At the moment, I find myself in a meeting with most of the other members of Harmony, just a few hours after our ordeal with the sea monster that was Knots White. I’m fighting off a migraine with painkillers, and my friends are yelling at each other. It's not pleasant.
“Absolutely not! She ain’t got nothin’ ta do with this! Ah told her who Ah was before any of that even happened,” Applejack argued from her chair at the table.
Twilight shook her head and knocked her hoof on the tabletop. “You aren’t getting this, so let me make it clearer. If aunt Luna finds out that your sister knows who you are, she’ll do it herself! We have to brand her, otherwise, this could get way out of hoof! I’m not saying do it to put her on Harmony, I just want to protect her from my family okay?”
“How is she gonna find out if nopony tells her? Y’all keep yer damn mouth shut and we outta do just fine. Y’all gotta know that none of my family is free of the virus at this point, save maybe my uncle. What if she has somethin’ that yer damn Aunt finds useful, huh!? She’s not even old enough ta be drafted yet, but Ah bet ya a Princess could make a ‘special exception’ if she wanted,” Applejack rebutted, tilting her head and doing that thing where she raises her eyebrow. I remember seeing that back when I lived in Ponyville so long ago, but I do believe it was only the Apples that really did it.
“That’s… look, you don’t know what she can do! She’s the Princess of the night, she can enter dreams! If this memory comes up and she’s watching…”
Applejack shook her head. “Then we’ll deal with it at that moment. Ah’m done with this discussion. What else? Ah know there’s more, so spit it out.” Sometimes it makes me wonder how I would act around her if either of us were stallions. I’ve had my strange fantasy about Marevelous Red before, but now that I know the mare beneath the mask… it makes those all the more real and I can’t say that I’m comfortable with it. However, between she and the actual stallion in the room, I feel as if there’s an odd, but growing chemistry between. I giggled at the irony of it, which had her attention drawn to me.
“Got somethin’ ta say?” She sounded a little more hostile that I would have liked.
“No, no, you two go on. Don’t mind me, I’m just… off in my own little world here,” I said in an attempt to lighten the mood. In the back of my mind, my body was screaming at me to sleep from over extending my time today. Applejack and Pinkie both asked me to freeze it, and a third time, I froze time with four ponies inside. I’d practically never frozen time with more than three ponies before, so I didn’t realize how much degradation that actually caused. If one pony removes two minutes of my time for every instance of my power, then four ponies at once should nearly spend my time entirely after mere seconds, and it absolutely did. I’d already lost four minutes and the seconds that went by while frozen, and by what little rules of this power we’ve managed to test, we still don’t know what the multipliers for additional ponies are.
Had I not the sense to inject pain killers when I did, I likely would’ve passed out where I stood. Even then, I could feel the pain beginning to well up in my body and it’s only going to get worse as they wear off. I must remember to thank Goose at some point for teleporting us here after we’d cleaned up. In this condition, I doubt I could have walked the miles between the harbor and the castle, let alone attempt to use the cables.
Then, there’s also Applebloom to think about. Applejack said she didn’t know what her power is, but I could swear she looked right at me like she knew me. Not Diamond the heroine, but Rarity Belle, the seamstress. How would she know that? And for that matter, why did she come running to the harbor if she knew about the monster in the first place? Goose said he told everypony at his store to evacuate, including her. He was dressed like a night guard, so I’d imagine they thought he was official…
“Well, actually, you are the next thing on the list. You did contact your father right? When Mother came over to fix Applejack’s tail the other day, she told me that we needed to make the investigation of Argent Tower out top priority after this. Especially since there actually ended up being a monster in the harbor, Argent has clearly got a game going on and I’m really hoping that we don’t have to see much more of it… but, based on what you all told me that worker said… I highly doubt he was the last one.”
Ugh, speaking of, I never did find my baton. Contacting the Lunar Guard about that is going to be a nightmare after the princess finds out… maybe even literally. And then there’s my father. I felt a twitch run across my bottom left eye lid. Bronze Belle, the current chief of sales at Argent Enterprises. Greedy bastard, lying cheater, old worthless stallion!
“Rarity?” I could feel my forehead veins throbbing as Twilight brought me out of my little fit and the pain of overusing my power coursed through me.
“What? I’m sorry, the um… the pain killers I think are wearing off.” Anything to keep that relationship in my pocket.
“Oh… is it that bad? Would you like me to see if I can’t do anything about it? It wouldn’t take more than a few-” she began, but I cut her off. I don’t need her worrying about me, this should all fade away after I get some sleep.
