Sunset Shimmer Goes to Hell

by scifipony

"The Rarest of Commodities."

Author's Note:

3/16/17 - Revised Crinkle Paper's tidbit about Sunset Shimmer to correct what White Stockings knows and doesn't know.

Celestia's prison enforces being nice.

It worked. Until you grew sick of it and lost the will to live.

The pocket world could easily have served as a go-to destination where ponies could find a cure for any injury or infirmity—though not diseases. Being here stopped aging. All that I'd learned of Princess Celestia, including during that one fateful meeting, had left me unable to believe that she could be that cruel. Tartarus could have hosted a sanitarium, a convalescent hospital, a spa, and so much more. It could have generated incredible wealth for the royal treasury. I could not understand the princess' priorities.

Nevertheless, she had reigned for over a thousand years so I guess inscrutable worked.

To stave off boredom, I worked to become everypony's friend. Surprisingly, most everypony was willing to tell me amazing things about their past if I listened quietly, asked rare questions, and smiled or looked shocked as appropriate. Though I made friends for my own reasons, it soon became the real thing.

The stories quickly became too much to remember. The scroll I'd saved proved useful for taking notes, though I had to relearn a skill I'd last used as a foal. Everypony called it hoofwriting or longhoof though in Tartarus even unicorns had to write manipulating a quill with lip and tongue. Inmates got neither pens nor paper. I made my own ink from berries and vinegar. You could trade pegasi and griffins for quills. I practiced long and hard on dried leaves and bark before micro-writing on Celestia's gift to me. There's plenty of time to learn any craft or to perfect any skill in Tartarus.

When I took time to visit the mountains, to visit Princess Forest Green to play cards, and then to visit her neighbors, I realized I was on to something that could prove interesting for many years. Ponies would pay (such that they could) for entertainment; learning about the monstrous inmates in the uncounted restriction zones served me well. I made many friends. While few monsters spoke Equestrian, many tried their best, or used sign language, or drew in dirt or mud with hoof, tentacle, or claw, anything to make themselves known or to vent centuries of bile and vitriol.

All of it proved interesting in one way or another. Besides biographies, I gathered the histories of cities, nations, and cabals cross-referenced between ponies who lived in the same place at different times or lived during the same times but in different lands—a dark geography of the spread of ponies and monsters across Equestria from their origins on every continent and ocean. I learned about forest canopy cities, desert caravans, pirate fleets, fairy castles, and windigo-loving queens.

This lead to the second time I spoke to Warden Sharp Beak. A pegasus deputy lead me to his office on the top floor in the "Big House", the multistory jail, factory, and administration building in the center of Central City. Though it had a big unfinished pine desk littered with papers and folders, the only other furniture consisted of a manger that wrapped around the room like a horseshoe and was stuffed full of fragrant hay and positioned against the desk. A wide window he could fly through stood unshuttered behind him, showing the circle of blue dusky mountains in the distance. The old griffon lay there, checking lists and doing whatever warden-y things wardens did. He said, "Yes?" He didn't look up.

I eyed the scattered papers with so little writing on them. "Sir. I was wondering if I could petition you to receive some of the paper you import from Equestria?"

"You can wonder."

I reached into the pocket of my now tattered jacket and pulled out the half-pony-length scroll now covered in purple berry-ink notes. I made sure it made noise as I opened it and got him to glance for an instant. "I am interviewing the inmates in the restriction zones. It occurs to me that I could write an encyclopedia about the history and behavior of the various beings that live in Tartarus."

"That's nice."

"How may I go about getting some paper?"

"You can't," he said, opening a book to compare a table with his list. When I didn't budge from his obvious dismissal, he added, "Paper costs bits and you have none."

"Sir."

He sighed, put down his pencil and sat up so he could look down into my eyes with an unblinking slit-pupil raptor gaze meant to rattle me.

I quickly said, "Princess Celestia clearly instructed me to find some way to make myself useful to Equestria when she sent me here. This, I think, is what I can do to fulfill her order."

He shook his head. "When the princess sends new immates, she sends all the information we need about them. In your case, EBI records and history. Even for the hard cases that will never leave the restriction zones, she sends some documents. We keep the information filed in the records room downstairs. Anything else?"

I tamped down on my anger and frustration, working to process the information given me freely until my subconscious... Bingo! "How do I get bits?"

His eyes narrowed. "Become a deputy. Considering the animosity you doubtlessly have for the constabulary, not to mention your extralegal business dealings in Canterlot and Manehatten, I doubt you'd be interested."

He lay back down and grabbed another folder.

I left. He'd given me much to think about.

The instant I left the Big House, Jewel poked her forked tongue in my face, tickling my nose. "Did he give you paper?" She glittered in anticipation.

There had to be something I could do, short of becoming a constable. Work in the constabulary; wear the hat with the copper badge; yay!

I did not see myself doing that.

I remembered the bruiser copper back in Hooflyn when I got my cutie mark. He'd been a loser.

I'd been a loser then and didn't yet know it. More so now. With every dawning day, Celestia slowly won. I shook my head, my hooves crunching in the gravel as I walked away alone.

