EVERFREE: The Bitter Boogie of a Mare From Skaia

And just like that, the agents' moment of peace was over. They heard shouting from outside, something about- what else- the moon, and they immediately opened the door to C-Side's and Dandy's room.
"What did you do?" Bon Bon asked pointedly.

C-Side was staring out of a window at the moon, before turning around at the two mares. "Uh, well, we moved it." C-Side simply admitted. "But not in the way we were trying to."

It was closer now, and unfortunately for all of Equestria, that meant they could get a better look at it and see that it had been tinted red. The other two mares stood to either side of the Skaian mare.

"How in the hay did you move it?! You're not even an unicorn, much less an alicorn!" Lyra shouted.

"Did- did you miss the part where we mentioned obtaining godhood from Skaia? The very obvious declaration of our role in the greater stream of the narrative we reside in?" She gave Lyra a look of minor disdain.

Everypony in the room was quiet for a second, while more shouts of distress rang through the streets outside. C-Side looked back at the moon and considered her next action. Lyra began to back away a bit.
"You're a god." Lyra stated.
"Yes." Dandy said.
"Like Celestia, or Discord."
"Yuh-huh." C-Side muttered.
"And you have some weird brain thing that makes you act like two different ponies."
"Glad you noticed, dear." Dandy affirmed.
"And we have to look after you." By this point, Lyra was backed up against the wall.

"That’s what you said to us, yeah." C-Side looked over to Bon Bon, and raised a hoof at Lyra. "See, this is why I didn't wanna tell her the doozy. She can't even handle the idea that I'm dubiously immortal, and if that's enough to unjive her vibes, then I don't wanna tell her the second thing. You get me?"

Bon Bon tried to articulate a response, only for Lyra to interject, “Wait! Hold on! Dubiously immortal?! What does that mean??” It wasn’t a question of shock or fear, but of sheer bewilderment.
Dandy put her hoof back down gently. “Short answer: We can’t die unless our death is narrative-ly heroic or just.”
Lyra raised her eyebrows, signalling C-Side to elaborate.

C-Side blew a short raspberry. “If we die saving a life/many lives, that’s a heroic death, we don’t come back. If we die because what we did makes our death necessary, like murdering a buncha people, that’s a just death, we don’t come back.”
“But otherwise you’re fine?” Lyra tilted her head.

“Yeah, though it’s a gross oversimplification on the whole thing. But, like, I’ll be real, I feel like there are many ponies out there who want to take a stab at it. And if they get me, and what they think they did was necessary for their narrative perception of the world.. y’know. We’d beef it. I mentioned our worry to Twilight, and, she assigned you to us. So.. sorry? You gotta understand we’ve only been immortal for... uh... for, uh..”

She went silent for a time, before muttering. “How long has it been..?” For a moment, she looked lost.
Bon Bon cleared her throat, and said, “Are there any ponies that you think may come for you?”
C-Side returned to the present and shrugged. “Celestia.”
Lyra’s jaw dropped a bit. Bon Bon took a deep breath, and steadied herself. “Okay. Why do you think that?”
“Well, I just showed up outta nowhere, took her sisters vital magic pool, she’s having to keep her sister on life support, and we have already started fucking around with the moon. I dunno about you, but I’d hate me too. This was just supposed to be another Tuesday for her.”

Bon Bon pursed her lips. "Hmm. Right. The moon. Why did you do that?"

"It's because we figured, we might have Luna's magic pool, right? So this was a test to see if that was right, and, yeah. From there, I was trying to move it based on our understanding of gravitational pull - see, our planet was heliocentric, it orbited around the sun, but I think this place works on geocentrism? I think I'm gonna need to do some research on how the sun and moon work in this universe and I really don't want to talk to Celestia about that because I'm like half-sure she hates my guts, so, can we go to the library before sunrise tonight?"

"If you have Princess Luna’s magic, can’t you just like.. give it back to her..?” Lyra asked, finally approaching again.

"Yeah, but like. We don't have complete control over it. I don't understand the link we've established between our own power and the lunar magic of this world, so if I tried to return it without properly disconnecting from our form who knows what would happen!" C-Side was kind of dramatic, passively floating up into the air, and gesturing vaguely about her thought processes. “Like, Lyra, you’d probably know - magic here is no joke, yeah? You can seriously injure yourself and/or others if you use it wrong?”

For once, Lyra felt like this conversation might be relatively normal. “Oh, yea, totally, tooootally. This one time, Twilight did a spell that made everypony in Ponyville fight over her childhood plushie.”

“Yeah, or the time that Trixie Lulamoon bought an artifact that gave her extreme power and cut off Ponyville from any outside help, or the time that Applebloom used Zecora’s alchemy to develop cutie pox on accident, or the time that Pinkie Pie cloned herself like twenty times with a magical pond..”

C-Side kept on rambling about almost every magical incident that had occurred in this town. She floated around aimlessly, as if she had zero gravity, idly bumping into the walls as Bon Bon and Lyra simply gawked at her specific knowledge of past events in Ponyville. Bon Bon and Lyra looked at each other and shrugged. “She already knows what’s going on, I guess.” Lyra conceded.