“No, no, I’ll be fine after I’ve had some rest. I have yet to contact my… father, but I will do so tomorrow after he gets off work.” I’ve never told any of them about my relationship with my parents since it never came up, and I don’t intend to now either.
Applejack however, was curious. “Ya sure it’s just pain right? Not somethin’ else that’s botherin’ ya?”
I shook my head and rubbed at my temples. “Applejack, we nearly died fighting a monster today, and I’ve more than over used my powers. If I am to be truthful, the painkillers must be working still, otherwise, I doubt I would be conscious at this moment.” There was a hint… well, more than a hint of irritation in my voice.
She narrowed her eyes at me, and I knew she could tell that what I said wasn’t the whole truth, but she decided against pressing the matter, thankfully. “Ah guess. Ya know what? That reminds me. Pinkie and Rarity cannot fight these thin’s without some kinda better protection. Whatever it is that Goose has, y’all need ta get some of that fer them. And uh… get another set made fer a pegasus…” I could already see where her train of thought was, but Twilight doesn’t know what we do.
“Why, exactly? I mean, Fluttershy is more than welcome to an armor set if she feels she needs one, but as far as the range on her rifle is, I highly doubt that-”
Applejack cut her off. “No, this is fer somepony else. Ah’ve been thinkin’, and it might be a good idea if we tried ta get the Crow on our side.”
Her true, honest green eyes near shoot through Twilight and she reacted negatively. “What!? No way! Don’t you remember that we already tried that? She didn’t work because she disables or dismembers her victims! We can’t have somepony like that on our team! On top of that, she and I did not get along. Besides, if we gave her a brand, she’d remember everything I took away from her the first time…”
Applejack shook her head. “Twilight, will ya just shut yer damn mouth fer one minute and listen? Ah know you’re skeptical here, but if she wasn’t there, Ah don’t know that we coulda taken that thin’ down. We just set her up, she’s the one who shattered the mirror. We need all the help we can get. What are we gonna do if the next one just shows up unannounced in some populated area, huh? Y’all just gonna teleport a few thousand ponies away ta a safe place while ya let us deal with it? On top of that, they’ve all been different! Every monster we’ve come across has been entirely different from the last, and they just keep gettin’ bigger! We don’t have the resources ta pick and choose who we like, we need power, and Goose and Ah ain’t gonna cut it!”
Before Twilight could yell back, Goose intervened. “Hey, slow your roll there. I know this is important and all, but you guys need to cool it. Yelling at each other isn’t going to solve any of our problems right now. Maybe we should just put this on hold and talk about it later. What do you think Flutterbutter?” There was a collective cloud of ‘what’ over the mares at the table, and just about all of us had our heads tilted at him.
Fluttershy had remained essentially quiet the entire meeting, but she was the first to snap out of the trance. “I… I don’t know what to think. I… I didn’t get to hear her voice or, or smell her scent last time we met her, but now that I did… the Crow… she, she was just so familiar to me, I… you know, I agree with Goose, we should call it a night. I um… I’m not too fond of the nick name, but there’s a lot on everypony’s minds right now, and Pinkie hasn’t even regained consciousness yet. We really shouldn’t be discussing our next plan without her I don’t think.”
Goose put a smile on and nodded his head with her as she spoke. “Well, the quietest voice has spoken, so what about you three? We need at least one more for a majority vote here. You and I are both pretty banged up Applebo-” He was about to say it, and Applejack slowly started to raise her snout at him with a fixed death stare. “Eh-hem, Applejack. I mean, we did what we set out to do right? Find the ship, make sure there weren’t any mirrors, and destroy the one we found?”
I mused that for a moment, but Twilight let out a breath and spoke the conclusion I had come to. “No, the goal was to take the mirror in one piece so we could study it, but… I can’t blame anypony for what happened instead. I’m sorry Applejack, I shouldn’t be so… obtuse about this. Goose is right. Let’s reconvene on Tuesday shall we? My healing spells should be finished working on Pinkie by then, and she should regain consciousness by Sunday at the latest. In the mean time, I must ask you to discuss with your sister what she knows, alright?”
Applejack let out a sigh as well. “Ah know, Ah was just… hopin’ it didn’t come ta this. Ah’ve managed ta keep my family outta this hero shit fer years now, and suddenly, it feels like all those walls Ah built tryin’ ta keep ‘em safe are fallin’ apart.” She shook her head and let out a defeated laugh. “Heh… it’s funny, really. Ah always thought Ah’d make an enemy outta some mob boss and have my family traced and kidnapped or somethin’. Never in my wildest dreams did Ah think that the threat of monsters destroyin’ the city was what would cause me ta tell any of ‘em about this…” I was about to attempt to comfort her because it looked like she needed it, but Goose beat me to it. He just popped from one chair to the next and draped his forelegs around her neck from atop the chair’s foreleg rest.
