Now It's Our Problem

by SisterHorseteeth

Rating: teen
Tags: Pinkie Pie (EqG), Comedy, Equestria Girls, Crossover, Sex, Sunset Shimmer, Profanity, Sugarcoat, Sour Sweet, Sunny Flare
Length: 20838

Three Shadowbolts on the eve of graduation start a podcast about magical disasters – a conceptual crossover with Well There's Your Problem, a podcast about engineering disasters.

Late in the evening, in the early summer of 2017, the EweChannel user 'silicapacket99' uploads a video that's a bit different from her usual content of several-hour-long, no-commentary let's-plays of various city-builder, factory manager, and colony-sim games.

The title: |Now It's Our Problem Podcast - Episode 1: The Fall Formal Inferno|.
The thumbnail: a .png of a horse that's been 'shopped directly into a burning building, both of which were probably taken from Giggle Images; all overlaid with the video title in bold text, plus the subtitle, |Feat. Sunset Shimmer|.

Might as well check it out. Her previous attempt to use her channel for something other than silent game footage kinda stalled out when the workload got to being more than she could balance with her education, but it was definitely interesting while it lasted.

Three Shadowbolts on the eve of graduation start a podcast about magical disasters – a conceptual crossover with Well There's Your Problem, a podcast about engineering disasters.

Rated Teen for vulgar discussions between young adults about motherfucking, pony profanity, and Pedestrian politics and religion.

Published 2024-04-19 01:00:00 UTC
Last updated 2024-04-19 01:00:00 UTC

Episode 1

The EweChannel video begins in medias res.

Well, if ‘in medias res’ meant ‘before the camera was supposed to start recording’. Pre medias res? The editing interface of a slideshow presentation program lurches nakedly onto the screen, spoiling the first half-dozen or so slides.

“Are we going?”, asks the dull, nasal voice of a woman who sounds like a deeply-bored, middle-aged professor. “I still have no idea how this thing works.” The last time she spoke on this channel, about three-and-a-half years ago, she was a preteen girl who still somehow sounded like a bored, middle-aged professor.

“Seriously?! Did we not just rehearse this?”, hisses a shriller voice, straining to vent her critique while simultaneously making as little noise as possible. “Don’t start the recording if you’re not ready.”

“I wanted to make sure everything else was working, too.” silicapacket99 hovers between the programs in her taskbar, hunting for something and eventually pouncing on the screen recorder, which opens up to reveal a recursive spiral of delayed screen-captures that can only lead into the primordial void before creation. “Ah, good. It’s recording.”

“Yes, I know it’s recording, dearie. The red dot on your taskbar told me as much. How many years have you done this without figuring that out?”

“Oh, I already knew. This is what is known as a ‘joke’.”

“I’m not laughing.”

“That’s intentional. Frustrating and infuriating you on purpose is the–”

“–Is the most reliable legal way to get me to come out of my shell. Yes, yes, I know; you’re right; thank you, Dottoressa. Well. I suppose ‘co-host’ is a speaking role. Now, would you be so kind as to quit wasting your own hard-drive space already? At least until the rest of us are here?”

The host clicks over to Clarity, the audio editor, where two screen-names can be seen in the audio feed: “MysteriousFlareDoWell” and “podcast”.

MysteriousFlareDoWell’s equalizer bars flare up as the chiding continues, “And, forgive me my pride, but remind me why on Pedes I’m not in charge, again? You know, since you always come to me for tech support, anyways?”

“Because you’re such a neurotic perfectionist that you’d never finish editing,“ Professor Podcast plainly answers. “You remember the Chance to Prance.”

“…Ugh. Granted, I’d certainly prefer not to be mugged at pendantpoint again, all for an unfinished MP4 file – but we can’t put out something this sloppy. What happened to upholding CPA’s excellence?”

“Awh, how adorable!~ You sound just like your mother!”, interjects a third girl, with the worst mic quality you’ve ever heard. “Shame that attitude led to her resigning in disgrace.”

“Can I not go five minutes without being compared to her?”, the mama’s girl mutters. “And hey! What is with your audio quality?! Why aren’t you on Clarity?!”

“I would also like to know why you’re shouting into my mic from across the room,” the host says, nonplussed.

“–She’s what–?”

“Oh, MoMo wanted to borrow my mic for her garage band, and, delightful friend that I am, I let her!~ Then she lost it. Under my name.”

FlareDoWell lets out a withering sigh. “And the librarian won’t let you borrow another, I presume. Look, how about we tell our guest to postpone for another thirty minutes? I’ll run over and loan you one of my spares, and as a plus, I’ll bring my mic so the three of us can all record in the same room.”

Suddenly, a third name pops up in the audio feed: CranberryCommissar666. “No need!~”, the Commissar declares, her audio quality only marginally improved. “I found a spare in my desk.”

“That’s better,” states silicapacket99.

“Is it really?”, whines FlareDoWell. “The quality, the unpreparedness… this is podcasting poison.”

“I’ll cut it all out in post,” she assures her histrionic cohost.

It was not cut out in post.

“Are we ready now?”, she asks, tabbing over to the slideshow again.

“No! We’re waiting on our–”

The boop of another connection signal cuts FlareDoWell off. As the host tabs back over to Clarity, the fourth guest, PhoenixRising, apologizes, “I’m sorry, everybody! There was a ‘First Guest Spot On A Podcast’ surprise party waiting for me when I got home. I tried to slip away as soon as I could!” The clinking of flatware on a plate is just barely audible on her feed.

“Get us some leftover cake and we’ll call it even,” the host states.

“Deal.”

FlareDoWell claps. “Alright, dearies, are we all ready to start?”

The other two hosts and the guest establish that they’re all more or less ready-to-go whenever in a crash of crosstalk.

“Then now, you may resume the recording.”

The host once again tabs over to the powerpoint, and this time she actually hits the play button. A plain picture of a suburban highschool fills the screen. “We’ve been recording for the last three minutes.”

A muffled groan bleeds through FlareDoWell’s hands, while Phoenix and the Commissar snicker at her pain. “…Let’s just roll introductions.”

“Yes. Let’s,” silicapacket99 says. “Hello, and welcome to ‘Now It’s Our Problem’: a podcast about magical disasters.”

“Which is, incidentally, also a disaster,” the Commissar cheerfully volunteers.

FlareDoWell clarifies, “Of the distinctly non-magical kind.”

“Yes,” affirms the host. “It also has a slideshow component. My name is Sugarcoat and I am the owner of this EweChannel account. My pronouns are she, her, herself, and so on. I am a senior at Crystal Preparatory Academy in Canterlot and, over the course of my education, I have personally witnessed a number of magical incidents. I also like to hear myself talk, so starting a podcast about it was only the logical next step.” Sugarcoat turns to the Commissar in real life and says, “Your turn,” her voice quieted by literally speaking away from the microphone.

“Why hello there,” the Commissar coos, “I’m Sour Sweet!~ Pronouns are… whatever, she/her. I’m Sugarcoat’s dorm-mate at Crystal Prep and when I heard she was going to do this podcast without me, I threatened to kick her ass bluer than it already is.”

The blue girl is utterly unfazed. “I was going to ask you anyway. You just ambushed me in the girls’ locker room before I could do so.”

“How thoughtful. Aren’t you just the sweetest?~”

“I am.”

“Anyhow,” grumbles Sour, “I was there for the Friendship Games Fiasco of 2015 and have craved that kind of chaos ever since. Could you imagine if Crystal Prep got magic powers, too?”

The guest audibly shudders.

“Yeah, that’s right! Quiver in fear! The Commissar of Laughter is here!”

“I think that’s why Harmony didn’t pick you guys,” Phoenix proposes.

Sour doesn’t seem to notice. “…It’s not fair. Your girl can just turn cupcakes into hand-grenades, but if I want to do some, to quote MoMo, ‘sicknasty Eagleeye shit’ with exploding arrows for funsies, I have to have awkward conversations with federal agents at my door asking me questions about the recipes I’ve been looking up online…”

“Moving on,” FlareDoWell interjects, “I’m your third host, Sunny Flare (@scareflare on Ritter and you will never learn my MyStable handle). As for pronouns… she/her, for the time being.”

“Awwwww, you and ‘they’ had a falling-out?”, teases Sour.

“Give ‘them’ a month,” grunts Sugarcoat. “‘They’ will come crawling back.”

Sunny resignedly confirms this. “‘They’ always does. –Do. –Ugh. …This is why I dumped ‘them’.” Dramatically sighing, she continues, “I am, of course, also a senior at Crystal Preparatory Academy, and was likewise present for the Friendship Games. The three of us were, in fact, among our school’s top five competitors fielded for the competition, for which we all bear a significant degree of culpability in the disruption thereof.”

“This is not a confession of legal guilt,” Sugarcoat hastily insists, “and we bear no legal responsibility for the irresponsible actions of one former Principal Abacus Cinch, on account of we were dumb teenagers and she was a grown woman placed in direct responsibility of her students.”

“…Right,” Sunny uncomfortably agrees, her voice much quieter. “Ever am I grateful for quality headphones. I do believe Mother’s downstairs right now, and it would be most unfortunate were she to overhear the things that may be said about her over the course of these programs. I did not agree to this venture just to have a platform for defaming my mother in the comfort of our shared home.” Dropping to a whisper, she adds, “Not exclusively, at least.”

“But before we can dive deep into all of our numerous psychological hangups,” Sour announces, “we have a guest!”

“We have a guest,” agrees Sugarcoat. “Guest, introduce yourself.”

“Uh, hi!”, stammers PhoenixRising through a mouthful of cake, her fork clattering loudly onto her plate. Swallowing, she continues, “I’m Sunset Shimmer! She/her!”

“Why are you here?”, growls Sour.

“…Because you guys asked me to be here?”

In a reassuring tone of voice, Sunny says, “Tell us your qualifications, dearie.”

“Oh! Right. I’m Pedestria’s foremost expert on Equestrian magic and lore, though I’ve definitely got some close competition.”

“Attagirl, Wily-Twily,” Sour interjects.

“She’s amazing,” Sunset says, warmth spilling out of her voice. “Now, personally, I had a couple of reservations about being on this podcast, but when you guys explained the idea behind it, I realized my expertise could really help you do some good.”

“For which we must thank you dearly,” Sunny gratefully purrs. “This would have been a comedy of ignorance without you.”

“You’re welcome. Also, I attended the school that’s on the screen right now. That’s Canterlot High School.”

“The enemy,” Sunny states, 180-ing almost as sharply as Sour Sweet.

“The enemy,” her cohorts agree, chanting on instinct.

“…Go, Wondercolts,” Sunset awkwardly counters. “But yeah. I’m here to explain the ‘magic’ part of a magical disaster.”

“But before we can talk about magic,” Sugarcoat continues, moving on to the next slide, “first we have to ask ourselves: what is a horse?”

A prime example of Equus ferus caballus, plucked straight from Giggle Image Search, flashes onto the screen: black of coat, with dull sandy hair, standing alone in a windswept field of dry grass.

“Hey, where’d you get this photo of me?”, demands Sunset. “Those were private!”

“It doesn’t even remotely look like you.”

“Besides,” adds Sour, “I thought you were one of the special horses.”

“Horses Plus,” as Sunny politely rephrases it.

“Ah, you got me,” Sunset admits. “I’ve never seen this guy in my entire life.”

“You can tell he’s a stallion, dearie?”

“Uh, yeah? …You can’t?”

Before Sunny can explain, Sour asks Sunset, without an ounce of shame, “So is he hot?”

“Sour!”, Sunny pleads.

With a snort, Sunset just as casually says, “Nah. All the equines here look weird.” Then, hastily, she adds, “Wait, scat, that isn’t pseudo-tribalist, is it?”, with an urgency like her entire self-worth hinged on the answer to that question.

“I don’t think he cares,” Sugarcoat assures her. “Anyways, we still haven’t answered the question. Define ‘horse’ for me, please.”

There’s a bit of crosstalk, as the other three all give their answers at once:

“You invited one as your guest speaker,” says Sunset.

“Fifteen-hundred pounds of hooves and health problems,” Sour answers.

Sunny also suggests, “Meg Carthy’s most neurotic creatures.”

Catching what the others said, Sunset grumbles, “…I wish I could say either of you were wrong.”

“These are all correct answers,” confirms Sugarcoat, “except for the part about Meg Carthy. This is a Faustian podcast.”

“To each her own–”, Sunny tries to say–

– Before getting cut off as Sour leans in close to the mic and lustily growls, “Hail Hasrro, the Infernal Toymaker!” She ends up blowing out her microphone, so the rest of her rant comes through Sugarcoat’s. ”We all go to His workshop when we die!”

Sunset chuckles. “Wow, I almost cut myself on the edge there.”

And Sugarcoat joins in. “Yeah, get a real religion, Sour.” A few seconds later, her microphone picks up a meaty slap. “Ow,” she performatively grunts. It doesn’t sound like she was actually hurt at all.

“Hey, you guys are friends, right?”, Sunset asks.

“Yes, dearie.”

“Obviously, yes.”

“Of course!~ Ride-or-die.”

“Just checking.”

“M-hm.” Seeming to give up on naturalistic transitions from their tangents back to the subject matter, Sugar just goes for it cold. “The thing about horses is that there’s an alternate dimension in which everybody is one of those.”

Sour snorts. “More like everypony. Eh?”

“Yes, that’s… the word we use,” Sunset explains.

“You’re serious? That’s funny. Cute, but funny.”

Sugarcoat pushes forward. “Instead of Pedes, their planet is called Equus, and it’s inhabited entirely by talking horses. Is that correct?”

“Nnnnnnnnnot quite. It’s more than just the horses that can talk. Not even just the equines; basically any ungulate can speak – and also some other species, for some reason? That’s one of the weird things about Pedes I’ve noticed: sure, crows, dolphins, and elephants are regularly as intelligent as humans – or at least, that’s what Fluttershy tells me – but only the humans get to talk. That seems kinda unfair.”

“I would like to talk to Corvus,” Sugarcoat admits. “I wonder what he thinks of my family’s business.”

