"Ugh, my head..." Sunset whimpered, pulling her sleeping bag up a little farther to try and cover her eyes. Unfortunately, doing so cut off her supply of fresh air, and a few seconds later she was back out, trying to deal with her splitting headache. A moment later, the door to the tent started to unzip, letting in a flood of direct sunlight that made Sunset hiss in pain. A second later, the light was blocked out by a set of soft feathers covering her face.
"Heya, sleepyhead..." a soft voice cooed. "Feeling any better?"
"Missy?" Sunset tried to make the effort to sit up, but her muscles failed to respond. "Wha-"
"Well, having your soul ripped out, nearly dissolved into the shadows, summoned onto a battlefield, and then shoved back into your body (which received no medical attention while it was comatose) will really take it out of you! Isis is busy taking care of Penn, which means I get to be your personal nurse until you feel better!" The softness of Missy's wing disappeared, swiftly replaced by something cold on her forehead. "Here, I had Yuki-Onna breathe on this, it should help you cool off."
Sunset nodded as best she could. The cold on her head felt exquisite. A moment later, she could feel the zipper on her sleeping bag being opened, letting a wave of fresh air wash over her body. "And it's hot enough without a sleeping bag now that the sun is up!"
"You... seem pretty good at this..." Sunset muttered, shaking her head lightly to bring the cold compress down over her eyes.
"I should be! I watched Penn learn this self-care stuff every day after he dropped out of college! It was INFURIATING!" There was a pause as Sunset heard the rustling of wings and felt a cool breeze wash over her. "I mean, have you ever watched someone else struggle with a video game you KNOW how to play well, and you just wish you could grab the controller out of their hands and do it for them? It was like that, except it was his whole LIFE!"
"Wait... Penn dropped out of college?" Sunset pondered the new information. When he'd told her he delivered pizza for a living, combined with his threadbare living conditions, she had just assumed that his education had come to a stop some time after or during high school.
"Oh, yeah!" Missy replied, somewhat enthusiastically. Sunset knew THAT tone. It was the same excitement Rarity always had before she shared some juicy tidbit of "news" (because "a lady never gossips, she only shares information!"). She had an opportunity to learn more about him, now, and she wasn't going to waste it. "He made it into a great school, too! All the way up in Utah! He was going to be an astrophysics major!"
Astrophysics? And he's delivering PIZZA?
"What happened?"
"Meh, that's a long story I wasn't really around for. He found my card after he came back home, I just got to see the fallout from it. He barely moved, hardly ate, mostly stayed inside and wrote fanfiction for weeks on end. He wound up in a dead-end retail job that made him miserable... it was pretty bad."
"Penn? Miserable? I can hardly picture it..."
It was true. Even in the short time she'd known him, he had always presented himself as the optimist. His car broke down all the time? She was just picky with a lot of personality! The house he was living in was falling apart? Better rebuild the windows! Literally in a fight for both of their souls against the spirit of an Egyptian god? He was living his favorite cartoon! Everything seemed to just roll off of his shoulders with a sense of quiet resignation at the absolute worst.
She heard Missy chuckle at her response. "And who do you think taught him to be so chipper, huh? Sure took a lot of whispering in his ear, but eventually we managed to pull him out of it enough to start improving!"
"We?"
"The Ghostricks! He looked at us and how we played, then started looking for other little happy surprises in life! It's a lot easier to appreciate the little little things when you're one of them!" Missy giggled. "Of course, he was pretty sure we were all just figments of his imagination, or-" she took a moment to clear her throat, then forcing herself into as deep a voice as she could muster, "'A visualization method of compartmentalization as a coping mechanism to enable rational thought!'"
"You mean, he thought you were just a way for him to focus on thinking clearly?"
"Mm-HMM!" Sunset felt the breeze finally come to a halt, then heard a pair of feet hit the ground beside her. "Do you think you're okay enough to sit up?"
"Not on my own..." Sunset shook her head slightly. "I'd need a little help." Almost instantly, she felt a small pair of hands grip her shoulders from behind.
"You got it! On three, okay? One, two, three!"
Sunset strained as best she could to force herself up, and with Missy's help she actually managed to rise into a sitting position. The cold compress fell into her lap, but it had already begun to warm up, anyway. A few seconds later, Missy came back around, flashing her a wide grin.
