Author's Note

Sneaky TLT reference is Sneaky, see if you can spot it.

MAJOR TW CHANGE FOR THIS CHAPTER ONLY!

• Blood
• Violence
• Animal death
• Holocaust mention
• Torture mention
• Hate group mention

Friendship/Games - Basic/Instinct

Sunset had experienced many a morning after while serving as the Beloved Student of Princess Celestia, but it was never a welcome or pleasant thing. Verbal sparring while all the competitors were imbibing increasingly toxic levels of alcohol, getting into an argument with the princess (sometimes under their breaths, sometimes loud enough to be heard in Ponyville), then returning to her quarters angry and bitter did not make for a good following morning, no matter how gentle a hungover Celestia had tried to make it by raising the sun as slow as possible.

Waking up in a massive cuddle pile with her new pack-mates, however, was so wonderful, so revitalizing to her soul that she would gladly have dealt with every single one of her many and myriad Alpha traits just to enjoy a morning like this every so often. There were at least two sources of sleepy purring beside herself, and she couldn’t tell which Alpha or omega it was.

It hadn’t been without hiccups; partway through the night, she wasn’t exactly sure when, nearly the whole pack had been woken up by Rainbow Dash’s absolutely terrifying snore. A half-asleep Applejack curled around the omega, pinning her on her side so she couldn’t roll on her back and repeat the sound, followed by Fluttershy scooting in closer and wrapping her arms around both of the other girls. Rarity, Pinkie, and Sunset managed to nod off again after about a quarter-hour, Rainbow hadn’t woken for any of it.

As much as Sunset wanted to stay comfortably embedded in the warmth and comfort of her friend’s sleeping bodies, the demands of her bladder would not be denied now that her body was rousing properly. She began shifting limbs and Rarity rolled gently off the bed, the beta girl apparently also awake. They helped each other out of the bed and took turns using the en-suite bathroom before tiptoeing out of the room and closing the door quietly.

They made their way to the kitchen and found Celestia already pouring herself a cup of coffee. “Good morning, girls,” she said brightly, “Do you drink coffee, Rarity?” Celestia was already pouring Sunset a cup.

“Oh, that would be lovely, I am normally an absolute harridan before caffeine.”

Celestia chuckled, passing Sunset her mug and pulling another down in almost one smooth motion, “Luna is the same way, so we definitely keep plenty of coffee in the house. Milk or sugar?” she added as she poured.

“Yes, please, to both.” Rarity glanced curiously at Sunset, who was already sipping down her very much black coffee.

Sunset shrugged, “Lotta late nights preparing for finals at CSGU, I got used to taking it black ‘cause I was too impatient to trudge down to the palace kitchens for some milk. ‘sides, the royal chefs would have probably ambushed me and tried to make my coffee ‘gourmet’,” she intentionally mispronounced the Prench word as ‘goor-mett’, “And, frankly, I was too damn tired to wait 20 minutes for them to make me a damn cup of jo.” She took another pull at her coffee and stopped mid-sip, eyes shifting worriedly from Rarity over to Celestia. She swallowed and lowered her mug, “Ah…” She found herself at a loss, her brain catching up to the fact that she just revealed she’d spilled a pack secret against Celestia’s orders.

Celestia just grinned as she passed the requested beverage additives to Rarity, “This is as good a time as any to let you know the walls aren’t exactly soundproofed here. Luna and I could hear pretty much everything.”

Both Sunset and Rarity blushed, though the latter also tittered nervously. “Oh, um…I do hope…that is to say…”

Celestia smiled at the beta as she turned to the fridge, only barely paying attention to actions that were so habitual she performed them without conscious thought, “Don’t forget, I was the one who authored the bill in the National Alpha Council to destigmatize betas being full members of packs.”

Any response Rarity may have made was interrupted by Sunset nearly choking on her coffee. Celestia paused in her breakfast routine to make sure her daughter-in-all-but-name-and-saying-it-out-loud was okay. Rarity rubbed and lightly patted Sunset’s back with the hand not holding her mug.

Finally getting her physical reactions under control, Sunset put her mug down and wiped the back of her hand against her bottom lip to catch the little coffee that escaped while she coughed. “Two things,” she said croakily, “First, why would a beta not be allowed in a pack? Isn’t the whole job of an Alpha to guard the pack? If that doesn’t include betas it’d just be the few Alpha’s they get along with and their omegas…pretty small pack, really.” Celestia noticed Rarity start to practically glow at Sunset’s apparent shock regarding anti-beta prejudice but said nothing, knowing the girl would wave it off anyway. “Second,” Sunset continued, “And I say this having pretty much lived with your pony self nearly my whole life, you were in government?!”

Celestia noticed that Rarity seemed as caught off-guard as she was, “Why would that surprise you?” after the question, she finished fishing out her eggs from the fridge and grabbed a loaf of bread, carting them to the counter to make herself food. “Oh, and did you girls want anything? I’m mostly an eggs and toast girl, myself.”

“Oh, I wouldn’t want to impose…” tempered Rarity, “But I could go for a bagel, if you have one. If not, toast will do nicely, thank you.”

“Cel…goddess, I miss hay-bagels,” muttered Sunset under her breath. Celestia made a mental note to ask later what name the girl kept starting to say before switching to the more generic ‘goddess.’ “I’ll have eggs and toast, too. Oatmeal just doesn’t do it for me since I got here. …stupid predator’s body…” she groused, “And what I mean is this country doesn’t have a noble class, it was one of the first things I looked for when I found the library, I was trying to find out which family lines I needed to…ah,” she glanced sheepishly at Rarity, probably trying to guage how to explain her strategy of more or less schmoozing up to the right people to get what she wanted, “’Butter up’ to. How were you in the government if you aren’t appointed by a royal house or decree?”

“Oh, that’s…goodness, I hadn’t considered that.” Rarity trailed off and looked to Celestia with the request for help written all over her face.

Celestia happily broke out her metaphorical educator’s hat as she started preparing food for the three of them, “We actually were a collective of colonies of the crown before the War for Independence,” she began, “The first Colonial Alpha Counsel declared independence after the European powers kept trying to tax the colonies like crazy to fund their wars. There’s…a lot about that you won’t know about, it’s covered in 3rd-grade social studies, which you missed.” She winked at Sunset playfully as she set about cutting Rarity’s bagel for the toaster, “I’ll talk to Nagatha about some coursework to get you caught up on US history.”

Sunset’s head tilted in confusion at that, “’Yeoo-Ess,’” she said, somehow making two letters sound like a foreign word.

“Short for ‘United Sovereign Packlands, the U.S.P., or just ‘US’ for short.” Sunset gave a comprehending, silent ‘ah’ as she sipped her coffee. “The same group of Alphas who just bucked off a High Alpha didn’t want to submit to anyone else, either, plus the betas and omegas who fought alongside the Alphas didn’t want the old feudal system to continue, some of them had finally started building little business empires and they didn’t want an Alpha coming in to claim it, so they came up with a representative system. It’s full of compromises that have had to be amended over the last couple centuries and we have a long way to go before we get real equality, which is a partial answer to your question about betas. Historically, they’ve been marginalized due to Alphas constantly fighting over the top spots in a pack, even after nations got large enough that the old pack structure just started looking like tyranny. The Holocaust War was about betas trying to exterminate Alphas and omegas using eugenics and…other methods,” Sunset noticed Rarity grimacing at this, “Which only served to set back equal rights measures for betas by centuries.”

Sunset’s brow pinched together, “Oh…I get it. Back home we had a history of the pony races being very divided. Unicorns considered themselves superior so set things up so they’d be in charge and have all the power, the pegasi were basically a military state that liked to think they were better than any ground-bound pony, and the earth ponies got, well, kinda dumped on. The Hearth’s Warming story gets really dark the more you dig into it.”

“Hearth’s Warming?” interrupted Rarity, “What does the holiday have to do with how the races interacted?”

Sunset smiled, “I guess it would be pretty different here, since it’s not about the founding of the country…anyway, the three pony tribes used to fight all the time, but when you get down to it, the earth ponies were pretty much a slave class to the other two. They fled and then revolted when the unicorns and pegasi followed. If it weren’t for the windigoes giving them a reason to band together, they might have killed off pony-kind before Discord even got his chance a few years later.”

Celestia placed a plate in front of Sunset and Rarity, “That’s actually fairly similar to our own Hearth’s Warming origin; the Alphas, betas, and omegas were at war, then a plague hit and they had to stop fighting. A sage from each group each wound up contributing to find a cure.”

Sunset’s stomach growled at the sight of eggs and toast on her plate. As she grabbed the fork Celestia provided she chuckled, “I’m guessing the story is very romanticized?”

Celestia put her plate down on the breakfast bar and decided to eat standing up, “Just as I’m guessing ponies owning each other as slaves isn’t mentioned in a holiday play?”

Sunset saluted Celestia with her fork and popped a bite into her mouth. The principal took that as a cue to continue her impromptu civics lesson, “The representative system was intended to give everyone a voice and make sure nobody could abuse power, so three branches of government were set up and a document was drafted to outline the rights, liberties, freedoms, responsibilities, etcetera. The president is the Chief Executive…”

Sunset swallowed quickly, “Not ‘Alpha Supreme’ or something like that?”

Celestia chuckled, “Actually, Wheat Farmer wanted that title…”

Rarity gasped, “What?! A beta wanted to be called, ‘Alpha Supreme’?!”

The Pack Alpha chuckled, “Yes, there’s a lot that gets left out of the curriculum, there’s just so much history to cover and we’ve only got you as a student for just so long.” She sipped her own coffee and continued, “The president can pass or veto laws, but can’t propose any and can’t declare war. The Supreme Court was intended to be a court where packs could have final arbitration, but it became a balance to the president and congress and between the federal government and the packs.”

“The third branch of government is where things get a little tricky. It was originally just supposed to be a single governmental body where legislators gathered to propose new laws and do the managing of things, but the Alphas got a little nervous that they were being stripped of their traditional leadership role, so the congressional body was split between the National Alpha Counsel and the Parliament. Parliament is pretty much whoever gets elected by popular vote in their districts, and there’s a set number of people represented by each representative, so the size of Parliament can grow or shrink depending on the census.”

The three had eaten their food by this point, the two teens fidgeting with their mugs. Sunset was paying close attention, her voracious mind consuming the new knowledge as Rarity paid the attention of an interested student who’d heard it all before. Celestia took the last sip of her coffee, “Technically, all pack alphas are members of the Alpha Counsel, though that’s mostly on the state level.”

“Is a state like a province?” asked Sunset.

