Chapter 10
Vice Principal Luna threw aside the latest form she’d finished and sighed. She leaned forward, rubbing her eyes. Looking back to the pile, she saw she still had quite a ways to go, but she’d put a sizeable dent in what was there already. With any luck, she’d be done with half of the stack by the end of the day.
“Miss Luna?”
She looked up at the other occupant of the room. James had paused sorting files for the Vice Principal.
“Yes?”
“May I ask you a few questions?”
“You may. What about?”
“Well,” James paused for a moment, unsure how to word the question, “It’s mostly just a few things I’m not comfortable asking Sunset or her friends.”
“I understand,” Luna nodded. She tilted her head, “Are they anything the school should be worried about? Something that involves the safety of a student?”
James shook his head. “No, it’s just a few questions about… well, this world, I guess.”
“Ah, I see,” Luna gestured to one of the chairs in front of her desk, “Take a seat. I’ll try my best, but I’ll admit, I’m not as up to date on what kids their age do as some other staff might be.”
“‘Kids my age,’” James chuckled, lowering himself into the chair.
Luna laughed as well. “Well, compared to you, I suppose I would know more, wouldn’t I?”
“It’s not like it’d be very hard. You were born decades after me. Well, I guess after when I would have been born, were I....” He trailed off.
Luna frowned, uneasy with the sudden change in tone. She tried to steer the conversation away from that particular topic.
“You were born in 1925, correct?”
James shook his head as if clearing the fog from his mind as he sat up straighter.
“Yes, I was. March 19th.”
“What a coincidence. My grandfather was born on the same day.”
“Oh really?” James chuckled. “Well, wish him a happy 90th for me.” He paused. “Well, actually, that kind of goes right into one of my questions: Wouldn’t I technically be ninety years old? I mean, I was born in 1925, but if that book is supposed to have taken place seventy years ago…”
Luna thought for a moment.
“That depends, I suppose. It’s been debated, mostly in the science-fiction community, how a person ages when time traveling. The most common theory is not that you’re the age of the year you’re in, but that you’re just the age of the life you’ve lived.”
“But that’s all fiction, right?”
“It is. But that’s the only real avenue we have to discuss this sort of thing. It’s not like this is something that happens… well, ever. We only have hypotheticals to deal with.”
“So how old, hypothetically, would you say I am?”
“How old were you before you came to our world?”
“Nineteen.”
“Has it passed your twentieth birthday yet?” Luna asked. James shook his head, “Then I’d say you’re nineteen. When time-traveling, people like to associate your age with the life you’ve truly lived, not with dates. Even if they did use dates, it gets rather interesting if you travel back in time. For example, if I was in your time, I’d be roughly negative forty years old.”
James laughed. “I see your point. But, on a separate note… you say ‘time-traveling’, but did I even time travel at all? Princess Twilight said she thinks I came from a different universe. Maybe there, the year is still 1944.”
“It very well could be. Even on this very planet, some places don’t use the same calendar as everyone else. While it may be 2015 for us, some places say it’s 223, 1394, 1436, or even 5775 or 6765. The current year is relative to the calendar you’re referring to. Who knows when your calendar started. Even if the numerical year is the same, who’s to say the universes started at the same time? Maybe yours is millions of years younger than ours. Maybe it’s millions older. Do you understand?”
“...I can certainly tell there was a lot of thought put into it if that’s any consolation,” James grinned sheepishly. “It’s certainly not lack of trying on your part that I don’t understand. This is just a little over my head.”
Luna laughed softly. “If I am honest, most of what you heard has little to no basis in reality. It is purely theory based on science fiction, which quite often is more ‘fiction’ than ‘science’ based.”
“Well, it certainly sounds like it from my end.” James fell back in his chair and sighed. “This timeline is getting pretty convoluted, isn’t it?”
“When you’re talking about hypotheticals on the scale we are, it often does.”
“What if I made it a little simpler.”
“How so?” Luna grinned and tilted her head.
