Chapter Twenty: Since I Was, Since I Began to Be
“That was weird,” DJ said as she came to the kitchen table for breakfast. She was still in her pajamas and while she was awake, didn’t look like she had any plans other than to go back to sleep as soon as she finished eating.
“My, aren’t we getting lazy this morning?” Anna teased her daughter. “Snowed last night; thought you and Sammy would be out there at first light playing.”
“Mom, it’s a Saturday and I’m eleven – I’m getting too old to play in the snow,” the alien girl pointed out. “Besides…I had a weird dream that just won’t….” She looked at her mother. “You ever have a dream that you can absolutely remember even after you wake up and you swear they’re almost like they’re real?”
“Yes, sweetie, it’s called lucid dreaming. Your father, with his overactive imagination, gets them all the time. Although,” Anna said with a smile, “I’d be lying if I said I didn’t have them myself occasionally. Why?”
“I had this dream where I was looking at two shapes: a larger purple one and a smaller lilac one. They were giggling, but it was kinda like they were playing with me or having fun or something. Nothing bad, just…weird.”
“Maybe it’s a memory from before?”
“I really, really doubt that, Mom,” DJ replied as she gave her mother a lidded look. “Besides, if I want fond memories of Sound and Vision, I’ll just listen to the Sea and Cake.”
Anna huffed. “Daisy Jo, you know I raised you better than that: David Bowie’s original is far superior to any remake of that song.”
The preteen alien sighed. “Dearest mother of mine,” she said in a theatrical voice, “you fail to realize that Sam Prekop just made a better version, just like Nirvana did a better take on Bowie’s ‘Man Who Stole the World’, okay?”
“I blame your father for all this,” the woman mock-grumbled.
“And that’s exactly the case, your majesty,” the soldier said to Celestia later that evening. It had been hours, and the sun alicorn’s plans to meet with Twilight were temporarily on hold due to the sheer number of things that had come up in the process. One of them was the least savory of all, in her opinion: the pepsis had apparently gotten in by assuming the form of Minty; there were traces of what was presumably pepsis DNA in the room assigned to her. This likely meant that Rarity and Silver’s youngest daughter was dead – and if that was the case, her husband and foal most definitely were as well.
I don’t relish being the one to tell Rarity and Silver, but Silver’s already prepared for it and Rarity’s already assumed that’s the case. Even still, it hurt; while Celestia wasn’t particularly close to Minty, the loss of her niece was a terrible blow to her soul. As her horn lit so she could move the sun beyond the horizon and towards its course around the other side of the world, an emotional wound ached in the soul of the Princess of the Day.
Mother…how did you put up with this? I’ve dealt with ruling in your stead for so long and that almost seems as though it’s simplicity itself, but…family? Did leaving us hurt you like this? Like when I ripped my own heart out to banish Luna to the moon? Or when Argent decided to exile himself for the good of the realm? Or even now, when I’ll never have the chance to let Minty know that I cared? That was probably the worst part of it all, she had to admit to herself: Minty’s hatred for DJ was so much that unless a family member outright stated a preference for her, the earth pony would assume the worst and assume that family member was in DJ’s “orbit”. It had cost Minty relationships with Twilight, Sweetie, AJ and Pinkie, and because of her need to be fair and neutral, herself as well.
Holding her head high, even though she wanted to just hang her head in defeat, the Princess Regnal of Equestria completed her duties and headed back towards the palace, wanting more than ever to be alone this evening.
“You know, maybe it’s just me, but I’m pretty sure I can tell a smile when it’s faked.” Celestia turned around and found Sam standing there, jacket slung over his shoulder, looking intently at her. “Plus, the way your posture is…I’ve seen Twilight like that a few times when she’s been down, and considering how close you two are, I’m presuming she picked that up from you.”
“Guilty as charged, officer,” the alicorn said with the barest hint of a smile – a genuine one.
“Well, seems to me that we never had the chance to finish the pizza,” he told her. “You still free for dinner tonight?”
“Right now? I’d do anything to get my mind off of my duties,” she admitted.
He walked up to her and whispered something in her ear. She flicked her ear for just a second before looking at him with another smile. “Are you sure?”
“Of course I’m sure, if you can get us there.”
Sam couldn’t say another thing as both alicorn and human were suddenly teleported away, with the telltale blue flash of a dimensional portal being opened.
A short distance away from the burning Infirmary, a group of ponies watched. Sunset Shimmer looked to the others and said, “See? This is what humanity does! This is why we should believe in a Pure society where ponies can live free of the taint of the lesser species, before they destroy us all.”
“But Lady Shimmer – how are you sure that humans caused this?” an earth pony standing nearby asked. Though he was out of uniform, his stance, demeanor and cutie mark made his occupation clear: law enforcement. “Our reports said that it was a changeling incursion.”
“And you believe that?” the unicorn said as she whipped around and looked at the deputy with a scowl. A violet flicker of her horn produced a sheaf of documents. “This is a report that her highness Princess Champagne Dreams was kind enough to forward to me – at great risk to herself, I might add. She believes in our cause, though she cannot support it outright.” Sunset turned her gaze to focus on each pony for a hard second before continuing. “And I don’t know about anypony else here, but I will not disappoint my princess! She’s doing this all to save Holy Celestia and Sacred Luna, and we cannot let her down!”
“But Ah—” began an earth pony stallion, speaking in the familial accent of the Apple clan; a quick peek at his flank and the golden apple slices mark confirmed that.
“No! We are pony!” Sunset thundered. “These are our lands! This is our home! And if you are truly an Apple, you would be completely, utterly in favor of this!”
“Ah…Ah guess yer right, Miz Shimmer,” he said, taking his lumps.
“Then you all know what to do. We must prepare for that day – it’s coming soon – and together we can save our Divine Princesses!” she sang, and was greeted with a round of cheers.
As they disappeared, Sunset cast a quick invisibility spell, followed by an illusion spell; a false vision of Sunset Shimmer began to walk away without a care in the world and would disappear after walking a mile away from the location. Meanwhile, that distraction gave Sunset enough time to open a nearby door in a convenient alleyway, entering a dimly-lit storage room in the building.
With a fast application of another spell, became her normal self once more, with a quick check of a mirror spell to make sure everything was in place. With that, she strode to another door, the edges glowing orange, and opened that, stepping into the preset teleport gate. A second later, she was back in the Western District of town, at an all-too-familiar spa owned by a loyal (and well-paid) henchmare.
“Mother?” Gilded Lily walked up to her, a concerned look on her face. “Are you okay? You were in the sauna for quite some time.”
Champagne Dreams looked at her daughter fondly, as a thought came over her face. Someday you’ll thank me for this, daughter. You may not appreciate what your father and I am doing now, but when you are the Princess Royal, you will. “Actually, I didn’t go to the sauna,” she said in a carefully-faked and somber tone. “I…I’m somewhat embarrassed to admit it, but I needed some time alone and dear Precious Jewel offered me the use of her office and a much-needed bottle of brandy.”
“Is something the matter?” the younger princess asked.
“I was just thinking about Virgin Dawn, dear – one of the mares here earlier had her coloring and…well, you know how close my cousin and I were.”
“She was the one that raised you like her own daughter, right?”
“Yes.” Well, more like we bucked each other silly when I needed the money or her husband couldn’t satisfy her. But to her family, Virgin Dawn had been the older fourth-cousin once removed that raised a young Champagne when her parents had been killed by a mad hydra near their summer home in Oatlando. Privately, Sunset gave herself both a fond smile of memories and the merest hint of guilt; all in all, Dawn had been good to her aside from their “business relationship”, and she almost wished it hadn’t been necessary to cause the accident that killed Dawn and her husband.
But if I hadn’t, I wouldn’t have become a viscountess, and I wouldn’t have met my husband – or had my foals. Well, when making an omelet….
“Mother, I know you don’t like discussing your past, but…well, someday, if you want to, I’m always willing to listen,” Lily offered. “You’ve always shown me a caring heart is what matters most and there are few that I care for as much as I do you.”
Champagne’s eyes genuinely misted at that. Lily, my dearest daughter. How I love you, even if you are a naïve foal. “Someday, I promise,” she said, nuzzling the younger unicorn. “Well, if you are done with your spa time, why don’t we have dinner together? I’m sure your father and your brother are otherwise occupied, and it’s always good to spend time with my favorite daughter.”
It was evening by the time DJ and Mike returned to Twilight’s home. She had tried to get a hold of Elusive, but to no avail; chances were, he was currently overburdened by both taking care of Butter and the foals, and with what she needed to discuss with him, stressing him out further wouldn’t be of any help whatsoever. So after catching a taxi back to Twilight’s place, they opened the door, just needing some time that DJ could use to talk to her parents.
Unfortunately, she wasn’t going to get that. Instead, what she found when she got there were her sons, playing with Lyra and Paul’s kids. Or rather, Stuart, Colby and Orchid, who were the same age, were goofing off with a vintage Neo Geo Renaissance that was currently playing SNK vs. Namco: Conflict of Superstellars; while Tyler was reading a book to Ovie. And sitting by the table, looking up from her tablet, was Lyra. “Heya, you two,” she said, waving.
“Heya, again,” DJ said as she went over to hug her old friend. “How’d you get stuck watching the kids? And how are you still alive?”
Lyra winked as she pointed with her horn. “Unicorn’s secret,” she said, whimsically. “Seriously, though, the kids have been well-behaved. Paul decided to go for a walk and your parents were all too happy to foist the kids on me while they went to dinner.”
“But that doesn’t explain why you’re here.” Lyra’s answer was merely an even glance, making it clear she needed say nothing more; the humanized pony took that as the only answer she was likely to get. “Well, whatever you’re going to say, I really don’t feel like hearing it right now. I’ve had a really bad day and you’ve already seen me break down once today. I don’t think I need to do it again.”
The elder mare smiled gently. “DJ, for being such a smart woman…you can really be an idiot at times. And now that I think of it…Mike, mind if I borrow her for a bit?” Lyra asked. “Ladies’ night out.”
“Don’t get too drunk,” he teased.
“Naah, I leave that to you Navy types,” the celeste unicorn retorted. “C’mon, DJ. Let’s get going.”
“Look, I need to talk to my parents, and then I need to talk to my brother…well, brothers, plural; it’s only fair that I include Sam in the conversation,” DJ said as the celeste unicorn rose from her seat, grabbed her purse and headed towards the door, pausing only to grab DJ, dragging her along. “I’m in no shape to go out tonight,” she pled to Lyra.
“DJ, you trust me, right?”
“You know I do.”
“Then we’re going,” the unicorn said with finality.
With a sigh, DJ relented. “At least let me get my purse.”
“Whut’s wrong, sugarcube?” Butter asked her husband as he sat down on the couch, frownlines practically embedding themselves in his face. Both foals were asleep, and it was a rare chance for both Butter and Elusive to spend some time together since the mare’s foaling. Before he could say anything, she moved behind him and started giving him a backrub, her forehooves running across his slumped withers.
“Aren’t you the one I’m supposed to take care of?” he asked with a wan smile. “And yet here you are, taking care of me. You spoil me, you know that?”
“Well, Ah’m an earth pony,” Butter reminded him, “an’ b’sides, apples don’ go well with spoilin’, hun. So, wanna tell me what’s got ya bothered?”
“My family is falling apart, love,” he told her. “I’ve got a sister I just met who bears a great hatred towards our mother and ambivalence towards our father. And while I know how she feels about me – about us – I know she hates Minty completely and utterly. And if that isn’t enough…Minty is…Min….” He broke down, sobbing, barely feeling as his wife wrapped her forelegs around him. “She’s dead. I…I can’t deny it anymore…my sister’s dead….”
“Oh, honey, Ah’m so sorry,” Butter said, holding her husband close. While Minty had been a mercurial mare, she had always gotten along with Butter, since Minty had always looked out for both Elusive and Blitz. Butter had gotten along much better with Minty’s husband Toffee Crunch, and of course she adored her niece, Gumdrop. But they were now gone as well – all three victims of the Tartarus that Equestria was becoming in the wake of Nightmare Moon’s return.
Must be strong for me and my family, she told herself as she pulled her husband closer to her. Whatever’s happening, I’ve just gotta trust cousin AJ and my mother-in-law. The Knights’ll save us. They always have – they always will.
But neither Applejack nor Rarity had saved Minty, the realization sunk in. And certainly if Minty would have been rescued, they would have done the same for her husband and foal. And if there was a way to save those three, they would have saved Fillydelphia…and Cloudsdale….
Cold fear sank in: maybe this time there was no way to save the day. Maybe this time the Elements of Harmony had met their match. Apple Butter’s body suddenly went cold from the realization; she wanted to break down and cry herself. But she couldn’t; she had to be strong for her Elusive.
The two held each other in broken silence as she felt the hot wetness of his tears as he mourned the loss of his sister and her family. After a while, she let go as well, the two adults crying and thankful their newborns were asleep long enough to let them both get this out of their systems. Both of them needed it to get over their grief at the moment.
Unfortunately, a knock came at the door. Because Elusive was still out of sorts, Butter forced herself to act. Wiping the tears from her eyes, she told him she would get to the door while he composed himself. And it was a good thing she got to the door as well: standing there, looking completely morose, was Rainbow Blitz himself.
“Hey, Butter, good seeing ya,” he told her. “You’re looking good – recovering well?”
“Uh-huh,” she told him. “The usual?” she asked him.
“Yeah,” he muttered glumly, a warning sign if she ever heard one. Blitz was always mercurial, but sad or depressed wasn’t in his usual rollercoaster of an emotional range.
“Blitz?” she asked.
“I know…I know I shouldn’t….” His voice was halting. “It’s…my parents, they never….” He was reaching around the words to say, unsure about crossing a boundary he’d never encountered prior.
“You loved her as well,” Elusive’s voice said as he walked into the living room. The look in his eyes was bleak. “She was just as much your big sis as she was mine. Always looking out for us, because she was the oldest.”
“Always being my big sis, because I didn’t have siblings of my own.” The dams in Blitz’ fragile emotional state busted again. “Why the hell is this happening to our family? First it was your mom and mine and our aunts, then Aunt Scoots and your dad, and now Minty and her family! Is somepony trying to kill us?”
“Blitz, calm down – I don’t think it’s that. Frankly, I don’t know what to think,” Elusive sighed. “But I do know that Minty wouldn’t want us to fall apart like this.”
“Yeah,” the rainbow-maned stallion agreed, as Butter passed him a bottle of cider. “She always looked out for us, didn’t she. Even when she was at her…well, even when I deserved to get my plot beat…she always looked out for us, didn’t she?” Elusive merely nodded, saying nothing else as he sat down in the seat next to his cousin. “And yet she’s gone and here we are,” Blitz continued, “and I get the feeling this is just the start of something. I don’t know why, but I get the feeling our flanks haven’t even been through the worst of it yet.”
Elusive’s eyes showed fear at his words, while Butter gasped at Blitz’ comments.
The pegasus looked at his cousin and best friend, and his cousin’s wife. “Don’t worry – nothing’s going to happen to your kids, you two. So long as Rainbow Blitz is here, I’m going to give it my all to protect them.”
“Just like Aunt Rainbow,” Elusive said with a smile as he brought his cider forward in a toast.
“Just like Aunt Rarity would do,” Blitz answered, clinking his bottle against Elusive’s in response.
“It’s quiet,” Twilight commented. “Too quiet.”
At the moment, the three were waiting in the ruins of the Infirmary. Now that the curse affecting Twilight was in remission, she was beginning to feel a second wind as her magic began to recover. At the moment, she was throwing up a stronger barrier, mainly against the unlikely event that the weakened building could fall down on them. At the moment, there were plans to build an isolation facility on the Infirmary’s grounds, but until it was built, they had to remain in the shattered remnants of the quarantine area. While Twilight was more than strong enough to rebuild the Infirmary with her own power, unfortunately they needed the building in its destroyed state for the upcoming investigation.