Celestia thought about this for a moment and nodded, “The first states were those original colonies I mentioned. Since they started out as colonies of different political powers in Europe, they all had different political affiliations and cultures and weren’t really interested in blending those, so they kept separate states, which have pack-lands that can cover counties or cities or even open wildlands. By the time the USP had been around for a century, the country had become a collective whole, even if there are enough differences from state to state that you can tell if you know the cultures of each state.”

She began stacking her dishes, which prompted the girls to do the same. As she took hers to the sink, she finished up her unexpected Saturday morning lecture, “Each Alpha takes a turn serving on their local Alpha Counsel, which elects an Alpha from their number to represent the local counsel on the state level, who then elects someone to represent the state on the federal level.” She took the plates from the girls as Sunset grabbed the coffee pot to refill her mug, and Rarity offered hers for a refill as well. She looked up to Celestia, who nodded and gestured to her mug with her head and shoulders on the counter, wordlessly confirming she wanted more, too. “Put on a new pot for Luna, please,” she said in quick aside. “A few years ago I finished up my time in the National Alpha Counsel.” Her face puckered in remembered frustration, “I don’t think I’d ever do that again. Your princess has my respect for running a federal-level shit-show. I can’t imagine having to do that day after day for…” she shuddered, “Centuries.”

Twilight Velvet’s horn lit up in her signature white-purple glow as she levitated the dishes to the drying rack, noting with a slight melancholy that there were only two pony’s worth of dishes in it. My daughter won’t be graduating for another two years, surely, it’s okay to feel upset that I’m already getting ‘empty nester’ syndrome, she thought.

Her self-pity party was interrupted by a knock at the door of the house. It may have been in one of the older parts of Canterlot owing to her family’s ages-old ‘noble house’ coat-tail status, but it was reflective of the family’s standing in the city that it also wasn’t a very large house, the front door being close enough that, should the dividing wall between the kitchen and dining room not been in the way, she could probably have looked out the front room’s panel windows and seen who was there. The wall persisted in existing, though, so she shouted in the direction of the ceiling, “Nightlight, sweetie, can you get that? I’m almost done with the dishes.”

A muffled, “Sure thing, honey,” came in reply followed by the thumping of hooves on carpet as her husband hustled down the stairs from the second story.

She turned on the kitchen sink faucet again and formed a little spout on the outlet with her magic to pressurize and direct the flow, spraying down the sides of the sink to rinse out the remaining dishwater. Lil’ Twilight Sparkle had figured out how to do that when she was 12 and struggling just to lift the plates when it was her turn on washing, and it’d quickly been picked up by the rest of the family when they were doing the chore as it made the entire process immeasurably easier for a unicorn. She began to feel slightly melancholic again, nostalgic for the time her children were actually children and not adults (or nearly so in the case of Twilight), when her husband called from the front door, “Hun, it’s Sunny Skies.”

Blinking in surprise, she absently shut off the water and looked up at the wall calendar, She’s two days early…? Twilight checked her appearance in a convenient window reflection before she pushed open the swinging door connecting the kitchen to the dining room.

Framed in the door was a white unicorn mare with bright, golden blond mane and tail with pink highlights. A familiar sun-shaped cutiemark graced her flank, but it was naturally smaller than the symbol gracing the Princess’ hindquarters, so most ponies (like dear, slightly oblivous Nightlight) never guessed the actual identity of the pony paying the Velvet/Light home a visit. “Oh, Sunny! I didn’t expect you today…” she glanced over to her husband trying to keep the mild panic off her face.

While he may have been slightly oblivious about other ponies, he proved he wasn’t oblivious to her and gave her a reassuring smile, “Don’t sweat it, hun, the club’s having a game night tonight anyway. Sunny here just gave me a good excuse as any to go so I can leave you two to have your mare-talk.”

She actually had to work to keep the relieved exhale from being too obvious, “Oh, that’d be lovely, sweetie.”

He turned to the mare still waiting outside the door, “C’mon in, Sunny.” He turned and trotted past Twilight, giving her a quick peck on the cheek, “Just let me get my saddlebags and I’ll be out of your hair.” With that, he trotted up the stairs and out of sight.

The mare named Sunny Skies stepped into the Velvet/Light manse and anypony who didn’t know her would think she was expecting a lovely visit with a friend. Twilight had only known her personally for a few months and could already tell the mare’s emotions were an absolute tempest. “Thanks for having me, Twilight,” she began, “I know we normally have these chats on Tuesday, but something came up and I just had to step out for a bit and, well, my hooves seem to have led me here.”

This explanation caused Velvet’s eyebrows to wing up under her hairline. With as much as her visitor normally dealt with on a day-to-day, the only thing that would cause her so much stress she’d have to step away from her normal duties and see Twilight, of all ponies, was…oh, dear… she thought.

Before either mare could say anything further, the sound of Nightlight’s hooves on the stair sounded through the house and moments later he was trotting past his wife, another trot-by-kiss delivered, “You two have a fun ‘filly’s night’ tonight,” he said, his magic adjusting the drape of his saddlebags as he nodded at Sunny as he passed her. “Do all the things we warn our children not to do and I expect to read about the rabblerousing you two get up to in the paper tomorrow.” He paused at the door to wink at his wife.

Twilight gave him a fond smile, “Go have fun, you troublemaker.”

He magicked over a bucket hat from the nearby hat stand and tipped the headwear to her before blowing her another kiss and closing the door behind him.

They remained quiet, watching him trot away until he was out of sight.

“Manehattan?” queried Sunny Skies, seemingly randomly.

“Steamtrain,” replied Twilight.

Simultaneously they lit their horns and twin spells fanned out and swept the house. Once every cubic inch of the place had been scanned twice, Twilight closed the curtains with her magic and levitated a decorative shade over to cover the area in front of the window she’d bought for this very purpose a few weeks prior. Sunny almost seemed to collapse, rump thumping against the front room carpet and head sinking so low she was almost brushing the floor between her front hooves with her nostrils.

“Tea?” offered Twilight with a flinch.

The other unicorn nodded, “Something stronger if you’ve got it.”

Twilight grimaced, “That bad, huh? Well, I think we’ve got a little rum left, not enough to really get you drunk, but it might take the edge off…but let’s start with the tea.”

A quarter of an hour later, Sunny sat across from Twilight Velvet slowly nursing her cup of ginger tea.

“Apparently there was an incident a week ago.”

Sunny’s pronouncement shattered the silence that had settled over the house. Twilight actually had to pause to get her brain caught up, trying to make sure there hadn’t been some conversation she’d tuned out on accident. Once she had reassured herself that no, she hadn’t missed anything, she asked, “Involving Sunset?”

Sunny nodded, took a sip, then elaborated, “You remember that sleepover I told you about last time?”

Twilight nodded, a bit buoyed at the memory of how happy Sunny was last Tuesday.

“I was so excited that she was finally doing ‘normal filly’ things, things she missed out on being my…student… that I didn’t think to ask any questions.”

“I presume that the incident was somehow the cause of the sleepover?” Velvet ventured.

Sunny sipped at her tea, fortified with a splash of rum, “It turns out that instead of simple politics and a royal guard, my counterpart deals with challenges to her authority with direct violence.”

At first, Twilight didn’t seem to register the concern. Then it occurred to her the level of violence Sunny had dealt with over the centuries, and for the other mare to be concerned about it must mean… “Exactly… how violent? ‘Yaks on a bender’ or ‘cranky, sleepy dragon’?”

Her face partially covered by the teacup, the other mare gave a thousand-yard-stare over the rim and said, “’It’s not uncommon for one of the participants to be fitted for a body bag’ levels of violence.”

Twilight was exceedingly glad to have not been actively drinking her tea at that moment or she would have choked on it. As it was, she barely got the now shaking cup back to the saucer on the coffee table. “…oh…” said a weak voice into the silence, and it took a moment for her to realize it had been her.

Sunny tossed back the rest of her tea and gently put the cup down across from Twilight’s, “The reason she didn’t mention the conflict, they call it a ‘territory challenge,’ was because it happens with such frequency they didn’t consider it to be at all worthy of mention. It took up several inches in the journal of me asking multiple questions before the other me even picked up that I was distressed about that fight. And then when I got clarification on the connection to the sleepover…” Sunny shuddered, and Twilight could tell it wasn’t needless dramatics but genuine emotion powering it.

It had been several hours, and the rest of Sunset’s new pack had roused themselves. Redheart had made a special trip to do a follow-up on Sunset, given the rushed and somewhat incomplete exam the previous afternoon.

“Well,” pronounced the medical professional as she tugged off her nitrile gloves, “I can confirm no concussion, or at least as much of a confirmation as we could get without a CAT scan. No broken bones, though there’s a few bruises and a sprain and a strain that needs plenty of R&R. That means no challenge fighting, no P.E., and no pack runs until you can flex and extend both arms without pain or tightness.”

Sunset’s brow scrunched together as Applejack and (to Sunset’s surprise) Fluttershy both vocally objected on her behalf. She even saw Celestia’s eyes tighten, the only sign the older Alpha was upset by this declaration.

It was Applejack’s words that caught her attention most, “What’d’ya mean, she can’t challenge Gilda?!” complained the farm girl, “That girl’s already impossible, she’ll be cock-o-the-walk if’n Sunset can’t challenge her!”

Nurse Redheart was resolute, “No. It’s a small miracle she doesn’t have a split lip or cheek that would require stitches. Gilda was not holding back when she attacked Sunset. If she hadn’t stopped when she had we’d probably be looking at broken bones or internal injuries. Sunset needs to recover before she can even think about that kind of thing.”

“I don’t understand,” interrupted Sunset, “Why would I challenge her to a fight? She…kinda kicked my ass.”

Fluttershy, once again surprising her, stepped close and clasped Sunset’s hands, “That’s exactly why you should be challenging her as soon as possible…” she nodded in Redheart’s direction and, in a much more deferential voice, said “Once you’re medically cleared for it, of course. I know you come from a world of ponies…and I would love to visit there someday, you probably look so cute as a pony!”

As she blushed, Sunset saw Redheart lean over and murmer to Celestia, “They know?”

“Sleepovers and secrets, you can guess what happened,” muttered Celestia with a smile, expression still creased with concern. Redheart responsed with a silent ‘oh.’

Fluttershy continued, either not noticing or willfully ignoring the adults, “So you probably come from a prey…a herding culture; leadership in a herd shifts depending on who’s the healthiest and most fit at any given time and happens with a consensus, at least it does among horses here…”

Sunset shrugged, “Well, there is a lot of politics involved, but with the exception of the Princess the noble houses do shift in power depending on which is more capable at the time. It’s part of why the premier schools in Equestria belong to the crown, no one family could sponsor one long enough to go generational.”

