The mayor was looking up into the sky, watching as the sun hovered overhead, signaling the approach of noon. The explosion that destroyed my home went off a few hours ago, early in the morning. I’d only been discharged thirty minutes ago when I heard the news about my house. Had I not burned some time packing my equipment, and sampling a few of my finer wines with Stacks, I would’ve been a dead pony.
I took a second look at the damage around me as the mayor gathered her thoughts. My pictures were all missing. Somepony had torn down and taken them all. Why anypony would want them was beyond me. I didn’t have any family pictures beyond the few that I kept of my father and my mother, and they were both dead. The only other pictures were of me and Stacks on our various road trips.
We like taking time out of the year to make the rounds in all of the best vacation spots and famous Equestrian cities. This year’s first trip had been to Manehattan. I took Stacks to a score of private museums. He took me to all the raves that DJ P0N-3 was working. He fell asleep during the museum tours and nearly dropped dead from exhaustion at the raves. As you can probably imagine, I spent more time dragging Stacks’ sorry hide across the city than I did anything else.
In the end, I did have a lot of fun. I can’t say that didn’t. But those were happier, simpler times that faded into memory. They felt like dreams, unreal yet vivid and working upon the mind an image of childlike innocence, free from guilt and responsibility.
“Sun Spot,”
The mayor waved me over and I complied, hoping to finally get some answers.
“Now, before we begin, you must come to understand the true nature of the universe. Instead of telling you, however, I will simply show you.” At that, the smoke drew inward. I panicked.
“What’s going on?” I yelled.
“Enlightenment,” she replied simply. Stacks said something outside, but it only came across as a jumbled, garbled mess. Time was slowing for everything outside of the house, if the smoke was any indication. I brought my front legs up to shield myself from the smoke cloud, only to feel myself get whisked away. The ground disappeared, and a sense of disorientation came over me. When I dropped my hooves, I was no longer in Ponyville, or Equestria for that matter. All around me were the vast, infinite stretches of inky darkness normally associated with space, the twinkling of the stars, and the silence of a vacuum.
From my position somewhere near the core of the universe, I could see time and space stretch under the force of gravity. I watched stars implode, galaxies break apart, reality crack under the pressure. The universe tore itself to pieces right before my eyes in an apocalypse a billion times grander than anything my pathetic pony mind could imagine. The fires eventually cooled. The void consumed all light within it. An oppressive darkness reigned supreme.
Then, in the distance, a single spark breathed light back into the universe. Massive clouds rolled into view, and I realized what they were. They were stars, so distant that they looked like the tiniest of dust particles drifting aimlessly in the vacuum of space. More stars bloomed as the universe waxed. Planets formed and fell into line, allowing the creation of solar systems, which in turn allowed the formation of galaxies. The universe that I had originally come to had restored itself perfectly.
“Do you understand now?” The mayor was standing beside me, eyes glassing over the billions of stars around us.
“I’m not sure if I should even bother asking you where we are.”
“You know where we are. Besides, I'm sure you want to know how I brought you here.”
I was curious, sue me. “Okay. How?”
“Magic,” Of course, “And before you ask, yes, I can do magic.”
I took a moment to consider my next question. It had to be an obvious one, one that wasn’t ambiguous, and one that absolutely avoided the topic of magic. I don’t think I could have handled her explanation for her magic just yet. “What did I just see?”
“What anypony else would see.” I wasn’t very good at asking questions, apparently.
What I had seen was the end of the universe, but that couldn’t have been the answer. No, she wanted something a little deeper than that. To figure out her game, I backpedaled to the one question she had asked me.
Do you understand now?
Not really. Though, I probably wasn’t looking at this the right way. What I had seen was a universe die, then come back to life, but that wasn’t the right answer either. It’s not what I saw that mattered, only what I took from it.
“So, the universe’s destruction symbolizes death, and the spark of light symbolizes life?”
“Something like that, yes.”
That meant I was going in the right direction. “So... Something about life and death?”