“Princess Twilight had a thought that maybe our worlds were similar, just with a different history, or something like that.”
Luna hummed as she mulled over his words. “Well, time-traveling between alternate timelines is not usually explored in science fiction as much. And if it is, they leave out the nitty-gritty details like this. It makes it easier for the authors that way. With that being said, I will say that Princess Twilight Sparkle may be the better person to talk to. It seems her world deals with these impossibilities a little more often than we do.”
James nodded slowly. He didn’t speak right away. He was thinking deeply over the large amount of information she’d just given him, so Luna let him think. She took the time to resume finishing up some of her paperwork. The latest in the stack was a district bus request form that she needed to sign alongside Celestia. Simple enough, she thought. A quick signature now stood proudly on the page below her sister’s.
“Miss Luna?” She looked up. “May I ask another question?”
“Of course.” She set the pen down.
He shuffled uncomfortably in his seat. “...Was it all fiction?”
Luna took a deep breath. She had to consider what the best way to go about this was. She could answer his question as a teacher, giving him exactly what parts of Their Darkest Hour was based on facts and what parts were fiction. But she knew better than that. He wanted confirmation he was fighting for something real. If his own God was real. He wanted to know there was some kind of higher power out there and not just some writer.
Luna gently closed the folder in front of her as she sat up straighter. “James, before I answer that question, I would like to ask you one instead.” James squinted his eyes slightly and crossed his arms.
“And what question would that be?”
“I want you to consider everything you’ve been through. Do you think it was real?”
“I don’t know what I think, Ms. Luna.”
“I think you do, James,” Luna leaned forward. “And I think what’s more important is that to you, it was real. Everything you saw and did truly happened, and you have the very real scars to show for it.”
James stared at Luna. She could see the uneasiness on his face. He mumbled a few incoherent things as he tried to dodge the question. Luna leaned back in her chair.
“You don’t need to answer, James. But I want you to consider what I’ve said to you. Your reality is different than ours, and I think that’s more important right now. I can give you a history lesson, but it won’t be your history.”
“M-Ms. Luna, I don’t… I’m not…” He paused, taking a deep, shuddering breath.
“W-When Sunset and Twilight told me I wasn’t... Real. Or that I was from a fictional novel, rather. I…” Tears started running down his face. “I started doubting things. I was so… so scared. I was terrified. I was confused and angry. Everything just…” he shook his head.
Luna came around to the front of her desk and sat in the empty chair beside him.
“It’s okay, James,” Luna reassured him, putting an arm on his shoulder.
“I lied to her… I put on a face, f-for them.”
“Why do think you did that?”
“B-Because a man has to be strong in hard times. So I acted like everything was fine. I told them I was okay,” He shook his head again. “But I’m not. I just… I didn’t want them to worry about me.”
“Why do you think you have to put on a face, James?”
“I just… It’s what a man has to do.”
Luna frowned at his reasoning. She wasn’t surprised, not by a long shot. Many male students even in modern times believed the same thing, or at least something similar. There was no reason why a man from 1944 of all times should be any different - if anything, such traditions would be stronger.
“Well, that may be what you were raised to believe, James, but that’s not always the case. It’s okay for men to be scared,” she reassured him.
“I-I know. I’m not afraid to look s-scared,” James shook his head. “But Sunset tells me all about h-how amazing she thinks me and the other guys were. How we’re… heroes or something.”
Luna was taken aback by the disgust in his voice as he spoke. Sure, most people were reluctant to accept themselves to be called heroes, but he seemed to be almost offended by the notion.
“Why don’t you think you’re a hero?”
James laughed grimly through his tears. “Ma’am… if you’d seen the kind of stuff we did in that war… we were never heroes.”
“James…do you know what the… Nazis?” She looked to him for confirmation, and he nodded. “Do you know what the Nazis are doing in their camps?”
James closed his eyes and lowered his head. He nodded again.
“Tell me, James: what are they doing in these camps?”