“Hey there honey dear, it’ll be alright,” he said softly. She didn’t reciprocate the hug, but she didn’t fight it either. In the end, it looked like she’d just let herself lean on him, but… after all she’s told us, surely that meant she accepted Goose as a friend… or maybe more… I’ve never met a mare as stubborn and closed off as she is, yet here she is, letting herself lean on another. We all sat in silence, I was more stunned than anything, but eventually Goose let himself go and decided to head to bed.
“Well, that was a good talk. Maybe we might try and be a little more civil around each other, huh? I know this is tense shit and all, but… you ladies don’t have to fight over me♥” There was a collective groan and eye roll that followed his back to form doucheyness, but it did get a giggle out of us all the same.
“Yeah whatever, y’all go be a douchebag somewhere else. Ah’m gonna head out y’all. Ah’ll see ya on Tuesday Ah guess.” Applejack got up from her chair, and for a split second, I thought I saw that orange gem sparkle as she moved, but it came as soon as it went and I wasn’t sure if it was real or just a trick of the light.
“Alright, I suppose that will be that. I’ll keep you two posted about Pinkie’s recovery until she’s back to normal. Rarity, do you want me to send you home, or do you want to stay here for the night? I know you said you were in a lot of pain…” Once upon a time, we tried to experiment with the limits of my powers and to say it didn’t end well… is more or less an understatement. I was injured fairly heavily and kept in stasis for nearly forty-eight hours just to keep me from falling into a coma. Had Princess Celestia not intervened, who knows if I’d have ever woken up? All the same, Twilight still feels guilty about it almost a year later and uses extra caution around me when I have headaches.
“I… think I will take you up on that. Goodnight everypony.” I woozily stood and wearily made my way to the room Twilight had reserved for me. I don’t remember much of what happened next, other than that I flopped on something soft in a dark room, so I suppose I made it to a bed at least.
The morning went about as I expected it to, had I a hangover. Sure, the drinking age is 21, and only next year do I actually attain that age, but all the same I’ve already had my fair share of hangovers in my lifetime and that is more than enough to remember how awful they are. You’d think with how my parents treated me, I’d have never touched the stuff. I’m glad Sweetie doesn’t have the friends that I had in high school. This time, however, I don’t have the memory of being blissfully intoxicated, just in pain from being in pain. However, I wasn’t angry when I woke up, no that came a few minutes later. On the end table next to the bed, in the little crystal box of a room that I’d slept in, was my buzzing and singing phone.
“Why so down tonight? Just another day that didn’t go your way well, don’t you make me sigh. Just take my-”
“Hello?” I said wearily as I silenced the ringer with my hoof. It wasn’t normal for me to get calls on my personal phone these days, and I wasn’t quite awake enough to read yet, so I had no idea who I was talking to when I answered.
“Rarity? Good morning darling.”
A voice I’d heard enough times to recognize and one I’d slowly started to hate as I grew older. My senses alive and well now that my father was clear in my ear, I sat up quickly, only to feel dizzy and nearly vomit from the pounding on the back of my skull.
“What do youuuu…” I held back the liquid projectile just waiting to happen. When the feeling passed, I tried again. “What do you want? Why are you calling me on a Friday? Shouldn’t you be at work?” I attempted to say again, this time with venom in my voice.
“Rarity… it’s five pm.”
It’s five!? I slept for almost seventeen hours!? Ugh, so much for opening the boutique today. At least I made sure not to have any appointments. However, that still doesn’t give him a reason to call me.
“Eh-hem, so it is. That doesn’t answer any of my questions, all the same.”
“Well… uh, it’s been a while and I though I’d just uh… check up on you. Your sister called me the other day and so I though that maybe...” The words registered in my head.
“Sweetie did what!?” Reign it in Rarity, it’s not like he’s some sexual predator, it’s just your bastard of a father… So maybe it’s worse than that…
“Geez, she called me. She asked me to sign a form so she could get into Junior Guard at the school. Didn’t she come to you first?” Oh ho ho ho, no, she didn’t. Because if she did, there was no way I would have let her in, and she knew that… She and I will be talking when I get home.
