Shave and a manecut,
Two bits!
A few seconds after the knocking, the door opened, revealing the face of her wife with her trademarked smile. “Good morning, my love.”
“Good morning, Twilight.” Sunset giggled and hugged her tight.
Twilight frowned. “Sunset, are you alright?”
“Been better. But let’s not keep that from our anniversary! Even if that’s yesterday. So, who’s going to surprise who first?”
Twilight laughed and landed a kiss on Sunset’s cheek. “Why don’t I go first?” Releasing their hug, Twilight let her in, closed the door, and walked her upstairs.
“So,” Twilight broke the silence, “how’s the trip?”
“It was fun.”
“Fun, huh? How was it fun? Interesting ponies you met on the way, or another driver asking you why you’re driving so fast at twice trotting speed? Or did you stop by Rarity’s and had a heart-to-heart chat that made you sad but later made you think better and clearer and, finally, happier as you are now?”
“Yes,” Sunset answered, and laughed at her wife’s questioning look. “I got curious with the speedometer’s unused numbers.”
Twilight eyes bulged. “You what!?”
“I went fast.”
“You could’ve died!”
“I could.”
“Why did you go fast if you could’ve died?”
“Because I could also not die,” Sunset said as she struck a pose, “as you can see yourself.”
Twilight glared. “Don’t do that again.”
“No promises.”
“Please, Sunset. I don’t want you to die. Your recklessness will be the death of you. Didn’t you think of it before you did it? That you could’ve died, that ponies around you could’ve been turned into a bloody pulp of pony meat and bones, that I could’ve been so devastated and traumatized by your death that I stopped functioning in society?”
“I did.”
“Then why did you do it still?”
“It’s fun, Twilight. I decided that it’s fun not to worry about those things for a while.”
Twilight stopped her, just before entering their bedroom. “Sunset, are you being . . . ignorant?”
Sunset shook her head. “Of course not. I’m simply setting aside my worries for a while to relieve my mental stress. Don’t worry, Twilight. I know what I’m doing. It may seem illegal, but it’s not; I promise you.”
Twilight sighed. “It’s exactly what I’m worried about, Sunset.”
“You’re worried that I found some way to relieve my stress?”
“No, I’m more than happy you found one, especially after these couple of days.”
“‘Couple of days’? What do you mean, Twilight?”
“You’ve been a little . . . off. Last week you told me you walked Sweetie Belle home after finding her at the end of an alleyway.”
“I did.”
“You told me that again the next day. You met her at the same alleyway and walked her back home.”
“I did.”
“The next day, you told me the same thing. You walked her back home after meeting her at the park.”
“I did.”
“But then you stopped telling me that. The next day, you didn’t mention whether or not you even met Sweetie Belle. But Roseluck told me that you two passed by her house. You walked her back home through the same route.”
“I did.”
“Why didn’t you tell me about it, Sunset?”
“I felt that it’s not interesting enough to mention.”
“She’s our neighbor, Sunset! A neighbor that’s acting oddly! How’s that not something worth mentioning!?”
“She was acting a little off, yes, but it didn’t seem like she cared much about it. Figured it’s something normal, thus something I can put away from my mind.”
“Mrs. Cake told me that you two visited her confectionery. You bought Sweetie a vanilla milkshake at quite an odd hour.”
“She didn’t seem to mind. She enjoyed it quite happily, in fact.”
“You talked to her that day, didn’t you? How could you not find any oddity in her behavior that deviates from her usual self?”
“I didn’t. She was happy to just sit there, enjoying her milkshake while ignoring me and the rest of the world.”
“It was the day you noticed that she’s getting ignorant, wasn’t it?”
“It was.”
“Why didn’t you report her, then? It’s your job.”
“Because, dear, she didn’t give a damn about me either.”
“That’s no excuse to not worry about her well-being!”
“I did worry about her well-being. I found that she’s a lot happier being ignorant that way, so I didn’t call on her.”
“Sunset.”
Sunset looked at Twilight in the eyes. “Yes, honey?”
Twilight slapped her. “Wake up.”
Sunset rubbed the hoof-shaped mark on her cheek. “I’m already awake!”
“Look at me, Sunset.”
“I’m looking at you right now.”
“No, you’re not. Look at me, Sunset.”
Sunset looked at Twilight in the eyes, those big, magenta irises looking at her straight through her visage and into her soul. Those clear, bright, intellectually superior eyes observing her every move and every twitch like an owl did its prey despite the tears obscuring her vision. “What did you do yesterday, Sunset?”
