Sunset jumps out in front of a car in a blizard, hoping to end it all, but it turns out better than she could've thought.
In the middle of a blizzard, Sunset throws herself out in front of a car that stops just in time not to kill her, which leads to her having a Christmas in a... different way than even she would deem normal.
Tell me what you think. I look forward to reading comments.
12/28/18 4:32 AM: I came up with this idea to see if anyone who reads this can find all of the references I made in this story (evidently I made more than I thought)
1/16/2019 3:50 PM: I'm going to add the narcotics tag to it. It shall be needed.
2/5/19 7:16 PM: I added the "sex" tag, just to be safe because of a small scene involving a certain pair of lovers.
3/1/19 10:45 AM: For the blooper/gag scenes, I want you guys in the comments to give me suggestions.
Sunset was walking down the snow-covered street when she spotted a pair of boxy headlights, not unlike those used by some cars of the 1980s, going down the street, so she jumped out in front of it.
She had no hopes for Christmas after Anon-a-miss, so she thought she’d make everyone’s lives better.
Maybe she’d get hit and killed.
Meanwhile in the station wagon/RV, cousins Seth and Autumn Blaze were singing to a Christmas song they had put to the tune of the East German National Anthem, Seth driving.
From our slumber, we’ve awoken; Christ-mas-time, this glo-rious morn’; To the hol-i-day we wel-come; Let us be al-to-gether! May your joy, be spread, to a-all; On this won-derful day!; For our fam’-i-lies’ ha-ppi-ness; Share your joy to all people; On this Christ-mas morn!; On this Christ-mas mo-
“SETH STOP!!!!!!!!”
Seth slammed on the breaks just in time so the car wouldn’t hit Sunset too hard, though it still knocked her on her back.
“Jesus Harold Christ!” he said as they got out, “Are you okay?”
“What happened!?” Autumn asked.
Sunset envisioned herself in a padded room if she told the truth.
“I was on my way home,” she said, pointing the direction she was running.
“To an old warehouse? At 11:30 at night? On Christmas Eve,” Autumn asked, knowing exactly what Sunset was referring to, based on her appearance, “I don’t think so.”
“My cousin’s right,” Seth said, “You’re having Christmas with us.”
“Where are you going?” Sunset said as Autumn put her in the car’s front seat with her and her cousin.
“Home,” Autumn responded as Seth started the car again, “Where we have food and heat and COZY!”
“You don’t even know me!” Sunset yelled, but was overwhelmed by the engine’s loud roar.
“Sorry!” Seth said, revving the engine to get it to warm faster, “Soviet cars of the 1980s need to warm up first, and two-stroke engines are the loudest! In 1995, they swapped over to more modern four-stroke engines, but I don’t think that the new Soviet cars are all that. I’m more the retro-type!”
Sunset turned around to see that it was indeed being used as an RV.
“You don’t even know me!” Sunset said as they were headed back to Seth and Autumn’s house and the engine wasn’t spinning at near-lethal speeds.
“Well, we change that,” Autumn said, “I’m Autumn Blaze, he’s Seth, and you are?”
“Sunset Shimmer. Where do you live?”
“A few miles away,” he replied, “In a small but nice house.”
A few minutes later, they were at the cousins’ house, where a cobalt-blue Yugo and ruby-red 1999 two-door Honda Civic was parked. Seth parked in front of the garage even though it was starting to turn into a light blizzard.
To Sunset, it was a mansion, but decorated more in red and gold instead of green and red.
The inside of the house was an open-concept living room/kitchen with five doors: three bedrooms, the bathroom, and the basement.
“This is nice.”
“It’s not much, but it’s what we have.”
There were strings of lights attached to the counter, a small fiber optic tree sat atop the counter with a crystalline, red star lined in yellow as a topper, and odd ornaments were hanging off of it.
The living room of the house had a couch and an armchair facing a 40-inch television, switched on to a YouTube video of a static picture of a Soviet flag and Christmas tree next to each other behind a Kremlin Star, playing Soviet Christmas Music, something that was unfamiliar to Sunset. Next to the setup was the big Christmas tree, a color-changing star as its tree topper, but still with the odd ornaments. Under it was twelve boxes wrapped in unique paper for each: A bird on a branch, doves and hearts, hens, birds in groups of four, yellow rings, geese, swans, cows, women dancing, men in suits jumping, flute players, and drummers, along with two others.
It was obvious to all three that Sunset was about to fall asleep.
“Let’s get you a bed,” Autumn said, walking Sunset to the third bedroom, then coming out just a few minutes later, “Let’s go back out for Sunset.”
“Gotchta, dude,” Seth said, grabbing the keys to his Yugo and both of them leaving together.
“Sunset was asleep before I even made it to the door with her,” Autumn said as the Yugo started.
“Whoa, that’s bad.”
“I know. What’s the plan?”
Seth started to back out of the driveway and onto the now-white road.
“We get her some clothes and Best Buy first, then go from there. If we can’t find anything, she’s still joining our ‘Twelve Days of Christmas’.”
“I like the way you think.”
At fifteen miles per hour, the drive to the mall took forever. Neither of them said anything until they made it to and inside the mall.
“Where to?” Seth said.
“I’ll go have clothes made, you hit up Best Buy, then we’ll go from there and hopefully not get caught up in this blizzard.”
“And not hold back.”
“Got it,” Autumn said as they both split, “Meet up at the food court!”
At Best Buy, Seth was surprised that they had everything he wanted to get Sunset: a HP Elite x3 set and some studio-quality headphones.
“$2,000 even,” the cashier said, boxing the stuff up, “Last minute Christmas?”
“Yeah, and one more thing,” Seth replied swiping his debit card.
“Hm?”
“Can you wrap it?”
After it was wrapped, Seth procured a sharpie from his jacket and wrote Сунсет Шиммер on the box.
“Merry Christmas!” he said, carrying the box out.
On the other end of the mall, Autumn was getting designer clothes for Sunset.
She’ll love these!!
“$93.95,” the cashier said, “Thank you for shopping at Ross. Dumbass Nirik.”
“Yeah and a Merry Christmas to you, too,” Autumn said, hiding her offense to the term ‘Nirik’ as she swiped her debit card and left with her bags, running to the food court where she met with her cousin.
“Boy or girl?” Seth said, knowing the familiar expression Autumn shown when she was called a Nirik.
“Bitch,” she said through clenched teeth.
“Guess I’m not beating her teeth out because she’s a girl.”
“Let’s go.”
The snow had let up, but the drive back to their house was still close to an hour, which had to be done in complete silence.
“Home free,” Seth whispered as they went in and closed the door as quietly as possible, “Are we going to wrap yours?”
“No. It’s almost 2:30 in the morning and I’m tired.”
“Let’s just set them next to the tree.”
Autumn nodded in agreement as both set their gifts down and went to bed.
The television had since changed from the Soviet Christmas Music to a blue, contemporary-style analog clock with no audio and captioned with Fröhliche Weihnachten.
The next morning, Sunset awoke to the sound of someone playing piano music and a blizzard just outside.
Wait, Sunset thought, Outside?
“Rudolph, the red-nosed reindeer; had a very shiny nose!; And if you ever saw it; you would even say it glows!”
“You sound just like a Soviet, Seth!”
“Spasibo.”
“I still can’t believe that’s natural!”
“Merry Christmas, Autumn. I hope Sunset’s gonna have a good time with us, too.”
Sunset followed the sound to the basement, but noticed the time on the television at 5:52.
“Time for one more?”
“Oh, alright,” Seth said, playing the tail-end of one of the songs from the night before.
“From our slumber, we’ve awoken; Christ-mas-time, this glo-rious morn’; To the hol-i-day we wel-come; Let us be al-to-gether! May your joy, be spread, to a-all; On this won-derful day!; For our fam’-i-lies’ ha-ppi-ness; Share your joy to all people; On this Christ-mas morn!; On this Christ-mas morn!”
It sounded beautiful.
“Let us celebrate the season; Cheer and jo-oy e-ver-ywhere; That all will be joy on this day; Christ-mas-time, this joy-ful morn’!; May your joy, be spread, to a-all; On this won-derful day!; Christmas is the reason for us; And your joy with all people; On this Christ-mas morn!; On this Christ-mas morn!”
“And the tune is from the DDR Anthem?”
“Yeah.”
The next thing Sunset knew was that there was music playing from the TV with the clock
5:59 and 55... 56... 57... 58... 59...
At 6:00, the nameless melody transitioned into Jingle Bells as the clocked flipped around to show a Christmas Tree in a wreath with snow falling on it.
“If she’s up, let’s have breakfast.”
Seth and Autumn came up the stairs and caught Sunset dead in her tracks.
“Breakfast?” Autumn asked, “or presents?”
Autumn was getting giddy, so she ran and got a pop-tart for Sunset from the kitchen, “Oh I can’t wait! Let’s have Christmas first, then I’ll fix something!”
“Or I could”
“No! Seth, you are not going into that kitchen and making something that’s SUPPOSED to be edible! The last time, you doused pasta in alcohol and set it on fire!”
“Yes, Mommy,” Seth replied not managing to hold back his laughter as he put on a Christmas playlist, continuing from last night, “Sunset, let’s do this.”
Sunset, predictably, didn’t think she’d get anything.
“On the first day of Christmas my true love gave to me,” the two cousins sang, giving the box wrapped in birds on branches to Sunset, “a partridge in a pear tree!”
“What?” Sunset said, taken aback by this.
“We started this this thing where on the thirteenth,” Autumn said, “one of us gets a present and wraps it like a certain day in the song Twelve Days of Christmas, then on Christmas, when the twelve presents are here, we open ‘em. You got the one for the first day. Merry Christmas.”
Sunset opened the box and found... “Cake batter?” she laughed, holding the box up.
“Looks can be deceiving.”
Sunset opened the box and found a copy of the movie RV.
“Oh-ho, lucky!!” Seth said, “Robin Williams is the BEST!!”
“Could we watch it later?” Sunset asked.
“The DVD’s yours. You can watch it whenever you want. Now you join in with us, it ain’t right if you don’t.”
“Okay.”
“On the second day of Christmas, my true love gave to me,” the box with the doves and hearts went to Seth, “Two turtle doves!”
It was a small, narrow box.
“I hope it isn’t,” he unwrapped it to find a powerstrip, inciting laughter from everyone, ”Enslaved by my own gag-gift!”
“On the third day of Christmas, my true love gave to me,” the box with hens went to Autumn, “Three french hens!”
“C’me on!” she said, tearing open the paper, then squealing, “Oh my GOD!!! An XBOX One X!!”
Seth and Autumn looked at each other, then at Sunset.
“Merry Christmas, Sunset,” Autumn said, handing the ROSS bags from last night to Sunset, “They’re for you.”
Sunset couldn’t believe all of the designer clothing that she had gotten, “Really?”
“Yeah,” Seth said, pushing a box wrapped in brown paper with the words Сунсет Шиммер written across the top.
“Me?”
“You.”
Sunset unwrapped the box to find it said “Best Buy” on it, so she opened it and couldn’t believe when she saw the tech inside.
“Best Buy was my friend last night.”
Sunset watched as Autumn and Seth exchanged gifts. Autumn had given Seth the original copy of Tomb Raider for Windows 95, while Seth had given Autumn a picture of them at an amusement park.
“Merry Christmas, all!” Autumn shouted as loudly as she could, going into the kitchen, “Bacon, eggs, and bagels okay? Good because they’ve been on for the past hour!”
“Another thing we decided earlier is that you can live with us, as a third gift,” Seth said as Autumn came back into the living room, “Merry Christmas.”
The hug was cut short by the fire alarm and the smell of over-crispy bacon.
"My God!" Autumn said, running to the stove, which was now producing dark smoke, "Open the door! It's on fire!!!"
Seth and Sunset opened the door, so Autumn could put out the fire.
"What's she doing?" Sunset asked as she and Seth watched Autumn dump the flaming contents of the pan onto the snowy yard, stomp on it with her bare foot, and beat it with the bottom of the frying pan.
"Putting out a kitchen fire."
Sunset noticed a fire extinguisher within arms' length of the stovetop, "Why doesn't she use the extinguisher?"
"That's boring," he said, running out and getting a handful of snow, dumping it on the charred, greasy bacon, "This is fun!"
"And insane," Sunset added as they came in.
"At least the toaster shuts off by itself and I never got to the eggs."
"That's a plus," Sunset said, looking to Seth, "What did she mean when she said you doused pasta in alcohol and set it on fire?"
"Well..."
Autumn was on the way home from some shopping, so Seth thought he'd make her lunch.
"Eggs," he said, going down to the basement and getting their old toaster, taking it apart, and cooking two eggs by jamming a coil through them and letting it heat for a few minutes over a plate, "Done. Bacon," he said, as he opened the eggs and grabbed some bacon and ran plain water through their coffee maker with the strips of bacon in it, letting it set for about thirty minutes.
"Pasta," he said, barely getting the stuff on the plate as his cousin came in.
"I'm home!"
He quickly doused it with rubbing alcohol from under the counter, set fire to it, and grabbed the bacon with his bare hand, wincing as he dropped it on the plate.
"I made lunch," he said, coming out of the kitchen with what looked and smelled like a science experiment gone terribly wrong.
At least the plate wasn't flammable.
"Why is the food on fire?" she said, worriedly looking between what was an attempt at making food and her cousin as he set the plate in front of her.
"I doused it in alcohol and, since I ran out of time, I thought we could watch it cook while we ate."
"Let's... not."
"What do you think, though?"
"It's better than last time," she said, "I think."
"You wanna just go out for lunch?"
"Let's do that," she said, taking the science experiment outside and stomping the fire out.
"Better!? What happened the last time!?"
"The fire department had to come out," Autumn said, pouring coffee and cream into three mugs: one with a hammer and sickle wearing a Santa hat, one with an oil-style picture of the Kremlin, and one with a Christmas tree, "Coffee?"
"Sure," Sunset said.
"Oh, and get a few changes of clothes," Seth added, "We need to be at the airport in a little while. My maternal aunt in the USSR invited us for Christmas, and we want you to come, too."
"Why?"
"Don't you want to spend the holiday with your family?"
"Family? What about Anon-a-miss?"
"If it were you, it would be like murdering somebody and leaving a note for the po-po telling where they could find you. Besides, you could use a vacation. Now, you eat breakfast while I get some things packed away in my Yugo."
Thankfully, Autumn didn't let anything else catch fire, so they had a nice breakfast. Afterward, Sunset packed and took a shower while Seth and Autumn loaded up her clothes.
A few minutes later, Sunset came out of the bathroom wearing a pair of name-brand jeans and a purple-and-orange shirt, "One more thing," Autumn added, getting a black leather jacket from behind the tree, "You might need this."
Walking outside, it was already impossible to distinguish where the flaming bacon had been thrown, and the blizzard had let up some. Sunset could see a nice, big plume of smoke emerging from the back of Seth's Yugo.
"After what happened last year," Autumn said, "I'm driving to the airport."
"What happened last year?" Sunset asked, trying to open the frozen-shut passenger door to the Yugo.
"I got cocky and gunned it."
"We almost slid off of the road!"
"HEY!" a voice called out, easily recognizable by Sunset as Rainbow Dash, "What the hell are you doing, making them feel sorry for you!"
"Rainbow Dash!" Sunset got out before Seth stepped in.
"What the hell are you doing!?"
For a guy, Seth had no measurable upper-body strength.
"Why are you taking her in!?"
''Why not!?"
"She's Anon-a-miss!!"
"No she isn't, and if she is," Seth turned to her, finding Autumn holding the former-homeless teen, then turned back to Dash, "Anon-a-miss is gonna have what's probably gonna be her first real Christmas!"
"Oh God! You REALLY feel sorry for her!?"
"Let me tell you something, asshole! Last night, my cousin and I were driving home and I almost HIT her! She said she was going home!"
"To a damn warehouse," Autumn added, "at 11:30 at night, on CHRISTMAS EVE, and in five-degree weather? HELL NO!!"
"How would you have liked it if it were you and we just left you there!?" Seth finished.
"UGH!!" Rainbow said, defeated as she stormed off back down the road, going to her original destination.
"You'd do that for me?" Sunset asked."
"We're family, now," Seth said, "So, unless you want to stay here and get hypothermia in the yard instead of going with us to Russialand..."
"I'm ready. Also...?"
"I don't drive in blizzards if I'm with her," he pulled a pocketknife out and stabbed at the ice between the panel gaps until it fell out, "Front or back?"
"Front, next to the vents."
They quickly piled into the packed car before Autumn slowly made her way to the airport, averaging around twenty-five or thirty miles per hour.
"Say what you want about women being crazy drivers," Autumn said after a two-hour-long drive to the airport, "but I think I'm better than most guys when it comes to snowstorms."
"I can't disagree with that," Seth said, getting everyone's luggage as she killed the engine.
The inside of the airport was a mess in and of itself.
"I'll get an extra flight ticket for Sunset," Autumn said.
"Oh!" Seth said as soon as his cousin was out of earshot, "Sunset, I want to help you set up your phone."
"What about the laptop?"
"The phone has to be connected to the laptop for it to work. It's basically an attachment to your phone. Every Windows-based computer I've had at some point started flipping out on me," he said, taking out the phone, putting it into the "laptop's" cradle, and powering it on, "Okay, first, it's just gonna ask you the same questions a regular computer would, but then I'll have to connect it to the cell towers."
"Okay," she replied, going through the "Welcome to Windows Continuum" questions, then stopping at the SIM network screen, returning the laptop to Seth, who took a minute to program it to the phone's cell service.
Soon, it rebooted and went to the desktop, "And that's it?" Sunset said, "How much did this cost? A phone and laptop in one?"
"Does it matter? It's Christmas. Go ahead and get used to it."
Seeing as how she was defeated in the argument, she took time to play around and get adjusted with it as Autumn came back.
"Leave in 30. The weather should be cleared up some by then, and they're trying to melt the snow on the runway."
Aeroflot Flight 15 to Moscow, now boarding at gate 12B. Departure time in 45 minutes.
As soon as Sunset put her laptop in her bag, they grabbed their luggage and went for the plane.
"You'll love Russia," Autumn said, "Aunt Natasha and Uncle Ivan are the absolute best to be around at Christmas!"
Leaving the plane and getting her bags, Sunset immediately got the feeling that she wasn't in the US anymore. They were numerous, but beautiful, or at the very least interesting to be around.
Current time is 5:45 AM Moskva Time. Flights to Kiev, Minsk, St Petersburg now boarding gates nine, ten, twelve, a Russian-accented voice said over the PA system, Kiev at Gate Nine, Minsk at Gate Ten, St Petersburg at Gate Twelve. Spasibo.
"This feels just like Kiev last year," Autumn said as a few hundred people went to the gates.
"Minsk," Seth corrected.
"What?"
"We went to Byelorussia last year. It was over the summer we went to East Berlin and The Ukraine."
"Oh," she said, her smiling face in her gloved hand, "Nobody knew where exactly to cross the streets."
"Why are you happy?"
"Five minutes after we got there, Sunset," Autumn said, "we figured 'Can't beat 'em? Just go across the streets wherever, too!' It's not like anyone in Belarus is a crazy driver."
"Yeah, leave that to me if we're in a blizzard and need to get somewhere, or if I'm rally crossing a car made of cotton that weighs three ounces and has less horsepower than any scooter made in the last two-and-a-half years. Thank you, Aging Wheels for doing that in your Trabant," the two cousins were laughing so hard.
"That was an amazing thing to do."
As soon as their luggage came around, they grabbed it, Seth exchanged his US money for Soviet rubles and kopeks, and then the trio set off, but Sunset's happiness soon turned to shocking fear when a few blocks later...
"Hey!"
The trio turned to see a policeman.
"Yes?" Seth said.
"Where do you live?"
"On the east coast," Seth said, him and Autumn getting a kick out of the situation while Sunset was uneasy.
"What do you mean 'The East Coast'? Where do you live!?"
"We came here as tourists."
"Where do you work!?"
"From our garage."
Could Seth mean 'our' like his and Autumn's, or 'our' like the three of us?
"Why do you break the pedestrian laws!?"
"We didn't know where to cross."
"You didn't know? How couldn't you know!?"
"Well, we just didn't know!"
Autumn was failing at not showing some kind of amusement to it, while Seth wasn't far behind.
"This will mean we'll fine you," the officer said, perturbed.
"Go ahead."
"I'll check on this and at work, they'll make a note of this and talk to you," he said, giving Seth a ticket.
Jaywalking - 3 Rubles Lipping off to a militiaman - 2 Rubles Total fine - 5 Rubles Date - 26 December 2018
Seth took the ticket and just paid the fine on the street, signing a carbon copy of the ticket that he paid it, along with the officer's signature, then continued on their way.
"That... what's so funny?"
"Every time we come to the Soviet Union," Seth said, cramming the ticket in his laptop bag, "we end up doing something like this at some point, so it's kind of funny now. Besides, five rubles really isn't a lot of money for us."
"By the way," Autumn said, "What's the rate of dollars to rubles?"
"One US Dollar for 63 Soviet Kopeks."
"What is all of that?" Sunset asked as they came to the car lot with rentals.
"In the US, we have dollars and cents. In the USSR, they have rubles and kopeks," a few minutes later, they found the office for the rental lot, "Be right back," he said, going in.
A few minutes later, he came back out with a set of car keys.
"Our car is the green 2016 Škoda Citigo," he said, leading them to it before turning to Autumn, "And yes it's a manual. I made sure of it this time."
"I have the instructions to the hotel and to get to Uncle Ivan and Aunt Natasha's place."
It took a few minutes, but they were able to get everything into the small, city hatchback.
"You know what's sad," Seth said, starting the car, "a 2016 Citigo has exactly ten more horsepower than our station wagon from 1983 DDR, which only has 50 hp."
"Well, you did say that you just needed a car for city roads, so..."
"True," he said, shifting into gear and going onto the road, "But in all seriousness, do we need anything? Other than coats? USSR winters are a lot colder than Delaware winters, Sunset."
Rainbow Dash and Scootaloo got to the Apple Family barn around 7:30 AM on Christmas Day. Windy Whistles and Bow Hothoof, their parents, would join them later. Their friends and their families were there already, along with the exchange student, Zecora.
"MERRY CHRISTMAS, DASHIE AND SCOOTALOO!!!!!" Pinkie said, hugging both so hard they couldn't breathe.