“What’s your family do?”

“Funerals.”

“Oh.”

“He’d probably just mock you for wasting good meat,” Sour teases.

A bit apprehensively, Sunset suggests, “If you really wanna know, you should take him to Fluttershy. I’m sure she’d be thrilled to translate caw for you.”

“That sounds fun. Anyways, the reason we brought you on is that you’re one of those talking horses from Equus.”

“That’s right! Though, technically, one: for the sake of the viewers, I turned into a human when I got here; and two: I’m a pony. Not much real difference there; we’re just smaller.”

Sunny rejoins the conversation with an excited, “Oh, my – is that so? Like the ones we saw through those fissures?”

“Yep! Just a little pony.”

“That’s adorable, dearie. Please tell me you have pictures.”

“I… don’t have any on-hoof – er, hand – since we haven’t had a lot of luck bringing technology between worlds, but… maybe I can work something out?”

A photograph of a smiling pony mare (looking a lot more cat-like than a Pedesly pony), with a coat of amber and a fiery mane, gets pasted overtop the original horse with the caption, |This is Sugarcoat in post. Sunset and the Twilights figured something out.| Notably, the pony form of Sunset has a pointy horn sticking out of her head. Her big, blue eyes sparkle with pride, and branded on her butt is a Meskiddan-styled sun with a sort of yin-yang flow between its red and yellow halves.

“I pray that you do.” Then, a question occurs to Sunny: “Would you say that the pony is to one of Token’s dwarfs as the tall horses are to the tall-men?”

“…A little less stone-mining and metal-smithing, and a lot more field-frolicking and carrot-farming.”

“So, a halfling, then?”

“…Maybe if halflings had uncontested mastery over the sun, the moon, the stars, and all the forces of physics.” There’s a certain cockiness to her answer.

Sunny flare slaps her desk with her slender hands. “Oh my gosh. You’re a gnome.”

Immediately, Sour fires out, “Sunset Gnomer.”

“Sunset Gnomer”, echoes Sugarcoat, in agreement.

Weakly, hollowly, as though the world has been ripped out from underneath her, Sunset mumbles, “…I’m a gnome…”

“And what kind of gnome were you, Sunset Shimmer? When I asked why Rainbow Dash and Fluttershy get wings when the others don’t, I was told it had something to do with different kinds of ponies.”

Shaking off the shocks, Sunset stammers, “Right, right. They’re called tribes, and there are… three or four tribes of them, depending on who you ask. I’m a unicorn, but there are also winged pegasi, strong earth ponies, and some ponies consider alicorns a tribe of their own. Allegedly, there were also sea ponies at one point. I thought they were just a myth until I met the sirens, but now I’m not so sure.”

“An alicorn – those are the King-Gnomes, correct? Describe them for us.”

“Well, it’s funny you call them kings, since they’re actually all female and style themselves as princesses instead of queens. An alicorn is a very rare kind of pony that combines all three tribes into one immortal, powerful being. Except for pony Cadance’s kid, they’re created by some powerful spell used on a regular pony.”

“Dean–” Quietly, so as not to be overheard by her mother, Sunny corrects herself. “Principal Cadance had a kid?”

“Princess Cadance, Alicorn of Love, had a foal, yeah – and assuming Princess Twilight wasn’t playing a prank on me, that foal was a naturalborn alicorn.”

“With who?”, demands Sour.

“‘Whom’, dearie.” Thanks, Sunny. “And I can only assume it’s the pony analogue of Security Officer Shining Armor.” Though she says his title with some disdain, she takes no issue with the man by his name. “It would be a cosmic sin to part the Innamorati in any universe.”

“You’re pretty much spot on, other than him being the Royal Guard-Captain before he became a Prince-Consort.”

“I knew it.”

“Everybody knew it,” Sugarcoat says, dismissively. “They made Jet Set and Upper Crust look like loveless Spuritans. I should know; Rockville’s full of them.”

“I’m just now realizing,” says Sunny, “that that makes fully three principals who just happen to be immortal alicorn princesses on the other side. Please, oh please,” she begged, “don’t tell me my mother’s an alicorn princess, too.”

“Take it easy, Sunny,” Sunset says, in a soothing voice. “There’s no Princess Cinch in the history books, as far as I studied them.”

“Then I needn’t pray for her subjects.”

Sugarcoat speaks up. “We should probably mention that everybody has a doppelgänger on the other side. Although we have no idea who our own alternates are, apparently, for each of Sunset’s friends here, our Twilight’s pony double has one of their doubles for a friend there.”

“Except for you, Sunset Shimmer. What did you do to human Sunset?”, accuses Sour.

“Killed and ate her. Next question.”

The hosts burst into a fit of laughter that they take a solid minute to recover from. Sour is the loudest, wheezing and cackling like the lovechild between a rabid hyena and an asthmatic pig. Meanwhile, Sunny Flare has a high-pitched, whickering snicker that it sounds like she’s stifling behind hands crossed over her mouth, lest some jailor of hers catch her having fun. Sugarcoat’s nasally snorting rounds out the lower end of the spectrum, sounding closer to someone just saying “Haaaaah” over and over again than actual laughter.

Still, this cacophony is contagious, and Sunset gets in on it, too. Her laugh is… somewhere in the middle: heartier than Sugarcoat’s, freer than Sunny’s, and less deranged than Sour’s.

When she was finally able to talk, Sunset explained, “For real, though, I did some research – I’m told she went to Crystal Prep actually?”

“I remember,” confirms Sunny. “She was only there for part of her freshman year, while I was still in middle school.”

Sugarcoat handled the explanation where Sunny might have needed to hush herself again. “She tried to fistfight then-Principal Cinch, so after she got expelled, the foster system transferred her to Rockville Military Academy to learn some discipline.”

“Yikes. Sorry to hear that. I hope she didn’t rough your mom up too bad, Sunny.” Her apology comes as if she was responsible for her double’s actions.

It was, however, Sour that replied, not Sunny. “Are you kidding?~ Withered old hag versus snotty dweeb who thinks she can fight because she plays violent video games. I’d be surprised if either of them walked away with more than a light bruise.”

“…I guess she didn’t have anything equivalent to a natural talent for magic and years of Royal training.”

“Actually, that leads me to my next question, dearie. Pardon me, but how did you come to know an alicorn Princess, exactly?”

“We – Cadance and I – both grew up in Princess Celestia’s palace. She took the both of us in and made us her students.” Sunset sighs. “I was a huge nag to her – ‘nag’ is the pony equivalent to ‘bitch’, by the way.”

“Oh, hell yeah. Tell me all the pony swears,” demands Sour Sweet.

“Okay, lemme just pull up my handwritten list of all my favorite speciesist slurs, which I will now read live on air:” Sunset then just says “Beeeeeeeeeeeeeeeep” for a solid twenty seconds, until she needs to catch her breath. By the end, Sour is cackling again.

“I have a soundboard,” scoffs Sunny. “I think–” She hits a silent button, and it makes an actual studio-style beep. “I can just do that. If you want to surprise the listener for a gag, just message me on Harmony when you need it.”

“Thanks. But look,” Sunset continues, “maybe I’ll give you guys a ‘pony etiquette’ lesson about all the things you shouldn’t say sometime when we’re not putting our names and voices on EweChannel. It would be nice to know how not to make an [BLEEP] – oh, scat, that’s one of them, oops–”

“You do have to warn me, though, dearie.”

“I’ll bleep it in post,” grumbles Sugarcoat.

“Regardless, it’s not a slur here, should any asinines be listening to this in the future,” interceded Miss Flare. “Among humans, that word is nothing more than an impolite word for the buttocks,” she says, with a blush you can almost hear, “when it is not referring to one of those donkeys here to whom Meg Carthy did not extend the gift of intellect.”

“That really doesn’t make it better,” Sunset said, grimacing. “…We’re definitely gonna need both Rarities to write the rules of conduct, once we figure out interdimensional tourism.

“But yeah, I should probably go on a Princesses-of-Equestria apology tour. I already apologized to Celestia for being such an awful filly, but I really don’t think it’ll ever be enough.”

There’s an awkward moment of silence before Sunset continues with her original thread. “Okay, so, right, I was Princess Celestia’s personal magic student. Not to keep dwelling on the past, but I was a little brat who wanted to learn the secrets of magic that would let me become an alicorn. To make a long story short… Celestia showed me the Mirror Portal that connects our worlds, I got caught researching it in the forbidden archives, and Celestia banished me from the palace. Instead of accepting my punishment, I snuck back in and leapt through the mirror to find myself in a strange, new world and in a weird, new body.”

“They don’t have humans at all on Equus, do they?”, asks Sunny.

“There are some talking apes – I think that Storm King guy was one? Or maybe he was a monkey – but that’s as close as it gets.”

Sour shudders. “I hate apes.”

Sugarcoat is quick to point out, “You are an ape. Taxonomically.”

“That doesn’t change anything.”

Sunny says to Sunset, “It has to have been quite a shock to go from hooves to opposable thumbs.”

“A little, sure, but the bipedalism, and the lack of a horn to cast magic with, threw me off far worse. Picking things up with these hands instead of magic was easier than letting go of the ability to set things on fire with my mind.”

“…Sorry, I know I’m getting hung up on a minor detail, but how do non-unicorns manipulate things?”

“Pegasi use their feathers.”

“And these earth ponies?”

“By mouth and hoof.”

“Eurgh. That sounds unsanitary.”

“I’m… not sure germs work the same on Equus as they do here? Don’t quote me on that.”

“…Right.”

“Anyways, I’m really lucky the portal thought to give me clothes. And a smartphone. And identification papers. And it turned the Equestrian bits I had in my saddlebags into a bunch of hundred-dollar bills, so that was nice, too. I would have been so screwed if it just spat me out buck-naked and flat broke in the middle of the suburbs.”

“Girls,” Sunny solemnly declares, “I have an idea for a get-rich-quick scheme.”

“More like an over-inflate-the-economy-and-get-the-revenue-service-jumping-down-your-throat scheme,” Sugarcoat counters.

“Phooey.”

“We can’t let Indigo know about that,” Sour adds, punctuated by the hiss-and-fizz of a freshly-popped carbonated beverage bleeding through her microphone.

Sunny groans. “Seriously? You couldn’t wait?”

“Hell no. Mama Sour needs her sugar.” When someone else’s microphone picks up the sound of a bottlecap popping off and rattling on her desk, Sour then shouts, “Drink check! I’ve got a nice cranberry Breezy.”

Again turning to face her dorm-mate in real life, Sugarcoat says, “I thought that was a seasonal flavor.”

You could hear the shrug in Sour’s voice. “Being friends with a lemon-lime-soda-heiress has its perks. What do you got?”

“Nothing.”

“Idiot. I’d hate to see you dry out…~” She got dangerously close to finding a way to say ‘</3’ with her mouth.

“I’m always dry.”

“Like a fine cranberry wine. What about you, Sunny?”

Sunny hisses, “Water. In a glass. Because I am a professional.”

“Then who popped the soda bottle? Sunset?”

“Yeah, that was me, sorry. This isn’t soda, though; it’s a crisp, refreshing Mandia Pale Cider, Zap-Apple flavor.”

Sunny gasps. “Underage drinking? On my podcast?”

“I’m twenty-seven, chronologically. It’s fine.”

Sunny spits out her professional water. “I beg your pardon?”

“How’s that work?”, asks Sugarcoat.

“It’s dumb. The mirror kinda just did what it wanted until Princess Twilight started tinkering with it. I went in a grown, twenty-year old mare and came out as thirteen-year-old. Gotta say, going through puberty a second time? Not fun.”

“That doesn’t add up. You would only be twenty-four, in that case.”

“…Yeahhhhhhhhh, the thing about that… Principal Celestia kinda held me back three years in a row. I didn’t start moving through the grades until I had friends.”

“WHAT?!”, shouts Sour, loud enough that Sugarcoat’s mic picks it up. “No fucking way. No fucking way a throwback like that goes toe-to-toe with Wily-Twily in the AcaDeca and only barely loses!”

Embarrassed, Sunset drops to a low and inanimate register to explain, “Look, I was a magic student, and I was pretty good at it. But learning how to cast spells and all that scat was, like, ninety-five percent of my education, and the rest was just basic stuff to help me understand my magic studies better: magical history, magical physics, magical math.”

– “I want to learn magical math,” mutters Sugarcoat –

“I didn’t know how anything that wasn’t magic worked – which is fine if you’re a pampered Royal Student in Equestria (have we mentioned that that’s the pony analogue to Pedestria?) – but it turns out it kinda sets you up for failure in a world where magic doesn’t exist.”

“Well, luckily,” Sunny says, “your portal deposited you right in front of an institution of education, and although it wasn’t the best one, it seems to have steered you around eventually.”

“Yep! Though part of it was just making the decision to stop slacking and care about this world, the rest is all thanks to:”, she says, as Sugarcoat flicks to the next slide, which is just the first slide of the school again, “Canterlot High School.”

Once again, Sunny declares, “The enemy.”

And once again, her comrades join her. “The enemy.”

The guest is silent for a moment, before coming to a realization. “Ohhhhhhh, I see. This whole thing is actually a vehicle for you three to vent your interscholastic animosity at me, the lone representative of CHS, for an hour-and-a-half.”

“Well, yes, but it’s also a podcast about magical disasters,” Sugarcoat clarifies.

“And at the rate we’re going,” Sunny notes, “an hour-and-a-half is optimistic.”

“I’ll edit it down in post.”

Hovering over the progress tracker reveals that the video is, in fact, two-and-a-half hours long.

Sunset summons all her school spirit to defiantly proclaim, “Well come at me, Shadowbitches! I’ll always be a Wondercolt, and proud!”

Sunny just chuckles. “If Indigo were here, she’d be whipping herself into a parareligious fervor in the face of such a show of fealty to the mediocre.”

“And Rainbow would fire right back at her. Why isn’t Indigo here, by the way? And Lemon, for that matter?”

