Two Filler Fics "From Ashes, Acid and Absinthe"

I swear, this is my last time plugging the fanfic I co-wrote with Hope, which just so happens to be a prequel to the human part of At the Inn of the Prancing Pony. (Um, there's a human part to At the Inn of the Prancing Pony. Spoilers to anybody reading this who hadn't reached Chapter 22.)

Anyway, after re-reading AAA (as Hope and I abbreviate it), I realized that there were two scenes I wanted to see that were not included in that fanfic. Now both of these come after the ending of AAA and are terrifically spoilery, so you have been warned.

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Filler #1

May 4, 1971

It was the anniversary of Marcus’ defeat. One full year, and no Sunset.

Sunset had predicted this possibility. Of course she had predicted this—Sunset was a genius, after all. It was hard to be exact with time magic.

Starlight had returned to Wisconsin ostensibly to check up on the sisters. She didn’t need to come here for the cult, as she had already relocated them to Santa Barbara. Santa Barbara was where her publisher was based—her first self-help book had already been published, to moderate reviews.

The sisters…didn’t do well with her. Meeting Starlight had triggered nightmares in the two, nightmares they couldn’t describe upon waking. Starlight had left soon afterwards.

After that she retraced her path, from the remains of their camp and its church, through Mukwonago and finally into Milwaukee. Dark skies and sound-dampening snow followed her every step of the way. She planned to stop her re-creation here, at the War Memorial. 

It would be far too painful to go farther than that.

There was an event going on at the Memorial, a “Save the Manuscript” fundraiser. Starlight sighed deeply on seeing it—there was no way she was going to retrace her steps under the eyes of dozens of strangers. But then she stopped, turned, and looked once again at the homemade sign. It was being put on by the Scientific Journal of Psychology.

Her parents had a subscription to that magazine. She had been raised reading it. The idea that this magazine might be in financial trouble was just…wrong.

Starlight had some money saved away. It was supposed to fund a wild trip with…but that probably wasn’t going to happen now. The magazine would be a good cause. It would mean that this trip wasn’t a waste after all.

She walked inside.

For a moment Starlight felt like she had stepped outside of mundane reality, as the lobby was filled with the ghosts of herself, Sunset, and everyone else who had been gathered here one year earlier. But that vision then faded into the present day, with well-dressed men and women circulating between cardboard exhibits tacked to the walls. It looked like a high school science fair. 

Starlight shook her head to clear it completely of cobwebs, and then started to examine the exhibits. Out of the corner of her eye she saw the others notice her brightly-dyed hair and give her odd looks. She would just look back at them, wave politely, and act like nothing was wrong.

It turned out that the magazine itself was not in trouble. Rather a local project they had funded had run into legal trouble, and a historical document at the center of the controversy was in danger of being destroyed. The matter didn’t really interest Starlight that much—if it came out of a Seventeenth-Century Catholic mission, chances were that it was yet another apologia for atrocities against the Native Americans.

As Starlight had been working her way around the lobby, she had kept her eye out for the fundraising organizers, and soon enough she had spotted them: a pair of short women, one a redhead with pale skin, and the other of South Asian ancestry. They were looking for people they hadn’t yet wrung a donation out of, and Starlight was determined not to be seen by them.

Starlight had nearly reached the front door again, and her chance to escape, when her eye was caught by the last exhibit, the one with the most-blatant language to induce cash contributions. The association behind the Scientific Journal of Psychology had been sued by the Wisconsin Society of Exceptionalism, and until the suit was settled, the magazine could reveal nothing of the contents of the document they had unearthed in Le Pere, other than the fact that it had been radiocarbon-dated to the year 1671. The year had deliberately been written large and bold.

It was close. It was so close. Starlight Glimmer reached out a finger, and in her mind’s eye flipped the second digit over, turning the 6 into a 9. But it flipped back of its own accord.

With a deep sigh, she turned to walk out of the building. And nearly ran over one of the two little women.

“I’m sorry!” she exclaimed, helping the redhead back to her feet.

“Oh think nothing of it,” the woman said with a mysterious smile.