“Ah c’n deal with quiet, sugarcube,” Applejack said as she lay down on the cot that Twilight had magically summoned. The former farmer looked as though she’d seen better days, but with the miraculous cure Twilight had gone through in just a few hours past, the agonizing pain Applejack felt was bearable, as she would be able to push it away in the very near future…if Twilight was correct. “What Ah can’t deal with is why y’ve gone an’ decided that strange pony is yer kin!”
At the moment, both were watching as the pony who was named Twilight Sunburn – scratch that, who had been renamed “Shining Dawn” by her “mother” – as she was watching over Sweetie Belle and casting healing spells. Rarity, who didn’t trust the young pepsis at all, stood there like a hawk, her worry for her baby sister overriding her distrust of her caretaker at the moment. Even still, she did not leave Sweetie’s side, taking the younger unicorn’s hoof in her own, holding it as though she could give succor to her biological sister.
“Applejack…I know what I feel. Shiny is my child,” Twilight said with firm insistence. “I am her mother now – that’s all there is to it. Yes, she is the foal of Chrysalis and my brother, but you know as well as I do that giving birth…or hatching an egg or however she was born…doesn’t mean that Chrysalis is Shiny’s mother.”
“Yeah, an’ Ah know our family hasn’t had much a problem with adoptin’,” Applejack replied.
“Then why are you so against me adopting Shiny?”
“Twi, it’s not….” Applejack paused in thought. “Honestly, Twi, Ah’d feel much better ‘bout this if’n y’ had time t’ think things through, an’ Ah know Rarity would as well. Y’ don’t know anythin’ about this gal, ‘cept that she’s the same type o’ critter that earlier varmint was.”
“Yes, and she saved our lives…and if what you said is true, she brought me back from the edge of death.”
“Yeah, Ah guess so…but Ah’d still feel better knowin’ y’ made this call not on th’ spur of the moment.”
The lavender unicorn shook her head. “I’d feel the same way even if I waited years, Applejack.” A sudden thought came to Twilight’s mind. “When did you know, even when we all thought otherwise, that Noteworthy was the stallion for you? After all, none of us, not even Big Mac, thought that he was going to do anything other than treat you as the latest in his conquests.”
“But that wasn’t fair!” Applejack retorted. “When he looked at me at th’….” Her words trailed off as realization sank in. “B’cause Ah just knew it was th’ right thing fer me. Okay, Twi. Ah’ll give ya that. But what about th’ rest o’ our family? An’ ‘specially ‘bout Cadance. She wuz th’ one what made that promise t’ yer brother – are y’ gonna deny her that?”
“It’s not about denying anypony anything,” Twilight countered. “It’s about what’s best for that young filly over there. And I know what’s best for my daughter.”
“Twi, Ah wish y’ could hear yerself. Y’ don’t sound…well, y’ don’t sound like yerself. Y’ sound like something else’s gotta hold o’ ya.”
“Yes, it’s called motherhood, Applejack,” Twilight said biting off the argument. She couldn’t afford to argue with her sisters now; to do so could potentially be fatal to them, and she couldn’t risk that, not when she was so close to a cure.
Watching from a distance away, Shining Dawn smiled softly to herself. She could hear as her mother told her friend that she intended to keep things as they were, and that brought a wide smile to the pepsis’ heart. She giggled softly.
“I don’t see what’s so funny,” Rarity said, watching the widening smile on her face.
“Oh, I’m not laughing,” Shiny said, the wide smile still there. “I’m happy. I have a mother now, a real mother, one that will be there for me and protect me.” She then looked at Rarity, her eyes sad. “I know that you don’t approve of me,” she said, her voice morose.
“Dear, it has nothing to do with you, believe it or not,” Rarity pointed out. “It has everything to do with Twilight. We’re…worried that she might be rus—”
“You’re worried that I’m corrupting her,” Shiny said, matter-of-factly. The way she looked into Rarity’s eyes…for a second, the fashionista swore that she felt a touch of Shining Armor’s disappointment in her.
“Motherhood…it’s not something a mare takes lightly,” Rarity began, trying to choose her words carefully. Incredibly powerful or not, this foal before her was just that – a foal. Whether she was truly the age she appeared or not was immaterial; the fact was that she was a relative babe in the woods and Rarity, as the adult, needed to be careful with her words. “It’s not just an event that anypony can go in willy-nilly without a care for the lives that are at stake.”
“Mom didn’t,” Shiny insisted. “She chose me. I chose her. We need each other – why doesn’t anypony understand that?”
“Because we’ve known Twilight Sparkle for years, and she’s been nothing but methodical,” Rarity explained. “This…these actions aren’t her. These aren’t the actions of a methodical individual. Nopony just jumps in and takes a foal under their wing, literal or metaphorical, just because they need it.”
Except that Fluttershy did with Cinnamon, Rarity’s mind said, betraying her. And so did Cadance – she could have easily turned down what was sent her way. In fact, isn’t that how parenthood works in the first place?
“Hopefully you’ll understand when you’re older,” Rarity finished.
“Maybe. Or maybe Mom’ll have to explain it to me like a lot of pony things – I’m guessing I still have a lot of catching up to do, don’t I?” Before Rarity could say anything else, the pepsis continued. “Do you have any foals? I don’t know if I’m supposed to ask questions like that or not, but you’re old enough, I guess.”
Rarity bristled at that. “Dear, it’s impolite to say or hint at a mare’s age. But I’m guessing you don’t really understand that, do you?”
Shiny shook her head. “No. In the hive, no one really cares, because pretty much everychangeling save for Chrysalis is the same age. And while we’re taught some things here and there for infiltration and the like, it’s just enough to get by. What we can’t glean from the hivemind, we’ll never know outright.”
“I…see,” Rarity replied, unsure of what else to say.
“And here’s a Stone IPA for the first lady,” Moira said, setting down the beer in front of Lyra, “and a Sweet Apple Acres Premium Reserve for the other lady. Will that be anything else for the lot of you?” the Scotswoman said with a smile.
“Nope, that works for me, thanks,” Lyra said as the human woman walked off. “Lucky thing I found out about this place the last time I was back in town. Granted, it’s no Doener Bistro, but you take what you get. Besides, I figured you’d be much more comfortable around a bar in the Northside than if we went clubbing in some of the more ‘pony’ districts, if you catch my drift.”
“Thanks,” DJ replied. “I appreciate that. Besides, I’d probably have to belt the first individual that bothered to ask me a stupid question or two.”
Lyra laughed. “DJ, I know you – you think everypony is out to ask a stupid question or two.”
“Guilty as charged,” she said with a smile, looking at her mentor. “You know, I never really apologized to you about what I wrote in my email a few weeks back.”
“You don’t have to. I’ve known you long enough to know that whatever guilt kicked in five minutes later is more than enough of an apology,” Lyra replied with a wave of her hoof, “so already forgiven and forgotten.”
“Am I that transparent?”
“No, not really. If anything, you’re just as hard to read as Celestia, but in your case it’s because your body language doesn’t skew to what’s the norm for ponies. No, it’s just what I know about you, kiddo – I did watch you grow up, to some degree.”
“Grow old,” DJ commented glibly. “Not sure about the growing up part.”
“Touché.”
As DJ lifted her mug of cider to her lips, she asked, “So what did you bring me here for, other than the obvious? Did Twilight put you up to this? Or Sweetie, or Luna?”
“No, I’m doing it of my own accord this time, DJ, and I’m not doing it for you – I’m doing it for your boys.”
That earned a curious look from DJ. “What have my sons got to do with this? Lyra, if you’re trying to blackmail me regarding my sons….”
“Is that really how you think of me?” the celeste unicorn asked, genuinely hurt. “After all these years, is that really what I am to you in the end?”
“Sorry, just that after today, I’m a little on the defensive side,” DJ admitted. “And I’ve said it before, but I’ll say it again: Lyra, you’re family to me. You’ve been mentor to me all these years, someone I can rely on. But I also know that it’s in your nature to meddle – like you’re doing right now.”
“Well, you’ve got me there,” Lyra admitted as she gathered her thoughts for the next step. “But I think I should explain: you have two boys that are extremely exceptional in the history of the human race, and that means you owe them a larger debt than just some guy back in Fairfax tracing his family tree for his kids. You need to be the bridge that connects your sons to their heritage, not only so that they can learn from ponydom – but so ponydom can learn from them.”
DJ took another sip from her mug, but said nothing, waiting for the celeste unicorn to continue.
“Your brother, Elusive, just had his kids, so like you, he has to look at something. But his kids aren’t like other ponies – they have an aunt that helped give them birth—”
“You heard about that, didn’t you,” DJ said, looking somewhat flustered.
“Cadance told me about it,” Lyra said, before continuing. “But as I was saying, he just had foals…and those foals now have an aunt that is unlike anything they’ll ever experience in this world. Sure there are humans here now, and there will be more when those foals grow up, but that’s different from having the first of their kind that lived with humanity as a direct family member. And your sons will be cousins to those foals – I am assuming that you’re going to have continued contact with your brother.”
“Why wouldn’t I? Yes, I’m on good terms with Elusive now – I want to be in his life and vice versa. And after what happened today with Silversteel, I’m willing to make an effort there as well. But you can’t possibly expect me to give any iota to Rarity after what she said and did to my parents!”
Lyra shook her head. “Again, DJ, this isn’t about you and Rarity – this is about your children and their pony heritage, and part of that heritage is their biological grandmother. Or are you so firmly against that heritage that you’re willing to be like Rarity?”
“That’s not fair, Lyra. Earlier today I told my boys, right in front of Elusive, that I was willing to do all this because of them.” DJ pointed a hoof back at herself. “I’m not going to go back on my word; I meant every bit of it and I would never willingly lie to my kids. But at the end of the day I’m a pony only physically, only genetically! In my heart and mind I’m human, I always will be.”
“But here’s a problem with that line of thought,” Lyra told her. “You’re far more than any individual – pony or human – has ever been. You’re a countess. You’re the daughter of a high-ranking military officer – two, if you want to count Rarity’s rank. You’re the daughter of a high-ranking member of government. Your aunts, uncles and several of your cousins – and your brother – are all nobility. Your aunts are the supreme rulers of this kingdom. From the pony point of view, you’re not average, DJ – you never were.
“As for your human side, you’re a famous writer on your own, the daughter of two equally-famous creators back on Human-Earth, and your husband is an up-and-coming military officer in his own right. You’ve had Supreme Court cases decided based on your very existence – you literally changed the legal course of the United States and influenced the laws of all of humanity!
“I know things haven’t been easy for you, DJ, but despite everything you’ve been through in your life, DJ, you have led a charmed life. A normal pony wouldn’t have had half the advantages you did. A normal human wouldn’t have either. You are anything but normal, DJ. And that’s the person that your children should know and your niece and nephew. That’s the pony that ponykind should know, so that you’ll be more than just ‘Rarity’s estranged daughter’ or ‘the Lost Foal’ – your parents told me how many years it took for the human press to stop calling you ‘the Alien Girl.’
“You have a whole family out there that knows you only by what Rarity says – or doesn’t even know you at all. And despite what Sweetie and Twilight say, the fact that you haven’t been here in all these years colors their judgment. Elusive may be in your corner, but he grew up with Rainbow’s son Blitz – and Blitz always turned to Minty for guidance. So you can imagine what she put into his mind. And then there’s the younger ones: Cinnamon – you might be on good terms with her now, but I’m betting the first time you met wasn’t that spectacular. And Pinkie’s kids – since they’re Pinkie’s kids, half-cocked is their natural mode. And Applejack’s son – he’s barely old enough to start forming his own identity…you need to be a part of that.”
“This isn’t about me, is it?” DJ said bluntly. “It’s not about my kids either, is it?”
“Of course it is,” Lyra responded.
“No, it’s more than just that,” DJ replied. “Lyra, you’ve known me since I was a teenager – but I’ve also known you just as long. You know all my buttons, but I know all of yours, too. And there’s something that’s bothering you, something you can’t tell Paul, isn’t there?”
“That obvious?”
“Only to those who love you dearly. And I’m sure Paul knows – he’s a lawyer, for Christ’s sake – and is just waiting for you to tell him.”
“Just thinking about how I’m going to tell my son and daughters about their own heritage,” Lyra told her. “They already know about their uncle – Harper and Serenade have been a constant in their lives – and they know about their human grandparents. But telling them about my parents…that won’t be as easy. They hated my relationship with Bon-Bon, not because we were marelovers, but because Bon-Bon came from a poor family. My family comes from old Canterlot wealth and they wouldn’t have cared if I married an abusive stallion, so long as it was a stallion with good breeding and went to the finest schools and all that shit.”
“Old money? But I thought your title was recent.”
“Well, my title was given to me by Cadance, so it’s mine – but technically Harper holds our family title. I mean, c’mon – my foalsitter was a princess – you don’t get that kind of treatment if you’re just a normal commoner. But to get back to what I was saying, I have the fun of having to explain to my children that their late grandparents would have hated them because of how they were born.” She looked at her bottle of beer as she said, “I know Harper and I don’t bring it up, but…my parents were specist, heavily so. There had been a brief point when Harper had been interested in a mare in his class and wanted to date her, but then got a serious ration of shit from my parents because – can’t remember her name, really, went something along the lines of ‘Zaleva’ or something like that – because he was flirting with a non-pony when I – and keep in mind I wasn’t even dating age at the time, mind – would likely not even have the chance to have my own stallion.” The look in Lyra’s eyes was angry. “So even before I was old enough to know the birds and the bees, my parents were already picking out who I’d be fucking for the rest of my life as far as they were concerned.
“And that’s on top of having to explain to them why their ‘Aunt Bonnie’ is sick.” Lyra took another swig of her beer. “So, your uncomfortable task of telling your children about their less-than-savory biological grandmother is much easier than what I went through.”
“So you’re telling me you’re bisexual because of your parents.”
“No, that turned out to be coincidental – I honestly thought I was just a marelover until I met Paul; it was Bon-Bon that had romped with stallions when she was younger. But nice try on changing the point.”
“Lyra, I know where you’re going with this, and I love you to death, but please…just don’t, okay?” The humanized pony took another drink from her mug, the amber cider sliding into her muzzle. “I’ve already got my relationship with Elusive pinned down, and now I have to work on my one with Silversteel. That one’s going to be weird, I can tell you that.”
“How so?”
“He called me ‘muffin’, which I would think is some weird-ass Equestriani slang if it wasn’t for the fact that he said it with warmth…like it’s supposed to mean something.” She shrugged. “It kinda reminded me of when my parents always call me ‘furball’, but at least I understand that reference. Am I missing something here?”
Lyra was quiet once more, as if wrestling with making a comment. Finally, after a minute or so, she replied with, “I think I know…but it’s not my place to say.”
“What?” DJ asked abruptly. “Don’t play coy with me, Ly—”
“I’m not. You need to hear this from someone who is in your family – at the very least, your extended family, like Twilight or Sweetie, maybe AJ or Fluttershy.” She shook her head, adding, “Just trust me on this one: I would tell you, but I really don’t feel that it’s it my place to. To put it another way: do you want to be the ones to break my kids’ hearts by telling them their grandparents would have called them little half-breed monsters?”