Sour fields that question. “GoGo’s hustling for a summer job, and MoMo can’t hold down a consistent sleep schedule to save her life, let alone record a monthly podcast. Besides it was the three of us before it was the five of us. Remind me, Sunny,” she commands, her sweetness taking on a predatory edge, “what did you used to call us, back in freshman year?~”

Sunny does not answer.

“If you don’t say it, I will. And you know how I love to butcher the Mench language!~”

Muffled by the arms she buried herself in, the quietest Shadowbolt shamefully admits, “…Les Trois Arquebusiers… That’s what I tried to call us, for a spell. Speaking of, can someone please shoot me?”

“Nope!~”

“That’s sweet,” Sunset tries to assure Sunny.

“It ‘s twee,” she moans. “I beg of ye, Sugarcoat, please edit this part out.”

“I’m leaving this part in.”

That just gets a subdued and wordless whine out of Sunny.

“Oh, cheer up, Sunnyflower!~ Just because you had phases like most girls have periods doesn’t mean we didn’t have phases of our own!”

“M-hm,” Sugarcoat agrees, “It’s not like you pretended to have rabies until the school nurse had to call animal control on you.”

Sour’s sweetness was gone in an instant. “How about we shut the hell up now. Don’t we have a podcast to record?”

Sugarcoat is amenable to this. “Yes. Sunset, tell us how your pre-Twilight school years were.”

“You know how your Sunset was?”

“According to gossip: a vain, megalomaniacal dweeb who was too easily-enraged and single-mindedly-petty to pull off the many schemes she was constantly trying to spin,” as Sugarcoat sums her up.

“Well… yeah. It was something like that. I must have been better at the bitch-queen thing than she was, though, because I was the top dog at CHS. Had a trophy boyfriend and everything.”

Pulling her face out of her arms, Sunny puts on a pleasant voice and says, “Oh, no, dearie, I can assure you: you would have been eaten alive if the mirror had been erected in front of CPA. Entitled brats with chips on their shoulders are the primary demographic of the student body (present company included), and the only ones who make it are the ones who get in line and either learn their place or pretend to do so.

“You would never be the queen b—, because Abacus Cinch was already the queen b—. Our Sunset tried to usurp her throne, and you well-know how that turned out.

“At the enemy’s school, you were simply the biggest fish in a pond full of minnows. And the owner of the pond hated fishing, to torture this metaphor further. Princess Celestia has something of a reputation for charity cases. When first we saw you at the Friendship Games, we simply assumed she had personally interceded on our Sunset’s behalf to save her from a life of scrubbing latrines, and enrolled her at CHS instead.”

Everyone’s mic goes dead. You could hear a pin drop. Finally, still somewhat stunned, Sunset murmurs, “That’s a hay of a dressing-down.”

“Apologies; it’s one of my more deleterious talents. Sugarcoat goes for the low-hanging fruit; I lie in wait for that rare opportunity which ripens at the top of the tree. Frankly, it happens without conscious thought on my part. I didn’t mean anything by it–”

“No, no– I’m sure you’re right, and I really don’t want to defend my past self. That’s not me anymore. …But it was, for several unhappy years.”

“Queen b—s are seldom happy, be they tall-man or gnome. The crown lies heavy on a head of any size. This, I know, for I dwell in one’s court, drinking soured honey and lining my pockets with lustreless gold…”

“That’s certainly one way to say you feel dirty about eating home-cooked meals every night and still having an allowance as an adult,” Sour says. “Personally, I’d kill for that.”

Sunset snickers far more than Sour’s response merits, then catches herself and apologizes, “Sorry, Sunny, you just sound so much like the lovechild of Princess Luna and Rarity, it’s uncanny.” Indeed, Sunny has to be talking that way – like some dark-fantasy narrator, slipping into a Brotish accent in lieu of her actual Pedestrian one – on purpose, but it comes so naturally to her. It kinda smothers the vibe.

Meekening by a few decibels, Sunny replies, “I should hope that’s a good thing? Or at least that I’m distinct enough to claim at least a modicum of originality?”

“Luna’s prose is a little more Shaking Spear, and Rarity’s obviously got more of a 1920s-high-society thing going on. I think your Menglish Romanticism thing falls basically right between those. I take it you like Purser Buy-Shells?”

“I am a fan, indeed.” Oh, she’s leaning into it now, fake accent and all. “Funny, to hear that from a would-be Ozymandias.”

“Ozyponydias,” Sugarcoat suggests.

Likewise, Sour says, “Ozygnomedias.”

“Would that we were on a video call,” Sunny continues, “that I might have my measure of your wrinkled lip, your sneer of cold command.”

“…Are you flirting with me?”

Sunny squeaks, and says no more.

The tension is broken when Sour interjects, “President of our drama club, everyone. Give her a round of applause!”

Sour and Sugarcoat clap, and Sunset joins in after taking a moment to understand what just happened.

“Right.” Sugar moves on to the next slide, which is a photo of a wall showcasing a quartet of photos from some formal prom-type event: the first three are of a human with the same red-orange-yellow color-scheme as that unicorn in the photo, looking increasingly maniacal – and the fourth is of a sheepish purple girl who looks deeply uncomfortable in her own skin.

Sunset is confused. “I thought I threw those away. Who dug them out of the landfill and them back up?”

They don’t look like they’ve been in a landfill; just briefly in a garbage can. Otherwise, nobody has an answer for her.

Once again, Sugarcoat is the one reading off the notes. “At the start of your fourth freshman year in a row, you had a life-changing experience that incidentally altered the trajectory of the lives of everyone on Pedes.”

“…That I did. I can’t call them the worst three days of my life – those would be the three that followed my banishment – but they were miserable, and horrible, and also some of the best three days of my life.”

“We’re going off of scattered gossip and the occasional tidbit of information relayed to us by our Twilight about events she wasn’t present for, so we don’t have the clearest picture of what happened.”

“I’ll explain it all to the best of my ability.”

“M-hm. Let’s see here. Around 11 AM, Womansday, the 27th of Steptember, 2013, two days before the Fall Formal (which is what Canterlot High School does instead of homecoming), your version of Twilight Sparkle, who is one of those aforementioned alicorn princesses when she’s not a visiting human, came through the mirror built into the horse statue your school used to have, in order to do… something.”

“Well, you’re correct that it was pony Twilight who came through, along with Spike, who’s, like, a dragon? I don’t know why the mirror turns dragons into dogs.”

“Does it turn dogs into dragons–?”, Sour tries to ask.

“Don’t know; don’t want to cause an interdimensional diplomatic incident to find out. Anyways, Twilight had just recently been ascended to alicornity by Princess Celestia, after she’d spent thirteen years as the magic student Celestia kinda… picked up the same day she banished me.”

“…Oh, that’s. Ouch.” Of all the people to extend earnest sympathy to Sunset, she never expected it to be Sour Sweet. “If I was you, I’d be fucking pissed.”

“I sure was! Enough to steal Twilight’s crown. Her actual, real, by-the-power-invested-by-Harmony crown. She came through the Mirror Portal because of me.”

“You went through the mirror first? I was under the impression you didn’t have a way back.”

“…Like I said, the mirror was tricky and did whatever it wanted. In Equestria – before Twilight strengthened its connection between our worlds – it was just a fortune-telling mirror, most of the time. It could give you a glimpse into your most likely future.”

Sunny lets out a sigh of relief. “Oh, phew. For a second, I was dearly afraid you might have overwhelming proof that determinism is scientifically correct. I most certainly do not seek that kind of knowledge.”

“That or the techno-magic isn’t good enough,” counters Sugarcoat. “Just because all events are consequences of previous events doesn’t mean you can actually realistically predict the future, since you have no way of actually knowing every single previous event, and I don’t trust a mirror to know that either. For all practical purposes, you’ll still have free will.”

“Why wouldn’t observing the future, even if it was 100% accurate, do some quantum physics horseshit and result in a different outcome?”, wonders Sour Sweet.

“Well, that’s the thing,” says Sunset. “What I saw in the mirror was me as an alicorn. That sure never happened.”

“And maybe it’s best that it didn’t,” supposes Sunny.

Faux-shocked, Sour calls her out by several nicknames. “Sunnyflower! Sunny-Buns. Flare-Bear. Scaredy-Flaredy. Think before you speak!”

Sunny gets defensively fallible. “Look, maybe I’m just projecting too much of myself into your situation, in which case, forgive me, but I know that I want nothing less than to inherit my mother’s crown. Assuming you’re orphaned like our Sunset, –”

– “I am.” Her answer is painless and plain, at least aloud –

“–which makes Celestia your mother by adoption. Hers would be your crown. Your burden to bear… or to abdicate. The Throne of Desire may yet lie empty.”

A savvy listener would, at this point, realize that Sunny Flare is quite taken with the Darkened Animus trilogy of Jamanese action games, rendering her advice a lot less sagely and a lot more dorky.

And Sunset is savvy. “Lemme guess – you run an INT/DEX rapier build using crystal sorceries, and you wear whatever makes you look the most like a dashing rogue. Am I right, FlareDoWell?”

“…Oh f— off, actually. Go f—ing Chain the First Fire for all I care.”

That lifts the mood a bit, just in time for Sour to bring it back down. “…Besides the whole ‘burn yourself to death for a dying order’ part (thank you for the lore dumps, Sunnyflower), I guess that’s kinda what I was going to say,” she concedes. “Look, Shimmy, just keep being a superhero demigoddess or whatever bullshit you’re up to here. Leave alicornity for the gnomes. You’re doing fine.”

“Or, frankly,” assesses Sugarcoat, “since apparently I have to be the ambitious one: if the mirror was telling the truth, and pony Twilight is as much of an awkward weirdo as our Twilight, I don’t see why you’re disqualified from the running. Pony Celestia might just be waiting for a politically-opportune moment to increment the Princess counter. Your life here on Pedes has barely started. Wait until you’re pushing forty to give up.”

“…Wow, those are some perspectives I haven’t considered. …Thanks for the advice.” Sunset takes a deep breath. “I just realized I’ve never talked about it with the other Rainbooms–”

“What are you doing, woman?!”, hollers Sour, incredulous. “Go to them for advice before you ask us! We’re just a bunch of jackasses with a podcast!”

“Something something, your perspectives are no less valid, and the lack of a strong bond between us means there isn’t much of a desire to preserve our friendship that might get in the way of being honest. And, also, you gave that advice completely unprompted.”

“Is saying sappy bullshit like that a royal duty? If so, I’m I’m staying in Camp Fuck-Being-a-Princess.”

“I’d suggest a therapist,” proposes Sugarcoat, “but–”

Sunny steals and finishes her thought. “Any ‘responsible’ psychiatrist would prescribe you a mandatory vacation in a sanitarium for believing half the things we know to be real.”

Sunset gives a hearty laugh. “True. In that case, I’ll see what Indigo and Lemon think. Back to our timeline–”

Sour interrupts her. “Hey, Sugarpie, you should chart this out. Doesn’t this program have a pen tool?”

“I think so. Let’s see here.”

She fiddles with the various buttons and popups on her screen that are supposed to make presenting easier. Then, by accident, Sugarcoat exits the presentation, flashing the viewer with the raw nudity of the editing interface.

“And you’ve fucked it completely.”

“Yes. But I can fix this.”

Sunny whines into her arms again. “Nobody’s going to watch this. This is unwatchable. This is unlistenable. I’m going to have to get a job.”

“Astradoes is always hiring,~” teases Sour.

Sunny just inarticulately groans her desire to pass up that opportunity.

It takes an interminably long time for Sugarcoat to re-enter the presentation and locate the pen tool. Making several loose marks in a cyan-blue, she declares: “Good news: I have found the pen tool.”

“And it only cost all of our credibility.”

“Then we have lost nothing,” declares Sour. “On with the pod!”

Sugar grunts, “Yes. You were saying about the timeline?”

“Right. So, both sides of the portal experienced time at different rates before Princess Twilight equalized it. The differential kinda fluctuated a bit, but generally… well, let’s just say that I experienced three-and-a-third years in the same timeframe that exactly twelve-and-a-half years passed in Equestria.”

Sugarcoat does the math with frightening speed. “So there were eight months here for every thirty there, and you arrived in 2010.”

“That’s right. It was Mayn. The schools had just let out and I had an entire summer to figure out how to be human. The seven-year anniversary’s in like three weeks.”

“Oh. Congratulations. What year was it in Equestria?”

Sunset facepalms. “That’s right, thank you – it was Y2K when I left. I missed a whole decade.”

There is a heavy silence as Sugarcoat pauses her drafting. “You’re telling me that, despite the time dilation, the year 2013 happened concurrently in both universes, the same year pony Twilight first came to visit, by sheer coincidence.”

“…Yeah, but I think the year had just started there. Should’ve been Foalbruary there, according to my math.”

“They call it Foalbruary?”

“Right, sorry – Footbruary.”

“…Faust indulged Hasrro these coincidences and horse puns specifically to confuse and infuriate people like me,” Sugarcoat grumbles, as she draws a horizontal chart on the wall: ten marks on the bottom, three marks on the top. If rulers worked for mouse-drawn art, she could really use one.

“Anyways, I know it was exactly twelve-and-a-half-years,” Sunset continues, somewhat exasperated by the tangents, “because the Mirror Portal only opened for passage every thirty moons, which are just a different way of saying ‘months’, and thankfully, besides having different names, our calendars are the same. The time dilation is all the mirror’s fault, not our different universes’.”

Sour has a question. “Wait a fucking second, does that mean that you could make another mirror that’s not synched-up with the one that gnome Twilight–?”

Sunny firmly cuts her off. “Sour, dearie, I ask that you please take a moment to reconsider whether you’d seriously like to increase the number of time shenanigans in this narrative. I am personally developing a migraine. There is a reason I do not write time travel stories.”

“Ah, but consider: you could fuck your time clone.”

Sunny does not dignify Sour with a direct response… but she can faintly be heard muttering, “…Giggle Drive… …Docs… …new document…”

“Anyways!”, continues Sunset, ignoring the limitless possibilities of the paradox, “–when I made my move on Twilight’s crown, it was the fifth time it had opened.”