The Castle of Friendship had an impressive library, at least from C-Side’s perspective. She hadn’t been in many libraries, but the ones she did go to were memorable, and this one took the cake. The Skaian mare was nose deep in books, as well as generally buried in them. It seemed the laws of physics were entirely different to what her old universe was like, and so she was basically having to learn how the world worked from the ground up again. This frustrated C-Side immensely, and Dandy always had a go-to solution for when she felt her alter grow irritated.

“I think we should take a break, Sweetheart.” Dandy muttered to C-Side. She responded with a soft shake of the head, and stared more intently at the book’s text, only to have her eyes glaze over. Even in other universes, academic jargon was still a Sisyphean task to get through.

“Oh, hello again, you three.” Twilight approached the table where Lyra and Bon Bon were disinterestedly reading some random fictional books they had found to pass the time. She seemed kind of frazzled, her eyes a little baggy from a day of royal stress. “Four? Sorry, it’s a little confusing with you.” Twilight gave a weak smile.

“Hello again, Princess Twilight.” Dandy opened. “If you want to avoid confusion, using ‘CD’ to refer to us collectively is fine.” She gave a warm smile to counter Twilight’s.

“I saw you managed to get the moon to move, which is, impressive for an Earth pony, to say the least! Could you maybe.. warn me next time, though? I just had to deal with a horde of reporters asking why the moon looks red now.”

“Sorry.” C-Side muttered. “We’re gonna try again soon, maybe today, to see if we can’t at least get the moon to set properly. Our understanding of what the celestial bodies are like was wrong because we were using the model of physics from our universe.”

“Princess Twilight? I don’t think she’s an earth pony.” Lyra whispered.

Twilight glanced over at CD, and saw her slowly sinking further into the book to hide. Twilight allowed Lyra and Bon Bon to report in their findings, and was a bit stunned to say the least.
“I’m not mad at you, but how come you didn’t tell me any of these things, CD?”
C-Side avoided eye contact. “You didn’t really ask much about where we came from. You were more focused on the fact that we came back from death, and we were like... super exhausted. Back-from-the-grave exhausted.”
“I suppose that’s fair. I am curious now, though... where did you come from, and how do physics differ from here?”

“Well.. uh.. we’re from another universe, as you know now. Our planet was just called Earth, it sure was An Earth. Everything in the universe was kinda based on gravity. Like.. imagine a blanket. The more mass something has, the more give it has in the blanket, right? Well, like, our Earth orbited around the Sun because the sun was massive. And the moon orbited around the Earth because the Earth was comparatively more massive. But here, the sun and moon aren’t.. that.”

“I see! And why do you want to move the moon again?” Twilight asked, taking a seat near C-Side and listening with interest.
“Well for starters I think it’d be nice for things to keep on running even while I try to find out how to detach Luna’s magic from our Skaia-given abilities and/or magic pool. If we have a greater mastery over Luna’s magic, we’ll run a lesser risk when we inevitably sever it from ourselves and return it to her. The sooner, the better, so if I figure this basic thing out, we’ll be able to work on the much more complex thing.”
“Very well. And this.. ‘Sky-uh?’”
“Skaia.”
“Skaia. Is it going to come for this universe?” Twilight asked, a touch more seriously.
CD looked Twilight straight in the eye. “No.”
“How can you be so sure?”

“This universe is so young. I can feel it, see it, breathe it. It hasn’t even been that long, relatively speaking, since its birth, and it’s got a looooong way to go before its death. The only way it would die is if something were to come kill it prematurely, like if Jack Noir, or Lord English, or Her Imperious Condescension found a way out of Paradox Space to come here, specifically. I don’t think they would because none of them have any reason to do so.”
“Who are...?” Twilight began.
“Some multi-verse grade assholes. I’m surprised me and my friends didn’t run into them out there.”
“C-Side, watch your language! We’re talking to a Princess!” Bon Bon gasped.
CD blinked. “I mean. We’re a god. I think we’re basically on her level.”
Bon Bon scowled. “There’s still such a thing as manners. Or did you not have those in your universe?”
C-Side leaned back in her chair from laughter, to which Lyra giggled in turn to herself. Bon Bon was initially a little taken aback, but when she saw Lyra laughing, a smile spread on her face.

“Hey, you’re smart.” Dandy offered when C-Side was done laughing. “You reckon you might be able to spare some time to help us get through these books?”

“I’d love to, but I don’t really have the energy..” Twilight admitted. “Honestly, teaching somepony else about the laws of physics sounds like a vacation for me.”

Bon Bon and Lyra saw something appear above them. A large, rectangular card, completely straight-edged and depicting some kind of thermos against a perfectly white square background. There was a little section of text beneath the image.

C-Side began muttering something to herself. “Coffee, god, n’ cigarettes, are all that I need.. s’all that’cha need just to break this routine..” As she did, the text began to highlight the words she muttered. The secret agents exchanged a look, and curiously, Lyra reached toward it.