“I get your point,” DJ answered. “I don’t like it, but I get your point.” As the waiter swung by to see if they needed another drink, DJ ordered another. Something in Lyra’s eyes told her that that the unicorn was very serious about this, and that she’d force the issue if she had to, something that DJ already figured was going to be the case – when Lyra got a bug up her ass about something, she tended not to let go until it was either done or she couldn’t do anything further about it. Since DJ already had a feeling that Elusive didn’t know what was going on, that meant that she was going to have to take it straight to the source.
Fortunately for the source, it came to her. A unicorn dressed in business attire walked in and made a beeline straight for Lyra and DJ. “Excuse me, Ambassador?”
“I’m not even going to bother to ask how you found me,” she muttered. “What can I do for you?”
“Acually, this is for you, Ms. Martinez,” the pony replied, floating a letter to DJ. “This was delivered to the Foreign Ministry three hours ago to you, in care of the ambassador here.” Turning back to Lyra, he added, “We’ve been trying to reach you via phone, milady, and when we got a hold of your husband, Ambassador, he said you two were out here. I’ve been scouring bars for the past hour.”
Lyra checked her phone; the battery was dead. “Third time this week – well, I was due to get a new phone anyway,” she said in an apologetic tone. “Thank you for your diligence,” she told him. Glad that he’d done his job, he departed immediately back to his duties at the ministry.
Meanwhile, DJ tore open the envelope and pulled out the letter. After a few seconds, she set it down, her face one of disbelief.
Seeing DJ’s expression, Lyra asked, “What’s up?”
“Here, you read.”
Lyra took the letter in hoof and started to peer over it. As soon as she was done, she looked at DJ. “We can be there in twenty minutes if we catch a cab.”
“Are you sure that you read the same letter I did?” DJ asked. “Silversteel wants me to go visit him at ten in the evening tonight – which is in fifteen minutes.”
“Yeah, and somehow he knew that I was with you, because you needed somepony to back you up.” Lyra looked at the letter as if it were a thing. “Okay, I’ll admit that’s a little too well-timed, but…DJ, this is your fath…well, your sire, at the very least. And didn’t you want to try to see if you could reach him the same way you did Elusive?”
“At ten in the evening in a hospital on a military base when he should be recuperating and most definitely after visitor’s hours?” DJ shook her head. “Look, I’m a Navy wife and I know the monumental bullshit that is just on number of broken regs alone…and I’m the member of my family that hasn’t been in the mil.”
“Silver’s a general; he can pull a few strings here and there, I’m presuming,” Lyra answered.
“Yeah, and that’s what worries me.”
“Glad to see your sense of humor’s still intact,” Lyra grinned, as she finished her beer, and set down enough bits for the drinks and the tip. “C’mon, let’s go – you know I’m not letting you waltz into this on your own.”
“Gimme a Bud.” When Rumble realized that the bartender was staring at him strangely, he shrugged inwardly. Yeah, I’ve been on Human-Earth too damn long.
“Let me handle it, Cask,” a soft voice said, followed a second later by, “here ya go: on the house. Yeah, it’s not one of those human beers, but the minotaurs make a pretty mean brew, I tell ya.” Rumble looked up to see a vaguely familiar unicorn mare, whose coloring was vaguely reminiscent of his sister-in-law Pinkie, save for the green eyes and three rose-quartz gems as her cutie mark.
“Pinch? Berry Pinch?” he asked, astonished, trying to match the hot mare standing in front of him with the somewhat frumpy filly he knew when he was just a colt. Wow, she looked good.
She nodded. “It’s been a long time, Rumble. Heck, wouldn’t have even known it was you if it wasn’t for the tag on your jacket there,” she said, pointing. “Gone bipedal, I see?”
He nodded. “Yeah, I actually live in San Diego on Human-Earth – I’m REN, stationed with the American military. I’m just here because my commanders insisted that I take a vacation and doubly-insisted that I do it back in Equestria so ‘I don’t forget where I came from’, quote unquote. How’ve you been? Looking good, by the way.”
She grinned. “Flatterer. Actually, that big lug you confused with the order’s my husband, Oak Cask. Met him while he was apprenticing for my mom.”
“Speaking of which, where is she?” Despite her off-and-on reputation as Ponyville’s town drunk, Berry Punch was actually very sober and in all the years growing up here in Ponyville, Rumble had never remembered the caring and even-tempered earth pony as even being remotely tipsy, much less outright drunk.
“Mom’s attending the Alcoholics Anonymous class tonight,” Pinch replied, but quickly backed it up with, “And no, she’s not an ‘attendee’, per se. She’s there to support Blue Beret, who was ordered to AA for public intoxication. Mom thought it would be a great idea if the town vinter and pubmistress offered support, given her unfair reputation.”
“You don’t have to tell me; I always thought your mother was a straight arrow. And you? I’m guessing you don’t work here normally, given your cutie mark?”
“I work at Beryl’s Baubles down on Market Street – I was my mentor’s last apprentice, and after my masterwork was done, Raspberry brought me on as a partner. I think she’s going to give me the business if she ever retires, but she’s a tough old unicorn. I’m just here helping Oak because it’s been a busy week – lot of ponies drowning their sorrows in the wake of all the crap that’s been happening in the past few days.”
“Yeah, I know,” he said morosely. “Personally, I want to get back into the action, but thirty days are my orders. Besides, I do have to admit, it’d be good to get to see some of the old gang and see how they’re doing. Obviously living as far away as I do I don’t keep up with what’s going on back here, so I guess I should take the chance to see what’s up. And….”
Even though she wasn’t a real bartender, Pinch knew that tone of voice when she heard it. “And what, Rumble? What’s her name? Or his?”
“Hers,” he answered with a self-deprecating grin. “That obvious?”
“No, just that in my time watching the bar I usually see that kind of stuff. So who is it? Maybe I can be of some help. Lemme guess: Sweet Tooth? Blueberry Cake? Fruitbasket? Coronet?”
He shook his head. “Sweetie Belle, actually, if you remember her.”
“Ah, her. Well, she doesn’t come around Ponyville much these days – if I recall correctly, she moved to Canterlot to attend the Mage Academy and has been there since – but she does come around from time to time. But if I remember from the last time that I talked to her, she was single; admittedly, it was a few years ago, but she’s a mage, and you know how busy they get – never have a life of their own.”
“Tell me about it,” he sympathized. His own career didn’t give much free time of his own, but he was now determined to make the most of his enforced leave.
“Well, now that I think about it,” Pinch replied, as a thoughtful look crossed her face, “Star Swirl should know for sure – she’s Sweetie Belle’s former apprentice, and she’s assigned to the Guild Office in town. She comes here occasionally to have a drink or when she’s on a date with somepony, but with all the stuff that’s gone down lately, wouldn’t be surprised if she’s just staying at the office until it all dies down.”
“So where can I find her?” If Sweetie was single, this Star Swirl should know for sure; it was a longshot, but he was used to that sort of thing.
“Oh, that’s easy – head to the old library. It got turned into the Guild Office since the new library went up. She’s usually there, and if not, then when school’s out, that kid of hers – she raised a dragon, just like Twilight Sparkle – should be hanging around there as well. In either case, you should be good to go.”
Rumble brightened up at that. “Thanks! That should be more than enough info to get me started, Pinch.”
“Well, if it doesn’t work out, no worries – I’m sure there’s a gal or two running around Ponyville that would love to get to know you better, Rumble,” the bartender said with a wink. “Now I gotta take care of my other customers before Mom gets back. I’ll talk to you later and it’s good seeing you again.”
“Yeah, thanks again,” he replied, waving to his old friend as she went off. As she started working with other customers, Rumble finished off his beer, then ordered another. He’d just relax the night here, maybe catch up with a couple of other old friends – he’d just seen Grassgrazer come into the place with a mare who also looked familiar from the old school days – and then head back to Thunderlane and Pinkie’s for the night. Then in the morning, he’d head to the Guild Office to talk to this Star Swirl gal.
What did he have to lose?
“It was a ruse,” Luna said bitterly as she had coffee and some croissants at a café in the town of Mountain Stream, just at the base of Poll Mountain. “Somepony knew exactly what they were doing when they sabotaged my barriers, and I will not let them get away with that.”
“Forgive me, Luna, but I didn’t see any signs of sabotage,” Imago said, seated across from her and ignoring the stares from the other ponies in the café. She wasn’t sure if they were directed at her, at the night alicorn, at both, or if the small town wasn’t expecting to suddenly have an influx of particularly powerful ponies enter their domain. “Admittedly, maybe I’m not sure I know exactly what to look for, but I didn’t see any signs of sabotage at all.”
Luna nodded slightly as she brought the coffee up to her lips. “It was very subtle, the work of – and I hate to use this term, but it’s the only one that fits – an expert. They did damage to a barrier that was due for a spell refresh, so I assumed that it was running out. I was lucky that I’m thorough enough in my spellcasting to doublecheck all my previous work, otherwise I wouldn’t have noticed that other magic interfering.”
Imago floated a bite of her croissant up to her face; one small filly in particular looked at her strangely, but Maggie had long since learned that was the way of foals; she was hardly better when she was one herself. She smiled briefly at the filly, then turned back to Luna and continued. “Now that you mention it, I did sense something slightly out of the ordinary. I mean, I discounted it at first, because I thought I was imagining things, but….”
“But?”
“The magic seemed…well, it reminded me of my daughter’s. A weird mix of both pony and changeling magic, like it was hybridized.”
“So you noticed the same thing I did,” Luna asked. “There have been some reports of adult pony/changeling hybrids, but I wasn’t sure whether or not that was true.”
“I can assure you, it’s possible. Given that my daughter was hatched instead of birthed, I could have easily artificially aged her in the egg. It’s possible that if Chrysalis, ahem, ‘mated’ with a stallion, she would have the ability to hatch them as physical adults, or at least teenagers.” She deliberately left out Shining Armor’s name, both out of respect for him and because of her anger in finding out he’d been violated.
Luna nodded at the flutterqueen’s discretion. “Given the existence of both your daughter and Cadance’s son, it’s clear that Chrysalis was behind this. It’s only a matter of finding out how deeply involved she is.”
“I’ll be more than happy to be involved myself,” the flutterqueen said wolfishly. “I have a score to settle with that maggot. Plus, I want to prove to Equestria that my brood and I are more than just the progeny of Chrysalis and changelingdom. We flutters are so much more.”
“You have nothing to prove to me, Imago – or to anypony else,” Luna said, appreciatively. “You are a friend and ally of Equestria and you have our support completely and totally. Furthermore, for the lives you helped me save today? I daresay there are quite a few in the Royal Astronomy Service who would very much beg to differ should anypony have anything ill to say regarding you and yours.”
“Thanks, Luna,” Imago murmured, sincerity completely embedded in her voice.
“You’re more than welcome,” the Princess of the Night responded.
“This wasn’t what I expected when you said you were talking about dinner,” Celestia said as she dug into her chili bowl.
A mildly-embarrassed look came over Sam’s face as he bit into his chili burger sub. “Well, I haven’t had a decent chili burger in ages, and Ben’s Chili Bowl is a DC institution, so when you have a convenient ride, you might as well take it.”
A mock-shocked look came over Celestia’s human guise; at the moment, she was in her “Skye Hanover” disguise, one she was oddly feeling more and more at ease with. “So is that all I am to you? Just a ‘ride’?”
“Well, no, trust me, I think you’re more than that,” he said sincerely. There was a sudden look in his eyes that Celestia couldn’t read, but for some reason, it made her feel flush. After a second more, he asked, “So, when was the last time you got out? Must not be much time off for a…well, you know.”
She nodded. “Other than diplomatic visits, royal duties and the like? Not much. Of course, I’ve had to adjust to having a life without a life, if you catch my meaning – all chances of anything regarding a normal existence went out the door when my mother disappeared. Of course, there was one point, ages ago, when I thought things were going to change…but they didn’t.”
“That’s a shame. You’re a queen in all but name. I would think that you’d be able to have whatever you wanted, including time off.”
“No, for the longest time there was just me,” Celestia admitted. “Luna was…indisposed, and Cadance and Twilight and the others are very recent entries in my life. I’ve gone whole decades without a day off, so getting used to having the capability for recreation time once more is something that’s somewhat of a luxury to me.”
“Well, you were able to sneak out tonight,” he pointed out.
“Yes, and if anypony is looking for me, they’re going to probably start alarms. The head of my guard detail will probably have conniption fits. And I hate to think of how Luna and Cadance will react.” She took another bite of her chili and said, “And to make things worse, I’m not here on a diplomatic visit, so technically I’m in the US illegally at the moment.”
“Don’t worry, I won’t tell. I promise.”
“I have it on the highest of authorities that an officer of the law trying to commit a crime does not look good on his resume when he’s attempting to apply for another position in a start-up agency,” she teased.
“Well, lucky for me this is a date then and not part of an interview, then.”
The look on Celestia’s face was one of slight confusion. “This is a date?”
He quickly ate a fry before continuing with, “Well, you see…if this was a date, then I would be off-duty and my personal business would be just that, so long as I wasn’t doing anything egregious. But if this was an interview, then as you said….”
“I see.” She quickly took a sip of her Coke; the alcohol selection here didn’t quite agree with her. “Well, I’m not sure why you’d want to go out with me—”
“Well, let’s see: you’re smart, you’re beautiful—”
Despite herself, she flushed; not a single soul had been so straightforward with her in ages. Still, she had to set the record straight. “Sam, I’m not this – you know what I really look like,” she reminded him.
“I said you were beautiful – didn’t say it was in this specific form,” he countered, and the look in his eyes was sincere. When she blushed – enough for him to notice this time – he added, “I grew up around ponies, so I know what is attractive in one. My sister, objectively, is a looker – but you’re gorgeous.”
“I’m older than you – significantly so.”
He took a sip from his beer, just as casually as could be. “I’ve always been into older ladies. I don’t think anyone in my family knew, but my first girlfriend? She was about four years older than me – I was thirteen at the time.”
“I’m your sister’s aunt.”
“Not by blood, if I recall,” he replied, “and no offense, Celestia, but you’re not mine. Twilight, Sweetie and the others – I look at them as great friends and people I can look up to, but there’s a difference between family and family, if you get my drift.”
His words gave her pause: Is he actually flirting with me? Only one way to find out. She smiled, more to cover the awkward pause she felt; she’d come here to interview him for the position she wanted to create – not to find a new lover. And yet there was something compelling about that. “You can’t be serious. Unfortunately – and no offense – but I’m in a whole different world than you.”
He looked at her with an even smile on her face. “Well, do you think I’m serious, is the question – and as to being in a whole different world, you should know that my sister and I were raised by my parents to always punch above our class. We might not win…but we won’t be stuck with the regrets of never having tried when we might have succeeded.”
Oh, stars, he is serious. Part of that worried her; she was already somewhat unsettled by her sudden attraction to DJ’s husband – how much worse would it be if it were her brother? And yet…are you really so damn lonely that you’d sleep with either of them?
Yes, she admitted to herself with less than a breath. Yes, yes I am. And that frightens me. It had been hundreds of years since she had anypony who looked at her in that way that wasn’t looking for an advantage, some way to get something past the ruler of all Equestria. And she couldn’t see any guile or even a trace of something hidden in the eyes of the human before her. Plus, as she looked at her hand in her current human form, he’d told her that he wasn’t looking at her as she was, but just as if she’d just put on a dress he liked.
“Why me?” she found herself suddenly asking. “And I want the truth, not some sugar-coated lie.”
He took a swig of his beer before continuing; she noticed trepidation in that move, as though he was trying to figure out the best way to say something. And in that slight moment, she felt a trill in her chest. He was being considerate of her feelings, something else that separated him from all the ponies that would have loved to be the princess’ paramour just to gain an advantage. “I remember seeing you back when I was just a kid, during the time we were here for DJ’s custody trial. And I thought you were the most beautiful thing I’d ever seen – I can’t explain it…it’s like I was just meant to look at you as if you were an angel. But that last day of the trial, I saw something in you when you chewed everyone out – there was an indescribable loneliness that I saw in you, as if you keep something separate from your loved ones every day. And even just when I was eleven years old at the time, I wanted nothing more than to just reach over and comfort you. Does that make sense?
