The call came just late enough that Sunset had fallen asleep, but not so late that she’d yet made it through a full sleep-dream cycle; 11:45 P.M., according to the digital clock that Sunset spent a few moments smacking ineffectually before realizing it was her phone going off, not her alarm. She rolled over to face the plastic shelves on the other side of her twin bed and groped around in the darkness, disoriented and unable to recall which shelf her phone was on. All the while, the grating sound of an old-school telephone assaulted her ears—
It stopped. A few moments later, it gave the simple *ding* of an incoming text.
At last her fingers felt contact with the cool, smooth glass surface of her phone. Sunset swiped her finger across the message to bring up the app. She squinted as the display lit up with a pink-and-yellow butterfly icon next to the message itself:
Can you come over right away please? Sick bear from the woods, maybe EQ magic, doesn’t speak normal bear. Need a mind read
“One day,” Sunset groaned, turning the phone off. “Can’t I just get one whole day away from it?!” She sighed, and pressed her hands to her face, before swearing loudly and kicking the covers off herself.
Minutes later, Sunset was flying down the city streets on her motorcycle, dressed in jeans, tall boots, an orange T-shirt, and a heavier leather jacket that she liked to save for riding. She gunned the throttle, feeling her hair whip around in the warm night air, and taking shelter in the knowledge that most of the short route between her apartment building and Fluttershy’s house on the edge of town was lightly policed… unless it was the end of the month and the cops were looking to fill their quotas.
Naturally, the sight of a blue blur on the edge of her vision made her curse under her breath and brake hard enough to make her shift forward in her seat.
Sunset looked from side to side as she moved down the way at a leisurely five-MPH over the limit, trying to spot the blur again. But Canterville was still the kind of town that folded itself up at night for the most part, and there was nothing but city around her. The only unexpected lights were from the phantom glows cast by the overhead streetlights that reflected in odd ways across the motorcycle’s chromed body.
“Hey there!” called a voice on Sunset’s other side.
Her heart leapt, and she accidentally veered at a thirty degree angle as she whipped her head around to look at Rainbow Dash, who gave her a manure-eating grin while running at inhuman speed right next to the motorcycle.
“Hey, c’mon, pull over in the empty lot right before you turn onto Shy’s street,” Dash added while Sunset brough the cycle back under control.
“Dash, what the buck is going on here?”
“Just trust me, Sunny. We still gotta move fast, but we gotta be quiet too. The last leg’ll be better on foot.”
Within another couple minutes, Sunset guided the motorcycle off the road and onto a long patch of cracked blacktop away from the streetlights. Dash slowed to a halt next to her, looking tense. As sometimes happened when Dash really got going, a faint smell of burning rubber wafted past Sunset’s nostrils, accompanied by puffs of smoke from Dash’s shoes. She cursed and stamped them out.
Sunset met Dash’s eyes. “How come you didn’t wear your good running shoes?”
As the two girls stared at each other silently, the long non-quiet of a city by night rang in Sunset’s ears. It brought the raggedy noise of cicadas from nearby trees, and the Doppler’d drone of the occasional car going by on the main drag a quarter-mile back, along with other, less distinct sounds. But Dash didn’t say anything; she simply stood there catching her breath, with a hunted look in her eyes.
With a sigh and a quiet curse, Sunset moved her hand back down toward the ignition.
Dash’s hand was on hers in an instant, stopping her from turning the key. “Okay, alright… Shy told me to come as fast as I could, and to watch for you, and to get you to the house all sneaky-like.”
“So this isn’t really about a bear, is it?”
“Look… I’m not as good as Applejack about the whole honesty thing, but I’ll level with you: what Shy told me is something you’re just gonna have to see for yourself. But I promise… it’ll be worth your time.”
“It better be,” Sunset grumbled, putting the kickstand down. “One day, Dash. I try to take one frickin’ day off from dealing with school, or Equestrian magic, or both, and just spend some time with my guy, and even get to bed at a decent hour. And then I get woken up at eleven-motherbucking-forty-five-P.M. to come deal with whatever this is.” She got up off the motorcycle, then narrowed her eyes. “Where are the rest of the girls?”
“Oh.” Dash bit her lip. Great, so she’s making this all up as she goes. “I, uh… Shy’s house is right there, right? You know the way? I’ll go get the others!”
