Sunset gazed out over the infinite flat plane, at the grid of endless lines every five feet. “Discord! I swear if you make us play Ogres and Oubliettes with you when we’re actually supposed to be saving the world I will cut you!”
“Watch it! If you yell like that again I’ll have to reanimate my eardrums!” Ghost Pepper’s ears twitched slightly against the side of his head.
“Sorry.” Sunset shook her head. “I’m sometimes surprised by how loud I can yell.”
“In any case, he’s Discord, what would you even cut him with?”
Glaring toward the horizon, Sunset replied “The terrible blade of want, and a hell of a lot of furious dumbass energy.”
“Yeah, that’s a good description of you.” Ghost snickered a little.
“Uh, do I detect that I might actually be right? No need to thank me. And now that I’ve finished getting out my props…” Discord’s voice echoed from the empty sky above them.
“I mean what I said about cutting you.” Sunset glared straight up.
“Oh, I know. But before you can shape the world, you must first shape yourself. Also, you should really hold still for a bit.”
Objects began to rain from the sky around them, bushes, trees, hills, even mountains falling into place soundlessly.
Sunset looked down at the pile of Burger Princess bags that had come along with them, pulled something out of it with her magic, and devoured it.
“Shouldn’t you at least unwrap it?” Ghost Pepper quirked an eyebrow at her behavior.
“Can’t talk, stress eating.” A half-dozen hayburgers and their accompanying fries levitated into the air in a perfectly synchronized display, paper and cardboard floating away and disintegrating into nothingness. They lined up in formation in front of Sunset’s muzzle, and were swiftly devoured.
“Guess that proves Twilight gets it from Celestia.” Discord’s voice echoed from above. “Your stress eating is actually more organized than her royal purpleness’s. And now that I’ve set up our little game, I leave to let it work out on its own. Fluttershy’s really opened my eyes to the potential of just letting chaos happen naturally.”
They walked forward, mostly because forward is generally the direction one walks, and any direction seemed as good as any other.
“Ghost, I don’t think we’re in Equestria anymore. If that’s true, then you’re free to use your abilities as much as you want, since there’s no law to stop you.”
He looked around at the identical trees surrounding them. “Why thank you, but Ah’m not sure how much of this actually has life force of any kind. Those trees sure don’t.”
“Oh?” Sunset looked at them. Aside from being identical, they looked a little odd to her. She gingerly tapped one, only to be greeted by a very familiar sound. “They’re made of plastic.”
“Right. Don’t see a lot of that in Canterlot, but Ah hear they’re a bit bullish on it in Manehatten.”
“In any case, even if we are still in Equestria, just say anything you used was necessary to prevent greater harm. I’ll back you up.”
“Does that count for anythin’?”
“Yeah.” Sunset nodded. “It’s a solid defense for anything short of killing someone. It’s called the ‘necessity defense’ and if I’m testifying for you it should stick.”
Ghost edged away from the plant and began to walk forward again in the direction they picked. “Well, you never got around to burning bridges with the judiciary did ya?”
“Eh, I left before I could get much opportunity to interact with them.” Sunset examined the birds in one of the trees, which upon closer inspection were actually drawings of crows or ravens (the art was indistinct on which it actually was meant to be, possibly due to the artist’s haste or inexperience) that rotated to face her no matter where she was standing, despite no visible means of doing so. “I’m sure if I’d stuck around Celestia would have eventually let me get arrested once for one of my stunts.”
“Like the grill incident?”
“We don’t talk abou– I mean, the grill incident wasn’t entirely my fault. Charge Carrier was also overcharging the electrodes.”
Ghost stomped his foot and pawed at the earth. “Hold on, I’m getting a faint read on… sumptin’.”
Sunset’s horn lit up, and her eyes flashed with a glow as she cast a vision enhancement spell on herself. She swept her head around. “I’m not seeing anything but more plastic trees and bird cutouts.”
“It’s about a kilo-ponylength straight ahead.”
“Ugh.” Sunset frowned. “A bit outside the range of my spells.”
“Then let’s go.” He broke into a trot.
After a half kilo-ponylength of running, Sunset recast her scanning spell. “I’m picking up on two, uh, maybe-ponies and two small structures.”
“Maybe-ponies?”
Sunset squinted, trying to bring the image of her remote viewing into focus. “Uh, looks like two earth pony stallions, each with a farmstead. The stallions don’t seem to have any magical cores, so they might be illusions. Also, uh…”
Ghost stared at Sunset, who was glaring at a spot in front of her.