"Pinkie Pie," Zecora said, "Your hug is causing your friends to choke, which in time will lead them to croak."
"Oh! Sorry!"
"That's okay. Merry Christmas to you, too, Pinkie. Our parents said to not wait up, it'll be an hour."
"Now, I wish to tell you a tale, one of how the events were so happily a fail."
There was no way in whatever hell either of the two worlds had, that they were going to be ready for what was next."
"Ah guess a Christmas story's a good way ta start," Applejack said, "Have at it, Zecora!"
"Yes, please, Darling."
"Last night, a girl I'm sure you all know had a hope so low. She planned to end it all when she heard a roar and saw lights, but her jump caused the driver a terrible fright. To me, it sounded as a beast, but was simply an engine from the East. The help she was offered was immeasurable, but gave her the ability to once more be hopeful. I saw, on the next morn, a certain one of you taking a warn. The warn was from he who decorates of the Kremlin and she who came from the tribe of the Kirin. In an argument rather brief," she looked at Rainbow Dash, "you were explained Sunset's innocent grief. While Sunset was torn by Anon-a-miss, the true culprit has taken more than the piss."
"Excuse me?"
"Rainbow Dash, to some you may be a nitwit, but in my country you'd be less than shit. Your actions deplore Sunset, but without you she seems to be living, yet."
"This is about what Dash said to you, ain't it?" Applejack asked, perturbed.
"Well," Dash said, sticking her butt at Zecora, "You in your hut of grass can kiss my ASS!!"
"To you both, I shun, simply to enjoy the Christmas fun."
"She... Sunset tried to..." Fluttershy said.
"Yes, I am afraid so, but she did not succeed, no."
"Where is she!?" Fluttershy said through teary eyes.
"From what I understand, they are headed to the Soviet Land to celebrate with the ones that do not hate."
"Okay," Autumn said, "Other than the GUM, where do we need to go and when?"
"Well," Seth replied, "Which way to Red Square? Even with the heater all the way on full-blast in this Škoda, I need a better jacket. All in favor?"
"Aye," came two simultaneous replies.
"Alright," Seth said as Autumn gave him directions.
"What's The GUM?"
"Oh, dear Celestia," Sunset said in awe.
"Before we leave to go to the hotel," Autumn said, "Let's do our Christmas shopping here."
"Agreed," Sunset and Seth said in awe.
They all began to walk to the various stores, starting out with getting their coats before putting theirs from home in the Citigo.
"It feels weird, wearing a fur coat that comes to my knees," Sunset said, "The hat feels a little weird, too."
"We both had one from last year, but they must've got lost when we moved from Brooklyn," Autumn said, "You actually get used to them after a short time."
"This is a lot warmer than my leather jacket," Sunset said, "I hope you wouldn't be offended if I wear this more than the leather one."
"Not at all," Autumn said as they all went back in.
"A few of our cousins from the DDR, the GDR, East Germany, Sunset, are super-interested in cosmonauts. Would you like to help with the shopping?"
"Sure," she said with a smile, "What's a cosmonaut?"
"Astronaut."
Over the course of the next couple of hours, the trio did shopping for their family in Moskva (Moskva, Moskau, Moscow. I don't think I left anything out), but something compelled Sunset to call one of her former-friends.
"Mind if I take a few minutes?"
"Sure," Seth replied, "Go right ahead."
Sunset found a bench and sat down while she set up her Skype and opened a videochat with Fluttershy.
"Hi, Fluttershy."
"Oh Sunset! Thank goodness you're okay! Where are you? Zecora said you're in 'The Soviet Land', but I don't know where that is."
"The USSR. We're actually in Moscow. Are you okay?"
"I'm fine. How are you?"
"Well, I'm weirded out by the fact that we're not in the US anymore, but it's a different kind than when I came to Earth from Equestria."
"How so?"
"Well, to make a long story short, I was adoped Christmas Eve, and earlier, Seth, one of the two people that adopted me, lipped off to an officer. Autumn, his cousin, was getting a big kick out of it too. The cop seemed to be... hostile, especially since we just crossed the street in the wrong place. I think they only paid about eight dollars on the street, mostly because they just laughed the guy off."
"Oh my..."
"It was actually pretty funny, thinking about it now. Anyway, I have to go," she said, ending the skype call.
"How'd it go," Seth said, both cousins going up to Sunset, loaded with bags.
"Good."
"I think we should start to the hotel and get some shuteye," Autmn said.
"Yeah. It is getting pretty late."
"I need to make a call right quick," Seth said, dialing a number.
"Hallo?"
"Mitzi?"
"Seth! You und Autumn made it to die Sowjetunion fine?"
"Yeah. Are Alex and Arnold there with you?"
"Nein. They are still in der Bundesrepublik Deutschlands when I called last, though- oh, sie just came in!"
"We're about to leave The GUM to go to our hotel. Can I talk to Aunt Natasha or Uncle Ivan?"
"Just one minute," she turned from the phone, "Aunt Natasha, Seth und Autumn are here... Ja, he wants you.
Seth waited a minute in silence as we went out and tried to fit everything in the Škoda.
"Privet."
"Aunt Natasha we won't have time to come by tonight, but we'll be there first thing in the morning. Is Mitzi and Alex staying with you?"
"Da. You get cosmonaut book for Arnold, da?"
"Yeah, I made sure," Seth said smiling as Aunt Natasha laughed somewhat, "On a more serious note, is it okay that we brought someone with us?"
"Da! It Christmas and Novyy God. Of course it okay! I want it to be surprise for Vladislav. He flying in from Omsk, will get here at 01:00. I guarantee he going to enjoy addition to family. Also, Liz is here from London. She staying until January 10."
"Ahrighty. I'll see you first thing in the morning."
"Proshchay."
After they loaded up our Christmas, they headed back to the hotel where they unpacked.
"I'll set my alarm for 5:30, if that's okay with you."
"Fine by me," Autumn said.
"Thanks again, you two, for doing this," Sunset added with a yawn, "I guess we'll just get up early to bathe?"
"Sure," Seth said as the three got in their beds and almost immediately fell asleep.
At 5:30 the next morning, Sunset woke up to the default Windows 10 Alarm music, a gentle piece, only to find Seth and Autumn finishing the Christmas presents.
"Mmm, how long have you two been up?"
Seth checked his watch, "An hour, give or take," he went and handed Sunset's clothes to her, "Everything's ready. We're through with the bathroom."
"As nice as that is, it's creepy."
"Actually, I did that," Autumn admitted.
"Oh..."
"I thought that would help the morning. Besides, we're going to the opposite side of Moscow."
"Over the summer, we went to the DDR to see our cosmonaut-obsessed cousin," Seth said as Sunset went to the bathroom, "We may do it again, but with you this year."
"That's... too nice. You probably wouldn't have done what you did the other night if you knew who I was before the Fall Formal."
The cousins looked at each other, "Yeah, right," Autumn said.
"Jerk or non, you were homeless first," Seth added.
"I turned into a raging she-demon."
"So?"
"What?"
"It was on YouTube's Featured page for a month," Autumn said, "The whole setup was kinda cool-looking, thinking back on it."
"Not for me," Sunset said, going into the bathroom, "I really don't wanna talk about it."
"Wow," Autumn said after the shower turned on, "She really needed something like this."
"Most people who do hide behind a mask that people mistake for being the jerky-kind of rich person."
"Are we bad people?"
"I don't think so."
Over the next several minutes, while Sunset was getting ready to leave, Seth and Autumn put the gifts in the car.
"Should we get something on the way?" Autumn said, "Aunt Natasha is making breakfast, but she's also on the other side of Moscow."
"How about we just get something from the hotel. I really shouldn't drive without coffee, and the last time you drove here in the CCCP, it almost ended terribly."
"Agreed."
They went back in to get Sunset, who was finished and ready, and explained the plan to get something quick from the hotel before leaving for the Christmas/Navvy God party.
"Alright," Sunset said as they got down to the kitchen. They all decided on coffee and eggs, because that was quick, then left for the party.
"How long are we looking at?" Seth said, starting the car.
"That depends, how fast are you driving?"
"What does the map say?"
"About an hour and a half."
"I'm going full-speed."
"Forty-five minutes," Autumn turned to Sunset in the back seat, "Hold on. From what I've read, if he passes any cars, we could get rear-ended in the oncoming lane of traffic."
"Oh, Celestia, help me."
Seth, true to his word, drove like a madman.
"What are you doing!?"
"I'm right," he replied, "and everyone else is an idiot. Almost like in Brooklyn, except it's Christmas and we're in Russia."
After 45 bloodcurdling minutes, they were at the house. Reality didn't catch up to Sunset for a few minutes, though.
"I think you're the idiot. Not everyone else in Russia."
"We're here alive, right?"
"Good point, barely."
"How about you go in and have breakfast," Autumn said, "and we'll unload."
"Are you-"
"Go ahead."
The three went to the door and rang the doorbell and was greeted by a young, blond woman.
"Hallo? Seth! Autumn!" the woman said with a moderate-German accent, then noticed Sunset, "Who are you?"
"I'm Sunset Shimmer."
"I'm Mitzi Krause, nice to meet you.
"Mitzi, who is at door?" a Russian accent called from inside the house.
"Es ist Seth, und Autumn, und Sunset Shimmer!"
"I am in kitchen now. Can you help unpack?"
"Ja!"
The four had the car emptied in a matter of minutes.
"Mitzi," Sunset asked, "Where are you from?"
"I'm from die Deutsche Demokratische Republik, East Berlin. Mein husband Alex, und our sohn, Arnold. Aunt Natasha es in das kitchen, making breakfast."
"It smells nice."
"Would you like coffee? Es ist still early."
"Sure," the three replied.
"Oh," Autumn asked, "Where are Alex and Arnold?"
"They're still sleeping. Onkle Ivan went out to get gifts for your friend."
"Aunt Natasha?" Mitzi said, taking them into the kitchen.
"Da?" said a middle-aged woman said.
"Ich can take this über," Mitzi said to the older woman as the two swapped roles.
"Spasibo."
"I guess you're their Aunt Natasha that I've heard so much about?"
"You must be Sunset Shimmer, da?"
"Uh... I think? I'm sorry. I've never been out of Delaware before."
"When words are similar," Autumn said to Sunset, "Usually they just say their word instead of the English one. It just makes the party more fun."
"Oh, yeah."
"Navvy God," Natasha said, taking Sunset to the Christmas/New Year's tree, then giving her an ornament in the shape of a Sun, "It for you. I have side-job of making ornaments. Navvy God," Natasha turned to Seth, "Sofia has something she want to give you when she comes later today."
"From the physics lab?"
"Da, I think so."
"Oh, when should Uncle Ivan and Sofia get here?"
"Ivan should be back in hour, Sofia in two, maybe tree. Flight from Belarus was delayed for while because of weather."
"And when do you think Vladislav should get up?"
Natasha checked the clock on the wall, "Not too long."
"Das Frühstück!" Mitzi called from the kitchen.
Sunset knew she'd enjoy the next several days more than anything since she was Princess Celestia's student.
It was two hours, exactly like Natasha said, before Sofia from Belarus (or Byelorussia) made it to the house. Sunset had made it a point to get to know everyone, though it wasn't until about 9:30 before everyone was there.
And Sunset had cold feet about this.
"Dàjiā hǎo!" a girl said, coming in with, just like everyone else, an armful of too many gifts to carry.
I don't remember anyone mentioning anything about a Chinese girl, Sunset thought to herself, I dunno. Maybe they forgot.
"Sorry I late. I had feeling to pick up something for someone," she turned to Sunset, "It never let me down."
"I'm Sunset Shimmer."
"I'm Hong Liu," she held a bag with the words 夕阳微光 scripted on it, "It is for you."
"Aw, thanks!"
"I would be honored if you tried it."
Sunset sat down opened the bag, "Sweet Celestia."
"You like?"
It was a Chinese dress, purple trimmed in orange, decorated with what resembled her two-toned Sun cutie mark, along with a pair of traditional Chinese shoes, hand-painted to have the same wavy two-toned pattern that her hair did, along with a pair of orange chopsticks.
"I love it."
"Go try it on," Hong said.
Sunset went to the bathroom with her new clothes, changed into them, and came back out, looking as if she had just been to Shenzhen herself, albeit without her hair tied back.
"I couldn't do my hair."
"Let me show you," Hong said, going into full detail on how to fix her hair with them, "Done."
"I love it," she said, looking at her new attire in a mirror on the wall.
"I'm so glad. Have you met rest of family?"
"Just Mitzi and Natasha. Briefly."
"I sure Elizabeth is in kitchen making English tea."
In the kitchen was Natasha, Mitzi, Autumn, a messy girl about Sunset's age who highly resembled Seth, and a brown-haired girl aged somewhere in between herself and Mitzi.
Natasha looked up, then went over to the two new girls in the room, "Elizabeth, Sofia, this Sunset Shimmer."
"Wotcha, Sunset Shimmer," the brown-haired girl said with a cockney accent, "It's sugar and spice ter meet ya."
"Nice to meet you too, I think."
"You're funny!" the girl laughed, "I'm Elizabef, but ya can call me 'Liz'."
"Oh, you're from England!" Sunset replied, smiling.
"Straight from London. I've 'eard a Hoppin' Pot abaht ya, and I fin' we'll get along just Calvin Klein," she noticed Sunset's new dress, "I golden dove the bleedin' dress. Was it a gift from 'ong?"
She knew that was a compliment, based on the expressions Liz was giving out.
"Yeah. It was. I love it."
"'ong Liu, you've gotta take me ter China sum day so we can Scapa Fla shoppin' together."
"In Summer, it will be just two of us."
"And you must be Sofia from Belarus? Byelorussia?"
"It can be called either."
"They told me you love physics."
"Da. I saw your work online after Friendship Games."
"Aw, that was nothing."
"Not often great minds like you are born. You would be like god at lab in Minsk."
"I guess it's too late to hide it. I did get kind of unnerved when we first got here, though."
"I saw incident on Vremya last night. You needn't worry. Militiamen can be jerks sometime. Fine is always low, never more than five rubles for me. Have you met Vladislav yet?"
Sunset had walked and joined the others in a different room; Seth, a middle-aged man, a younger-aged man, and a father and a boy who was in the ninth-grade, presumably his son.
"I don't know what to..."
The boy noticed her.
"Ich saw your work," the boy said, directing everyone's attention to her.
Crap. One of them is gonna kick me out, I just know it.
"You must be Sunset Shimmer," the middle-aged man said, "I am Ivan. I hear lots about you."
"Vladislav," the younger said, "Do you take advanced class?"
"Yeah, kinda."
Sunset made her way to the boy, "So you're the cosmonaut?"
"Ich bin Arnold, so ja. Ich like your dress."
"Und I'm Alex. You have met mein wife, Mitzi?"
"She's nice."
"You have never been to Europe, Sunset?" Alex asked, noticing her delayed responses to their speech.
"Oh, I'm sorry," she said, holding her hands up, "I... it's just..."
"Es ist okay," Alex replied, smiling, "I understand. You aren't used zu hearing uns speak. Es ist perfectly fein."
"Thanks for understanding."
"Es ist our pleasure."
"Sunset," Vladislav said, coming over to her, "Navvy God from Omsk," he put a necklace on her with a charm in the shape of a purple star, trimmed in orange, "You can call us anytime. Remember that."
"Just be honest with us," Natasha said.
Sunset turned around and saw that everyone was in the same room now.
"Sofia, you wanted to talk?"
"I saw YouTube video of Friendship Games with leaked work. Normally, I don't question this, but I have to ask, was it real?"
"Yeah," she said, confident that they would accept her, "Yeah, it was. You see, I don't have any family in this world. As for that equation, I was the student of the Princess of the Sun, Princess Celestia. That... didn't end too well on my part. The holes in reality, they were to Equestria. That's where I'm from. I'm actually a unicorn, back at home. The equation that I solved, was to calculate the force of a beam of magic, the diameter of an average hoof, at a distance of twenty feet. In reality, though, it never would've happened if I hadn't tried to gone back and steal a magic crown," the room was silent for a minute, "I'll... just go an"
"Nyet!" Natasha said, "You come this far, I see no lies, Sunset Shimmer. You are welcome to family."
"When I saw video," Sofia said, "I ran numbers, they confirmed."
"Plus you do not look like you always study," Mitzi said.
"Even I don't have a mind like that," Seth said, "Then again, I'm just the smart guy without common sense or the ability to cook without making a fire."
"You almost burn house in Belarus."
"I'm banned from cooking," Seth turned to Autumn, "mom."
"With good reason," Autumn said, crossing her arms.
"Do you have das kosmonauten im Equestria?" Arnold said, excited.
"No, actually, Princess Celestia controls the heavens."
"Die Prinzessin?"
"Yeah. Princess Celestia controls the Sun, while Princess Luna controls the Moon."
"Please, tell of your country," Ivan said.
"Get comfy," she said as she started an hour's worth of stories.
"So you have Hearts Warming?" Natasha said.
"Hearth's Warming. It's kind of like Christmas or Novvy God, but different, you know?"
"Ja," Arnold said.
"If I can get Princess Twilight's approval," Sunset said with a smile, would you all like to come to Equestria for a week this summer?" she turned to Seth and Autumn, "If you're okay with not going to the DDR, of course."
"Better idea," Autumn said, "Everyone meets us in Canterlot, then we'll go from there. Equestria, America, London, FDR, DDR, Belarus, Moscow, Omsk, and Shenzhen! If everyone's okay with that."
Everyone in the room agreed with her as Sunset took out her journal and began to write to Twilight, "She says alright," Sunset looked up at everyone, smiling, "But could I get a picture to send to her first?"
"Settled," she said, "Mark your calendars."
"Who wants to use my phone to get a group picture?" Seth said as Autumn grabbed it.
"One... two... three... cheese!"
As soon as the picture was taken, Aunt Natasha printed it out so Sunset could put it in her journal.
Wow! You're really getting along! I'm so proud of you! But where are the girls? Not important RIGHT now, but we're having a lot of fun here! Where exactly are you? It doesn't look like Canterlot. In Moscow. It's in Russia, on the other side of the world. Where we have Hearth's Warming, they have Christmas and Novvy God. A few of them are from here in Moscow, one is from Belarus, she's a physicist. Another is from Omsk, somewhere else in Russia, one girl is from China, she gave me the dress, and a family from the DutchDuetchDusch DDR. They're all really nice. That's good to hear, but can you tell me about these places later? Sure, but I'm gonna get you a present on the way back. I'll write you when I'm back in town, so you know when to get it. Just don't bring a coat. Okay, Sunset. I'll see you when you get back!
How did I buttdial Mom!? Rainbow Dash thought as she pulled the phone out of her pocket, "Hey, Mom."
"Rainbow Dash, we raised you BETTER than this! You drove a girl to commit SUICIDE!?"
"Uh, no, Mom," Rainbow said, grabbing a handful of hay and rubbing it against the phone, "What? Sorry I... losin' ya... la..." she hung up and shut her phone completely off.
"Pinkie," Maude said to her younger sister, "Why did you do this?"
"I'm so sorry!!" came the reply, along with literal gallons of tears that came from who-knows-where.
Everyone was having to answer for what they did at this point, and none of them were holding up well. In fact, all hell was beginning to unfold somewhat in the barn.
"D... do you think Sunset...?"
"Since I have been going to your school, I've seen her, as you say, regain her cool. She is an honest girl, but for her forgiveness, it will be more than just a hurdle."
"Should I call her?"
"A flight to the Russianland was planned, but I'm sure it has yet to land."
"Fluttershy, don't bother with that bitch!" Rainbow said, "I had 'er phone busted!"
"Why?" was all Zecora could come up with.
"She hasn't posted again, but I really wish she were in the middle of the road right now."
"While I too was attacked, it was done so without fact. I must admit, while I was perturbed, I believe Anon-a-miss was the one who was truly disturbed. My people do not hold ill-will because of her transgression so slight, instead we look to resolve it at a time most nigh."
"You and your fancy nature gods better-"
"While my people are Pagan, we don't disrespect and hate as you do and do again."
"So you're telling me that I'm blaming this on a bunch of dumb animals and trees!?" Fluttershy got up and went over to Rainbow during her rant, "I'm pretty sure that they don't have a brain to-" Fluttershy sent a blow to the ranter's nose, breaking it and ushering a wave of frightening silence throughout the barn, "WHAT THE ACTUAL HELL!?"
"Don't EVER let me catch you saying something like that again! Not only were you disrespecting nature, but you were supposed to be LOYAL to us, Sunset included! I don't care HOW much of a jerk she was, but it sure-as-hell didn't justify THIS!!!" she stormed out of the barn, slamming the door behind her.
Nobody did anything for a minute.
"Fluttershy!" Zecora said, running out to find the angered girl.
Anon-a-miss posted a new update just now You know the new girl Autumn Blaze? Well, word has it that she has a pretty funny trigger word: NIRIK
Autumn was walking down the halls with Seth during their free block, deciding who they were going to ask to house-sit for them while they were in Moscow, when
"Nirik!"
"Excuse me?" she said through gritted teeth, turning around to find the biggest jock at CHS, Touchdown and a friend of his, along with a small crowd gathering to see the scene unfold.
"You heard me you cute, little, weak, bitchy Nirik!"
Normally, she was mellow, happy, and gave out some of the best vibes of anyone at CHS, Rainbooms included, but now she was just pissed. A 275-pound jock was harassing the crap outta her, a 100-pound Kirin girl.
"Aww, wittwe Niwik baby mad?" he said, prodding as her expression darkened somewhat.
Seth put his arm around her, sending a secret message.
Wait a while and see where this goes. It'll be a whole lot funnier then.
She pretended to be sad and insecure, crying. All those months of acting were gonna pay off sooner than she thought.
"Now," he said, "You, me, your place, 4:00," he looked to Seth, "You gotta problem with that, bub?"
"No. I'm actually scared to have a problem with it."
"Good."
Scared to have a problem with you getting thrashed by a petite girl that you outweigh by three times, yeah. You ain't seen crazy.
"Told ya I'd get 'er, Pigskin," he said as his other jock friend left with him.
"Tear 'er open!"
A few minutes later, and the façade was gone.
"You set up the webcams in my room if you wanna see the end of this guy."
At that, they shared a high-five and went to the library to brainstorm the... creativity.
