Sunset had a baseball bat. It was going to be a metaphor.

She stood on two feet, traipsing a verdant, lush, rolling green hill scape, marble mossy cliff sides stretching a furlong below, where oceans shimmered on the sandy shoreline.

The landscape wasn't really a metaphor, it just looked kind of pretty, and adventurous.

Cretins descended on Sunset.
"Get her!" yelled the head of the pack.
Sunset swung. She swung again. She swung again, and knocked a man out of the park for a home run. One cretin ran the bases for her, fleeing off into the hills.

"Ah, writer's block on a day off! She's got a metaphor, look out!" expletived the goon in the back of the cretin gang, the one the smart ones knew to listen to in, well, really any situation where unbridled offense was no longer the best plan.

"Stand your ground!" yelled the ring leader, before Sunset's metaphor asimilied with her face.

"Wait, what?" asked the smarter goon and several others. And Sunset too, but most uses of 'and' concluding a sentence flow better if you leave the connected subjects to just two groups at the end of it like that.

"No, no, it's assimilated," corrected Sunset about the word choice, as the remaining cretins fled.

"OK, but so like, the word looks a little similar, so I thought I was getting at something," tried the author narrator. She made a positive, but weird facial expression.

"Right," said Sunset, swinging her bat and wiping the simile off the narrator's face.

"Ow," tried the author, standing back up on his legs.

"You okay, dude?"

"Not really," she answered, still working on it. He looked back at Sunset. Sunset raised an eyebrow, frowned, and scratched her own forehead thoughtfully with that circle that's at the end of bat handles which probably has a name that nerds care about.

"Well, get in line, I guess." The author got in the back of the line, and Wallflower Blush stepped forward.

"Hey," she stammered. Sunset blinked. "I'm damaged, and you complete me."

"Aw. I love you," Sun setted, kissing Wallflower and embracing her and making her feel better and good and right and like everywhere was so perfect in the world. A time passed as the two embraced, the amount varying depending on what you think this story's rating should be. I was thinking E, but I'll have to review the site's guidelines.

"Holy fuck, I think we're losing the plot" said Sunny or Blushy. I couldn't tell where it came from between the pile of girl hugs. I mean the narrator-author couldn't tell.

The baseball bat was on the ground now too, and I actually forgot it was going to become a metaphor, but I guess we dropped it like the plot there, so actually it was one? Shoot. Sure I guess.

"Okay," tried Sunset, attempting to glance at the next person in the line, really grasping for any hope that this could stay on the rails, but there was a writer's block in the way (it was Sunday after all). "Hmm."

Wallflower found a shotgun and handed it to Sunset. "Oh, ok, cool." An opaque, though green and friendly looking portal opened nearby, occupying about seven feet (like twelve euros, if you don't speak Amareican) of space nearby. It beckoned, but like, placidly and mostly un-urgently.

"I'll be there for you, you know. If you need me," Wallflower affirmed to Sunset, hugging herself tightly. The comfort and assuredness of helping someone else she loved was a high she knew she chased compared to how unassuageable navigating her own wants and needs ever felt.

"Well, I uh, I do, right now, actually," blushed back Sunset. She sat down on a tropely convenient wide log and laid the firearm across her lap. She loaded a shell into it. "Shells?" She held a hand out to Wallflower, who placed a whole bag of them down between them instead. Wallflower loaded one then. She looked into Sunset's eyes. Sunset loaded a shell, gazing back. Wallflower loaded a shell, then Sunset. They continued gazing longingly, like really longingly, as a non-euclidean amount of ammunition was loaded into the gun over the next forty minutes before the next scene started.

Sunset stepped out of the portal onto solid ground, and took stock of the Niagara Falls, denoting their usual impressiveness, albeit marred by how they were gushing red. It could have been a metaphor, about women, or some shit.

"Jesus Christ," stated Sunset. "I think we've lost track of the point."

The narrator cut in line and sat down across from Sunset. It was attempting, but really not pulling off the androgynous look now, compared to the femme and masc ones. "Table it," frowned Sunset, deflecting that distraction.

Discord tapped his knuckles on the table, trying to collect his thoughts, though the butterflies slipped through the net and out his ears. "It's tough, you know," he grimaced, "trying to get the hang of things."

Sunset loaded the shotgun more.

"People provide provocative prose so well, yet I feel as though I'm just dallying about in comparison." He had a monocle now. And a third and fourth pocketed, but he'd only put them on layer if he felt he'd said something deep enough. (He wouldn't).

"People want to be you. Talented, confident, an adventurer, a romantic, a badass, someone who makes mistakes, but always recovers from them."

"I'm some of those things, sometimes." Sunset swept a streak of gun oil out the barrel and into her leather jacket. It faded right in. "Don't go on about it."

Discord glanced down to check if he was sitting on anything particularly funny for a reply to that one. No, just a copy of his script. He frowned pensively into his thoughts.

"Indecisiveness belies boredom, if advice is why I'm still here." Sunset paused, shrugged, thought, continued. "I got where I am by making my decisions, terrible or great, and pushing forward." She paused for a moment. "Not much else to add there, it's good to just do, I guess."