She shook her head. “Sun Spot, life is cancerous. It grows upon itself in large, ugly tumors. It is inconsiderate and selfish. Life can be beautiful, but only when kept in check by death. Death is what prevents life from spiraling out of control. Death is the surgeon who cuts away the malignant growths that sprout from life’s recklessness. Death is eager with its blade, however. Life must always grow enough to sate death’s need to cull, lest it decide to cut into virgin flesh in search of tumors.”
“That means...”
“That means that order is maintained so long as life and death do not try to overcome one another. Order is the key to our universe.”
“Order is born through the balance of life and death?”
“Exactly.” she told me, nodding.
“What does that mean anyway?”
“It means that if there is an imbalance, if the scales are tipped in either direction, the universe will end. Life will end. Death will end. Then, the process will begin anew. Life has not, cannot, and will not be permanently extinguished. The souls of those not yet born will demand existence, their own chance at life. Denying them that right is impossible.” She explained as we delved deeper into the universe
Now she lost me. “What does that have to do with anything?”
“The scales are being tipped.”
I froze in fear. The hairs on my neck stood on end as I tried to wrap my head around the implications of her words. She’d said that if the scales tipped, the universe would end. That was cause for fear. Not regular pansy fear, like the fear I held for surprises, but real, apocalyptic fear. “H-how?”
“Think about it. What single event do you think could’ve caused the scales to tip over in either direction.”
I tried, but nothing came to mind. “I don’t know.”
“Oh come now, Sun Spot. It’s the whole reason you’ve been sitting underneath the stars, working with that silly little telescope of yours.”
The revelation hit me like a ton of bricks. Red and green ones, to be precise. “Nightmare Moon...” I said, the words breathless and empty. The vacuum of space seemed to have that effect on me. I felt tired, drained. What I was learning was something far heavier than I’d intended.
“Yes. Good.” I couldn’t see her, but I knew that she was satisfied with my progress. I was finally beginning to understand.
“Nightmare Moon, she only moved the stars. Right? That couldn’t have possibly-”
Her laughs sent chills down my spine. “Did you really think that your little planet was the only world with life on it? As the stars shift, the garden worlds of the universe die. They're being consumed by a fiery, irradiated Armageddon or are being left to freeze in the absence of their stars’ heat. ”
“Not all the stars have shifted.”
“True, but it’s only a matter of time.”
“Wait,” I said, rubbing my head with my hooves, “we’ve got time until then. This is still fixable. I mean, if Luna, or Nightmare Moon, managed to move the stars, than she can move them back.”
The mayor looked at me expectantly. When I didn’t respond, couldn’t respond, she asked me, “Do you see why we tried to kill you? Why we had to kill you?”
It took me a while, but the connections started to form. The logical progression led me from one discovery to the next, until the picture on the puzzle that represented this ridiculously mind-numbing conspiracy made some sense.
“You... were trying to stop me from telling the Princesses because they can stop all of this. You actually want the universe to end.”
She seemed proud of me, like an enthusiastic parent pounding their hooves louder than everypony else at her son’s piano recital. I was horrified. “Why? You’ll die too if the universe ends.”
“Because, Sun Spot, I am not the mare you think you know. I’ve changed. I’ve Melded.”
“Melded?”
“You’ll find out what that is soon enough.” The black void around us turned into the burnt out wreckage of my home. “Just know that the mayor and the Other are now one and the same.”
”Can’t you just tell me now?” I begged.
“We’re out of time.”
Stack ran into the room. I didn’t catch the first half of whatever sentence he’d been trying to form, but the other half came as clear as day. “...alright in here?”
“Hold that thought, Stacks,” I told him as he came to my side. I think he was worried that I’d done something to get myself hurt again. Was I truly that clumsy? Clumsy enough that I needed to be watched carefully? I didn’t ask.
“Mayor, I need answers.”
She gave me a pointed look. Stacks was not to hear what she had to say.
“You two should get going. It’s not safe to be out at night anymore.”
I nodded in agreement, but didn’t leave. I couldn’t leave the mayor to her fate. “They”, whoever they were, were coming after her. She’d die without my help, and I didn’t trust her to willingly keep herself safe. I couldn’t take her with me, either. Not after she had tried to kill me.