4:00
Seth was on the couch, screwing with his laptop in Microsoft Word Mobile (actually just pretending to with Seven Saviors from FimFiction copy-pasted to look like he was writing a paper) with the TV remote ready to switch to the cameras and a large mocha and box of Red Bulls when he heard banging on the door.
"It's unlocked," he said, knowing good-and-well who it was.
"Where is she?" Touchdown said, throwing the door open.
"Her bedroom. The one with leaves."
Slamming the door, he went to Autumn's room, where he found it completely dark.
"Get on the bed," she said as if she were still sad and insecure from under her desk, "I'll be ready in a minute."
"AW RIGHT!" he said, slamming Autumn's door, too.
"And now," Seth said, closing his laptop, turning the TV on, setting it to record, then sliding the laptop under the couch, "Better-than-cable," he had a devilish smile on his face.
The webcams were night-vision, which only made it easier for the trap to be recorded.
When she came out from under the desk, she was the color of asphalt, had fangs, and demonic eyes that glowed. This was Seth's cue to lock Autumn's door so Touchdown couldn't get out
"I'm ready," she said, a small, demonic touch to her voice.
"Wha-"
Seth watched as Autumn bore her fangs into his arm, then began other acts that were borderline-torture.
"OH MY GOD!!!!!"
"YOU LIKE IT!? YOU'RE GONNA GET A HELLUVA LOT MORE OF IT!!!!!"
Touchdown's screaming and beating on the walls was enough to incite their next-door neighbor, Lightning Dust, to come check on things.
"I heard screaming and-" she said, running in, only to be interrupted by Seth holding a hand up toward her direction, drinking his mocha, "Is that Touchdown?" he pointed to the TV, "Mind if I watch?" he patted the seat on the couch next to him, turning up the volume and kicking his feet up on the coffee table as she closed the door and took the seat.
"Are we bad people for enjoying this?" Seth said, handing her a can of Red Bull.
"I don't know, but- Ho-ly CRAP! Are those MATCHES on that glove?"
"Good news: I'm gonna touch you in your special part, juusst like you wanted," Autumn said, swiping her left hand quickly over his torso, then holding true to her promise, causing him to scream in agony. He couldn't do anything, though; Autumn was, on a scale of one-to-ten, a fifty at tying knots.
"Yup."
"Can't say he didn't have it coming. He's almost 300 pounds of muscle. I know because he keeps bragging about it."
"And we're watching him be completely pulverized by my cousin who weighs a third of that."
"Whatcha gonna do with this?"
"Blackmail. I've heard he does this hundreds of times a day on some occasions."
"That's an understatement."
"How's about a kiss, hotstuff?"
"NO!!! PLEASE!!! PLEASE DEAR GOD NO!!!!!"
Both hands went on his face as she bit down on his lip, tearing a part of it off, "I was hoping for the inside of your mouth," she said, smothering a small flame as she found the opportunity, "I love this."
"Should we call 911?" Lightning Dust said.
"It shouldn't be too much longer until she's finished. We don't call each other's fights unless they're not worth it."
A few minutes later, she was back to the kindhearted Autumn Blaze that everyone had grown to know over the past two months.
"I'm finished, now," she said, a barely-conscious jock tied up on her bed.
"Cut him loose, I'll unlock the door."
Seth stopped the recording and shut the TV off, then went and unlocked the door, finding an innocent-looking Autumn standing there, "I think he hurt himself during... it."
Lightning and Seth both looked around her and played Autumn's game of innocence.
"What in hell did you do in there?"
"It wasn't as bad as I thought it was gonna be."
"I'll call an ambulance," Lightning said, getting out her phone and calling 911.
The Next Day
As the cousins went down the halls of CHS, a few people had questions.
"What happened to Touchdown?" Sunset said, worriedly standing next to the Rainbooms.
"He hurt himself a little," the six girls winced, "It happens with every guy I come home with," they ran backwards into the lockers, "I'm still not sure why, though."
Sunset, Fluttershy, and Rarity passed out, Rainbow and Applejack were frozen with shock, and Pinkie... just wasn't Pinkie.
"Maybe he'll be better by mid-January. If you're practicing after school, mind if we stay and watch?"
The three girls that were still awake each got one of the unconscious ones and ran off.
"Would you like to open gifts, Sunset Shimmer?" Uncle Ivan said, "You are new, so you make call."
"Sure," I guess, "If you want to."
"Vy heard new girl!" Vladislav said, prompting everyone to go and start their gift-giving from under the tree.
"Sunset," Mitzi said, giving her a decent-sized and decently-heavy box (or weight), wrapped in paper with the DDR coat of arms as it's pattern, "Der hammer und der kompass means Worker und Intellekt."
"You're... really patriotic," she replied, smiling, "Aren't you?"
"Even after mess im 1980s, das DDR may be ein little less wealthy than der Bundrespublik Deutschlands, but we still moved. Money ist not everything. Now open es!"
Sunset opened it to find that it was a compass, black, red, and yellow, in a glass rectangle.
"You really think I'm..."
"Anyone wer can do that ist intelligent."
"Oh," Autumn said, "Back when Seth and I went to Brooklyn General High School, the shittiest place, when we came to the division of Germany, Seth and I both asked how far Ms Historiker would go, she's from Frankfurt, and guess what she said."
"What?"
"East Germany was just a rogue state by the pink commies who took what wasn't theirs to begin with in 1917."
"Well, die DDR und die FDR are different countries, each with the tricolor flag with their coat of arms. They are part of the Deutsch Union, which has the neutral flag, just the stripes."
"Ich werde meine Schwester anrufen," Alex said, perturbed as he went to get the phone from the kitchen.
Sunset looked to the cousins, who then looked to Mitzi.
"Ihre teacher ist his bruder."
"Celestia, the poor woman."
"Speaking of poor souls," Autumn said, "A while back, a MyStable personality known as Anon-a-miss threw up to call me the N-word, so a jock kept on and on, so I pretended to be submissive, sad, and insecure. Naturally he wanted to have sex with me, buutt..."
"You kept him alive, da?" Sofia said after a minute with a straight face, showing no emotion, whatsoever.
"I did. He should be out by early-February."
"Poor soul," she said (in the same manner that Sheldon would say "There, there" in TBBT).
"Then they made fun of my synesthesia," Seth added, "so we made an exoskeleton for me to wear under my clothes with fifty Pis connected across the school, and I faked several... tech disasters."
"I glad to be related to you."
"Anyway," he said, getting something out from under the tree that was cloth, "Mitzi, I know your love of the DDR, so..."
Upon getting it, she opened it to reveal a shoddy, albeit handmade, verticle DDR banner, along with a double-sided record and CD, both labeled Auferstanden aus Ruinen.
"Ich LOVE es!"
"The record is the first recording, both instrumental and with vocals, and the CD is... mostly homemade recordings."
"Danke!"
Alex came back in the room, looking better.
"What were you screaming over the phone? I know I shouldn't ask, but I just have to."
"You don't want zu know."
"O...kay."
There was a lot of gift giving and stories over the next hourish before they settled for lunch.
"Seth? Autumn?" Sunset said, holding the two back for a second before lunch, "When you... what did you..."
"Do? About Anon-a-miss?" Autumn finished, "Well, I come from the Kirin tribe, we're adoptive cousins for people who actually wonder, and the Kirin are nice, sociable, friendly people. When someone uses the term 'Nirik' to describe us, that's one of the few things that would piss off any self-respecting Kirin. On so many levels. My parents and I moved to Brooklyn when I was nine, then Seth and I became good friends because we were just so different from everyone else. Some time after I turned twelve, well, let's just say I may not get to see my mom and dad until after I leave Earth for good. Anyway, word got to Seth's parents, so I was adopted into their family, and we've been close ever since. That thing with Touchdown, let's just say... Niriks are the demonic equivalent of Kirin. That's why you won't be seeing him for a while outside of the Urgent Care Unit."
"She doesn't mean that lightly by any stretch of means."
"So... that... basically means something along the lines of 'Walking Demon'?"
"Essentially, yeah."
"I will definately try to stay on your good side," she turned to Seth, "And your synesthesia? By the way, what is that?"
"It's... I don't really know how to explain it, other than I can see, hear, feel, taste, and smell things that most people can't, primarily because my brain kicks something in with it that isn't there. For instance, I can see the Wi-Fi signals when I'm or someone else is using a device, or when I listen to music or sound, I can see like a scope of the song or sound, or if I'm looking up fanart, an oil-painting-style picture for instance, I would feel the oily texture just by looking at the picture. In fact, creepers in Minecraft actually feel like dead leaves. It's actually pretty awesome for me. When Anon-a-miss pulled that shit at me, you got the rundown earler, but it ended with me making 'predictions' about the tech, but mostly calling people out without even seeing what they were doing on their phones," he suddenly became somewhat disturbed, "Porn is one thing, but what I saw over the airwaves, was beyond disturbing, to say the least."
"I just have to ask, even though I don't want to, but what?"
"Download MorningDew, lock the doors, close the windows, mute your device, and on 100l<(_)|*.mist, look up porn, and be prepared to see un-unseeable things."
"How do you know that's there, Seth?"
"For one thing, the MorningDew network is on the Deep Web and Dark Web, it's intentionally hard to find data, even to the point where I can't see more than the next page, sometimes, and when I think I've got the cracked, bootleg copy of whatever $500 piece of software I'm looking for, well, you know how it goes from there. Darknet, you know?"
"I'll just take your word for it," Sunset said, "Now let's get lunch."
After having made sure Fluttershy was home safely and getting breakfast from Wendy's for her and Speedy Silverstreak, Zecora decided to meet up with him at the cousins' house so they could keep an eye on things while it's regular inhabitants were halfway around the world.
Speedy was just flipping through channels, when Zecora came in.
"How was the Rainbooms' Christmas?"
"To tell you the short tale, it quickly went to hell."
"Ah."
That was understandable, considering how Sunset's name would inevitably come up.
"They left a note," he said, getting up and going over to the Christmas tree on the counter, then handed it to Zecora, "I figured I'd just leave things alone until you got here so we're on the same page."
Speedy and Z'koZekZecora, Thanks SO much for doing this! Feel free to get into anything, but just don't destroy anything. Especially by cooking, cause that's MY thing. If you have any questions, feel free to call us. We have one of those AT&T home phone things, so don't worry about it.
"It appears to be a simple task, for they have not much to ask."
"Yeah, I think we'll be fine," Speedy agreed, wondering about the cooking sentence.
"Say, you want some coffee?"
"Yes, thank you."
Speedy went to get the coffee, but couldn't find it in Seth and Autumn's... rattrap of a pantry (You'd think they'd have everything sorted after living there for a few months), so he ended up needing to call one of them. He tried Autumn first, but just straight to her voicemail.
"Hi, this is Autumn Blaze. Leave a message!"
Then Seth
"I can't take the call now, so leave a message or, if it's really important, just press redial until I answer."
Then the house where they were staying at.
First, the ringback tone was the same as if anywhere else in America were being called, then
BE-BEEEP... BE-BEEEP... BE-BEEEP...
Somewhat confused, he just figured it was normal, considering the 14-digit number.
"Hallo?"
"Hi, is Autumn or Seth there?"
"Who ist calling?"
"It's their friend from school, Speedy Silverstreak."
"Oh, nein. Not yet. Do you need them?"
"I just had a question, but I'll text 'em instead."
"Okay. You have ein Merry Christmas!"
"Thanks, you too," he said, ending the call, then turning to Zecora, "Nothing."
"I got some from a Wendy's that was near, now that we're here."
"Alright," Speedy said, texting Autumn as Zecora pulled some sandwiches out of a brown paper bag.
Autumn, I'm assuming Seth doesn't go in the kitchen, so I was wondering if you knew where the coffee is?
"Merry Christmas," Zecora said as Speedy set his phone near on the AT&T box.
"You, too," he replied as they started their breakfast.
To say that Sunset had never seen people drink Vodka with lunch would be one of the many things she'd consider wrong. But she was also in the USSR, so... shrugging it off as normal would really be the only thing to do.
"Sunset, you can handle Vodka, da?" Vladislav said.
"In Equestria, we had apple cider. That was hard."
"It on."
Sunset and Vladislav were in a drinking contest because of who-knows-why for a few minutes before Seth's phone rang.
Home
"'xcuse me," he said, stepping into the living room, "Hey, everything okay?"
"We found the coffee-"
"Just go ahead and call it a rat's nest. That's what our pantry feels like, anyway."
"Yeah, but you just got a delivery, the return address just says 'Anonymous'. Were you expecting anything?"
"Open it."
"It's a Dollar Store phone."
"Turn it on and plug it into my computer in my room."
"Okay... done. The phone says Readme and Chrome."
"Gah, chrome sucks, I hate chrome. I use FF so I can build off of it."
"Riight... should I do anything else?"
"No, that'll do it. Anything in the mail?"
"Just a few envelopes."
"Put 'em in my drawer with the MINECRAFT logo."
"Okay. Talk to you later, dude."
"You too. Merry Christmas," he said, ending the call.
"Sunset!" he called, opening his laptop and connecting it to the wireless, "C'me here!"
Her and Sofia came in the room.
"You got something?" Sunset said, unaffected by the copious amounts of alcohol she drank.
"Guess what was delivered to the house," he said.
"What?"
"I think it was Anon-a-miss's phone," he said, opening up a bunch of BitRazer files to download, Autumn following them into the room, "Get me coffee, it'll take, like, ninety seconds."
After decrypting the archives, he connected to his desktop, then to the phone, which, indeed, turned out to be a $15 phone at best.
"Remind me to ask you how you do that," Sofia said as the phone's screen came up in a HackDroid window.
Opening the Readme file, it contained two lines of text:
You get to be the next Anon-a-miss! mystable.com/userprof/426828
"Definitely their phone," Seth said, clicking the link, then the home key when Chrome opened, "Just run-of-the-mill, checkout-line, Dollar General junk. I've actually pulled better things out of a garbage pile before."
Opening the Wi-Fi settings, he saw that it had been connected to over a hundred networks before.
"How-" Sunset said, but was interrupted by Sofia.
"Sh."
"Extracting syslogs... The first network this was connected to was AppleHomeWiFi. Fill me in on some details."
"A while back, Rarity had a slumber party, and Applebloom called and said Apple Jack's nickname, Piggly Wiggly, then-" Sunset said, being interrupted by Seth.
"It was those three."
"What?"
"I told you, despite not giving half of a microshit, I could have this thing cracked in less than two minutes. If you're gonna do something like this, at least get a two-dollar WiFi router from the junk store and set it up with something like Publix Wifi or something. Don't, in any realm of insanity, human or pony, do something like that with a network name that matches your name, of all things."
"What are we gonna do now?" Sunset said as Seth imaged the phone to his laptop.
"What do you want to do?"
"Give the phone back to them?"
~~~Meanwhile in the CMC's treehouse~~~
"Any idea where that phone ended up?" Sweetie Belle said to Applebloom, who was looking for the phone on Google Devices.
"Comin-" the girl froze when she saw where its GPS had pinged from, "Uh...oh.
"What?" Scootaloo said, a nasty feeling in the pit of her stomach as Applebloom turned her HP Streambook to them.
"Shit!" they all said in unison, noticing the address.
Speedy had taken to watching all of the work being done on Seth's computer remotely from Moscow, which gave him the idea for a bet after the windows all closed.
He just needed a few things, so he called Russia, again.
"Hello."
"I take it you found who Anon-a-miss is?"
"Yeah, but none of us really give a shit at this point."
"If they're doing it from a laptop now, would it be okay if we recorded it?"
"Do what you want, but if it pisses Autumn off, I feel sorry for both of you. Have at anything in the house, though. All the good stuff should be in the basement, still boxed up."
Going to the basement and rummaging through the first box, "Really?"
"Really what?"
"You have a bird-shaped drone."
"I was wondering where Birdronie was. But like I said, anyone can do what they want with it. It's Novvy God, and I wanna enjoy it here, and don't really give a shit about that anymore."
"Okay, thanks, bye!"
Rummaging through the box some more, he found what looked like large Hotwheels cars, so he took a few, went back upstairs, and dug a laptop out from one of the kitchen drawers.
"Zecora, do you do bets?"
"I am up for a good challenge or two. What are the wagers if I do?"
"We give video footage to the Rainbooms and see if they believe Sunset. If they don't, you win, twenty bucks and I have to eat a Carolina Reaper dipped in Ghost Pepper Sauce. They do believe the video, I win, you give me twenty bucks and take your shirt off."
I will kill you if it ends like that.
"I'll do it, but you won't see my, as you call it, tits."
"Good," he said, holding up the drone, "Now I've gotta find a way to make this bird take one helluva shit."
After a good hour of setting up crap, they set Birdronie in the driveway, connected it and the car to the Internet, and set the thing off on its maiden voyage.
"I fly the drone, you get the car," Speedy said as they went inside and set the rather cheaply-built, cobbled-together laptop to charge.
A few minutes later, and the drone was over several bales of hay that was next to Applebloom's window.
"Dropping..." Speedy said, letting the camera fall to the hay, just past the window, "Perching on the roof... done! Your go, Zecora."
Swapping the laptop to control the car, she drove it into the bedroom through the full-height window, and found all of the CMCs in the room, pondering over a laptop screen which, upon zooming in, was the malicious account.
Record... Hopefully someone puts on a shelf.
"Y'all, we're almost at shit creek!" Applebloom said, scared that it ended up at Seth and Autumn's house.
"What do you mean 'almost'?" Scootaloo asked, earning more disturbed glances from everyone else, "You heard what she did to the quarterback! He wanted sex and was sent to the hospital! I think she set him on fire! One guy even said she ate his tongue and gouged out an eye!"
Now they were scared.
"Someone said he may not be a 'he' anymore after he gets out," Sweetie Belle added.
As Sweetie Belle put the inconspicuous car on a shelf without a second thought, the pair controlling the drone and car were laughing their asses off.
"She... she turned a 300-pound jock into a WOMAN!?" Speedy asked, bending over because he was laughing so hard, "Zecora, Seth's lucky!"
Zecora was too caught up in her own laugh attack to figure out what he was saying, let alone rhyme.
"I don't want to leave in May, now!"
After the CMCs closed their laptop and left the room, Zecora drove the car onto the haybale, then Speedy took the drone, grabbed the car, and flew it back to the house and uploaded the footage to the laptop.
"I think Rainbow lives on this street," Speedy said when he landed the drone back in the driveway, "Can you go get her? I need to put this junk away."
Zecora broke down laughing as she went to find Rainbow Dash. A few minutes later, she came back with all five Rainbooms and showed them the video.
"I hope it's not too hard to believe," Speedy said, loading the video.
After seeing the video, it looked like Zecora would win, but...
"Now I know who I'm pissed at!" Rainbow said, storming out.
"Sweetie Belle will get more than just a slap on the wrist for this one."
"An' Applebloom's in fer a mighty good whoopin' once Ma, Pa, an' Granny finds out about this one!"
"You know, you can keep the $20. I don't need that part."
When the Rainbooms left, Zecora sarted to lift her shirt with one hand (or so it looked), then backhanded Speedy as hard as she could.
"Ouch! I didn't deserve that!"
"And you deserve this, too!" she said, sending a fist between his knees, "You've gotten farther away than any man has on a first date," she said, walking and slamming the shoddy laptop closed, before turning back to him, "You don't deserve this, either," she kissed him, then helped him to the couch, "But it was pretty smart."
"...Thanks..."
И сегодня вечером, на Новогоднем «ВРЕМЯ»... (And Tonight, on New Year's «VREMYA»...)
"Tell me again, you two," Sunset said, "Why exactly are we gonna sleep at Aunt Natasha's and Uncle Ivan's tonight? I mean, we have a hotel room and they're house is full."
"Usually, we just sleep on the pullout couch when we come, but you're the reason we got a hotel this year."
"I feel like last-minute things are better in the Soviet Union than they are in the US," Seth said, "That or we just struck gold when the first place I found had a place to stay over the holidays."
"Probably last," Sofia said, bringing coffee out to them in the living room, then setting the television to record the New Year's program in Red Square.
"What are you doing?" Sunset said.
"It surprise from us."
The trio from America just looked at each other, not knowing what the surprise was.
"Whatever they have planned has to be something good. The first year Arnold was here, we all took him to the Cosmonaut Lab," Autumn said, "We were in Omsk."
"It was a bone-chilling experience."
"When was his first year here in the USSR?"
"Five years ago."
The day went as normal, everyone enjoying their gifts and still being amazed by Sunset and her life, but at 10:00 that night...
"Everyone get in estate car!" Aunt Natasha said, "It going to be crowded!"
Everyone got in their station wagon, then Vladislav drove them to Red Square.
A trip that took an astonishing hour and forty-five minutes.
At Red Square, there was a huge ball with a 60 printed on it in a huge, Russian-style typeface. Hundreds of people were gathered, almost butt-to-gut, presumably to see the ball drop.
Getting out of the car, Sunset could see her own breath and snow falling on Red Square, every inch lit up like daytime, she smelled all kinds of Soviet foo... scratch that. She smelled foods that she found out were as far west as Germany. There was music blasting, and she could hear a roar of all kinds of languages.
"Novvy God, Sunset!" everyone said to her, "Enjoy yourself!"
They all went their separate ways, enjoying themselves, though Autumn and Seth stayed with Sunset in all of the madness.
"What is this!?"
"The biggest New Year's on the planet!" Seth said, getting the trio Pepsi-Vodka, "Drink up! I think it's Vodka and Pepsi! I made out that much!"
At 11:55, they all met back up with the rest of the family.
"Did you enjoy yourself?" Ivan said.
"Yeah!"
"Ball should drop any minute!"
"Izvinite menya!" a television reporter said from behind her, so she turned around, "Izvinite, no ya iz programmy Vremya! Kakovy vashi novogodniye tseli?"
"What?" she said over the crowd, "I'm sorry, but I don't speak Russian! I'm sorry!"
"Ona iz Ameriki! Eto devushka, Sanset Shimmer!" Natalya said.
"I am from the program Vremya!" he repeated, "What are your Novvy God resolutions?"
"Wait, is this live?"
"Da, ma'am! Across the CCCP!"
"Okay! My resolutions are to just try to be a nicer and better person overall! Also, to try to fix a few relationships I've broken over the years! Beyond that, I think I'm good!"
"I wish you best of luck!"
"Thank you!" she replied as the crew moved on and began to film the ball drop.