“Irene! Are you alright?” the other woman exclaimed, racing to her side.

“Oh, I’m fine, Diep!” Irene exclaimed brightly, gesturing towards Starlight. “And look who I found!”

Diep locked eyes with a suddenly nervous Starlight, and her mouth dropped open in wonder. She looked over at Irene, who nodded back at her.

“That’s a lovely hair color you have there, miss,” Irene said with a confidence belied by her height. “May I ask what inspired you?”

Starlight touched her hair self-consciously. “Well, the colors work well for me, and I knew somebody who liked them.”

‘Why did I say that last part? The standard response is to go into the cultural significance of each color!’ she thought angrily to herself.

“We are looking for a personal sponsor for this project,” Diep said quietly but with conviction. “Someone who can help us to see it through to its deadline, before it’s too late. Cases like this could last for decades before they…uh, reach their deadline.”

Irene rolled her eyes and elbowed her partner.

“I’m not going to say it,” Diep muttered to Irene.

“I’m sorry, but I’m just not interested,” Starlight said. She gestured at the exhibit she had just read. “I’m not seeing any signs that this is a document worth special preservation.”

“Well you already know what’s in it,” Diep muttered.

“So what is it?” Starlight asked, running out of patience.

“Science fiction,” said Irene. 

“Quite interesting science fiction,” added Diep.

“Well, I wouldn’t say it’s quite up to the level of Cyrano De Bergerac’s works.”

“L’Autre Monde is rubbish and you know it.”

Starlight looked in confusion between the two women.

“I will say no such thing!”

“Well what about the climax, set in this very building?”

“Completely contrived, and utterly breaks the rules of magic set in the earlier chapters.”

“Wait, wait, wait!” Starlight exclaimed, stepping between the two feuding researchers. “You said that the climax of the story you’re raising money for is set in this building?”

“This very one,” Diep confirmed.

“But how would an author in 1671 possibly know about the existence of…what’s the main character’s name?”

Irene looked at Diep. “Are we allowed to tell her?”

Diep winced. “The lawsuit is very broad in what we’re not allowed to talk about.”

“And besides, it depends on the section. She has a different name on each planet.”

“No, on Earth Starlight knows her true name. …Oops.” Diep put a hand over her mouth.

Starlight turned away suddenly to hide her tears from being seen. She put a trembling hand over the date on the page before her. “One digit off, Sunset. So close, and yet so far.”

Irene frowned on seeing the reaction of their visitor. “Alright, game’s over,” she announced. She reached into her purse and removed a slip of paper, which she shoved into Starlight’s hand. “It’s not what you think, Miss Glimmer,” she said. “Just wait a bit, and your story will have a happy ending.”

Starlight was still in so much shock that she didn’t even hear what was said, or notice what had been put in her hand.

Irene looked at her softly for a moment, before striding over to the center of the lobby. “Alright, I’m afraid we’ve gone far past the time allotted to us. Please leave in an orderly manner while we clean up. Chop chop, people!”

---

“Goodbye, Starlight.”

The words, spoken quietly into her ear by Diep, circulated slowly through her brain for several minutes until she had finally come to her senses. She looked around her at the empty room, dimly lit by the setting sun. The snow had stopped, and at least some of the sky overhead had cleared.

The exhibits were gone. The people were gone. The place was just like she had imagined it to be for her anniversary visit.

Except there was no Sunset Shimmer here to wait for her.

Starlight slowly looked around her at the empty room, taking in the silence. As she turned, her foot crunched lightly on a piece of paper.

Starlight looked down. It was the paper that Irene had put in her hand. The paper attached to the story…that Sunset had written in 1671. Had written for her in 1671. Starlight bent down and picked it up, smoothed out the wrinkles and tried to read it.

The lighting was horrible. And it was written in French, which Starlight didn’t know. But the year 1984 was written large and bold.

Starlight smiled. “Is that all? I can wait that long,” she said to nobody, before leaving the lobby.

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Filler #2

The year 1984 approached Starlight Glimmer with a sense of inevitability. Largely hopeful inevitability, but inevitability, nonetheless.

