It was an incredibly unpleasant experience; the first genuinely uncomfortable thing Sunset had experienced during her time in the infinite realm. It felt like her whole body was being torn, compressed, ripped apart. Her thoughts struggled for a moment, like everything she thought was immediately forgotten. At least the sensation didn't last that long, expelling her from the void lacking sensation or thought and onto a field of rolling hills as bright and cheerful as anything in Equestria.
Sunset landed, straightening the crown on her head and surveying her surroundings. It looked almost as though she'd found her way into ancient Equestria, with numerous little castles and villages dotting the horizon. They looked too far away to see, yet the world was playing tricks on her, because she could see them just fine. Just at the base of a nearby hill, a battle was taking place. Sunset made her way to the edge, glancing down cautiously to try and get a better look.
A pair of armies, each one perhaps five hundred strong, clashed below. They wore armor not all that different from what Equestrians might've worn, though the way humans used weapons was quite different. It wasn't a matter of charring and goring opponents so much as piercing them from range or bludgeoning them to death up close. Yet for a battle, the scene seemed remarkably clean. There were no dying huddled on the ground, no gory scenes of people trampled. When any wound was scored, the soldier fell to the ground without a scream, then vanished.
It was so hard to tell the humans apart when they wore so much armor. "Jackie, are you down there?" Sunset called, using a simple spell to amplify the volume of her voice. Several of the soldiers turned to stare at her, pointing or speaking to one another in annoyance. She couldn't catch most of the words from this distance, except one knight on horseback, who managed to say, “She's breaking sim rules!” before getting struck several times with arrows, and vanishing along with his horse.
Her shouting worked, as much as it appeared to be upsetting things below. A few of the soldiers separated from the army, making their way up the hill. They shouted back and forth with the rest, but not loudly enough for Sunset to hear them.
When she was far enough away from the clashing armies, Jackie's armor vanished in a wave, replaced with an ancient style of padded trousers and shirt, presumably whatever she had been wearing underneath it all. She kept her weapon slung over one shoulder, and looked a little annoyed. "When I said you could come now, I didn't mean right now," she said. "You were supposed to take some time to figure it out, not..." She trailed off, staring openly at Sunset. Her eyes lingered on the crown, apparently recognizing some of its significance as more than just a piece of jewelry. It wasn't hard to see important objects represented in code, if nothing else than the sheer number of pointers one might contain. The crown had tens of thousands.
Her friends removed their helmets one after another, though they didn't ditch the armor completely. Sunset recognized Bree's bright orange hair, Robbie's annoyed face, and Noah with his expression cool and collected. "You graduated?" Jackie asked, speaking more slowly. "Graduated into gorgeous, by the way. It's a good thing you already gave me your number."
She was too collected to blush at Jackie's advances. Too collected. "Not technically," she said. "I still need the resources of the education shard, and having to break in might make my plans difficult." She stepped closer to Jackie, lowering her voice so only her friend could hear. "Did you mean everything you said? About the Tower?"
"Every word," Jackie said, staring into her eyes. "And the others I didn't have time for. All of them."
"Good. Because I plan on getting even, and I need your help."
Jackie glanced once over her shoulder, to her friends. They looked on confused, questioning, but she could only shrug. "Whatever you're thinking of, Sunny, it's probably already been tried. If the Realm could be taken down from the inside, they'd probably have to watch us way closer than they do. Make the world into some 1984 hellhole, watching everything we say. They don't, because it's safe. There aren't any flaws that could bring it down. And you're new. Even if..." She stared up at the crown, one of her hands twitching. "What the hell is that?"
Sunset grinned. "I don't think anypony ever tried what I'm planning. But it needs your help—you, and your friends too if they're willing."
"What is it?" Bree asked, her tone flat as ever. "You haven't told us anything."
"I won't, unless you come with me," Sunset said, waving her hand towards the air behind her. As she did, she summoned the return portal back to her kingdom. As curious as she was about this strange place, where humans fought pointless wars without bloodshed, she didn't plan on staying to get to know it. She couldn't waste time like they did. "Back to the school, I can show you.” And more importantly, you won't be able to get away. Sunset couldn't be completely sure about the powers their "keys" would let them wield, but she had some idea. The same way the school had disabled permissions could be used on anyone, at her whim. Or, as she'd set things up, on everyone who wasn't her. Even if they wanted to betray her plan once she told them, they wouldn’t.
"Sounds exciting," Jackie said, grinning. "Will there be dinner? I'll bring the wine if you bring the entertainment."
"Keep it in your pants!" Robbie groaned, waving one arm and putting his helmet back on. "You go on ahead. I've seen enough stupid newbie plans, I don't need another one."
"Fuck you too, Robbie!" Jackie shouted after him, glaring at his back. "What about the rest of you? I for one am excited to see what Sunny came up with. Going from zero to woke in just a few days must have really inspired you."