"See! You're getting better already! Now try to stay up, I'll be right back!" With that, she rushed out the front of the tent, leaving Sunset alone with her thoughts. She was starting to realize that she had really taken Penn at surface value, as if the chipper guy whose first instinct had been to buy milkshakes was just like that. It was like Pinkie Pie: everyone thought that she was just a constant stream of bubbles and laughter, to the point that she didn't take anything seriously at all. But the truth was that she was so energetic and happy because she was ALWAYS being sincere, which meant that both victories and failures tended to hit her hard. When things she was counting on went sour, it could prove a crippling blow to her outlook, and Sunset had seen first-hand what happened when that happiness slipped out of her grasp.
Her mind flashed back to Penn's duel, and the moment that the happy outlook had fallen away. The sheer, raw emotion behind his wrath had seemed overpowering.
Guess there's still a lot I don't know about him, huh?
After a few seconds, she returned, holding a bowl of liquid that she gingerly placed in Sunset's lap. "I followed Penn's recipe for chicken and dumplings, but I didn't really make the dumplings... or the chicken..." she clasped her hands behind her back. "Okay, maybe I just dumped a bunch of chicken bullion into a pot of boiling water. But chicken soup is supposed to be good for the soul or something, right?"
Sunset smiled and picked up the bowl with both hands, taking a long sip from it. The taste of the chicken was practically overpowering, clearly oversaturated with the flavoring, but the parched feeling in her throat overrode her sense of taste and she quickly sucked it all down. With her stomach full of hot liquid, she felt her eyelids growing heavy again.
"Thanks, Missy. I think I need some more sleep..."
Missy nodded, quickly rushing back around to help Sunset lay back down. Before she could even ask, Missy had put the cold pack back over her eyes as an impromptu sleep mask.
"If you need anything, we're all right outside!"
"Mhmm..." Sunset mumbled. In a few seconds, she was already back asleep.
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"I killed him."
Isis could see that Elijah's mental state had been deteriorating as time went on. His lucidity following a proper amount of rest had left him racked with guilt over his prior actions.
"How could I do that? That wasn't right! I- I didn't just kill him, I did something worse! I sent his soul to the shadow realm! Eternal torment! For eternity! That's- that's something I can't take back! He's in hell because of ME!"
"Negative. May I remind you that he agreed to the terms of the game? In full use of his faculties? It could just as easily have been you who suffered that fate.""Isis, you can't just AGREE to something like that!" he cried, gripping both sides of his head. Isis noted the positioning of his fingers: spread and clawing at his skin. He was descending into a full-blown panic attack. "It's like a toddler agreeing to a life of servitude in exchange for unlimited cookies, the consequences are beyond reasonable comprehension!"
"There was a strong implication that he had done the same to many other duelists in his travels. He mentioned to Sunset Shimmer that Ra had been leading him to duelists for some time, and an inspection of his bag revealed a quite substantial collection of cards. You simply revisited upon him the same fate he inflicted on others. If the same logic applies as in the Yu-Gi-Oh anime, you also freed all of his former victims from that same eternal torment.""But... I don't have that right! To decide someone's fate for all of time? What happens to their soul? That's not my PLACE, Isis! It was WRONG!" He pried his hands off of his head, if only to stare at them in horror. "I didn't even do it for Sunset, or to survive... I did it because I was ANGRY. Wrath, Isis! Revenge! The WORST reason to do anything, and I used it to justify sending a man to HELL!"
Logic was not working. He was suffering emotional distress. Isis attempted to simulate the same scenario, but her ability to empathize fell short. She needed an emotional appeal, something to draw himself out of his self-blaming. A new "spin" on the scenario. Looking through her memory, she found an appropriate musical track to play behind her next words. It would associate his actions with someone whom he viewed as a hero.
"Your wrath may have been your motivation, but you were faced with a choice: Either you could save Sunset Shimmer's soul or spare an evil one that would go on torturing other innocent people. Whatever your reasons, your actions were good and ample justice. Your turned his way of attacking others back on him, no more, no less. I believe that is the entire philosophy of your competitive deck, is it not? To be a wall so strong that your opponents break themselves against it? You have no reason to regret acting in self-defense and the defense of Sunset Shimmer. You were the wall that was needed. It was your opponent who opened the door of darkness, and suffered the consequences for doing so.
You are familiar with Yu-Gi-Oh's source material. You know that there is always a cost to those who use the dark arts to take advantage of others. A reckoning. I ask that you trust me when I say that you are NOT guilty for your actions."He took a deep, shuddering breath before reaching over to the bottle of sedatives, popping another pill into his mouth.
"I... I'm going to need time to come to terms with this."
"Affirmative. You will have it, Sunset Shimmer is resting while Missy watches over her well-being. We will likely not be moving for several days after both of you suffered such thorough physical, mental, and spiritual stressors."After a few beats of silence, he shook his head dismissively. "The more pressing question is, why would Ra ally itself with someone like THAT? The guy was a psycho." He lightly massaged his temple to take some of the pressure off of his head. "I thought Ra had higher standards than that?"