“I mean, yeah, it sounds odd: makes me sound as though I’ve been in love with you for close to most of my life, despite only having seen you a handful of times. But…aaargh…I just can’t explain it, Celestia, I just…can’t.” He was no longer looking at her, but instead, just staring into a point in the distance, recollecting his life. “All those girls I’ve gone out with…hell, even my last girlfriend, and she wasn’t a bad wahine at all….” He focused his eyes again on her, and she could read them clearly. “None of them even compared to what I see in you.”
“You can’t…I mean…you shou—” Her words were suddenly cut off as Sam leaned over the table and kissed her. The sensation was electric, wild and like nothing she’d ever felt. When she kissed Mike both times, she’d wanted that, and the feelings had been strong. But this was somepony – someone – wanting her, and the feelings were intensified a thousand times over.
As she pushed him away, she looked at him with a look of shock. By the look on his face, it had been impulsive as well; this wasn’t an intentional move on his part.
She did the only thing that suddenly came to mind: she got up from the table – and ran.
“Is it too late to admit that this isn’t one of my better ideas?” DJ admitted.
“Well, if you’d like, I can say for the record that this whole thing is idiotic,” Lyra admitted.
The pair stood in front of the main gate to Canterlot Mountain Airbase…and the heavily-armed guards, guard dogs, sandbags, crash barriers and other signs that the base was under a high security alert. And small wonder for that: given the earlier attack on the Infirmary, it wouldn’t be a surprise if every base in the realm was in the same situation. But as a result of the full lock-down, the taxi was unable to get onto the base, so as a result, that left DJ and Lyra standing at the main gate, arguing with the lead gate guard as to why they needed to get onto base for their appointment.
“Look, ma’am, the regs are the regs,” the gate guard, a sergeant, apologized, though it was clear he wasn’t going to budge. “You have to stay off the perimeter until I get clearance that you’ll to be allowed through. And to be honest, I’m having a hard time believing what you’re saying – even if the letter looks legit. So until somepony who has the authority to let you on says so, it’s a no-go.”
“Look, Sergeant…Barricade?” Lyra asked, reading the nametag on his uniform. They’d been standing here for twenty minutes now with no improvement to things and so far this was turning out to be a monumental waste of time. “I’m not even going to waste my time asking you if you realize how high my rank is compared to military equivalents. I’m simply going to tell you to let us pass, get me a car and driver so I can get to the base hospital and we’ll call it that.” The celeste unicorn took a step forward, as if daring the sergeant.
“Ma’am, don’t make me arrest you,” he warned.
“Sergeant, if you arrest me, you’ll be explaining to Princess Cadance what you did. If you arrest her,” Lyra said, pointing a hoof in DJ’s direction, “you’d better hope that Princess Luna is in a good mood.”
“Final warning,” he stated. “I’ll be happy to call you a taxi so you can head back to town, but unless I get further instructions, this base is closed.”
“Exactly,” the celeste unicorn agreed. “Which is why you’re going to get me some officer who can get me what I want, got that? I realize you’re just doing your job, kid, but you’re well out of your league right now, which is why I ne—”
“Heartstrings, stop picking on my troops,” a new voice said. The sentry turned and immediately saluted, his face going from its normal ochre color to a very pale hue as yet another senior officer stood before him. The salute was returned, followed by a, “At ease, Sergeant. Go ahead and return to your duties; I’ll deal with things here.” As he turned to Lyra and DJ, he said, “Sorry about the extra headache. About the same time that the Infirmary was attacked, somepony sent in a surgical strike to rescue the human pilots that attacked Cloudsdale. We found the bodies of the ponies they were imitating and…well, it’s…you know.” He didn’t offer any further information, knowing Lyra would understand the reasoning behind his silence.
She nodded quietly, watching briefly as the sentry returned to his post. “Hope I didn’t drag you away from anything interesting, Soarin’,” she replied.
“No, I was only turning in to get a decent night’s sleep after spending the past day or two in Cloudsdale overseeing the first wave of military assistance.” He shook his head. “Spent all that time putting down those bastards and now they got away. And now I’ve got you here, making a mess of things.”
“Well if you know why I’m here, then you know why she’s here,” Lyra said, gesturing to DJ. Turning to the humanized pony, she added, “DJ, you’ve never met him, but this is your uncle, Soarin’. He’s Rainbow’s husband.”
He noticed DJ’s slight bristle and her jaw firm up. A sad look came over his eyes as he said, “You probably won’t believe this, but I’m just as much a victim, too. Got caught up in Rainbow’s and Scootaloo’s actions, and it did some damage to my career at the time. It took me some time to forgive my wife and her sister, but…I love Rainbow, even when she’s done some stupid things – and she excels at doing stupid things, and Scoots is little better. But they’re family, and…I just had to forgive. I don’t expect you to understand or forgive on your own, but…I just thought I’d tell you that.”
“Look, I keep trying to put all this shit behind me, but if people are going to keep bringing it up, that doesn’t help,” she said. “I guess it’s not your fault, but…you’ll have to excuse me if I’m being somewhat rude. We’ve ‘been summoned.’”
“Yeah, I know. I actually spent the past hour briefing him on what’s been going on, because he’s been insistent,” Soarin’ said. “He’s not at the base hospital right now; they actually put him in the VIP quarters in the officers’ barracks, just because he insisted that he was going to see you as soon as possible.” Pointing towards the car, he said, “Let’s drop you off at the barracks, and then I’m going to bed – I’ve had a damn long day and this whole mess just made it longer.”
“Thanks, Soarin’,” Lyra said.
“Yeah, yeah, yeah, whatever,” he replied. “Get in the damn car, Heartstrings.”
“And that should be that,” Mike said, handing the report to one of his junior personnel. The person in question, an Australian RAAF sergeant, saluted and took the report off, back to their operations facility.
“Well, that’s done,” he sighed. Turning back to his guest, Mike added, “Sorry about that. Apparently Combined Command wanted a response on what happened at the Infirmary immediately. Thankfully the brass was willing to accept a written report if I follow up with in-person tomorrow.”
“I do not envy you, Mike,” Paul said, looking at the younger man across the table from him. At the moment, the two men watched over their children, as the four kids slept on the couch, silently dozing away. As Paul ran a hand through his graying brown hair, he added, “You’re taking command of a unit that is supposed to stop these things and on the very first day of your command – even before you’ve been officially installed – you’re right at the center of the latest attack.”
“Yeah, tell me about it. I’m surprised that you wanted to bring your kids with you on your jaunt to Equestria, all things considered,” Mike told him.
“Hey, my kids are just like yours; they need to know about their pony heritage too.” He drank from a mug of apple juice he had on the table; Twilight’s fridge wasn’t stocked with many alcoholic drinks and both men decided it would be better not to drink right now anyway. “Besides, we’re only here for the weekend. We’ve got to get back by Monday so the twins can go back to school and Lyra and I can get ready for the funeral.” Paul shook his head. “I didn’t know Apple Cobbler well, but she and Lyra were good friends. I know as soon as we get back this is just going to eat her up inside.”
“Sorry to hear that,” Mike sympathized.
“All things considered, I think I’d rather deal with the funeral of one of my wife’s good friends than I would the situation you’re going through. You sure it’s still a good idea to move here? Especially with how DJ views this place?”
“She was the one to suggest that over geographical bachelor status, believe it or not,” Mike replied. “She knew what I went through at my first assignment – what we both went through and we didn’t want that to happen again, especially since we have a family now.”
“Won’t argue with that logic,” Paul said with a hint of a smile. “But you know that as long as she’s here, they’re never going to stop pestering her about where she comes from and what she needs to do to reunite with Rarity.”
“That won’t be a problem whatsoever,” Mike replied, holding a mug of water in his hands. “She’s looking for what’s best for her, and I’ll back her completely in whatever it ends up being. I love her too much to do anything less.”
“Even if it means you’ll lose her?” Paul asked.
“I won’t,” Mike replied with a firm and wide smile. “I know my Daisy Jo.”
After a few minutes, Sweetie Belle stirred. The first thing she heard was, “Don’t move, Sweetie, dear. You’re both still injured – and infected.” The younger unicorn turned her head gingerly to find her older sister, looming over her with worry.
“Rarity?” she asked weakly before realization sank in. “Oh, no….”
“Ssssh,” Rarity said in soothing tones, reaching down to gently muss her sister’s hair; Sweetie Belle might have been in her mid-fifties, but she’d always be Rarity’s kid sister. “Just relax. Moving a lot aggravates the curse further and brings quite a bit of pain, trust me on this.”
Sweetie nodded slightly, then turned slowly to face her sister. “What happened?” she asked.
“You tried to protect us,” Rarity said with a look in her eyes akin to pride. “An assassin…he looked like Shining Armor, only…twisted.”
Sweetie sighed; she knew this wasn’t going to be easy to say. “He may have infiltrated by impersonating Minty.”
“Oh.” The response in Rarity’s voice was empty, hollow.
“Sis….”
“I can’t cry right now,” Rarity insisted. “I have to be strong. We still have to revive Rainbow, and there’s you to take care of. And then there’s this issue with…Twilight…and her supp….” Rarity trailed off, the tears finally coming as she started bawl for the loss of her daughter and what it implied.
Despite feeling the agonizing pain by quick action, Sweetie Belle was there in an instant. “Rarity, it wasn’t meant to happen. But Nightmare Moon did this and we can beat her – you and the others can beat her!”
“My baby filly….my wonderful little filly,” Rarity moaned, the pain of losing Minty far more a spear in her heart than anything the curse did to her before. “And Gumdrop! That precious little treasure. And Toffee…he was such a gentlestallion, a wonderful member of our family. And they’re all gone now! All I have left is Elusive and his family…. Oh, Sweetie, how can I keep them safe?”
The mage chose not to remind her sister of her estranged daughter and her family at the moment; Sweetie herself was overcome by the loss of her somewhat acerbic niece and her family. I’m just as much to blame, Rarity, Sweetie moaned silently. I never did enough to make things better with her, to make sure that we had a better relationship.
Watching from a distance, Twilight and Shiny watched the other two. “Mom, is she okay?” the pepsis asked. “Did I do something wrong?”
“No, sweetheart,” Twilight said, gently kissing her daughter on the forehead. “Rarity is crying over the loss of her daughter – your cousin, Minty, and her own family. They were killed in the attack on Fillydelphia weeks ago, and apparently there’s now confirmation that she’s dead.”
At their side, Applejack sighed. “Ah know that Minty could be a mite rough-edged, but…she wuz family, Twi,” the earth pony whispered in a sad tone. “ We hafta stop th’ Nightmare, so she can’t hurt us anymore – so she can’t hurt anypony anymore.”
“Working on it,” Twilight Sparkle said. “And when I get us out of here, I promise that she’s never going to hurt anypony again – not Luna, not you, nopony.” There was a strange flicker in Twilight’s eyes, Applejack noticed, but she chose not to say anything at the moment.
Applejack instead said, “So, whut’s th’ plan fer havin’ us all together? Heard from Celestia an’ th’ others yet?”
“No, but I know they’ll be here soon,” Twilight said, a smile on her face as she reached a foreleg around her daughter to embrace her. “And once they are, just give me time to work my magic and everything will be right as rain.”
The doctor withdrew the needle. “Okay, that should be it, General,” he said, looking at Silversteel. “For the record, I want you to know that I am strongly against this and am halfway tempted to medically override this whole thing.”
Sitting in a chair and wearing his duty uniform, Silversteel almost felt like he was back to his old self again – almost. But the unfamiliar look and feel of the VIP quarters in the base just reminded him of how much of a chance he was about to do. The doctor would have preferred all this happen at the base hospital – preferably during visiting hours – but Silver overrode that. And while Silver himself would have preferred to do this at his home in Canterlot, feeling the emptiness of Rarity’s absence hurt him…and to his upcoming guest, it probably would have felt like being in the manticore’s den.
Practically feeling the doctor assigned to him hover over him, he didn’t look at the pegasus as he stated, “Major, she’ll be here.”
“Sir, with all due respect, that was thirty minutes ago. Now, I know you’re one of the fittest soldiers in the Army, sir – your strength and stamina is legendary – but you’ve been through hell and as the doctor overseeing you here, I have to protest!”
Silver looked at the major. “Do you have foals?”
“Yes, sir,” came the immediate answer. “One filly and a younger colt. Tricolor takes after me, though my wife seems to think otherwise,” he chuckled. “Greenleaf, though, is already looking forward to his first day of school, if only so he can start worrying about his cutie mark, just like every other pony that ever existed.”
“What would you do if you had a situation that took you away from one of them for decades and you had just one chance to salvage that tattered relationship?”
The pegasus doctor looked at him, agape. “I…I have no idea how to even remotely answer that, sir.”
“I know,” Silver said sadly. “Tonight’s my last chance to make up with the one daughter I have left that’s still alive. If I blow this….” The earth pony trailed off, unable to say anything more.
“Sir, I understand that your daughter is the Lost Foal – I was in high school when all of that happened,” the doctor replied. “And I sympathize with your situation. That’s the only reason I’m agreeing to any of this, because general or not, you’ve been through hell and you’re a hero to ponykind.”
“But I’m also a father wondering if I’m on the verge of reliving the same nightmare I did decades ago.”
“I don’t know, sir, but I wish you the best of luck. Phone’s there; give us a call if something comes up – there’s a medic on standby at all times, and I’m the duty officer tonight.” With that, the doctor departed, leaving Silversteel seated in the room, anxiously awaiting a moment that he wasn’t sure he wanted to come.
A few seconds later, the car pulled up, its passengers stepping out of it. Soarin’ looked at Lyra and said, “From here you two are on your own.” He then turned to DJ. “Look, kid, you don’t have to like it or not, but I am your uncle and this is about family. I know what Silver’s trying to do, and I know it’s hard as Tartarus on him right now. So…just…just give your old stallion a chance, okay?”
“Look, he called for me, not the other way around, and so far, save for the goon with the carbine at the gate, all of this is tailored to be one huge fucking set up. And you’re wondering why I’m less than happy?” DJ looked fit to be tied. “Right now the only one I feel I can trust at the moment is Lyra.”
A slight smirk crossed the diplomat’s muzzle as she put her forelegs behind her head, stretching. “Gotta admit, she’s right: this has the classic feel of the other horseshoe waiting to drop.”
“Lyra, you’ve clearly been living with the humans too long if you’ve already forgotten that ponies just have a sense for things,” Soarin’ groaned. “Silver knew Sandalwo—”
“DJ,” the humanized pony interjected, feeling somewhat on the defensive now as well as knowing that her buzz from earlier was wearing off. “Not Sandalwood – never Sandalwood.” It was possible she would have went off on Soarin’ further had Lyra not brushed her hoof against DJ’s in a slight hint.
“Let it go, DJ,” Lyra advised. “You’re usually calmer than this.”
“Sorry, old habits die hard,” was his answer. He gave the two females a sad smile, then looked at DJ directly. “One way or another, this has to happen. And if I were in your shoes, I’d probably feel just as defensive. But…just, please…he’s wanted you in his life all these years and…if there’s anything about you that’s pony, please just make him happy.” He handed a business card to Lyra. “This is the duty number; when you’re done, the driver has orders to pick you up and take you two wherever you need to go.”
“Soarin’….” Lyra voiced, feeling sympathy for her friend.