Bree walked up beside her, dismissing her armor as Jackie had. "I will go."
"How about you call me if it's cool," said the other guy, taking a step back. "Maybe when you're done, err... when you're done. I'll finish up here."
"Whatever." Jackie waved. "Keep an eye on the idiot while I'm gone."
"Sure." He too turned back to the battle, leaving the three of them alone on the top of the hill.
"Alright," Jackie said, spreading her hands out. "Let's go. Before the mods realize you're not in costume, and ban you from the fare."
Sunset gestured to the portal again, and the three of them walked through.
They appeared in the courtyard, where apparently happy earth ponies worked fields pointless in the virtual world, growing GE crops Equestria had never seen. The guards watching on castle walls stopped to look down on them, staring down at the newcomers. Jackie and Bree froze where they had appeared, staring out at everything. Jackie spun around in a slow circle, taking in the high castle walls with their mounted guns and guards armed with enchanted weapons. She took in the fields, and the ponies working them.
"What the fuck is this?" she asked, pointing at the nearest earth pony. "This isn't the school..." She held up her arm, skimming over the shard information, eyes getting wider. "God, it is."
The construct wasn't intelligent enough to understand—it just kept farming, with the typical diligence of an earth pony.
"Of course it is." Sunset snapped her fingers, and the three of them appeared in her throne-room. It was far less unpleasant a transition than the one between shards, and accompanied by the familiar flash of light and slight pop of a unicorn teleport. "You were exactly right about the way empty shards work." Quietly, without saying anything to suggest she'd done anything, Sunset re-adjusted local time in the shard, back to the 512:1 ratio that would keep actions within as far apart from the rest of the realm as possible. "No one cares what we do with it. I thought I would make myself a slice of home. Practice for when I return."
Jackie moved slowly through the room, running one hand along the edge of the holotable. She looked to be deep in thought, though she kept her actual feelings close to herself. Even while in Sunset’s shard, there was no way to read her mind.
Bree, meanwhile, did nothing to conceal how she was feeling. "You're insane," she exclaimed, backing away from Sunset. Her previously flat, emotionless expression was completely gone, replaced with one of horror. Her voice had changed, her eyes moving differently—everything. "You have no idea what you've done! The Morrigan's crows circle you! We have to call the knights!" She reached up with one arm towards her GIO, and froze in mid-motion, mouth still open. Sunset concentrated, drawing on the power of the crown as she had once used her horn. She couldn't change a person the way she could change one of the background characters... could she?
The Element of Intellect sped her thoughts, allowing her to take in all that was before her at once. As she looked, she saw Jackie and Bree were very different creatures. One, Jackie, registered like herself, an independent mind with full privileges. But Bree... Bree looked like the background characters. She was, in the terms of the tower, a fork. She'd been a fork this entire time.
"No." Sunset advanced past Jackie, extending one hand towards the frozen girl. "You will not disrupt my plans before even hearing them!" She concentrated for a moment, then repeated the same exact spell she'd done hundreds of times, changing the fork from one form into another. She already had an excellent template for the ponies here, and so she used that, changing poor Bree into the smallest, most pitiful earth pony she could. The girl kept her bright orange hair, as those processes she changed over retained their distinguishing features. Sunset couldn't take her GIO away, but she could hide it away inside Bree's body, where she couldn't get to it.
There were more important pressures the change imposed, which Sunset had based on her time in class. Just as the time-accelerated classes forced students to pay attention to what they were learning, Sunset's power would force all who were near it to feel the loyalty a princess deserved.
Bree looked up, huge green eyes confused, and she let out one final pitiful squeak before lowering her head to Sunset in submission.
"Finally." Sunset looked back to Jackie. Her friend hadn't moved, hadn't reached for her own GIO. This was good—Sunset would much rather have her willing loyalty than to cheat and trick her brain. The one who had helped Sunset see the truth deserved honesty.
"All this..." Jackie muttered, gesturing at Bree, at the room around them. "This is... where you come from?"
"Yes," Sunset said, as flatly as possible. "I know how crazy that sounds, but... that's the truth. The reason I was so ignorant when I got here. I didn't come here from the Federation. I came from Equestria, a country of ponies like these. Our society doesn't have technology like yours, but it has..." She didn't say the word magic again, not with as negative as Jackie had been about it. "It has something similar. I used it to get here, so I could learn from you. But it was all lies." She walked slowly past Jackie, over to the window, where she could look out on her kingdom. "I want to go home, Jackie. This... Infinite Realm... what I learned in my old world still works here. I didn't see it at first, but now I do. I want to use it to get back, and to take this whole shard with me."
She spun around, extending a hand to Jackie and looking as confident as she could. "Will you help me?"
Jackie hesitated, staring down at Bree again, then out the window at Sunset's kingdom. Then she took the offered hand.