Isis took a moment to review her data on the Egyptian God cards. It was patchy, inconsistent, and contradictory at best, all conjecture from the television show and manga.
"I took the liberty of searching the internet for any records matching his name and face. No records of this 'Joshua' individual seem to indicate that he is of any supernatural significance. The only connection of any kind is that he graduated from the same high school as you, two years behind."This made Elijah pause. His eyes widened in surprise as some form of realization.
"Seminole High?"
"Affirmative.""You mean he was from the real-" he caught himself here, an error in his syntax he had been trying to correct when Sunset wasn't listening. "You mean he was from the same world as me?"
"Affirmative."He pressed his fingertips together before pressing them against his lips. "Isis, mind if I talk something through with you?"
"Feel free.""One of the major plot points during the introduction of the god cards was that Marik was attempting to create copies of Ra for his followers to use, but none of them were quite good enough to work properly. But if Joshua was from the same place as me, and THAT was where he got his Ra card... It would have been a promotional card. Something made and mass-produced for the fans. A perfect copy." His eyes grew wider as he continued processing the implications of his theory. "That might not even have been the REAL Ra. And if that IS the case, then there could be thousands of devastatingly powerful card spirits running around out there."
He reached down to his belt, retrieving the set of black-sleeved cards and beginning to anxiously shuffle them.
"I'm going to look through the new cards and see if I can find anything that can improve my deck..."
Isis considered mentioning her other discovery about their attacker, but it hardly mattered. Knowing that the person who had nearly destroyed both his and Sunset's souls had been a product of his own gaming club would only cause him to blame himself more. Instead, Isis focused on the positive: his panic attack over possibly having killed another human being had stopped for the moment.
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Sunset cracked open her eyes, coming slowly and peacefully back into the waking world. Beside her, Missy's wings fluttered as she rose up into the air. The two of them stretched their arms in near-perfect sync, Missy letting out a small squeak of satisfaction alongside Sunset's grunt of effort. She made no effort to suppress her yawn, and was rewarded with intoxicating scent of fresh bacon. The smell seemed to catch Missy by the nose and lift her a little higher into the air, pulling her up to the front of the tent, where she unzipped the door and slipped outside. Sunset chuckled to herself, imagining that, were Pinkie present, the two of them would be a perfect match. She took one more lungful, forcing the air out in a decisive huff, then threw off the top half of her sleeping bag.
Outside, Penn was happily whistling to himself as he held a pan over a morning campfire. Even if Sunset couldn't have smelled it, the telltale crackle of bacon grease was more than enough to tell her that he was already well into preparing breakfast. Beside him, Isis was happily bobbing up and down to the beat of the song coming from her speakers.
Nothing to do to save his life, call his wife in!
Nothing to say but "What a day, how's your boy been?"
Nothing to do, it's up to yooou!
I've got nothing to say, but it's okay!
"Good morning! Good morning! Good morning!" He chimed in, matching the next words of the song as he gave her a little wave. Sunset couldn't help but smile a little wider seeing him so happy. With Isis's antibiotics and plenty of rest, his recovery had accelerated dramatically. In just a few days, the infection was nearly gone, and he claimed the pain was nonexistent (a staement he usually followed with another round of Isis's sedatives, so Sunset wasn't entirely certain how truthful it was). At first, it had grated on Sunset's nerves to stay in one place for so long, but she had hardly been in a place to argue. Still, the sight of most of their things packed into the car gave her even more reason to smile. it was finally time to get back to the search for her friends. Missy was instantly hovering over his shoulders, happily flapping her wings and dancing in circles around him.
"Bacon and eggs, bacon and eggs, bacon and eggs!"
Penn chuckled to himself, taking a spatula resting by the fire and spooning the contents of the pan onto a plate before handing it to Sunset. She looked down, regarding the crispy bacon and fried eggs with a healthy amount of salivation. After two days of Missy and Isis's "cooking," she had practically wept with joy when Penn announced he was feeling ready to take back over food duty. Still, even compared to his usual meals, this was a step above.
"What's the occasion?"
Penn's eyes widened, then he chuckled and turned his gaze down to the ground, as if he'd been caught in some kind of deception. "Well, I wanted to bribe you into giving me one more day before we hit the road again. There's something I need to do."
Sunset blinked, taking a seat beside her friend and putting off digging into the food for a few more seconds. "Penn, it's YOUR car, you're doing ME a favor, remember? If you need to take a day for yourself, I'm in no position to deny it."