I'm not sure what drove me to choose the specific topic I chose for storytelling that night in the common kitchen. The roofed open space provided protection from the sun and the rain for as many as fifty long tables, as it did this evening, and included a dozen wide hearths for communal cooking. The smell of leek and parsnip soup, with roasted caramelized hay, filled the area in my quadrant because that's where a yellow unicorn named Sawhorse had placed a soup tureen and a heaping plate of browned alfalfa before me. (She'd sawn through one-too-many bridges to draw business to her carpenters guild when one collapsed under Celestia's army as it headed out to fight a border incursion of the Oryxian Elite Force.) Maybe it was her yellow fur and unicorn horn that prompted me.

Maybe it was the rare appearance of one of the deputies in the kitchen. Except for the warden and a couple of adminstrators, the entire staff of the Big House, really the government of Tartarus, were inmates. They had the privilege of eating at work where some of the food was imported from Equestria; this included the only apples in Tartarus. Still, I imagine, even the privileged wanted to eat out occasionally. Or to slum it.

I loudly sipped the leek soup—made creamy with cumin potatoes and rosemary infused sunflower oil—to show my appreciation. I lowered my hooves and the bowl and wiped my green mustache with a foreleg (which passed as manners here and I'm one to follow convention). A dozen flickering vegetable oil lamps lit my silent audience. I paused dramatically, while moths fluttered around the lamps making a faint patter with their wings on the glass, then added, "Would you believe it? The newspapers declared Sunset Shimmer to be Princess Celestia's love child!"

That received a roar of laughter and a thunder of hooves on the brick floor. I'd reported this one before, but the joke I manufactured from it was well loved.

Deputy Crinkle Paper, a pale flaxen-colored earth pony mare with a long limp platinum mane, had a pained expression on her face as she contained her laughter and snorted daintily. I had learned from two stallions that she had been caught having forged documents that allowed ponies to collapse the economy of a small dukedom. Ponies had starved as a result of her greed. Forgery seemed the opposite of her crushed ball of paper cutie mark, but there you are. Her violet eyes locked on me and I knew she had something to say.

"Crinkle Paper?"

"That pony was crazy from the beginning! She attacked Princess Celestia in front of everypony. The princess should have seen it coming. Sugar cubes!"

It might sound cliché, but the crowd went so silent you could actually hear crickets chirping. Then somepony dropped a mug of beet juice. A new roar rumbled through the our shabby supper palace.

I got up and walked up to her. She was a petite pony and I lowered my head to speak on her eye level. I asked as guilelessly as I could, "Sunset Shimmer did many things, including having a public spat with Princess, but 'attacking' the princess is one I've not yet heard. Wow! When did that happen?"

"Um—"

A sudden silence of the nosey audience stopped her cold. She looked around, suddenly grinning guiltily. Such big beautiful teeth.

"You know," she said quietly, "That's something we keep amongst ourselves in the Big House."

"Did it happen before the royal court?"

She made a zipping motion in front of her mouth. Shaking her head, she backed away to a loud chorus of "Awww!"

I followed her into the night. Never discreet Jewel nevertheless managed to slither along in the shadows. Central had no street lighting, but cloudy moonlight and the wane illumination of lanterns in unglazed windows and through wood shutters provided enough light to see. Most ponies I knew saw well enough in the dark.

Trotting up beside her, I said, "Sunset and I have a history."

She chuckled. Kind of a tinkling sound. "Sunset Shimmer, the princess' first protégé. I know. I've read your record."

Got one free there: the warden's inmate staff had access to the background files. I said, "I'll run and fetch for a week for that story."

"Really?" She snorted.

"Cook."

"Oh?"

"I'll dip shower water from the well— How about daily?" She was fastidious and made sure she aways looked nice; hard to do in rustic dusty Tartarus.

"You're trying to bribe me?"

I stopped long enough to thump my chest. "Me? There's no such thing as bribes in Tartarus. We have nothing. We share everything."

I already suspected this whole dropping a lure into calm waters had to do with my visit to the warden today. When she shook her head and laughed, I added, "I'll do anything you ask of me. Keep you warm at night. Anything."

I wasn't all that in demand with the mares—since nopony could foal in Tartarus, it was a thing; stallions had to play the game. It was pro forma offer.

She stopped and looked at me with a smile. She then walked slowly around me, stopping a moment at my flank to admire my spilt mug of mead cutie mark as I swished my tail, before finishing the circle. She said, "One day. Sure." She laughed. "Not today." She reached into a pouch strung around her neck, catching a sheet of paper with the frog of her hoof. She presented the sheet. "The warden thought you might want an application."

I said, "Not really interested."

"You said anything."

"Huh. I did."

She sauntered around to my side and unexpectedly leaned against me. Her sudden warmth and weight shocked my heart into a double-time beat. She reached up to my ear and I felt her breath as she said, "I'd be glad to keep you warm at night, and that wasn't the warden's suggestion, either. Not only are you nice, you're a smooth operator and would be make a better partner than some of the dunderheads we've got in the Big House."

I actually blushed. She looked less than half my age, but Celestia had caught her in her confidence scheme more than a century ago. "Uhhh..."