Rainbow giggled, “Schools? What are you, a nerd?”

Sunset rolled her eyes at this, “Celestia’s Beloved Student, remember? ‘Nerd’ is kinda baked in.”

Her reminder of her status as the princess’ protégé seemed to be the hook Fluttershy needed, “Yes, that! How would you have responded if someone had managed to get a higher score in a special test?”

Sunset felt a spike of incredulous anger, “Yeah, right! Nopony could even come close! If they tried I’d out-study them…” she saw Celestia’s eyebrow twitch up and a knowing smile quirk her lips. Sunset blushed and confessed, “…and I’d probably wage a shadow campaign to discredit them and make their life miserable to pressure them to back off.”

Fluttershy released Sunset’s hands and gripped her arms, clearly trying to drive her point home. “And if someone showed up that was somehow better than you in every way? Someone who, just by being around, threatened your position with the princess?”

As much as Sunset had grown bitter about the mare herself, as much bad business had happened the last time they saw each other as more than words on a journal page, as much water had passed under that particular burned bridge, Sunset’s pride still flared strong at the mere thought of someone supplanting her place by Princess Celestia’s side. The muscles in her face tightened into a sneer, “I’d find a way to end them!” All at once she understood what Fluttershy was saying, “…oh…”

The normally reserved Alpha girl smiled grimly, “You’re one of the strongest Alpha presences I’ve ever felt. Not as strong as Celestia, and some of the teachers are stronger, too, but I’ve never been around someone our age who can just…quiet a room like you did.”

Sunset winced at the memory of that first time she experienced her own Alpha fury but nodded slowly. “Gilda wasn’t just going after me to get back at me about Dash or losing control, she came after me because I was the toughest pony in the cell block?”

This drew a cackle from Rainbow Dash, a snort of amusement from Applejack, and a chuckle from Celestia. “I would prefer an analogy that doesn’t compare my school to a prison, but that is essentially correct.”

Sunset quieted, her mind turning inward and casting back to her time in the Equestrian equivalent to high school, to the competitive nature of the Middle Session years to get the best test scores, write the best papers, score the best contacts to gain access to the best research. She had dozens, possibly counting in the triple digits, of basic- and proficiency-level skills she had learned for the sole purpose of being “the best” at anything, and for those subjects that caught her interest, she had a mastery level and beyond. In every case, however, all that learning began with one of two things; seeking a mentor in the subject or researching until she had more knowledge in her head than whomever she was trying to best, then practicing until she could perform whatever tasks she needed to attain proficiency in her sleep.

She looked up, seeing that she was still the subject of everyone’s attention, even if they had all remained quiet to give her time to think. She glanced around the room, realizing that she had an entire pool of subject matter experts in this very room. She let her eyes flicker to catch everyone’s gaze at least briefly before turning her whole attention to Celestia.

Are you forty forms of fucking out of your mind?! Her past self seemed to scream at her from the recesses of her subconscious, Don’t you remember what happened last time you were Celestia’s student?!

Gently squeezing Fluttershy’s hands, Sunset straightened her spine as she thought, Of course I do, and I’m going to be a student and learn from it. Still holding Celestia’s gaze, she asked, “Can you train me to fight like you did with that Alpha yesterday?”

That had clearly been the right thing to say, as Celestia’s face lit up like…well, the sun.

“Oh, she’s learning their culture?” Twilight asked hopefully.

Sunny sighed mournfully, “You…don’t understand. Sunset is driven. She’ll do anything to win. I once saw her drag a dozen cookbooks into the royal kitchens, chase half the staff out, and pretty much camp out there just so she could prove that ‘anypony’ could make croissants better than the palace pastry chef. The staff had to use the backup kitchens for a week and Sunset insisted that he be fired.”

“Oooooh, wait! I know this one! Or, at least the next part, wasn’t that Jo?” Twilight interrupted.

Sunny lost her pained expression in favor of an incredulous one, “Yes! You know what happened to my pastry chef?”

Velvet chuckled, “Oh, well I didn’t really connect him to Sunset until that story, but he and Twilight get along like a house on fire! I swear he’s one of the only ponies Twily will go out of her way to talk to. He didn’t say it was Sunset that challenged his skills, but he did say he took that as a sign that he needed to leave the palace staff and start his own shop to make his ‘true passion’ of…”

“Donuts,” both mares said at the same time with a fond chuckle.

Sunny was truly smiling for the first time since entering the house, “And that was worth losing a pastry chef. I didn’t tell either of them at the time, but Jo’s donuts were always better than his other pastries…including his croissants, and I’m just as glad he quit without waiting for Sunset to finish her final batch…Her’s really were better.”

Twilight didn’t reply, not wanting to interrupt the fond, motherly smile, one she recognized easily because she’d made it about her own children more times than she could possibly remember. She deserves more good ‘mommy’ memories, she thought, She’s practically Equestria’s mom, but really needs to experience it from her own child more often. With any luck, the team Celestia assembled would be able to make it happen, and Twilight once again renewed her determination to do her part.

All too soon, the smile faded from Sunny’s face, starting with her eyes. Twilight couldn’t help but think it reminded her of watching the sun set. “Sunset doesn’t stop,” Sunny’s voice was choked, “Until she achieves her goal, whatever it may be. She never made another croissant, she just wanted to prove she was right.” She used her magic to lift the kettle, Twilight noting that it wasn’t a stable hold and the pour was downright sloppy for a mare who’d been pouring tea for centuries. “So…she…the other me…will be training my daughter on how to be a good Alpha,” the kettle almost wobbled its way back to the serving tray.

When Sunny didn’t continue right away, just letting the steam rise from the still hot tea, Velvet let the mare have her silence, noticing a slight sheen of unshed tears and kept herself from commenting by picking up her own tea in her magic and sipping slowly.

Several pregnant pauses later, Sunny finally broke the silence, “Principal Celestia is teaching Sunset how to hunt.”

This time, Twilight did choke on her tea.

Sunset held the very obvious children’s book like it was slightly radioactive. “This is the best book you’ve got on how to hunt?!”

Cheerilee chuckled, and if Celestia hadn’t briefed her that morning about helping Sunset with the “theory” of hunting (Sunset’s words), she would have been completely confused and a bit insulted by Sunset’s incredulity. “You have to understand, dearie, hunting isn’t really something that’s studied, it’s just done. Books like that are to make sure young Alphas can describe the things they’re experiencing for the first time. Most cubs have a solid handle on the basics before they get into middle school.”

“Nobody studies hunting as a sociological construct? I’d think at the very least there would be an anthropological paper on it.” The teen held the book with one hand and started flipping through it with the other, “I think there are literally more pictures in this book than words.”

The language arts teacher and librarian shook her head, struggling not to laugh at Sunset’s frustration, “I forget you’ve passed university levels back where you’re from sometimes. Yes, there are some papers published, but none of those will teach you the basics like this will. And it’s not that bad, there’s maybe three pictures per chapter. It’s designed to work with a parent’s teaching their children how to hunt.”

Sunset held the book open absently, eyebrows pinched and corners of her mouth turned down, eyes slightly unfocused as they twitched back and forth like she was reading words written on an invisible whiteboard. Cheerilee had learned the look was Sunset’s ‘I’m about to drop a very verbose and extremely well-referenced ad-hoc essay on you’ look. She mentally prepared herself even as she had to work to keep her amused pleasure at having such a good student in her library off her face. “But…what about children of betas? Or if an Alpha’s Alpha parent dies before it’s time to teach them? You might as well teach sex ed with a pamphlet that just has, ‘don’t do it’ written on it!”

Cheerilee blushed and actually did laugh out loud at that, “You’re not wrong, though most of the time the rest of the pack will help in those situations. It used to be Alphas born to betas or had lost their Alpha parent would just be taken in as a child of the pack and moved into the Pack Alpha’s family. That stopped being allowed about 50 or so years ago.”

Now Sunset’s face was about halfway between a grimace and a frown, “Let me guess; right around the time of the Holocaust War?” In response to Cheerilee’s flinch, Sunset gave a very equine-like snort, “I’m starting to think everything ties back to that war.”

Cheerilee sighed, “That’s…yes, you’re right, it does. It was a worldwide war, after all.”

“…what?!” Sunset looked both ill and horrified and nearly dropped the book.

Cheerilee was feeling the slightly vertiginous feeling she got when she really contemplated everything that was implied by Sunset’s mere existence. “Surely you had wars in your history back on your home world?”

“Not in 1,000 years we haven’t!” Sunset hissed, “And even then it was a civil war just in Equestria!”

It took Twilight Velvet a few minutes to collect herself and clean up the mess. Fortunately, the teacup didn’t break. Unfortunately, it was saved by landing on the area rug. The very old, antique area rug that had been in the family for at least two generations.

Sunny sighed down at the stain, “I’ll send someone down from the palace under the guise of getting something for Twilight, I’m sure Kibitz or Raven can find someone to take care of that.”

Velvet grumbled half-heartedly for a moment, then poured herself a cup of tea. Noticing it had cooled a bit, she used her magic to warm her cup first and then the pot itself. “It’s okay, we made it through the kid’s ‘terrible twos,’ not to mention Twily’s ‘practical experimentation’ phase when we got her that chemistry set. In the end, this isn’t that big a deal.”

Sunny smiled indulgently, “Take it from someone who’s had to let go of more than a few sentimentally important things over the years, you’ll want to hold on to your memories.”

Twilight nodded and took a sip from her fresh cup, “I’ll take your word for it…now tell me about this hunting thing?” Velvet could hear her pitch rise as she neared the end of the sentence.

Sunny sighed, this time in muted sadness, “Ah, yes, I…it’s not like I’ve never dealt with someone who’s hunted for their food before. Back before Griffinstone fell, we regularly had visits of state and as a visiting dignitary I was frequently invited on royal hunts whenever I went.” Sunny noticed Twilight looked vaguely ill and hurried to explain, “I never directly participated in the hunt, and unlike a lot of the Nightmare Night tales fillies and colts like to tell around campfires, griffins have never hunted ponies, not even when Discord was in control.”

This mollified Twilight somewhat, “Oh, good! But what about the other races?”

Sunny chuckled darkly, “Griffins don’t eat the meat of anything that can talk. They say there’s something off with the taste. I don’t think any griffon has eaten the meat of another sentient in centuries, so I’m not sure how they’d know, but the superstition keeps their hunting practices…unproblematic, for lack of a better term.”

Sunset was genuinely unsettled, the poor girl was barely able to read a page before putting the book down and pacing for several minutes in front of the television. Luna was quite glad she had cooking dinner to distract her, or she’d have been tempted to grab the girl by the lapels of her jacket and give her a few good shakes while demanding she calm down. Sunset never said anything, she just paced a bit, then sat down, picked up the book, and continued reading.