On January 1, New Year's Day, Sunset woke up in the living room to the sounds of Seth and Sofia discussing something, Liz and Hong Liu carrying on laughing, and
"Celestia!" Sunset screamed, seeing Arnold next to her, "What are you trying to do!?" she laughed, sitting up and putting a hand on her chest, "Gimmie a heart attack?"
"Ja? Ich think so."
"Well you're doing a good job of it," Sunset said, fully awake now.
"Ich want you zu come outside und hilfe me with die Rakete."
"Let me get some coffee and I'll be right out. Do you want anything?"
"Nein."
"...Seth, I don't think we're closely related to be considered incest."
"I'm with you, Sofia, but it does border this."
"When did your family go to US?"
"I think five or six generations ago. Maybe we'd be fine..."
That conversation put Sunset's mindset on the trail of Get coffee and get the tartarus outta here.
"It would be like Big Bang Theory."
"Yes it would, Leslie Winkle. And this is weird.
"Beyond," Sofia said, closing a laptop as Sunset readied herself to go outside.
Outside, Arnold had his model rocket set up and decorated. It had a hammer and compass, stars, and a sketch of Sunset's cutie mark.
"Ich found your buch und put the sign on the front of meine rackete."
"In Equestria, those are called 'Cutie Marks', and they're on your flank. They symbolize something special about you, whether it be a desire, talent, or your personality."
"Whoa."
"Yours would probably be related to space, your mom's would most likely be a hammer and compass or something symbolizing where she's from, and I'm not sure about your dad."
"Amazing."
"Now," Sunset said, sticking her finger in her mouth for a second, then holding it to the wind, "For a straight up trajectory, accounting for the breeze and temperature, offset the thing five degrees toward me."
"Won't that just machen es go askew?"
"It'll send the rocket on a curve and look amazing when it hits stronger winds."
"Okay," he replied, tilting it ever so slightly.
"Ready to light the fuse?"
"Ja," he said, readying the launch button, "Drei... zwei... ein... GEHEN!"
A second after he hit the button, the rocket was off.
"How high do you think es went?" he said, both looking up, trying to follow the trail of smoke.
"Five hundred feet, maybe?"
A few moments later, the rocket shot back down from the side, almost in a perfect circle from its launchpad.
"That's why I said to tilt it," Sunset said as Arnold picked the rocket up, "so it would come back."
"I'll miss you."
"How would all of you like to come back to America to meet the people who essentially left me homeless?"
"They need zu be taught ein lesson," Arnold said, rather perturbed.
"Let's go back in," Sunset said, helping get the rocket picked up, "I may not have a horn to keep warm, but I still know what frostbite feels like."
"Wait," Seth said to everyone, "You guys want to what!?"
"Those girls tried to make Sunset kill herself," Hong said, furiously, "That is not right!"
Seth looked at Sunset, who just shrugged, "Fine by me. I don't give a damn about 'em anymore."
"Uh, what do you mean?"
"Since you've been taking me in, I've had dreams where either I've pushed them into hell or just let them burn in hell, knowing I could pull them out," Sunset smiled, "Those are some of the best dreams I've had in forever. Well, apart from the ones with you guys in them," everyone looked at her with complete shock, "What? Just how I feel."
"Whatever the case may be," Alex said, "We need zu go zu Amerika und set those girls straight."
Everyone agreed with Alex.
"Autumn?" Seth said, "You wanna go with Sunset to get our stuff from the hotel? I know when I'm beat. Keys are on the counter."
The two girls agreed.
As soon as they left, Seth opened his laptop and started hacking into the airport's servers and got enough seats for everyone.
"And... done."
"How are we getting to US?" Vladislav asked.
"Tonight, around ten we board Moskva Air flight 63 to the DDR International Airport. We depart from there for anywhere between thirty and ninety minutes, then reboard to Airfleet Europe flight 12 to London. We then get on US Atlantic Air flight 197, straight to Delaware."
"Is that even legal?" Liz asked Seth.
"Hell to the no," he said, closing the laptop, "What do we do until they get back?"
The Rainbooms were gathered at Sugarcube Cafe, just hanging out when Pinkie started to flip beyond her normal standards.
"Pinkie," Applejack said, "Just what the hay's gotten into you?"
"I... DON'T... KNOW...!!! MY... PINKIE-SENSE... IS TELL...ING ME WE... NEED TO... HIDE!!!"
"Are you sure you've not had too much coffee?" Rainbow Dash said, "I mean, you have had twelve cups of it."
"Caffeine doesn't affect her, Darling, remember?," Rarity said, raising an eyebrow at a now somewhat-destructive Pinkie Pie, "At least not like the rest of us."
"Come to think of it," Applejack said, looking a little ill herself, "I feel like we have bigger things to worry about. We're gonna haveta answer to Princess Twilight about what we did, now 'at's a given," Applejack said, a hand to her chin in thought, "But there's something beyond that..."
"Maybe we should just book it outta town," Rainbow Dash said, "I feel like I'll be sharing a room with Touchdown if we stay here much longer."
Pinkie Pie stopped, then melted into a puddle on the floor, "I know!!" Pinkie's arm came from the puddle to a jacket, so it cleaned the puddle, then rung out a, surprisingly not dazed, Pinkie Pie, "It's like someone's gonna try something REALLY bad on us! And it ain't gonna be the Princess!" she said, flailing her arms for emphasis.
"Darling, you're scaring us," Rarity said, holding Fluttershy, who was shaking.
"HOW AM I SUPPOSED TO EXPLAIN IT!?"
"Rarity does have a point," Applejack said, somewhat uneasy by Pinkie Pie's display of... whatever it was of.
Moskovskaya aviakompaniya vypolnyayet reys 63 v mezhdunarodnyy aeroport Berlina v GDR, seychas saditsya.
"Sunset," Seth said as they boarded the plane, "Full disclosure: I know about as much Russian as a five-year-old that's been electrocuted does."
"You lucky son-of-a-bitch."
"Oh, is it fine if I sit with Sofia on the way to Germany? I think Liz and Autumn really want to talk to you on the way back," Seth said, "I mean, we'll be just across the aisle."
"Sure," Sunset smiled, "I find her... interesting."
As everyone took their seats, Autumn, Liz, and Sunset started being easily the chattiest bunch on the flight, whereas Sofia had brought a decent-sized backpack full of books and magazines, all in Rusinglish. Sofia's skills at reading English were admittedly terrible, along with Seth's complete lack of actual Russian, so it worked out.
When everyone was settled in and the flight took off, Sofia jammed her bag in between her and Seth so they could start burning through the stuff.
The first two things pulled out were Чемицал Цаталог, a physics magazine based around chemicals, pulled out by Sofia, and Ретро Цомпутинг Монтхлы, a retro-tech magazine, retrieved by Seth.
"Quick question," Seth said as they were a few pages in, "Do you ever use Belorussian instead of just Russian?"
"Only if I have to. It stupid that some people want documents in local languages, especially sending between labs in Minsk, Kiev, and Moskva."
"That is stupid."
"Da. Next document I make is just going to be Russian. They deal with it."
Without so much as looking up, they gave each other a fist bump.
Sunset was amazed, still, at just how open they were to her.
"Sunset, do ya kna Rusinglish?"
"I have never heard of that."
"It's one of those things that mixes two languages," Autumn said.
"English written wif the bloody Russian alphabet. I fin' you'd loike ter learn it."
Sunset looked over Liz's shoulder to see the duo reading with their legs crossed, "That's what that is."
"Daan't worry, they're Beechams Pill the bleedin' weirdos 'round 'ere."
"What? Weirdos?"
"Trust me," Autumn said, putting a hand on Sunset's shoulder, "If you knew them like the rest of us."
The three girls went into a fit of laughter.
"Sofia?" Seth said, getting out a Zune and two pairs of headphones from his bag.
"Da."
"Music?"
"Please."
STOP 1: DDR International Airport (or GDR... or East Germany. Whichever)
At around 10:30p in Berlin, the plane touched down at the airport, then they got off.
"How exactly does the air travel system work in East Germany again, Alex?"
"You may be staying with uns for the nacht," he said, going to an information kiosk.
After doing the math, it was obvious that, while it was technically only thirty minutes later by their clocks, their bodies were screaming it was a little after midnight.
"I'm pretty sure Fernsehen der DDR's closed for the night," Seth said as everyone got their bags.
Sofia, Liz, Sunset, Seth, and Autumn sat down on a bench, all half asleep and carrying the bags they had with them on the plane.
"We're in Berlin," Autumn said.
"East or West?" Sunset asked, "'m too tired to remember."
"What's it matter? All of Central Europe is two hours behind Moscow."
"The chuffin' world is smaller than ya fin' in sum places."
A few minutes later, Mitzi and Arnold came over to them, carrying five cups of coffee.
"Es ist Mocha Fix Gold," she said as they handed out the coffee.
"Sunset, you may wake up reverse-hungover in the morning. This is stronger than any energy drink we have in Good ol' America," Autumn said as everyone took their drinks and started them.
"Probably most powerful stuff in the world at 75 cc per 12 fluid ounces."
"That'd kill a pony if they drank this much," Sunset said, noticing the size of the cup being around the size of a large coffee at McDonald's.
"It'd kill most people if they drank it like I do," Seth said, he and Sofia finishing their coffee at the same time before the others, "I'm the reason we have to get coffee makers like we do. They all break because of me."
"We will mehr than likely ende up sleeping hier tonight," Alex said as he came back, "Zwölf zu London won't board until 06:30."
They all went over to a waiting area where they promptly fell asleep.
Seth, Autumn, and Sofia were the first to wake up.
"What is the time?" Sofia said, spotting a TV with a clock on it, similar to how it was at Seth and Autumn's house, "Oh."
The picture was schemed to match the DDR flag. An analog clock in the front, along with the time below it. Every ten-or-so seconds, eight notes would play on the bells as the soundtrack for the program. 05:29:53
Autumn noticed that a few of them were gone, probably to get breakfast.
Seth looked like he was ready to commit murder, "I need coffee."
"I'll be right back," Autumn said, yawning, "I'll get us all some."
A few minutes later, Autumn had came back with three cups of Mocca Fix Gold and some sandwiches.
"We should be home soon enough," she said, giving the other two their breakfasts before plopping back down in a chair.
"Thanks."
Over the course of the next several minutes, everyone else began to wake up, with Hong Liu being the last to get up at just before six.
"Say what you want about Hong," Sofia said, "But she good to go for whole day when she wakes up."
"The flight boards at 6:30," Alex said, "Did you alles sleep gut?"
"So this is TV in Germany?" Sunset asked, taking interest when the 25-second countdown started.
"Diese ist just Fernsehen der DDR," Mitzi said, "There's really never anything gut on es."
When the anthem started, she noted how it sounded, in a way, similar to the singing at some of Equestria's regal events.
"It sounds a little like the choir did when at Princess Cadence's coronation if I think about it enough."
"Es ist just ein choir, too."
"Then again, I wasn't even a yearling yet. I was just a foal, then, so I have virtually nothing to go on, and I never asked Princess Twilight about her coronation, so I really don't know where I'm coming from."
"Probably just some DejaVu," Autumn said to Sunset as she stood and popped her back.
"I'll go with that," Sunset said, finding out she had no more coffee, "Crap."
Jetzt steigen Sie mit Luftflotte Europa Flug Zwölf nach London International Flughafen, Großbritannien. Abfahrt in fünfzehn Minuten.
Everyone followed Alex and Mitzi to gate fifteen for the trip to London, then they repeated the process of loading their bags with everyone else.
Boarding was the exact same way as it was from Russia, except for the fact that everyone was tired, and Seth's Zune HD was charging.
"Peace and quiet," Sofia said, drinking her coffee as she read through a copy of Лаб Дисастерс Вееклы.
"You can say that again," Seth said, reading a copy of Хов то Препаре Фоод витх Пхысицс.
"Idiots," Sofia said, shaking her head at an article titled Лунч Ехплосион ин тхе Лаб.
"Remind me to ask you," Seth said, looking over Sofia's shoulder and skimming a story, "How can anyone be stupid enough to mix a bunch of random things together, then just... go and eat lunch?"
"They must have come from shallow end of gene pool."
An hour and a half later saw them getting off at the London International Airport.
"Hammer and Tack in me Jack Jones nickle and dime, again!" Liz said as they all got their bags.
"What time is it?" Sunset said, seeing the Sun hadn't risen above the horizon yet.
"Windows Phone is syncing..." Seth said, "7:02 in the morning, local time. London's an hour behind Berlin, so we were actually on the flight for about an hour-and-a-half, give or take."
"This timezone stuff is really messing me up. It's so different than Equestria, where it's the same time everywhere.
The group had practically no time at all because they almost immediately heard
US Atlantic Air Flight 197 to Canterlot, USA is now boarding at gate number eighteen.
"Lovely," Aunt Natasha said as they quickly hurried to board the last plane.
The flight from London was just over seven hours, which was used by most of the family to catch up on lost sleep so they'd be ready to go when the flight touched down at the airport in Canterlot.
It was the last bit of turbulence that woke them up.
"Jesus Harold Christ!" Seth said, as he was jolted awake, "What the literal hell?"
We will be landing in the Canterlot City Air Terminal momentarily. The local time is 9:03 AM.
"Our cue to get our stuff together," Sofia said.
"Lord Jesus Christ, it worked."
A few minutes later, the plane landed and everyone got their bags, but the combination of one Yugo and twelve people, with luggage, was a rather difficult experience.
Their Wartburg 353T didn't help matters much when they brought it to the airport, still taking thirty minutes.
Twilight, I'm back in town, but it'll be a bit before I can get to the school. Okay. I'll be waiting. Just write when you're ready. Alright. Will do.
When everyone was back at the house, Sofia immediately went and picked the lock, earning looks from everyone when she did it in a matter of seconds, "What? I am physicist and cold."
Going inside, Speedy and Zecora were streaming YouTube to the TV.
"Oh, you're back," Speedy said, blushing when he saw Autumn walk in and take off her coat.
"You didn't break any of Seth's babies, right?"
"What?" he mouthed, looking at me confused.
"The tech and coffee maker," Seth clarified as everyone walked in.
"I've never met a Tsakhlai before," Liz said, noticing Zecora, "I'm Liz. I come from London, and I've always wanted ter meet wahn of ya! This is so excitin'!!"
"The pleasure is mine to meet someone from a place so fine," she replied, "I am Zecora."
It didn't take long for them to strike up a conversation.
"You two can stay longer if you want," Autumn said, "Speedy, I... um..." she looked away, "Nevermind."
"You said you would show me your tech," Sofia said.
"Yeah, you and Sunset both come into my room. Again, I don't think that, by any means, what you're about to see is legal in any way."
"Speedy," Seth said sternly while Sunset and Sofia were laughing at the video in the Vivaldi browser window, "Get in here."
He went in, not being able to hold a straight face, "Yes?"
"What is this?" Seth asked, laughing too now.
"Touchdown's sex-change when he thought he would be banging your cousin."
Seth cycled through the other tabs, "LiveLeak, YouTube, Dailymotion, Vimeo, MyStable," he turned to Speedy, "Jesus Christ, you didn't leave anything out," he started laughing, "The fact that it was that small is just funny."
Big bad small dick jock ends up dickless after trying to sexually assault flame chick
"Look at some of comments!" Sofia said, noticing one surprising one as a reply on MyStable.
theBreeze2000: Uve gotta get this girl 2 fuk some1 4 me.
"If you could make out Autumn, she'd be a hit online right about now," Sunset said, "When did this go up?"
"I found it when I went to put the drone laptop away at midnight. That's when I uploaded it."
"Like I said," Seth said, bookmarking all of the windows, "I'm glad to have the friends that I have."
"How did you hack airline network so quickly?"
He pressed a curious-looking button on his desk, swapping the computer over to one that was hidden in his closet, "Decoy. This baby has five terrabytes alone, just for BitRazer P2P. It also has my TIP connection, MorningDew Network, and the standard stuff. Psiphon, Hoxx for Firefox, Microsoft Office, XPQ4 Threshold, fifteen terrabytes of storage on the main RAID, you know. Just the barebones basics. I've also got a multi-gigabit Internet connection set up here, so that's a plus. Then you have the games to slow, halt, and utterly kill computer systems on a hidden driveset of about five or six more terrabytes, and-" was all he got out before Sofia broke down laughing, with Speedy and Sunset, despite not knowing most of what was said, getting the impression that Seth could've been a felon.
"You are coming back to Minsk with me, no questions!"
"Honestly, I could've hacked the terminal's network in my sleep."
Sofia went over to his closet, noticing a strip of duct tape running next to the wall, and opened it, revealing a computer with God-only-knows-what in a large fish tank filled with mineral oil for a coolant, then broke down laughing, "GOD!!!"
"Please have a seat by me and let's be," Zecora said to Liz, as Sunset, Sofia, and Seth went into his room.
"Merry Christmas, Zecora. If I knew Autumn and Sef were friends wif ya, I would've came before na!"
"Something about Autumn we were able to find, going on the pretense that she won't mind-"
"Don't say a word before I get out there!" Autumn said, running out of her room, "I know this one, but I want to hear your version of it."
"Very well," Zecora started, "Someone who was disturbed did something to make all of CHS perturbed. An athlete, Touchdown, did something that earned more than just a frown. As Autumn is a Kirin, you should know the word from here-on-in. Despite being muscular and tall, his brain is... rather small. He pulled his shit, but took more than just a hit, landing him in the infirmary for an incident not-so-pretty. He thought he'd get sex, but he had a hex. Autumn turned on him in full demon from the starts, with only a little bit of smarts. He was burnt, bit, and cut, more than deserving for the piece of smut. From the start, though, Autumn turned him from a man to a woman, burning off his dick, repeating the words for his pick."
"So Autumn, ya burnt 'is todge Frank Bough?" Liz said as Autumn broke down laughing, "That's beyond 'ilarious!"
"Oh, I ripped it off, too!" she said, holding herself and almost cackling, "He was O-U-T OUT when I was through with him!"
"You've gotta come Hammer and Tack ter London wif me, Zecora! You'd 'ave an absolute blast!"
"I would more than enjoy it when time will allow it to fit."
"'a is your summer?"
"Summer is fine, but for now, do you wish to dine?"
Twilight, I'm going to leave the house now. I'll be at CHS, then.
"Seth," Sunset said, "Mind if I go run Princess Twilight's gift to her at the school?"
"Do you know how to drive the station wagon?"
"No," she said, "I don't know where the gears are, but I've driven Applejack's truck before. It's a manual."
"All the way to you and up is first, down is second. Forward and up is third, and down is fourth. All the way forward and up is fifth, and down is reverse," he gave her the key, "The gear selector is the stalk on the right side of the steering column. Also, the freewheel device is locked up, but it's been modified with an oil injector. It'll feel like you're killing the engine if you try to coast, but don't worry. I'm gonna take the thing to get it fixed in March"
"Thanks!" she replied, running to the front door in her coat with a bag labeled Мерры Чристмас/Новвы Год/Хаппы Хеартхьсварминг, Принцесс Твилигхт!.
"Sunset, where are you going?" Aunt Natasha said.
"To go give the princess her gift. She's at the school now. You wanna come?"
"Da," she replied, following Sunset out to the station wagon.
Getting it started, she almost flipped out when she saw the dials looked like they were in Russian, but Aunt Natasha told her what she needed to know, though Sunset still had to take a few tries in getting the Soviet estate car to crank.
I'm sure that Seth learned to drive in the Soviet Union, or at least somewhere in the East Bloc.
Thirty unsettling, deafening minutes and several plumes of smoke later, and they were at CHS. Princess Twilight was there, chewing out the Rainbooms.
"This is your school?" Aunt Natasha said as the station wagon came to a jerky stop.
"It is."
Getting out of the car, the alicorn-turned-human snapped her attention over to the station wagon, along with the Rainbooms.
"I didn't know that you knew the Crystal alphabet," Twilight said, reading the Russian-sized license plate on the front of the car.
ВАРТБУРГ
"Why does it say 'Vartburg', though?"
"Crystal alphabet?" Aunt Natasha asked, looking at Twilight confused.
Sunset's brain didn't link the Russian-style alphabets with the one used in the Crystal Empire until now.
"Aunt Natasha, in the Crystal Empire, the crystal ponies use an alphabet that looks like Russian," she turned to Twilight, "Here, it's called Cyrillic, and a few versions of it exist for some languages," she counted them on her fingers, "Russian, Belorussian, Ukrainian, and Bulgarian," she turned to both of them, "I don't know how close Crystalline is to any of them, mainly because I don't know 'em," she handed Twilight a bag, "Happy Hearth's Warming, Merry Christmas, Novvy God, or whatever holiday it is!" Sunset said, a smile on their faces, "I don't know what it is anymore! First, I was on an eighteen-hour long flight to Moscow, which is eight hours ahead of here, then we flew to the DDR, a two-hour flight that goes back by two hours, then from there to London, going back yet another hour the next day, and then coming back here, five hours behind there!"
"You had quite the trip, huh?" Twilight said, confused as she pulled the coat out of the bag, "What is it?"
"I'm not sure what it's actually called, but it's a Russian coat and fur hat. Believe me, if they can make a Moscow winter day feel warm, Celestia knows how it's gonna feel here."
She looked at the hat and saw a pattern of her cutie mark sewn onto the front of it, so she put it on, then hugged Sunset, "Oh thank you SO much!"
"You're welcome!"
"So you are Princess Twilight, da?" Twilight was lost at Aunt Natasha's speech and accent, "You are Princess of Friendship in your country?"
"Oh!" she said, remembering what Sunset had written, "I'm her! Who are you?"
"Natasha Ivanov, from Moskva."
"Thank you for everything you've done for Sunset!"
"It was only because of niece and nephew that she alive now," Aunt Natasha said, telling the story how Sunset had told them while they were still in Russia.
Meanwhile, Sunset excused herself to get the keys from the car when...
"You try to kill yourself, and instead get a fur coat and a trip around the freaking WORLD!?" Rainbow said, standing in front of the door to the Wartburg with the other Rainbooms.
Sunset showed no mercy, saying the thing like an innocent preschooler would if they were asking for water.