“I see. Please refrain from speaking to my little sister without my consent in the future. A checkup is all you said you wanted right? Well, now you have it. We are doing just fine.” The words were only there to keep my teeth from grinding against each other. I was mad at him for existing, and now I was also mad at Sweetie for lying to me.
“Now, wait just a minute! Rarity, please just hear me out! Hasn’t it been long enough? I can never make it up to either of you if you won’t even speak to me!” Groveling swine! You’d better beg because I have no sympathy for you! I was just about to retaliate with the most scathing insult I could think of when I remembered the position I was in. I still needed him to get me into Argent Tower undetected. Damn it! I was supposed to call you, you old fool! I sighed as if I were about to try and pick up an eighty pound weight and took a deep breath.
“As you can tell, I still harbor ill will.” I heard a sigh from the other end of the line and forced myself to keep talking. He might be a horrible pony, but he is my father. “However, maybe two years is long enough. Why don’t I meet you up there in Tin? We can do lunch and you can give me a tour of Argent Tower. It… has been a long time since I’ve seen it. Are you free Tuesday?” I could almost hear the smile forming on that old stallion’s face as I spoke. I hold so much disdain for him yet… the thought of him smiling again might have even made me grin.
“Oh, of course! Er… Actually, I’m supposed to make a trip to Zvyr on Tuesday for a deal on some new bulk mining equipment. Would Monday work for you? A favorite restaurant of mine runs a special at one PM every Monday, and I’d love to have you try it. It’ll be… just like it used to…” he said, trailing off and no doubt watching the train wreck that became his life later on. A thought crossed my mind, and I wasn’t sure why I hadn’t already issued this ultimatum yet.
“Very well, I can take Monday off. But! Know this old man, if I smell a drop of alcohol on your breath again I will leave right then and there. Do you understand me? I am not defenseless anymore.”
There was a pause, but then he responded, “Of course. Yes, why would I even consider… drinking again…” His voice fell to a whisper, which made me suspicious, but I wasn't about to press on that just yet.
“Then it is settled. I will meet you at twelve forty-five by the train station. If you are late, I will go home and block you from this number. This is your final chance to make amends. Do not disappoint me.” I hung up before he could respond. Anymore of this and I don't know what I'll say. I sighed. I probably shouldn’t bear this strong of a grudge against him at least. He’s making an effort, which is more than I can say for that harlot. For every time I think about them, my hooves always move to feel the small scar just under my jaw. Worthless, evil mare.
After talking to Twilight about it and making my way home, Sweetie and I had a discussion about her little adventures in the Junior Guard. I didn’t know why she’d been getting up so early in the morning this past week, but I simply thought she was getting up to go see her friends before school. I suppose I wasn’t entirely wrong.
“You went and joined Junior Guard without even telling me!?” I said just about as soon as I saw her. She froze in place amid eating some reheated pizza, nearly dropping the pie on the floor before catching it in her magic.
“… Maybe I did, what about it?” she said as she set her pizza down. I could feel the veins beginning to bubble up to the surface again.
“Why!? What could have possibly possessed you to do something like that? It’s one thing to go and join some, child soldier program behind my back, but to call him just to go over my head!?”
Now that we were at the real reason I was angry, or at least the bigger one, Sweetie stood still like a statue. “I…” she began, but didn’t continue.
I took a few stomping steps closer. “Well? You, what, exactly?” I realized that I was starting to lose my temper, so I lowered my volume without losing intensity. I could see the veins beginning to surface on her head as well. She stood up and came to eye level with me. Sweetie was shorter than I was, but not by a large margin anymore. She's seventeen now, almost a full grown mare.
“It’s not like I could’ve come to you! You wouldn’t have even let me talk about it as soon as I said anything about the military! You know what? This is exactly why I never asked you, because I knew it would end up with us yelling at each other! Scootaloo said she just about fought Rainbow to get her signature, but Applebloom said that after she told her siblings about it, they understood that it was something that she wanted to do! At least Dad was happy to hear from me!” We were just about snout to snout at this point.
“Oh, and you think that your abusive father cares whether or not you go off to fight in some war and die in your twenties!? If all you needed was a signature, I honestly believe that you could have gotten it from mother if you knew where to find her! They don’t care about you, me, or either of our lives! I care about your well being, I don’t want to get a knock on the door from some random officer saying you were promoted two ranks, I don’t want to hold a funeral for my little sister!” She promptly backed down and lost eye contact with me. I let out a breath and tried to calm down myself.