Luna had legitimately run out of things to do to stretch out dinner’s cooking and prep any longer, so after about the 240th (she may have been exaggerating a little) such circuit of the living room and reading material, she sighed loudly and said, “Sunset, take a seat.”

“Hmm?” the girl glanced over to Luna briefly, then started another pace of the room with a wave of her hand, “No, it’s okay, this is my thought process.”

Luna gave the former pony an exasperated glare, “Sit,” she snapped, “Down.”

For her part, Sunset seemed to realize her gaff and hustled over to the Celestia-sized barstool-style chairs at the kitchen island before planting herself in a seat with only a little difficulty. She’s going to be tall for a girl, Luna noted absently, Not as tall as Celestia, certainly, but I’ll probably be looking her in the eye by the time she’s 16…16 on this side of the portal, anyway. “Thank you. You’ve been practically trying to start a fire with your shoes and the carpet over there.”

Sunset flinched, “Sorry! I’m just trying to…absorb the information in the book. There’s so much I haven’t even thought about hunting. Cel…er, Princess Celestia used to tell me about her occasional state visits to Griffinstone ages ago and I think I was just so revolted by the thought of a sentient being going out and eating meat intentionally I never thought to ask about the actual process.” Almost absently at first, Sunset cast her eyes around the kitchen and spotted the dinner Luna was making. It was a simple one-pan dish consisting of some mixed vegetables, pan-gravy, pasta…and a pound of ground beef.

Luna kept her features neutral, refusing to show the sympathetic regret she felt at her choice of dinner. Sorry, kiddo, she thought, Meat eating’s a fact of life for you now. “Don’t sweat it too badly, kid. A lot of betas get squeamish about it, too.”

Sunset was turning slightly green, “I thought at first a children’s book wouldn’t really be very useful, but I keep stumbling onto little things that…” she shuddered. “The worst part is part of me is starting to really look forward to it, like now that I know all the bits involved just having words for the concepts are activating nodes in my brain for the computer of ‘Alpha’ that’s up here,” she tapped at her skull.

“’Nodes?’ Do you mean ‘circuits’?” she waved her hand absently, “Never mind, probably a difference between how computers work in your world versus ours. Thing is,” Luna started plating the food, “I don’t think it’s just that weirdness bothering you. I’ve seen you adapt to things pretty well and yeah, you’ve had your moments of breakdown, but honestly, you’re handling it all like a champ.” Scraping the rest of the food out of the pan and onto the third plate, she let the moment gestate as she put the pan in the sink and fished the flatware out of a drawer. “I’ve only ever seen you get this brand of nervous, not to mention the particular scent of this,” Luna gesticulated in Sunset’s direction with an all-encompassing circle with the forks, “Kind of anxiety only ever happens when the journal starts buzzing during Celestia’s daily check-in with the Princess. And that won’t happen today for another,” she glanced at the wall clock, “hour and a half. So why don’t you tell me what’s got you tied up in knots?” Even as she said it, Luna was glad she was dealing with Sunset, as a less mature student might have chuckled lewdly at the mention of a knot in any context the same way some of them did when the number ‘sixty-nine’ came up in conversation.

The equestrian ex-pat glanced across the room to the archway that opened to the hall that led to Celestia’s office, as though fearing she might get caught uttering something clandestine, then glanced down at her own nervously clasping hands. It took a few moments, and more than one false start, but Sunset finally explained why she was so nervous.

“The worst part,” Sunny practically moaned, her eyes misting over a bit, “Is even if Sunset were here, even if she were going through this or anything like this…” a sniffle escaped, “She wouldn’t come to me. I put the ‘princess’ before ‘mother’ and now…”

Velvet was at the cabinet that bore the title, “liquor cabinet” but was more likely to be used for holding the children’s gifts to parents and various projects she and Nighty wanted to keep for posterity. As such, she wasn’t looking at the other mare so felt free to roll her eyes a bit. I know I’m her first real outlet for this, but really, every week? With an under-breath grunt, she shoved the nearly empty bottle of rum back in the cabinet and closed it with a ‘snickt’ of the latch. “Okay, you know what?”

The abrupt statement and action of closing the cabinet clearly caught Sunny by surprise. She lifted her head and blinked her incipient tears away with a startled, “Mwuh?”

“We,” she trotted over to the couch and began collecting the tea set with her magic, “Are going to follow my husband’s advice.”

Velvet deliberately didn’t respond to Sunny’s confused glower as she trotted over to the swinging saloon-style doors leading to the kitchen. By the time she returned from pouring out the undrunk tea, Sunny was almost scowling as she mentally reviewed the brief contact she had with Nightlight earlier, “What advice?”

“We,” Velvet allowed smugness to color her tone, “Are going out on the town.”

“What?!” Sunny went from confused to panicked in a heartbeat, “But we can’t go out there right now! What if other ponies find out?”

“Find out what? That their princess needs a night out every hundred years or so?” she rolled her eyes, deliberately ensuring that Sunny could see her do so, “Or maybe that some random mare named Sunny decided to go out with a friend and get plastered?” As she spoke, she trotted over to the door and pulled a couple of hats down, plopping the stocking cap on her own head and levitating the toque over to the other mare. When she merely stared at the thing with a blend of confusion and horror, Twilight plopped it on Sunny’s head. “Normal, mortal ponies are going to be chilly this time of year, you’ll need it to blend in. Besides, if you’re that worried about being recognized, the hat will help. The more ridiculous you look, the easier it is for ponies to ignore you as Somepony Else’s Problem.”

“’Somepony Else’s Problem’? Really?”

“Yes, Daring has been teaching me a few things about disguises. Now,” she opened the door and, when Sunny didn’t move from the couch, bodily lifted the other mare with her magic (and having to hide the strain, whatever she was doing for the disguise magic, it wasn’t doing a thing for how much she weighed, and given the princess out-massed most ponies by 2-3 times…she wasn’t a small pony)

Sunny slumped as far as the magic allowed and glared at Twilight Velvet, “I’m not being given a choice, am I?”

Velvet snorted in amusement, “N-nope!” and trotted out the door, dragging Sunny Days through the air behind her.

“Sunset is terrified of disappointing you,” explained Luna as she tied her running shoes.

There was a ‘clang’ as Celestia practically dropped the chest press weights rather than ease them down, “Wait, she said that?!”

Luna finished with the laces and straightened, “No, of course not. She did use a ton of forty-dollar words and referenced about half a dozen scholars I don’t think even exist on this side of the portal and said a lot of things that all boil down to her being afraid of disappointing the newest mother figure in her life.”

Celestia frowned, resuming her interrupted set, “No wonder dinner was late, what did you tell her?”

“Mostly some pretty basic, ‘it’s your first hunt, nerves are to be expected,’ kitsch with a bit of pony-isms tossed in. I think I’m the ‘dad’ here,” Luna snorted in amusement, “Apparently my use of horse puns was a little too much and very cringeworthy.”

Celestia finished her set and grabbed her water bottle, “Serves you right for pushing the whole ‘mom’ thing.” Her face fell from a smirk to a small scowl, “So it’ll be up to me to de-escalate a teen dealing with dysmorphia and the usual first hunt trauma.”

“Dysmorphia?”

Celestia took a pull of water before putting her bottle down and starting her next set, “Related to dysphoria. I stumbled across it when I was researching ways to help Sunset since she reacts very much like a trans kid with the way she’s having to deal with new hormones and growing into a new body.” She took a few breaths, the repetitive weight lifting starting to have the intended effect of burning calories and gently strained muscles, “We can’t take her to a mental health professional for it the way we would for someone with an actual case of dysmorphia because the DSM defines it as the perceived,” she used the exhale of her push against the weight machine to emphasize the word, “Difference between how the subject thinks of themselves versus what they see in the mirror. In Sunset’s case…”

“…she genuinely is in a different body than the one she’s supposed to have right now. That’s…rough. Wonder why I never found dysmorphia in my own research?” Luna pondered as she clipped her running belt on.

“Sunset still in her room working on her homework?” Celestia asked as her sister turned on her headset to pair with her phone.

“Last I saw before coming downstairs,” she replied without looking up from her music app, “She was pulling about a dozen reference books from your personal library for Harshwhinny’s assignment on U.S. history.” She smirked as she put one earbud in to test the playback, “She kept muttering about, ‘war-obsessed predators.’”

Celestia rolled her eyes as she finished the set, grabbing a towel to wipe sweat off her forehead, “Well..she’s not wrong.” She stood and wiped down the bench before picking up her bottle and flopping the towel over her shoulder, “Soloing the night run today?”

“You know night runs don’t operate like morning runs do. I don’t bother with a silly all-call. My crew knows when we start, knows the cadence, and knows the route. They don’t need me micromanaging like a dorm mother.”

Celestia rolled her eyes, choosing to forgo the long-running argument between them. Instead, she started her first set of Beautiful Warrior curls, grunting from exertion between lifts, “Sunset will have her choice of runs in one week; that’s how long Redheart said she would need to recover enough for exercise. If she wants to do a night run, will you accommodate her recovery?”

Luna just glared at Celestia, who didn’t even need to look up from her concentration on her form, “Didn’t think so. I’ll let her know she’ll be joining morning runs until she’s fully recovered.”

The vice-principal put her other earbud in, socketed her water bottle in her running belt’s holster, and made her way upstairs.

Sunny’s head was fully rested on the bar, her chin pointing at the tumbler a quarter full of liquid. Next to it sat the bottle, also about a quarter full, but unlike the glass the bottle had started completely full. It was also a type and vintage that Velvet flat out refused to touch when the thing started glowing ember as the earth pony bartender pulled it off the top shelf behind the bar. Over 1,000 years old or not, I hope she’s not flat-out poisoning herself with that! Mused Twilight for perhaps the thousandth time.

This was one of Twilight’s favorite bars, though she didn’t get out to it nearly as much since Shining was born as she did during her younger, more carefree days. It was still owned by the pegasus Heartfire and her adopted earth pony daughter Crookleg (a misnomer if ever there was one, young Crook had been hale and hearty her whole life and even as a teen out-massed some members of the guard) still served drinks of the alcoholic variety to the 5 PM crowd and the caffeinated variety to the 5 AM crowd, but Heartfire was getting gray around the muzzle and Crook had gone off to serve a tour in the guard and had come back with a rarely seen wife, an amusingly-scrawny-to-Crook’s-buff unicorn that Velvet could see her daughter getting along with if she could conspire to get both mares in the same room at some point.