“Don’t worry about it.” He waved it off “Night, ladies, and tell Silver if he needs to talk to somepony afterwards, he knows how to get a hold of me.” With that, he got back into the car and the sedan took off, down the street, into the distance.
Lyra looked at DJ, not sure what he could say at the moment. So instead, she tapped the younger pony on the shoulder and asked, “Are you ready?”
DJ shook her head. “Hardly, but I don’t want to stand out here all night.” With that, she knocked on the door of the bungalow they’d been dropped off in front of.
A second later, Silver opened the door, looking at her. He was in a military uniform and standing upright, standard protocol for the Equestriani military. “It’s 10:45,” he told them. “I didn’t think you were going to come.”
“We ran into some issues at the gate,” Lyra explained. “Hope me being here isn’t making things too uncomfortable for you, Silver.”
“No. If it puts Sa—I mean, DJ, at ease, all the better.” He moved away from the door, letting them step into the bungalow, which reminded them of a tastefully-decorated but rather spartan room. “Get comfy, ladies,” he told them. “This is going to be a very long explanation. Should I make some coffee?”
“Let me do that,” Lyra insisted. “You two need to talk.” With that, she disappeared into the small kitchen, leaving the pair alone.
For several seconds, the two looked at each other, unable to speak, the wall of pain and age well between them. Finally, Silversteel cleared his throat. “I think there’s something that you should know,” Silversteel began in a voice so soft that it almost wasn’t clear if he was speaking to anypony at all. “Something you need to know about – something you deserve to know about, muffin.”
“Yes, and I damn well want an answer,” DJ said, though her tone had lost its bite when she heard his anguish. “and you can start with that.”
“Rumble?” Rumble saw his sister-in-law sitting there when he got in. It was closer to eleven, and he thought that everypony in the house was asleep by now. They’d all gone to bed by eleven the previous night, so he assumed that was just normal around here. But there was Pinkie, sitting at the coffee table, poring over something on a tablet and sipping from a coffee mug.
“Oh, sorry, Pinkie. I tried to be quiet when coming in.”
“No, you were fine,” she said. “I was up looking over the accounting; going to have to order some extra flour for next month.” The fact that Pinkie sat at the table, serious as could be and not by any means the happy-go-lucky party pony that she was known for being made him wonder. He wasn’t used to seeing her at all like this. “I made some hot chocolate,” she offered. “It’s on the stove if you want some.”
“Thanks,” he said, deciding he would take a drink; Pinkie’s hot chocolate had always been a treat whenever he’d had some during the winters at Sugarcube Corner as a foal, and he was pretty sure that had never changed. Pouring some into a mug, he took a sip and was not disappointed. “Raspberry?”
“Raspberry and white chocolate,” she said, a soft smile on her face. “It was a gift from my niece Cinnamon shortly after she arrived on Human-Earth. After having a couple of mugs, I called the company and bought the rights for distribution for our world. It brings in a pretty neat profit for all my cafes and we’re thinking about offering a package version for markets.”
He sat down and looked at her. “Okay, who are you and what did you do to my sister-in-law?”
She laughed. “I guess this is a side you usually don’t see of me, is it?” He nodded. “Would you believe that for most humans, this is what they think I’m like normally? I had to adopt a business attitude when I inherited the Sugarcube Corner, and Luna’s been helping me on keeping what she calls ‘a business face.’ It’s so easy for me to adjust to now that I tend to do it when I’m working on business.” She flashed him a smile and said, “Just don’t tell your brother – I think after all these years he’s used to me being who I am normally, and it’s no secret that Bubble and Surprise take more after me than him. I don’t think he can handle another shock.”
“Your secret’s safe with me, Pinkie,” he promised.
“Thanks.” She looked over a few more numbers on her tablet, before she asked him a question without looking up: “So, what are your plans for Sweetie Belle?”
He blinked. “How the hell did yo—”
She looked at him and grinned – that looked like the mare he knew. “Pinkie Sense,” she said with a wink. “Well…that and I am married to your brother, and I remember him mentioning how you felt about her ages ago.”
“Oh.”
“Can I make a suggestion?”
He drained his mug, then grabbed hers and walked over to the stove to refill both. “I’m all ears.”
“She’s been through a traumatic time right now,” Pinkie told him. “I can’t tell you the details…it wouldn’t be proper…but she just had a very long-term relationship end on her, and there’s no chance of recovery right now. She’s keeping a lot of it bottled in, but…she won’t even talk to Bloomie or Scoots.”
“That’s surprising,” the stallion said. The trio that once called themselves the Cutie Mark Crusaders was as tight as sisters, more than just best friends. If Sweetie wasn’t telling her two closest companions in the world…something was very wrong. “That’s not good – just bottling it in wounds you hard and does you far more harm than good.”
Pinkie just looked straight at him with a sober glance and said, “Spoken like somepony who’s been doing a little of that himself as of late?”
“Yeah, okay, I admit that,” the pegasus said, taking another sip of his hot chocolate. “Even still, there’s a lot of what happened to me that I can’t tell you about because, well…you’re not in the military.”
“I’m the Knight Elemental of Laughter,” she reminded him, “and my rank is equivalent to NATO OF-8.”
“Yeah, sorry – forgot that you being a Knight means it comes with some military responsibilities,” he apologized. “But Pinkie…I do stuff that most normal ponies don’t do. I kill. I blow up things. I do the nasty work, so that Mr. and Mrs. Pony and the foals can sleep easy at night knowing that Equestria is safe.”
“But what about you?” she asked, her eyes filled with concern. “Who helps you when you need it?”
“I just roll with the blows and deal,” he told her. The sudden firmness in her jaw told him that was the wrong thing to say to her.
“No, that’s not right,” she told him, getting up from her chair and embracing him. “Sweetie’s hurting; I don’t want you hurting too. Yes, you’ve done a lot of things that the average pony doesn’t do, but…you’re not alone, Rumble. You have a family. You have us.”
“Pinkie, I’m fine,” he insisted, though something had clearly changed. He could feel his eyes tearing up, feel an ache in his heart. “This is something I have to handle alone, and I ca—”
“No!” she insisted, gripping him tighter. “You don’t have to face anything alone, Rumble, not when you have friends and family. And how can you show Sweetie how you feel about her when you’re bottled up and fighting whatever’s bothering you?”
The dam broke. “I failed my ponies,” he told her, letting himself cry in the gentle arms of his sister-in-law when he couldn’t do that before. “The bodies arrive next week, and so many damn good ponies that won’t be returning alive because I failed.”
“You did your best,” she told him, her own eyes filling with tears. “I know you, Rumble – you did your best.” She held him as he let his grief out, the two staying together long after both mugs had gone cold.
Finally, he broke away, feeling somewhat relieved. “Thanks,” he told her. “I don’t know what you did, but…thanks.”
“Just taking care of my family,” she said, wiping tears from her eyes. “Promise me that if you’re in that situation again, you’ll get help, Rumble. We love you too much to see you hurt so.”
“I will,” he vowed, meaning every word of it. “Pinkie Promise.”
The two sat for several uncomfortable minutes, looking at one another, neither saying a word. Finally, Silversteel said, “I really don’t know how to say what needs to be said.”
Don’t lose your temper here, Dee, she told herself. You’re a grown woman, and you can handle being alone for a couple of minutes with the pony that sired you. Unconsciously, her hand went towards her chest. Underneath her shirt was a chain that she felt for, with two objects on it: the first was a human-style wedding ring, which Mike had gotten for her as a first anniversary gift to always let her know he loved her, during times she couldn’t wear her wedding bracelet. The second was his dogtag, given to her the day he graduated from the Academy. Both were her talismans of love for him and gave her strength at the moment.
“Feeling better?” Silversteel’s voice rang. She opened her eyes and saw him looking right at her with eyes full of concern. “The look on your face right now…I know you don’t want to hear it, but it reminded me of Rarity and something she did a long time ago.” His eyes took on a nostalgic look as he started. “Well before you were born, I nearly lost Rarity – we weren’t married at the time – because she was tricked into an engagement with a power-mad donkey. The only way to save her was to duel him—”
DJ stared at Silversteel as if he’d become a madman. “Dueled?”
“It was legal back then,” he explained, “and it was the only way to save Rarity. I won, obviously, but I earned a few scars from the fight. But getting back to my point: the look on your face now was the same as on hers when she was afraid I was going to die. You are more like her than you might want to realize, but it doesn’t make it any less true.”
With that, he started what he meant. Reaching into his pocket, he pulled out a flat piece of paper. He then reached over and passed it to her. “This was something I’ve carried around for years. It’s actually yours.”
She recognized it as a photograph. In the image was a younger, happier Rarity, with an equally-young Silver wrapping a forehoof around his wife, both of them cradling their newborn daughter. To Rarity’s right was a golden-colored pegasus mare while on Silver’s left was a bluish-gray stallion with a mare and foals around him. Behind and just above them all, looking proud as a peafowl, was a graying, mustachioed stallion…and an older mare that, save for a couple of darker strands of brown in her mane, was the spitting image of DJ; enough so that she got a good idea of what she’d look like in another couple of decades. At the bottom of the picture were two unicorn teens: The elder one had a light magenta coat with a two-tone purple mane and tail, while the other had a pale violet coat and a gold-and-ecru mane.
“Who is this? I recognize you…and…her….” DJ started. “I’m guessing the foal in the center is me?”
He got up and went over to her side, then sat down, pony-style, to point out the ponies in the picture. “The pegasus by Rarity is my older sister, Golden Sun,” he started, a smile on his face. “That was a few years before she got married; Goldie’s got several foals now. To my left is my older brother Diamondplate, his first wife, Lavender Blue, and their sons, Paperclay and Leafscatter.”
“First wife?”
Silver nodded. “About a couple of decades ago, Lavender came down with rainscald. It devastated her and…thankfully she passed quickly and painlessly, though we all miss her. Dimes’ second wife, Nordic Laurel – she’s nice, but there’s always going to be a part in our hearts for Lavender.”
“I didn’t know,” DJ said. She didn’t feel a connection with the deceased unicorn mare, but she understood what it was like to lose loved ones. “I’m sorry for your loss.”
“It’s okay. Leafscatter and Paperclay, they grew up to be great stallions in their own right: Paperclay’s a famous sculptor in Manehattan, while Leafscatter runs an arboretum in Whinnypeg. And Dimes and Laurel had a daughter, Quickstep, and she’s scheduled to attend the Royal Military Academy and follow in the family business.
“The ponies behind me and Rarity are my parents: Silver Hammer and Sandalwood. It goes without saying that you were named after her.”
“I didn’t know that ponies had generational names.”
“We usually don’t. In fact, we were going to name you Amaretto, but the likeness changed our plans, muffin.”
“You keep using that word – ‘muffin,’” she noted. “Care to explain?”
“I couldn’t until now,” he answered, gesturing towards the last two in the picture, “but now it’s time. The ones lying down in the picture? They’re Sparkler and Firecracker – they were two of the ponies that saved you the night you were sent to human-Earth.”
“Were they cousins?” DJ asked, genuinely interested. If there was one thing she’d learned from the day she visited the graves of the trio that had given their lives to save her, it was that she felt she owed them a debt.
“San…no, DJ,” the earth pony general said, looking at her with gentle red eyes. “Sparkler and Firecracker were your older sisters.”
DJ blinked. Once. Twice. And finally looked at Silversteel again as though he lost his mind. “The fuck?” she blurted, too surprised by his words to even consider propriety.
“The one who took the picture – and thus isn’t in it, was a mare named Derpelle Jessica Hooves – Derpy, to her friends as well as the stallion she loved for most of her life: me.” His eyes were now sad, reaching back into a pain thought long-over. “Derpy and I were in a long-term relationship, though in the end it didn’t work out and a couple of years after we broke it off, I married Rarity. Even still, we remained friends and if you want to know the truth, probably still very much loved each other – I still do love her. But it was during those years we were together that we adopted two unicorn fillies, Sparkler and Firecracker, though we nicknamed Firecracker ‘Dinky,’” he explained. “As for muffin, it was a term of endearment that Derpy always called our daughters. You were born and we called you that, and later on Minty got called that once she came along as well. Elusive, as he occasionally jokes, was lucky enough to escape that because Rarity never felt it worked with him.
He felt his chest heave. “The day you disappeared…I didn’t just lose you. I lost a mare I still loved very much and I lost two precious daughters – three, by my count of the time. Rarity was also heartbroken; she was Sparkler and Dinky’s stepmother and she loved them as if they were her own.”
At this point, Lyra returned with the coffee, passing one to each and placing the condiments on the small table between them. She plopped onto the sofa next to DJ, and briefly bumped against her in a silent gesture of support. DJ appreciated the move, though she didn’t say so.
“I…I don’t know what to say,” DJ commented, not sure how to proceed next. However, a lump built in her throat as she realized the occasionally weird dreams she had throughout her life weren’t dreams, but memories.
“Don’t say anything, anything, then,” was Silver’s response.
“Don’t say anything?” the humanized pony repeated.
The stallion nodded in sympathy. “I’m sure all of this is overwhelming for you right now. Believe me, after all these years, just thinking I’d worked through it, and then to mention it again is like a buck to the barrel.”
“So, what, am I supposed to just….” She lifted her arms, trying to say in gesture what she couldn’t vocalize. All her talents as a writer, all her skill at prose…and suddenly she couldn’t think of a single thing to say. After a few minutes, she finally found some words: “What do you want from me?”
“Nothing,” he told her.
“Nothing?”
“DJ…this isn’t about giving you a guilt trip or anything of the sort; I’m not that sort of stallion, I suspect you’re a very intelligent mare, er, ‘woman’, and even if I was interested in guile, I know Lyra wouldn’t allow it.” He dumped a few cubes of sugar into his coffee and drank. “I’ve had years to think on the mistakes made when you were here last, and while I love Rarity more than I can say, our opinions don’t always dovetail. Last time I checked husbands are allowed to disagree with their wives, and I have come to a realization over the years that she really hasn’t.”
DJ poured a bunch of cream and sugar into her coffee. “And that is?”
“The fact is, right or wrong, there is no way a newborn foal would have survived in a hostile world without the help of somepony. And that somepony was the humans that took you in – but they did more than that. They accepted you as one of theirs, made you their daughter, and that’s something exceedingly rare and magical for any species – but especially humans. Feel free and correct me, but acceptance isn’t always the strongest of human traits, is it?”
Lyra spoke up after dumping as much cream and sugar into her coffee as DJ had. “Well, I didn’t grow up with them like DJ did, but my experience is that, no, not always. But I’m curious as to how you know that.”
“I’ve worked with enough humans over the years as we reformed the military. Though most of the troops our NATO allies sent over were wonderful men and women to work with, there were some plotholes, and I was assured more than once that they weren’t indicative of all of humanity. But there’s ‘not indicative’ and then there’s just numbers,” he said, shrugging. “Italians, in particular, are serious plotholes, if you ask me. But some traits ring true on a species level and I’m sure that’s likely the case for humans.”
“Mom and Dad shielded me from most of it when I was younger,” DJ admitted. “I really wasn’t aware of any of it until I was old enough to understand, and thankfully most of the people I know have been very accepting of me. My best friends, in particular, have been there for me through thick and thin and I don’t know what I would have done without them.” There was a soft, loving smile on the humanized ponies face, one that brought a smile of his own to Silversteel’s.
“They sound like wonderful people,” Silver replied.
“They are. We people rarely make lifelong friends, but…I can honestly say I’m an exception in this regard. And then there’s my brother. He’s always given me the motivation to keep going, if only so that he’d see that I never gave up – so he wouldn’t, either.”