“...they’re killing Jews by the millions.”
“Yes, they are. And you’re liberating them. Isn’t that heroic?”
James stared at the floor. His shaky breaths were the only sound in the room for a while. Luna was worried she’d offended him until he finally spoke. “Do the ends justify the means?”
“Yes.”
Luna’s voice was firm, more so than she’d expected it to be. He looked up at her, taken aback by her tone.
“Yes, James. They do. This isn’t a pointless war. It’s genocide, James. You are there for a reason. There is a great evil in your world. An unspeakable injustice that you are fighting to end. And if you don’t, millions more will die.”
James slowly lowered his head, and closed his eyes. He slowly shook his head.
“No… I only do that if I get back,” He looked up at Luna. “Miss Luna, I… I don’t know what to do. I gotta get home, but… I don’t know how.”
Luna’s face softened. “That’s alright, James. You don’t have to have all the answers. Sometimes, you have to put your faith in others.”
“I’ve been doing that a whole lot more than I’d like to, lately.”
“Sometimes, we don’t have a choice,” Luna grinned sadly. “My sister and I find ourselves putting faith in Sunset Shimmer and Princess Twilight Sparkle a lot more than we’d like to, as well. But ever since they started working together, they haven’t let us down yet.”
“I just wish I could know for sure it’ll be all okay,” James laughed weakly. “It’d make it a whole lot easier to put my faith in strangers.”
“That’s the thing about faith, James. If you know it’ll all work out, that’s not faith.”
He nodded slowly but didn’t respond. She stayed there for a few more moments, just to be sure. After a few minutes of silence, James wiped his eyes and stood, facing the wall of filing cabinets again.
“I’d better get back to sorting these papers.”
“James, you don’t have to do that if you don’t want to. I’ll understand if you want to take a break.”
“No. It’s fine. I want to.”
Luna nodded apprehensively. “Alright, then.”
She stood and returned to her chair behind her desk, picking up another form to get started on.
For Luna, her work was slow going after her conversation with James. She couldn’t get what he’d said out of her head, and she was, unfortunately, intimately familiar with hiding one's emotions.
Her thoughts lingered on his fear in particular. James’s uncertainty ran deeper than just simple worry for the future. That, she could help with. A life plan, a pep talk about their future, that was the sort of thing she was used to dealing with. Delinquent teenagers more often than not just needed to be shown that the road to a good life is easier than they think. But James? His was an existential fear, and that sort of thing wasn’t so easily quelled. That was the sort of thing that required years of therapy and soul searching. Something Luna was nowhere near qualified to handle.
So there she sat, pondering the best course of action to take. Realistically, there wasn’t much she could do. The first step would be convincing him to accept help at all. Something he’d clearly shown wasn’t going to be easy. Then there would be finding someone who was willing, and more importantly, even able to see him. Therapists were, more often than not, selfless people who would like to help everyone they could, but there were laws in place. There’s not a lot they could do without proper documentation for identity and release forms.
Lastly, there was just a matter of time. If all went well, then he’d only be here for a little bit longer. After that, he was on his own to deal with his problems. And what she knew of mental health in the 1940s, even the most forward-thinking psychologists would most likely institutionalize him in a heartbeat if he told them what he’d seen here. Even then, that would be assuming he’d even ask for help in the first place.
And so, she was stuck between a rock and a hard place. Let his demons run wild, or tackle the bureaucracy and risk his security for something that may not even work.
Luna sighed. There was no easy answer here.
A buzzing noise vibrated across her desk, shaking her from her thoughts. She looked up at James; he didn’t seem to even hear anything as he steadily worked through the stacks of paper. Luna frowned and grabbed her phone.
Celestia - Today at 1:54 PM
Just got done with the meeting with the superintendent. On my way back to campus. How are things?
Luna typed out a short response.
Me - Today at 1:55 PM
That depends. Where do you rank an existential crisis?