Sunset stepped back. “I—”
“Don’t lie to me, Sunset.”
Sunset stepped further back but was stopped by the wall of the corridor. She fell on her rump. “I-I don’t know what you’re talking about, Twilight.”
Twilight stepped forward, her eyes locking into Sunset’s with so much unconditional love like always, yet with a determination that she had never seen since she proposed to her in front of her disapproving parents. Sunset couldn’t look away. “You know what I’m talking about, Sunset.”
“Yes, I do.”
“You know you can’t get away with it, don’t you?”
Sunset shrunk and whimpered.
Twilight stepped forward, wrapping her hooves and wings around her beloved. They both cried. “You’re being ignorant, Sunset.”
“Yes, I am.”
“Ignorance isn’t the choice if you want to be happy, Sunset. It is the understanding of the true nature of the world that will eventually give you happiness. With understanding and knowledge, you’ll be able to figure out all the possible outcomes of a situation and find which one gives you happiness, thus avoiding misery and sadness. By being ignorant, you’re stalling civilization’s endeavors to destroy the source of all misery and sadness, which we know can be done through intellectual advancement.”
“I know, Twilight. I know it very well.”
“Then you must understand why you’re going to need to be rehabilitated, don’t you?”
Sunset pushed her wife back, breaking the wing hug. “Y-you called the fire department!?”
Twilight floated out the fire bell from under her wing, the button pushed down and silently flickering, indicating that The Salamander is on the way. “I did.”
“B-but—”
Twilight put her hoof to Sunset’s muzzle, silencing her. She looked at Sunset in the eyes again, her tears absent in place of determination and motherly love. “It had to be done, Sunset. For your own good.”
A siren wailed in the distance, closing in on every tick of the clock. Twilight grabbed Sunset’s hoof and guided her downstairs. “Let’s meet your friends, shall we?”
Sunset silently nodded and let her wife guide her outside, just on time as The Salamander parked in front of their gates. Celestia was, as always, at the driver’s seat.
Another car soon followed, in its side emblazoned the writing ‘Rehabilitation Center’. Twilight got into the back seat after saying, “See you soon, my love,” kissed her, hugged her. And the car went away.
Celestia came out, her face stern and unreadable. No other firemare was present.
Sunset saluted. “Good morning, Captain.”
Celestia saluted back. “Good morning, Lieutenant. How was your trip?”
“It was fun.”
“Too fun?”
“Too fun.”
“You know what to do, Lieutenant.”
Sunset nodded and went to the back of the firetruck. She opened the trunk, took out the Balefire-proof coverall, the Balefire-proof mask, and put them on. She took out the black steel hat, donned it. She floated out the Balefire igniter, put down by the captain.
Celestia put the igniter back and floated out the flamethrower. “I want you to know, Sunset, that the last fire captain also suffered the same thing I do right now. I failed to burn the rest of the Moonshine as he asked.” She looked at the flamethrower wistfully. “Told me to burn my house down, he did. With this.”
Sunset took the flamethrower in her magical grip.
“Consider this a punishment.”
Sunset nodded and entered her house.
A house, Sunset noticed, was just a building. There’s nothing sentimental about it.
Now, a home, on the other hoof, was full of memories, full of emotions, full of sentimental things that she had grown attached to.
Take a look at this door, for example. It was the door that Sunset had first opened two months before her wedding. It was a door that Sunset had gone through while inside her wedding dress, accompanied by Twilight in a similar fashion and a similar emotion of lovestruck lovebirds. It was a door that she had passed from both sides countless times, every time she did she did it either greeting or saying goodbye to her beloved wife. It was a door that was now burning in bluish-green flame.
Or maybe, take a look at this photograph. It was a photograph of her and her wife, of both smiling goofily at the camera at their wedding, accompanied by two other mares and two other stallions, all of which smiling happily after years of conflicting interest and beliefs and views and traditions all of which had been won by Love and Tolerance. Too bad it’s now burning in bluish-green flame. The color contrasted poorly with her wife’s purple coat.
And this! Sunset’s not really sure what it was. It looked like a bookshelf, but it’s hard to tell between all these bluish-green flames. She remembered the bookshelf that had been there once, though, holding her wife’s special collection of books. Special books that had been given by Sunset in the years they had been a couple and the first year they had been married and the one missing spot that should’ve been for her second-anniversary gift.