When Crook started by asking what Velvet and her friend wanted to drink, Twilight had ordered her usual and Sunny ordered the ’45 Draco Fireberry Burbon. Crook had laughed in Sunny’s face, but then Sunny dropped a coin on the bar that made Crook’s color drain. The young mare looked at Twilight with a, “What kind of crowd are you mixed up with?!” expression, then disappeared to the back without a word and retrieved Heartfire. Heartfire hadn’t even needed to look at the coin, she just saw Sunny and whispered to Crook to get the mare whatever she wanted and, with a brief nod at Sunny, returned to her office in back. Twilight didn’t see where Sunny put the coin, but it clearly hadn’t been used to pay for the drinks, but Crook also wasn’t saying anything about the tab.

Twilight wondered if she would be served whatever she wanted no questions asked from now on, but quashed the idea as she had a suspicion that she could sell every last piece of property she owned and take out a loan for as much as the bank would give her and still not be able to afford that one bottle Sunny had casually consumed most of already.

“You know what?” interjected Sunny randomly, “I think your husband was right. I really needed this.”

“Well, in fairness, you really haven’t ‘cut loose’ yet, but I don’t think I’ve ever seen an alcohol I was genuinely afraid was going to spontaneously combust before.”

Sunny snickered, finally sitting up and lifting the tumbler in her magic and tossing it back. “Last time I cut loose we went to war with the Yaks…though I think that was more their king being way too fuckin’ stuffy.”

Twilight’s eyes bugged out, “Oh, my! I was starting to wonder if even that stuff could loosen you up,” she gestured at the bottle with the hoof holding her own drink, “But I’ve never…ever heard you swear before, so progress, right?”

Sunny shrugged, “I just…I’m worried. I can’t stop worrying, it seems, and the more drunk I get, the more I start to worry…I’ve been saying ‘worry’ a lot.” She poured herself another glass and mulled over the contents, her eyes starting to lose focus. “I worry that Sunset will ‘go native.’ She’s so…headstrong. Once she decides something is a certain way, well, fuck what anyone else has to say.” She slumped her head back on the bar, staring blearily at the glass, “I mean, I’ve only been around a thou~” Twilight cleared her throat loudly, Sunny flicked her eyes to the other mare with a grateful expression before continuing, “A lot longer than she has, but I couldn’t possibly know what it’s like to want something and not be able to have it, now could I.” The now clearly inebriated mare pulled herself up from her slouch and clopped a hoof on the bar, snorting in frustrated anger, “And then her…‘solution’ to just run away…yes, I…kicked her out, but she was supposed to stay here where…”

Sunny’s ears drooped and her whole body seemed to sag, “…where I could at least try to show her I didn’t hate her.”

Twilight put her drink down on the bar and draped her arm over the other mare’s shoulders. “I’m quite sure she doesn’t think you hate her. She doesn’t understand enough to think you hate her. At most, she probably thinks she disappointed you in some way that can’t be fixed. She probably doesn’t know any more than anyone else what really happened.”

They were quiet for a while, Crook stopping by briefly to top up Twilight’s drink.

Sunny seemed to have drunk enough to relax her inhibitions, to Twilight’s surprise, the next time she raised her head, it was to wrap her neck around Velvet’s. Twilight just leaned into the surprise intimate gesture and rubbed Sunny’s back as the other mare said, “I can’t help but worry…that this hunt will mean I’ll lose Sunset entirely, that I’ll lose Sunset to her.”

At any other time, Sunset would have loved to be where she was at that moment.

The grounds of the school’s game field really were beautiful, with more verdant green trees and fresh growth than Sunset had seen since leaving Equestria. For the first time since becoming a human, she truly appreciated her enhanced sense of smell, as she was able to pick up notes of plant and animal life that she hadn’t been exposed to in some time and all of it triggered happier memories of a time when she actually had hooves and could dine on the wild plant life without having to cook it down thanks to the superior (in her opinion, anyway) equine digestive system. The sheer variety of wild growth tucked into the hidden gem on the school grounds had taken her breath away and, very briefly, made her forget about why she was there in the first place on a Sunday morning instead of comfortably in her bed, resting up as much as possible before starting the morning runs with Celestia tomorrow.

Getting her claws to extend on command had been the most daunting challenge she’d faced thus far, something she’d only managed in the wee hours of the morning. She’d gone down an internet rabbit hole trying to chase down anything that resembled a ‘how to’ guide for humans extending their claws, only to realize that due to her unique nature (As an Equestrian? As an alien? As someone with a magical core? She was unsure what her uniqueness entailed and was frustrated with being the only sample available from which to make anything like an educated guess), she couldn’t use normal human biology as a guide anyway.

Eventually, she realized her claws had more in common with a cat’s than a regular human’s. Initially, she could only get the claws to come out by pressing on the anterior digital region on each finger, which seemed to trigger an autonomic response that got her claws to flex out. The exercise also gave her the answer of how her claws even worked; the raptor-like talons were “stored” in between the distal and middle knuckles of each finger and the fingernail, which was normally just the tip of a normal Alpha human’s claw, was the “bed” on which the claw slid until it snapped into place.

Once getting the claws out was managed, she had to figure out retracting them. This was quite a bit harder, and for a brief period, sometime between 11 PM and midnight, she experienced a bit of existential panic where she imagined that she wouldn’t be able to get them to retract at all and would need them removed surgically. This brought up a host of conflicting emotions which, to her surprise, none of them included relief that she’d be rid of the evidence of the horrible monster living in her skin. Instead, the feeling of dread was closer to her fillyhood fears of losing her horn and how knee-quakingly terrifying the idea was.

During the panic, she was more tempted than she ever had been of trying to initiate an Alpha fury, simply because those were the only times she’d been able to both express her claws and retract them, even if the action was strictly instinctive. She did everything short of giving herself a concussion to terminate that line of thinking whenever it came up. Her “inner Alpha” was something she hoped stayed firmly locked away, never again to rise to the surface.

Eventually, she realized that she could actually feel the little channels in her fingers the claws passed along, and once she found those, she discovered some very tightly tensed muscle and tendon in the tips of her fingers that also served to dull some of the pain receptors in the tips. She spent some time massaging the tension out of those muscles, and as soon as the first claw retracted it acted like a signal to the rest to pull back.

She physically stimulated her hands for both the extension and retraction of the claws multiple times before she started being able to command the appropriate tiny muscle groups to flex just right, but by the time 1 AM rolled around, she’d managed to do it without touching one hand to the other at all. By 2 AM, she figured that she was so good at it she could do it in her sleep…a sentiment that was born out when she collapsed to the bed and passed out from sheer exhaustion only to wake up with punctures in her pillow.

She had no idea why Luna kept snickering when Celestia spent part of breakfast trying to reassure Sunset that night-time incidents like Sunset’s were actually fairly common for teenage Alphas and that even some adults still had the occasional accident where their claws expressed in their sleep. With every giggle the vice-principal let out, Celestia blushed a little bit more, further confusing the young Alpha.

And now, she was on all fours next to a tree, sniffing at a branch.

They had arrived at the game field after the morning caretakers had cleared out. Given the students were charged with (and graded on) maintaining the field and the plant life and all the animals in it, the paid maintenance crew didn’t really have much to do on the weekends other than just make sure nothing major happened since the previous Friday afternoon. This meant that Celestia and Sunset had the entire miniature preserve to themselves.

Sunset’s jacket had been left behind in the car, leaving her in just a t-shirt and her gym shorts and the hunting cleats…which now that she was actually hunting turned out to be far more useful than she had initially thought. Since humans had hunted clothed for millennia, they had developed the specialized shoes. Sunset had read that once upon a time what was now a series of curved metal spikes covered in weather-protective hardened rubber that could be easily replaced by screwing them on the built-in studs started out as sticks woven into boot soles. It wasn’t until the 20th century that a surprisingly parallel evolution in sportswear introduced the bottom of the shoe cleats (that, amusingly to Sunset, reminded her of some sportswear horseshoes back home) that was later adapted to the pseudo-claws that existed in the hunting footwear of today. She had added, at Celestia’s suggestion, a hair tie to pull back her shoulder-length hair into a tail.

A part of her mental processes was spending a good amount of time trying to figure out how humans pulling their hair back with a tie got to be called a ‘ponytail’ when they weren’t ponies and, depending on the human, may look nothing like a pony’s tail. She was just as happy to let her mind spin out on this, regardless of how distracting it was, because it was helping to keep her inner Alpha from taking control.

She was using the remaining mental processes that weren’t occupied with the minutia of examining her previous and current experience examining her surroundings and trying to extrapolate the path of a deer. She could smell the animal’s presence and was learning how to gauge how long ago a scent trail had been left as she went. The mental exercise was doing wonders for keeping her logic and reason firmly in place, keeping her more violent instincts from ever being more than an unpleasant murmur of her subconscious.

Since starting the hunt and picking up the trail, that had been her entire focus; smell around to pick up the deer’s scent, figure out where the trail lead, chase down the trail, make sure she hadn’t lost the trail, pause and pick up the scent again, repeat. And through it all, ignore the voice whispering in her head about how she needed to relax and let loose and just allow instinct to take over and that she’s overthinking it.

And she absolutely refused to allow that monster that had, she was sure, almost killed Gilda out again.

Besides, instincts (as Celestia had told her before during previous training sessions) can be fooled. A well-reasoned, rigorously applied intellect could easily beat out pure instinct more often than not, so her inner Alpha could go buck herself.

Sure that she had identified the direction the deer had traveled, she oriented herself and launched into a run, sprinting through the trees. The heightened senses that indicated her more base nature was nudging closer to the surface informed her that another body was tailing her, but she knew this was Celestia, keeping up easily and offering the occasional suggestion where the educator knew Sunset’s pony upbringing would be inadequate for her current circumstances. The principal’s silence on Sunset’s course of action could either be an indicator that she was on exactly the right track or she was wildly off-base and Celestia didn’t want to get in front of Sunset’s analytical abilities, a trait in teaching that both the Princess and the Principal coincidentally shared, apparently.

Sunset confidence in her choice was born out moments later when a deer, the same one she’d been tracking by scent, leapt from a small stand of grasses that had been allowed to grow to impressive heights. The basic directions that had been printed in the children’s book that she’d been repeating like a mantra since she checked it out of the library echoed through her thoughts; disable, disarm, dispatch.

Putting on a burst of speed almost unconsciously, she ignored Celestia’s surprised, “Oh!” and snapped out her claws, severing the tendon at the back of each leg that connected the deer’s calf muscles to it’s calcaneus in a single swipe. The deer collapsed with a nerve-jangling bleat of pain. Ignore it! Sunset practically mentally shouted the order, Ignore the sound, it’s just an animal, it’s your target, your goal! Do not let instinctive reactions get in the way!

