A Shadow of Myself

Russel was a man who attracted a lot of gossip. He was the art teacher who also coached the wrestling team, which seemed unbelievable to many, as if being both an art teacher and a wrestling coach were impossible to be together. He was a black man with vitiligo that gave him a very piebald appearance that instantly caught everyone's attention and made him easily recognizable. His parents and parents-in-law jointly owned a major company famous for producing shrimp that ponies could safely eat, and everyone always wondered how much he and his wife were worth (they rarely saw a dime of that, although they were in line to inherit it…someday, after all of both sets of parents died). He was also married to a pony, and while it wasn't unheard of, it still made people talk.

However, as of the last month or so, he was the target of a new set of gossip. The world had learned that his plump, cheery little wife wasn't just any pony. The love of his life was none other than The Marshmallow, and The Marshmallow had become the face of the Dreamwardens with Phobia Remedy's retirement. Now he rarely escaped a conversation without someone asking him what it was like being married to a Dreamwarden.

This was why, despite how much he cared about all his students and wanted to see them succeed, he was nothing but relieved when he could finally walk past the now ever-present bodyguards guarding his front porch.

He was barely done taking his jacket and shoes off when his wife's scowling personal bodyguard-assistant, came storming out of the kitchen and dining area towards him.

The Belgian woman put a finger up to his face. "You need to go deal with your wife."

He calmly finished hanging his jacket up and smiled at her, making a point to look around the finger. "Hello, Blanche. What seems to be the trouble with Rebecca that has your ponytail in a twist?"

"She's moping and has canceled three important appointments today!" Blanche fumed. "She isn't listening to me. So you need to talk some sense into her. She'll listen to you. Maybe you can get her out of this rut."

His smile slipped. Rebecca was moping and canceling meetings? That was unlike her. Her mood had been a little down as of late, so it wasn't shocking. She was under an enormous amount of pressure now that her identity was public, and she was taking on all the duties that Phobia Remedy used to take care of. If anything, she seemed to have done better with much more of it than Russel could manage. One of the more challenging things they had to do in the last month was host the leaders of The Friends of Humanity for dinner. By the time the meal was halfway over, Russel had wanted to put his fist through their speciest faces and had detected a strong hint of racism from them as well. Rebecca had endured it all with smiles and laughter, and even had those bastards laughing at her joke and asking after her recipes for cake. They would say their disgusting ideas; Rebecca would nod, say she understood their feelings– which was true and turned it into a dialogue where they were forced to acknowledge the fact the counterpoints she made. Phobia Remedy had made every attempt to fight bigotry through peaceful dialogue, and Rebecca was continuing that trend without missing a beat. She never ceased to amaze him.

So, if dealing with those kinds of people didn't cause her to feel depressed, what did?

Blanche sat on the couch and gave him a glare that silently ordered him to deal with his wife. It was unneeded, but it did make him quicken his step to the kitchen. He entered the next room and surveyed the damage.

There was bread, many many loaves of bread. There were open crocks of butter, mixing bowls filled with various culinary things, some with only crumbs and loose bits of sugar and flour. There were jars of buttercream, chocolate, fondant, cinnamon, and a surprising number of empty milk jugs– all whole milk, of course– lying around both the kitchen and dining room. He saw three different cakes, all half eaten, with two more plates that indicated those were not the total number of cakes that had been baked today. There were four trays of cupcakes, a tray of muffins, and two trays of cookies, all half eaten. The muffin tray and muffins still have steam rising from being freshly cooked. Let no one ever say his wife couldn't cook. In another life, she would have made a very prolific baker.

Rebecca herself was currently at the dining room table with the toaster. She was in the process of constructing a building out of toast, molded together with a mix of butter, chocolate, and what looked like strawberry jelly. It was in the early stages, so he couldn't tell what it would eventually look like, but beside her were completed toast models of Stonehenge and the Great Pyramid.

Hey slowly walked over to the dining room table. "Hey, babe, having a bad day?"

"Bad year, and it is going to get worse," Rebecca mumbled as she cut another piece of toast and plastered one of its dissected pieces to her construction with a dab of chocolate.

He got up beside her, bent down, kissed her, and then hugged her. "Want to talk about it?"