"All of you can just go and fuck the God-forsaken shit out of yourselves. Honestly, if you were burning in hell right now and I could get you out, I would just turn and walk away. If you weren't in hell, though, I would push each and every one of you in as fast as I could, enjoying your agonizing screams and torture. On the flight back from London, I had a dream. It was of me going all she-demon again, but targeting each of you specifically and, instead of using you to control Equestria, I was torturing each of you. Just to name a few things, I was eating parts of you, ripping your ribs out through your back, shoving my hand through your chests and ripping your beating hearts out, tearing out limbs, cutting you bitches open, and drinking your blood, just to name a few of the very lightest and most forgiving things. So again, I ask you to get the ***damn fuck out of my way so I can shut off the car."
"Darling, that's no way for a lady to talk," Rarity said, offended, along with the other girls.
"Alright, Sunset!" Applejack said, "We may've turned our backs on you, but you're the one who tried to kill herself!"
"And who brought that on?"
"Dammit!" Applejack said, punching Sunset and sending blood and a tooth flying, catching Twilight and Natasha's attention, "Now don't go a-pinnin' this on us!"
"We apologize, then you tell us that!?" Rainbow Dash said as Sunset got up and retaliated against both of them.
"I learned some self-defense, too."
"What the fuck!?" the princess said, among some rather colorful swears, becoming even more furious when she heard how Sunset had felt toward them now.
"Are you okay?" Aunt Natasha asked Sunset as she wiped some blood off of the former-unicorn's face.
Shortly after Sunset had left, Seth and Sofia found some instant noodles in the kitchen so, when two minds think alike, they each grabbed a cup, went into the basement, and set up several large magnifying glasses and magnatrons from a few old microwaves, then started cooking brunch.
"What exactly are you two doing?" Speedy asked, noticing them in the basement, staring intently at something.
"Cooking Ramen Noodles," he said, "I found it in a magazine published in Rusinglish and figured a few modifications so it would work in our house. Want some?"
"Sure? If it's safe to eat when you're through, I guess."
"Three, two, one," he said, closing the closet and turning the setup on from the bottom of the stairs.
An odd sound was heard as the lights dimmed until they turned it off, "What was that!?"
"Your house is jacked," Sofia said as Seth quickly went to retrieve the first cup of noodles, then started eating them.
"Certainly faster than waiting three-and-a-half minutes in a regular microwave."
Sofia went and put her cup in the closet, then repeated the process, "Tri, dva, odin, done."
"I think I'm good."
"Your loss."
"I wonder if Aunt Natasha accidentally met Rainbooms," Sofia said, taking her goggles off.
"Why?" Speedy asked.
"Getting chewed out by her is hundreds of times worse than being in bad fight and losing."
"I may be growing a conscience," Seth said, unplugging the stuff as everyone left the basement, "But I do feel sorry for them if Sunset hasn't cooled off yet. I mean, I can understand being pissed from hell to Houston because of something like this, but we've only lived in Delaware since mid-October. We have nothing to go on, well at least I don't, anyway."
Sunset and Princess Twilight were sitting in the station wagon on the mattress while Aunt Natasha had taken to chewing them out rather loudly and harshly.
"I'm worried for the girls, seeing them being gotten onto by her."
"As far as I'm told, she won't get physically violent."
"I'm still sure that's worse than anything anypony else would ever do."
"She's a nice person, really. She just doesn't let people get away with shit. Still though, if I had to choose between getting shot with a blast of magic versus getting chewed out by her, it would be the blast for me any day. I do have to say, though, I feel sorry for them right now."
While Aunt Natasha was Chewing Out the Rainbooms...
Aunt Natasha was on the other side of the fiberglass body from Twilight and Sunset, screaming loudly at the Rainbooms for what they had done.
"That girl is child!!! If she truly was your family, you'd have worked past this!! If I find you doing this to her or ANY OF MY FAMILY again, Jesus can come here and he won't help you! If you've lost your minds, I will help you find it!!!...
"What is going on out there?" Twilight asked as Sunset held a Pepsi to her face.
"Aunt Natasha doing what their parents should've done, and what she would've done to me after the Fall Formal."
"Is it going to get past the screaming?"
"No. It's just her way of teaching lessons," Sunset turned to Twilight, "Now, what did you want to talk about."
"When you said... that... earlier, did you mean it like that?"
"After my first or second night in Russia, what I said would've been an understatement. Now, it's just boring," she counted off on her fingers, "Mundane, repetitave, annoying, you get the drift."
"Sunset, I know I haven't heard all of, or a lot of, what's been going on over here, but I don't quite think that's how to cope with these things."
"Aunt Natasha doing that to someone for this long is bound to give them nightmares, at least me."
"Does she usually..."
"I don't think so."
"...now, five of you, GO AWAY!!!!!"
The Rainbooms scattered, then she opened the door and sat on the mattress.
"That was harsh," Twilight said.
"Princess, sorry you had to see that. They were reason Sunset almost didn't have Christmas and Novvy God. I would do that to anyone who would hurt our friends and family. I hope you can forgive me, but they needed to be told down."
"I see... is that how you do things in Russia?"
"People normally behave around me."
"Well, I've been talking to Sunset about... earlier... and..." Twilight couldn't finish that sentence.
"That is why we wanted to come to America. No one should have to deal with what Sunset had to."
There was silence for a minute.
"Twilight, I know you're busy back in Equestria, but maybe you'd like to spend a little while at the house?"
"Could I save the surprise for the summer?"
"Sure."
Twilight went back to Equestria, then Sunset and Aunt Natasha drove back to the house.
Going in the house, Sunset noticed the place had a different atmosphere than when she left. Autumn was holding flowers and Sofia had her "reading bag" as it was dubbed.
"Sunset," Seth said, holding a key that had the word ЮГО etched in the keyhead, "Sofia, Autumn, Speedy, Zecora, and myself are going to the hospital to see Dickless-Jock. You wanna come?"
"Yes," she said, dropping the key she was holding, one headed with a hammer-and-sickle, with the thought of her harasser in the hospital going through her mind.
"Let's go," Seth said.
Speedy and Zecora, however, stayed back for a minute.
"Care to one-up it?"
"If he's scared to rest, you can see and touch my breast. If he is full of anger, you are to kiss, in both places, the girl who caused him danger."
"Deal," Speedy replied, shaking on it.
In the Yugo, Sunset, Speedy, Autumn, and Zecora turned a tiny three-person seat into an extremely-cramped four-person seat, while Sofia sat up front with Seth so she could read a copy of МорнингДев, ТИП, анд Цримсон Бох Сториес, one of the very few things that Seth found a little uncomfortable about Sofia.
"That is sick pleasure," she commented on one story.
After a more-or-less uneventful-for-the-circumstances ride to the hospital, he pulled the car into the main parking lot, giving Sofia enough time to put her magazine up.
"You made my leg go ta sleep!" Autumn said to Sofia.
"Deal with it."
When they went in, they found that he was in room 606 in the East Wing, not a far walk from where they were.
"That day, my bedroom would've been 666," Autumn said, inciting laughter from the other five.
After a few minutes, they got to his room. He had several IVs, was mostly wrapped in bandages, and had several casts.
"Touchdown," Nurse Rose said, "A few of your friends from school are here to see you."
"Sure."
She left the room, so Autumn took a cup, put some water in it, and set the flowers on a table, "So," she asked him, "can you have your dick back?"
"Shut up, you bitch! I'll kill you when I'm outta here! I don't know if I fucked you or what, but I'll kill your motherfucking ass!"
"You could at least say 'Thanks'. I brought you flowers."
He rolled his eyes.
Zecora looked smugly at Speedy, so, blushing, he went over to Autumn, turned her around, and kissed her on the lips. Neither of them knew what was going on for a second until Speedy broke away and started to bend down.
"Whoa!" Autumn said, taking a step back and pushing him away, "Take me to dinner first! Then we can... get busy."
"Wait, you're..."
"And you're..."
"Whatever happens," Seth said, "I'm already a fire hazard to two other people, so don't up it to three."
"Autumn... I've had a crush on you," Speedy said, rubbing his arm uncomfortably, Autumn feeling just as awkward, "since the day you came into class drenched in rain."
"Oh, uh," she stammered, remembering how heavy her head felt and that weird feeling she got when someone mentioned her hair to her that day, "I uh, I always thought you... were a snappy dresser."
"The kiss... was a bet with Zecora. I never thought I'd get it, though."
"It was nice."
"So... where do you want to go?"
"I know a nice Kirin restaurant on Coffeelake Avenue."
He looked around, "We'll be outside," he looked to her, "You won't hurt me?"
"No, where's the fun in that?"
After the door closed, Sofia walked to Touchdown.
"Can I have your penis to take back to Belarus?" she said, no intention other than being an asshole to him, "It will not weigh anything on luggage scales."
After Touchdown's rant over Sofia's request, Seth just had to know what happened between his cousin and their friend earlier.
"What happened earlier?" Seth asked Zecora.
She didn't know how to answer the question because of everything lately, so they just dropped the subject. A minute later, they all left for the Yugo.
"What was he screaming about in there?" Speedy asked.
"I wanted to take his penis to Belarus," Sofia said.
"There..." Seth said, trying to put words together, "There... is an odd reason... I sometimes enjoy you."
Pulling out on the road, the drive back to the house was silent, except for the roar of the engine as Sofia kicked up her feet and continued reading sick, disgusting sting stories.
When they got back to the house, it was only a matter of seconds before Autumn got her keys and wallet, then pulled Speedy to her car.
"I know this place, it's called Kirindainā or something like that."
"Let's go," he replied, "I wanna try it."
She started her car, and Adele started blasting from her CD player, startling Speedy for a second.
"You two have very different tastes in music," he said as Autumn turned the volume down by about ten notches.
"I know, he likes this song about Moskau, then Rasputin, Air Supply, Gloria Gaynor, while I'm more in the now."
The thirty-five-minute-long trip was filled with talking, jokes, laughter, and some jackass blowing his horn because they made out at a stoplight.
Upon arriving at the restaurant, it started out as a normal date, but then...
"Kirin dinā e yōkoso, watashi wa anata no u~eitoresudesu, Fern furea," a Kirin said, noticing Autumn, "Kyō wa nani o nomimasu ka?"
"Fern Flare," Autumn said, holding up a fist as her eyes turned somewhat-demonic, "Don't fuckin' ruin my date!"
"Fine, fine. I'm Fern Flare, what will you drink?"
"Beer-ru."
"Pepsi?"
"I'll be back," she said, writing down their orders, then leaving as she put a pencil in her hair.
"This'll be an interesting date," she said, looking at Speedy and accidentally scaring him.
"Uh, Autumn?"
She took out her phone and used its front camera as a mirror, "Don't mind that," she said, putting it back up, "She's a bitch."
He made sure the coast was clear, "Are you gonna rip her head off?"
"I've wanted to do that shit since day one. She was so... God only knows when Seth and I lived in Brooklyn. He'd come back to the apartment all like 'Jesus, Autumn! Yous mad yet!?'"
"How did that turn out?"
"Three people, one handgun, three bullets, you piece it together," she said, lifting the side of her shirt some to show the scar.
"Oohh."
"Yeah."
A minute later, Fern came back with two drinks, both which resembled thick mud, "Enjoy."
"C'me here," Autumn said, pulling Fern to her by the collar of her shirt, "This is my date, and I don't want you ruining it," she darkened somewhat, "I don't care about what we did to each other in the past, but I never tried to ruin your life, so don't try to ruin mine."
Autumn's hair, along with Fern's, began to catch fire at the ends, so Autumn pinned Fern down on the floor.
"GET IT RIGHT!!"
"FINE! FINE, I WILL!"
"Good!" she said, getting up and cracking her bones, "And don't make my guyfriend eat squid if he doesn't want it, ya hear me!?"
Fern, now frightened, ran back to the kitchen, so Autumn went a table over, grabbed one of their drinks, and threw it on herself, extinguishing the flame.
Frightened, she went back to the kitchen and came back out with a glass of beer and a Pepsi, quickly took their orders, then ran back to the kitchen.
"Sunset," Seth said, going into his bedroom to get a laptop, "I want to show you a Trabant."
"It's a car, right?"
"Yeah."
Sunset was picturing something similar to your run-of-the-mill, ten-year-old car, but when Seth came out and showed her a picture...
"Here is a car that's made of cotton, weighs three ounces, and has exactly two more horsepower than a lawnmower. It goes thirty-five miles per hour, reverse lights are optional, burns a mixture of gas and oil, VERY oily gas, you can't coast in first, second, or third gear, you have to be in neutral, but fourth gear is the magical gear, allowing you to operate it like a sane person. Being one fortunate, or unfortunate, enough to have driven one over the summer in the DDR, it's a good way to sit and contemplate your existence. There's no tachometer, no gas gauge, no blinker signals, no air conditioner, the windshield washer fluid is a hand pump, seat belts are just loosely strewn pieces of fabric, your fuel cutoff is manual, you have a choke to put up with, and it was made by old idiots. You can lock the driver door from the outside of the car or the passenger door from the inside of the car, but not the other way around."
She noticed Seth's expression, "What are you gonna do?"
"I know a lot where we can get communist cars, with or without mods. Autumn streetraces with a Fiat 126p from 1980s Poland, but with a V8 mod, I think. She makes heads spin. Anyway, would you like to take the bitches for a rally cross?"
"Why?"
"It'd probably hurt 'em a little. Plus, the oily smoke and Rarity..."
"I'll do it. What are the tricks to driving one?"
"I'll let Aging Wheels show you," he said, finding a YouTube video that showed how to drive the cotton box.
"Okay," Autumn said, letting Speedy off at his house, "You'll meet me back over on Delaware-12 in an hour?"
"Yes."
"Head or foot?"
"Foot."
"See you then," Autumn said, as she began to go into Canterlot City.
"I don't know about your racing style, but mine is a cute, little 1982 Polski Fiat 126p," she said to herself as she headed towards a shady-type car lot for all of Delaware and the part of Maryland that sat beside their state, "But with a mod."
~~~On a bench in Canterlot City outside of Sugarcube Cafe~~~
Sofia and Seth were drinking mochas, their winter tradition, talking over a few things.
"Physics lab in Byelorussia is having technical problems."
"It okay if I come back, yeah?"
"Please."
"Is Minsk still 'Gray and Depressing'?" she looked at him like he was being a jackass, "I know, I just had to ask that," she laughed for a moment.
"I know."
"Damn phone!" a voice Seth recognised as VP Luna's said, coming out of the cafe, "I go for the best thing I can get my hands on, and it's still a piece of shit!"
"Luna," her sister said, "It's not the end of the world. I'm sure i-"
Seth and Sofia turned around, seeing the situation, also getting the attention of the women.
"Seth, good," Luna said, giving him the phone, "PLEASE fix this!"
He looked it over and said, "Here's your problem: it's an iPhone."
"What?"
"Contrary to popular belief, especially for hackers such as yours truly. Windows Phones run Windows, and thus can run full-on Windows programs, even if a bit slowly. Android is Linux, which opens up the biggest pile of shit when I get one from a carrier because they load bloatware for me to have to remove said bloatware. I have a TV. Why would I want to watch NFL on a seven-inch screen? Better yet, why would I want to watch it at all? I don't even like football, or, for that matter, any sport."
"I'll get a Pixel to you when school starts back."
"That reminds me," he said, turning to Celestia, "Would it be okay if I missed out on my classes for a few weeks or so? I'm needed over in the Soviet Union."
"To teach them how to use a ZX-80?" Luna replied sarcastically.
"Stop your shit now," Sofia said, "I from Byelorussian Soviet Socialist Republic."
"They let you in?"
"Luna!" Celestia scolded before turning back to the duo, "Sorry, the phone thing's just got her mad. And you can go to Belarus."
"Thanks."
~~~The car place~~~
Autumn pulled off of the side of the road and inside a garage. She now had a streetracer's attitude and persona.
"Yo, Douglas!" she said, shutting off her Honda and getting out, "Blazer!"
A man pulled himself out from under a 2010 Mustang and got up, "Nice to see you again."
"I got somethin' special," she said, pulling some clothes from a closet, reminiscent of a motocross outfit, "You know my deal."
He noticed something different about her as she quickly changed into the outfit, "You just come from a hot date?"
"What's it to ya?"
"I smelled it on you when you came in."
"We went all the way, now I'm gonna tear the punk to shreds in a race."
"You know where the keys are."
"Thanks," she said, getting a key that had ФИАТ written on one side of the keyhead and 126П on the other, "Good luck with the Mustang," she said, getting in a car that looked like a tangelo-colored Yugo, but a little off.
"You, too," he said, going back under the car as she started hers and left out.
"I'm gonna show off my V8," she said, getting on the road, shifting gears as she went, "I'm sitting on at least 500 horses, disguised to look like something from 1982 Poland," she smiled devilishly.
Being that her car wasn't street legal, she had to be careful, which made the trip to the foot of Delaware-12 take a decent amount of time.
When she finally made it, she saw Speedy standing next to his R33, and upon seeing his racer, he laughed as she rolled down her window.
"Don't go too fast!" he said.
"I'm from Cold War-Poland. I'm working with 24 horsepower, so you might beat me."
A few minutes later, both were in their cars and the race was about to start."
When the race was started, they both stepped on the gas. Autumn quickly had a head on Speedy, all while leaving a plume of smoke behind her.
"Highway 12," she said over the roaring engine when she noticed Speedy passing her. Time and time again, they kept at neck-and-neck, running people off of the road, evading the cops, and Autumn doing a certain gesture at one who drove beside her for a few minutes.
After about half-an-hour, the race was over and Autumn won by half-a-second.
"What in the hell are you driving!?" Speedy said, going to Autumn.
"I had it modded to increase the number of cylinders from two to eight, engine strokes from two to four, and the horsepower was only a little boosted, going from twenty-four to almost five hundred."
The day finally came for CHS to return to classes. Principal Celestia allowed for Liz to shadow Zecora and for Sofia to shadow Seth. The rest of their visiting family were enjoying their time in Delaware, meeting people and getting a taste of the Canterlot City lifestyle.
Autumn even doused her hair in water for Speedy, which broke tension when they spoke, though she earned a few touches from idiots, none of which ended with less than a bad sprain.
Their classes went normally until lunch came when Autumn decided to go grab something from down the street with Speedy.
"Sunset, Sofia? Autumn and I usually eat lunch with VP Luna, trashing a few noobs because our free period is right after this. Care to join?"
"Da, I'm in."
"I guess I could get back on Steam."
"Sunset," Applejack said, going up to the trio with her four friends following, "Thank goodness we found ya. Now, Ah know the other day was... hard... ta say the least, but you were right."
"Thank you."
"And I'm sorry for just... blowing up like that."
Sofia glared at Rainbow Dash.
You fucking, ***damn bitch. I will show you what "I blew up" means soon.
"So you admit to growing a brain?"
"Yes!"
Just then, several people came from the office, one of which was quickly recognized as the woman that gave them nightmares for a while. Alongside them were the girls' parents, and Autumn and Speedy.
"We thought we might join you," Aunt Natasha said, each of her new European family bringing a dish.
"Thanks!"
As they saw the Rainbooms get taken into an empty classroom and gotten onto by their parents, Sunset knew her day was made.
"We could eat in the Home Ec room."
At lunch, it was decided that her visiting family, plus Seth, would go back to Europe and the USSR the next day.
Everyone's day went more-or-less as expected, with Seth and Sofia being the last two to go to bed, but at 1:30a, Seth heard a noise in his kitchen.
"Der vodka?" he said, rubbing the sleepy from his eyes and noticed his Byelorusian cousin with her bag on, "Sofia?"
"I need your car to take care of few things."
"Like what?" he said, giving her the Yugo keys from his pocket.
"You sleep with your keys?"
"Evidently."
"I need to give Rainbooms... present."
"Are you gonna do something illegal?"
"Niama."
"Sofia?" he looked at her, "I know when you're lying to me, because I know that's Byelorussian."
"Da."
"I wanna be a part of it."
They went out to the Yugo, where Sofia explained her ideas after they were good on the streets, with Seth driving.
"Okay, so I did some profiling, I found Rarity is fashion designer, Rainbow Dash is athlete, Pinkie Pie is party planner, Fluttershy is animal caregiver, and Applejack is farmer."
"Where to, first?"
"We burn farm harvest."
"You are the only one I would trust myself to do this with, especially knowing with what you get away with in Byelorussia."
"I try," she shrugged.
"What do ya have in that bag?"
"We will not get caught, but get bleach first."
"Tell me you're not doing the whole place in an inferno."
"Nyet. Just what is in barn."
At Sweet Apple Acres, Sofia and Seth sterilized, pried open the barn, emptied it, and burned its contents, dousing it with bleach afterwards, then drove off.
"Now to Rarity's home," Sofia said, "We are just going to destroy some dresses, then leave."
"That sounds admittedly boring, coming from you."
"Really?" she said, holding a lighter with a five-inch flame.
Sneaking into Rarity's house, felt their way to her room, and turned an entire closet of dresses into burnt and shredded fabric, then left.
"Go to hospital, then Rainbow Dash and Fluttershy's house."
Seth complied, only wondering what this would end up as. it was almost 2:00, and they had to be at the airport by 5:00.
"What ar-"
"No questions."
He pulled into the hospital parking lot so she could get out.
"Guess I'll just see what's in here," he mused, grabbing a magazine from the floor titled Вампирес: Тхе Сциентифиц Импоссибилиты.
After a few minutes, she ran back out as if holding something delicate in her bag, "Drive, drive, drive!"
"Where to?"
"Rainbow Dash's house," she said, pulling a bag and needle marked with the biohazard sign on it out.
"What...?"
"Lypo... check. Blood... check. Knives... will get."
I am DETERMINATELY going to hell now, Seth thought.
"Can I please ask what you're planning to do here?" Seth said, worried for his well-being, "I just want to know what room in hell I'm gonna end up in."
"I come from Soviet Union. There is no hell."
"That makes me feel a little better," he said, shutting his lights off and entering the driveway.
"I take lipo and inject it into Rainbow Dash."
"Isn't that deadly?"
"She will be fine."
"I'm going STRAGHT to hell."
"Will you stop," she said, putting the stuff in her bag as they got out.
"I'm sorry."
"It's okay," she said, picking the lock, "Just be quiet until I use chloroform."
"Jesus Harold Christ."
As the two snuck up to Dash's room, Seth could only wonder what was going through is favorite cousin's head.
"When you said illegal, I thought you meant in the lines of going in their houses and fucking with their stuff, not psycho warfare and biowarfare."