“Mayor, I really hope you can forgive me for this,” I said guiltily before swinging my right hoof at her as hard and as fast as I could. I connected a second later, and the mayor dropped like a rock. She didn’t move. Next to me, Stacks’ jaw hung open in shock.
“Sunny, what the hell did you just do?!”
It seemed pretty obvious to me. “I knocked the mayor out with one punch.”
“And why’d you do that?”
“Cmon, Stacks,” I pointed over to a spot near the back of the room. “Clear that rubble so I can bring her down to the cellar.”
“Dude, the mayor. You-”
“We don’t have time for this man. Just help me, and I’ll explain what I can later.”
He sucked his teeth. “I don’t like this, Sunny.”
“I don’t either, but it’s what we gotta do.” he nodded slowly, then went to work on the rubble while I checked the mayor’s pockets. The only interesting thing I found in there was a postcard from a pony named Ursa in Trottingham. It read, “Here’s to all your problems bleeding away.”
I stuffed it in Stacks’ mane as I carried the mayor’s body down into the cellar. He didn’t seem to notice.
____________________
I guessed that I’d been in Stacks’ bathroom for around a thirty minutes when I began to regain the faculties of thought, but the only thing that I could think about was myself. I’d even forgotten why I came into the bathroom in the first place.
My dark steel coat, which I hadn’t groomed in days, felt unruly. My silver mane wasn’t much better either. It looked ugly and knotted, and its strands of hair spilled everywhere. This wasn’t the perfect head of bedmane. My eyes were definitely my saving grace. The two silver, glowing orbs were captivating, and would’ve made up for the mess I was in.
It’s been months since I’ve last seen myself in a mirror large enough to reflect my entire face. That’s because I have a problem with mirrors. I found out early on in my life that if I look into a mirror longer than a few moments, I become entranced by my own visage. It’s not out of arrogance, but more out of wonder and amazement. I find the sight my eyes, my muzzle, my ears, and my mane, strange and fascinating. It only takes a sideways glance into a mirror or into a glass of water or a pool, or even somepony’s eyes, to keep me transfixed for hours. Eye contact usually doesn’t last for more than a few seconds anyway, so that’s never a problem. The others are still very much a problem for me, however.
It’s for that reason that I live without mirrors. I’ve lived without them since I was a child. It’s a secret between me and Stacks that I keep out of embarrassment, though if you’re going to read my story, you might as well know something else about me.
I’m ironic.
My name is Sun Spot, and yet, I look nothing like a sun, or a spot. The name was fitting when I was a colt, but I outgrew it rather quickly. I was born with a virgin white coat and a dark red mane. My eyes danced across the infrared part of the light spectrum, never settling on an exact color. Over time, however, I changed. My white coat grayed and darkened while my eyes and mane turned silver. Of course, I’d been so used to my name that I couldn’t change it even if I wanted to.
The memories of my ultra-ironic childhood came flooding back one at a time, until Stacks started banging on the door. The noise tore my attention away from the mirror, freeing me from the compulsion to stare at myself.
“Bro, how much longer are you gonna clop in there?”
“I’ll be out in a second. Just wait for me downstairs. Okay?”
“Sure. You had better tell me what the heck is going on when you come out though.”
I turned the sink on and splashed some cold water on my face and ran some through my frazzled mane and coat. I felt a little better. The water would keep my hair down, and I’d at least look passable.
The desire to look presentable was a strange one, but one that I fulfilled quickly and, dare I say it, obsessively. I gave it no more thought beyond that.
I exited the bathroom and leaned over the second floor railing. The front door was open with no Stacks in sight. I assumed he left and decided to explore his house while I waited. His house isn’t exactly all that familiar to me. He stays at my house more often than not, so there usually isn’t a reason for me to be in his. Now that I was officially homeless I had the perfect opportunity to check out what Stacks was missing every time he ended up sleeping at my place.
His house reminded me of a casino, with beige walls and dark green floors. Around a short coffee table were four white lazycolts, each with a different symbol. The looked like the suits you’d find on playing cards. Stacks also had a few support beams in his house shaped like a stack of poker chips, same as his cutie mark.