Sam ran several blocks down U Street, hoping that Celestia hadn’t changed back to her normal form and taken to wing. Then, as the first drops of rain fell, he had just enough time to swing by a closing kiosk vendor and throw him twenty bucks in exchange for one of those cheap I♥DC plastic umbrellas that didn’t last for crap.
Oh, great fucking move, Martinez, he chastised himself. Sure, put the moves on your prospective boss – and your sister’s aunt! What, couldn’t keep it in your pants? Now you’ve got an alicorn who’s not supposed to be here, in the rain and you have no idea how she’s supposed to react!
He kept running until he hit 19th and Vernon, with no sign of where she was. All he knew was that he’d pissed her off, he was getting soaked in the rain thanks to this stupid-ass umbrella, and he was stuck several thousand miles away from his home in Hawaii and a reality away from Equestria, where he was supposed to be.
Shit. And Mom and Dad are still in Canterlot, he grumbled. Well, maybe Uncle Tom or Uncle Jim’s home; one of them hopefully can drive out here to pick me up. Gonna have to explain that one. And then I’ve got to find a way to apologize to Celestia – she’s probably at the embassy by now an—
It was a second later that he saw it out of the corner of his eye. He thought he imagined it at first, but if he did, he was going to chance it: a flash of light, just for the briefest of seconds, enough to turn the evening hour into noon. He knew that had to be impossible, as Celestia said that she had no control over the sun in this dimension. But she was still capable of….
Sam, just shut the fuck up, and….
He sprinted up 19th Street, well from the commercial district into a residential area. And on a triangular-shaped park, on the corner of 19th and Kalorama, he found her. She sat on a bench, still as a human, still in her dress, letting the rain fall on her – she hadn’t summoned an umbrella or a shield. She just sat there, head down, looking…morose?
“Celestia?” he said, moving over to her with the umbrella. It was stupid at this point – she was completely soaked – but he had to be the gentleman an—
“Why?” she asked in a soft voice that seemed to cut right into him. “Why are you able to see what others can’t?” She looked at him and it was clear she was crying. “I’m so tired of being the unapproachable, inviolate princess that is meant to be on a perpetual pedestal! Love, affection, companionship – it’s like it was never meant for me!”
“Look, Celestia, I—” Sam began, but it was no use; the gates were open and the firehose that was the alicorn’s psyche had been unleashed.
“Do you know what it’s like, day after day for hundreds of years, blessing other ponies’ marriages, watching them have family and laughter and life and love – when you can’t have it yourself? Do you even comprehend how I felt when I lost the only stallion I ever loved – because the nobility wanted me to remain pure and distant?” Her eyes became stained with tears. “I cried when I lost him – and I cried again when I forced Luna to have to give up her relationship, knowing that all these years later she still pines for him!”
“Celestia, I have no idea—”
“Is it so wrong that I want someone of my own?” she cried, on the verge of hysterics. “I bleed and cry and all the other things living creatures do, why am I denied happiness? I am supposedly a living goddess…but who do I get to turn to when I need my own blessings? When do I get my own life? When do I get to have a love of my own? When do I—”
Sam finally dropped the umbrella, took her by the shoulders, and shook. “Celestia! Get a hold of yourself!” She finally looked at him, eyes rimmed red from tears, completely soaked, and utterly miserable – and yet to him, she still looked impossibly, ethereally beautiful.
“Did you mean any of it?” she asked in a shaky voice, like a frightened child. “Or was it just teasing?”
“I wasn’t. I meant every word of it,” he blurted as if he was once more a kid with a crush; compared to her, he might as well be one. “I sound like a complete idiot, but, yeah, it’s true.”
She leaned forward and kissed him. He returned the kiss, surprised at first, but soon pulling her closer. The two did not stop as they kissed and held each other in the falling rain, both getting wetter as their passions rose. They kept at it, ignoring everything around them until Sam felt someone tapping his shoulder. He turned around to see an officer from the Washington PD, looking at him askance.
“I’m sure there’s a reasonable explanation for this,” he drawled. “Most people get a hotel.”
The look on Celestia’s face was apoplectic, but before she could speak, Sam grinned. “Sorry about that – girlfriend and I had an argument, but we patched things up. Didn’t plan to, uh, get carried away,” he apologized, rubbing the back of his head.
“That’s nice – can I see some ID?”
“Sure,” Sam answered, reaching into his pocket for both his ID and badge. He gave it to the cop, who looked it over before speaking into the radio responder on his vest.
“This real?” the cop asked, as he handed the badge and ID back to Sam.
“Yeah. Me and…Celeste…here were out for a bite, and, well, you know what it’s like being a cop,” Sam drawled. “Visiting my family – I’m originally from Winchester,” he added, knowing full well that he was lying through his teeth about the visit.
“And you?” the cop asked Celestia.
She reached into a pocket, handing him a small wallet fold. “It’s…been a bad night for me, officer,” she explained. “Fortunately, I’ve got a very understanding col…boyfriend.”
He looked at it and handed it back, then looked at Sam. “Well, Sergeant, you obviously didn’t mean it, but there was an attempted murder the other day here in the park. Neighborhood’s pretty spooked, so anyone they don’t recognize…you know the drill.”
“Yeah, that I do,” Sam said, grateful that the officer had bought their story while at the same time feeling slightly guilty about inadvertently freaking out the locals.
“Well, let’s get you guys out of here,” the cop said. “Need a lift somewhere?”
“Yeah, we’re parked over by Ben’s Chili Bowl,” Sam said, trying to sound a little sheepish.
The officer looked at him bemusedly. “You followed her for a mile in the rain?” Looking at her, he said, “Lady, take my advice: most cops are hardasses, both in relationships and life. If this guy’s willing to follow you that far, you better put a collar on him and not let go.”
A strange look crossed Celestia’s face as she commented, “Oh, believe me, officer, I’m starting to get that message.” She reached over and gave him a kiss on the cheek. “Well, shall we go back to our car, dear?”
“Um, yeah,” Sam answered as the trio walked towards the flashing lights of the waiting police cruiser. And as he felt the adrenaline of the past few minutes wash through him, he suddenly heard a voice in his mind, almost purring:
Don’t plan to get any sleep tonight.
Silver nodded and took another sip from his coffee. “Minty was the same way with both Elusive and your cousin Blitz. Actually, she’s been the ‘big sister’ for all of your cousins. She felt that was her responsibility.” He realized that could have sounded accusatory, so he amended it with, “And now, there’s a whole new generation of foals coming about. I had a grandfoal from Minty, and now Elusive’s, and hopefully, if you’ll allow it, yours as well.”
DJ shifted uncomfortably in her chair. She remembered Rarity’s response towards them and to her, it was disturbingly predatory. Silver saw that and winced; DJ, in turn, realized he hadn’t meant anything other than the hope of being a grandparent and that made her feel guilty.
“It’s getting pretty late,” Lyra said, looking at the clock. “You’ve got to get some sleep, Silver, and we’ve got to get back to our families.” She rose from the chair, pulling the card and her phone out of her purse. “I’ll have them pick us up in fifteen minutes, so you two can wrap up your conversation.”
“Thanks, Lyra,” DJ said, as Lyra departed the room again.
Father and daughter stood and looked at each other in silence for a few minutes before he asked, “Do you ever think you’ll find it in your heart to be a part of this family?”
“I love Twilight, Sweetie and the others unconditionally,” DJ said without hesitation. “Some came into my life much later than they should have, like Luna, Cinnamon and Elusive, but they mean the world to me as well.”
“But not Rarity.” It wasn’t a question.
“No. She wants something I can’t give her and don’t want to give her. I was Sandalwood, once, I admit that. But that was a long time ago and that ship has long gone haze gray and underway – I can’t be who I never really was. I can’t be expected to just grow a sla…cutie mark and run around naked when that hasn’t been me my whole life. So I will never be Sandalwood. That pony, however you want to look at it, is gone and she’s never coming back.
“Furthermore, it’s not just about that. It’s about the fact that Rarity has zero respect for my Mom and Dad. I don’t expect her to love them – but I damn well expect her to respect them!” The look in DJ’s eyes suddenly became fierce as she fell onto familiar grounds. “Without them, I would have nothing, be nothing!”
“You would be a pony,” he reminded her. “You would have your family here.”
“I would be a corpse,” she countered, “a pile of ashes and strange bones in a burnt-down shack in the backyard. My father risked his life to give me mine. My mother took a chance to raise me as hers. They will always be my parents, and I will never accept any entertainment of thoughts otherwise!”
“Fair enough. I remember bits and pieces of it all from the trial, but I don’t think I know the full story,” he admitted. “Our attorney at the time wasn’t exactly focused on that aspect.” He looked at her and then asked, “And what of you and I?”
“Can you accept my parents for who they are? Can you accept me for who I am? That I might be a pony in body, but within beats a human heart? That Sandalwood is dead, and for better or worse, I am what is here?”
He shook his head, not in disagreement, but in a self-depreciating gesture. “Applejack warned me this was going to come someday,” he stated, “but I never really believed her. More the foal I, then.”
“If you can accept me as DJ, we can work on finding out if there’s a tomorrow out there with our name on it,” DJ stated. It was a needlessly prosaic term, she knew, but she said it regardless.
He looked at her, then past her. “The truth is…I don’t know where or how to begin. I very much appreciate what your parents did, and I’d be more than happy to tell them in person, if you’d like, though I don’t know if they’d want to see me after all that’s said and done.”
“My parents are saints,” she insisted. “Okay, well, maybe not saints – Dad’s got a mouth that could peel paint off a battleship and I learned that from him, but they’re very quick to forgive.”
“That speaks well for your upbringing, then,” Silver replied. “But you have to understand my position: I lost my three oldest foals. And now my fourth oldest – as well as her family – may have been killed in a senseless battle, and all I have left is my son…and the middle daughter that I thought I lost.
“I don’t know if you can accept me, or if you expect me to have conditions of accepting Rarity, but….” He closed his eyes as he said, “Your sisters gave their lives so that you could live – it was more than a selfless, brave act, it was one of love. But if I push you away, all I’d be doing is saying that Sparkler and Dinky’s actions wasn’t worth it…and I loved them both too much to ever say that. So I’m going to put myself out on the cliff and take a risk.
“Be the woman you are, DJ; I’ll accept that, or I’ll learn, somehow. This isn’t about me and my pride as a pony; that went out the window the day you and your sisters died. And regardless of what Rarity thinks, this isn’t about her, either. This is about you and the life your sisters sacrificed so you could have yours – and I’d be a foal to let you go.”
“I’d like you to at least say something to my parents. You don’t have to be buddy-buddy with them, but I would like you to at least respect them. My husband as well.”
He nodded. “I’m not so proud a stallion to know when I’ve mistrotted. I can do that.”
“And I refuse to have anything to do with your wife until she can do the same,” DJ insisted. “Like I said, I’m not expecting her and Mom to suddenly trade dinner recipes, but until she realizes and accepts me for me, then no dice.”
“I’m not very happy with that, I’ll admit,” he told her. “I want you to understand something, DJ: Rarity still loves you. There’s a lot that you still don’t understand and know about, and there will be time to tell you later. However, that doesn’t mean that I won’t agree with the request for now.”
“And if my opinion never changes? Because I don’t see that happening,” DJ grunted. “Furthermore, I don’t see her changing her mind either.”
“Things change,” he told her. “I can only hope they’ll change for the better.”
“Driver’s here,” Lyra said as she looked out the window.
DJ started to hand the photograph back to Silver. “I…I can’t accept this,” she told him, a nervous look on her face.
Lyra went over and patted the humanized pony on the shoulder. “Look, you wanted something to show Stuart and Tyler about where they came from, right? This is where it starts.”
“You’re right,” she admitted, slipping it into her purse. Turning back to Silver, she added, “Thank you.”
“It was always meant to be yours, muffin,” he told her. “But you have no idea how good it feels for me to give it to you finally.”
She looked at him again. “Well, I….” She chose to leave the bungalow before she said or did anything further.
“I never realized it was this bad,” Silver told Lyra as she stood at the door.
“Truthfully, Silver? If it wasn’t for me, Twi, Sweetie and a few others? You wouldn’t even have this much,” she told him. “At times, she’s been this close to not caring about what happens to ponydom at all. If it wasn’t for the ponies she considers family? Let’s be glad things didn’t go there.” She went over to him and gave him the embrace that his daughter denied him. “Night, Silver. I’ll keep looking out for her.”
“Thanks, Lyra. I appreciate that more than you know.” As she closed the door, he thought about he and his daughter and the gulf that lay between them, but that paled compared to the one between DJ and Rarity. But as much as he loved her, he wasn’t entirely happy with her conduct in this issue over the years, and it made him wonder: would a chasm similar to the one between the two mares develop between him and his beloved wife?
“I just don’t know what went wrong,” he said to nopony in particular.
“Thank you once again, Cadance,” Imago said as the two royals looked at one another. “Tonight let me finally participate as part of this nation and to protect my adopted species. You can’t imagine how much of a dream that’s been to me.”
“I’m glad that you had the chance, Maggie,” the romance alicorn said. “But it’s getting late, and you’ve got some running around to do in the morning, right?”
She nodded. “Pip wanted to show me around Canterlot, especially the shopping districts. He says that it’s a great way to get me noticed around the capital, but I think he’s also planning to pick something up for the boys.”
“That’ll break the bank,” Cadance laughed.
“Perhaps, but spoiling one’s foals is the point of being a parent, right?” Imago replied.
“Too true. Anyways, I should let you get some sleep, Maggie. The guards here will show you to the guest room. See you hopefully for breakfast?”
“Certainly,” the flutterqueen answered. “Have a wonderful evening.”
“You, too.”
Cadance started the trek towards her old room in the palace; while she would have preferred to have returned to her mansion, unfortunately Duskie was too young for such late-night travel and thus had a nanny watching him while she finished up her affairs of state for the evening. Thankfully, one of the maids offered to take care of Rose while Pip and Cadance continued to trade what little they knew about the long journey known as parenthoo—
The wave slammed her to the floor, filled her body with ecstasy in a way she hadn’t felt in years. Her body suddenly burned with desire, and while she had never entertained going out with anypony since the passing of her husband, had he been present, she would have immediately wanted to make her opinion known on her desires. Right now. On the floor.
After a few seconds passed, the Princess of Love gathered enough semblance about her to shake off the torpor and realize that she’d been hit by a wave of desire stronger than she’d ever have needed to process, a sexual urge that felt as though the floodgates hadn’t been opened in a very, very long tim….
Cadance suddenly blushed as she realized the source of it all, the only one that could have that much of an impact on her powers. Well, she does deserve to have somepony. I’ll have to talk with her later and congratulate her.
But first, Cadance had her son to take care of. And probably needed a cold shower, too.
DJ yawned as she reached for the doorknob to Twilight’s front door. She just wanted to go in, crawl into bed, and hope she could get up early enough to see of Mike as he prepped for his first full day as the unit commander. Then she was going to have to see about returning back to Yokosuka as well and updating FFSC of the change in Mike’s status. She could probably stay there – sadly, without him after all – long enough for the boys to finish out the school year, then arrange for their furniture to be moved to their new home here in Canterlot.
That in itself was going to be interesting, since she was going to have to check to make sure that the contractors working on it were building it according to human standards. She didn’t doubt that they could get the standard measurements, but all things considered she wanted the house redone in standard US measurements, not metric or Japanese building standards. Then there was the trouble about where the boys were going to attend school while here. There was no US base, which meant there was no DODDS, but considering there was a US embassy that meant there was probably an American International School in Canterlot somewhere….
“DJ,” a voice said behind her.
Shoulda known, the humanized pony thought to herself, but she smiled; she could really use a friend right now.
