Miss, hello?”
“You can’t see him?” Flash opted this time. “My coltfriend? He’s right there.”
“I don’t think she can see me. Or hear me either, looks like.”
“Like, right in front of me,” he continued regardless. “Like, you’re literally in smooching distance with him and I don’t really like that.”
“I-I don’t see anypony, sir,” the waitress insisted, hastily stepping back. “Should I be getting somepony or—”
“No!” I yelled as if she could still hear me.
“Uhhh, no need, no need! Haha, yes, no need!” Flash spoke for us once again, breaking out in nervous laughter as he finally acknowledged every pair of eyes in the room. “I’m sorry, this must be weird for everypony, right? Is this weird? Am I being weird? We should probably—oh, what am I talking about, I should probably, heh, just… leave! Hahah! Just me! Yep! Only me, wowie! Heh, we should—”
Quickly, we stumbled out of our seats and scurried out of the diner, though not before Flash stuffed his cheeks full with the last of his fries. We stopped once we were far away enough, allowing time for Flash to properly munch on his fries and me to chew on everything that just happened.
“No one can see me…” I muttered to myself. “Okay, okay, oh Faust, okay, so no one can see me or hear me except for you. Okay… okay…”
“Should we get help?” Flash asked with his mouth full, though that was obviously the least of my worries right now. “I think the waitress lady that wanted to kiss you has a point.”
“We should. Also, I don’t think she wanted to kiss me, Flash.”
“If we'd waited a little longer in there, she would’ve.”
“But yes, we should probably get help.” My gaze fell towards the outskirts of the town. “And I think I know just the pony who can do that.”
“So wait, you’re telling me Sunburst is here?”
Flash beamed at me. Or, to Starlight Glimmer, the collective empty space that he thinks consisted of me. “One and only.”
“O…kay?” Stepping away from her principal’s desk, Starlight trotted up towards me. She tilted her head and squinted her eyes, trying to make out from thin air the spectacled, distressed lump of an existential crisis that was yours truly. “Should I be bringing out an Ouija board?”
“I’m not dead, Starlight!”
“He’s not dead, Starlight!” Flash echoed. “Look we’re thinking—well, he’s doing the thinking, I’m just relaying the message, but we’re thinking it’s because of this magic spell that he accidentally discharged on me.”
“If I had a bit for every time this happened…” she grumbled to herself, out of earshot from Flash but certainly not from me. “Okay, is Sunburst able to tell me what the spell consisted of? If I could figure out what he did, maybe I could work something out.”
With teamwork and a great amount of difficulty, we eventually managed, leaving Starlight to mull over the spell in her head with the help of the many notes Flash had gathered from my bedroom. Sure enough, she managed to figure out what I had been formulating in a manner of minutes, a rather impressive feat which I knew she would be rubbing in my face in the weeks to come.
“Alright, so I kinda get the gist of the spell,” she explained, more so to me than to Flash. “Mistmane’s beauty magic and Somnambula’s hope, in raw form. Combine that with dragon greed and kirin fire. Four different magic systems, which is… honestly, this is some incredibly complex stuff, Sunburst.”
“Why, thank you!” I said, only to remember that Starlight still can’t hear me.
“There’s one thing you're forgetting however,” she continued with a telltale puff of her chest. “Once you’re dealing with magic systems this complex, other factors that didn’t matter before will soon come into play. And going down the prep work you did beforehand, it seems like you’ve accounted for everything that could affect the spell, save one very important detail.”
“Which is?” Flash asked in my place.
“You, Sunburst,” Starlight proudly concluded. “You forgot to take into account the caster’s magic. Your magic.”
“Ah.” I sighed to myself, hoof meeting my face. “See, this is why I failed magic school.”
“He says this is why he failed magic school.”
“Seriously?” I groaned, glaring daggers at my coltfriend, who only responded with a playful shrug.
Starlight giggled. “Luckily for you,” she added when she was done, “if what you’ve constructed here is accurate, the spell’s effects should fade away in a day or so. That means Sunburst should be back to normal in no time.”
“Oh!” Flash lit up alongside me. “Oh, that’s a good thing!”
“Yes, it definitely is.” Starlight glanced between my coltfriend and the space in which I inhabited. “I guess it’s safe to say that you can take the rest of the day off, Vice Principal. I’ll have Trixie or somepony else handle it from here.”
“Anypony but Trixie!” Flash spoke up before I needed to convey my horror to him. “Yes, right, Sunny says anypony but her. Well, okay, he didn’t actually say it? But he looked like he was about to? So I thought—”
“I know.” Another cheeky giggle from the mare. “I’ll keep that in mind.”
Without further ado, we stepped out of Starlight’s office and into the hallway, left to our own devices with nothing but time in our hooves. Gasping out in a sigh of relief, I turned to Flash and opened my mouth, only to slam it shut when I felt the tuft of his chin planted on my head. Precisely, the spot that’s just right behind my horn.
“F-Flash?”
“Just checking,” he muttered, smiling down at me. “To see if you’re really not just a figment of my imagination.”
“Right, um… I’m here, I guess!” I blubbered, only to shake my head out of it. “Kinda weird that you only thought to check on me now though. You had one whole journey here from the diner to do that.”
“Hey, in my defence, I wasn't sure how long this would last.”
“How long what would last?”
“The fact that I literally have you all by myself.”
A burst of red filled my cheeks, to which Flash responded with a playful skittering of his eyebrows. Smiling to save myself from all manner of hopeless blabbering, I evened the score by brushing my head upwards against the side of his neck, eliciting a lubberly chuckle from my coltfriend.
“You’re unreal, you know that Sunny?”
“Only if it’s with you.” I reluctantly pulled away from him. “So what now?”
“What else?” Flash declared as he began to drag me along with him down the hallway. “We have a three-and-a-half to celebrate. Not that you have a choice anyway. Might need to keep things inside here though. As much as I like to show us off, we’re supposed to be catching only feelings from each other, not stares from everypony else.”
“Sure, why not?” I laughed, looking forward to whatever contingency plans he was currently making for the both of us. “We’re probably getting pizza for dinner too unless we want a repeat of lunch.”
“Yeah? Oh yeah.” Flash chuckled, his goofy smile coming to the fore. “Why not? I was craving for pizza anyway.”