"We from two different places with two completely different lacking moral standards. Besides, they are reason Sunset tried to kill herself."
"I cannot argue with that."
"Good," she said, opening her bedroom door, "Quiet."
She took a rag and chloroform from her bag, set it up, and put it on the blue girl's face, waited for a minute, then began sticking a needle into her, injecting the lipo into various parts of her body, making Seth nauseous.
"Want in?" she said, holding an extra needle.
"My dinner wants out, if that answers your question."
"Vomit out window."
The moment that more than a little extra began to show, he projectile-vomited his dinner out the window.
"Done," she said after a few minutes, removing the rag.
"I can't do this anymore," he replied, going out to the Yugo.
She followed a minute later.
"I don't think I can do this anymore."
"That was worst one."
"What now, since I'm in too deep already."
"Just hit animal in road, then go to Fluttershy's house."
He hit a rabbit, so she went out, got it, and made sure it was dead before going to her house.
"Just stage animal murder scene."
When they got to Fluttershy's house, they sterilized, chloroformed Fluttershy, drugged several animals, Sofia snapped the rabbit's head off, stuck it in Fluttershy's mouth, scattered a few kitchen knives in the room, and poured blood on everything, making sure to get plenty in Fluttershy's mouth.
"This looks like a bad animé I like."
"Show me sometime."
In the car, Sofia contemplated how to shoot down a party planner that was capable of breaking physics.
"Farmer, burn harvest. Dressmaker, destroy dresses. Athlete, lipo injections. Animal Caregiver, murder scene. Party planner... Is there party store around?"
"What are you gonna do?"
"I am going to give Pinkie Pie party overload. I need alcohol and party works."
"I pulled this prank on Autumn one time," Seth replied, "It didn't end in the best of ways, considering that she only thought she had been drinking. We shared a six-pack afterwards, though, and it was mostly okay then. I still owe her a trip to the bar, though."
Pulling into the Walmart parking lot, Seth handed Sofia fifty dollars, on account of the fact that the US didn't use Soviet Rubles, and she, being the retarded dumbass she was for five minutes at the Canterlot Airport, didn't get her money swapped over.
"I will be back in few minutes."
"Just the cheapest. I want one for myself with that, too."
"Okay!" she said going into the store.
He pulled into a parking space and read some more for a few minutes until he heard the Aktuelle Kamera music play from his dashboard, "Lovely," he checked the Caller ID.
Сафія +011-375-29-235-2787
"Hey."
"I'm ready."
"Be right there."
He pulled up to the front and opened the hatch for Sofia to load the beer into.
"Any idea how you want to pull this one off?"
"She drank herself to sleep?"
"Works for me, if you're going with it."
He drove her to Pinkie Pie's house, where they, unceremoniously, made it look like she had spent her evening on a drinking spree, then took the backroads back to Seth's house, where Sofia buried the stuff she stole in his backyard, then proceeded to get coffee.
"You are up early," Aunt Natasha said.
"We just went for little drive," Sofia lied, "He taught me Canterlot streets and such."
At 4:30, everyone left for the airport, all having a more-or-less uneventful trip back to Europe and Asia, but when the Rainbooms started waking up an hour later...
~~~Applejack, 5:32~~~
She shut off her alarm as she went to open her window. Still groggy, she didn't notice anything different, so she went to brush her teeth, as per her usual morning routine.
"Applejack," Big Mac said, a cup of Applebean coffee in his hand, "Y'all come down to the livin' room. It's important."
"Let me get mah work clothes on an' Ah'll be there'n a jiffy," she said around a mouthful of toothpaste.
"You won't need 'em."
She started coughing so he hit her between the shoulderblades a time or two, "C'me on... Breathe."
"Why not?"
"We don't have a harvest. It's been burned."
She started coughing up more toothpaste, so Big Mac hit her back again, "Don't choke on me, sis!"
A few minutes later, they were in the living room, and immediately started crying at what they saw: The charred remains of their harvest in a milk crate.
"Who woulda done this to us?" Granny Smith asked in tears, Bright Mac and Pear Butter not doing any better.
"It could be Sunset," Applebloom said.
"Don't go pinnin' this on her," Granny said, "She's a good girl. She's just mighty misguided."
"Actually," Applejack asked, also succoming to tears, "This could be revenge magic or somethin' that comes out when family betrays her. It's not impossible, but it may not've been somethin' she coulda helped."
"Th' both of ya better go an' apologize to her RIGHT when you see her!" Big Mac said, full of rage, "If ya haven't pissed her too much from th' bothaya, maybe we'll make it to the springtime!" everyone in the room was silent, "Now git ready!!!!!"
~~~Rarity, 5:43~~~
Opal jumped on top of Rarity in her bed.
"Opalescence," Rarity said, still half asleep, "You know mommy needs her beauty sleep."
She began to meow rather loudly.
"Opal, what is it?" she said, sitting up and taking off her sleep mask, then looking around the room, "I must've been sleepdesigning again," she looked at Opal and pet her on the head, "Good girl," she said, getting up to clean the mess.
When she opened the closet, though...
"SWEETIE BELLE!!!!!" she yelled stomping down the hall to her little sister's room.
"You. Burnt. My. Dresses," she said, gritting her teeth and glaring at her, helplessly scared.
"I didn't do it!"
"You burnt the orange juice! How could it NOT be you! AND you tried, briefly succeeding to do so, to destroy the name Sunset was making for herself!"
"I promise, it wasn't me! Maybe it really was her! I mean, she's from the magical world that Princess Twilight's from, right?"
Rarity let her sister's words register in her head for a minute, "I didn't think about it. After all we did to her, it could very well be a form of revenge magic from within her after what we caused. It must've came to life when we were all asleep last night."
"Rarity?"
She broke into tears, running into her room to try and make a set of clothes for school, "I'm a terrible person!!"
She woke up feeling heavy, which was unnatural, especially considering she was an athlete.
"Ugh, I feel sick," she said, getting her clothes and walkingtrudging to the bathroom, "What's wrong with me today?"
When she started getting ready, she noticed somethign that made her freak out.
"What the fuck happened to me!?"
"Rainbow Dash?" Scootalloo said, opening the bathroom door a few inches before her older sister slammed and locked it shut.
It didn't keep her from getting a glance that landed decently into the disturbing side of the spectrum.
"Are you okay? You looked-"
"Tell me that you're just dillusional because you get up early everyday!"
"I don't think so. It looked like an allergic reaction."
"It feels like I was binge-eating all night!" she went and threw up.
"Unlock the door when I get back," she said, "I'm getting some medicine."
"Don't tell Mom and Dad!"
"Okay..."
Rainbow Dash spent the next few minutes over the toilet until Scootalloo came back and knocked on the door, "It's me."
"Just you?"
"Just me," she said as Dash unlocked the door, let Scootallo in, and locked it back, "I have Pepto-Bismol, some crackers, and water."
"Thanks," she replied, taking the Pepto-Bismol, "You're the best."
"What do you think happened?"
"Either I had some strange allergic reaction that I've never had before, some sicko stuffed me last night, or something in Sunset snapped and revenge magic got let loose around here."
"Let's talk to her at school, you want that?"
"Like this?" she said, falling into tears.
"Do you have any baggy clothes?"
She said something that, apart from "housewarming", "maybe", and "party", Scootalloo couldn't make out.
"I'll be back," she said, locking the door on the way out as she went to rummage through her older sister's clothes from a party back in October.
~~~Fluttershy, 6:03~~~
She woke up, noticing something in her mouth, along with a coppery liquid, and
"OH MY GOD!!! MY ANIMALS!!!"
Her scream was loud enough that it woke her brother and parents.
"Flutters!" Zephyr Breeze yelled, going into her room, "Are you..." he went slackjawed, "okay...?"
"Honey, we're here for you!" their mom said.
"NO!" Zephyr said, knowing how they'd react to the gory scene, "This is a bro-'n-sis deal, ya know?"
"If you need us, just call!" they said, going down to get breakfast started.
As soon as they went down, Zephyr went in and locked the door, unnaturally serious. Fluttershy was still holding the knife, and the decapitated rabbit still on her bed.
"I... I..."
"My sweet little Flutters?" he said, going over and sitting on a part of the bed that wasn't bloodstained, "Kill her animals? No. You didn't."
"But I-"
"Now, we both know that you'd never do something like this on your own, or at all, for that matter."
Fluttershy could just cry.
"Imma go and get a wetwipe, and get the blood offa your face while you compose yourself."
"Okay," she cried.
Leaving the room, he locked the door and went downstairs, only to find that their parents were visibly concerned.
He had to come up with another quick excuse.
"Just need to clean a little somethin'. Spill, ya know?"
"Alright."
He went back up, unlocked her door with his hairpin, went in, locked it back, then cleaned the blood off of his sister's face, "Now, I want you to think. What could've caused this?"
She thought about everything for a minute, "Well, Sunset's from the same world Twilight's from, so it could be some magic her soul used to punish us after what we did."
"Soul magic? Sunshim?" he thought about things for a minute, "Sounds right. You get ready, I'll keep Mom and Dad out of your room, and if you need me, you know where to find me."
"Thanks," she said, hugging him.
"That's what I'm here for."
~~~Pinkie Pie, 6:22~~~
Pinkie woke up, her room littered with beer cans, mostly empty, and some on her bed. There were several stains on her floor from where some were spilled, but nothing beyond that.
"I may need to tone down my parties for awhile," she said to herself as she uneasily went and readied herself for the schoolday, "Wait, do I drink?"
As the Rainbooms made their way to school, they all ran into the bathroom with their sisters, Rainbow going a step further to hide in a stall so she could take off the hooded-sweatshirt.
Applejack was extremely messy, Rarity was wearing a dress made of tape and a few pieces of fabric, Rainbow kept away from everyone else, Fluttershy wouldn't go anywhere without her brother and just held onto him, heaving, and Pinkie was still a little confused.
"Darlings, this has to be Sunset's revenge magic, though we can only speculate."
"Exactly, Sugarcube. We have to right our wrongs with her an' hope she'll forgive us."
"Me first!" Dash said, "I can't go around like this!"
"Darling, please-" Rarity said, but was interrupted by Sunset and Autumn going into the bathroom.
"And here I am-" they noticed everyone, "What happened?"
All at once, the Rainbooms tried to make things right with Sunset, but for her and Autumn, there were more important things to do, more along the lines of
"What in Tartarus happened‽" Sunset said.
"Revenge soul magic," Zephyr said, "Please turn it off!"
"Wha-?"
"This" Rainbow Dash said, stepping out of the stall, "Please fix me!"
Everyone in the room succomed to varying degrees of nausea, with Autumn puking a decent amount, "And I've had Sofia and Seth's cooking before."
"Sunset, we'r-"
"Time for that later, you need to get to a hospital or anywhere you can get help! That's not normal! Even Alicorn magic doesn't manifest as such!"
"Sunset?" Autumn said, "Who and/or what did you say your dad is again?"
"That... is an excellent question," Rainbow Dash began to lose consciousness, "Get the paramedics!!" Sunset said, running out to the portal, screaming "call 911!"
"We're cool now, right?" Pinkie yelled.
"Yeahwe'refinenow!"
"I think that's a 'Yes'," Autumn said as she was washing the puke out of her mouth and Rarity was laying Rainbow down.
Running through the portal, Sunset completely ignored the human-to-pony process, instead ending up hurting herself.
"Sunset?" Princess Celestia said, worried.
"Ow," she said, getting up and noticing her mom and Twilight having breakfast, "Mom! I'm sorry about what happened wh-"
"What's wrong?"
"Something happened on the other side of the portal, and we need to know who my dad is! We think it's some weird magic!"
"Sunset, your father is Discord."
Sunset's world, along with Twilight's, came to a screeching halt.
Worriedly, they followed Sunset back through the portal.
"Oh, thank Celestia!" Sunset said as an ambulance rushed into the schoolyard.
Students were gathered around as the scene unfolded.
"Sunset?" Autumn said, running up to them, "Where the hell- nice dress- did you go?"
"Longstory!"
As Nurse Redheart and Principal Celestia wheeled out a bespectacled, concealed-in-baggy-clothes Rainbow Dash, the two princesses couldn't believe what they saw.
"I'm driving the girls to the hospital behind the ambulance," she felt her pockets and jacket, "Shit my keys!"
"Here they are!" Principal Celestia said, running them over to her, then noticing her double, "We don't get paid enough," she ran into the ambulance to ride with Rainbow Dash and Scootalloo to the ER.
"You two coming?"
They both followed, amounting to eleven people in a '99 two-door Civic DX, which was a hard time for all involved.
Starting up the car and putting it in drive, she slammed the hazard lights on and floored the car, which scared Fluttershy about thirty seconds in.
"Autumn! Revs!"
"Damn transmission," she said, moving the shift from Drive to 2, then 3, and back to where it should be, "Need to get that fixed, please be fast enough," she said, frustrated as the speedometer rested at 120.
"We're losing it!" Sunset said.
"Don't worry," Autumn said, "I'm gonna start driving like all Kirin do," she rolled down the window, stuck her head out, started blowing the horn, and driving in the middle of the road, "GET THE FUCK OUT OF THE WAY YOU DEGENERATE JACKASSES!!! WE'RE TRYING TO GET TO THE ***DAMN HOSPITAL!!!"
"Watch out, Darling!" Rarity said as she was speeding to a crosswalk with people about to cross.
"Don't worry, they're young," Autumn said, blowing the horn as if she were doing CPR on something very badly, causing them to jump out of the way, "See how they jumped?" she rolled the window back up.
Everyone looked at Autumn like a force to be reckoned with, before Applejack spoke up.
"Are you okay t-" was all Applejack said before someone was caught in the middle of the road.
She slammed on the brakes, rolled down the window, blew the horn, stuck her head out, and yelled, "GET OUTTA THE WAY, YOU IDIOT!!!" before going around the guy at the first chance she got, quickly hitting breakneck speeds again.
They made it to the ER a few minutes after the ambulance did, where they found the sick girl's parents screaming at the receptionist.
"I got it," she said, darkening at the woman behind the glass, "Take us to Rainbow Dash!"
"603 in the East Wing!"
"Follow me," she said, going to the elevator and trying to cool off.
INTERLUDE: Мінск, Беларуская Савецкая Сацыялістычная Рэспубліка
"Are you suffering from severe hypoxia‽‽‽" Seth asked furiously at Sofia, following her to her car.
"Nyet."
"Sure, Sunset almost killed herself, but thinking about it, the Rainbooms are the equivalent of, well, idiots!"
"Are you saying I went too far?" she said, unlocking a Zaz 1102.
"YES!" they got in and she started it, then drove to her house.
"Damage is done either way."
The first eight notes of Risen from Ruins played from Seth's pocket, "If that's Autumn, PLEASE dump me off at Pripyat-Chernobyl and speak nothing of this."
Autumn: 何を考えていますか？
"Oh, she's pissed."
"How do you know?"
"This is in Kirin."
"..."
"Sofia?"
"..."
"Sofia?"
"...We. Fucked. Up..."
"Second that, I don't know the protocol here."
"Reach into bin, get my phone, call her, I talk to her."
"Okay," he said, getting and unlocking her phone, dialling Autumn's phone in America, all the while hoping that, by some sliver of luck, they would both live to see the end of the week.
"What the fucking hell is WRONG with you, Sofia!?"
"It's Seth."
"You too!"
"Where are you?"
"On the way to the hospital. The police are trying to start an investigation, but we originally brought up some kind of magic, but our lie isn't holding out like I hoped!"
"You're not gonna kill anyone, right?"
"If you want to stay alive, don't come past East Germany," she said, fire in her voice before Sunset came on the line, "Listen, I know they were bitches and idiots, but REALLY!?"
"Listen, Sunset, if I had been the one in charge, it wouldn't have went past going in their houses last night and screwing with some shit."
"I... I don't even know what to THINK about either of you right now! You're lucky Princess Twilight and Mom are having trouble processing this, otherwise you'd be dead in Tartarus! HOW do you plan to fix this‽" she said, hanging up.
The drive back to Sofia's house was one that consisted of stress and tension, so much so that no words were said until she pulled up to a garage situated a few blocks from her apartment complex in southeastern Minsk.
"Sofia," Seth said as they approached the front door, "I know you had good intentions, but what the actual hell was going on in your head last night?"
The complex was old, being built sometime within Khrushchev's time as First Secretary/Chairman of the USSR, so most things were manual and cramped, and showed signs of age from an era bygone. The complex itself stood tribute as the first completely modern apartment complex within Minsk, but was long overdue for repairs. Nonetheless, it was still possible to comfortably live there.
"If they made Sunset do that," she said, going in and opening the elevator, "How many other people do you think fell victim?"
"This," he closed the door as she hit the button labeled 12 a few times until she felt the elevator jerk, "This isn't physics. We can't just go back and scratch out crap or start the experiment over! Besides, we have no evidence of what could've happened to anyone else."
"Shit," was all she could bring herself to say.
"You didn't need me here in the BSSR, did you?"
"That part true."
"Sofia," Seth said, "Will you-" he noticed her glaring angrily at a swastika and penis that someone had drew on the wall, "I may have a quick remedy for that," he pulled a sharpie from his jacket pocket and drew a large black spot over the drawings.
"Only good thing from that part of history is people know not to do that now."
"They should've known beforehand that that was a terrible idea."
"Exactly. If you go blind, way something looks doesn't bother you."
"Not to mention that history has, indeed, had it's fair share of idiots, just look anywhere."
"Stalin was paranoid idiot in my opinion."
"I think your feeling there is mutual amongst our entire Eurasian family."
"I have sudden urge to play Red Alert 3."
"We should try to do something to fix this, though."
"Like what?"
"I don't know!" he said as the elevator jerked to a stop, then he opened the door, "I'm not the idiot that wasn't thinking!"
"We call Autumn again and go from there."
After they made their way down the hall to Sofia's apartment, they both decided to give in to the facts.
Her 125-square meter apartment, despite the building being erected in 1961, was more akin to if someone were to put some decent Gangnam Style-era junk and send it back in time to an apartment built while the Berlin Wall was being built.
"I put on coffee, you call Autumn," Sofia said, walking into the kitchen and using the stove to make coffee with as Seth called Autumn once again.
"Yeah?" she said, not as pissed now.
"Listen, about-"
"They all say magic, but Sunset and I don't entirely believe that. I have a feeling it was you and Sofia, too."
"Is Sunset there?"
"Just a second."
"While I'm waiting, you're not mad, still, are you?"
"That's... listen. We've came so far since Christmas, and I don't want anything to get lost, okay? Here's Sunset."
"Listen, I'm not gonna tell Mom or Twilight if you help me fix this, but as far as the cops are concerned, you're on your own to come up with something. And before you say anything, I kinda picked up that something may happen when we were coming back to Canterlot, just not on this level. Rainbow Dash's heart doesn't seem to be reacting well from what any of us can see. She's fell in and out of it a few times."
"We're coming up with something right now. Just, if the cops ask, just say magic. From what I've gathered, they stay out of the magic business. Just bullshit a lie like 'Oh it was some stray magic that made clones' or whatever, okay?"
"Sure," she said, sighing, "Just don't do something this crazy again. I mean, I forgive you and the likes, but still."
"Call one of us back in a few hours and let us know how everyone is, m'kay?"
"Yeah," she said, ending the call.
"So?" Sofia said, coming in the room with two mugs of coffee.
"Cops are on the case, Sunset pretty much knows it was us, Autumn pretty much knows it was us, but they don't want to see us go to jail and death row. Autumn is probably gonna tear at least your throat out and maybe send me to the hospital for a day or so. Everyone is using magic as a deterrent, but that is structurally questionable on so many levels, not to mention we could've killed Rainbow Dash; she has a heart condition that you probably exponentially worsened."
"Now I going to be sick," she said, placing the two mugs on the coffee table and sitting next to Seth on the couch.
"Okay, Sunset," Autumn said as they were getting seated in the waiting area, "I have a feeling that, for the po-po to stay off of our asses, we're gonna need to know Rusinglish," she opened a file labelled РУСИНГЛИШ.xlsx and gave the phone to Sunset, "Меmorize this. Rusinglish is just English, but written in Russian. The cops will never know what hit 'em if we have to send something off."
She took the phone and skimmed the list, which looked very familiar to something she used to learn the Crystal Alphabet back in Equestria, only having a few different letters, "Oh, I should be able to go with this," she said, "This must be what I was thinking about when I was trying to make sense of the people in Russia."
"Good. Good for us. What are you gonna tell the Rainbooms?"
"If I tell them, I might as well just get the police and princesses in the same room and dictate my life's story," she came to an awkward realization, "Sweet Celestia, I feel like I'm talking Russian."
"You're still you."
Twilight came out of the room a minute later, but was accompanied by a cop.
"Let... me... go...!!!"
"Fat chance of that, Miss 'I'm a princess'. If you don't cooperate, you'll be sitting in jail for a long time."
"Twi," Sunset said, "Hold on," she turned to the cop, "Could I just take my sister home?"
The cop thought for a minute, "I guess, you can have her back because she wasn't doing anything outside of chanting something which, thankfully, wasn't doing anything."
"Thank you."
As the officer left, Sunset took Autumn's keys so she could take Twilight back to the portal.
"What are you doing?" Twilight asked.
"Getting you home," she said, the Civic not starting immediately.
"Why!?"
"One, I need you to study chaos magic. Two, you almost went to jail. Three, I need you to close the portal. I'll overnight my journal to Minsk-"
"Minsk!? Isn't that one of the places you said was on the other side of the world?"
Sunset got the car moving.
"Yeah. I just text, using Cyrillic, what I want to write to you to Seth and Sofia, and one of them writes it. Hopefully legibly, neither of them have good handwriting, or whatever it is around here."
"What's the chance something would get lost in translation?"
"Not very likely."
As she sped to the school, she couldn't help but feel that she was being followed, so she ditched the car a block and a half away from CHS, keeping their mouths shut the rest of the way to the portal.
"Twilight, go home, keep Mom there, close the portal and keep it closed until I say so. If she asks, it's to keep law enforcement idiots out of Equestria."
"Got it," she said, going through the portal as the same cop ran up to Sunset from earlier.
"Ma'am, did I just see you do something to this statue?"
"What? Me? No! I just had to come back to get a journal, that's all. You probably just saw a reflection."
"I'm gonna have to take you in."