“Don’t say it, Luna,” DJ said regardless, the words spilling out of her. “I appreciate what you’re going to say, but just…you don’t have to say it.”
Luna bent down and nuzzled the humanized pony. “I’m proud of you, DJ. You dealt with the situation very well.”
“How did you know about that?” she interjected.
“I stopped to check in with Silver on the way home from some business out of town. He was worried about you, and asked me to at least check on you.”
“That was nice of him.”
Luna rolled her eyes and sighed. “Is that it?”
DJ hugged her aunt. “Better?”
“Yes, though that’s not what I was talking about,” Luna admonished the humanized pony. “I want you to realize something, DJ: just like your human parents love each other, so too do Rarity and Silver; and just like your parents, I’m sure, Rarity and Silver don’t see eye to eye on everything. I’m guessing you don’t always agree with Mike?”
DJ remembered the argument she had with him just a week or so ago in the hospital in Singapore – it already felt like it had been a long time ago and yet his words still rang clear in her mind. “Yeah, we’ve had a few dustups,” she admitted.
“Give Silver a chance,” Luna pled. “I don’t think you fully understand how much losing almost all of his daughters at one point or another in his life has hurt him. It’s broken him, DJ, and only you can help heal his pain from losing you, Sparkler and Dinky in just one blow.”
”Look, I’m not about to—”
“This isn’t about Rarity. This is about Silver. I would ask you this regardless, because in addition to being family, he is a dear friend as well. I remember the night he lost you, Derpy, Sparkler and Dinky. I feared for him, I really did. Rarity was broken – but Silver was shattered.”
“What were they like?” DJ suddenly asked. “My, uh, sisters, I mean.”
“I didn’t know them that well,” Luna admitted. “It was during the time that Celestia was reorganizing the government and so I was still largely isolated to night duties only, so I didn’t run into them that often, but…you would have loved them as much as they loved you. Sparkler…I remember her being such a bright and beautiful young mare, in the prime of her teenage years and adjusting to her life as a jeweler. And Dinky? Even at her age, I recall her being absolutely brilliant. I daresay that if she’d lived to a ripe old age, she probably would have outpaced Derpy, who was an accomplished scientist in her own right.”
DJ was suddenly quiet at that, and Luna picked up on it immediately. “Nopony is blaming you for what happened. And if they were still alive, Derpy could never have placed any blame on you, just a newborn at the time. And Silver was right when he told you that your sisters loved you more than anything. If they could say it, they’d be absolutely proud of the woman you’ve become, DJ, I know it.”
“I…I think I remember them,” DJ admitted. “Growing up, I had these occasional dreams where I was looking at two shapes: a larger purple one and a smaller lilac one. I remember happy sounds, almost like giggling and I….” She let her words trail off; there was too much to say and not enough to say it in.
“If you’d like, when it’s possible, I can work with you in your dreams to show some of my memories,” the dusky alicorn offered. “It won’t be easy – you having a fully-human mindset is hard enough to adjust to while moving through the Dreamlands – but I think you might appreciate seeing them as they were.”
DJ nodded, unable to trust herself to say anything further. Finally, she added, “I think I’d like that sometime…when you have the chance. No need to rush on my account.”
“It’s a deal, then,” Luna agreed. “But for now, you have a long day ahead of you. And frankly, so do I.”
“Huh?” DJ asked.
Luna smirked. “Tia lowered the sun about thirty minutes late…as if she was distracted by something,” she clarified.
“Distracted her?” DJ asked, confused. “Isn’t she the very picture of composure or something?”
“Well, if you want my guess,” Luna said, a slight smile on her face, “to use a human turn of phrase, I guess you would call it a miracle.”
“Not being clear,” DJ grumbled.
“Don’t worry about it,” Luna laughed, bending down to nuzzle her niece once more. “Goodnight, DJ.”
Hours later, Fluffy Pillow led her group of maids towards Princess Celestia’s chambers. By the posted schedule, the sun would be up in a few minutes, so the sun alicorn would be on the Grand Sidereal Balcony raising the sun, before heading off to breakfast and the day’s duties. Usually this was the time that the maids would clean her room, so they could make it spotless for their Divine Ruler.
As they arrived at the door, they were surprised to find the door sealed by a magic spell, followed by two scrolls tied to the door by a ribbon. The smaller scroll was sealed by a single deep-blue ribbon, while the other unfurled easily for Fluffy:
My dear servants,
I plan to sleep in for the day – feeling a bit tired. I will raise the sun from my balcony and do not worry; you do not have to worry about cleaning my room today. Please ensure that Princess Luna receives the second scroll, and then please feel free to take the remainder of the day off, with my grateful thanks for all that you do.
- Warmly,
Celestia, HRM
One of the other maids, a pegasus named Cozy Hearth, giggled. “Sleep in, my flank – does she think we don’t know the ‘tying soc—’”
“Hush, you!” a third maid named Dustpan answered. “She is our Divine Sovereign and she deserves our respect! Though…I am wondering who the lucky stallion is….”
“Stallion, my flank – I’ll bet it’s a mare,” a unicorn by the name of Potpourri, teased. “You know she has that ‘protégé’ of hers,” Potpourri said, doing air quotes with her hooves. “I’ll just bet that now that she and Duchess Twilight are pra—”
“Don’t you even go there!” Fluffy Pillow snarled. “Even to suggest that our Divine Lady would be mounted by a hot-blooded stallion or between the thighs of a lovely mare wou—”
“Ahem,” a voice said behind the four and they turned to see Princess Cadance, standing there. “Is there an issue, ladies?” the youngest alicorn asked, keeping her tone neutral.
The four of them went very pale as they realized the romance alicorn had heard their bawdy banter – and was not happy about it. “I…uh….” Fluffy began, having been the most recent offender.
“Princesscelestiasaidthatshessleepinginsoshedoesntneedustocleanherapartmentssoifyoullexcuseuswehavetogorewindthecheesewheelsinthekitchenbecauseitsveryurgent!” Dustpan said, freaking out and beating a quick retreat. The three others soon did, leaving both the note and Luna’s scroll behind.
Cadance picked it up and read the first note. Slept in? Celestia never sleeps in, even when she was raising me and Twilight. I really wonder….
“Oh, hello, Cadance,” Luna said a second later as she joined her niece in front of Celestia’s doors. “I was already awake and was coming to get Tia for breakfast, but…I….” She blinked. “Is that a door seal spell?”
“And a privacy ribbon as well,” Cadance said, telekinetically passing Luna the tied scroll. “Looks like I was right about the paramour,” Cadance said fondly. “Good for her – she really needs somepony. No offense, Luna.”
“None taken,” Luna said, inwardly relieved that it wasn’t who she feared it was. She’d thought earlier that it had been DJ’s husband, but he had been at Twilight’s place all night, waiting for his wife to return. So if it wasn’t him…who was it?
“You know,” Cadance said, “if I was more impish, I’d probably take a peek with magic. But she’s likely got the whole place magically sealed and honestly – Celestia’s more like my mother than my actual mother is. And thinking about your parents having sex? Ick.”
Luna at that point decided discretion was the better part of valor. “Well, I believe Pip and Imago are joining us for breakfast this morning, correct?” Luna asked, as she gestured in the direction of the morning parlor.
“Yes. Plus, apparently a courier came with sealed mail from Twilight. She needs to talk to us as soon as possible, and with the Infirmary being damaged, we’re going to have to find a way to ad hoc the communications until we can get them to a new quarantine location,” Cadance replied as they started walking off.
“Twilight and the others will be fine,” Luna assured Cadance, seeing the concern present. “Twilight’s strong and adept; she’ll save the others. If anything, I’m more concerned about whoever it is in there with Tia.”
“Oh?”
The look on Luna’s face was wicked. “Think about it: my sister hasn’t had a lover in hundreds of years. And unlike either of us, she’s never been sexually active. So put the two together and….” Cadance shuddered slightly and Luna facehoofed as she realized who she was talking to. “You felt it, didn’t you?”
“Yeah,” Cadance sighed. “Cold shower and lots of memories of my husband last night.”
“I’m sorry, Cadance. Shining was a wonderful stallion.”
“No need to apologize,” Cadance replied as the pair arrived at the morning parlor. “It’s just…well, if nothing else, I’m thrilled that things are changing for the better around here. We need a little brightness our way for a change, and no more shocks.”
The warmth of the morning sun tickled Sam gently on his face, and he yawned, opening his eyes. He felt…well, exhausted would be the word that came to mind, but exhausted in the best of ways.
Blinking his eyes to dispel the last vestiges of sleepiness, he looked around the room: it was certainly the room of a queen, with walls of marble, gold and silver metal trim, and him on the largest bed he’d ever slept on in his life.
He then felt the soft brush of fingers against his face, gently guiding his eyes to turn towards the person next to him, whose warm body he could still feel against his, every luscious curve. The fact that she normally didn’t look like this didn’t matter. The fact that something had changed over the course of the night did.
“Morning,” she said, stretching in what seemed like unfamiliar directions. He focused on the face and recognition came to mind: it was Celestia, the only difference being that she’d let her natural haircolors come through this time rather than the strawberry-blonde she’d used prior. Likewise, the eyes on the person were an unusual lilac – her natural eyeshade – rather than the soft brown she’d used last night. She smelled deeply of chocolate and honey and looking at her now he was feeling slightly aroused.
“Heya, yourself,” he replied, looking at her.
“Sam, I think we need to talk,” she intoned, suddenly and abruptly.
“I’m guessing I don’t get the job?” he asked, hoping that the joke wouldn’t fall too flat.
“Oh, that? My only purpose was to interview you for the position. Your day-to-day reporting would be to Luna with a small briefing to me as necessary. I’d actually be recused for the most part, both because I could unintentionally cause a bias, and because Luna’s been working on legal reforms in general. Besides, you showed a lot of integrity last night in going after me last night, and I would be a foal to let someone of your caliber go. The job’s yours, if you want it.”
“Then you’re talking about us, I gather.”
She sighed. “I’ll be honest: what you said last night? I gave in because it hit me hard. I wanted it – I wanted you. But I’m not sure you want me.” She shifted back to normal, reverting to her true form. Tossing her mane back, the day alicorn looked at him evenly as she pointed out, “This is who I am, Sam. Not the woman you kissed last night. Not the woman you had sex with last night. This is me. And I am not like a regular pony.”
“Celestia, do you really think I care about that?” he asked.
In her true form, she sat down next to him on the bed. She dominated most of it, and the situation looked almost as it would to a casual onlooker: a man sitting next to a horse. “I’m larger than people – so much so that there is a reason we alicorns walk through the human world as we are and not just bipedally as is the custom for most of our kind. Standing on my hindhooves, I’m easily closer to thirteen feet, if you were to measure me by human standards.”
“Okay, you’re confusing me – why are you telling me all this?”
“Because I’m not just some mare that you could have a relationship with, and not just because I’m a princess. I know about many of the difficulties that human/pony couples have, and with me, they would be that much worse. It would be difficult for me to have a relationship with a stallion of my kind,” she said, as a soft flicker of a memory came to mind. Her beloved Argent – she would finally be putting him in the memories of the past.
“Still losing me,” he stated, though there was a curious look in his eyes that she couldn’t read.
Nevertheless, she continued. “But you’re not a pony an—” She was cut off abruptly when Sam got up and kissed her – in her true form. The two remained that way for several minutes as he kissed her repeatedly, each kiss tracing down the line of her jaw.
“I said I don’t care about that,” he told her. “Look, call me crazy, but…I almost feel as if my whole life has just been waiting for this. There’s a quote from a book I read years ago, and I memorized it for the girl that I knew I would ultimately end up with. I’ve never said it to anyone before, and yet now…I feel like I’m going to burst unless I do.”
“You do?” she asked, surprised.
He closed his eyes, calling it from memory: “‘I could not tell you if I loved you the first moment I saw you, or if it was the second or third or fourth. But I remember the first moment I looked at you walking toward me and realized that somehow the rest of the world seemed to vanish when I was with you.’”
“And you mean all of this?”
“If my sister had never come, if Sandalwood was just some pony in the background that I never knew and our worlds bridged, if I saw you I would know. If I had been born a stallion, I would still feel this way. If you were just a normal woman in a normal human world, I would still feel this way.”
The scents of chocolate and wild honey began to permeate the room again.
“Sam,” she started once more as she changed back to her human form, “I want you to promise me a few things if this is going to continue.”
“Absolutely.”
“First, I never want you to see me as a princess. I must be one – I have to be one for my ponies – but you are not a pony. When I’m with you, I just want to be myself. In fact,” she said with a soft smile, “I’d actually prefer it if just called me Tia.”
“Okay, that’s going to be kinda creepy,” he groaned. When she looked at him, he explained, “Well, ‘tia’ means ‘aunt’ in Spanish an—”
She shuddered. “Say no more.”
“What about just ‘Cel’?”
His reward was a gentle kiss. “I think I can deal with that. The second thing is that once you move here, I want you to find a place close to the palace – easier for us to go back and forth while we’re dating,” she insisted. “It’s for your sake, not mine; the palace staff tends to be far chattier than I’d like.”
“Okay, had planned that anyway. Anything else?”
She nodded. “We’ll have to keep this quiet for a bit. It’s not that I don’t want to tell anypony, but….”
He nodded. “Look – I’m going to have a hell of a time explaining this to my sister, so…yeah, I agree, at least until we can agree on something.”
“Works for me. Oh, and one last thing.”
“Which is?”
She took his hand in hers, and smiled. “Sorry for all this.”
“Sorry for all what?”
The look in her eyes was wicked. “There’s a lot of things I’ve wanted to do, and a lot of frustrations to work out, so…we’ll be very busy today,” she said as she led him towards the bathroom.
“The bathroom?”
“Oh, yeah – in this form, the bath’s about the size of a swimming pool.”
He grinned.
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This has definitely piqued my interest...
Well then. Oh gawrsh DA references! I just don't even know what went wrong!
I'm going to pass on this story. I might read it in the future but not right now, This story would take me months to read.
But it does got my interest.
Well, Silver did pretty much what I expected of him in being a stand-up guy. I don't know WHAT Rarity's damage is but it can't be as simple as wanting to live in the subjunctive tense. Hmmmm. That line about Derpy, Dinky and Sparkler's sacrifice being in vain might apply to both of them. It's just that someone
means something different by it.
Silver seems to readily accept DJ out of desperation. Hopefully he actually means what he says.
Sam...Sam got lucky. All the alicorns are so deprived of the basic need of companionship they readily take anyone.
Wonder what the bag guys are up to now.
Why do I have the feeling Sunset´s karma will fall over her sooner or latter?
4018477
Not all of them. Cadance, despite, if anything, being the one who could get away with it most, still remains utterly true and faithful to her husband (and thus monogamous), even though he's been dead now for fifteen years.
4018487
The difference between the Cadance and the other two are night and day. Celestia and Luna have lived for so long they are intrenched in the the roles that their subjects pushed them in. Cadance hasn't lived long enough to meet the quota of a normal ponies lifespan yet. That and it seems Celestia wants to make sure Cadance doesn't live with that burden. When a simple hug is like an oasis then something is terribly wrong.
4018501
That much is very true. Which makes you wonder how much worse it was for Faust before she met Greg. It's hinted that she tried and failed hard - possibly due to the Rules - so she must have been on the verge of an emotional meltdown before she met him.
4018512
Sure it makes me wonder about that alicorn (author is baiting you don't take it)...please elaborate some more.
4018537
What baiting?
No, what I meant was that as long as Luna and Celestia have gone without SOs in their life, Faust had that much longer, and while she tried with various people through time, the Rules pretty much dashed that for her. Just theorizing (not as part of a plot, just thinking in general) that she was probably very emotionally fragile and on the verge of an emotional breakdown by the time she met Greg...and if she'd lost him, Kuzu and Emme would have probably had to deal with one insane alicorn.