She skidded to a stop, her cleats digging into the dirt and raising a small plume of soil. Not allowing herself time to second guess, she launched herself back and leaped on the deer, using her familiarity with the equinoid form to grapple with the flailing creature, pinning its torso with her hips, nesting her pelvis below the bottom of the ribcage and dropping her weight on its pelvis so it couldn’t kick her with its hind legs. She proved the utility of human hands when she grabbed its forelegs by the ankle, then hastily pushed both ankles into her left hand and slammed the limbs to the ground next to the beast’s head, twisting the muscles so they couldn’t bring their…his strong tensor muscles that allowed for the impressive springing cervidae were known for, which when given half a chance can buck the teeth right out of a pony’s mouth in a fight. She realized she could recognize nearly entirely masculine features in the deer’s skeletal structure, but the lack of antlers meant this was a juvenile. …shut up, shut up, SHUT UP, SHUTUPSHUTUPSHUTUP! Stop analyzing it, stop personalizing it, it’s an animal, it’s prey, it’s going to be meat and you’re a meat eater now!

Gritting her teeth…not her fangs, thankfully (she had successfully managed to keep them from dropping), she leaned her weight on the hand pinning the deer’s hooves and raised the other, extending her claws to strike.

…and hesitated.

Sunset, you stupid bitch, this is the consequences of your actions! This is the path you’ve chosen; you made your damn bed now you get to lie in it! Her hand remained in the air, she snarled then made a fist and slammed it into the ground next to the deer’s shoulder before pulling it back again, claws once again fully extended. Now! Do it now, the longer you delay the worse this will get, end it!

Then she looked the deer in the eyes.

She thought back to everything that had happened since coming through the portal, every moment both terrifying and healing, and tried to use it as fuel to get her arm to move. But now she couldn’t look away from the terrified animal’s eyes. No…no-no-no-no! Do not fail this, do NOT fail this test! She is right there, she’s watching right now, she already knows you’re fucking up, you’ll never be a part of the pack, you’ll never belong to her fam… She felt a tear escape the corner of her eye and slide down the side of her nose, the tenseness in her muscles that had been so taut she was shivering starting to slacken, her legs began feeling like dead weight as the adrenaline dispersed. Her breathing started to become ragged as she tried to blink the film of water away from her vision.

She felt Celestia’s hand on her shoulder and knew it was over. She heaved herself away from the dear and almost skidded on her knees in the dirt. She curled up, clutching her closed fists, left hand still covered in blood, against her stomach.

Sunset was distantly aware that Celestia had moved closer, she could see the older woman’s hunting boots (an affectation she learned from Rarity some Alphas still used, preferring the enhanced ankle support and lifted heel, not to mention the leather aesthetic, over the ability to easily replace the cleats), and she focused her energy on minimizing the sound of her crying, a bubble of loathing forming on top of the anguish of failing the hunt right at the end.

Celestia kneeled, the tan pants the principal wore as what was apparently part of her normal hunting gear matching the color of the dust-colored soil entering Sunset’s blurred field of vision. Sunset’s rational mind tried reminding her of this Celestia treating her with unbounded kindness and compassion falling flat in an overwhelming flood of shame and self-flagellating disappointment. She didn’t have to worry about her inner Alpha right now, that monster had retreated in the presence of a much older horror, an abomination she’d been running from for far longer than she’d even seen the mirror that trapped her in her current body.

Celestia’s hand gently touched her back right over her shoulder blade, and Sunset instinctively let out a very canid whine of distress and flinched into an even tighter ball. “Sunset,” came the gentle voice, “I…you deserve to feel the emotions you’re having right now, but your prey is suffering.”

Sunset lifted her head and turned enough to see the deer, wiping her eyes with the back of her wrist so she could see without tears. The deer was, indeed, clearly suffering. It…he was flailing about in the dirt where Sunset had felled him, but clearly unable to get his hind legs to respond. Blood was pouring from the wounds she had inflicted, and even in the moments she took to watch his movements were growing weaker. Fresh tears obliterated her sight and she blindly reached out, but couldn’t bring herself to move from her curled up kneeling position. “…oh, Celestia…I did that. I…” she hissed.

Whatever Celestia’s response to the use of her name in abbreviated prayer-like slang, she didn’t let on. Instead, she asked, “Will you be able to…do I need to take over?”

Rather than respond directly to that, Sunset asked, “I…know some first aid, maybe we can…?”

The sensation of movement through the hand on her back told Sunset that Celestia was shaking her head before she answered, “You nicked an artery, by the time we managed to get it to a vet with proper care facilities, it would be too late.”

Sunset moaned into a full-throated weeping, dragging herself over to the deer’s side and catching one of its flailing forehooves, “I’m so sorry,” she grieved.

She heard Celestia sigh and stand, then looked up as the older Alpha gently lifted the deer’s head into her arms, gripped with her palms on his jaw and the back of his neck, and yanked hard. Sunset flinched as the sound of the deer’s vertebrae shattering carried through the layers of muscle and tissue. The hoof in her hands went limp, and Sunset dissolved into tears.

At some point later, she had no idea exactly when, Celestia had sat down on the ground and pulled Sunset into her lap, just holding the younger Alpha and rocking her, letting her pour out her feelings that she couldn’t quite seem to identify. As her emotions calmed, her more rational mind started to return to the fore, and as she was wont to do began analyzing her emotional state. The expected dread and regret of having taken…or at least causing the loss of the life of the deer was there, but it was a much smaller part of her overall anguish. It was like water added to oil; it might be in the same place, but it was not part of the rest and over time seemed to be separating out. The remainder was harder for her to process, and her lack of understanding was leading to frustration that she just didn’t have the energy for, so she simply stopped trying to examine it.

“Sunset,” murmured Celestia, “Do you want to talk about it?”

In a way, she did. If nothing else the woman might be able to help her understand what she was feeling and give her the words and context to properly handle it. On the other, she was just…tired. Tired of fighting her inner Alpha, tired of chasing things that she would end up destroying, tired of being a broken, discarded disappointment. She shook her head, not even opening her eyes.

Celestia rumbled a comforting purr, “Take your time, my little cub. Tomorrow or Tuesday…or next week or next month are just fine for talking about it. We will talk, it’s unhealthy for any Alpha to hold in the kind of thing you’re dealing with now, but for now, just rest and recover.”

Not waiting for a response, Celestia used the strength she hid so well on her large, graceful form to rise to her feet, almost casually shifting Sunset to be held entirely by her left arm, before once again casually displaying just how far Sunset had to go to become an Alpha on Celestia’s level by crouching down next to the deer and single-handedly hefting the carcass onto her right shoulder. More to fill the quiet than anything else, Sunset suspected, Celestia informed her, “Cranky lives pretty close to the school, we’ll take the deer to him. Goddess knows he can’t get out as much as he used to, and Matilda does love visitors, no matter the reason.”

“Crook,” came an authoritative voice, almost more of a command than a name, “Would you care to tell me why your mother’s 50-year-old bottle of dragon bourbon is sitting nearly empty on the bar, nearly entirely consumed by two mares?”

Velvet looked up from Sunny’s shoulder to see Crook’s wife trotting up to the bar with a clipboard in her magic and glaring daggers at the earth pony bartender.

“Just the one mare,” interjected Twilight, hoping to spare Crook the unearned wrath of the unicorn.

Crook’s wife, Terramend, was a fairly rare type of unicorn, an umbrum. She had the signature sickle-like, curved back horn and dark mane and tail, even as her fur was extremely pale. Twilight had only seen one other, during her college days, and realized with a start that she’d heard a more common, less savory name for the recessive traits that didn’t often surface in unicorn foals and fillies, ‘Sombran.’ Considered by many to be bad luck, umbrum unicorns often faced (very unwarranted) discrimination among the pony communities. The possible connection between their derogatory soubriquet and the would-be tyrant now forgotten by history was likely blamed for that, a fact she probably wouldn’t have known without her briefing from the princess after her daughter fled.

Terramend turned her angry eyes on Velvet and left the, ‘How dare you interrupt my righteous tirade, peon?’ question unasked.

Crook threw her a lifeline. “Oi, show’er the coin,” she said in her New Sheepland accent.

As Sunny seemed disinclined to disentangle herself from Velvet anytime soon (how long had it been since the mare had allowed herself a hug?!), Twilight lit her magic and probed around in Sunny’s mane a bit, looking for the metal disk that was large enough to be a small hubcap more so than an actual coin. Sunny giggled a bit but didn’t offer any assistance.

Shortly enough that Terra couldn’t complain too much, Velvet found it and pulled it out, showing the distinct design of an alicorn rearing before a design showing off the sun on the left half and the moon on the right. Some old Pegasii words were engraved around the edge that Twilight didn’t have the lingual skill to translate and the outside edge was etched with what looked like an overly detailed reverse-360 of the view of Equestria from the top of the Canterhorn rendered in extremely fine detail, and the backside of the coin bore the royal seal, complete with horn, horseshoe, and wings. Now that she was able to see it at more than a passing glance, she understood why Crook had blanched earlier; this particular coin was, while not unknown to the populous, per se, it was only really known and understood by members of Equestria’s military and their families. It was an officer coin, though not just any officer coin. It was no wonder Heartfire let them have the run of the bar, this was the princess’ officer coin. Anyone holding it basically had a direct line to the throne.

Of course, Twilight knew why Sunny was carrying it, but Terramend did not. She inspected it closely, took it in her own magic to flip it around a couple of times, then glared at Twilight, “Did you two steal this?”

Sunny finally snorted in amusement, “No, we didn’t steal it.” Straightening, she finally disengaged from hugging Twilight and turned to face the (much) younger mare, “It’s the genuine article, and if you like I can make sure you can speak with the right people in the palace to authenticate it.”

Terra glared at Sunny for a moment, then sniffed and thrust the coin back at the mares. “Fine, then you can expect a bill and a hefty commission charge. That bottle cost more than this bar to procure, and that was twenty years ago before the surge in inflation a decade ago.”

Twilight refused to let her sudden lightheadedness show when she understood exactly how much the bottle she’d been side-eyeing since Sunny ordered it cost.

“Honestly, I’m shocked you’re not dead, that was made to get dragons drunk.” Snipped Terra.

Sunny’s answering grin could have slit a throat, “I’ve got a strong constitution.”

“Y’know, if you want to get drunk, and I mean rip-snorting so off your arse you can’t remember how many hooves you got, you’re doing it wrong,” interrupted Crook.