“And how do you know that?”

“Because I checked. Every day.” Even though Sunset pauses there, nobody really knows how to react to that, so she just has to keep going. “When I first came to Pedestria, I barely scraped under the deadline before the portal closed again. Like, maybe if I had been a couple seconds slower, the connection might have severed while I was mid-transport. I don’t want to think about what would have happened to me, then.”

Sunny inhales sharply. “I don’t, either!”

“So, yeah, I turned around and that statue was just solid stone. Which sucked, because I was fed up with Pedes after maybe an hour, tops. I wanted to go home, banished or not. I didn’t know what kind of home would be waiting for me, but whatever it was, it had magic, and this place didn’t.” She sighs. “It felt like Princess Celestia herself shut the door behind me. I know she didn’t have any control over the mirror, but that’s… just how it felt at the time.”

“What did pony Twilight do to stabilize it that Celestia couldn’t or wouldn’t do?”, asks Sugar.

“She saw me at one of the lowest points of my life and chose to literally pull me out of the pit I dug for myself, instead of telling me to leave CHS and never return.

“But you probably want a more technical explanation. When I came here, I had a two-way journal that let me write to Celestia whenever I wanted. Whatever I wrote would appear in her copy of the book, and vice-versa.” She goes silent for another few seconds. “She never wrote to me, and I never wrote to her. Make of that what you will.

“I didn’t remember it even existed until I needed Princess Twilight’s help with the sirens. Of course, the portal wasn’t open, but it occurred to me that maybe Celestia held onto the journal. It was a gamble, and it paid off better than expected. Turns out, Twilight had inherited it at some point without realizing. She figured out a way to use the enchantment lingering in my book to strengthen the connection.”

“I see.”

“But before then… I didn’t give up on going home. Every day, after school and during summer break, I ran my hand along that polished marble, hoping this time, it would let me through.

“And you know what? One cold day in late Manuary, 2011, it did. Before I even knew what had happened, I was a pony again, in the Canterlot I knew. Just… sitting there on my tail, dumbstruck.

“I didn’t get to linger very long, though. I heard voices coming from down the hall, and there wasn’t anywhere to hide except back in Pedestria, and… I guess I just remembered there wasn’t really a home left for me there after all.

“I didn’t try again until after I’d spent the next eight months coming up with a plan. It… wasn’t really a plan, so much as a disorganized list of things I wanted to yell at Celestia and leave before she could answer, but it felt like a plan.”

“I can relate,” empathizes Sunny.

“It all fell apart when I found Princess Cadance waiting for me on the other side.”

“Oh, sh—.”

“You weren’t wrong to see Princess Celestia as my mom. I didn’t really see it that way at the time, but that’s on me. In which case, I guess that makes Princess Cadance my sister. Or cousin. Something along those lines. We didn’t get along very well, but she tried. She really tried.

“She was just as surprised to see me as I was to see her. She was… She was paying her respects to her missing runaway sister. It was the five-year anniversary, for her.

“My brain shut down. I didn’t know what to do, so I just did what came naturally. Before she even got a word out, I jumped back through the Mirror Portal, and I ran– I just ran– just, as far as I could, ‘til my lungs were burning.

“I spent the entire next month looking over my shoulder. You don’t know how freaky the Friendship Games were for me, seeing her double there, after it already took me like two years just to get used to Principal Celestia. I think Dean Cadance thought I was your Sunset too, because when she looked at me–” She doesn’t finish the thought. “I– I still haven’t… apologized…”

On the verge of tears, Sunset Shimmer falls into a set of breathing exercises.

Sugarcoat asks, bluntly but not inconsiderately, “…Should I cut this from the final video, too?”

Seeming to have stabilized, Sunset says, with determination, “No. No. That goes against the reason I came on this podcast in the first place.”

“If you’d prefer, dearie, we can skip ahead to the theft of Princess Twilight’s crown.”

“No need. We’re past the hardest parts, and the other cycles are kinda important for context. …Incidentally, if Cadance hadn’t insisted on having the portal relocated to her brand new palace in the frozen north between cycles 4 and 5, because (I think) she wanted to be the first to see me if I ever returned, I would’ve been in the complete wrong nation to enact my plan.”

“Anyways. I didn’t go back on the third cycle, when Mayn 2012 rolled around. I figured they would be waiting for me, probably with a whole squadron of Royal Guards, ready to arrest me. Rut that.

“But I couldn’t help it on the fourth. I… I had to go back, just for a quick in-and-out.

“Manuary 2013 was Equust (Auguyst) 2010 in Equestria. I knew it was the ten-year anniversary, but I felt like I was ready for whatever they might have waiting for me. I… wasn’t ready for it to be nopony.

“I mean, it worked in my favor. I actually got to leave the portal room for a change, and snuck around the palace a bit by cover of night. The guard patrols still hadn’t changed after ten years – or, if anything, they decreased. The halls were weirdly desolate.

“Though, I could never quite shake the feeling I was being watched. I probably was, and I think I know who.”

“By whom?”, asks Sunny.

Sunset takes a moment to consider how to answer. “So, here’s the thing about Princess Twilight: she got her start on the path to royalty by taking down a rogue, malevolent alicorn princess. You know how Vice-Principal Luna sometimes bickers with Principal Celestia?”

“So we hear,” Sugarcoat acknowledges.

“Well, pony Luna and pony Celestia had almost a thousand years of ruling Equestria together for those disagreements and frustrations to blow up into full-on hatred and resentment. When they finally came to blows, the old capital of Equestria was basically razed to the foundations as collateral damage.”

“Faust forfend a woman have fun.” Sugarcoat’s comment draws a bit of snickering, but the mood’s too heavy.

“Celestia won the fight with these magical artifacts called the Elements of Harmony. They banished Luna to the moon… but that would only last a thousand years. That imprisonment ended in Junnet (Junetleman) 2010.”

“So you came back two months after the fact. Twilight used those Elements to send her back, I’d assume?”

“No, thank Harmony. She and her friends did use the Elements, but they just smacked her silly until she was ready to calm down. Sorta like what happened to me, but we’ll get to that.

“So now Luna was back, and there was a brand-new stained-glass window in the throne room that I got to learn all this from.”

“…Luna was the one watching you.”

“I can only assume. It’s probably how they knew what happened when I took Twilight’s crown on the fifth cycle. Besides, you know, waking Twilight up when I tripped over Spike, and my cloak falling off and revealing my whole pony butt when Twilight chased after me.”

“That’s gone poorly.”

“Yep.” The cringe is audible. “Not my finest hour. But I did get the crown into Pedestria, which was the plan I came up with when I saw that the Elements were in use and Twilight had one of them. Her crown was the ornament that the Element of Magic was socketed into. If I could just bring it to Pedes, I’d be able to tap into the magic still beating inside my heart and become a human mage.“

“We never did actually describe what magic was, did we? We’re really bad at this.”

“Too late to start over!~”, insists Sour Sweet. “I’ll kick your ass if you try.”

“I could swear I had a slide…”

“Don’t you dare exit the presentation again,” hisses Sunny.

Sugar exits the slideshow.

Sunny sounds like she’s pulling out her own hair.

“Look, guys,” Sunset says, stepping in, “I’ll just give a quick explanation. Magic is friendship… except when it’s not, because there are plenty of evil wizards in Equestrian history with no friends. I personally prefer to describe it as passion, and it’s literally stored in the heart. Everybody on Equus has some, not just unicorns – but it shows most obviously with unicorns.

“I’m sure either Twilight could give you a lot better description of the exact kelemadynamics that go into it, but I’m a bit rusty, myself, and I was always more of an intuitive caster than a spell-scholar.”

“I see,” grunts Sugarcoat, flitting through several slides after accidentally restarting the presentation at the beginning. She ends up overshooting the current slide (showing a collage of shockingly-grainy photos of towering beams of light and one of some hovering fire-elemental-looking woman taken from afar) and has to backtrack to the one with the four portraits. “You didn’t see that.”

“I did,~” purrs Sour.

In her most stern and professional deadpan tone, Sugar counters her with, “Nuh-uh.”

Taking a moment to let the ensuing giggles die down, Sugarcoat then asks Sunset, “So, what was your plan regarding the Element of Magic?”

“Honestly? The original plan was a bust, because it was kinda contingent on Twilight not chasing me through the Mirror Portal before it closed. I was going to use my status as sole human mage to take over as much of Pedes as I could (starting with Canterlot of course) within the eight months before I could realistically expect Equestria to launch a retrieval operation. If I couldn’t be an alicorn god-princess in Equestria, I was going to be a witch-goddess here, and defend my domain with all the hellfire my angry, spiteful little heart could muster.”

“That sounds kinda hot,” Sour puns.

“Indeed,” Sunny quietly agrees.

“Uh… thanks?” There’s a delay as Sunset tries to remember the train of thought so rudely derailed by idle flirtation. “…But with only three days left before the mirror closed, Princess Twilight and Spike went through the mirror.”

“M-hm,” hums Sugarcoat. “And why didn’t she take her friends with her? All evidence seems to suggest that magic in the hands or hooves of heroes is at its most powerful when used as part of a team.”

“That’s because she was the only Bearer of Harmony whose human double didn’t attend CHS.”

“The enemy,” times three.

“Yeah, yeah, huff my Wondercolt plot.” That pale cider sounds like it’s getting to her.

“…’Plot’, dearie?”

“I think the Sirish coined it. –”

– “My peop– My ponies!”, Sour Sweet shouts. “I think I know what it is.~” –

“It’s the butthole, pussy, and/or taint. Whatever you’d find if you lifted a horse’s tail. It’s ‘cunt’ without being tied to sex or gender, basically.”

“I…– I see…”, mumbles Sunny Flare.

“I was (mostly) right!”, exults Sour. “And don’t threaten us with a good time,~” she teases. It is unclear how serious she’s being.

Loudly clearing her throat, Sugarcoat interjects, “For legal reasons, I should state that we are all above the age of majority, and would be able to prove as much to any EweChannel content moderators.” And, turning on a dime, she asks Sunset, “Now, how did Equestria know that Twilight was the only one who wasn’t going to the enemy?” The others do not bother to chime in, that time.

“…I don’t think I was the only one using the Mirror Portal. I suspect that one of the Princesses slipped through at some point (maybe on the cycle I didn’t go through the portal) and scouted out the lay of the land. Depending on when it happened, my money’s either on Luna or Cadance. Or, it could have been some random guardspony who’d more or less blend into the background. I don’t know.”

“So if they didn’t know our Twilight was going to CPA instead, they at least knew that she was conspicuously absent from CHS. Presumably, they didn’t expect her to go downtown while she was here.”

“Twilight had three days to kick my butt, grab her crown, and get back to Equus. She’s a determined mare. She straight-up slept in the CHS library instead of finding actual accommodations.”

“Think our Wily-Twily will get that kind of spine one day?”, asks Sour.

Warmly, Sunset replies, “She’s already most of the way there. Give her some time.”

Sunny sighs. “That’s what we should have done a long time ago.”

“Yes,” says Sugar. “Now, according to informal interviews with a number of Rainbooms and other CHS students, the self-actualized pony-Twilight-in-human-form, who does not wear glasses despite being blind as a bat, proceeded to make friends with everyone at school and brought down three-point-three-three-three-repeating years of your hard work of fostering an environment of apathy and cliquishness at CHS, practically overnight. Is that correct?”

“…Sure is. Like finding out the big stone fortress I made myself untouchable in was actually a house of cards.”

“I know I put down your abilities as a manipulatrix earlier,” Sunny apprehensively begins, “but I’m actually quite curious how you achieved that.”

“Well, obviously, there were a few different strategies in play. I don’t think we have time to go into everything and I have enough experience with lingering resentment to worry that, even after four years of trying to be a better person, someone might still be (understandably) upset enough to press charges against me–”

– “Fair point,” states Sugarcoat –

“–so I think I’ll only go into how I split up the girls I’m so grateful to call my best friends now. And if they’re listening to this: I know I’ve apologized a hundred times already, but I’m still so sorry. I made your freshman year a living hell and conned you into discarding your first friendship before it could blossom. I’m sorry. Thank you, from the bottom of my heart, for every second chance and patient smile you’ve sent my way. Thank you so much.”

“Awh, that’s so touching!~ But hold the fuck up,” objects Sour. “You made it sound like you were all freshmen when gnome-Twilight showed up. You’re telling me they were sophomores?”

“…No, I dragged everyone down to my level. Turns out, living in fear of the flaming bitch-queen deciding to make herself your problem on any given day isn’t conducive to a healthy learning environment. One of us, who I won’t name for the sake of her reputation, did start that year in the tenth grade – but then between work, superheroing, and artifact-induced memory loss, she ended up having a really bad finals week and had to repeat her senior year, so it balanced out in the end.”

“Tragic irony,” Sunny idly notes.

“To answer the original question: I either stole their phones when they weren’t looking or spoofed their numbers with the coerced help of a certain techie whose name I would rather not mention for his own safety. Then I fed them fake promises, lies, and insults until they were gaslighting themselves into hating each other all on their own.”

“That worked?” Sunny sounds either baffled or disappointed. “No one tried to resolve the miscommunications by comparing text histories? Or communicated outside of their phones?”

“They tried, but I was good at interception. They wanted to pass notes? I’d replace them with forged notes of my own. They wanted to schedule things in person? I spoofed sudden changes of plans by text. And my tech guy really came in handy, too. If it seemed like they were going to try to actually figure out where the miscommunication came from like adults, we deleted the spoofed messages so there’d be no evidence, making liars out of the would-be sleuths. And, of course, real messages sent by the wrong fingers don’t need to be deleted.

“Eventually, they couldn’t stand each other enough to communicate by anything but text, if they even talked at all, by which point they were completely caught in the trap.”

“I still think you got lucky.”

“Maybe. All it took was one neutral outsider who, in a really roundabout way, knew the moral characters of all five of them well enough to see through the entire web of lies I’d woven, and just like that, they were friends again.