Actually, this sounds like a topic for the group.
4018556
I don't recall, do you have a timeline for all this? Starting from creation and so forth.
4018566
I do, but I think like the family tree and the continuity, I'm probably going to need a timeline editor, since it's large enough to require a hand while I'm writing all the stories.
4018593
Given that you have hinted at a pantheon in the background it would long. Long enough to mirror Tolkien in some ways. That's just pony earth. I have no clue what you've done with human earth.
4018604
Yeah, I tend to have large legendariums in my works. Sorry.
4018655
Don't you dare apologize for world building. It's rare enough as it is.
Good for Celestia! It wasba bit abrupt, maybe, but justifiably so for in-story reasons. And good for Luna for not being bitter about it.
And good for Equestria--I thought for a minute there that Pinkie was drinking coffee, and the poor kingdom's been through enough.
Soo very tempted to post a picture of Cell for some reason XD.
4019951
Guest art is always welcome!
4019955
That was fast ... really fast.
Anyways no what I was saying was "Cel" reminded me too much of Cell from DBZ. Don't mind me and in any case I do wonder what happens when everyone else finally sees Shining Dawn.
4019983
Ah. K. Well, it should happen soon enough.
I personally don't like one-syllable nicknames like "Cel", they feel awkward to me; I would have preferred "Celly" or something like that. But whatever works for Sam and Celestia.
Nice chapter, I loved it! Keep up the good work.
Something about Celestia and Sam doesn't sit right with me. Annoyingly, I cannot figure out where my opposition is coming from. It's most definitely not an objection to Celestia hooking up with OCs, and it's sure as hell not an opposition to AAG!Celestia finding happiness because the poor girl deserves some. It seems a bit out of nowhere, but I don't think that's the root cause either.
As someone who prefers to give useful feedback to authors, and as someone who hates having feelings they can't justify or explain, this pisses me off. Maybe I will be able to figure out exactly what the source of it is, and be able to elucidate on my reasoning.
4020918
Maybe it's because she's his aunt, from a certain point of view.
4020918
Likely because it would seem like a massive betrayal for their familial stance with DJ, bordering on the incestuous (as 4020954 pointed out.) Hell, Sam and Celestia both agree that they should keep their relationship on the downlow because of that. Not because of the paparazzi, not because somepony could accuse Sam's new job being a result of nepotism, but because they're running a little too close into the family ties (in a manner of speaking.)
Plus, Celestia knows that if Luna had a bad reaction when she assumed that the sun alicorn had designs on Mike...does this make things any better?
4020954
4020974
I don't think those are the reasons, but they're certainly possibilities to consider. I can't really rule anything out at this stage, given my seemingly idiopathic loss of metacognition. If anyone finds it lying around, please let me know.
I'm definitely going to need to get to the bottom of this, if only because I see it really irritating me by not being able to give a rational justification. And as I said, I believe in giving useful feedback, and "I don't like this" is of very little use to anyone.
early morning tomorrow your just awesome
I refuse to believe Celestia is any where close to 25 feet tall on her hind hooves. Rearing horses are very tall, but not 25 feet tall.
3.bp.blogspot.com/-NmSZuiCnT-o/UrrGy9T46fI/AAAAAAAAPnI/idktXpg1voM/s1600/giants+chart+jim+mars+-+Copy.jpg
This how tall Celestia would be if she were 25 feet tall.
blog.world-mysteries.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/10/giant_skeletons.jpg
She's probably closer to 13 feet on her hind hooves. Sorry for being picky on this, but that irked me. Celestia probably didn't know how big 1 foot is. Anyway, great chapter, and keep up the good work.
4021819
that's a miscalculation on my part, and I fully admit that. I'll be more than happy to change it.
Okay while it's great that my prediction/guess came true about Sam and Celestia I have to admit that this entire chapter is worrying me. I mean what happened to the mane six don't they have to worry about being crushed in a room or did it somehow got better off screen and it was never explicitly stated? I mean didn't they send someone to get help in moving something like this, I doubt it's something that Twilight and the others will be totally okay with even throughout the entire night.
...
Hmm. Interesting.
It seems Silver finally accepted that DJ is not – and never will be – Sandalwood. As for Rarity, I don't see her accepting DJ as DJ.
So after I woke up today, I went to the lost-and-found desk and some very nice person had handed in my missing metacognitive abilities. Or maybe they spontaneously returned by virtue of no longer being half-asleep. Anyway, moving on!
Upon reflection, the main thing that irritates me here is that there doesn't seem to be a believable chemistry between Sam and Celestia. This chemistry being present in pretty much all couples seen thus far, even (some) between Sunset's alter ego and Blueblood, and not-couples like Logan and Lovestruck.
I mean, what chemistry is there? This comes pretty much out of nowhere, and I've certainly never been fond of the love at first sight trope which Sam seems to have taken a hefty blow to the head from. I could see Celestia and Sam becoming friends, but lovers? No.
Celestia is one of my favourite characters in the show, so I love seeing stories where her character gets expanded further. And for the most part, I've liked what AAG has done on that front. I can also empathise with Celestia's plight, and as I said, I think she deserves some happiness and would like to see that. I can certainly accept her interest in Mike due to the whole saving-her-life thing, and because of his personality resemblence to Argent Lance. In-story I consider it wrong, but I can accept it, both as a plot point, and because I view it as within the spectrum of realistic (albeit unhealthy) behaviour.
If Sam x Celestia is intended to be a positive development in-story, then I want to like it, but at present I simply can't.
If it's intended to be a negative issue in-story (like Celestia's infatuation with Mike), then I can't really buy it; it seems to make Celestia dangerously close to fucking anyone with a pulse and who will show her a shred of affection.
All in all, so far it's the only aspect of the story I really dislike*. Sure, people are going to inevitably disagree with things, particularly in a story of this size and complexity. But why oh why did it have to be this?
* At least, enough to not be able to accept it; I dislike Rarity's bitchiness, but can accept it, particularly after KHC where you made her start off as an extension of Canon!Rarity.
Also: bonus mistake:
4023087
Well, latter error corrected; also corrected the omission of a word.
Believe it or not, this is actually kind of going along according to plan. Neither of them really know what they're getting into or why, and it shows.
- DJ and Mike were high school loves, then went the distance into a full life together.
- Lyra and Paul used each other in the beginning, but eventually fell in love.
- even Sunset/Champagne loves Blueblood to some degree (when they're not scheming)
and as you mentioned, there's the non-couple: Logan and Loves.
But Sam and Celestia I wanted differently, because they're meant to match a more real-world aspect of this kind of relationship. For Sam, it's just another cougar he's dating, and the fact that he's been somewhat smitten with Celestia since he first saw her - but there's been at least a decade in-between the last time he saw her (at DJ's wedding, for a grand total of two times he's met her prior to this) and he's never really known her other than an acquaintance at best. For Celestia, it's the fact that someone cares for her as her, not as the princess, but the same rules apply: she really doesn't know him that well and she's so inexperienced in the ways of love it's like (to use a quote I once heard) "a girl going on her first date with a guy who's already lost his virginity - you know where that relationship's headed, and you don't want to be there for the trainwreck." And even if by chance they somehow gel, the fact is that their duties are going to be very full-plate in the near future.
It's an off-putting relationship, but it's meant to be one. Granted, it was meant to be one for the reasons Cody and I mentioned earlier and I hadn't voiced this aspect, but these apply as well.
In the end, you hope that Celestia and Sam have a relationship closer to that of Faust and Greg, and not the tragedy that was Luna and Robin - but the latter end's far easier to picture than the former.
4023223
Well, at least I understand the intent now, so that's something. I guess time -- and more importantly, story/character development -- will tell on whether I'll change my mind. In any case, hopefully there's something slightly more useful in the above rambling than my previous comments.
The experience point is something I see as both valid and yet irrelevant.
If my understanding of the story is correct, Celestia is certainly long-lived, but doesn't seem too experienced in matters of the heart, aside from her relationship with Argent Lance. Which if true is a relatively unusual dynamic in a character; many tend to have increasing experience in that field to go along with their amount of life experience.
I'm also of the opinion that once you get to a certain age, maturity levels more or less plateau off, which isn't really the case with your analogy. Well, one would assume so at least, though I can imagine a variety of scenarios. But while you gain maturity with life experience, the gains are not infinite. For example, I'd suggest that a 40 year old going out with a 50 year old is far less significant than a 20 year old going out with a 25 year old.
Anyway, a hypothetical 30-something year old guy going out with Celestia would certainly consider the gap in life-experience as a possible barrier or obstacle, but I don't think it's insurmountable, and would automatically lead to an unhealthy relationship dynamic, though I'd also say this depends heavily on the person involved; if it's someone insecure, then it wouldn't work.
Then again, this is all speculation since it's a situation that at present is very far removed from our society. Maybe it will be an issue to consider in the future if life extension / reversing senescence works out.
4023312
Well, Argent is the only relationship Celestia's ever had, so when you have your puppy love...and nothing else...your view on relationships is skewed, especially in comparison to the relationships you see everypony else having. You don't know about their trials and tribulations, and if you do, it's always going to be an outsider's view, not internally, and though you mature, that's one aspect that cannot if it's not developed. Just like any other "skill" in life, having a mature relationship takes work and effort and is laid on the back of previous experiences, good and bad.
In terms of development (not chronological age, obviously), Sam and Celestia are on equal footing. this (imperfectly, I admit) ties in with Faust and Greg's older relationship (though they met in their - well his - mid-twenties, he's always known that she was "older" by a few years - though he didn't know how many years) and contrasts with Robin and Luna's relationship (where although Robin is also in his mid-twenties, for Luna it's like that teenage first love.)
Speaking off-the-record (meaning not as the writer), I'm hoping that it will work out for Celestia and Sam. Celestia's also been one of my favorite characters in the show (and she's been sadly - though understandably - underdeveloped) and AAG-Celestia is a fusion of the canon version plus a lot of events I've known several females in my life to have gone through. Not all those endings have been happy, but I hope that for Celestia, she'll get what she deserves in the end.
The fact that this chapter was very light on the sinister political machinations is only gonna make them worse when they do come, won't it? Also, it seems like Rumble is about to be in more trouble than he realizes. As always, I'm loving the way you set things up. We seem to be in the eye of the storm now, but you're making it apparent there's more bad things to come.
My only complaint would be a couple of awkwardly phrased bits of dialogue (I can't call up any specific examples at present, but I know there are a few points where the characters will repeat words needlessly). Do you have a proofreader/s? I ask because I'm considering finding one or two for my own stories, but I know there are authors who get along just fine without them.
On a final note, so happy for Celestia and Sam (incidentally, I think he has the greatest name ever for no specific reason)! Now we just need to get Twilight hooked up with somebody and all the pony girls who deserve happiness will be happy!
Oh, and Luna. Let's not forget her.
4023392
I actually have proofreaders, but you're welcome to join if you'd like. Most of the time, the repeated words are intentional for effect or as a verbal tic, but once in a while mistakes do occur. And I've always felt it's best to have a team of beta readers (I happily call mine "Team Dumbass", because they often prevent me from making a dumbass out of myself) because when you're too close to the words, you're often too close to see the mistakes, too.
And as to eye of the storm? Well, you have heard about how the term Perfect Storm comes to mind, right?
4023336
Depending on the person, I think it's possible to develop the "mature relationship skill" through latent means. It's not a substitute for actual experience of course, as you quite rightly point out, but I think it's possible to make up a surprising amount of ground under the right circumstances. I can think of several friends of mine who would probably do quite well in that regard due to their age/maturity, despite (to my knowledge) quite limited experience.
But as I said, this depends on the type of person, their social skills, and the exposure they get to the subject through their social circles. And conversely you can also get people who end up in bad relationship after bad relationship because they're unwilling or incapable of learning from their experiences.
To return to the context of the story, yes, I could see Celestia running into difficulties because she's spent a lot of her life being fairly isolated. Maybe her extended family have sought her council over the years, but it's quite easy to imagine her as being socially stunted in many ways, not just when it comes to intimate relationships.
Ah, relationships.
4023443 Oh, while I appreciate for the offer (which I totally wasn't expecting. I was merely asking for my own benefit like a selfish bastard!) I think I'd prefer to remain involved in this story as a reader plain and simple. If you already have a good team of pre readers in the form of Team Dumbass (personally I like Dumbass Patrol as a name) then it's probably better I don't join in. You know what they say about too many cooks!
Now that you mention it, I think I remember you mentioning that the slightly awkward dialogue here and there was intentional for the purposes of making it more true to real life. I guess it just sticks out as odd to me because as a screenwriter I've been trained to cut out every unnecessary syllable in what I write, and I guess that way of thinking transfers over to everything I read as well! Being a writer - no matter how amateur - really ruins the passive reading experience!
4023954
i know those feels; when I'm doing the work for my comic scripts I have to follow Eisner's rule and cut out all but the most important parts of the dialogue. But you've got a lot more leeway when you're working with nothing but prose.
And yes, whenever you're a creative type, once you start working in the medium, you end up deconstructing things and it makes it really hard to enjoy it from that point on.
I swear, every time I read about Celesita and Sam, I started laughing like a stereotypical french dude.
'Ho ho ho ho! This is outrageous! ho ho ho!'
Well its nice to see one birth parent settling some things with DJ. Now how many chapters before Rarity does? XD
Well, I'm glad to see that DJ is at least reconciling with one of her parents. Gives me hope that she can finally do so with Rarity. I wonder how long that will take. I still have a feeling it will somehow play a role in defeating Nightmare Moon.
So, I guess Sunset Shimmer really was Champagne Dreams. I still think she might be Nightmare Moon too. Playing all sides and stuff.
Celestia and Sam...
I admit that it is as surprising as the weird infatuation Celestia had with DJ's husband Mike, but at least it's not as odd in my opinion. And apparently he's been carrying a torch for her for her for quite some time.
[Wait, DJ was raised Catholic. Wasn't Sam raised Catholic as well? If so, he should know better than to engage in premarital coitus. And Celestia is revered as a goddess among her little ponies. It's not only fornication; it might be apostasy too...
]
...
Okay, I'll stop theologizing now. Sorry.
Anyway, this story continues to be interesting. Got me now expecting the unexpected. Keep up the very good work.
i just checked. this story is currently over half the word count of Fallout: Equestria. lets see if we can't fix that
4027547
As was pointed out to me yesterday, the whole saga (sans the stories written by my wife, Blue Bastard and Deverer) is about 853K and rising, with likely to hit 1M this year. And I'm not even done yet.
omg i live right next to Winchester im in the next town over
4027547
Makes me wonder what the total word count is for ALL the AAG sidestories, since every single one ties back to the core story in one way or another.
This story and the side story compilation are absolutely phenomenal!
I downloaded the story so I could read it on the go. I began on the loooooooong first chapter which I thought was pretty exposition heavy
. I put it down after that and restarted it a week later. Once I came back I mental kicked myself for ever putting it down, for any amount of time Three very unproductive days later I had finished the story up to its then current chapter (I wailed in despair having to wait for more 
) and read all of the side stories. Now..... I wait for my favorite story to finish its epic tale.
Anna, DJ, you're both wrong. The 808 State vs. David Bowie remix is the best version of Sound + Vision.
He shook his head, not in disagreement, but in a self-depreciating gesture. --> I think you want self-deprecating.
Such a Philistine.
Bowie's Man Who Sold the World is clearly the superior version. the guitar doing the singing at the end of Nirvana's version is nowhere near as good as the vocals at the end of Bowie's, and that's just for starters.