Luna bit her lip after she’d sent the text. Perhaps that was a bit too harsh. Though, to be fair, not untrue. Her phone buzzed again.
Celestia - Today at 1:57
That’s not good. Is he ok?
Me - Today at 1:58
I don’t know. You’d probably know better than me. Would you want to talk to him when you get back?
Celestia - Today at 1:59
Sure. I’m about to drive. I’ll see you when I get there.
Me - Today at 1:59
See you then.
The engine shuddered to a stop as Celestia removed the key. She sighed and glanced to her side, where her now-much-heavier briefcase sat. Her meeting with the Superintendent had gone well but still resulted in quite a bit of additional paperwork that she certainly did not need added to her already considerable pile of things to get done.
She shook her head and climbed out of the car.
Such is the life of a principal these days.
Shutting the car door, she rolled her shoulders, shifting the weight of the briefcase to a more comfortable position as she started towards the school building. The groundskeeper smiled and nodded to her as she passed. He was an older man, probably much too old to be doing the kind of labor he did, but that never slowed him down.
“Good afternoon, Ms. Celestia.”
“Hello, Mr. Topiary. How are you today?”
“Very well, I’d say. And you?”
“Oh, you know. Meetings, paperwork, and the like.”
He hummed amusingly. “Feels like it don’t ever end, does it?”
“Well, I suppose that’s more likely because it doesn’t.”
“Oh, you’ve got that right. Had to do all that back when I ran my landscaping business. Don’t miss it at all.” He chuckled. “But hey, I’m livin’ proof there’s a light at the end of the tunnel, don’t you worry!”
“You’re quite the optimist, aren’t you Mr. Topiary?”
“Oh, well, y’know. You gotta have faith that it’ll all get better. Oh, I tell you what, I wouldn’t be here now if it weren’t for my faith!”
“Oh really?” Celestia asked, stopping next to him.
“Yep! I’ve certainly seen my fair share of hardship, don’t you worry. But that never stopped me from getting to tomorrow.”
“I didn’t see you as the kind of man to have been through a lot, Mr. Topiary.”
“Oh, I have. Trust me. I lost my business back in ‘08. Some real good people were workin’ there that lost a lot of money. I tried to keep them going as long as I could, but the Recession was hard, y’know? Just didn’t have the money. Had to let them go. Eventually, I just had to shut the whole thing down.”
“Well, I’m sorry to hear that. I remember your business doing quite well there for a while.”
“Oh, we did good for a long time, sure. Y’know, I started that place back in 1970 with my first wife, Ledger. She handled the business, I handled the labor,” The man’s face fell slightly and his speech slowed to a tone of solemn remembrance. “Sadly, though, I lost her in ‘79. Car accident. Absolutely tragic. Y’know, I’d say that was one of the hardest moments in my life.”
“I can’t imagine, Mr. Topiary. I’m so sorry to hear that.”
“Ah, well. It was a long time ago, don’t worry about it. She wouldn’t want me to go around being sad about it. I’ve got plenty of good memories with her. Anyway, I got married again, to my current wife, Violet, years later. She certainly helped me get back on my feet, let me tell you. And she has a way with kids, hoo boy. After we got married, my daughter did not like her, let me tell you. But Violet’s just got this way with kids, y’know? After a month, they were best buds.”
“I didn’t know you had a daughter, Mr. Topiary. Did she go to this school?”
“Oh. Well, no. She never went to high school, Ms. Celestia.”
“Oh, my mistake. Was she homeschooled?”
“No, ma’am, she passed away from cancer back in 93.”
“Oh my goodness, Mr. Topiary… I’m so sorry.”
