A Shadow of Myself

Andrea stood, gun in hand, with one eye on the horizon and one eye on Shrieky. Shrieky insisted that nothing would attack them here, but none of their party were convinced of that. Andrea's gun might be utterly ineffective if a Decepticon attacked, but it might distract the bots to buy time.

Josie and Phobia were scouting the area while Sapphire, Luster, and Cadence stood watching Shrieky work. The Crusaders were examining the sparse plant life, helping Apple Bloom take samples. The country-sounding earth pony had a scientific background in botany, so she was fascinated by the grass. Excited by grass…how dull could you get? The Crusaders were far removed from the fillies that the old cartoon depicted. They'd supposedly been adventurers in their younger adult days, but now, middle-aged, they were teachers and researchers. That was all well and good, but the idea of getting excited about grass growing labeled them as boring as sin in Andrea's book.

Whatever Shrieky was doing wasn't much better. She was mixing various herbs and chalks in a bowl, grinding them together as she chanted in some unfathomable language that sometimes seemed barely human with its high-pitch nasal sounds. How this would get them into the mound was anybody's guess, but Shrieky was insistent this was what had to be done.

Sapphire walked over to her and sat down beside her. "Isn't adventure riveting? Nothing like sitting around and waiting for something to happen; that's ninety-nine percent of adventuring."

"I'd rather things not happen. People get hurt or die when something happens," Andrea replied. Yeah, she was bored, but she wouldn't trade what they were doing now for being shot at.

Sapphire kicked up some grass, earning a look of reproach from Apple Bloom. The pegasus gave the earth pony a brief apologetic look, then gently patted the grass back into place with her hoof.

"True enough, but I still feel useless when nothing of note is happening. Feels like there’s so much to do and not a lot of time to do it. And I want to be involved in everything but I can’t be and that’s annoying me, and I’m really not a fan of being annoyed,," Sapphire snorted and sighed. "Sorry, I shouldn't be complaining; it's foalish. I'm just sick of the ground. We've been stuck under it for days, and now that we are out from under it, I'm still stuck sitting on it."

Andrea could understand the feeling. She was stir-crazy, too, after all that time in a cave, and was not looking forward to more caves. "Better off than me. I had one job, and now I don't even have that," she replied bitterly. "Anyway, if we end up attacking Care-A-Lot, you'll be our biggest asset. I mean, it is a cloud city; you'll tear that place up."

Sapphire shook her head. "Ripping a cloud city to shreds of a last resort. I'd end up killing most of those bears if I destroyed their city, and I'd rather not have that blood on my hooves. Making it so no one can come or go without destroying it, now that's a trickier feat to pull off. Truth be told if the stakes weren’t so high I would be excited for the challenge."

Shrieky stopped chanting and set her pestle she was using to crush the pigments aside. "It is time for the next stage. I require your silence."

That felt like a pointed remark, considering only Andrea and Sapphire had been talking. Whatever, at least they were getting closer to something happening.

Shrieky put her right hand in the bowl, submerged it in the paint, then continued chanting gibberish. This went on for about thirty seconds, then she removed her hand and stood before walking up to the mound. She did more chanting and placed her red-painted hand on the side of the mound, removed it, leaving a red handprint, and then placed it a short distance away and repeated the chant. She repeated this process over and over again until she had made seven such handprints– one up high and centered, three in the next row below the original, one centered below that line, and two more near the bottom. She then touched her hands together, smearing the paint on her clean hand, and raised both high above her head, chanting loudly. This was some weird pagan-druid crap. Did Grimlock and the other Dinobots care about all this?

After about a minute of ear-splitting chanting, there was a rumble, and part of the mound suddenly revealed the groove of an enormous doorway, big enough for one of the transformers to get through. The door slid downward, and when fully opened, it revealed a massive uneven staircase descending into darkness.

"As riveting as all that chanting and ceremony was, I can’t help but feel that there was an easier and more efficient way to go about all this,” Sapphire glibly remarked.

"Sapphire, not now,” Cadence lightly chastised. She turned to Shrieky. "I'm assuming those chants were in the native language from before the movie reels were found."