And she was gone, just like that, in a small cloud of dust and smoking rubber.
“One. Day.” Sunset shook her head again, and set off across the open series of backyards between the empty lot and Fluttershy’s house. She stayed close to the small dry creek that wound its way through the decades-old development, which served as a natural border between the town proper and the Everfree woods on the other side. The grass crunched softly underfoot; a sure sign that rain had been light in the last couple weeks.
Soon she found herself crossing through the plain but grassy backyard of Fluttershy’s house. The two-story home was a modest mid-century structure done in brick, though it was hard to make out any details beyond a solitary light in an upper window, as it was otherwise completely dark. But in the dim moonlight, Sunset spotted a hunched shape perched on the back porch. It rose as she approached, and shrugged off a hood, revealing a figure with long hair and a surprisingly hard expression on her face.
“Fluttershy, this better be worth skunking my day off,” Sunset said. Then she looked behind herself, back out into the darkness. “You can come back too, Rainbow,” she projected, albeit quietly. A moment later, a blue blur heralded Dash’s return.
“I’m sorry that I lied in my text,” Fluttershy said. “I’ve actually been doing a lot of lying tonight. I told my folks that I’d be staying over with Rainbow Dash, and I hid under my bed until mom and dad went to sleep downstairs, and Zephyr…”
Dash put an arm around Fluttershy’s shoulder, before frowning at Sunset. “Look, what you said about respect and stuff? I totally get it. And you’re right! We’ve gotta let you… do you.”
“Or Zephyr, as the case may be,” Fluttershy added, shuddering. “But please, just come inside for a few minutes, and listen, and I promise we'll never talk to you about it again if you don't want us to.”
Though Sunset's jaw was tight and her fists clenched, she nodded. “All right, but I’m holding you to that. And ‘we’ means you too, Rainbow. You bring this up ever again and you're a dead mare.”
“Geez, I’m not a horse, Sunset.”
“Whatever! Are you in or not?”
After a few moments of grumbling, Dash nodded. “All right, fine, whatever. Take a ride on the Z-train all you want. Get a punch card. Join his friggin’ rewards program. I’ll shut up about it.”
“All right then, follow me,” Fluttershy said. “I’ll go first. This isn’t my first time sneaking in; step where I step so the floor doesn’t creak. And don’t let the screen door slam behind you.”
The three girls made their way into the dark kitchen, where the only light came from the digital clock displays on the microwave and stove. Sunset tried not to be distracted by the question of why Fluttershy might have experience sneaking back into the house, and instead took pains to ease the screen door shut slowly behind her. She felt the tension drain from her shoulders as she was rewarded with the sound of a soft *click*.
“C’mon,” Dash whispered from ahead.
Sunset picked her way through the darkness after them, glad she didn’t have to try to remember Fluttershy’s kitchen layout on her own. They made it to the hall without incident, and then crept slowly up a set of carpeted stairs.
Some kind of muffled sound became apparent as they approached the second floor. Sunset couldn’t quite place it, though part of it seemed familiar, and part of it didn’t.
They paused at the top of the stairs, and stood there for a few moments in a tight cluster. Sunset saw that it was a straight shot down the hall from there to a doorway with a bit of yellow light leaking out from beneath it.
“That’s Zephyr’s room,” Fluttershy whispered.
Sunset narrowed her eyes. “What’s that sound?” she whispered.
The look that Fluttershy and Dash exchanged was… tense. Unnerving. “Sunset, follow me into the guest bedroom,” Fluttershy said. “You’ll be able to listen as long as you want to.”
“I can’t believe he’d really do this,” Dash whispered as they picked their way slowly down the hall. “I mean, listen…”
So she did. “—Can I... can I see it?” They were Zephyr’s words, but they were followed by:
“Oh, of course you can.”
Sunset’s jaw clenched. It was a woman’s voice; definitely on the high side, but with a richness of tone that suggested she wasn’t a teen.
Then Sunset’s stomach went hollow as she heard Zephyr gasp.
“Do you like what you see, big boy?” It was the mystery woman again, and… Sunset staggered, stepping on a creaky spot in the floor. She felt a strong grip on her arm, from Fluttershy, who held a finger to her lips and pointed at the door next to Zephyr’s.