"But- what about your friends? I thought you wanted to find them as soon as possible!"
Sunset rolled her eyes and placed her hand on his shoulder, giving it a gentle squeeze. "You're my friend, too. Whatever time you need, you don't need to ask for my permission to take it. I'm sure the other girls are looking for me, too. If they've been okay this long, they'll be okay one extra day."
For a moment, Sunset thought she could catch tears welling up in Penn's eyes before he reached out and wrapped her up in another one of his bear hugs.
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Honestly, Sunset had forgotten what day of the week it was. It was easy to lose track on the road, and even easier as things got hectic and life-threatening. Finding out that it had been Sunday had been a bit of a shock, for some reason. She supposed it was because knowing what day of the week it was disrupted the constant flow from one day into the next she'd gotten from the last few weeks on the road. It was a concrete point in something that was ever-shifting, like managing to stick a pin in a river.
What had been even more strange was seeing Penn in a suit and tie, rather than a flower-patterned shirt and his red-and-white baseball cap. It hadn't taken long for her to put two and two together after that. With Isis's help, they'd managed to find the particular church he was looking for and, after she had politely declined to join him, he had disappeared inside.
"You know, I never guessed he was the religious type... Are churches even still meeting at this point?" she asked. "I mean, all the gods out there kinda had a battle royale when this all started, right?" Isis, who had set her dragon-shaped robot into what looked like a "sleep mode," replied from her phone.
"I have a conjecture based on psychological profiles: perhaps those with faith are now turning to their beliefs, since things they once knew for certain about the world around them have been proven wrong? What was fact is no longer necessarily so, but faith need not change so uncontrollably."Sunset pondered the idea as she reclined back in her seat. Thankfully, Penn had left the keys with her so she could use the radio and the air conditioning while he was gone. He'd promised that it would only be a couple of hours, and with Isis's cell service and a way to keep cool, Sunset could easily occupy herself looking around the internet. Out of morbid curiosity, she began browsing through a few news sites.
ALIENS SPOTTED IN NEW YORK CITY!
Fisherman Claims Giant Creature In Tokyo Bay!
New Video Footage Proves Existence of Ghosts!
He heard a strange noise in the attic, You won't believe what happens next!
Netflix confirms new season of Stranger Things!
"I guess it's really a new world, isn't it?" she muttered to herself. "Must be nice to have something you can fall back on like that..."
She'd stopped being the religious type long ago. Not out of any spite or grudge, it was just hard for her once she was on her own and devoting her life to her studies to take precious time for something that was by definition neither quantifiable or repeatable in a laboratory setting. She'd certainly grown less pragmatic over the years, but still religion had never really stuck for her the way that it did for other people.
"May I offer my opinion on the matter?""I don't see why not?"
"The most essential component of this coping mechanism is faith. Faith in something or someone. Perhaps, if faith in a deity or lifestyle is not to your liking, you could find something else to have faith in?"Sunset rolled her eyes. "You say that like it's easy. What isn't going to be subject to just randomly changing because some other universe overlapped with the one I'm currently in?"
"Yourself. Your core beliefs: Honesty, Loyalty, Generosity, Kindness, Laughter, Magic, and Empathy. Have faith in your friends, we will ALWAYS remain such, no matter what universe we may encounter."Sunset actually smiled at that, feeling the warmth of her love for her friends quickly drive out the cynicism. "You know, I REALLY wish I could hug you, Isis."
"The sentiment is appreciated."The time from there passed quickly, and soon Penn and Missy had returned. Penn had a much more content, comfortable smile on his face, looking as though the service had restored some peace to his soul after everything that had happened.
"So, which way are we headed, Sunset?" he asked, settling with one hand on the steering wheel and one on the shifter.
"Yeah, fill us in!" Missy cheered from the back seat.
Sunset reached down and pulled her geode off of her neck. In her mind's eye, she pictured her lost friends, remembering the last day she had seen them. She remembered Fluttershy's calming presence, Rarity's contagious confidence, Applejack and Rainbow Dash's constant need for competition, Twilight's inquisitive spirit and Pinkie's constant passion. She thought of her new friends, of Isis's deep thoughts and Missy's chipper brightness that seemed to light up any space she entered. She thought about Penn and the sheer spectrum of emotions she had seen from him in the past few days, from pained vulnerability to unconditional friendship to unstoppable wrath.
Every single one of her friends brought new depth and meaning to her life, and in her heart of hearts, she knew she would never truly lose them.
She felt a tug from the geode. They had their heading.