At the current moment, Equestria is in high tensions with a few countries, namely another major superpower, Zvyr. Were it not for the good ties that Argent has with them and the exports and imports they deal with, I doubt our ‘good’ relationship would last very long before somepony started a fight. The rumor that’s floating around is that Stannum Argent has recently been in decline and he doesn’t have a successor lined up to take his place. Supposedly, he has a son, but said son is not in a good place health wise either. The future is uncertain to say the least, but the last war that broke out happened in about the same way and ponies tend to panic when they get the opportunity. The real chance that she could fight in a war if she did join the military is rather high at this point if nothing is done to fix Zvyrian relations. I crept up next to Sweetie and pulled her into a hug.
“I shouldn’t have come home just to yell at you, but this isn’t something you can just brush off.” I made sure to bring my volume down and try to actually get across to her. She just doesn't understand what what a firefight is like, and I don't want her to learn too late.
“I… I’m sorry, I should have come to you about it. But, the thing is… I really like it. The training, the exercises, the outfits, it just… feels like it’s what I should be doing, ya know? Scootaloo and Applebloom felt the same way, and since we all have similar cutiemarks… maybe… maybe this is what my cutiemark really means after all?” She looked at me with those big green eyes of hers. Maybe it was the color that made me think of her, but it was the sincerity I saw in them reminded me so much of Applejack. If Sweetie turns out like her, then… maybe it wont be so bad after all…
I sighed. “If… If you really feel that way, then I’ve no right to stop you from doing something you love. Just… just don’t go off and do something to hurt yourself, okay? If I lose you, then I’ve lost everything.” I squeezed her tightly and she reciprocated my feelings with a hug of her own. I giggled to myself a little after finally we let go of each other. “Of course he would ask if we got along and then I start a shouting match the minute I get home.”
Sweetie furrowed her brow. “He? You talked toDad?”
I closed my eyes and felt my lids twitch again. “I… I did. As a matter of fact, he’s the one who told me about your little excursion into the military. You might find it hard to believe, but I’m actually going to see him Monday afternoon.” She reared her head back, as I expected she would.
“Really?” she questioned, almost in disgust.
“Really,” I replied, near void of emotion.
“Why?”
“If it was just to see him, I would have made him meet me here. I needed to go to Argent Tower for a job and he called me asking to make amends.” I decided to do something about the rumbling in my stomach and started to dig around for something to make, when I remembered the pizza Sweetie had. “Did you already reheat that, or should I make dinner?”
She shook her head to fight the stun. “Whoa, whoa, whoa. You are going to see Dad… to makeamends?”
I knew this was coming, I did. “Food, Sweetie, stay on topic for me.”
She put her hooves together and touched her lips. “I… No, I haven’t heated the pizza yet, make food please. But back to the Dad thing.” I rolled my eyes and let out a breath. I didn’t want to think about it, I was already dreading the mission I was on to being with, adding him to the mix is just another reason to make me not want to go. I don’t have a choice in the matter either.
“Yes, to make amends. You talked to him didn’t you? Did he not sound like a broken, but apologetic stallion?” I began acquiring cooking utensils from the cabinets. I was feeling like pasta since I hadn’t eaten in nearly twenty four hours apparently. Overexerting myself must have done a number on me if I had to sleep for that long.
“Well, sorta. He’s always had that kinda… broken spirit to him ever since mom left, but… do you actually believe him this time? Like, this isn’t going to end in fallout like the boutique did, is it?” I stopped moving for a moment as the memory of the last time I saw him came flooding back to me. It was a few months after I had custody of Sweetie taken from him, a little after I turned eighteen and proved that I could provide for her with the business I’d been running for the last year. I didn’t make much, the apartment we lived in was… for those with low income, to call it something nice, and one day, he just showed up at the door.
He had cleaned himself and looked presentable for the first time in a long time, outside of being at work, and he had come to ask for forgiveness. I was wary at first, but it really appeared that he had given up his drinking habits. We talked and I let it go that I had been looking to move into a shopping district and then he offered to help me finance it. The offer was far too tantalizing to refuse, so we went through with it. We were in the final stages of having the building furnished when the old bastard stumbled in wasted out of his mind. A whole week. That’s how long he hadn’t been drinking, and he gave in to it, again, just after so little time had passed. I had a restraining order signed to keep him away from Sweetie and had him removed from the loan that bought the boutique. It was a struggle, but after two years of hard work, a military salary, and additional bounties turned in, I managed to pay off the loan and the boutique was finally mine.