Mary Jo and Ellen Powell soon became so unable to handle the act of looking at Starlight’s face that she had to perform her support of the sisters at a distance, mostly in the form of hand-written letters with checks paperclipped to them. Starlight truly regretted being forced to do this but felt it to be the only way that they could move beyond the abuse they had received from their father.

One of the prime areas of support was legal: The pair were still legally Marcus’ daughters, and until they reached the age of 18, they had no protection from him. Starlight unleashed a flurry of lawsuits and injunctions during this time, ostensibly trying to replace Marcus with herself as their lone parent. Starlight knew full well that none of these attempts would have a chance of winning, and they ate up all of the money Starlight made from her books and lectures, but they bought the time needed for Mary Jo and Ellen to grow up out of the control of Marcus, lasting until their eighteenth birthday in 1974. Starlight wasn’t alone in her support: Mary Jo had fallen in love with Gary, a fuzzy bear of a man who obsessed over wargaming when he wasn’t working part-time as an assistant for the poor lawyer tasked with filing all of those frivolous lawsuits. They got married in 1978. Starlight watched the wedding in disguise from the back of the church. The disguise utterly failed, and everybody at the wedding watched her make an utter fool of herself…except the sisters. They couldn’t even see her. Starlight feared that if they were forced to confront her existence they might have a relapse, but otherwise she felt safe now attending their public events.

Going back to 1974, that was also the year that the Powell sisters published the First Edition of their revolutionary role-playing game Ponies & Dragons, supported by the sale of Starlight’s beachfront cottage in Santa Barbara. Starlight had a strong suspicion that the game was inspired by the pair’s repressed knowledge of Equestria, but was still stunned to see what could only be Sunset’s Princess Celestia featured on the cover of The Equestrian Handbook.

The game exploded in popularity overnight, allowing them to take over the gaming convention Gen Con the very first year. The name change to “PonyGameCon” was supposed to be temporary. There was never another “Gen Con”, and before the decade was out it had been moved to Los Angeles due to overwhelming popular demand.

Starlight loved this development—ponies seemed like alright individuals to her, and maybe this game might have a better effect on human behavior than her lectures, which were always well-attended but never seemed to have any permanent effect on their listeners.

There was however, one significant negative effect of Ponies & Dragons. During that first convention, Mary Jo had apparently lost her mind. Starlight was unfortunately not present to do anything about this in person, as this was before she had learned that she could safely be around the sisters, so she had to work with varying reports of exactly what happened. (The sisters said absolutely nothing about it in their letters.) There was something about the character of Princess Celestia freaking Mary Jo out, that was all that could be said for sure.

After abandoning her investigation into the incident, Starlight had turned back to The Equestrian Handbook, reading it cover-to-cover to find out anything she could about Princess Celestia. Celestia came off alright, but Equestria itself was a wasteland, overrun by monsters. Sunset had never spelled out the crisis she went to Earth in order to resolve—was this it? And if so, why was Sunset never mentioned?

Mary Jo never had another “incident” after PonyGenCon I. But there were other rumors about something strange going on with Ponies & Dragons. Not the rumor about the game turning “good Christians” into “filthy pagans”—Starlight would have been thrilled if that one had actually been true. No, this was the one about random players getting possessed by ponies. Starlight was never able to prove if this one was true or not, but if it was…those poor ponies! Having to spend their time stuck on this world of all places.

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And so finally the day itself arrived: October 31, 1984. PonyGenCon X. Los Angeles. For a brief moment of madness, Starlight considered actually dressing as her unicorn self, but she didn’t have the superhumanly-strong back required to run around in a quadrupedal fursuit. So instead, she just wore a tee-shirt with her pony self silk-screened on front. Due to the massive popularity of the game, she found herself surrounded by thousands of other women also wearing their ponysonas on their chests. Most of them were far younger than her.

“Never trust anyone older than thirty,” Starlight told herself, repeating an aphorism from the now long-dead Hippy Era.