“I’m sorry?” Twilight began, before being surprised by the sudden appearance of a thermos, which landed right in front of C-Side with no ceremony.

“Would some coffee help?” C-Side offered, holding up the thermos with her hoof. The mysterious card disappeared, causing Lyra to flop onto the table with the grace of a unicycle with a missing tire. Twilight glanced back over at the two, and shrugged off the weird display.

“Is it... fresh?” She asked with a mixture of desire and hesitation.

“I mean.. I technically brewed it in a place where time doesn’t exist, and the... method of storage I have keeps things in a sort of state of stasis. It’s about as fresh as it gets.”

“Hold on! You can’t just ignore what you did! What was that?” Lyra asked as she recovered from her mishap, brushing off a bit of dust from her shoulder.

“Guh, fiiine.” C-Side stuck out her tongue a little bit as she gathered her thoughts. “It’s something called a ‘Captchalogue’. Or a ‘Fetch Modus’. Pick your poison really. It’s like a subspace storage system that allows you to stash a lot of stuff, the catch is that every single variant of the system has some sort of funky ritual behind it when it comes to actually recovering or organizing the items you store.”

“And the ritual for yours is..?”

Dandy giggled, and then C-Side looked away shyly. “Karaoke.” They answered in unison.

Twilight was intrigued, and grabbed the thermos with her magic. “Really? So you can just sing a song’s lyrics and it’ll give you the item? I think that might be very useful for Equestria.. and maybe even beyond that! Is there any way you can replicate this technology for everypony?” She then moved to take a sip.

“Oh, you’re gonna wanna be careful, it’s super loaded on caffeine. And really-”

C-Side was interrupted by the horrid splash of coffee spat onto her face. “...hot.”

One sip was all that it took. Twilight was back in action, unnervingly so. She raced around the library, with CD floating behind, as they grabbed the books that were actually relevant to CD’s plight. As they made circles around the library, Bon Bon and Lyra sat and watched the chaos unfold.
“Do you think we can handle her?” Lyra asked.
Bon Bon rested her head on her hoof and clicked her tongue. “Well.. she’s at least sentient and capable of reason. That’s already way better than the bugbear that made me go on the run last time.”
“Yeah, and she’s an alien, which is like.. so cool. Weird and unsettling that she’s a god, but still cool.”
“Do you actually believe that nonsense?” Bon Bon asked.

Lyra looked at her best friend with a hint of shock. “What do you mean nonsense?”
“It’s obvious she’s just a weird pony with weird magical powers. There’s no such thing as a Skaia, or other universes. I feel like it’s all delusion! Why else would she start spontaneously acting like somepony else out of nowhere? She’s just not all there in the head.”
Lyra gave Bon Bon a look. “Bon Bon.. I think she’s telling the truth. You saw the weird card.. thing. She flies and uses magic without any obvious indicator that she’s magical.”
“Then how does she know the history of Ponyville? To the point where she was able to detail magical mishaps that were covered up by SMILE?” Bon Bon retorted.
“Well, it’s that.. Seer of Blood thing, obviously!”
“I’m not convinced. If she showed me something that proves her whole.. ‘universe’ being real, then I’ll consider the rest of it to maybe be true. But for now, I just think she’s as weird as Discord.”

By the time that Twilight was done lecturing, the crest of dawn began to call to the sky of its arrival. Bon Bon and Lyra had long since fallen asleep, and the two were magically placed onto the comfiest sofa that Twilight could find in the library.

CD had a lot to work with now - the sun and moon were not physical objects, but magical constructs that were essentially massive invocation spells. The planet itself had no need for orbit because the Sun and Moon were part of it, and outer space, as far as anypony knew, was a sort of bubble surrounding the planet. The other realms were other bubbles, and so those realities had their own laws of physics to deal with.

And so, sleep deprived and riding on coffee, Twilight and CD ascended to the highest point of the building. For some reason, needlessly dramatic music played as the duo climbed the stairs. The moon had continued to sit patiently, awaiting a new order. Twilight wasn’t sure if CD actually had the capability to move the moon, and looked on with curiosity, prepared to take all of the notes in the name of Scientific Discovery. CD reared onto her hind legs, pressed her forelimbs onto her head, and concentrated.

The moon grew redder, the bloody symbol etched in the stone above glowing hot as melted irons, and the symbol on CD’s chest burned just as brightly. Red and Blue veins shimmered through CD’s body, and she began to heave with the effort and concentration of moving the moon as she did before - but instead of calling it away and sideways, like she had assumed on the gravitational scale, she moved it downward in an arc along the sky. It dipped forward, not used to the humane hands that were currently touching it, seemingly groaning in defiance before it gave way to its new master’s commands, and settled down beyond the horizon to sleep. CD then dropped to the floor, and fell asleep on the balcony, the last of her energy spent. Twilight shrugged, popped open the flask of coffee that C-Side had been carrying, and had another drink before walking back into the castle to be ready for today's political kerfuffle.