I shrugged. “If it does, then I don’t think I’ll ever see him again. If you want to seek him out at a later time when you get older, that’s none of my business, but if he lies to me again, then… I’ll stop holding out hope.” I put the pot of water on the stove and reached in the pantry to levitate a pound box of fettuccine out. A sharp pain shot through my horn down my spine the moment I attempted to use my magic, and I dropped the box. “Damn it!” A wave of pain and nausea came over me and suddenly everything hurt.
Sweetie rushed to me as I felt my legs beginning to give out and helped me sit down “Rarity! What’s wrong?”
I shouldn’t have done that. I know better than to use magic after overexerting myself, I do! Oh goddess, it hurts! The sick feeling followed by throbbing pains in my head lasted for nearly two minutes before they started to subside. A sudden feeling had me dash for the nearest trash can and lose a cup of burning stomach acid. Once that whole ordeal was done, Sweetie had grabbed me a kitchen towel and I wiped my face off. Sweaty, dry heaving and sick to myself, all the signs of overusing one’s magic, or in my case, my powers.
“What did you do? It isn’t like you to get sick like this out of nowhere… Have you been using your magic too much?” She asked once my body finally settled for a moment. I nodded my head.
“I was… rather involved in a fight last night… I might have… bitten off more than I could chew…” As far as Sweetie knows, I work part time at a bar as a server. Me getting involved in ‘fights’ is always my excuse for when I return beaten or sick.
“Rarity… you can’t keep doing this. If you keep this up, I won’t even get a chance to get into the military before you burn yourself out.” Well, she’s certainly not wrong. But then again, I don’t know how long any of the six of us will last if these monsters keep showing up. One wrong move and we end up with broken legs like Pinkie last night, the poor filly.
“Oh, don’t you worry about me, I didn’t even get hit this time. I mostly played support, it was my friends that did all the heavy lifting.” Overexertion of my powers was far more taxing than over exerting my actual magic, but on the other end of it, I could usually hold my powers longer after. The time I had every day never extended, but the strain of adding ponies to it usually became less every time this happened. Before the first experiments, having another pony in my frozen time reduced it by half and downward. The fact that another pony only takes two minutes out is the work of physical and magical endurance training every day. I got back to my hooves and made note to find my limiter ring before I tried to cook again.
“Friends? Did you have somepony come visit you?” I thought about the question and eventually nodded.
“I wasn’t really expecting it, but I met Rainbow Dash yesterday. Applejack was the one that brought her actually. It was… odd, but welcome.” I try not to lie to Sweetie when I can word it in such a way. She doesn’t even know about my powers as far as I can tell, but… the thing with Applebloom has me concerned about her. It had never occurred to me before that she could also be a Power Pony, but now that my head is clear, I’m not sure… Should I… talk to her about it? If nothing else, I could prod what she knows… Yes, that’s what I should do. If she has anything, it might be good to know in the event something like last night comes up again…
“Really? Huh, I didn’t think she was the type to go to bars… Applejack either… aren’t they like, too young to drink though? I thought you were the oldest out of our sisters, and you’re not twenty-one yet…” Sweetie rambled, some of which I recognized as her talking to her self out loud.
“Yes, they were in the neighborhood and decided to come visit. But that aside, Sweetie, what do you know about the virus?” I took one of my magic limiting rings out of the kitchen drawer and unhooked the latch. This overexertion thing has happened far more times than I’d like to admit over the past two years, and because of that, I have a limiter ring in every room of the boutique. I fixed the thing to the base of my horn and then went to pick up the box of pasta I’d dropped. I hope this didn’t snap too many pieces. I hate short noodle pasta. I poured some salt into the water and watched as the pot started to bubble near the bottom.
“Uh… it’s not always bad? I don’t know much. We kind of glanced over it in biology last year, but I’ve never really talked about it with anypony… it’s uh… a touchy subject, I think.”
Oh, I'm sure. ponies with physical mutations always get the brunt of humiliation, and that's not as uncommon as one would think. “I see. You know, supposedly, the virus can overwrite genes across generations. Studies over a few years have come to the conclusion that any parent with it will breed children with it.” I poured the pasta into the boiling water, and just as I feared, almost half the box came out in half sized pieces. A sound of irritation escaped my lips.
“Oh. That’s… interesting? Um… why exactly are you bringing this up?”
That's a nervous tone if I've ever heard one. “Sweetie, if you had powers, would you tell me? I can tell that there’s something to this, you’re not being forward with me like you usually are.” Well, if I want something like this to not happen with her, I might as well come clean. Applejack mentioned that she thought there would be an evil rival or something, and I can’t say I wasn’t thinking something similar, but now… I may not get the chance to tell her anything with a future so uncertain.