As a neurodivergent, Discord did recognize that getting anything done did make Sunset hotter.
"Water?" he offered. "Water." He snapped and delivered unto her ice water sourced from nearby.

She glanced at the cup of red liquid, and went back to the gun, eyeing down the sightline. It was the only straight thing for miles.

Discord looked back to Sunset, finishing his own cup, sipping the last dregs of plastic. The water splashed across his claws.

"It's not supposed to be this color," Sunset doured. Discord turned her water blue, but she just dourered. "Water's clear, you know." The rivers around them changed to match the new murky blue hue. She frowned and left the drink sitting there. She looked up at Discord, eye contactingly.

"Gonna need you to advance the plot, man."
Discord reached over and grabbed for her gun, right where the trigger was.

"Well what does this do?" he asked, pulling it.
The buckshot rang out, and buried itself across his torso like a few dozen belly buttons. The pellets just kinda sat there. Sunset sat up straight too.

"Don't grab my gun, dude."

"Well, nothing bad happened."

"I mean, they're supposed to go through the things they're shot at."

"Oh, ah, I see." The buckshot resumed its course and sailed through the rest of Discord. Blood went everywhere, dude. "Ouufgh!" Discord's antlers thunked down onto the edge of the log, and bounced back up, and thudded back down into it again, rebounding a few times and settling. Sparks flew right on out.

Pop.

Celestia stared, forward. Then she took in a really deep breath through her nose. Loudly. At length. Strongly.

Sunset twitched.

"Hey."

"Uh. H-hey." Sunset patted the shotgun, gently. For emotional support.

The silence was loud. Celestia looked down at the draconqueus but stayed near motionless, just frowning. The remaining 15/17ths of Discord that weren't part buck gave her a claws up. Celestia made that noise that's like a "tsk," but it's done more lazily and slowly with the whole tongue going against the roof of your mouth. "Tuh." With half a breath following it out afterwards. Go ahead, try it. I can wait. The part of me that gives a buck has just been shot.

The metatextual postulating soaked the air with its own mood and really bled out all over the awkward quietness Celestia had going before. She hadn't been up to much today, retirement and all that after all, but it was the principle of the spontaneous yoinking that mattered.

Sunset cleared her throat. Celestia looked over to her. The shotgun barrel was tapped fidgetly for a bit there, for that emotional support.

"Well uh. Have you met my girlfriend?"

"Is that like a marefriend?"

Nod.

"Great." Celestia blinked. "I mean, no."

"Well. Here she is!" Sunset smiled. Celestia blinked a little more. At the shotgun? "No, here!"

It was then apparent to Celestia that a girl had been sitting next to Wallflower the whole time. She had come through the portal in the background while no one was really looking. I mean, I didn't even notice either, she's pretty good at her namesake.

"Oh. Wow. That's kind of adorably pathetic."

"Yeah, I am!" Wallflower had her head deeply resting in the crook of Sunset's head and shoulder, and nuzzled deeper. She kissed her like mwahmwahmwahmwah on the cheek and Sunset shot scarlet red all over her face. Awwww. I guess my kind-of-daughter and her mare- girlfriend are kinda cute. Wh- Hey- Celly, get out of my script! Nope. Hey! Nope! No, you brought me here on my day off without asking! Oh, you don't do shit on your day off! Hey pal, not doing shit on my day off is the shit I do on my day off, and you just show up here, and you get shot, and you just bring me on into your mess like you-

BANG
Sunset fired her shotgun into the air.
"Guys, for Pete's sake, this story is already hard enough to read! Cut it out!"

Silence settled slowly.

Celestia blinked a lot.

There'd been something to talk about with all the arguments before that, but with that out of the way there was a lethargic quiet moment to be found as the girls cuddled and Celestia very visibly wondered if she should just. Go. She didn't know how to mother, let alone how to surrogate-mother all that well, a lack of experience vastly obscured by cultural mythos. Did she need to put out an auto-biography or something now that she was out of the game? Hmrgh.

A wild herd of writer's blocks peaked over the horizon in a exhausting pack. They lumbered toward the makeshift camp of weary, strange people.

"Babe. Hey, babe," Wallflower said quietly, poking Sunset.

"Ermf?"

"Hey." She pointed at Celestia. "Clowns to the left of me." To Discord. "Jokers to the right." She hugged Sunset and got closer. "Stuck in the middle with you!"

Sunset wouldn't let that land right away. She mock pouted but Wallflower kept poking her, "hey", "hey", and brightly smiling.

It got through.

Sunset really giggled. It was pretty sweet. Wallflower smiled. They hugged it out while the herd of writer's blocks shambled closer.

Scene cut concluded, Sunset strode forward, unloading her dubiously-physically-possible firearm unto the horde. She blew through formidable challenge after formidable challenge, surmounting all those mountains that rose before her, coming to crest as the victor on the summit of the valley of her woes.

And here I am, padding the buckshot holes in my heart with the stories of her triumphs.

Author's Note

Discord D. Draconqueus