I haven’t been here in years, though the last time I was here his house was a disorganized mess. His personal interests were all scattered around the house, and no effort was made to make the rooms they were in mesh well at all. There wasn’t a color scheme or an identifiable style to be found. Now it looked like he’d put effort into making his home look good.
My stomach rumbled. I hadn't eaten much over the past few days because of the disgusting food that they serve at the hospital. Its, frankly, awful. Its almost as bad as the baked bads I ate that one time. One more reason not to trust Pinkie Pie, I guess. “Time for a snack. Hope Stacks doesn’t mind me raiding his fridge.”
I was already half-way downstairs when a black, impish thing smashed through the window over on the far left. It flew into one of the suit chairs before dropping to the floor. It resembled a pony in many respects, with its four legs, long muzzle, and flowing mane, but it seemed... deformed, for lack of a better word. Its face was permanently etched in a smile, and its eyes were snow white. It had a row of spikes on its back that started at its neck and trailed all the way to its rump. It was a little shorter than me, maybe a little thinner too. I didn't have a clue as to what it was, why it was here, and where it came from. Curiosity beckoned me towards the body, if only for science's sake. Up close, it looked even weirder. Impish seemed like the perfect adjective at the time.
Before I could touch it, I heard Stacks curse outside and rushed for the door to help him. I’d my hoof on the door when Stacks burst through it, a group of similar screaming imp things on him. We crashed into each other and ended up in one big pile of multi-colored hooves flying at each other. Stacks had no trouble lifting himself, and the rest of the things clinging to him, up. He promptly began making his dominance clear to the pseudo-ponies by swatting the ones with wings out of the air like flies, or by crushing the slow ones underneath him with his hooves.
“What are these things?” he yelled as he stomped brutally on one of the pony imps. It seemed to bleed normally, like any other animal.
“Monsters?” I offered quickly, ducking as a black pegasus swooped overhead. I lashed out with my hind legs before it moved out of range, and its wing snapped. It tumbled into the lamp behind me, knocking out the lights. We were now fighting in the dark.
I wasn’t affected much, but Stacks was. It was dim enough that their black little bodies became impossible to see. They seemed to recognize that too, because they swarmed him almost instantly, kicking him with their hooves or digging their horns and their spikes into his unprotected flanks.
“Sunny!” he yelped, disappearing underneath a pile of angry pony imps. More streamed into the house through the doors and windows to join the mob. Something had to be done.
I entered the fray, kicking the imps off of him and biting at anything that got within range. They didn’t stop. I could barely even see Stacks underneath the swarming mass of bloodthirsty pseudo-ponies. In my desperation, I started using my magic to push them away, but I wasn’t much of a magician and there were so many of them...
I didn’t notice when the lights came back on, but I did notice when it got bright enough that I was forced to squint my eyes. The imps were running away from me. Something must scared them off.
“The light,” I whispered aloud, “they must not like being under too much light.”
“It’s your eyes, bro. They’re acting real trippy.”
“So that’s why it’s so bright in here.” With a little concentration, I could make the light filtering through my eyes dim or brighten. I set it low enough to see things normally again. “You okay Stacks?”
“I’m dying.” he groaned, pointing at his side. He had a good number of cuts and bruises, flesh wounds really. Nothing too serious; nothing that couldn’t be healed with time and magic.
“I sincerely doubt that, Stacks.”
“You sure? It sure feels like I’m dying.”
“You’ll feel better when we get to the hospital.” I tried to help him up, but he pushed me away.
“Hell no! The Doc’ll kill me if I show up like this.”
I deadpanned, “Hang on. You think that Doctor Redheart is going to kill you for making her do the one job she’s paid to do?”
“Yes,” he answered, after a second of thought.
I was exhausted from everything I’d endured today. Losing my house, punching the mayor, and fighting these imps had worn me out to the point where I just didn’t have the energy to argue with him over something stupid like this, so I relented.
“Fine. Just tell me where you keep your first-aid kit.”