Seeing as how some of the windows were open and class was in session, she let out an ear-piercing scream, followed by the officer holding her down, all while several of the students and faculty ran out.
"What are you doing to my student!?" Principal Celestia said, running over to him.
"Ma'am, I'm gonna have to ask you to back away. This girl planted something on the statue."
"Have you tried LOOKING yet?" Celestia replied.
The officer gave the statue a decent once-over, but found nothing, so he turned back to Sunset, "Get back where you belong, or I will have your ass in jail for truancy!"
She tried to remain strong.
"Come, Sunset," Celestia said, allowing the shaken girl to rest in her office as long as she needed.
Passion Silverstreak had been looking at a few things for quite some time now since she'd came in to work, and something didn't seem to be adding up.
This magic thing's a hoax, she thought, drinking from her can of Dr Pepper, Give me an hour and I'll have this thing cracked.
At the hospital, Autumn was screwing around on her laptop with reading Wattpad, playing Minecraft, watching YouTube, and listening to music, "Where is Sunset?" she said to herself, "She should be back by now."
She called Sunset from her laptop, an easy task since it was essentially an over-glorified phone dock, but wasn't ready for what she got.
"Autumn?" Principal Celestia said from the other end of the line.
"Whoa God! Sorry, Principal Celestia, it's just-"
"It's okay. Sunset's in my office. Where are you?"
"The hospital. Is she okay?"
"One of the policemen harassed her, threatened with jail time for messing with the statue."
"Okay. Thanks," Autumn said, ending the call.
"I'll see about my car later, what with this news."
At the CCPD Passion walked over to her desk, grabbed her iPhone and sent a text to her younger siblings
Speedy, Shinelight, I'll be home late. I may have to do an investigation. Don't wait up for me, because it'll probably be really late when I get in.
"What were those bastards up to last night. Streetracing, I can understand, especially on Highway 12. But this girl," she looked at the traffic cameras from last night, "What the hell is going on?" the network went offline, so she called Shinelight.
Thirty minutes later at the school, Shinelight was in class, she had forgotten to turn her phone off, but thankfully Miss Cheerilee was her third period teacher.
"So your PRINT statements-" she was interrupted by Shinelight's ringtone, "Shinelight?"
She took out her phone, noticing the Caller ID was her sister, "It's a cop! I'm... probably a suspect in what happened... the other night," she gave the phone to her teacher.
Canterlot City Police Department (302) 067-9899
"Take it," she replied.
I love computers, she thought, quickly leaving and answering.
"Sis?"
"Shiny, I don't like having to do this, and I know you're in school, but someone took the networks here offline. Can you help us?"
"I'd need to be there, but this SOB's gonna be under the prison."
"Drei, zwei, eins, done!" Seth said, typing on his laptop at a speed that would have otherwise made Sofia worry if she needed to make new rodent traps when she went back to the lab, "The CCPD has no network, and I hope to Jesus that it stays like that," he said, sighing, "At least until I can go back to the US."
"I made dinner," she said, coming from the kitchen holding two plates with steak of clearly-unknown origin, "Is steak okay?"
"Yeah's fine."
"Would you like to watch R-rated movie?"
"Autumn's the one to watch movies," Seth said with a smile on his face, "But we can watch one she directed herself if I can connect my phone to your TV."
"What is movie title?"
"We never got that far, but it's better than anything you have in that case of yours. In fact, I like to think of it as a violence/romance/comedy, myself."
"This going to be excelent."
"Trust me, if we don't have to call Soviet-911 for an ambulance, I don't know what I'll do. I mean, I've seen it a few times already, but I still don't know how to do a spoiler for it."
"Connect laptop and play."
He didn't hesitate in opening a hidden file labeled Why you don't piss Kirins.MP4 and hitting play, "Enjoy."
"It starts out with sex-scene?" she asked starting her dinner.
"Just watch," he said, taking a bite of his steak, "By the way, where'd this come from?"
"I..." she looked at it, then went to get the wrapper as Seth paused the video, finding no label on it as she brought it to the living room, "I have no idea."
Seth grabbed the package and felt around it before finally finding where someone had put thin labels over the blank thing, "Hold on," he said, peeling the labels off, to find something written in either Russian or Byelorussian.
КАНIНА
"Translate?"
Sofia turned pale, "Kanina."
"What?"
"Spit it out! It's horse meat!!"
Immediately, they both raced to the toilet, disgusted by what they had just eaten.
"Where did you BLEHH get this!?" he said while they were both vomiting the substance up.
"It was regular steak from Vostochnaya Germaniya in shop!"
"Who could've done this!?"
"Ya ne znayu!!!"
After what felt like forever, they went and blended the cooked dinner into a liquid, then flushed it.
"That is end of that."
"When Sunset, and possibly her pony friends, come to the СССР, we can't do that. Is your refrigerator empty?"
"Aside from experiment and drink, da."
"You wanna just go out to the Ukrainian place for dinner?"
"After that experience, da," she said as he shut off his computer, pocketed his phone, and got both of their jackets.
The Fuzz IV: Is the Summer Going to be Good? Or Bad?
"When you said we may go to Equestria," she tried to move to a less stressful topic, "What should we expect if we do manage to go?"
Sunset snapped her a look for a second, "We'll all turn into ponies..." she remembered Seth and Sofia's... them, "mostly. I wouldn't be surprised if those two would be draconequui."
"Draconequui?"
"Chaos gods. You would either be one of them too, or just a very unique pony. Probably the latter, considering you aren't nuts."
"Thanks...?"
"Sorry," Sunset replied, "I'm still pissed and stressed at what they did to my old friends."
"An' who's 'they'?" Applejack said, pissed, along with Pinkie, Rarity, and Fluttershy.
"Promise you won't be mad, Applejack."
"Spill th' beans, then we can get this whole mess behind us when Dash's cleared ta leave."
"We're leaning toward a few people possessed by magic."
"Ahem," she replied, quickly growing annoyed.
"It was Seth and Sofia," she replied, holding her head, "I don't know whose idea it was to blow the shit outta proportion, let alone this."
"Who now?"
"Seth and Autumn are cousins, and they went to the Soviet Union for Christmas and Novvy god, where Sunset got a Russian coat and Russian hat, and she met Natasha and Ivan, their aunt and uncle in Moscow, Vladislav, Natasha's brother from Omsk, Hong Liu, cousin from Shenzhen, Mitzi, Alex, and Arnold Krause, from Commie-Berlin and one of Seth's favorite places, Sofia from Minsk, and Elizabeth Liz from Cockney London! Sofia is a physicist who drug a half-asleep Seth into it. If he had been the one to have done the mess, it wouldn't have been this bad!" She said, smiling as she made a "squee" sound.
"Pinkie, Darling," Rarity said, "I don't think that's what happened."
"I think she's spot-on," Autumn said, facing into a corner she had went to in the middle of Pinkie's rant.
"Ah guess 'at is a lot ta take in at one time, Sunset," Applejack said as the four new girls sat down.
"Ya think?"
"Oh dear Jesus, I don't want Seth to go to jail," Autumn said, sitting back down, "but I wouldn't mind seeing Sofia's criminal record right about now."
"So... 'is whole thing 's a Soviet Scientist blowin' things outta proportion an' draggin' Seth down with 'er?" everyone seemed to agree with Applejack, "Alright, but who should tell 'er ta call it off?"
"There's actually a few words I have to say to her about this," Autumn said.
"Good thing I was having second thoughts about sending the journal," Sunset said, sifting through her bag for her phone, "You take this," she found the device and gave it to Autumn, "and tell them to come up with a plan."
"There's gotta be a way out of this," Autumn said as she found Sofia's number and called her.
"They're onto us," Seth said as Sofia finally got on the road, "No idea how long it'll be before-" his phone started pinging like crazy, so he checked it, "Jesus Christ!"
"What!?" she said as he forced the phone off.
"Someone's hacked my phone! They're stealing my files!"
"What do we-"
"Dinner plans on hold, I need a burner laptop. NOW!!!"
"I can be at computer store in fifteen minutes!" she said, haphazardly making a U-turn in the road and driving crazier than Seth would to a tech store.
"What do you need?" she asked as they both ran in.
"Twelve-inch, 64-gig Pinebook, 16-gig USB, and a burner phone."
"Okay," she said, running to the desk.
"Što ja mahu dapamahčy vam sionnia?" the man behind the desk said in Byelorussian.
"Dvanaccać caliaŭ, šesćdziesiat čatyry hihabajta Pinebook, šasnaccać hihabajt USB, i prystojnaj jakasci pradapločanych smartfon, i jon pavinien pracavać u Savieckim Sajuzie, Jeŭropie i Amierycy."
"Dajcie mnie adnu chvilinu, i ja viarnusia," he said, going to the back, "Vy chočacie, kab ja aktyvavać što-niebudź?"
"Niama! U nas niama času, i my možam zrabić heta samastojna!"
"Što b vy skazali," he said, coming back shortly after with the stuff, "Piaćdziesiat šesć i siemdziesiat ... dvaccać dva i piać ... adzinaccać i tryccać čatyry ... Dzievianosta rublioŭ i dzieviać kapiejek."
"Dziakuj!" she said, paying the guy as he took his new-bought, Soviet-grade tech, then they ran to her car.
"What do you need it for?" she asked, starting the car.
"Someone hacked my phone, which is also my laptop by extention, and started stealing my files, so we've got to pawn that shit off somehow, and we're, by now, criminals in Delaware."
"If I caught, I plead insanity."
"You what?"
She grunted as she tried to get her Zaz to cooperate, then spoke when they were on the road to the diner, "I have been put in mental healthcare facility few times in Minsk. Longest I was there is forty-eight hours. All fake call-ins by jackass from Kiev or from Sofia."
"I think in America, they keep you for three days or ask you basic questions if they're not sure."
"We figure something out," she said, "Now let's eat."
Seth took Sofia's phone and texted Autumn.
Сафія: Тхис ис Сетх. Ригхт нов, еверытхинг ис тентативе. Сомебоды хацкед мы пхоне, тхеыьве стартед стеалинг мы филес, со И цаньт усе ит. И хаве а бурнер, анд Иьлл техт ёу тхе нумбер вхен И гет ит анд мы нев лаптоп ацтиватед. Итьс а Пинебоок, ин цасе ёы вере вондеринг, со нот партицуларлы поверфул. Иьлл стилл гет анд *поссиблы* мурдер тхис псычо битч беёнд анытхинг анёнеьс евер сеен.
"...and send."
"What are you going to do and how?"
"Let's just say, while every other guy is bragging about the massive size of their junk in their underwear, mine's small, but it can do so much more."
Sofia broke down laughing at that.
Meanwhile in America...
"Shit!" Shinelight said, hitting the table with her fists, "This soviet asshole lost the connection!"
"What?" Passion said.
"Either this dude's phone went dead, or there is no reliable technical infrastructure in the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics."
"Sis, I don't know as much about computers, by a longshot, as you do."
"His phone died or the pink-commies have shoddy Internet where he's at."
"I love you."
"Thanks," Shinelight said, smiling as she went back to hacking on her Panasonic Toughbook CF-53.
"I need to make a run," Passion said, checking her phone, "I'll be back in a little bit. Call me if anything happens."
"You got it," she replied, drinking from her coffee.
Passion went out to the hospital, hoping one of the two culprits would be there.
Speedy never told me if Seth was there, but maybe he is.
Seth and Sofia had just ordered at Café Kiev, they both ordered Dr Pepper and Chicken Kiev (real thing), leaving them to ponder over what would be for the next few days.
"The fact that I lived with you and... Natalya?" Seth said, not quite remembering their Mom's name, "like I was your brother here in the Byelorussian SSR until I was seven should do me good, depending on how far this goes. For some reason, I've always been more accustomed to calling Mom by her name instead of 'Mom'. Hell, I don't even know why I took the bastard's name. I regret not keeping Mom's name, but Autumn was going through hard times."
"You know Byelorussian, but not Russian. I always thought that strange."
"I know the feeling. I just wish we could have been with Mom and Dad together a lot more."
"What happened to him?"
"I don't really know. He and his second wife, Fushidarana on'na, just left Autumn and I with the apartment in Brooklyn when we were sixteen, for whatever reason," he sipped his drink, "I'm glad that dickface didn't show up to her funeral when she died a month after leaving us for some slut prostitute."
"Jackass came and got you when you were seven, leaving us in Minsk for no reason."
"I hope he's dead," Seth commented, "Is America great? Sure. Is Byelorussia great? Just as sure. Our dick-of-a-father coming to get me to make up for seven-and-a-half years lost time? He tore me away from my home."
"He hated me, say I 'Natalya Number 2', then hates Mom, saying she is rotten, no-good communist."
"Dad was a real dick, the one month we both remember seeing him. Between him or Stalin, I choose Stalin."
"Dy. Same here."
Sofia's phone rang, showing Autumn's number.
"I'll take it," Seth said, tapping Адказ, "Hello?"
"Seth? There's a cop here, and she wants to talk to you."
"Okay," he said, worriedly putting the phone on speaker.
"Seth DeMeats, this is Officer Passion Silverstreak. In light of recent events, I am willing to offer a plea. If you place all of the responsibility for the crime on Sofia, claiming that she threatened your life, I'll let you be pardoned as a victim, minor accomplice at worst."
"Um, just a sec."
"Just take it!" Sofia mouthed silently, "I will get out on my on."
"Is that what happened?"
"Officer, I... Jesus, I get worried at this kind of thing."
"Go with her deal," Sofia mouthed again, "We are megageniuses. We figure something out."
"Well?"
She nodded.
"Yes, that's what happened, but I can't get over to you right now, I'm kind of... unavailable."
"I understand that you're working with a family member in Europe, from what your cousin told me."
Fuck you! he thought.
"Yes, ma'am, that's true."
"I'll need you and Sofia to report to the police department in a month."
"Okay," Seth said, ending the call.
"We need to hurry," Sofia said, "This going to be harder than we originally thought."
Over the next month, Sofia made arrangements for a few of her neighbours to check up on her apartment every few days or so, all understanding the situation unexpectedly well, Seth worked with the lab's computers, and on February 1, they headed for the US.
"Do you have any ideas or plans to get out of the insane home?" Seth asked Sofia as their flight took off that morning.
"I will just have to work with what I end up with."
"Jonagold took me back to Brooklyn, then Mama committed suicide a month later. I had just forgotten about it when this shit started."
"If Aunt finds him, she would easily create hell."
"I hope the bastard and slut falls in a volcano. Fell in a volcano. The last I heard they were in Maui."
"He is terrible man."
When they arrived at the airport, they were greeted by Sunset, the Rainbooms, and the CMC, Rainbow looking mostly fine plus a decent amount of scarring.
"You got something you wanna say to us?" Dash said, very pissed.
"Sunset," Sofia said, "Get me. Away from them. Now."
The way she said that was enough to scare Sunset into thinking there might be a round-two of this shit.
"Listen," Seth said, after Sunset and Sofia were gone, "Sofia heard what you did to Sunset, she let it slip at our Novvy God party in Maskva, and it resurfaced old, terrible memories of what our dad Johnagold did to our family: He came to Minsk knocked up Mama and left the week she was supposed to give birth to us. He came back seven-and-a-half years later, verbally abused Mama and Sofia, calling them no-good-reds and the like, then took me back to Brooklyn a month later. That... caused our mama to go into a depression. Skip forward to sixteen, and Autumn and I were living with him and a slut, Fushidarana on'na, and he left us and everything for said slut. A month later, I get a call from Sofia that Mama jumped from the balcony of our home in Minsk and died on impact with the ground. You doing that had to have triggered something in Sofia. Frankly, I'm disappointed in each of you."
"We did apologize ta Sunset," Applejack said, "but that may have been more out of desperation than anything."
"Listen," Seth replied, pinching the bridge of his nose, "I'm sure Sunset's already done the whole 'Forgive-and-Forget' thing, but this vendetta is just beyond stupid, even by my standards. If it were me, it would've played out differently."
"How did you vent, Darling?" Rarity said, ready to run.
"I'll just say that Jonagold spent more time in the hospital than he did thinking about sex. I'm fine, yeah I can handle myself, but Sofia is either gonna end up in prison or the nut-home."
Rainbow Dash and Scootalloo looked at each other.
"We're in," they said.
"I'm sure neither of us wants anything else like that to happen again," Rainbow commented.
"Well, the poor darling does need our help," Rarity said, joining.
"And throw her a BIG party!" Pinkie said, taking a stand with the others.
"Applebloom, we've been caught up in too many lies lately ta go without helpin' her."
"I'm going with you, too," Sweetie said to her other friends.
"Flutters, ya in?" Rainbow Dash said.
"Yay," she said, joining the others.
"Then it's settled," Seth said, "This bloodfeud is settled, and I can't use Soviet cash in America, but I will deal with that one later."
"What about mah family?" Applejack said, "Ya did burn our harvest."
Seth took out a checkbook that looked like it had spent years in a closet under junk and wrote some twenty grand to Applejack, "Don't think twice," he said, giving it to her, "Stupidity brought this on, stupidity's only gonna make it worse."
When the farmer saw the amount, she sputtered for a second, "H... how d..."
"I work with computers and code software. People donate to me if they like it because I don't charge up front for it. And before you ask, they're enough for Autumn, Sunset, and myself to live on and then some."
"Dude, why didn't you think of just bribing the cops?"
"I wouldn't bribe the Soviet Police, why would I do it here?" he said as a piece of paper fell from his jacket.
We're All About to be Criminals, and My Name's Not Seth Anymore, It's Alex Ivanov
Things went... sort of planned. Sofia was arrested, but went to jail instead of a crazy-home. The following day, Autumn and Speedy went to his house for... festivities while the Rainbooms were gathered in Seth's house, looking for a cheap laptop somewhere in a spot of junk.
"Girls," Seth said, "Which of you has high-speed internet access?"
"Why?" Rainbow Dash asked, scared as Seth started looking in the microwave, "You let your sister go to puh-rison!"
"That was just to appease the cops. She won't be there for long, and we all know it."
"Are ya sayin' we're breakin' her out?"
"Nie, ty hrobany prydurak fiermiera! My zbirajemsia ŭziać savieckuju Radzimu nazad ŭ časie ŭ epochu Iosifa Stalina! Što ty dumaješ, čort pabiary!" Seth yelled.
"What?"
"I'm sorry, Applejack. By the way, my name's actually Alex Ivanov, not Seth DeMeats," he said, the atmosphere around him suddenly changing ever-so-slightly with that fact being out in the open, "Thinking back, I'm glad you didn't understand that, or any Byelorussian for that matter."
"Uh, yeah."
"Is this it with the upside-down letters on the box!?" Pinkie called from the basement.
"Bring it up!"
Pinkie came up with an unopened box, clearly with tech inside, and she was rotating it at weird angles, "I can't read it!"
Мінск Кампутары - Пустыя ноўтбукі
"Well," Alex said, "I don't want to use a Soviet laptop to do this, but I'll be more pissed at myself if I let her rot in jail for longer than I have to," he opened it, seeing a brand-new, 2008-era laptop and a note inside.
Алекс, шкада, што я не магу прыехаць у Нью-Ёрк на дзень нараджэння. Я ведаю, што вы будзеце любіць гэта амаль столькі ж, як і вы мама і мяне. Сыстэмы.
"I remember when they shipped it to me from Minsk," Alex said, plugging it in and looking at the keyboard, grateful that it was a Standard-Soviet/International-English hybrid.
"We have high-speed at the barn," Applejack said, as the laptop returned an error that read Там няма сістэмы прывада.
"Good," he said, getting a book of matches from a drawer, "We're gonna need to burn the laptop afterwards, so is there a good place to do it?"
"Don't worry 'bout a thing."
"Good," he said, pulling a USB from the drawer labelled пайшоў на хуй.
"What is that, darling?" Rarity asked.
"USB Key to install FUL."
"What?"
"It means, 'Fuck You Linux'," he replied, causing her face to go red, "I wrote it in 2012 with the intent of breaking into Jonagold's phone to ruin his marriage so he'd ship me back off to at least Ostberlin, but his wife was a slut and thought that the more places her žančyna Pliamy were online, the more he liked her. Spoiler, I never got to move back to the Motherland. The reason I chose the name, I went up to him one day and said, 'Fuck you, I'm a Soviet!' before dislocating his jawbone."
Later, they headed out to Applejack's house and began working.
Вось што «пайшоў на хуй Linux» можа зрабіць OR Here's what "fuck you Linux" can do
That night, everyone was in the Apple family home. Seth Alex had opted to run the setup in English, so the Rainbooms and CMC would know what to do if any of them were unfortunate to have to get anyone else out of a situation like Sofia's.
"Darling, I know you chose English, but it's not very good."
"Rarity, right? Rarity I wrote this when I was twelve. I had only been speaking English for about four years. Looking back, the only reason English is on here is so I could force myself to understand it when I was trying to get back to Minsk. Never thought I'd be busting Sophie away from the militiamen, let alone here in America."
"Ah guess 'at'd explain 'Last' 'n 'After'. Also, it's 'police'."
"In America, you have the police. In Soviet Union, we have militiamen. That's how it is."
"Ah see."
About an hour (and enough bad English to go from hell to Houston to CHS to Equestria to Tartarus to Moscow to Minsk to CHS and back to hell) later, the laptop was ready.
"I need a wireless password for AppleHomeWiFi."
"Ah got it," Applejack said before looking confused at the absolute mess of a... whatever FUL was supposed to boot into.
"O, dajcie mnie zrabić heta," Alex said, muddling his way to the WiFi menu, "Heta pavinna być ciažka aryjentavacca, u liubym vypadku."
"Do Ah wanna know what you just said, or should Ah just leave that stone unturned?"
"Just stating the obvious. Password."
"SweetApple1923."
"And... in! She would probably be here in Delaware, so... searching... here it is," he opened the file they had for her, "Piaćdziesiat blia-hadoŭ!?"
Fluttershy almost passed out.
"Not if I can help it."
He changed a few things where her "sentence" would only be a month long.
"So," Rainbow Dash said after he finished and forced the laptop off, "Are we even?"
"Dy. I'm willing to let bygones be, but you may have to kiss up to Sophie for a while."
"Oh, of course, whatever she likes, Darling!"
"We need to burn this laptop," he said, taking a book of matches and the computer outside, then setting it ablaze.
Sunset, meanwhile, looked at the paper that fell from his pocket earlier.