Twilight, who’d gotten smashed before but never deliberately or by design, felt the beginnings of a feeling in her gut she’d learned to call her, ‘Maybe this was a bad idea’ vibe. Oh well, she thought, I did start this, time to see about finishing it. Dramatically flourishing her hoof, she said, “Guide us, o’ sage of sasparilla.”

Crook snorted, “I only use sasparilla when the college crowd finally makes their way here. Nah, what you need is this,” so saying, she reached under the bar and dropped a bottle on it, covered in dust and still sealed.

Terra gave the bottle a disgusted look, “Well, that at least will mean the books aren’t going to be too egregiously in the red until we get payment from the palace for the damage these two caused already. By all means, Crook, serve them that prison still garbage, princess knows it’ll never move otherwise.”

Crook just grinned and pulled out some shot glasses, then cracked the top of the bottle, blowing her wife a kiss as the unicorn returned to the back office with her account books. With the deftness of many years of experience, she filled up two rows of shots, one for each of the mares. “There you go, that’ll knock you both out or I’ll eat my sunglasses.”

Twilight, as per her usual, lifted a glass in her magic while Sunny used a hoof. They saluted each other skeptically and, as one, tossed back the liquor.

Twilight’s eyes immediately watered as she started hacking, her body seeming to be reflexively attempting to both eject the contents of her stomach and exhale every breath she ever took at the same time. “Oh, that’s revolting! How did that distillery stay in business long enough to make that instead of being arrested for war crimes?”

Sunny seemed to be attempting to scrape lint from the roof of her mouth as her eyelids seemed to be attempting a forbidden dance, “I think I’ve drunk paint stripper that wasn’t that strong…and it tasted better!”

Crook just grinned, her firey red mane seeming to glint in the dim bar lighting. She pushed another glass forward a few inches, “More?”

Twilight cringed as Sunny’s razor grin returned, this time with an air of ‘challenge accepted,’ “Please!”

Sunset stood next to Celestia as the older woman pushed the doorbell, instigating a bit of muffled conversation leaking through the seams of the door, just quiet enough the words couldn’t be made out. A few moments later, the door opened to reveal Cranky Doodle, the history teacher at school.

The man was dressed more casually than Sunset had ever seen, but that wasn’t really saying much. Instead of a pinstripe, collared shirt with bowtie, he wore a button-down flannel. Corduroys substituted for his usual slacks, and instead of penny-loafers he was wearing a pair of house slippers. The old war vet turned teacher took in the scene and grunted, “First hunt?”

Celestia nodded, “Sunset is…I don’t think today is the time to teach her how to dress a deer.”

Cranky looked closer at Sunset, taking in her features that she was sure made her look like she’d just walked through a desert without shoes or water. He grunted again, turning to call back into the house, “Matilda, could you take this game off Celestia’s hands, please?”

An older woman, many features in common with her husband, poked her head out of the kitchen, smile stretching from ear to ear. Her eyes lent her a feeling of warmth and welcome, were the same smile matched to any other eyes, it might come off as over-aggressive and creepy. “Certainly! Hello, Celestia, good to see you! Will you be staying?”

Before Celestia could reply, Cranky interrupted, “Nope. Kid’s staying, though.”

Both surprised, the Alphas on the porch shared a confused glance before turning back to the omega. He simply raised an eyebrow, “The kid needs a talkin’ to, and you’re not the one to give it,” he grumbled as Matilda relieved Celestia of her burden and hustled off around the side of the house to the back yard, “We’ll get her cleaned up and fed, don’t you worry about that. I’ll drive her home before bedtime.”

Celestia frowned, but to Sunset’s surprise didn’t object. She simply turned to Sunset, “I’m not sure what he’s going to talk to you about, but it will be worth it.” She punctuated her statement by reaching out and pulling Sunset into a hug, “Know that I’m proud of you, my little cub.”

Tears sprang to Sunset’s eyes and she found herself too choked up to respond verbally, so she simply wrapped her arms around Celestia and fiercely returned the hug

Cranky goaded the pair to separate and brusquely but affectionately waved Celestia off, then guided Sunset into the Doodle home.

If the dimensions were slightly different and more corners rounded, Sunset might have sworn she’d been transported back to any middle-class home in Equestria. Nearly everything in the place practically shouted ‘vintage,’ but just the same everything bore signs of periodic use. An old record player (something she hadn’t seen since the princess had been gifted a top-of-the-line hand crank model shortly after a new type of high-fidelity vinyl record had been developed) sat next to a radio that, save for more human-friendly controls, could have been purchased at any department store in Canterlot. The one concession to modern technology in the living room seemed to be an HD-capable LCD TV, but it looked positively archaic compared to the models she had seen in Celestia and Luna’s house.

Just as she was taking in the living room, Matilda came in through what looked like the kitchen, which Sunset guessed had a door to the backyard. Despite having handled a deer carcass, she didn’t appear to have any stains or significant rumpling of her clothing, which consisted of what appeared to be an old blouse and skirt combination protected by an apron. She was wearing a pair of house slippers similar to Cranky’s and had her hair twisted up into a simple bun. “Oh, hello, dearie. I don’t believe we were ever properly introduced, but then I’m hardly ever up at the school. I’m Matilda, and goodness, look at you, didn’t Celestia give you a chance to clean up? Why don’t you come with me and we’ll get you a quick shower. You’re a bit smaller than me, so I think a pair of my sweats should fit okay, goodness knows I haven’t used them since my hip surgery.” She clutched Sunset’s arms, not intrusively by any stretch, but certainly not shy, “You are just so thin, but I can tell Granny’s been trying to put some meat on your bones, bless her soul. You’re going to be tall, too!”

“Matilda, let the girl breathe, hun,” the reprimand was delivered without heat, and Sunset thought she could see a corner of his mouth turn up.

“Oh, of course she can breathe,” she waved his concerns off, “Come along, I’ll get you situated in the bathroom and dig up those sweats. What’s your name, hun?”

It seemed like barely a few moments had passed before Sunset had stripped off her dirty clothes and climbed in the shower after Matilda had pointed out where she kept the guest toiletries stocked and given her some privacy. She watched as the water from the showerhead rehydrated the blood that had been drying on her left hand and drip to the tub floor, where it made a red river to the drain. She had scraped her knees a bit without noticing, but that had resulted mostly in some abraded skin with some dirt stuck in it.

She felt…hollow. Like whatever was supposed to fill her normally just drained out. Who even am I? she pondered. Having no answer, she sighed and picked up the soap to actually clean herself.

Fifteen minutes later, she was changed into Matilda’s old sweats (apparently a pair she bought some years ago to support Cranky in some capacity as a member of CHS’s staff as it had Canterlot High lettering but in a design she was unfamiliar with), her “hunting” “outfit” (really just the clothes she normally wore to PE, a mistake she didn’t think she was going to make again) was in a plastic grocery sack hanging on the front door’s knob. Cranky had merely pointed to a chair in the kitchen as he set about assembling a vegetable chopping station on the kitchen table opposite the chair she’d been directed to. She asked almost timidly if he wanted help, and he gave a brief, “Nope,” as he set about turning a handful of carrots and celery into small chunks.

The atmosphere was cozy for all it was foreign, and the repeated ‘ssh-thock’ of the knife cutting vegetables created a soothing cadence that started to lull her into a mildly meditative state.

“Celestia is a fantastic Alpha,” said Cranky suddenly into the silence, “But there’s some things she just doesn’t get.”

Sunset inhaled in a half-gasp as she brought herself back to full awareness. She quickly reviewed the omega’s words in her head so she didn’t sound completely vapid and asked, “Like what?”

“Like what someone who wasn’t raised as an Alpha so powerful it was a damn near inevitability they’d become pack leader might go through when taken out on a hunt.”

Sunset took a breath and realized she had nothing to say to that, so remained quiet.

“I talked to Luna about where you come from,” Cranky said a moment later, “Celestia didn’t give the staff much detail initially, but we’ve picked up a few things from your answers to schoolwork and some of the things your mom and aunt have hinted at…don’t object, girl, you and Celestia marked each other so firmly there’s no taking it back at this point. You’re family, and that means Luna’s your aunt.” Sunset frowned at this but obediently kept quiet, allowing him to continue, “Luna mentioned that you come from some sort of parallel dimension?”

This was more comfortable ground for Sunset, “Universe, and yes. It’s not one-for-one, but a lot of people here have counterparts there.”

Cranky gave an understanding ‘hmm’ to this before asking, “Y’ever meet me over there?”

Sunset grinned slightly, “Well, no, but you might have a counterpart. ‘Doodle’ used to be a pretty substantial donkey merchant family and Matilda is one of the more common donkey names.”

“Donkey merchants? We sell donkeys there?”

Sunset snorted in amusement, “No, donkeys who are merchants, not merchants who sell donkeys, that’d be slavery and that’s so very illegal.”

The omega’s eyebrow went up at this. He put down the knife and stood, picking up the cutting board to transport it over to the counter next to the stove. He remained silent as he took the knife to the sink to wash it and put it in the nearby dish rack, then returned to the table. “Matty’s probably going to be a bit working on the deer you hunted, so we have some time to talk before she comes in to finish making dinner.” Sunset scooted her chair up to the table so she could lean her elbows on it, clasping her hands. When she had finished, he continued, “I don’t figure you all had the Holocaust War over there, did you?” when she shook her head no, he snorted, “Kinda wish we hadn’t. But let me tell you about that a moment.”

“We had The Great Pack War ‘round the 20s, and that played merry hell with the economy of a lot of countries, and in one in particular, well, a lot of people blamed them for the way the Pack War went, so they got stuck with the bill, which sent them into a particularly bad depression. When enough people feel like their way of life is threatened, they tend to get stupid in groups. One particular group decided that they had the answer, and that answer was to exterminate all the Alphas and omegas.” Sunset gasped, a hand flying to her mouth. Cranky huffed, apparently satisfied at her reaction, “So they declared certain sexual practices to be illegal and destroyed all the research at the leading university about it, and then they used that to leverage a whole bunch of new legislation that made it criminal for Alphas and omegas to be what they were in public…then they went ahead and rounded up all of us and shoved us into camps.”

Sunset was quite smart and was starting to get an idea why the Holocaust War was such a major pivot point in this world’s history. Cranky’s next words confirmed what she was suspecting, “They…took us. A lot of families got split up. Some betas who had Alpha or omega kids were lumped in with their families as ‘carriers’ and taken to the same camps, the Griffin Diaspora got a shot in the arm, and anyone with even a shirt-tail link to the Griffin families got rounded up. Some camps were just for political prisoners, and by that point, the Party had stopped pretending it was about blaming the non-betas and just started saying the quiet part out loud; it was about getting rid of anyone that didn’t fit with their specific world, a beta only world where nobody had any relations that weren’t just a man and a woman.”