Shrieky set her bowl of paint aside. "They are in the ancient tongue. We haven't spoken that way in millennia."

"Is that the standard procedure for performing spells on this world?" Luster asked.

"One of the methods. There are typically magic words," Shrieky replied.

Luster made a quill and parchment appear before her and began making notes. "Interesting, very classical."

Sweetie Belle walked up next to Luster and looked at what was being written. "Don't forget to record the exact layout of handprints in that spell matrix. Note she only used her right hand to make the imprints. Hey, Apple Bloom, can you look at that paint and give us a report of the properties?"

"On it!" Apple Bloom said as she hurried over. "Scootaloo, can you hurry up finishing that soil sample?"

Scootaloo looked at where Apple Bloom had been working. "Uh, I suppose so."

Andrea rolled her eyes. Four nerds. She knew research was part of this scouting team's job, but she had absolutely zero interest. Hopefully, Josie and Phobia would be back soon so they could get a move on. She wanted to get in, find whatever they sought, and get out. They weren't going to fight any care bears or Decepticons here. With Charlotte gone, that's all Andrea had left.

"There ain't nothin' fancy about these here pigments. Some berries mixed with ocher," Apple Bloom said after her examination. "Was anythin' done to them before this?"

Shrieky gave her a look like she was dumb. "Nothing was done. They are what they are. The magic comes from the mixing and the words."

"Hmm," Apple Bloom hummed, "Andrea, ya think ya can go crystal pony and see if ya can get anything from this?"

Andrea sighed and put her gun away. "Guess I'm not doing anything anyway. You know I'm no expert, right? I can only describe what I feel in vague terms."

Apple Bloom nodded. "Ay understand. Ay just need to know if there is anythin' there."

"Yeah, sure, whatever," Andrea said as she adjusted her earrings, shifting to crystal pony form. She walked over to the paint and focused.

After a few seconds, she turned away. "There's a tiny bit there. It doesn't seem like it is strong enough for a spell." She looked at the doorway then at the ground where the door had slid down. "There's more down there, more than this, but it still doesn't feel strong. Can someone do me a favor and adjust my earrings back? I don't want to have to fuss with them."

Luster lit her horn, and Andrea could feel the magic work around her ears, a tingling sensation; then she shifted back to human form.

"Intuits aren't typically violent, but they might kill for those earrings," Shrieky said. Before Andrea could reply, Shrieky turned her attention to Cadence. "We have about ten minutes before the door shuts, and I have to go through all that again."

"We wait on Phobia and Josie to return. We aren't going in there without their eyes, and we aren't leaving them stuck outside alone," Cadence responded.

The Crusaders were still examining that paint. Andrea walked away, shaking her head.

"It seems understandable that you would be annoyed by all this,” Sapphire remarked, following a comfortable distance away. "Guessing by where you grew up, I would assume you'd not have great experiences with ponies picking a magical problem apart."

Andrea raised an eyebrow at the pegasus. "This is a surprise. You've been avoiding talking about her."

Sapphire fluffed her wings. "It was a general statement."

Andrea did a half-chuckle. "Well, if you must know, you-know-who never did research like this. She'd look at someone doing something, watch them for a bit, and never ask any questions, or she'd read some report or book or whatever. She seldom wrote things down, at least that I ever saw, and I paid attention. She never talked to herself, never gave any indication she was learning and figuring out weird new applications for whatever she was seeing. She just tucked the information away. I assume she made some records, but never in anyone's presence. She was always low-key and secretive about research. Therefore, I didn't have to deal with this. The only thing I had to deal with was her standing there, silently watching, making you wonder what's going on in her head."

"You sound homesick?" Sapphire asked.

Andrea stared upward. "I wouldn't mind having the old coot standing around watching me like a hawk. At least it is something familiar. It would also mean there's some chance in hell I get to see my sister again– the real one, not the old bitch."

"You'll see your sister again," Sapphire assured her confidently.

"Because her other self is a survivor," Andrea said in response to what had been unsaid. "Why won't you say anything about her, not even mention her name? You two used to be friends."