A Word is Worth Face Value, A Picture is Worth a Thousand Words, A Picture Can Trigger a Terrifyingly-Real Memory
That night, when everyone went to sleep, the picture, most likely drawn by a kid-Sophia, lay folded next to Sunset.
Sunset was walking in the streets of Moscow, when she finally found the house she went to for Christmas, but something was... different.
"Hello?" she said, knocking on the door, "Can I come in?"
It was as if the others didn't pay her any attention. The first Sunset would've just crashed the party for the hell of it, the second Sunset would have left them to their space. but the current Sunset knew something was up, so she let herself in.
It was a necessary evil.
She saw everyone, except for Arnold, but they were several years younger, children rather, along with a woman who looked shockingly like Aunt Natasha, almost like her sister.
Wait...
"Natalya!" Sunset's aunt said, chasing after Sofia, "Help me get your little rascals!"
"Come to Mama, Ale-" he ran off, "Alexander Ivanov!"
Since when do I know Russian? Sunset thought to herself.
"Follow me to the bathroom, Alex!"
The five-year-old Alex ran into a bathroom with Sofia, then locked the door.
"Why are you two in the bathroom?" Natalya said, a familiar emphasis pattern, "Together like that!?"
She went up to the door and listened in, still unnoticed by anyone."
"Alright, Sofia, just a few more touches."
"And stars"
"And Byelorussan flag"
"And color and... done!"
"Mama, close your eyes," Sofia said, holding something behind their back.
"Okay," she said, obeying the two children, "But you two are still eating my biscuits!"
"When are you going to turn the oven on?"
"Now I know why you two started running," she said as they gave her a picture, identical to the one she remembered going to sleep with.
"Open!"
She looked at it, then pulled her kids in a hug, "Novvy God, you two rascals," she said as the four shared a laugh.
"You're not going to try to finish them, are you Mama?"
"These might actually be good."
Everyone went into the kitchen and saw what may have been a breathing science experiment.
"Mama," Sofia said, "When I grow up, I'm going to be a scientist so I know what you try to cook."
"It's that bad?" she replied, earning several heads nodding "Yes".
"Well, I know where their cooking skills came from," Sunset said to herself, suddenly being noticed by the others.
"Who..." Natasha said, "Who are you?"
"I'm Sunset Shimmer."
"Sunset?" Alex said, "How are you here?"
"I'm really not sure, but I think it may have something to do with your mama's gift."
"You know my children?"
"I know everyone here," she replied, before looking into Natalya's lifeless, gray eyes, "Everyone except you."
Immediately, tears came from the Byelorussian mother's eyes, "I'm sorry we never met."
As she finished that sentence, the scene suddenly turned to a city, which she soon found to be Viciebsk, where she saw the two sisters, younger still, but with Natalya supposedly carrying her soon-to-be-born kids, walking to a park.
Sunset was, again, on a separate plane of existence from them.
"What are you going to name them, Natalya?"
"I'm not sure. Are you still going steady with Maksym?"
"We decided to go our seperate ways. It just wasn't working. For now, I want to spend time with you here in Byelorussia."
"How is Moscow?"
"It's like a version of Omsk that is in European Russia."
"Did Vladislav stay?"
"He did."
Natalya had to sit down, "When the twins come, I want to have an apartment in Minsk."
"You should stay here at home," her sister joked.
"Says you. You and our brother moved to Omsk, then he stays in Omsk while you move to Moscow," she laughed.
"Alright, but why Minsk? Why not stay in town?"
"I don't want Jonagold to have my address, but I want to stay in Byelorussia."
"You can always come live with me in Moscow."
"Thanks, but I don't want to intrude."
Sunset snapped up in cold sweats, "What in tartarus...?" she grabbed for her journal and began to write.
Twilight, I just had the strangest dream, but I think it would be easier to talk in pony. -Sunset
Sunset woke up to see Alex looking at her, extremely pissed and sitting right next to her head.
"What. Are you. Doing. With Mama's gift."
"It fell out of your pocket and I never got a chance to give it back," she looked him over as she sat up, "You talk just like your mom."
Alex went cold, "How do you know that‽ How do you know how Mama spoke‽"
"I had a dream," Sunset answered, "I don't know how to explain it, but it just happened!"
"How much do you know, and what did Mama look like."
"She wore clothes similar to what Sofia wears, but a little nicer, medium brown hair, maybe two years younger than our Aunt, a watch on her right arm, a necklace with a plain charm on it, glasses before you and Sofia were born, and earrings that looked like red stars," she said, then going into all of the details of her dream, causing everyone to suddenly be afraid of her on a mild level.
"What are you?"
"My dad, as it turns out, is the Lord of Chaos."
"That explains everything..." he pinched the bridge of his nose, "and nothing... at the same time."
"I never thought I'd be saying this," Rainbow Dash said, "But the sooner we get to school, the better. I want to forget about this as long as possible, as soon as possible."
"Agreed," Alex said as everyone got ready.
At CHS, Seth left the Rainbooms be, but went to find Autumn. A few minutes in, though, he heard bumping and moaning in the janitor's closet, so he stopped for a minute.
"Speedy, you magnificent beast," Autumn said seductively, visibly disturbing Seth.
"Autumn!" he knocked on the door, "Autumn, open up, we need to talk."
She opened the door just enough to stick her head out and nothing else, "Can it wait a few minutes, I'm kinda naked in here."
"That," Seth said, "That is the last thing that I wanted to hear! J- ju- just get dressed! Please!"
"Oh alright," she said, closing the door and coming back out, her and Speedy both looking as messy as Seth did on any day of the week.
"See ya in class?" Speedy said.
"You know it," Autumn said, opening the door to the closet, "We can talk in here."
"What? No! Gross! I'm glad your sex life here is better than in Brooklyn, but what you two did in there," he jabbed a finger at the closet, "STAYS in there!"
"Okay."
He took her to an empty classroom, then he told her everything about Sunset, then how he was Sofia's brother.
"You and Sofia being brother and sister, I kind of picked up on after Jonagold and Li'l Miss Slut left us. Sunset though, I can't wait to go to Equestria now! Though, I always figured that you were ashamed of being a Communist."
"Let me put it in perspective," he said, earning a nod from Autumn, "If we see him, Sofia and I will do our worst to him. Please help us."
"Oh," she said, "Nirik-level fuck?"
"More-or-less," he said as they began to walk to homeroom.
Seth, Autumn, Sunset, and the Rainbooms (plus Zephyr) went to the prison to visit Sofia after school a week later, but Seth had a failsafe method of getting her out.
"You have twenty-five minutes."
"Could we have some privacy?" Seth blatantly said, "We need to talk about some rather sensitive matters."
"I'm sorry, but that isn't allowed."
Seth muttered a few more-than-colorful phrases under his breath in Byelorussian, glad as hell that nobody (sans Sofia) was capable of understanding.
"What do you mean 'My God, why the fucking hell?', Seth?" Pinkie said, causing Seth to snap up and turn five shades paler.
Seth looked to Pinkie and Sunset, "That's it, I know it. You two are sisters."
"Not quite," Sunset said.
Sofia and the Rainbooms made things right with each other, before they gathered around Seth and Sofia so they could do the other half of their mission: kill her.
"Listen," Seth quietly said, giving her a few small pills, "Take these. You will, as the metaphor goes, be sitting at the table with Death himself. You'll fall comatose, almost completely dead, for a short time."
She swallowed the pills, "How long?"
"T minus sixty-five minutes, give or take."
"You're done," the guard said, going over to them, "Out now!"
"It hasn't even been ten minutes, yet!" Seth said.
"Don't care," he said, forcing Sofia back to her cell.
Upon leaving the prison, Seth checked his phone.
"What now, Darling?"
"We just have to eat up time until they start putting my sister into a body bag," everyone looked at him extremely disturbed, "What? We can't just stand here."
By the time Sofia was back in her cell, she had already started showing signs of her body shutting down, but she had to make herself hang on.
Keep it together, she thought, looking at a slightly-pale version of herself in the mirror.
"Hey Commie, you okay?" a silver-haired girl asked, "You're sweatin' a lot over there."
"Da," she said, stripping to her bra and underwear, showing more paler-than-normal skin and sweat.
If she had known it would be this bad, not even ten minutes in, she would've tried just getting out like a normal person. Right now, though, she turned on the faucet and tried to get under it.
"You sure you don't need someone?"
She started drinking from the tap for a minute before turning around, leaning on the sink, and replying with an exhausted, "Da."
"Okay, then."
She made her way over to the bed where she collapsed and continued sweating and panting.
This is stronger than it should be.
A few minutes later, she started acting rather strange, muttering complete nonsense.
"I'm getting someone-"
"Naga, mutant eagle kitty."
Before her cellmate could say another word, Sofia stood, vomited a large amount of blood, then fell to the floor.
"HEY!!! GET SOMEONE IN HERE!!! THIS BITCH FELL OUT!!!"
A minute later, a team of paramedics ran in to check on the Byelorussian girl, unconscious and laying in a pool of her own vomit and blood, before saying anything.
"My God, she's dead."
The "Get Outta Prison" Pill: Sofia's Experience Pre-Coma
As I was being forced back to my cell, I began to feel weaker, along with an amount of pain that felt like when I accidentally was thrown back by an explosion at the lab in Minsk, but the pain had no discernible source.
"Don't do any of that half-assed 'I'm sick' shit," the guard said.
I'm not. I'm genuinely fucking sweating my insides out ***dammit.
I just tried to keep myself from dying until I was thrown back into the cell by the inhumane bastard who tried to rape me an hour earlier.
"Now keep fucking quiet!" he said, slamming the door, jolting me back to attention.
When he left, I went to see myself in the mirror.
Shit. I'm papyrus-white.
"Heycommie,youokay?You'resweatin'alotoverthere." my cellmate said.
"Da," I said, seeing something strip me naked.
After a minute, I realized I had done that.
"Yousureyoudon'tneedsomeone?" a voice said, resembling my cellmate's as a steady sound hit my ears and I felt wet.
Must be the sink.
I stuck my head under and drank for Christ-knows-how-long, probably muttering something.
I wasn't too sure.
"Okaythen."
I felt like I was spinning for a bit before I fell on something rather firm.
"Imgettingsomeone-"
When I looked over to the sound, I saw an anthro-anime world with a person with eagle wings and a lion's body.
"nagamutanteaglekitty."
I suddenly hit something.
The "Get Outta Prison" Pill: Sofia's Experience, Comatose
I looked over and saw what looked like a section of my wall with my corkboard and dry-erase board. The first thing that caught my attention was a picture of a cut steak that bared a passing resemblance to East-Germany, alongside a map to go with it.
"I wonder..."
I took the picture, turned it over, and read the date.
31.12.2009
"This was when they had settled in East-Berlin," I said, writing on the dry-erase board.
Mitzi's house, Berlin, DDR - 31 12 2010, 23:58
The next thing I knew was that we were in Mitzi's living room, the clock read 11:58, and it was dark out. After a moment, I found that I couldn't interact with anything.
"Mitzi, bring a map!" I heard a ten-year-old Alex Ivanov say.
I followed Mitzi into the kitchen where she unfolded a map of the Deutsche Union, and setting it down next to the plate before laughing.
"How does your steak look like die Deutsche Demokratisch Republik?"
"I don't know."
"Either way," she said, turning to the living room, "Come in here so you don't miss the Neujahrs special!"
"Have this," Alex said to me, taking the picture with a Polaroid and giving it to me, "I'm hungry."
I followed the younger versions of ourselves into the living room where Fernsehen der DDR was starting up. The countdown was the same, but instead of the regular version of Auferstanden aus Ruinen, a special instrumental version was played, then the program finished starting up by overlaying the text DDR NEUJAHRS 2010 as an upbeat tune played, almost resembling a part of Moskau by Dschinghis Khan.
I stayed for a few minutes before changing the board.
Sugarcube Café, Canterlot, Delaware, USA - 24 12 2018 12:22
I saw the Rainbooms cuss Sunset, get physically violent against her, and Applejack holding her at one point while I heard what was at least two of Sunset's ribs cracking.
"You fucking leave us the hell alone!" Rainbow Dash delivered a punch that guaranteed Sunset would be missing teeth in a day, "And stop fucking around ***dammit!!!"
This shit kept on for a few minutes.
"Please..." she begged, receiving more physical abuse for several minutes.
Eventually, one final kick to the chest knocked the breath from Sunset, cracking more ribs and breaking the ones that were cracked earlier happened before Applejack and Rainbow Dash threw her to the floor, where she lay for a few minutes, coughing blood and missing half of her teeth before she grabbed them, put them in her pocket, and left, heaving as she did.
"Fuck that bitch, ***dammit," Rainbow Dash said.
I wanna see how this plays out.
I followed Sunset down a block or two, then into an alleyway, not that it wouldn't have been hard with a small trail of blood to go by, then I saw her pull the skin and muscle from her chest, exposing her ribcage and lungs, one of which had collapsed.
Sure enough, her ribs were either cracked or broken entirely.
"Now I really want to see where this goes."
She broke her ribs off, all of them, then put them immediately back on as if nothing was there, then opened her left ribs like a cage, took her collapsed lung out, and blew it up like a balloon before putting it back in and closing herself up.
I have a few questions for her.
She swallowed her teeth, opened her mouth, and ran a thumb across them, "Good," she said, "Back in place," she licked the tip of her finger and touched it to her swollen black eye, relieving it instantly, resetting her nose, then snapped her fingers which may have been what caused all of the blood to disappear, "Well, I should get home before I have to do that again," she said, slowly walking down the streets, "Don't know how many times I can do that."
Next, I saw the Novvy God party with Sunset and everything I did to the Rainbooms.
"Alex would've loved doing this with me," I said, sitting down after the last scene finished playing out, "But I... really don't... know what to do now," I said, feeling something soft on my back, almost like I was laying in a bed.
The next thing I knew was that I was laying in Seth's bed with him, Sunset, Autumn, their principal in a dress for whatever reason, and a Christ-knows-what.
"I must've used too much magic in that thing," Sunset said.
"Speaking of which," Sofia said, pushing herself to more of a sitting position, "HOW IN HELL CAN YOU OPEN YOURSELF, OPEN RIBS LIKE LITERAL CAGE, TAKE OUT AND BLOW YOUR LUNG UP LIKE BALLOON, AND SWALLOW YOUR TEETH FOR NEW ONES ***DAMMIT‽‽‽" Sofia said, glaring at Sunset as Rainbow Dash and Pinkie Pie came in the room.
Sunset was visibly stunned by this, then Pinkie started to say something, but found herself at a loss.
After a minute, she looked at the reader and pointed at her head, "Whoops, there it goes. Yup, my Pinkie-Sense stopped."
"I think they've got that, already," Discord said.
"Let me guess why you're here," Sofia said to Celestia, "You want to know about Byelorussia."
"Want to know about- no," she replied, "I'm a princess from another reality."
"I now know less about America than before."
"A...merica?" Celestia replied, confused, "What's a Merica?"
"Mom," Sunset said, "America is the country they live in," she looked at Sofia, "Well, except for her. She lives in the Soviet Union."
"Oh."
"Quick show of hands," Seth said, "In this room, how many people have tried to kill someone somehow?" every hand in the room went up, "Good. We're all terrible people, cut, said, and done."
"That is a good question, Sofia," Rainbow Dash said, turning to Sunset, "You looked pretty bad, then the next morning you looked good as new."
"Two words," she replied, "Chaos Magic."
"Can I get up now," Sofia said, "It is going to take all of vodka I find to process this."
"The important thing is that you're alright," Celestia said.
"Thanks for not killing me."
"That's over and done with now."
"We've seen the full story," Discord said (literally in his case).
In the coming months, everything would happen more-or-less as it does in the EqG timeline, but Seth starts talking to Zecora, Sofia would go back to Moskva until she was sure she could stay by herself in Minsk again, and everyone tries to live their lives like normal.
Until the next magical thing comes along and tries to kill them all.
Sunset was walking down the snow-covered street when she spotted a pair of boxy headlights, not unlike those used by some cars of the 1980s, going down the street, so she jumped out in front of it.
She had no hopes for Christmas after Anon-a-miss, so she thought she’d make everyone’s lives better.
Maybe she’d get hit and killed.
Meanwhile in the station wagon/RV, cousins Seth and Autumn Blaze were singing to a Christmas song they had put to the tune of the East German National Anthem, Seth driving.
From our slumber, we’ve awoken; Christ-mas-time, this glo-rious morn’; To the hol-i-day we wel-come; Let us be al-to-gether! May your joy, be spread, to a-all; On this won-derful day!; For our fam’-i-lies’ ha-ppi-ness; Share your joy to all people; On this Christ-mas morn!; On this Christ-mas mo-
“SETH STOP!!!!!!!!”
Seth slammed on the breaks, but they didn't work, causing him to have to swerve around the person.
"Jesus Harold Christ!!" he said, yanking up the emergency brake, causing the vehicle to skid to a stop.
"It's in your line to slam on the brakes!"
"I did," he looked and saw that he missed the pedal entirely, "How did my huge foot miss that?"
"Let's try that again in a little bit, okay?"
"Yeah!" Autumn said, turning to Seth, "Hell if I know, it's your huge foot."
“Where are you going?” Sunset said as Autumn put her in the car’s front seat with her and her cousin.
“Home,” Autumn responded as Seth attempted to start the car again, “Where we have food and heat and COZY!”
“You don’t even know me!” Sunset yelled, as Seth struggled to get it to start.
"...Start...!" he said, before looking to the gas gauge, "Crap," he rolled down the window, "Does anyone onset have gas and two-stroke oil? I don't have an injector, yet!"
Sunset and Autumn laughed and checked their phones, Seth joining in a moment later.
"Oh, Christ."
“Where are you going?” Sunset said as Autumn put her in the car’s front seat with her and her cousin.
“Home,” Autumn responded as Seth started the car again, “Where we have food and heat and COZY!”
“You don’t even know me!” Sunset yelled, but was overwhelmed by the engine’s loud roar.
“Sorry!” Seth said, revving the engine to get it to warm faster then going blank.
"Care to tell us why it's so loud?" Autumn said after a minute.
"I forget."
Autumn handed him a sheet of paper, "Read this."
“Soviet cars of the '80s need to warm up first, and two-stroke engines are the loudest! In '95, they swapped over to modern engines, but I don’t like the new Soviet cars. Or new cars in general. I’m more the retro-type!”
At Best Buy, Seth was surprised that they had everything he wanted to get Sunset: a HP Elite x3 set and some studio-quality headphones.
“$2,000 even,” the cashier said, boxing the stuff up, “Last minute Christmas?”
“Yeah, and one more thing,” Seth replied, searching his jacket for something before facing offset, "Autumn, you got my wallet! I need it back for the Best Buy thing!"
"Oh Lord."
She’ll love these!!
“$93.95,” the cashier said, “Thank you for shopping at Old Navy,” she locked up, moved her eyes down and to the right, then her and Autumn bent over in a laugh attack.
"It's Ross."
"Hello, I am the cashier at Ross Clothing," Autumn said, "I work here five days a week for the past six-and-a-half years, there are signs everywhere with our store's name on them, so thank you for shopping at OLD NAVY!"
"My God!" someone said as a few people laughed.
“Home free,” Seth whispered as they went in and closed the door as quietly as possible, “Are we going to wrap yours?”
“No. It’s almost 2:30 in the morning and I’m tired.”
“Let’s just set them next to the tree.”
Autumn nodded in agreement as both set their gifts down and went to bed.
The television had since changed from the Soviet Christmas Music to a blue, contemporary-style analog clock with no audio and captioned with Aktuelle Kamera, which caught Seth's eye.
"Mind telling me why it says 'Current Camera' in German instead of 'Merry Christmas' in German?" he said to the crew, rather annoyed.
"Sorry," a guy said, changing the text, "Now we can do it over."
"Just don't screw it up again."
The next morning, Sunset awoke to the sound of someone playing piano music and a blizzard just outside.
“Oh, my song, song of a maiden's true love, To my dear one travel with the Sun. To the one with whom Katusha knew love, Bring my greetings to him, one by one. ”
“You sound just like a Soviet, Seth!”
“Spasibo.”
"Guys," Sunset said from the top of the stairs, getting their attention, "As much as I like hearing you play that song, nopony knows what it is.
Seth and Autumn came up the stairs and caught Sunset dead in her tracks.
“Breakfast?” Autumn asked but was cut off by Sunset, “or-?”
"I'm from Cold War-Poland. I'm working with 24 horsepower, so you might beat me."
A few minutes later, both were in their cars and the race was about to start."
When the race was started, they both stepped on the gas. Autumn quickly had a head on Speedy, all while leaving a plume of smoke behind her.
"Highway 12," she said over the roaring engine when she noticed Speedy passing her. Time and time again, they kept at neck-and-neck, running people off of the road, evading the cops, and Autumn doing a certain gesture at one who drove beside her for a few minutes.
A few turns in, however, Speedy hit something.
"Shit!!"
"Hell, are you okay?" someone said, running to his car.
"Yeah, I'm fine."
"You'd do that for me?" Sunset asked."
"We're family, now," Seth said, "So, unless you want to stay here and get hypothermia in the yard instead of going with us to Russialand..."
"I'm ready. Also...?"
"I don't drive in blizzards if I'm with her," he pulled a pocketknife out and stabbed at the ice between the panel gaps, making no progress, "Front or back? Ice fall out. Do it now. I command you."
"Now I'm just getting cold," Sunset said.
"I'm gonna set this on the stove for a few minutes and come out when it's glowing and try again," Seth said as he went inside."
At CHS, Seth left the Rainbooms be, but went to find Autumn. A few minutes in, though, he heard bumping and moaning in the janitor's closet, so he stopped for a minute.
"Speedy, you magnificent beast," Autumn said seductively, visibly disturbing Seth.
"Autumn!" he knocked on the door, "Autumn, open up, we need to talk."
She opened the door just enough to stick her head out, but fell down, both former occupants of the closet trying to cover themselves as Seth stared, miles from reality, in shock before opening his mouth and letting his head fall.
"No," he muttered, walking off and shaking his head as the other two quickly got back in the closet and closed the door.
"I better be getting 'Mental Scarring' pay for this!" Seth said, out of camerashot.
"If you let this leak online, I swear to God you'll die!" Autumn said, venom in her voice behind the closed door.