“I say ‘again’ because they originally hit it off at the Freshman Fair. It was like Harmony or fate or something wanted to bring them together, no matter the universe. And I stood in its way. Of course, I had no way of knowing that back then, but even if I did, I was dumb enough I’d still try, anyway.”

“Forgive me, but craftier protagonists than you have tried to fight fate and suffered worse fates in turn. I’m sure you’ve seen the play–”

Sour cuts her off, furious. “If you bring Oedipus into this too, I’m going to go to your house, kick your ass, hunt down your absent father for sport, and fuck your mom before you get a chance.”

Weakly, Sunny stammers, “I– I was going to say The Scallantish Play…”

“Oh. Carry on!~”

“…Fucking Sunny’s mom doesn’t preclude Sunny from later doing so,” Sugarcoat points out. “You haven’t made her unfuckable.”

– “I mean, have you met her?” –

“She is only subjectively unfuckable to most people with sense. That’s different. Obviously, Sunny still happened.”

“She wouldn’t survive Sour Sweet,” mumbles Sunny, almost inaudibly, and inarguably haunted. “I have… seen what our dear Sour does to boys who catch her eye. Field hospitals in active war zones have better survival rates.”

– “Meat’s meat, baby. Meat is meat.” –

“You can still fuck a corpse,” Sugarcoat half-shouts, agitated by her comrades’ illogic. “You’d have to render Abacus Cinch unfuckable in a literal and incontrovertible sense to deny her the oedipal displeasure. Now, if you need to borrow a cement mixer, I know a guy.”

“Oh, I can get rid of both bodies that way.”

“It’s a two-for-one special.”

It’s at this point that neither Sour nor Sugar can keep up their characters and both start corpsing for three solid minutes.

Tamping down her own disquieted laughter, Sunny announces, “…I think we lost Sunset.”

Sugarcoat exits the slideshow again to tab over to Clarity, where PhoenixRising is absent. “Ah, shoot, you’re right.”

Still snickering, Sour asks, “Aww, did we scare her off?”

But she’s not gone for long. PhoenixRising pops back in, mid-wheeze, trying to hack out, “I’m sorry– I was– I was trying to mute myself– while– while I was dying– and I accidentally hit |Disconnect|!” and that sets everyone off again.

Another minute later, Sugacoat has managed to wrangle the presentation back to the proper slide and, still a slight bit mirth-touched, she reads off her notes again. “Now, this fourth photo you see on the screen here” – she circles Twilight’s photo – “was taken during the Fall Formal. You might have noticed it doesn’t match the other three, on account of it not being Sunset Shimmer.”

“I can hardly imagine our Miss Sparkle attending homecoming, let alone being crowned homecoming queen, or what-have-you,” sighs Sunny Flare.

“Princess of the Fall Formal,” Sunset explains. “Trust me: Princess Twilight isn’t generally big on that kind of thing, either. I kinda forced her hand.

“See, back when she was chasing me in Equestria, she almost managed to wrestle her crown out of my hooves, but it ended up flying through the Mirror Portal anyways. I dove in after it, and she went to the Princesses to report the theft and figure out a plan.

“But here’s where one of my plans bit me in the butt: before I fumbled the theft, I wanted to replace the Element of Magic with a cheap copy that might keep her from noticing until the portal was closed. I bullied the Fall Formal committee into using my design for the prop crown for the 2013 Fall Formal, which I drafted to look exactly like the crown I saw on Twilight’s head in the stained glass. Obviously, something a bunch of teenagers welded together out of spraypainted aluminum and colored glass isn’t really gonna match the actual, genuine golden, amethyst-studded tiara, but I just wanted to buy myself a couple hours.

“It really wasn’t worth it, though. When the real deal smacked Fluttershy in the back of the head out of nowhere, she thought it was the Fall Formal crown, and ‘returned’ it to the Principals, who put it under extra safekeeping. I wasn’t gonna be able to steal it again. Not without magic, at least.”

“So the only way to get it back was to win it,” assesses Sugarcoat. “And I’m assuming Twilight, likewise, wasn’t able to convince the Principals that she was a horse-princess from another dimension and that crown rightfully belonged to her.”

Sunset can’t help but chuckle. “Nope!”

“Which is why the both of you spent the next three days of school, Womensday through Fingday, vying for the votes of the students in order to earn the title of Fall Formal Princess. You, through intimidation, and her, through being a good person.”

“Shouldn’t surprise you she won.” The smile – the pride – the sportsmanship – is audible.

“…Not to disparage our dear Tartaglia Sparkle,” says Sunny, “but I do suspect, from the sound of it, that had someone like your Twilight come to CHS, our school may have made a genuine change for the better far sooner. She seems so… stalwart, so dauntless. Perhaps Mother…” She doesn’t finish the thought.

But Sunset finishes it for her. “Maybe. If she could turn Princess Luna around, I’m sure she could turn a regular, mortal principal around too. But let’s not get hung-up on the what-ifs when there’s so much more the future could still bring.”

“As you wish…”

Sugarcoat moves on to the next slide, which has already been spoiled. Not that you can really tell what the pictures are of, besides some freaky demon-thing. “So, uh. What happened here? I’ve heard the words ‘she-demon’ tossed around a lot.”

“…Right. That’s because I turned into one, literally.”

Sour shouts, “Pandemonium is real! I knew it! Hail Discord!” It is unclear what religion Sour Sweet actually professes.

“The existence of demons is only proof of the existence of demons,” objects Sugarcoat. “Pandemonium and Discord are different concepts altogether, neither of which we can verify using our current information.”

“…Maybe ‘literally’ was the wrong word. I don’t know that there was anything like me before I turned into that, and even Twilight looked… way different.”

“She looked terrifying,” Sour says, in awe and admiration.

“Terrifying,” repeats Sunny Flare. The blush is unmistakable.

“Kinda like one of Sunny’s old OCs,” Sugarcoat observes.

“Silence, Dottoressa.”

“That would make recording this podcast very difficult,” Sugar calmly explains. “How did you become a demon, Sunset?”

“…Let me start from when Twilight won the vote.

“I wasn’t ready to give up. The crown falling into Princess Twilight’s hands just meant I had to improvise a new plan to take it from her. And she just so happened to bring her little brother with her.”

“Her brother is a dragon? What?! How do pony genetics work?!” Of all things, this seems to have upset Sugarcoat more than anything else.

“–It’s not like that. To make a long story short, he was an orphaned egg and Twilight’s family adopted him when she helped him hatch. Which just makes it all the more insulting that the Mirror Portal turns him into a dog. He’s not her pet.”

“…Can you have a dragon as a pet, though?”, asks Sour Sweet.

“…No. That’s slavery.”

“So I gotta find one who’s into that shit.”

“…Anyways, I had a couple of lieutenants whom I also won’t be naming. They were just a couple of freshmen and they don’t need any more flak than they got for being coerced into helping me. I won’t sugarcoat this: –”

– “Hah,” she deadpans –

“– I had them hold Spike hostage so I could issue an ultimatum to Princess Twilight in front of the school.”

“Merciful Meg Carthy…”

Sour scoffs. “Don’t tell me you’ve never been in a hostage situation, Flare-Bear!~”

“Oh, I have. You’ve put me in them. I can still smell your body wash on some of my collars…”

“They make deodorizer for that, you know,” offers Sugarcoat.

“No.”

Like a good friend, Sugarcoat just moves on from that. “So, you were saying, Sunset Shimmer?”

“…Uh…”

“Just keep going. Once this is all over, you get to leave.”

“…Right. Look, I know, I was a bit of a raging she-demon–”

– “I would’ve said ‘cunt’, but that works too,” says Sour –

“– but I never planned on hurting Spike. I just needed to get Twilight where I wanted her. Like, call me a silly gnome all you want–”

– “And I will, you silly gnome.” –

“– but killing is a lot more taboo in Equestria than it is in Pedestria, and I dunno, I like having gorefest shooters and slasher movies on this side, well enough, but I don’t think I could take a life… at all. Not even in self-defense. It’s one of those Equestrian sensibilities that I still held onto, both after three years, and still now that I’m coming up on seven.”

“I think that’s a pretty normal attitude? Just because violence is the lifeblood of the state doesn’t mean the average loser stuck living in it has to enjoy it, though it sure makes life a lot easier to swallow. Personally, I think replacing state violence with friendship is a wonderful idea!~” She clicks her tongue. “Just, uh… how?”

“Sour, dearie,” whines Sunny, “I was saving the serious, compassionate political analysis for the conclusion! Get back in character, Pulcinella!”

“Ugh, fine. Sunset, you’re a pussy for believing in things like empathy and human decency. After this, I’m gonna go skeet-shooting with a bunch of impoverished-but-plucky street-urchins. Instead of clay pigeons.”

“Skeet-urchins,” Sunny idly portmanteaus.

“Skeet-urchins,” agrees Sugarcoat.

After a round of chuckles, Sunset is ready to continue her narration. “Okay, so, the ultimatum was this: if she doesn’t give me the crown and get the fuck back to Equestria before it closes at midnight, then I’ll smash the inactive portal and we’ll both be stuck here.”

“Despite the fact that the Fall Formal concluded at 10 o’clock PM, so you’d have to camp out in front of the statue for about two hours,” observes Sugarcoat.

“I was willing to stand at the one known gate between our worlds as long as I needed to. I’d let her think it over, or say goodbye to all her new friends – whatever she wanted to do before she got out of my life for another eight months.

“I didn’t count on her deciding she’d sooner give up her royalty, alicornity, and all of the friends she no doubt made in Equestria, if it meant keeping me from ruining this world. That took guts I didn’t think she had in her.”

“So what was your backup plan?”

“I… didn’t have one. I was so peeved I could barely think, and I just lunged for the crown. It kinda just turned into a slapstick game of keepaway at that point, where none of the players brought their A-game.”

“You should have buttered the crown. Maybe then, you could have timed the portal out.”

“I should have had my henchmen steal butter from the cafeteria, yes,” Sunset says, imitating Sugarcoat’s deadpan affect and getting a hearty chortle out of her host. “Not that it would have mattered in the end: that, uh, tall tealish beam you’ve got so many pictures of? That was me activating the Element of Magic when I crowned myself.”

“Oh.”

“I thought I won.”

“That’s how they get you.”

“It really is. That red blur right there” – Sugar highlights the smear of pixels in question – “is me as some kind of demon of wrath. I, uh… It’s what I wanted to look like.”

“A flying hot sauce stain?”, asks Sour.

“Okay, maybe I remember what I looked like better than you can tell from this photo. I’m surprised you couldn’t get a better picture; I know some of those kids had their phones out before I mind-controlled them.”

– Sunny gasps, “Before you excuse-me?” –

Sugarcoat barrels past to reply, “The enemy students didn’t trust me with the pictures they took, so I just got this from someone who was watching from their house across the street at the time. I think your classmates care about you.”

“That’s… very kind of them. I’m past saying ‘more than I deserve’, but it still feels that way sometimes.”

She doesn’t dwell on it. “What I don’t see here are my henchmen, who I also demonized, so this was probably when they were inside the building but before we all got smacked back down to Pedes.”

“I see. All we knew going in is this: one thing leads to another, and at approximately 10:10 PM on Fingday, the 6th of Steptember…” Sugarcoat changes the slide to a photo of CHS with a big stinking hole instead of a front door. “The whole front entrance of Canterlot High School goes kaput.”

“…Hey, is this podcast admissible in court as evidence if the school board sues me for damages?”

“No, because everything we’re saying is patently insane. By the time enough people believe in magic for a judge and jury to buy ‘an extradimensional pony clone of a juvenile delinquent turned into a demon and exploded the front façade with a magic fireball spell’, and have settled on or written a law in(to) the books with which to charge you for it, you’ll have long exceeded the statute of limitations.”

Sunny also shares, “The law is slow to adapt to new technologies.” She sighs in the most melancholic mourning, like an aging actress reminiscing over her day in the limelight. “I miss the Wild West of the old internet. Once upon a time, I had entire forums wrapped around my finger. Naught but ghost towns, now.”

Sugarcoat barrels past her friend’s prose. “Admittedly, President Sombra’s probably gonna put together an internet commission and work them doubletime to find more ways to make it illegal to watch a video the wrong way, but twice a snail’s pace is just a fast snail’s pace. You should still be good.”

Sunset hums. “There’s a name I do remember from the history books, but our Sombra was a warlock conqueror, not a politician, so I probably wouldn’t worry too much?”

“A sorcerer kills with a spell; a statesman kills with a word,” remarks Sunny. “The difference is thin. In much of fantasy fiction, a spell is just a word with power behind it.”

“…Maybe I would worry, then.”

“All presidents are sinners and ghouls,” claims Sour. “He fits in like a glove!~”

“…I’ll keep Princess Twilight on speed-dial. –Speed-write. Also, wasn’t this Sombra a Crystal Prep alum?”

“As Mother loves to remind me,” Sunny groans through her hands.

“Sorry I brought it up.”

“Easily-forgiven, dearie. You’re not the one needling me to take her place or shoot higher. ‘And what’s your plan for when you’re 35, my dear Sunny, hm? With whose children have you been making connections?’ I don’t know, maybe I want to try this ‘actual friendship’ thing out for a while. See where that takes me. Maybe I like mes arquebusiers as more than a means to a portfolio.”

“I gotta say, I’m also a fan of ‘not getting ditched for having a working-class background after graduation’,” adds Sugarcoat.

“You stole the words right out of my mouth, Sugarpie, you claim-jumping thief,~” completes the trio. “Though if we’re all still doing this podcast when we’re in our thirties, something will have gone either horribly right or horribly wrong.”

“There are only so many magical disasters,” argues Sugarcoat. “Assuming we don’t reach the singularity where they’re happening faster than we can cover them before we catch up in about a year, this is a podcast with a finite end.”

“That won’t do,” insists Sunny Flare. “I shall be most distraught if we should lose this (potentially-profitable) friendship venture.”

“We could mine Equestria for disasters,” suggests Sour. “They have an entire history to pick apart like vultures.”