"Yeah," she replied, then sighed. "But I can't. Super secret stuff with lots of rules. Dreamwarden stuff is so unfair sometimes."

He gripped her tighter "I get it and understand. I knew it was part of the package when I married you." He looked at her hoofs, which she used to dab and spread the chocolate. "You want some help with that? You are getting your pretty stripes all messy."

She leaned into him. "Okay, my valiant spotty man."

They sat constructing whatever building Rebecca had in mind. It looked like some Greek or Roman temple. Given her previous two constructs, he would guess the Temple of Zeus or Artimus, or maybe the Mausoleum of Halicarnassus or the Parthenon.

"I always wanted just to build things, that and help kids that didn't have any friends or who were going through tough times," Rebecca said sadly as she pulled another piece of toast from the toaster. "Everybody's favorite floating Marshmallow, here to cheer kids up and inspire others to do creative things. Friend to most, always ready to brighten up a dreary day with my silliness."

"You do that. You do a great job at that," Russel reminded her.

She shook her head. "I'm stuck doing so much more than that. I'm not talking about dealing with boring old politicians, generals, douchebags, and various other people I'd rather not have to spend minutes listening to. Phobia did me dirty when she decided to retire now of all times."

"Guessing something big is in the works," Russel commented.

"Can't say," she muttered before reaching over with a wing and grabbing some cookies to stuff her face.

He chewed on his lip as he looked around the room. "I know this isn't the best time to bring this up, and I know this is your way of coping, but this is a bit much, even for you. I don't want you eating yourself to death. It's hard to grow old together without two of us."

She smirked. "Do you have a suggestion for some other stress relief?"

He gave her another kiss. "If you want to pause your efforts to match Paeonius, Inctinus, and Imhotep with toast, we could go to the bedroom to discuss other stress relief in depth."

"About seven and a half inches in depth?" Rebecca giggled.

He chuckled. "I still can't believe you pulled out a measuring tape on our honeymoon."

"Well, I wanted to know how my man stacked up. You know, to see if I had gotten a quality product. This Marshmallow only allows herself to be injected by the very best-"

"Okay, eww," Blanche said from the doorway, breaking their mood. The bodyguard held up a phone. "Phone call for you, Rebecca. You'll want to take this one. I insist."

Rebecca slumped in her seat and whined. "I can take calls and talk to important people tomorrow. I want to do dirty things with my spotty man now."

Blanche sternly walked over to Rebecca and shoved the phone in her face. "It's your friend Jordan. Bursa just showed up at Wabash Manor."

Rebecca's ears perked as she blinked. "That's a blast from the past. Guess she finally made it through. Guess anyone can manage anything if they keep trying long enough. I wonder if she remembers my smiling face."

Russel vaguely recalled the name but couldn't place it. Wait…wasn't that one of the monsters Rebecca met during her trip to Equestria? The bug one?

Rebecca grabbed the phone with her hooves and then looked at him apologetically. "I kinda have to keep this private…and might need to do some dancing after. I'm sorry."

He gave her one last kiss. "Told you, I knew what I was getting into. What song do you want me to put on for you?"

"Surface Pressure from Encanto," Rebecca answered immediately.

"Yikes," Russel said with a whistle.

Jordan paced the guard room with Blue Streak, Jessie, and several guards watching her.

"What's taking so long?" she fretted.

"It takes time to get a response when you just call up a Dreamwarden, ma'am," the guard at the communication station answered.

The screen suddenly shifted from black to show Rebecca. She had chocolate caught in her fur, and Blanche was standing in attendance close behind her.

"Hiya, Jor! How's my favorite former co-foalsitter-in-arms? I heard you have a guest who might be a bit cranky," Rebecca chirped.

Jordan stopped pacing. "I do, and I don't know what to do with her! I just learned that, apparently, Wabash is a special district, and what happens at Wabash Manor is my problem as far as the government is concerned, so they won't come to deal with her. I asked the guards if we could just toss her out the front gate, so she isn't at Wabash anymore, but I can get in trouble for that since it counts as me endangering the public. I'm stuck with this thing, and I don't want her here. She's a threat to my family. You have to help me!"

Rebecca nodded. "Bursa didn't hurt anybody, did she? How'd she even get there? How are you holding her? How did you even catch her?"