At any point she was nervous or afraid of something, Sweetie had this twitch in her ear and she’d spin the tips of her front hooves around each other. “And… if I did, and… and maybe they weren’t something so… nice, something that could… really hurt ponies, what would you do?” Which means you do have something, and you have something you can’t control very well at that. I turned the heat down on the mostly done pasta and turned to face her.
“Sweetie, you know that I would never stop loving you, even if you did something wrong, but having powers isn’t anything wrong at all. In fact, I believe that having powers is a wonderful thing, something you should be proud of. Sure, some ponies have talents that make them ‘more special’ than others, and some ponies can do things that you could never dream of doing, but to have powers means that you can do something that other ponies could never dream of. A power that has potential to be dangerous has equal potential to be used for good.” I moved closer. She took a step back. Is she afraid of what she can do?
“But… but what if… what if I- somepony can’t control their powers? What if it just happens on accident sometimes and… and you don’t know how to turn it off? What if you’re afraid that one day, you’ll just be having a good time, and suddenly they turn on and hurt somepony? What if your powers turned on, and you didn’t know what to do and you ended up ki-” The poor dear… I could have intervened with this sooner. Had I known she was so afraid of whatever she can do I would have tried to help her learn how to not be.
I silenced Sweetie and brought her into a hug. “Shh… It’s okay. Nopony knows how to control them at first.” I ran my hoof through her mane. She was shaking.
“Do you… do you have them too?” I nodded and kept silent. She wriggled her way out of my hug and stood back. “Then… can I show you? I… I don’t know really how to do anything but turn it on and off…” I hadn’t expected her to do that, but I suppose if it’s not too bad then it shouldn’t be a big deal…
“I… suppose. But first, what is it that you can do, Sweetie darling?” I can’t show her my powers right now, but if she’s just willing to show me, then maybe she really hasn’t told anypony about it…
“I can… I can turn myself into fire. Like, do you remember back when we were kids, that show about all the ponies who could all those crazy things, and there was the one guy who could just… turn into fire? Like, he was the lighter guy?” Like the Torch? From that cartoon? Really? I’ve seen plenty of elemental powers in my time, but being able to just… turn into something else usually resulted in more… monstrous visages.
“Sweetie, how much of yourself turns into fire? Is it just like the show, and your whole body is set alight, or can you do just parts at a time?” Her ear twitched again and she looked away.
“I… I don’t know. It happens on accident some times. When I get mad, or angry enough to hurt somepony, I’ll hear it start like a little buzzing sound in my ear. And then I’ll feel it somewhere. It’s like… my body is waving and flickering, but at the same time, it’s not my body that’s moving but the flames. I… I got in a fight the other days with those two bullies I’ve told you about and… if we hadn’t been in the bathroom, I might’ve hurt them.” As she spoke, she curled her tail around her side and I saw it flicker.
“My whole body went up. It’d never happened before, all the way, like that. Applebloom and Scootaloo and usually keep me calm enough to keep from losing it, but they weren’t there. It’s such… such a weird feeling, ya know? Like, I am the wave, the flickering flame, but I’m also not. Everything is lit in color, but my vision changes to something else, like I can only see heat. There’s always so much light, but things and ponies don’t look the same, it’s all hot and cold to me, but at the same time, I’ve never felt anything but cold before.
“Do you remember the time, back before we moved, when we went swimming at the lake? Everypony else was so happy to be in the water and out of the ‘heat’ but I didn’t know what they meant by it. I was perfectly fine and the water made me feel sick while I was in it. I remember getting a funny feeling in my stomach and needing to get out. I don’t vomit like a normal pony, like you did a minute ago, my body makes me spit out charred carbon and smoke. You thought I was playing with rocks at the time, but those came out of me.”
The memory she was talking about, from way back then, nearly eleven years ago. I do remember getting out of the lake to see what she was doing, and I remember the rocks too… She said she spit them up, but at the time, I thought she’d just swallowed them or something, she was six.
“Sweetie, how long have you been holding on to this?” She stuck her hoof out and I watched as it burst into brilliant orange flames. She just waved it around and stared at it like nothing was wrong.
“I don’t know. This is about the most control over it that I have. I can’t get burned, fire reacts weird to me and I can light myself if there’s an open flame near by. It’s been like this as long as I can remember, but after I… once I set a blanket on fire after a nightmare while I was sleeping one night, I’ve been afraid of it. I’ve tried to get a better grip on it over time, but I just… I just don’t know what to do. This is the best I’ve ever been able to do, and I’ve only been able to do this for a few weeks now.” She admired the brightly glowing flame, and I had to stare too. A power like this is... certainly unique. She flailed her foreleg around and the flames slowly died out until they were all gone.