Sugar grunts, “Yeah, but we don’t know a damn thing about Equestrian history. We’d need to bring on Sunset as a permanent host and split the money four-ways. –Rest assured, Miss Shimmer, you’ll be adequately compensated for your time today as well, but so will every subsequent guest.”

“…You make a good point, Sugarpie. Sunset, do you accept payment in cranberries?”

“No, thank you!”

“Well, shit. Guess we’ll have to resort to Plan B: make our own disasters!~”

“We do have applicable experience,” notes Sugarcoat.

“Or,” Sunset suggests, straining not to call these bozos the bozos that they are, “you could just pay a visit to Equestria and do some research yourselves. Princess Twilight would be thrilled to accommodate a learning experience like that!”

Before any of them can object to her suggestion, she charges onwards with her explanation of events. “Anyways, since I probably won’t be sued, yeah, while I was in she-demon mode, the students and faculty who’d come out to see what all the noise was started retreating inside to hide from me. I, uh… proceeded to explode the front door with a blast of magic to demonstrate my power and the futility of resistance and all that jazz…”

“It’s a power move, to be sure,” Sunny says. “Is this where that hypnosis comes in?”

“Hypnosis and mind-control are two different things – but yeah. I was… kinda power-tripping and improvising at the same time. I felt so strong with my magic back that, for a moment, I genuinely thought I could take the fight to Equestria and rule both worlds.”

“…With an army of teenagers, dearie?”

“…Remember how I said the faculty came out to investigate the ruckus? That includes administrators.”

– “Oh.” –

“Like, say, a pair of Principals I had no reason to believe wouldn’t be subservient alicorn superweapons on the other side of the portal.”

– “Oh.”

“Yeah, look, I was still way overestimating my odds against the Harmony that protects Equestria, but it wasn’t as dumb a plan as some of my classmates joke about when they think I’m not in earshot. If you wanna be Princess Celestia’s magic student, you gotta be either really book-smart like Twilight, or really good at improvising.

“…And Princess Twilight isn’t that bad at improvising, either.”

Sour asks, incredulous, “Miss ‘Schedule-Her-Bathroom-Breaks’? Her?!”

“Just because both versions of her like to plan things out in advance and stick to that plan doesn’t mean she can’t think fast, when push comes to shove.

“Like, I neglected to mention – the thing about the Element of Magic is that it’s also the Element of Friendship. It’s supposed to bind the other five Elements together the same way its Bearer is connected to the other Bearers through personal friendship, and concentrate their individual virtues into one omnibenevolent ray. It shouldn’t be very powerful on its own, which it was in its brief time in our world.

“But because I was mostly tapping into the magic side of the duality, it was really lax on what it considered a friendship to draw power from. ‘Oh, you have two henchmen who are only by your side because they have a crush on you? That’ll do.’”

Scratching her face in range of the microphone, Sugar mutters, “You’d think some artifact weapon representing all that’s good in the world wouldn’t give the old you the time of day.”

“…I also wonder about that,” Sunset sighs. “I think… Harmony might have been humoring me to teach me a lesson, like my old mentor was fond of. If I didn’t get so close to getting everything I wanted… and to taste how bitter, and angry, and hollow, and lonely I still was, despite all that… I might not have been emotionally-broken enough when its boon got smacked out of my hands to re-evaluate the last decade or so of my life.”

Sour snorts. “Who knew Harmony had a sense of humor?”

“Laughter is one of the elements. That one’s in the hands and hooves of–”

“–That pink fiend,” Sour concludes.

Then, an unfamiliar voice chipperly cloys through Sunset’s microphone like cotton candy through a straw. “Hey! That’s not very nice!”

Sunset shrieks at the jumpscare, prompting a barrel of laughs out of the Shadowbolts. “Pinkie–! My room–! I thought you went home already!”

“Kreate’s noperoni-and-cheese dinner, Sunset Shimmer!”, Pinkie giggles. “Of course I’m still here! I had a party to clean up! I’m not just gonna leave your apartment full of loose and extremely edible confetti! That’s how you attract parasprites!”

– “–Pinkie, how do you know what a parasprite is?” –

Pinkie doesn’t answer the question. “But then my ears got really hot, and my shoulders got all fluttery, and I felt a foot-shaped chill on my belly like a ghost stepped on me, and that’s how I knew someone was talking about me!”

“I meant it as nothing but a compliment, sweetie!~ Devil-to-demon, you understand.”

“I believe Indigo would say ‘game recognize game’,” adds Sunny Flare.

“Oh! Okie-dokie-‘chokie! Thanks, Sour! You’re a real barrel of laughs, too! Also: hi, Sunny-but-not-our-Sunny!”

“…Hello.”

“Hi, Sugarcoat! Maud says hi, Sugarcoat!”

“Hi, Pinkie. Hi, Maud. Hi to Boulder, as well.”

Pinkie gasps. “Oh my gosh! I forgot to say Boulder says hi, too! Thanks a bunchies for reminding me! You’re so good at not forgetting things!”

“I am. Is Maud still into rocks?”

“M-hm! You should go see her at the geology museum downtown!”

“I should.”

“…Does our dear Pinkie Pie now count as a guest for the purposes of compensation?”, asks a wary Sunny Flare-y.

“I made her sign a waiver, weeks ago,” Sugarcoat casually states. “As unplanned appearances are unavoidable and inevitable, we do not need to pay her unless we explicitly bring her on as a guest. See our future episode on the Mirror Pool for a Pinkie Pie guest appearance.”

“And how do you already know about the Mirror Pool?”, demands Sunset.

“I will say nothing on the matter other than that I am exceptionally-proficient at time-management.”

There is a long silence as Sunset tries to figure out if that’s a joke or not. “…We did a headcount after the Spring Breakdown. There was only one of you. I’m gonna choose to believe that this is a prank.”

“And I will note for later that the Mirror Pool is within the vicinity of the Everfree Forest and/or Ponyville. Thank you.”

“…I don’t know what’s real anymore.”

“Me neither!”, Pinkie cheerfully adds. “I haven’t for a long time!”

Sour cuts in to say, “PiPi, sweetie, if what you’ve got going on in that bouncy bedeviled noggin of yours is anything like MoMo’s [BLEEEEEP], she can hook you up with some [BLEEEP].”

There is a sharp change in the audio feed. “Hi. This is Sugarcoat in post. I am more than willing to leave embarrassing trivia about my friends in the pod for the sake of comedy, but for legal and moral reasons I will not be divulging their medical histories, nor any potentially-illicit activities which they would theoretically be capable of doing. Don’t take it out on Sour for forgetting she’s on a public podcast, either; Pinkie has that effect on people. Now, back to the pod.”

The original buzz of idle microphones picking up the hums of a choir of background air conditioners returns in time for Sunny to add, “Or that lettuce which befits the two of you.”

“I’m good, thanks! And I should probably get out of all of your not-even-close-to-what-the-doll-looks-like hair! This bit’s starting to wear out its welcome!”

A salvo of “Bye, Pinkie”-s hits the pink demon at once.

“Oodles of toodles!~”

Sunny plays a Manna-Boybera-kind-of ‘proink’ noise on her soundboard as Pinkie departs, and the bubbly giggles it earns carry all the way to Sunset’s microphone.

“She’s good,” Sour mutters. “Real good. A worthy competitor, if I do say so myself!~”

Sunny gasses her up with, “Your fated battle shall stampede the heavenly horses, bells a-jingle, from Meg Carthy’s pasture; drive Hasrro into shuttering his infernal factories out of fear; and uncover the holy corpse of the Lorn Saint from its hidden sepulchre in the darkest folds of uncreation, dearie.”

“Whoever wins, we lose,” Sugar concludes. “Also, Faust isn’t Lorn,” she says, and for a second, it sounds like they’re about to argue religion, but then Sugarcoat deadpan heresies, “She’s just out for cigarettes. I’m sure she’ll be back from the corner store any day now.”

After the laughter dies down again, there is a profound pause, which Sunset ends with, ”What were we talking about, again?”

“You were about to describe what made Princess Twilight resourceful enough to stop you from invading Equestria.”

“Oh, yeah! Okay, right. As I was saying, using the friendship side of the Magic Element’s duality requires a lot more friendship and (you’d think) the other five Elements to be physically-present: Generosity, Loyalty, Honesty, Kindness, and Laughter.”

Sunny wordlessly plays another ‘proink’ sound effect.

“Now, take this with a grain of salt, because we (as in, the mages and scholars of Equestria) still don’t know all the ways in which the Elements work, but somehow, Twilight Sparkle, Bearer of Friendship, managed to manifest the other five Elements on the doubles of their Bearers that she new-game-plussed her friendship with. Harmony must have figured they were suitable substitutes. I don’t know.

“It didn’t look quite like what you guys saw at the Friendship Games. Instead, that’s what that– Go back a slide?”

Sugar compliantly brings us back to the collage of pixels that allegedly form photographs.

“That’s what that rainbow pillar is. They ponied up for the first time (you know, got the ears, tails, wings, horns, and so on of their counterparts) and the rainbow just came out of them.”

“Like the Rainbow of Light?”, asks Sunny.

“Yeah, kinda – except instead of Meg Carthy just straight-up merking Tirac with it, Twilight and her friends just took back the power I stole and left me, uh… bruised pretty bad in a smoking crater, but otherwise unharmed.”

“I have to say, that’s a much more pleasant outcome than being vaporized, screaming, into the dew of the First Dawn.”

“Yeah, I’ll take it. Incidentally, that rainbow was not, as Dashie will tell you, her doing a corkscrew dive-bomb with her new wings directly into my smug demon-bitch face. Anyways, I’m done with this slide.”

Sunset continues her narration as Sugarcoat restores the intact wall to its broken state. “You know the story from there. Princess Twilight starts up this precooked speech about how I should just give up because an villainous wretch like me will never claw back my power again, magic or otherwise – and then the smoke clears a bit and she actually sees me bawling my fucking eyes out at the bottom of that pit, and she realizes she might’ve had the wrong speech prepared.

“So, she scraps it and pulls me back to my feet instead. I told you she knows how to improvise.”

“Guess so.”

“The call to leave me in the care of her new friends… I’ll be honest, even though it worked out in the end, and I wouldn’t do a thing to change it, I still question if it was actually a smart decision, or just the smartest fast decision she could make so she could get back to Equestria before the portal closed.”

Sugarcoat suggests, “Couldn’t she have instructed Celestia on how to use your books to link the portals, so she’d have time to think it over and/or vouch for you in the immediate aftermath of taking you down?”, suggests Sugarcoat.

“Maybe? But I kinda dragged her away from her royal duties to embroil her in this mess, and three days in Pedestria was almost twelve in Equestria back then. I think. I’m actually not sure if our timescales synched up when the portals were open, but still. She was attending a royal summit at the time (which would also have complicated my theft plan if she wasn’t).

“And besides, I don’t know that I would have been any better off following her to see Princess Celestia and say my sorries, or if I would’ve just backslid into being a huge nag again once I got comfortable. As it was, (other than a certain incident around Carthmas that really put a strain on things) my first true friends trusted Princess Twilight, so they trusted me. I wish I could say the same for the school as a whole, but the Battle of the Bands the following spring did a lot to help with that.”

“Was there any disciplinary action?”, asks Sunny. “I cannot picture Mother letting our post-Midnight Miss Sparkle off the hook, had she not resigned her position, nor had Twilight not transferred to the better friends she found among the ene– among you and yours at CHS.”

“Well, Vice-Principal Luna also made me lay a few bricks back into the entrance, but that was just for show. She released us before she’d have to choose between paying us and violating child labor laws, and the whole wall had to be torn down and rebuilt by the contractors, anyway.”

“She may still have violated one, actually,” Sugar states. “You can’t work a minor after 10:00 PM, and there’s probably something for educators and their faculty about holding minors in their care against their will after a certain hour if we don’t want to rule it as work.”

“…Not that I’m going to press charges, but am I entitled to financial compensation?”

“You may be. Talk with an actual lawyer. Or me in five-to-seven years. I’d be willing to work pro-bono for a friend.”

“I mean, thanks – seriously – but again, I think I just wanna let sleeping diamond dogs lie.”

“M-hm. Now, for the reason all of this matters and isn’t just some random crank’s conspiracy video. Why did magic continue to leak into our world after Twilight took the Element of Magic back to Equestria?”

“That’s really a question for, like, both Twilights at the same time, but I’ll do my best to explain it here.

“To some degree, magic has been on Pedes since at least before the years started ticking upwards.

“No real nice way to put it: before the Mirror Portal was a gate between two nations, it was an old unicorn wizard’s garbage dump. He and his apprentices had a habit of throwing anything (and anybody) who was too dangerous to deal with back then through the portal and dusted their hooves of the problem. That’s why Canterlot’s got weird skeletons and cursed relics like towns in Coloradude have mill tailings. Hay, that’s probably why it’s called Canterlot instead of… whatever the ‘canter’ part is punning.”

Sunny hums. “The word ‘Camanlot’ just sprang into my mind, unbidden.”

“Let’s go with that. Sugarcoat, I know you started your series on Canterlot’s history way back before you knew about magic, but even then, you discussed the mystery of anthropology about where the hay the original inhabitants of ‘Camanlot’ came from, since this one tiny hamlet with its own distinct culture seemed to predate the surrounding settlements by centuries.”

“(Where is the next episode of Shelott, anyways?)”, asks Sunny.

“(I’m working on it.) That’s right. The Mirror Portal being active in Pedestrian prehistory would go a long way to explain that.”

Sour hisses, “(It’s been three years, Sugarpie! You’re still working on it?)”

“(Yes. I’m almost finished.)”

Sunset politely waits for them to finish up their sideline before continuing with her answer. “But none of that explains why, now, magic seems to just be finding its way into the randomest things. I spent a long time trying to figure this out on my own before Sci-Twi brightened up my world, and this is what we more or less came up with:

“Magic’s kinda like a fungus. It plants its spores and leaves its marks on everything it touches, and once it takes root it really doesn’t want to scrub out. Most of the artifacts dumped here don’t do anything on their own, and the people exiled here often transformed into harmless Pedesly analogues. Like, dragons’ breath is a kind of magic, but here, they’re just dogs. The worst breath they have is halitosis. The sirens would have just been normal humans if they didn’t have those bloodstones grafted to their chests. So, what little magic remained intact here laid inert, just sorta creating a background radiation of magical energy that even modern Equestrian mages would need delicate equipment to observe.