Sapphire looked up at the sky. "Looks like the former Dreamwarden and Josie are returning. Good. It saves me from a conversation I'd rather not have. Let me summarize for you. A long time ago, she was a vile mare who cobbled together an empire with violence and deceit. But it's easy for ponies to take things too far when they can get their way, and I thought after she lost it all that she had had a change of heart, that she could be better or at least a normal pony deserving of redemption. But then she was given power, real power, to do anything that she wanted, and that revealed the real her. A monster who sees others beneath her, insects to be crushed under her hooves at her inconvenience. So when she showed me who she really was, I believed her, and now she's dead to me."

Andrea was taken aback by the barrage of information. "Did you have that all thought up?"

"Yes, I was expecting the question to come up at some point. What? You never have scripts pre-written in your head for future conversations?"

Andrea grimaced. "I hate to defend her, but I think that is too harsh. She never goes out looking for trouble. She is just defending the family. Yeah, her methods get extreme when she does, but those who attack us have already gone to extremes."

Sapphire shook her head. "She could have left Earth anytime she wanted to protect her family. The princesses gave her ample opportunities, but she decided to stay on Earth, endangering all of you, because it was more convenient for her to let you stay in danger and her murder than it was for her just to do the rational thing and put an end to it. She had to stay and show how everyone else was nothing to her."

"So, you wanted her to run away?" Andrea asked.

Sapphire shook her head. "You shouldn't defend her. I don't want to imagine how long she's been using rhetorical tricks to convince you of how necessary whatever she did was."

"You didn't answer the question," Andrea said. "I think you're wrong. It's not looking down on others, at least not everyone. I think it is vindictiveness. She wants to hurt Shimmerists, just like they want to hurt her, and that's who's always attacking and who she is killing. When we first met her, she gave this long lecture about Tom and Jerry, you know, the cat and mouse."

"I know who Tom and Jerry are," Sapphire said flatly.

"She said they always kept hurting each other, always instigating the fight to go on. I think that's what is going on. She and the Shimmerists are Tom and Jerry," Andrea explained.

"That doesn't make it any better, possibly worse," Sapphire replied.

Andrea watched as Josie and Phobia landed. "My first encounter with Shimmerists was them trying to murder my baby sister. I got hit by what should have been a lethal blast that was aimed at her by a Shimmerist. They've killed guards on the property that I considered friends. I would have resented her for running away if she did. You don't run away from evil; you face it. The only reason I don't resent her for leaving for Equestria now is because Charlotte needed her, and she was looking for a way to make sure those who killed Kristin were brought down. She's a monster that kills monsters, and the monsters she kills are the ones that want to hurt us. I don't like her, but I empathize with her, and I won't cry for the spilled blood of Shimmerists that came looking to spill blood."

"Would you ever have had to deal with those monsters if not for her?" Sapphire asked.

Andrea shrugged. "Those fights were already in progress before we were involved. The Shimmerists were the ones that pulled us in. If I had to blame someone for escalating things from there, it would be Triss. She should never have given Charlotte those powers. Charlotte's powers are what kept us chained to Sunset, and it is because of Charlotte's powers my sister is dead, and we are where we are. That's no fault of Charlotte's or Sunset's; that's all Triss."

Sapphire snorted. "Let's say we see things differently. I'd rather not fight. I know you've gone through hell, and it was no fault of yours. Just say you aren't going to look at Sumset as an example. No one should ever look to her as an example of what they should do."

"Sunset is a monster; I don't intend to be a monster. I'll never have her power to be a monster anyway," Andrea said tiredly. She looked at Sapphire. "Sunset is in Equestria, where she never has to deal with Shimmerists again, so hopefully, that's the end of it. I'm tired of it all, and I imagine she is too. That long nightmare is over. That's what matters."

"You're too young to understand," Sapphire said.

Andrea's face hardened. "You are older than me, and I'm sure you're wiser about plenty of things, most things even, but you never had to deal with this. You've never had to live your life in constant unending fear. I don't think you can understand what it is like or what it does to you. When we needed help, where the fuck was the government? Where the fuck were all the powerful ponies other than her? I'll tell you where. The government secretly hoped that someone would off Sunset and probably us too, because we were inconvenient to exist, so they didn't lift a finger to aid us. The rest of you were making moral judgments and letting this all play out without doing anything to put a stop to it. In the meantime, we woke up every day wondering if someone would try to kill us again today."