“Now Ms. Celestia, it was a long time ago. I’m fine, alright?” He smiled warmly, his mustache curling around his lip. “Now, I only tell you this because I want you to know where I’m coming from. You gotta have faith to carry onto the next day. Faith that things were gonna get better. My wife and child may be gone, but I’ve got the memories we made together. I’d like to remember their life, not their death. Now, think like that all the time? Makes it a heck of a lot easier to get up in the morning. Who knows what tomorrow will bring? I thought I’d never love a woman again, but then I met Violet. I never thought I could give my love and experience to a child ever again, but then I started working here. Now, I can give my love to the school so these fine children can go on to do great things. And every so often, when I’m lucky, I get to pass on my experience to someone who may need it. Like you, Ms. Celestia.”
Celestia stared at the peculiar old man for a moment while she processed all he’d said. She grinned slightly, and nodded to the man.
“Well, Mr. Topiary. Thank you for all you do around here. You’ve certainly given me quite a bit to think about.”
“It was my pleasure, ma’am. I hope you have a good day, now. And if not, just remember what I said.”
“Who knows what tomorrow brings?”
“Exactly!”
She laughed. “I will certainly remember that. Have a nice day, Mr. Topiary.”
“You too, Ms. Celestia.”
With that, she adjusted her briefcase’s strap and walked into the building. The words he’d said were playing through again in her head. She had no idea that the man had gone through so much in his life. Especially for a man as happy as he was. She shrugged it off. You never knew other peoples’ stories. In her line of work, she shouldn’t be surprised.
After a few turns through the corridors, Celestia approached the door to Luna’s office. She paused just short of the door. She thought for a moment, and then reached into her jacket and pulled out her phone.
Me - Today at 2:14 PM
I’m outside your office. Do you want me to come in?
After a moment, she got her response.
Luna - Today at 2:15 PM
Wait there, I’m coming out.
The text was abruptly followed by the door opening, and Luna stepping out into the hall. Celestia glanced inside and saw James standing over a box of files with his back from the door. Luna quickly shut the door behind her.
“Hello, Celestia. How did the meeting go?” Luna asked, keeping her voice low. Celestia frowned.
“It went fine. Luna, what’s going on?”
“He’s… There’s quite a bit bothering him, from what he told me. He asked if anything from the book was true. I think he’s questioning whether or not his life is real.”
“Oh dear.” Celestia sighed. “I was afraid of that.”
“What can we do to help him? Pretty much everything I was telling him was from science fiction and he knows it.”
“There’s not much we can do, no. As much as I hate to say it, the only people who can prove to him he’s real is Sunset and Princess Twilight. At least, I hope they can.” She shook her head. “This isn’t good. This is something that I’m not even sure therapy could fix.”
“Sadly, I think you’re right. Even if they could help him, it’d take quite a long time. Something we don’t have a lot of if all goes right. And I’m afraid he'll struggle with this even once he returns home. He may think it’s all just fiction, even then.”
Celestia nodded sadly. “That’ll just have to be something he’ll have to come to terms with.”
“Well, if we can’t fix the problem, can we at least help the symptoms?”
“We could, yes, but it’d be like fighting a fire with an open gas line. It’d never truly go away unless we can stop what’s causing it all in the first place.”
Luna sighed. “I just hope he doesn’t do anything rash.”
“What do you mean? Like what?”
“He’s a severely depressed young man questioning his reality and he owns a gun,” Luna said, grimly. “I don’t think I have to say what that could mean.”
“Luna he’s not-” Celestia stopped herself. She desperately wanted to tell her sister that he wouldn’t, but as she worked through the information in her head, she knew she couldn’t say it. Whether they liked it or not, there was a very real possibility that he would, and they both knew it. Luna shrugged sadly.
“It’s a very real possibility we have to consider here, sister. We’re treading on very delicate ground.”
“We do.” Celestia agreed. “This… this is well beyond either of us, Luna.”
“I know. But what else can we do? A therapist would need all sorts of legal paperwork to see him even once. Not even just for James’s confidentiality, we’re talking about their license, here. Outside of an introductory meeting, we may be able to get a meeting or two, more if we’re lucky. But regularly seeing him? I’m not so sure.”