Uh. 1984. President Nancy Davis and her equally reactionary First Man Ronald. The Seventies hadn’t exactly been a fun decade, but at least there was some lip service to the ideals that Starlight and her generation had fought for in the Sixties. Now it was all about greed. And Los Angeles was the capital of that greed.

Starlight hoped that Sunset would come back in a raging fireball that would engulf the entire city. A magical raging fireball that only destroyed material possessions and would leave Los Angeles a mass of embarrassed naked people, all of them rendered equally poor. It would have been glorious.

The Champion’s Showcase was…interesting. Maybe it would be better to say unforgettable. Mary Jo was clearly being possessed by Celestia. And a peasant…Sunset in disguise? No, definitely not Sunset. She had no snark. A Sunset without snark simply wasn’t Sunset.

Starlight debated what to do about Mary Jo’s poor mental state, but she really couldn’t think of a way to intervene without the psychic impact of seeing her would invoke.

Marcus showed up. The sisters got rid of him.

One of the other Pony Handlers flipped out. Ellen dealt with the situation.

The Equestrian influence on the game became more and more blatant. Most of the audience got nervous. Starlight got excited.

And then…

“...I claim protection over all the ponies and creatures you [i.e. humanity] have victimized, and that protection will. Last. Forever!”

Princess, nay Goddess Celestia herself had the last word, and every electrical device in the hall exploded in unison. Starlight was very glad she didn’t have one of those gigantic “cellular telephones” that a lot of Angeleno businesspeople liked to cart around—at least a couple of people next to her got second degree burns.

The convention hall was emptied in seconds by the mass of panicking humanity, with the unconscious Ellen and Mary Jo having to be carried out.

Starlight sat there in the back of the room, leaning forward eagerly in her chair. When nothing happened after the first few seconds, she walked up to the front row, center seat, and sat there. Seeing a discarded pink frilly handkerchief on the neighboring chair, she picked it up and put it in her lap.

“Excuse me.”

Starlight turned her head to look at the person who had walked back into the hall to confront her: a short woman in a bright yellow jumpsuit and matching miner’s helmet. Starlight hadn’t seen this person before, but assumed that she must be Patricia Crowther, the famed caver explorer who had been dragged halfway across America to get involved in this game.

Starlight reluctantly stopped her eager examination of the rest of the room to look directly at Mrs. Crowther. “Yes?”

“What are you still doing here?”

“Waiting for the best part. Sit down over there or something if you want to see it.”

Pat Crowther did as she was told.

And then, finally, a big hole ripped open over the toppled gaming tables, revealing the large stones of a castle interior wall. A few moments, and the head of a familiar alicorn peeked around the edge.

“Halloo!” cried Sunset Shimmer.

“Halloo!” echoed Starlight, waving her borrowed handkerchief.

Sunset stepped through the portal, which remained open, and down a convenient chair to reach ground level. 

Starlight got up and walked over to her. “You’ve gotten taller,” she noted.

“Alicorn thing,” Sunset replied.

“So you did wait,” Starlight concluded. “I was afraid that you’d lose your patience and just jump straight from when I last saw you to this moment.”

Sunset shook her big equine head. “I wouldn’t do that to you,” she replied. “If you had to wait fifteen years, then I was determined to wait the same amount of time.”

Patricia Crowther sat in her chair, taking this all in. The other two pretended not to notice her.

“So did I miss much?” Sunset asked. “Did you get married, have any kids?”

“Are you seriously asking me that question?” Starlight asked. “I mean, what about you?”

Sunset groaned. “After about the third time I saved Equestria, the propositions totally dried up! It was like everypony thought I was better than them or something! Can you imagine?”

“No. No I cannot,” Starlight said dryly, before breaking out in a huge grin. “Come here!” she cried and pulled Sunset into a big hug.

“What, just a hug?” teased Sunset.

Patricia raised an eyebrow.

“It’s been fifteen years, Sunset,” Starlight countered. “We have to re-establish the barriers first, before we can start toppling them.”

“Fair enough,” Sunset said with a shrug of her wings. “So, do you want to show me around?” Her form started shimmering as she began to change form.