“Tartarus take you, Discord.” Sunset shook her head, ending the remote viewing. “You’ll see when we get there.”
“Sunset, those ponies have yellow exclamation points over their heads.”
“Yes,” Sunset replied through gritted teeth, “I am aware of this.”
Ghost considered the anger Sunset had been radiating for the last half-kilo-ponylength. “Uh, is this something I should know about?”
“No,” Sunset swept a hoof for emphasis, “Discord took this when we read each other’s minds. It’s a, uh, trope in my world. Let’s go with that.” She was still frowning, but at least she’d stopped gritting her teeth.
“Let’s get this over with, ma’am.”
“Right you are.”
The two of them trotted towards the farmsteads. Each seemed completely a mirror image of the other, except one was red and one was blue. Even the stallions shared this property, although their eyes, manes, and tails were the same shade of gray. Each had a cutie mark of a rutabaga.
“Of course it’s a rutabaga, the ‘funniest’ vegetable.” Sunset muttered. “Can we help you gentleme–stallions?”
“Yes!” One said.
“Of course!” shouted the other.
“This no good varmint moved the boundary markers!” They both shouted in perfect synchronization. Then they turned and glared at each other.
Sunset turned to the area between the two farmsteads. A row of bronze-topped iron spikes denoted the line between them, but it was irregular and many of the spikes were tilted. They’re tilted in a pattern… “Are you seeing what I’m seeing, Ghost?”
“Fault line? Yah.”
Clearing her throat and attempting her best Princess Celestia impression, Sunset turned to the farmers.“Gentlecolts, neither of you moved the boundary markers. The earth beneath you did, and there is no need to blame either of you.”
“Bull hockey!”
“Corn pone!” Both stallions pressed their muzzles together and glared at each other.
“I know he did it!” They both shouted in perfect synchronicity.
“Ma’am,” whispered Ghost, “Are these programmed by Discord for maximum stubbornness?”
“Maybe,” Sunset whispered back, “I’m getting the feeling Discord set this up as an unsolvable problem and decided to have us make our own solution.”
“If so, it’s got what seems like an obvious solution to me.”
“Oh?”
“Reverse the process. Hit me up with Starswirl’s multi-tribe combiner.”
Sunset’s horn lit dramatically, drawing the eyes of the glaring stallions away from each other. She whipped her head down to point the tip of her horn straight at Ghost Pepper, and fired a beam of reddish energy that wrapped around him, resolving into a sparking red aura coating his entire body. “There you go.”
“What the Sam Hill are you doin’?” “What in tarnation?” Sunset and Ghost ignored the two farmers, Ghost preparing himself for the task at hand. He took a couple steps forward, ending with his left and right hooves on either side of the fault line. Then he concentrated.
The red aura wrapped around him dipped down to his hooves, turning a smokey gray. He closed his eyes and grunted, then dragged the hooves on each side in opposite directions. With a groan, the very ground moved with his hooves, dragging the boundary markers back into line.
“There!” Sunset exclaimed, “Your properties are now restored.”
“But…” “But…” The two stuttered in synchronicity again. Then they turned to each other. “How do I know this varmit won’t try again?” they asked in perfect stereo.
Sunset facehooved. “Can either of you actually move the earth like that?”
“Uh…” “No.”
“That’s what I thought. Sunset rose into the air on a column of red aura. “And I hope you two realize that you should work together peacefully, and leave this unfortunate incident in the past. Since there’s a fault line running under your properties, please prepare a means of observing the boundary that’s unlikely to be upset by it in the future.”
“Yes your highness!” “Right away your worshipfulness!” Sunset took note of the fact that the once-enemies were now tightly hugging each other, that they were on their knees, and that she’d somehow levitated into the air without realizing that.
Naturally upon realizing this, she fell down onto her face.
“You ok there, Sunset?”
“Yeah, I hurt my pride, but the dang thing is mostly scar tissue at this point.” She took Ghost’s offered hoof and stood up. She looked back at the two farmponies, who now had golden question marks over their heads. “Good talk.”
The question marks vanished in a shower of sparkles, and the two farmponies went back into their homes.
“Discord, that had better be the friendship adventure wrapped up.” Sunset glared at the heavens.
As if in response, cirrus clouds formed the words “Part 1 Complete”
“DISCOOOOOOOOOOOOOORD!”
“Walk faster, I hear random encounters.”