Celestia bit her lip, thinking. This was a tough situation. Stuck between a rock and a hard place: leave him to deal with it on his own or risk finding a therapist?
“I suppose we’ll just have to do our best, then.” She said, reluctantly. It wasn’t the solution she truly wanted, but it was the only feasible situation. As Luna said, they simply couldn’t risk a therapist, nor did they have the time. “Is there anything else?”
“Yes, actually,” Luna sighed. “It seems that Ms. Shimmer and her friends seem to see him as a sort of hero.”
Celestia was taken aback.
“A hero?” Luna nodded. Celestia shook her head. “I’m sorry, what’s the problem with that?”
“He doesn’t agree.”
“Why?”
“From what he’s told me, it’s because of what he and his fellow soldiers did. He doesn’t think they acted very heroic.”
“Didn’t they free those people from those camps? Isn’t that what the whole war was for?”
“Yes, they do in the book, but he didn’t. At least, he hasn’t yet. I mean, he knows they exist. He knows, vaguely, what they’re doing. But I don’t think he really understands the severity of the situation. I think he’s forgotten, or just simply didn’t know in the first place.”
Celestia nodded absently. There was certainly a lot there, and it was all certainly nothing two high school administrators could ever hope to deal with. A therapist? A priest? Maybe. Regardless, it was beyond them. They were going to have to get help if they wanted to make any real progress.
“Maybe we could find someone to help him.”
“Celestia were you not listening? I told you we ca-”
“I know, Luna. But the alternative is either leave him to figure it out himself, or we try to help him. And I’m sorry, sister, but I am not ready to even attempt that sort of thing right now. Not with this volatile of a situation.”
“So now what? Do we find a therapist who is willing to forgo any sort of legal release forms? And how is James going to pay for it? He doesn’t have insurance, a job, and I’m certain Ms. Shimmer can’t afford to pay it for him.”
“I’ll pay for it.”
Luna was taken aback. “Sister, you understand this isn’t a small fee, right? This could cost you quite a lot of money.”
“And I’m happy to do it. Luna, I make more than a liveable salary with this job. A little less spending cash isn’t going to hurt me, trust me.”
“Well. Good.” Luna nodded, almost convincing herself it was. “Good. That solves that. That still leaves the very pressing issue of finding someone willing to do it.”
“I think that may be easier than you think.”
“What?” Luna exclaimed. “You think finding someone willing to risk their license is going to be easy?”
“But are they risking their license, Luna?”
Luna recoiled back with a shocked expression. “Yes! Yes, I do!”
“Well, I don’t think they are. What forms are standard when you go to therapy?”
“A consent form, a record release form, insurance information, medical history,” Luna rattled off several responses rapidly.
“He doesn’t have insurance, nor will he be using it. That’s not an issue. The medical history he can give voluntarily and it’s not like they have you prove it. The record release form and consent aren’t being put through any sort of government system, they’re just on hand in the office, right? So it’s fine! Even if he did fudge the information on it, the therapist isn’t at risk.”
Luna stared at Celestia.
“...how long have you been thinking about this?”
“Not long. But I think this is too important to be hung up on what-ifs.”
“Those ‘what ifs’ could get us in some serious legal trouble.”
“Possibly, yes.”
“Is that a risk you’re willing to take?”
“Absolutely,” Celestia said without hesitation. “Under normal circumstances, I’m not sure I would. But we have a young man who needs quite a bit of help here. I don’t think this is something we can risk.”
“Fine.” Luna sighed. “But I have just realized yet another hurdle.”
“What?”
“We need to find someone who’ll even believe us. I mean, seriously, sister. This will sound insane to anyone else but us. We saw a teenager rip holes in reality to another dimension, and we were still skeptical when Sunset told us what was going on.”
“I can deal with that, don’t worry.”
“Really?” Luna said skeptically.
“Really. How do you think I managed to convince two thousand students to pretend that the holes in reality just didn’t happen? Or better yet, that the front of our building collapsed due to structural damage after a student just magically blew it up?”