She pushed herself upright and waved the application. "Here you go. The offer stands. Mine and his."

"Do I get to keep the paper?"

She smiled showing those pearly teeth again and tucked the application into the tattered pocket of my jacket. "Sure, Sugar Cube. Sure."

As she walked away, she swatted my nose with her platinum tail and I got a good whiff of pony scent.

I said, "Touché."

She stopped. Looked at me. "Come again?"

"Tell your boss, 'Touché.'"

As the light-color pony retreated into the darkness, looking like a ghost, I heard the faint sound of dust and pebbles from beneath a considerable weight. It was no surprise when Jewel hissed beside me, "She's one tasty morsel."

I shuddered. I could not be entirely sure that she meant the remark as salacious innuendo. The glitter cobra was a real boogie-mare. She had told me that she was "thought responsible" for the disappearance of foals and small ponies when she acted as a spy on Equestria's southern frontier over two centuries before. I hadn't gotten her to spill her full story, yet, but some ponies had said she had been in league with the Tolltech Empire and a shady monster known as Ahuizohtl. I gathered that was a title, like chief or king, not a name.

I said, "It's all about the rarest of commodities."

"Ooo. What?"

I took out the application. It fluttered in a dry breeze. "Paper."

"Ah. How s-so?"

"Me getting some, and me learning about everypony in Tartarus. It's too many details for one pony to remember. If I can't write it down, I can't show it to Celestia."

Oh. I said that aloud. I blinked, trying to focus outside of my head and on what my audience, which I needed to control, would think.

The snake spat. An unlucky dandelion began to sizzle, the yellow flower leaning over. "We need to know. Concentrate on that."

"Well, the warden wants to make that difficult. Even if I accept the job—" I pocketed the application since it slurred my speech. "He may still not give me any paper. Sharp Beak made a point of telling me he has a room full of records all about us. Doesn't need no stupid research. With him satisfied with his records, no paper. Nopony in Tartarus knows how to make paper. No paper, no encyclopedia—

"You do aim big, Mr. White Stockings."

I huffed. "Not sure I'm willing to do it any more."

She said under her breath, "Some pony speaks with a forked tongue."

Jewel remained silent beside me as I walked to the dorm I shared with her and a pair of griffins. She shared my bed. She insisted on the 'payment' for her investigative services; the desert denizen liked to keep warm, and Tartarus at night got cool. She also wanted to smell like ponies so they wouldn't be instinctively skittish around her. All the same to me.

Her scales glittered in the moonlight as she said, "Sss-sad." Her tone sounded the opposite of sad. Thoughtful, maybe?

Alone the next morning in my bed—a euphemism for a trough of hay—I stared at the application. I could fill the page with days of micro-notes in my invented shorthoof grammar. If I knew Sharp Beak's type, very much in the mold of Carne Asada and so many other power-broker ponies I'd met, if I decided to join he'd only accept this application. My notes—

—or a job.

I had changed a lot in the past couple of years or so! I used to hire ponies to research things for me so I could make decisions.

Bad decisions as it turned out.

And now, he who couldn't be bothered to read books in school, or afterward when in business, wanted to write an encyclopedia? Maybe Sharp Beak was right. I pegged the paper to the inside of the trough with a splinter and stared at the print. I remembered the indecipherable brown cursive scratches Celestia had made on the scroll when she committed me.

"No," I said. "It is important."

Really, it gave me purpose. And without purpose, Tartarus and Celestia would destroy me. With it, I might yet contribute to the society I had so disdained and disrespected.

I jumped out of the trough, grabbed myself a sack of bread and a quarter-bale of hay and headed up into the mountains. My intuition insisted I had a way of getting around the paper problem.

Princess Forest Green reconstituted herself, listened intently, and asked the restraint zone for paper. It produced single sheets without hesitation. My quill skipped on the rough stuff, but by refining the request we got china-white bond paper that was both fine grained and minimally absorbent. Perfect for shorthoof.

It dematerialized the moment I took it outside the restraint zone! Little puffs of ink dust wafted like smoke on the stiflingly hot day. My scream of frustration echoed though the adjacent hills, as did the timberwolf's unrepentant laughter.

I stayed in the mountains for weeks, trying all sort of things, even to the point of getting the magic in the restriction zone to duplicate Celestia's scroll—to no avail. The best I could come up with was asking the interviewees to keep my notes with them.

In the end, it proved a frustrating exercise. Few inmates could be trusted. I mean, well, we were all sent to Tartarus for a reason, weren't we? Even kept under a rock, the wildly unpredictable winds grabbed some of the sheets. Rain blurred the ink on others and would completely erase them eventually.

I decided to eat my pride after much prodding from Forest Green. She very much wanted to hear everything I would learn from my research. I wanted to make ponies happy, including her.

When I returned, hot and sweaty on a hot hot cloudless afternoon, I headed immediately for the warden's office with my filled-out application. Jewel slithered up to meet me at the red brick steps of the central warehouse-sized building.

She hissed quietly, "I thought you might want to know. There was a fire in sss-some of the s-storerooms of the Big House. Who knew they were filled with such flammable sss-stuff?"