“Oh Sweetie, I should have asked about this sooner. I can help you get a grip on this. With as unwieldy as my own powers were at first, I’m sure yours are just as hard to deal with.”
She looked away from the ground to focus back on me. “So… what can you do? I… I have a few weird memories of you just flickering from one place to another from a long time ago, but, I wouldn’t know what that really means. Or maybe I’m just crazy, which is always a possibility.”
I shook my head. “No, you’re not crazy, far from it actually. Sweetie, to tell the truth, I’ve never been in a bar fight. I don’t have a part time job, and none of my extra money has come from tips. My powers are… fairly unique among the Power Ponies I’ve come across. Had I not over exerted myself the other day I would show you what I can do, but me throwing up is the least of my problems if I try to use them now. I can stop time.”
Her face contorted into a frown mixed with confusion. “Stop… time?” she asked, like the words were foreign.
“Yes,” I said, bluntly.
“Like, you can move around while everypony else is frozen or something?”
“That’s rather specific, but yes.”
“And… the world is all frozen, like nothing moves. Anything that was moving just stops in place, and it all loses color, and everything is in black and white?”
“That is… exactly what my powers do… Sweetie, why do you…?”
“That night. With the um… Ms. Duster… I didn’t know if what I saw was real or a dream, but… you screamed, and you rushed over to me. I tried to talk, but I couldn’t move either, and when you pushed on me, I didn’t feel it, like were were in the same room but separated by some kind of glass. The bullet that was maybe half a meter from my head. You tried so hard to turn it, and when you did, you fell over and then everything started to move again. All… all that blood and… I uh… it’s hard to think about that, but I guess maybe it wasn’t a dream if I was only half frozen in your time.”
Did I… did I really almost bring her in my frozen time all the way back then? I wasn’t even able to bring other ponies in until a few years ago when I started using my powers more liberally… then again, I was under quite a bit of stress, and I know my powers are tied to magic. Young unicorns tend to have spurts of powerful magic in puberty… maybe I did?
“I… see.” She nodded and let her eyes fall to the floor. I remembered that the burner was still on and went to check on the fettuccine. The pasta was a little overcooked, but it would be fine after I threw a bottle of sauce on it. “Why don’t we continue this discussion at another time? It’s been… some kind of day today and I feel like I could use more sleep.”
“Are you one of them?”
What is she talking about? “One of whom?”
She quickly pulled her phone from somewhere in the house with her magic and started furiously swiping around the screen with her hooves. She turned the device around and showed me a picture of Harmony at the harbor. All of us in the shot, save for Target, fighting off the monster Knots White turned into. This was taken last night! Who could have taken this!?
“Specifically this one, right here in the corner. They call her Diamond. Her mane and tail look just like yours do, and she’s got a white coat. Is this you?” She asked so forcefully that I felt I was under interrogation here.
“Well… um… y-yes, that is, um, me.” I had planned on telling her, but I wasn’t about to go and say that I was off fighting giant monsters. This... is not going to go well.
“So, you came in here today, yelling at me for running off and joining the pre-enlistment, training program at school without telling you. And then, you turn around and tell me that you have super powers, and you’re off parading around in a leather suit fighting off giant monsters!? How can you even do that? You… you… ugh, you’re so infuriating!” Her tail went up in a blaze.
“Me go off to fight in some war, me get killed at twenty, what about you!?” Followed by her mane. “Huh!? Am I going to be looking for a tombstone soon? Is my sister going to die in her early twenties? Or are you also working for the military too, and will I get notified that you’ve suddenly been promoted two ranks one day, I don’t know, maybe tomorrow? Goddess, what the fuck Rarity!? You’re such a fucking hypocrite!” Then her horn and ears lit themselves.
“You know what? You eat alone. I need time to think. I’m not hungry anymore.” She shook herself not unlike a dog, and forced all the flames to peter out. “Great! Now that I’ve tried to use it today, I don’t know if I can stop using it! Thanks a lot!” Her horn covered itself in a bright green aura and so did the kitchen drawer. Out of it floated our full box of aluminum foil and toward the stairs Sweetie went. “You should turn the fire alarms off. I don’t know how long I’m gonna be mad.” She finished climbing the stairs, made a turn to the right, and then the last thing I heard was a door slamming.
“Well. I suppose that could’ve gone better.”