He leaned back in his chair, unbuttoned his sleeves, and started rolling them up. “Me and Matty, well, we didn’t know each other before we were on the same train to the same camp, but if there was one bright spot that made it all worth trudging through that particular valley of Tartarus, it was her.”

“When we got to the camp, she and I would find ways to meet up under the guard’s noses. I managed to bribe a couple guards, some of the other ladies…The Party didn’t believe in splitting us up by Alpha and omega…idiots…anyway, some of the ladies found ways to make their work spread out a bit, cover for Matilda’s absences…it was hell, but she was like an angel in the middle of it.”

He paused for a bit, eyes hooded as he worked up whatever he needed to continue his story.

“Then, one day, Matilda and a bunch of the other Alpha women were just…gone. We tried to ask around, but the guards just told us they were taken and it wasn’t our problem. At that point…well, a bunch of us omegas and some of the betas in our camp decided we were getting out. We waited until the trains bringing supplies weren’t going to show up for a couple days and we did a prison break.” He snorted, almost a growl, “They made a movie about it a decade or so later, made us look like a bunch of goddamn heroes instead of the desperate kids we were. It was chaos, and even if we did beat them, we only had a third of the people left. We didn’t even have time to bury our dead, we had to move.”

“When we got to Allied territory, we hooked up with one of the U.S.P. armies and…they told us that intel said that Matilda’s group had…that the camp had killed all the occupants and burned ‘em in open mass graves.”

Sunset by this point felt like she might vomit and was keeping a hand clasped over her mouth. In the quiet left by Cranky remembering the time he thought his love had died, Sunset made a realization, “Wait…you said Matilda’s an Alpha?” he nodded, “But…I didn’t scent Alpha on her…”

He grimaced, one hand clenching into an angry fist, “Yeah, kid. She obviously didn’t die like we thought she did, but her and a bunch of other Alphas were taken to a different destination. One of the betas, he had a ‘theory’ that Alphas were parasitic mutations, and if the Alpha parts were removed, then they’d ‘revert’ to being good little compliant betas.” Sunset blanched even further and felt her face going numb from disgusted shock, “He…he cut into her…”

It took a bit, but he managed to settle enough to continue, “I didn’t even know that yet, but I knew they’d taken her, not to mention the rest of my family. Ma and pa…it hurt they day the I found out they were dead, but losing Matty?” He shook his head, “Well, once the medics in that army got us all checked out, a bunch of us were just running on Mad and Fury and wanted to get some good ol’ vengeance, so we just joined up with the Army right then. Got my papers as a US citizen and learned to shoot a gun and march in time.”

He leaned forward, “You see the movies from that war and Applewood makes it look all nice and honorable and glorious. Good guys and gals going to fight the good fight. Truth was, it was ugly, it was hell, and out of all of it, almost as much as the memory of thinkin’ I’d lost Matty, you know what I remember most?”

She almost didn’t respond, so caught up in what he was telling her, but she shook her head. She wondered if he’d told this story to any other student in the school.

His eyes went unfocused for just a moment, “The first time I killed a beta. That changes you, when you make the conscious choice to take a life. You…change. You don’t lose somethin’, or at least the good ones don’t. You remember what you were before you took that life. You remember that you once didn’t realize just how dangerous and lethal you could be.”

He snorted, “That deer…did it remind you of someone?”

Sunset felt like she was tasting ash as she replied, “Yeah…I mean, it clearly wasn’t a counterpart or anything, but it almost could have been Prince Bramble.” She shrugged, “Wrong jawline, wrong spot pattern, but he had the royal family’s brow ridge and was probably going to grow a good set of…” her vocal cords choked off before she could finish, her eyes blurring again.

“Goddess,” she spat once she could speak again, “You must think I’m pathetic! You were a soldier, you killed people. I just almost killed an animal and I’m…”

He chuckled darkly, “Sunset, killin’ is killin’. Worse for you, you grew up where the ‘animals’ talk and vote and fall in love,” he let that settle for a moment, “How’d the kill go down?” She explained, very briefly, about maiming the deer and Celestia finishing it off. He nodded, “Lemme guess, you didn’t do the final act, but you feel like you did anyway?” She took a shuddering breath and nodded. He patted her hand, “Well, I don’t got good news for you, kid. You did kill ‘im.” She looked up, not caring that a level of terror was showing through the twin trails of tears on her face. She could see in him a wisdom, a hollowness to his gaze, a slightly unfocussed nature to his pupils as he looked directly at her. He was seeing her, she could tell, but he was also seeing…something else. “But everyone’s responsible for at least one death, whether they meant for it to be or not. It’s part of being alive. And I’m not gonna tell you any of that popycock about ‘life is for the most fit’ or any of that bullshit,” she gawped a little at the use of a word that he'd have sent her to detention for, “Life is life, and part of that includes death. And the fact that you chose to include death, no matter how ignorant you were of it, just means that you got a little more intimate with death than most.”

Before he could say anything further, they heard the screen on the back door swing open just before Matilda opened the back entry. She saw them sitting at the dinner table and smiled warmly. “Just hang tight a bit longer, I’ll go get cleaned up from dressing that kill and get back to making dinner. I can’t wait to hear more about you, Sunset. Celestia only adopted one cub and she’s never personally taken anyone she’s not related to out on a hunt, so you must be something really special.”

Sunset smiled and blushed, nodding quietly.

Dinner was…nothing special, really, other than that she had it with a really nice, cute old couple that she now wished, more than she ever thought she could, that they could live forever just to show the world what love could be like, in spite of all the ways the world tried to stop them. Between them, they managed to get her not just eating (and eating meat, no less) but actually smiling and talking and even laughing a little bit.

And when she got back home…and she realized she was really starting to think of Celestia and Luna’s house as her home, she got the biggest, warmest hug from the Pack Alpha that she could ever remember receiving.

She still hurt, she still had the shock and guilt and all the other emotions that were roiling in her, but whatever Cranky had been trying to say…she had understood. And in understanding found, in the middle of her emotional storm, a calm center of peace.

Twilight flinched and nearly threw up when an amused voice that sounded far more smug than it had any right to said, “You know, when dad said he told you two to go rabble-rousing, I didn’t think you’d taken him seriously.”

She heard Sunny (was she still Sunny? Twilight opened her eyes to check and found out two things; yes, it was Sunny and the actual sun hated her with a passion she would never have ascribed to it) moan incoherently.

“Shiny,” moaned Velvet, “Please tell me you brought a little hair of the dog.”

Her son, traitor that he was, just snickered as loud as it was possible for someone to snicker, “No can do, according to that rather prickly unicorn at the bar you two started your night at, you did shots until the bottle was empty, and we checked, that brand was so bottom shelf the company that made it went under. No hair of the dog for you two.”

Twilight struggled to get her eyes open, and the struggle was real as her hindbrain was convinced she was trying to drive needles of dry ice into her eyes whenever she parted her eyelids even slightly. She negotiated, pointing out that squeezing her eyelids shut hurt just as much, and managed to face the fact that photons did, in fact, exist, and might possibly want to end her existence on a fundamental level. “Did you at least bring painkillers and coffee?”

The normally muted sparkle-twinkle sound that unicorn magic made when in use for something like levitation sounded like it was being replayed on a concert speaker. Accompanying that sound, however, was the blissful, wonderfully bitter smell of boiled bean juice. She groaned, “Ooooh, Shiny, you may have just won The Sibling Supreme award already for this year.” She forced herself to achieve some semblance of upright and took in her surroundings a bit better and realized that she was, in fact, in a jail cell. The shock and dismay were promptly ordered to take a number until coffee had been imbibed, and she lit her magic, doing her level damndest to ignore the absolute raging-white-hot-axe-to-her-temporal-lobe feeling it gave her head. She reached out and made grabby motions with her forehooves while tugging the coffee free of Shining’s magical aura, “Gimme, come to mamma.”

Shining chuckled and magicked the top of a bottle of painkillers open and levitated them into the privacy-adjacent room through the bars. “I think you’ll both be relieved to know that I took a little initiative and had the incident reports and all records pertaining to your arrests routed to my private inbox in the officer barracks. ‘Mares, including mother of princess’ protégé, arrested for defacing public property,’ was not a headline I think anyone would be prepared for today.”

Sunny finally stirred from her collapsed-in-a-puddle-of-blotto’d-pony, “Officer thinking, lieutenant,” she managed to get to her forehooves on the cot she’d been poured onto at some point in the prior eight-ish hours and looked to the coffee with bleary eyes. “Who raised the sun today?” she inquired as she shakily levitated her own cup of coffee over.

“Oh, you did,” he chuckled again. He was clearly enjoying this entire incident, “That’s how I figured out where you were, actually. We got a greenhorn from this precinct who came to the palace guard station convinced you needed to be brought up on some sort of treason charge because you were, and I quote, ‘Claiming to be the princess and saying she needed to put her sister to bed so that heavy bitch of a ball of gas can get her ass in the sky.’ Although, I’m sure that was partially hyperbolic on the part of the officer.”

Sunny took a long sip of the coffee and grimaced both at the bitter brew and the description of her words, “No…that sounds right. I remember that now, at least. I believe your mother can attest that I seem to get…sweary when I’m inebriated.” She took another sip of her coffee and grimaced again before muttering, “And ponies wonder why I prefer tea…”

A Canterlot PD officer trotted in at that moment, bearing a file folder and a ring of keys. “Got that paperwork you requested, Ell-tee,” passing the documentation over from his own magic field to Shining’s, he inserted the keys into the lock and gave a friendly mock salute, “Yer mom is a handful when she’s partying, but on the whole more entertaining than anything harmful.”

Shining was almost giggling when opened the file and found a particular police photo, “Oh, wow, spray painted graffiti, ‘Down with the diarchy,’ followed by, ‘Let the princess have a nap.’”

The cop was barely stifling a chuckle, “Well, I’ll leave you to it, tell that marefriend of yours that we miss her at the gaming table.”

“I’ll see if I can talk her into joining, usual time next week?”

“Yuppers,” he tipped his cap, “Stay safe out there, Shining.”

Armor waited until the cop was out of earshot before he turned to the two mares with a grin, “Well, ‘Sunny,’ I’d better get you to the palace, Kibitz was practically having kittens looking for you.”

Sunny groaned, pushing herself off the cot and slumping her way out the cell. Twilight followed, struggling to keep her head from dragging on the floor as she walked, indulging in the brilliantly bitter coffee to get her body moving in something approximating the direction of home. “I need to sleep for a week. Remind me to only do this when it’s not going to be Monday morning…like, ever.”

Shining just chuckled and tailed the mares out of the room.