“Then I had to go and use the Harmonic manifestation of Magic Itself to try and go to war with my mom. And if that wasn’t it, it was all of the Elements manifesting at once to power me down.”

Sugarcoat supposes, “So the spread of magic is like nuclear fallout, except instead of giving several generations of children birth defects, sometimes an angry teenager just gets handed the Lathe of Hassro.” She hums. “Impossible to say whether this is better or worse.”

“Pretty much. So… yeah. Oops. My bad, guys.”

Sunny clicks her tongue. “I rather dread what might have happened were we to face a bearer of the Memory Stone without Equestrian aid, so I think I have it in me to forgive you.”

“Hah, thanks. Anyways, I think that’s it? –At least for this incident. Obviously, I was on the other side of Harmony for basically all the other disasters you’ll cover on this side of the Mirror Portal, but I don’t think there’s anything left to say about the Fall Formal?”

“That’s all we’ve got. Once you started on your whole path to redemption, CHS started performing better as an academic institution, eventually bringing performance back up enough to make it to the finals in the Friendship Games and face Crystal Prep Academy in the spring of 2015.

“Everything was good, and henceforth nobody would use the stolen magical power of the Elements of Magic to turn a schoolgirl into an unhinged demon of dark magic out of a bloated sense of pride and misguided need to feel superior on Canterlot High School campus grounds again–”

Sugarcoat changes the slide.

Some orchid fallen angel hangs in the air on unbeating wings of midnight’s deepest blue, over a different angle of the CHS front lawn, beneath a dusky blanket of clouds. A horn of ghostly flame sprouts from her forehead, and ethereal glasses of the same will-o-wispy blaze frame the radiantly-glowing eyes of some teenage girl experiencing uninhibited euphoria for the first time in her life.

There is a hole to the sky itself below her, and a ring of horrified onlookers with their faces blurred out all around it. Beside the photographer are four students in matching uniforms, two on each side, all facing away from the camera and towards the deviless they made: to the left, a deep-crimson ponytail and elaborate, arctic-white twintails; to the right, a slicked-back cobalt coiffure and a messy curtain of verdant green.

– “Oh, you used my picture!”, squees Sunny Flare –

“–Until we did it, a year-and-a-half later, at the 2015 Friendship Games, but that’s another episode–.”

Sour Sweet blows out her mic again, hammering on her desk and shouting, “LET’S GO, SHADOWBOLTS! RIGHTFUL WINNERS OF THE 2015 FRIENDSHIP GAMES! LET’S FUCKING GO!”

That doesn’t get the laughter she seemed to hope for. Not from present company, anyways.

Sunny Flare cringes, “Bit much, Pulcinella.”

“…Yeah, you’re right. Still too soon. …Fuck me, I’m an awful cunt.”

“Hey,” Sunset reassures the miserably-jingling jester, “maybe it’ll be funny in ten or fifteen years, when the memory isn’t so fresh and Twi’s had enough time to grow into her own.”

“…Will it? I kinda just sound like an unrepentant bitch now.”

“Well– Yeah, that’s what it sounds like, but I know that’s not what you’re going for. Everybody copes with guilt in their own way. You think Pinkie hasn’t screwed up before and tried to smooth it over with a joke that was in too poor of taste to land?”

“More times than I can count!”, Pinkie jumpsca-declares, “And I have a lot of fingers on this side!”

“I knew it! Get your butt back to Equestria!” An audible smack of the playful variety slips into Sunset’s microphone.

“But my butt was born here, silly!~”, human(?) Pinkie insists, giggling. “And so was the rest of me, except for my left kidney, which is from sunny Califoalnia!”

“…Don’t you mean Girlifornia?”, asks Sugarcoat.

“Nope!~”

Around here is the point where Sour starts wheezing so hard there’s no way she can carry the conversation along.

Exasperated, Sunset asks, “Pinkie, where did you get a pony’s kidney?”

Sunny flare adds, “(And when? And how? And why?)”

Pinkie answers Sunset’s question first. “I just said it’s from Califoalnia!”

“Actually,” objects Sugarcoat, “you said it was born in Califoalnia, which does not preclude its previous owner from having parted with it (or you otherwise discovering it unattended) in a location other than Califoalnia.”

“…You’re gooooood,” Pinkie says. “Anyhower, Sour-Power,” she says, catching the previously-morosified girl mid-cackle, “how’s that for a ‘demon’-stration of the power of Laughter?”

“Fuckin’ hilarious!~”

“Seeeeeeeee?~ Laughter’s the best medicine there is!”

Sour’s good humor slumps out of her body in an instant. “It takes off the edge, Doctor Pinkie, but I still feel like a worthless tool.”

Sunny tries to say, “(We are getting dangerously close to a joke that does not make sense with the pet names I gave you, dearies,)” but Colombina is, however, intently ignored.

Very intently. Pinkie jests, “Hmmmmmmmm! Have you tried seeing the great clown, Pedrolino?”

“(We don’t even have a Pedrolina! An Arlecchina and a Beltrame, but I never found a good Pedrolina!)”

“No, Doctor, but I saw his wife. ‘Saw’ her right in half.”

“More of a scissoring motion,” Sugarcoat idly notes.

“Oh!” Pinkie inhales, sharply. “In that case, maaaaaaybe you shouldn’t go see Pedrolino tonight.”

“Doesn’t make a difference; I’ll be stabbed either way,” Silvia Sweet growls, “by dagger or by da-guilt.”

“Wait, hold on,” interrupts Sunset, “explain Bootalian opera to a horse, please. What happens in Pedrolino? I only know the joke.”

“No idea!~”, giggles Pinkie. “I’m just going where the bit takes me!~”

“I’ll spoil how it ends:” Sunny agitatedly explains, “Three dead: the wife, her lover, and the comedy.”

“So who’s who?”

“No one’s anyone. It’s not applicable to our situation.”

“I’m everyone,” argues Sour. “It’s a one-clown production.”

“And I’m Sugarcoat,” claims Sugarcoat. “Il Dottore isn’t in this one.”

“Then who have I been playing?!”, protests Pinkie.

“Not that kind of doctor.”

“Any quack in a storm,” Sour malapropizes. “What do you got for me, ducktor?”

“Well, let’s see here…” There is an indistinct rummaging sound, that may or may not be Pinkie rifling through Sunset’s desk. “Laughter is the best medicine, but… the dosage makes the poison? That’s a different lesson… …cough syrup can be pretty icky? Not exactly what I’m going for… …a-ha! Here it is!” She slams something shut. “Laughter’s the best medicine, but you should really-deally read the labelly-dealio to make sure it’ll actually cure what ails ya! Sometimes it’s more of a painkiller, you know.”

“And if that was all I needed, I’d just steal some opiates from [BLEEEP]’s dad. How do I make the guilt stop?”

“Hmmmmmm. Forget the Pedrolino joke: instead of laughing the guilt away and just feeling like an even bigger meanie than before, maybe you should do something nice for Twilight, even if it’s just spending time with her and making your friendship even more real!”

“That’s an idea,” Sour agrees. “…What would we even do together, though?”

Pinkie whispers conspiratorially into the microphone, “You didn’t hear this from me, but somebody’s been having a hard time finding archery lessons that fit into her schedule after watching a video about parabolaaaaaaaaaas.~”

“…Guess that’s what I’m doing after this, if she’s free,” Sour vows. “I’ll have to reschedule with the skeet-urchins.”

That’s the joke that lands. Even Pinkie’s busting a gut, and she wasn’t there for the setup.

Still giggly, she says, “Alrighty, I’d better scram for real this time! See you on the 28th of Nofemmeber at the lateeeeeeeeeeest…!~”

After the pink menace finally finishes fading into the background, Sunset asks, “What’s on the twenty-eighth of Nofemmeber?”

“…My birthday,” mutters Sour Sweet, perturbed. “How does she know?”

“You literally have a twin sister who goes to CHS,” Sugarcoat points out. “I’m not even going to spell this one out for you.”

“…Ah. Right.” Sour grumbles, “It’s so damn easy to get wrapped up in the pink mystique.”

A few seconds of chuckles and dead air pass before anyone speaks again.

This time, it’s Sunset. “…Man, the Friendship Games really were a role-reversal of my ride on the Harmony-go-round, huh?”

“From many angles,” agrees Sunny Flare.

“But not others,” Sour argues. “You managed to talk Wily-Twily down instead of rainbow-blasting the devil out of her. Thank you, by the way. She wasn’t any of the snotty plots who would’ve had it coming.”

“I mean, thank you for also not blasting the shit out of us, too,” Sugar adds. “I am also thankful for that. Not that any of us expected unleashing the magic to transform Twilight into a superpowered reality-vivisectionist, but laws and ethics tend to be more concerned with the result of the offense much more than the intent behind it.”

“…Well, look, I can’t say ‘you’re welcome’ for not dropping a rain-beatdown on you guys, because that wouldn’t have been the right response. Like, violence–”

Sunset changes her mind about how to start the sentence. “I think, as a Bearer of Pedesly Harmony, it’s helpful to maintain a sharp ‘villain/jerk/idiot’ distinction in your head. You guys were a mix of jerks and idiots, but I can easily believe you wouldn’t have been so gung-ho about it if you actually knew what you were messing with. Being a villain requires a genuinely-malicious intent, an unwillingness to be talked out of that intent, and, most importantly, enough power that leaving them alone for a second makes them a mortal threat.

“That’s where you break out the can of whoop-rump, and only enough to knock the power out of them. I was just a jerk, right until I made myself a demon and a villain. Sci-Twi was – I’m just now realizing how mean this is gonna sound – categorically just an idiot until she was coerced into becoming a dark angel and a villain. You guys weren’t even trying to hurt anyone beyond their sense of school pride, you didn’t get the magic power-up, and, most importantly, you realized you fucked up and jumped in to keep your ‘enemies’ from skydiving to Ponyville without a parachute. You didn’t get a beatdown because you didn’t need one.

“That’s honestly kinda what I meant earlier, about how Pedestria is more violent than Equestria. Justice here isn’t as concerned about fixing the damages as it is about punishing the wrongdoer. They aren’t the same thing. There shouldn’t be victimless crimes in a restorative system, because with those, there’s no one in need of restoration; but here, you can lose years of your life just for using the wrong substances on yourself.”

“There’s also the economic incentive to extract slave labor from a captive prison workforce,” Sugarcoat notes.

Sunset shudders. “Yyyyyyyeah, this country didn’t elect the warden of Crystal Penitentiary in a vacuum. But that’s getting away from the point I’m trying to make.”

“Another time, then.”

“Thanks. As I was saying, punitivity’s embedded in our culture here, too. It’s like the only two ways a movie-villain can leave the screen are either running/limping away to do more crimes in the sequel, or getting killed in the takedown – like redemption and atonement are this ‘deeply unserious’ notion for kids. Hell, even in kids’ shows, where they can’t even take the killing option, the cartoon fight-cloud and silly sound effects they’re using instead of blood and gunplay are there to make you happy the right guy is getting hurt, not as a tool for getting the bad guy into a state where he’ll listen to reason.

“And I’m not scolding anyone for laughing and cheering when the good guy fucks the bad guy up, okay? I do that, too. These things are objectively entertaining. That’s what they’re supposed to be. Just… maybe, if you’re a writer, put some thought into whether killing off your villains is really how you want to depict justice.

“Sorry for ranting. I just get worked up about this kind of thing. As a former villain… I’m kinda biased.”

“No, no, dearie; it’s more than fine!”, Sunny assures her. “This is exactly the kind of intellectual, philosophical energy we were hoping for in our debut episode!”

“And besides, if you’d gone and killed off the antagonists, we’d be out of ideas for guest spots.”

Apprehensively, Sunset says, “…Not gonna try to argue against that at all, because everyone deserves a chance to tell their side of the story… but I can’t guarantee that they’ll all share my general vibes about the merits of friendship and Harmony. Or that they’ll be entirely honest.”

“Then we’ll cross our fingers and hope they’re at least funny as hell, instead.”

“Besides,” Sugarcoat argues, “it’s not like you can logically trust anyone to be honest. Not even you. Heck, not even Applejack, as much as the two of us value truth. Obviously, she hates telling lies – even lies of omission – but she’s also a stubborn tool who’ll lie to herself if it keeps her believing what she wants.”

“We’re really just picking fights with all of our rival-friends today, huh?”, observes Sour Sweet.

“I’m not being mean; I’m just being right.”

Sunset just chuckles. “Oh, don’t worry; she gives it right back. She gripes about ‘that wishy-washy devil’s advocate who don’t know the diff’rence a-tween bein’ frank and naggin’,’ – often, loudly, and sometimes even unprompted. That’s how you know she appreciates you.”

“I plead guilty on all charges.”

Sunny Flare anecdotalizes, “We’re all very lucky you and the others were there to explain that the reason we all clustered to Twilight’s side at the 2016 Friendship Games was not to steal her back to CPA with empty displays of change as human beings, but because we genuinely wanted to show her how far we’d come and express our gratitude. Furthermore, Applejack is quite lucky to have so many friends patient enough to explain this to her the three or four times it took to finally convince her to stop trying to drag her away from us again.”

“None of us are flawless paragons of our Elements,” Sunset admits.

Continuing, Sugar declares, “Do not mistake my dismissal of perfect honesty as a lack of commitment to the facts. This is why we ask questions when something doesn’t sound right. Your story had a number of such confusing particulars, and you answered them all to my satisfaction. You can rest assured that we’ll be grilling our future guests just as hard, if not harder, whether we 99% trust them like you and Applejack or 33% trust them like, for example, Vignette Valencia, who is the only planned guest I can say that about out loud without scaring her off from a precious opportunity to reach a new audience. It’s only due diligence.”