“...point taken. Fine. You can deal with it.” Luna fiddled with a bracelet on her wrist. She suddenly felt exhausted. “Better you than me.”
“Thank you, Luna. I’ll ask around and let you know what I find.”
“Alright.” She nodded. “I’d better get back in there. Are you taking him back to your office?”
“Not just yet. I’m going to make a few calls first if that’s alright.”
“It’s fine with me.”
“Okay.” Celestia smiled. She leaned forward and hugged Luna, who smiled and hugged her back. “I’ll come get him when I’m done.”
“Of course. No hurry.” The two separated. “Good luck.”
“You too.”
With their goodbyes done, Luna opened the door and stepped back into her office, shutting the door with a soft click. And with that, the halls were empty once again.
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Ayyyy nice to see you back :)
"Bribery? Threatening expulsion? Shadowy government agencies breathing down your neck?"
"Not... exactly."
"Which one?"
"Yes."
Good to see you back. I do love a good metafiction-induced existential crisis. But the scene where Mr. Topiary divulges his full biography feels overly long. Not just in term of pacing but suspension of disbelief; this kind of exposition dump feels stilted at the best of times, all the more so when Luna has a crisis on her hands and Celestia knows it. Said dump seeming only tangentially related to the story further compounds the issue. And then there are the repetitive aspects of the sisters' deliberation. Not just how they keep going over the same subject matter, but even some of the phrasing. For example:
Don't get me wrong, I'm still enjoying the story, but this chapter felt bloated at times.
It lives! Glad to see James again. Maybe they should just have him talk to Mr. Topiary.
Hees aliiiiive
Loved this a whole lot.
I'm excited for more! Consider me a cult-fan of this story.
I'm planning on doing a review of every chapter eventually. Keep up the good work, and don't worry about trying to get chapters out quickly. The more time you take with a chapter, the more well thought out and better it will be. Don't force yourself to write! I don't know if that's something you might be struggling with, but I just don't want to see authors be pressured into such a thing.
Have a great day.
this fic is so good, it makes me wish to see more of its kind here in fimfiction!
you have something really special here, i can't wait for more!
keep up the good work!
10557670
Probably that's true, but If that's the case Sunset should be having it much worse, but she isn't. She came from the fairy tale land where the technology goes back as far as 1800s and they still use gold standard for money. What I am trying to say is that they are both young, they could easily adapt to the modern society given the chance. It's not too late for James to go back to school and finish his education if he so wished.
10558315
Technology isn't the factor here, it's the culture. Equestrian culture may be technologically Victorian but the culture is much closer to modern society than anything else.
But even setting that aside, Sunset's already lived in this world for years at this point, making a conscious effort to blend herself into her peers and rise as the popular kid. James has been in this world for less than a week.
And while James may be entirely capable of going back to school and learning things, it still would be extremely difficult for him and would take years for him to relearn various things. He has at most a 6th-grade education, but that is a 6th-grade education from the 1930s, which is grossly insufficient compared to what modern 6th-grade children are learning today. It's still possible, but certainly more difficult.
Soooooo, any updates on the way?
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Hopefully. Honestly, since the last update, I basically didn't really read anything and wasn't paying attention to anything going on around here. I kinda just pushed this whole thing out of my head, but I just finished a real long fic on here that made me wanna get back into things. It's just hard to write, personally. Every time I wanna write something, I wanna rewrite a whole other section because I don't like it. I'll try to get something out soon, though.
More... I need more...
Excellent story keep up the good work
A G.I. From World War II in Equestria Girls. Wonder how the six from 1959 Die Brucke (The Bridge) by Bernhard Wicki would have felt if it happened to them.
Oh and don't forget military training, combat experienced, heavily armed, and a whole slew of things. Maybe even fragmentation grenades! So yeah there's definitely one helluva problem.
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So, when's the next chapter?
A very well written and put together story, will it continue?
Una increíble historia.
When is the sequel?