“Uh, what’s that sound like?”
Sunset and Ghost had left the farm walking the same direction they’d taken to reach it, and soon found themselves descending the side of a wooded valley.
“Dice rolling.” Sunset looked to her left and right.
“Ah smell timber wolves.”
Sunset shook her head. “Great.”
The first timber wolf burst from a layer of shrubbery at the edge of a nearby clearing. It made one leap towards Sunset before suddenly turning inside-out and then exploding in a shower of tree sap and sawdust.
“Who’s next!?!?” Sunset shouted.
Whining and scuffling sounded from somewhere out of line of sight. A glowing sign popped up. “Victory! 1 enemy defeated. 5 enemies fled for partial xp.”
“If I wasn’t in a hurry I’d be really mad about the partial xp thing. C’mon.” Sunset began to trot forward.
“What the heck spell was that?” Ghost canted after her.
“It’s actually a spell designed specifically to mess up constructs, since they don’t have the willpower to cancel out the transformation matrix. Unfortunately won’t work on the Ice Skate, but it was a nice perk of the Magus Corp spell library.”
“Guess that wouldn’t be on the curriculum at the school.”
“Nah, doesn’t really fit in with the theme.”
The two emerged into the town completely covered in tree sap.
“Oh, thank harmony. No more random encounters.” Sunset groaned.
“Well, at least you didn’t have to touch the dang things.” Ghost shook his head, slinging a little tree sap around.
“Didn’t stop it from getting all in my mane. I didn’t ask you to power stomp them.”
“Well, you asked me to help fight. And Ah can’t reanimate anything once it's been used to make a construct.”
“Yeah, yeah, I get that now.”
“Constructs don’t use positive or negative life energy.”
“I want to state for the record that this was simply an unnecessarily high number of random encounters.” Sunset’s magic tugged at a chunk of wood that had gotten into her teeth.
“Pretty sure we fought more timber wolves than have ever existed.” Ghost dunked his head into a nearby water trough, turning the water greenish. “Feel cleaner now at least.”
“Let’s just see what we’re supposed to do now.” Sunset surveyed the town, and noticed, or rather didn’t notice, anycreature at all out and about. “Getting a feeling we’re not out of the metaphorical woods even if we’re out of the actual woods.”
“Reckon you’re right. Wish Ah could get a better read on these guys, but they’re technically illusions.”
Sunset considered the nearby houses. “Well, let’s try it the normal way.” She walked up to the nearest one and pounded on the door.
“You’ll never get us, you cultists!” shouted somepony within the house.
“We’re not the cultists,” Sunset droned.
“That’s exactly what a cultist would say.”
“Yeah, that went how I expected.” Sunset shook her head. “Uh, hypothetically if we weren’t the cultists, where would we find the cultists?”
“They took over the town hall.”
“Thank you, good day.” Sunset trotted away, towards the building in the center of the town with a clock tower. “Come on, Ghost Pepper, we’ve got cultists to mash.”
“What’s the plan?” Ghost Pepper whispered. The first floor and all upper floors of the town hall had been deserted, with the cultists concentrated in the basement. In front of the two ponies hovered an illusion projected by Sunset, showing a view of the basement. In the center was a large open chamber. While passages branched off from it and a sort of balcony was formed by the stairway wrapping around it, most of the action was concentrated in the center, where dozens of pony cultists sat around an alter as a high priest cultist chanted over a bound pegasus.
Sunset shifted her gaze across the crowd. “Remember the time they did a fair at the magic school?”
“That was a horrible appropriation of earth pony culture, and they didn’t fry nearly enough things.”
“Remember how it ended?”
“They had this troupe of clowns, and you…” Ghost shook his head. “These guys aren’t wearing that much hair spray.”
“Then I’ll conjure it onto them, it’s not that hard. It’s going to the place it’s supposed to be, after all.” Sunset grinned at him.
“Yeah that might work. You need me to distract them?”
“That might help.”
“Okay.” He stood up and stretched.
The cult was chanting about Nightmare Moon or something, but Ghost Pepper couldn’t care less what they were doing. He landed on the floor of the basement with all four hooves at once, channeling life energy into them to offset the damage that landing should have done to him. “Gentlestallions.”
“What are you doing, nonbeliever!” The high priest of the cult waved a book at him with his magic, and the other cultponies stood, turning towards the intruder.
“Ah’m here to debate you. Have you heard the good news of Princess Twilight? Friendship is magic, and Ah’m sure you’re a pony that appreciates magic.”