But Zephyr must not’ve heard the creak, because his next words came in hushed tones that seemed filled with awe: “I… I’ve never seen anything like it… it looks so smooth…”
“Oh, it is so smooth, Zephy.”
Sunset’s mind… froze. Bluescreened. She felt the strength of her legs go limp. Hard and sudden pressure on her arms suggested that Fluttershy and Dash might be carrying her, or at least guiding her. But the impetus to keep moving… the strength in Sunset’s guts… was gone.
Yet whatever was going on in the room, seemed to continue going on. Even as her other senses failed her, Sunset still could hear: “And I… can I touch it?”
“Oh, I want you touching it alright. I want… want you go go at it with both hands!” The woman moaned. “Oh, what are you waiting for, you tease! I can almost feel your fingers inside it already!”
“Sunset!” Dash hissed, clicking her fingers right up near Sunset’s face. It was then that Sunset realized she was sitting on her butt in what looked like a pleasant little bedroom, with Fluttershy hugging her, and Dash crouching close.
“Oh, I’d like that,” Zephyr’s voice said from nearby. Each word was like a dagger piercing Sunset’s heart. “I’d like that a lot…”
With effort, Sunset met Dash’s gaze. “It might not be what it sounds like,” she whispered, her tone and words mechanical.
A sudden bouncing and creaking of bedsprings from the other room seemed to put the lie to her words.
“I’m so, so sorry to put you through this,” Fluttershy whispered into her shoulder. “But I couldn’t keep quiet. Not where my friends are concerned.”
“Oh yes, that’s fantastic!” came the woman’s voice from the other room.
Sunset felt hot tears welling at the corners of her eyes. She wanted to say how sorry she was for not listening to both of them to start with. She wanted to curse herself for jumping blindly into a relationship that she herself had called “just light and fun” without even realizing for her own sake that “light and fun” wasn’t all she wanted; not if it meant such a huge imbalance between her own inability to touch without being tempted to read a person’s mind, and someone else’s pure pursuit of physical pleasure.
But Sunset said none of those things. Instead, words failed her, leaving her a silent mess that nodded, and hugged both Fluttershy and Dash close, as quiet sobs began to wrack her.
“Whoa! Geez,” Dash said, extricating herself from Sunset’s grasp. “Man, Shy… I believed you, but I guess part of me couldn’t quite believe you. Not without hearing it for myself.”
Fluttershy nodded into Sunset’s shoulder. “He really is the worst.”
“Yeah…” Dash stood, and smacked a fist into her opposite palm. “Y’know, he really is. He’s got all the loyalty of pond scum… him and his little two-bit floozy in there. It’s not the kind of thing a decent person oughtta have to put up with.”
“No,” Sunset croaked. “Dash, please, don’t do anything stupid.”
Dash glowered back at her. “Sunset, everyone involved here’s just been doing stupid stuff since day one. Fluttershy brought him to her party; I got you two talking as a joke; he asked you out; and you didn’t shoot him down like the barrel of fish that he is. And then you wouldn’t listen to us, and we… well, we dragged you in to hear this. Seems like there’s been plenty of stupid to go around.”
“What good would bursting in there do?” Sunset asked through a dry throat.
“Yeah, Rainbow,” Fluttershy said, looking up at her. “You’d wake my parents up for sure.”
Dash shrugged. “Honestly? I don’t care. Let ’em wake up and see what their son’s up to. Let Zephyr sue me for beating his butt down. Let whoever she is do… whatever people like that do. I don’t friggin’ care anymore.” She pointed at Sunset. “That jerk made my Sunnybun cry. And ain’t nobody gets to make my Sunnybun cry.”
“Dash, you—”
But the problem with trying to stop a girl with super-speed from making a rash decision is that she can be gone before you even get the words out. Sunset shot up off her rump once she saw Dash vanish in a blur. Mere heartbeats later, she heard the telltale CRASH of something breaking through wood at high speed.
“Oh my GOSH, Zephyr… what?!”
“Whoa! Whoa, whoa, whoa, now Rainbow, I can explain…”
“Explain what, you creep?! This has to be some new kind of low.”
“Why hello there,” came the woman’s voice, smooth as butter.