Jordan pointed with a hoof out toward the front of the house. "I didn't know that thing's name before, but it was Charlotte Portsmith, the young one, not Auntie, that got her here. They portaled in! I don't know if she hurt anyone because she knocked the girl into another portal when Charlotte injured her. We have Bursa sedated, and we think her health is stable. Does she regrow limbs? She lost half a leg."

The plump pegasus tilted her head. "Um…I don't know. Not sure how her changeling biology works since changelings aren't native to our universe. I'll have to sleep and dig around what I have for Luna's memories to figure that out. She probably knows. Charlotte hurt her? That's surprising. I remember Bursa kicking Applejack and Rarity's patooties, and they're way more experienced at fighting than little Charlotte." Rebecca squinted. "Why does Jess look guilty like she just put skim milk all over my cereal?"

Jordan glanced back at her best friend. "Jessie made a tiny error when trying to stop dragon-form Bursa from taking off with Charlotte."

"What did you do, Jess?" Rebecca asked with curiosity.

Jessie balled her hands into fists then released them; she refused to meet Rebecca's gaze. "I bombarded her with an extremely high pitch ringing at what seemed to be an extreme volume that only she could hear. It completely disoriented her– so much so that I nearly got that girl crushed. I should have thought it out. I'm a genius."

Jordan gave her friend a comforting smile. "You're a math genius. That doesn't mean you make the best calls on non-mathy things, and it was very effective. Everybody makes mistakes. Don't beat yourself up over it."

"Oh, that's a clever use of your powers in s fight," Rebecca complimented. She then frowned and flicked her ear. "…except I think attacking ears is a war crime."

"It is, for attacking soldiers in armies, but that wasn't a war, and Bursa isn't a soldier," Blanche clarified to her Dreamwarden.

Rebecca fluttered her lips and whinnied. "See, this is another reason I hate politics. There are things that you can do to civilians that ate perfectly legal in that instance, but a crime when you do it to a soldier. Who the heck decided that? Don't answer, Blanche; I don't want to know. I need more cake."

Blanche held up a laptop computer. "Well, you should know that drones picked up the fight with Bursa with high-definition cameras. Videos are now on social media, and it's making its way into the news cycle."

Jordan groaned. "How bad is it?"

"Chaos continues at Wabash Manor, despite Sunset Blessing vacating. Footage of a hostile encounter with a large dragon surfaced on the internet today. It is unknown yet if the dragon survived, and the new Mistress of Wabash Manor, Jordan Streak, has yet to issue any statement," Blanche read off.

"I'm supposed to issue a statement?!" Jordan asked in disbelief. "When was someone going to tell me? How do I do that?"

Rebecca waved a wing. "Don't worry, Jor. I can help you with that. I suppose I can talk to Bursa too."

"How will you help me get her off my property?" Jordan demanded. "I can't keep that thing here!"

"Um…that's a little harder," Rebecca said sheepishly. "I can't authorize any removal or incarceration by my people unless Bursa broke one of our rules, and while I'm sure she is breaking all kinds of rules that many people care about, she isn't breaking ours." The plump pegasus sat and thought. "Government won't touch her, especially now that she's been on the news. They're probably hoping you just kill her. They liked that about old SB."

Jordan gaped. "They liked Auntie murdering intruders??!"

Rebecca shrugged. "I didn't, but I see where they did. If those meanies could be radicalized enough to do something crazy like try to kill Sunset Blessing, they could be radicalized into doing just about anything. From the government's perspective, Sunset Blessing was doing them a favor by disposing of potential terrorists."

Jordan stood tall and flicked her tail. "I'm not killing her. I'm not a murderer."

"Didn't expect you to. You're like me, too nice to be pragmatic," Rebecca replied.

"I can kill her," Blanche offered.

"No, you won't," Rebecca said firmly, not looking at Blanche.

"I can make it quick and painless," Blanche continued.

"There's no murder-murder-kill-kill happening," Rebecca said with unusual sternness. Blanche scowled but nodded. Rebecca shook her head. "I've got a solution, but you won't like it. I don't like it either, but she's our best bet to get Bursa out of there with no killing involved."

"Who?" Jordan asked.

"Arachne," Rebecca concluded.