“Fair enough.”

“If you do still wanna play fact-checker, I ask that we negotiate the terms of such an arrangement off-air, but I can say now that you would not be a fourth mic. Your presence would intimidate at least some of our guests.”

“And that’s my job!”, declares Sour.

“Yes.”

“…I’ll consider it,” says Sunset, “But I think you might just have the integrity to make it work.”

“I pride myself on it. Now–” Sugarcoat moves onto the next slide, which is of a photo taken not during the Fall Formal, but some sunrise. Like the collaged photos, this one is taken from really far away (probably some nearby homeowner’s lawn), and the glare of the morning sun casts the phoenical figure floating above the roof of Canterlot High School in an unbefitting shadow.

– “Oh, I remember that! After the Battle of the Bands.” –

– “Looks a bit like you did at our first Friendship Games,” notes Sunny –

“–You had something you wanted to say here, Sunny,” Sugarcoat reminds her friend.

“You’re very right! Thank you.” Taking on a serious, authoritative tone, Sunny Flare addresses the audience. “We bring this podcast to you with an undergirding statement. There is a theme at work in Now It’s Our Problem, which we hope shall be borne out in the ensuing series.”

Clearing her throat, Miss Flare enters monologue mode. “Magic has entered our world, and it is unlikely it will go away. One day, magic will become common knowledge; an aspect of everyday life. It is inevitable. And yet, that day of common knowledge is not today – though we are playing our own hand in bringing it about.

“We are uniquely poised, at this juncture, to be among magic’s first ambassadors to the broader world, and in doing so, shape the discussion surrounding the phenomenon to (being transparent) our own agenda.

“One day, there will be a national conversation about the role of magic in Pedestrian society, and chances are, the powers that be will see how much damage magic can cause when used maliciously and shoehorn it into the ongoing discourse about firearm regulation, where the only two stances considered valid in the mainstream will be ‘only the government can be trusted with magic’ –”

Sugar adds, “(The same state currently piloted by a prison warden with several credible allegations of systemic and personal abuse of convicts in his care leveled against him.)”

“(Didn’t he straight-up ‘employ’ some as domestic servants?)”

“(Yeah, but that was technically legal,)” Sugar deadpans.

“– or, alternatively, ‘it’s fascist if you confiscate my enchanted ZCube controller that lets me puppet people around in real life’.

“But the powers of friendship and camaraderie and self-actualization cannot manifest a shotgun in your unlicensed hands –”

– “If only,” grumbles Sour Sweet –

“– and Harmony takes a vested interest in preventing its perversion for fatal ends. These are fundamentally not the same debates, and I fear that if we do not say something to get people thinking about it now, we will be trapped in this false dichotomy for interminable decades. Magic is its own thing.

“Maybe you’ve made it through this entire video thinking, ‘Well, that was an entertaining work of urban-fantasy fiction and/or unhinged conference of cryptozoologists and conspiracy nuts,’ and you don’t buy the idea that one day, something might tap into the real, actual magic in your or a loved-one’s heart, to wondrous or terrible ends. If that’s the case?

“Fine. Then it should be of no consequence to you to adopt the ‘strictly-speculative’ stance we propose here. And if you should happen to believe us? Take heed.

“You cannot regulate the magic away any more than you can ban people from making friends and being true to themselves. It’s just not enforceable. At the same time, not all magic is put to benevolent use. What is to be done, to mitigate that potential harm?

“As has been established by the events of the Fall Formal and numerous other crises we intend to dive into, a superpowered villain can be safely depowered. One need only have friends at one’s side. However, what, then?

“Here at Now It’s Our Problem Podcast, we advocate the policy of:”

Sunset speaks her word. “Empathy, –”

“– Integrity, –” says Sugarcoat.

Sour adds, “– Commiseration, –”

And Sunny finishes the quartet with, “– and Forgiveness.”

She resumes her speech. “Because these dangerous supervillains? By and large, they’re just normal people with commonplace, everyday issues, onto whom a great deal of magical power was then randomly dumped like water onto a grease-fire. Sure, personal students of pony princesses with ambitions for the throne are few and far between, but spoiled children and familial resentment are…”, she sighs, “all too common.”

“The next time something like this happens, it could be you,” Sunset says, “or someone you love. Your family, your friends, or maybe just that nice cashier you don’t know very well but smile when you see.”

“Everybody’s as capable of doing evil things as they are of doing good things,” asserts Sugarcoat. “Some are more willing; others need a push. For me, it was being so sure CHS was purposefully cheating to win the Friendship Games, despite mounting evidence to the contrary. None of you are exempt.”

Sour grunts, “We’re all at least a little unhappy, in one way or another. That’s just part of being a goddamn ape that thinks. –Or a goddamn pony, for that matter, I guess. (Celestia-damn?)”

“(We used to say moon-banished, but that was before Luna came back. I don’t know if they still say it or if something’s replaced it.)”

“So,” continues Sunny, “I ask you: do you want to live in a world where one bad decision can ruin you for life, no matter how much you regret it and no matter how many steps you take to mend the wounds you caused? Where there’s no incentive to back down while you’re power-tripping on the infinite fires of creation, because the only thing waiting for you if you do is hatred, doubt, and ostracization? Or do you want to live in a world where you can make things right again?”

Again, Sunset says her piece. “Because it can just as easily be you using the magic in your heart to talk these people down, pull them back to their feet, and wipe away their tears – no matter how much of a jerk, loser, or broken person you think you are. You still have the capacity to give somebody hope.”

“M-hm,” grunts Sugarcoat. “And sometimes the villain of the week isn’t someone you already like and want to forgive. Sometimes, they’re just some jerkwad. As far as anyone present was concerned, that’s what the four of us were. So try not to play favorites: if we get a second chance, every other brat and bully who screws up like us and wants to make amends deserves one, too. It’s only fair.”

Sour adds, “The wonderful thing about everyone being unhappy or kind of a plot sometimes means you’re not suffering alone!~ Take that fucking prick you’re having a hard time bringing yourself to extend the hand of forgiveness to out drinking, and find some common ground to bitch about together. You might just stumble across something you like about each other in the process!~”

“That said, an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of redemption,” Sunny notes. “Please, find it in yourself to forgive the little things before it becomes necessary to forgive the big things. Patience for the socially-maladjusted is rather more our dear Lemon’s thing, but… there are lonely, awkward, weird, mean, and/or annoying people everywhere. If you can give them companionship, tolerate their clumsiness, appreciate their oddities, work with them to blunt their edges, and humor their obnoxiousness, you can prevent these people from ever feeling like it’s necessary to turn to magic in order to make a world that has a place for them – nor to more mundane means to power and control.”

“That’s right,” agrees Sunset. “These principles don’t just apply to helping freshly-brought-down magic-abusers – they’re just kinda good to practice, in general; same as the virtues represented in the Elements.” Sunset sighs. “I will never forget how the Great and Powerful Trrrixie” – another affectionate impression – “had my back during the Memory Stone Mixup. She saw herself in me when nobody else would even look me in the eye. So, uh, if you’re in Canterlot on Junetleman 16th, go see her stage-magic show at the Canterlot Center for Performing Arts, downtown! I’m still not entirely sure if she’s found a way to incorporate Equestrian magic into her act or not; that’s how good she is.”

“We’re not asking you to be a superhuman saint who can easily forgive anything and everything,” Sugarcoat notes. “You might end up not being compatible with that jerk, after all. They might not want to get better, or they might not want you to be the one who helps them get there. They might have a track record of abusing forgiveness. What matters is that you give everyone a shot. Clean the slate off at least once, and then however many times you’re willing to try again after that.”

Sour admits, “We sure needed a couple tries. –Thanks again, Rarity, if you’re listening. You’re genuinely the sweetest!~ (And I prommy I’m still trying to figure out my cutesy nickname for you!~ It’s just, RaRa’s kinda already taken! If you want it, hire a hitman.)”

“(We usually go with ‘Rares’,)” Sunset offers.

“(Eh… I want it to be my thing.)”

“(How about… Rariflare?)”

“(That just sounds like you’re trying to match-make Rarity with my Sunnyflower.)”

Sunny mutters, just barely loud enough to be picked up by her microphone, “(I mean, I most certainly wouldn’t say no…)”

“(Well, if you wanna invite her to a quote-unquote ‘girls’ night’ sometime, just make sure you bring enough quote-unquote ‘soda’.)”

Sunny squeaks again.

“(…Why are these things in scare-quotes?)”, Sunset asks, fear apparent in her voice.

“(Let’s not go into details about ‘girls’ night’. Not here. If you wanna know, we’ll talk later. Just don’t ask questions you aren’t prepared to handle the answers to.)”

Then, suddenly, Sour remembers she was in the middle of making a point. “But yeah. It’s almost like redemption isn’t just some door you can shut behind you by saying sorry, done-and-done. It’s more like, uh… climbing the stairs to your dorm, which should be piss-easy, but sometimes you’re drunk and trying to hide it, and it’s fucking cold out, even in the indoor hallway, so you’d really like to get inside before you freeze your tits off. But sometimes you just kinda slip and fall and you just lie there, just grateful you didn’t crack your skull or break your neck on the way down.

“But you know what? There are total sweetie-pies in this world who’ll see you there, and even if their first impulse might be to grimace and step around you, they’ll change their mind, go out of their way to pick you up, walk you to your room, and not even tattle on you to Principal Cadance. Thanks, [BLEEEEEEEP]!”

The audio cuts out again. “This is Sugarcoat, in post, again. I’d rather we didn’t get the student in question punished for potentially seeing something against school rules and not saying something, as she will still be attending CPA next year after we publish this episode, post-graduation. You know who you are, plagiarist. Also, I wish to clarify that this was all a rhetorical device on Sour Sweet’s part, which is not necessarily evidence or a confession of actual underaged drinking. Now, back to the podcast.”

“I’m honestly surprised I remember that. I was cranberry-fucking-sauced,” Sour concludes.

The gang shares another round of laughter, and the hosts’ thesis statement seems to end there. There is a silence as the giggles die down and everyone comes off the performance-high.

Sunny breaks the silence. “…Do we want to re-record that after a rewrite? I’m worried it came off as overly-moralizing.”

Sunset chuckles. “Ah, that’s kinda inevitable when you’re telling people how to be a good person. You can try to thread the needle, but if you undershoot, then people might get the wrong message, or just not even learn anything at all. It’s a podcast; most listeners are just gonna be half-paying attention while doing something else, anyways.”

“Still… I’d like to think we can bring this episode that much closer to its ideal version. Maybe if I–”

“Look, you know I like to lay it on thick,” Sugarcoat interrupts. “It’s fine. I liked it. Stop being such a perfectionist.”

“…As you wish, dearie. In that case, I believe we’re ready to wrap up?”

“M-hm. Our next episode will be…” – at long last, Sugarcoat brings the slideshow to its final slide: a blurry photo of the night sky with a vague, comet-like streak circled in red and surrounded by question marks – “the Dudecember 2013 Anon-a-Miss Windigo Sightings.”

Sunset takes a sharp breath. “Yeah… those are some experiences I’d rather not relive. But good luck with that!”

“We figured. That’s fine, though. We were going to see about getting the windigos for that, anyway.”

Sunset snorts. “Seeing as tribalism is one of the few things I wasn’t unhappy to learn didn’t really exist on this side of the mirror, I’m gonna have to ask that you don’t create it just to summon the ice spirits.”

“Well, damn. There goes that plan,” Sugar deadpans. “Anyways, does anyone have anything else to add? Any last minute advertisements?”

“Oh! Yes, actually! I happen (because I suppose this is the only thing I’m any good at) to have also entered production on another podcast, with Rarity and Rainbow Dash. It’s called Kill Daring Doo, and it’s about how the Daring Doo we all grew up on… kinda sucks, actually? We’ll be going through her movies, one by one, and reveal the noble adventuress we all know and love for the tomb-robbing, temple-desecrating agent of Pedestrian imperialism that she is.”

“I’d listen to that,” murmurs Sugarcoat.

Sunset agrees, “Me too… But how on Pedes did you get Rainbow to agree to that?”

Sunny clicks her tongue. “She wasn’t too keen on the idea, at first, but when I assured her it would mostly be an excuse to watch, recap, and argue about the movies with a friend-and-a-half, she was sold – and it’s not like she’s completely unwilling to engage with the more unsavory implications of the works.”

“Look,” says Sour, “say what you want about Daring Doo, but it kicked ass when she teamed up with the Guyrish Republican Army to rob that Mench billionaire.”

“…Different movie series, same actress, dearie. And she was playing a villain in that one.”

“Don’t take this away from me.”

“Forgive me.”

“Anything else?”, asks Sugar.

Sunset digs for something. “Uh… shoutout, again, to Trixie Lulamoon: see her show! Junetleman 16th, downtown Canterlot. Be there!”

“M-hm. Alright. I think that’s a podcast.”

“Thanks for having me, girls,” says Sunset. “I think I have a sister to visit, if she’ll see me. See you at the graduation afterparty?”

“I should hope so,” says Sunny.

“See you there,” says Sugarcoat.

“Wouldn’t dream of missing it, Shimmy!~”

After a final round of goodbyes, the video ends as abruptly as it began.

Author's Note

I got distracted and ended up writing this instead of working on Empathy is Magic this week. Oops. I'll still try to get the weekly update in tomorrow, but it might be Saturday if that doesn't work. Fortunately, I don't intend to write a followup any time too soon.

If you're unfamiliar with Well There's Your Problem and either enjoyed this anyways or decided to look down here for an explanation before reading, I recommend watching Episode 19: Lake Peigneur as an onboarding episode. It's a funny episode about a deeply stupid disaster with no human casualties.

This take on the setting of Pedestria is intended to be roughly canon-compliant, wherein all movies and shorts are canon, but comics and other media are subcanon and open for reinterpretation. This episode was more or less recorded parallel to late Season 7, prior to the Pillars' return, according to the numerous assumptions I make about the timeline of both shows. I made a whole freakin' graph of the timelines to try to make sense of it.