“Eh, eh, eh!” Starlight said, putting her fingers on the tip of Sunset’s horn to halt the change. “I’d like to see Equestria first.” She shook the valise that she had somehow been holding this whole time without anybody noticing. “But I need to ask a question: This thing that happened right before you showed up—was that your Princess Celestia?”

“No,” Sunset answered. “That was a parallel reality.”

“Good,” said Starlight. “Because that particular Equestria was messed up.”

Sunset raised a hoof and shook it from side to side. “Well, mine’s not perfect, but I think you’ll like it.” She looked around her at the devastation of the room. “This whole incident was unfortunate, but necessary. For that world, and incidentally for you and me.”

“Because that Celestia breaking between dimensions opened the hole you used just now,” Starlight concluded.

Sunset nodded. “Exactly! So, you want to visit Equestria…” She looked back into the portal, rubbing her chin with one hoof. “You’re going to get a lot of attention…”

“I expect you to transform me,” Starlight said simply.

Sunset blinked. “I…really?”

“Of course. I mean, you’ll have to become Alice Shiner again in a week when I take you on a tour of Earth, so the least I can do is do the same for you.”

“Oh, alright.” Sunset lowered her horn and blasted Starlight with a cone of blinding light, leaving her looking identical to the figure she had silk-screened onto her shirt.

Starlight looked down at the shirt that she was still wearing, and saw that the figure on the shirt was now how she had looked as a human…complete with a shirt with a pony Starlight wearing a shirt with a human Starlight wearing a shirt with…you get the idea.

She wasn’t wearing anything else.

“Cute,” she said. Looking down at the valise, she lifted it with her new magic.

Sunset pouted. “Aw. I was hoping I’d be able to teach you magic during your trip.”

“Oh I’m sure there’s plenty you’ll be teaching me,” Starlight said, walking over to the portal.

Sunset took in Starlight’s figure. “I should mention that you looking like this brings up a complication: Equestria has its own Starlight Glimmer. I met her after returning and she’s one of my save-the-world buddies.”

Starlight looked back at Sunset “‘Buddies’,” she said with suspicion. “I’m not going to have to compete with myself to get your affections, am I?”

Sunset shook her head. “No, she’s pretty different from you. Not my type.”

Starlight smiled bemusedly. “Why? Does she prefer stallions? And more importantly, do I know the human version of the stallion she’s dating?”

Sunset put on a mischievous grin. “‘Stallion’, as in single? I suppose that’s right. She’s dating one stallion, and three mares. And ponies are usually monogamous.”

Starlight laughed, turning to fully face Sunset. “And why aren’t you one of those lucky mares?”

“I don’t date crazy,” Sunset said with a straight face.

The two of them burst out into raucous laughter a second later.

Sunset walked past Starlight to step through the portal. “Come on,” she said, beckoning the other pony, “dinner’s waiting. I’ll change your manestyle afterwards, so ponies don’t mistake the two of you.” She turned her head to look at Starlight for a moment. “Maybe a curve in front, around the stripe.”

“Nuh uh,” Starlight said with a shake. “Straight cut forever.”

“We’ll come up with something.” She walked further into the portal, out of sight of the watching Patricia Crowther.

Starlight looked back at Pat, waved a hoof at her in farewell, and then followed through the portal, which soon afterwards closed.

Pat got up, walked cautiously up to the former location of the portal, and felt around in the air with her hands, failing to feel anything unusual. She then looked around her at the abandoned room.

One part of the room looked off to her, a large box behind the last row of seats covered with curtains. Pat walked back to the box and parted the curtains at the center. This revealed the presence of a large Faraday cage containing a videocassette camera on a tripod. The camera was attached via a converter to a car battery located inside the cage. Two women of about the same diminutive height as Pat were behind the camera.

“Pay no attention to the ladies behind the curtain,” muttered Diep.

“Please tell me we got all of that,” said Irene.

“We did,” said Diep.

Comments

[FanOfMostEverything]

Lovely double epilogue. Starlight's shirt post-transformation was an especially delightful detail. Thank you for these.