“Gaah! Zephyr, what the…”
“Rainbow, like I told you! This isn’t what you think! Are you… wait, hold on a minute. Flutterbutter, where are you? I know you must’ve put her up to this!”
Sunset and Fluttershy held each other closer, each both seeking and offering silent warmth and moral support.
“You… you leave her out of this,” Dash said. “You’re in a relationship now, Zephyr! You can’t just be doing this kind of crap and expecting to get away with it!”
“No, no, no, you aren’t listening!” Zephyr shouted. “You girls always get to have all kinds of freaky magic secrets, right? You tell me bits and pieces… or, well, Sunset’s actually told me a lot. Turns out I’m an excellent listener, isn’t that right?”
“Oh, you bet he is,” said the woman.
“Well then, so what if I have a little secret of my own like that for once? Something a little exciting? Something a little out there, on the edge? Feels like I’m barely scratching the surface of what you girls get up to on a regular basis!”
“Do you think that what we deal with is some kind of game?!” Dash shouted. “Do you have any idea what Sunset goes through when she even thinks about touching you?!”
Sunset's heart froze.
“You know what you are?” Dash continued. “You’re just an immature punk, who’s never gonna have a real relationship, and who’s gonna die alone because of—”
“STOP.”
The word made Fluttershy startle and recoil. Silence reigned from the other room as well. Sunset heaved a sigh, then pushed herself forward slowly. Why, Dash?! Why’d you have to drop the bomb about… not touching him now of all times?! She walked around the corner, keeping her eyes low, steeling herself for whatever she might find when she looked up.
“Oh… ohhhh… h-hey, babe,” Zephyr said.
Sunset’s stride faltered. She paused in her steps.
She looked up.
A bed sat in the middle of what she saw. Rainbow Dash stood on the side of the bed closest to her. Zephyr was on the opposite side of the bed… and shirtless, but still wearing sweats. A stab of jealousy held her gaze on him longer than it should’ve done. Because then she looked closer at the edge of the bed where Zephyr stood…
Something on the bedsheets moved. A high, cackling laugh sounded from somewhere she couldn’t see. And then a woman slowly rose from Zephyr’s side of the bed.
Her skin was purple. She wore a skin-tight catsuit of a pinkish-purple. Her hair was green… and there were miles of it. Threading over the bed. Crawling all over the walls. Moving. The whole room was alive with it.
Sunset’s jaw fell as she watched long tendrils of the hair-stuff encircle Zephyr. He screeched for just a moment before still more hair wrapped its way around his mouth. Then she threw her head back, gave another insane cackle…
...and jumped into a comic book that lay open on the bed.
After a moment to process what she’d seen, Sunset’s mind snapped her right into action. “Get the others,” she said, stripping off her leather jacket and pressing it into the waiting arms of a stunned, slack-jawed Rainbow Dash. “Hey, Dash! Shy! Call Twilight. Maybe have her call Princess Twilight, too, in case we need more serious backup.”
“W… what was that?!” blurted Dash.
“I have no bucking clue,” Sunset said, rubbing her palms together, trying to psych herself up. “So I want you girls to bucking stay here and get us some backup while I go in and try to figure that out.”
“I’m… wait, no, I can’t let you do that alone,” Dash said, shaking herself back into some semblance of awareness.
Sunset gripped her arm. “Yes, you can. He’s Fluttershy’s brother. She needs someone right now. And we might need the rest of the girls if we’re gonna do this right.”
“Um,” Fluttershy said, coming out from around the corner. Even though her eyes were wide and tearful, her gaze seemed determined. “Rainbow Dash is right, it could be dangerous to send someone in there alone.”
“Yeah it could be. But he’s my boyfriend.” She looked at them with an expression that brooked no argument. “And after I get done pulling his flank out of there, me and him are going to have a serious chat!”
With that, she dove straight onto the bed—and felt herself shift, twist, contort, yet somehow continue falling, as she hit the surface of the comic.
Rainbow Dash watched Sunset disappear in a flash of black-and-white light. Slowly, she reached down and picked up the comic, then flipped it to its cover, and stared at it.
“Power Ponies?” asked Fluttershy, approaching from behind her.
Dash furrowed her brow. “What the hay are those supposed to be?”