This one, in fact, had been a sofa. It was now a pile of melting wood and spring and professionally-crafted covers with the melting brand of Rarity’s Boutique. The sofa had been a place at which cuddling happened between Bacon Horse and Purple Smart. Now it was the cuddling place of bluish-green flame with greenish-blue flame.
On the wall was a black metallic wing, as one might clearly see. It was a staple of Sunset’s career as a firemare, switching from the easily-combustible polycarbonate into the badass, fireproof steel wings. It’s very hard to ignite, you see, and so was instead disposed of in a flick of Sunset’s horn and a Boom! of the spell’s arcane explosion.
Oh, look, a kitchen! Where is it, you may ask? Well, it was here before, Sunset swore. Maybe it’s hidden behind all that bluish-green flame?
The second floor? Well, it’s still there, see? Now watch as Sunset Shimmer, Fire Lieutenant of the 451st fire department, snapped it out of existence in a single metallic click! of the modified M-97 flamethrower that spits octirosene instead of kerosene! Look at how all those walls melted into molten concrete and how that wardrobe full of clothes and a pair of wedding dresses and fine-crafted jewelry and an album containing five-and-a-half decades of memories, two-and-a-half decades each from two mares with an additional five years of the two together all melted into a sad pile of misery and regret.
One may ask what this one is, but nopony knows. Sunset maybe knew, but she wouldn’t want to admit that it was more than a book titled Celestial Incognizant, the newest edition that hadn’t been published yet and wouldn’t be for another five months, at least. She wouldn’t want to admit that the mysterious figure of a melting block of paper was supposed to make Twilight go all nerdy and lovely and beautifully her, in all her unadulterated, triple-distilled bookhorsiness form. It would forever remain a mystery of what it was other than fuel for the bluish-green flame.
This one . . . well, it had been a car once. A car with which Sunset first met her wife, a car with which Sunset drove Twilight under the twilit sky into the Sunset, away from the city of Canterlot in which their parents were bickering on whether they should both he wearing a wedding dress or a traditional tux-dress pair for their wedding. She briefly tried to remember what color it was before giving up and simply let her mind form an assumption that it was colored bluish-green as it currently was.
Now this, this was the front yard. It was as clear as the day that it was on that it was the front yard of Sunset Shimmer and Twilight Sparkle’s home. How cognitively disabled you must be to not know that simple piece of information, you intellectually incompetent blob of neurological processes and chemical reactions. No, it’s not burning nor melting. It’s perfectly fine, it was even thoroughly lit by the light from the Balefire spire behind Sunset. How could you not see that, dummy?
Sunset felt her mask removed, revealing the tear-stained face of a bacon-maned unicorn without her beloved wings. It’s her cue, she realized, and she put the flamethrower’s safety pin back.
“You did the right thing.” Sunset heard somepony said. From the lack of anypony else at the site, it was most likely Captain Celestia of the 451st fire department.
“Did I?”
“Yes, you did.”
“How do you know?”
Celestia let out a sigh. “Ignorance, Sunset. Ignorance must be destroyed, for it destroys our happiness. Ignorance is the source of—Lieutenant, put that down.”
Sunset lifted the nozzle of the flamethrower at eye-level. “No.”
“And what are you going to do, Lieutenant? Burn me? Kill me? Well, then, do it. Do it quick. What’s holding you back, Lieutenant? Your empathetic nature as an equine? Or maybe it’s your fear of what might happen in the future if you pull that trigger? I’ve been on your shoes once, Lieutenant. I once almost killed my captain. But then I realized that it was in vain. There’s no escaping yourself from being ignorant; in this world, you either think or be made to think. There’s no such thing as escaping reality the way old ponies do, with all their toys and booze and drugs. Come back to us, Sunset, and we will forgive you. We will fix you and made you whole again. You will be happy. Don’t you want to be happy?”
Sunset pulled the flamethrower's safety pin. “Frankly, Cap’n, I don’t give a damn.”
A metallic click. A melodious scream of agony. A melting marshmallow.
How did a liquefied Celestia marshmallow taste like? Sunset briefly wondered, and quickly set aside as she spat out the disgusting and meltingly-hot blob of molten pony hide. Vanilla tasted better, she decided, and so she took The Salamander to the local confectionery to order a glass of vanilla milkshake, ignoring the confectioner’s repeated question of why she was wearing her uniform and why said uniform was soaked in some white liquid.
“Fahreneigh 451,” she finally answered, “is the temperature at which marshmallow liquefies and octirosene catches Balefire.”