"Did you expect us to spend our lives defending your household from Sunset's past sins returning to haunt her?" Sapphire scoffed.

"I don't know!" Andrea said as she started crying. "I don't think anyone had a solution to it all– not Sunset, not us, not you. Sunset went too far as things went on, but I don't know what anyone was supposed to do. There was no way out."

Sapphire gave her a sympathetic look. "Sunset could have left Earth like I said. That was the solution."

Andrea wiped her face. "Maybe running away was the only solution Sunset could have made; maybe she should have abandoned us and run. Then we would have had Charlotte's magic spark at some random time and place, and it would all be worse, not that it has any bearing on things. I don't know. Running seems wrong; I told you, you don't run from evil."

"But she wasn't the person to fight it, and she knew it," Sapphire asserted. "You never saw her cry over how terrible a pony she was. You didn't have to be part of the interventions when she practically tried to kill herself. She was never strong enough emotionally or spiritually to endure those hardships without blackening her soul. She knew this, and she knew the best option was to get out. She was told that tike and tike again. I told her as much myself, but she stayed and let herself go down the abyss. Sunset made her choice to be a monster. She had an out, not a proud out, but an out, one we all begged her to take."

Andrea watched as Sapphire spread her wings wide.

"So, yes, I understand that the situation made her a monster. I don't need that explained to me. What you need to understand is she chose to stay in that situation, knowing she'd become a monster," Sapphire said in a firm tone. "She chose what she would become, and I wash my hooves of her for it. Yeah, she's out of that situation now, but she's shown her nature, and when push comes to shove, we know what she'll do in a crisis. She'll take the dark path."

"Excuse me."

They both turned to see Phobia standing there.

"I know my mother is a figure who can inspire impassioned debates, but it is time to get moving before that door shuts," the former Dreamwarden said

Andrea looked at Sapphire again. "I'm sorry. I didn't know you tried to help her. I'll never let myself do what she did. Let's drop the subject."

Sapphire nodded stiffly. "A good idea. For what it's worth, I wish someone had a plan to stop those attacks despite her not running as she should have, so things never went as far as they did. You're right; no one knew what to do after she refused to leave, including me. Anyway, let's go explore some more caves."

"You are not the only one to react to Optimus Prime with awe," Heavyheart said as she prepared the mat to sleep on. "Sapphire Sky reacted the same way. It seems strange that he should cause such excitement on another world. Charlotte Human doesn't react the same way."

Sunset Blessing glanced around the small cavern. There wasn't much here, just some metal crates. Heavyheart assumed the Autobots hollowed out this assuming they would rescue more intuits, but it only served as useless space right now. Rescue, they called it. Personally, she'd rather be back in the Forest of Feelings. The only saving grace of this place was that she had Empathy with her again.

"I became a massive transformer fan later in life," Sunset Blessing replied, still examining all the walls. "When I adopted my…my sons, I was looking for toys and games for them to play with, and I wanted something I was familiar with, so I could spend time bonding with them. Transformer toys had never gone out of fashion from when I was a child. I admit I got a bit more into it than they did. I think it was the ∆∆∆∆∆∆∆ that fueled it."

The pony had used a word that Heavyheart didn't understand. Should she ask for clarification of the term or ignore it? She did catch some sadness from the pony when the pony spoke of her sons. The last time Charlotte Human was here, she had mentioned that the bears had killed one of Sunset Blessing's sons. Sunset Blessing was not a human, so Heavyheart had no obligation to serve, and she gained no sustenance from doing so. However, she did want to make the pony sympathetic to their cause, and serving her might help in that. What to do?

"Do the Autobots have any way of monitoring this room?" Sunset Blessing asked. "I see no cameras or recording devices."

Heavyheart shook her head. "No, they don't. The Autobots have limited resources, and those resources aren't going to be used to monitor a mostly empty side cavern that goes nowhere. You will have full privacy."

"Correction," Sunset Blessing said, turning and looking her in the eyes. "We will have full privacy."