“What kind of idiot are you?” A tiny wisp of smoke escaped from the high priest’s mane.
“A loud one. Also, one that doesn’t like pony sacrifice.” At that moment, Sunset’s spell completed and the manes of the cultist congregation burst into flames at once, sending a stampede of panicked ponies in all directions.
Sunset jumped down from the overhead stairway/balcony onto the altar, using a little bit of self-levitation to adjust her path and not break her knees.
The pegasus on the altar startled as she landed, and strained against his bindings.
Energy charged as Sunset directed her horn towards the roof. There was a lot of building between the pegasus and the sky, but it was all wood. Three spacial rend spells fired off, cutting a triangular wedge out of the building with perfectly straight, perfectly smooth edges. The building bits inside the wedge were promptly flung into the air with a little telekinetic shove, and a small telekinetic spike cut the bindings. “Fly for the exit and don’t stop!”
“Don’t have to tell me twice!” The pegasus rolled to his feet and lept for the sky, up the tunnel Sunset had carved for him. She turned her attention back to the incendiarily bad hair day crew. “Give it the Tartarus up.”
Those cultists, shaking off their severe case of head-burn, looked up to behold Sunset Shimmer standing in a shaft of light with her horn lit in a glorious corona, staring down at them with intent to slay all who opposed her.
They surrendered immediately.
“Success! Part 2 Completed!” blared the hovering text.
“Discoooooooooooord!”
Interrogating the cultists had been simple enough, but they revealed a troubling development: another group of cultists had succeeded in summoning an army of demons and dark warriors.
Apparently they’d arrive at the town the next morning.
“So we’re expected to sleep in this adventure?” Ghost Pepper looked a little tired, but wasn’t exactly interested in bedding down. The town hadn’t even bothered to throw them a party for saving them from the cult, as required by pony custom.
At least the pegasus they rescued had offered them the use of his house. It had only one bed, which Sunset suspected was Discord trying to put the two of them in it. Neither of them would ever, ever acknowledge or consider that fact.
“In O&O that’s usually how you recharge your special abilities.” Sunset considered her overall level of energy. It seemed oddly high for having fought through enough timberwolves to fill a hippodrome with.
“Eh, Ah haven’t really used magic all day.”
“You thinking about doing some prep work for the big, stupid army?”
“Yes. Also, if Discord has a fourth task for us, we’re making him eat one of those plastic trees, agreed?” Ghost Pepper grinned as he lifted a hoof.
Sunset hoofbumped him back. “Recon time.”
The good news was that the foul army would have to travel through a pass through a set of rocky hills overlooking the town, giving them a natural chokepoint to hold against them.
The bad news was that they weren’t exactly stopping their march for such trivial things as night. Sunset could see the fires below as they marched through the light forest up towards them. “We need a plan.”
“Well, townsponies ain’t gonna put up much of a fight.”
Sunset nodded. “It’s all up to us.” She looked off to the right, where she spotted a rise she’d seen before. “You go on that expedition to the badlands?”
“Ya, it’s the same terrain. Guess Discord copied it. We went there and found a bunch of… oh ooooh…”
“You thinking what I’m thinking?”
“Does a skeleton rattle in the woods?”
Dawn broke as the army approached the pass, paper cutout demons and dark knights marching forward in strict formation. As the reached the pass, silhouetted in the sunlight, a lone unicorn stood at the top of the pass.
Don’t say it, don’t say it. Ah heck with it. When else would I get a chance to say it? “You! Shall! Not! Pass!” In lieu of slamming down a staff, she levitated several large boulders nearby and rolled them down at the army.
The boulders bounced down, and the front row of demons braced themselves to catch them. Then they exploded on contact.
Sunset laughed as burning paper rained from the heavens. “C’mon up!”
The new front rank of paper dark knights looked at each other, then raised their weapons and charged over the rubble.
Sunset charged up her horn, a series of red orbs levitating around her. They shot forward one by one in a ripple pattern, firing blasts of fire into any of the paper enemies that got too close to them, causing them to run around on fire until they crumbled to ash.
That caused the army to pause, stacking up the front ranks as they tripped over themselves. Sunset solved that problem for them with a more conventional fireball that exploded directly on contact with the pileup, resulting in an immense inferno.
She teleported to a rock on the side of the pass to get a better look. I’ve taken out hundreds of them, but look at that. There could be a hundred thousand of them down there! I’ve got to hope Ghost Pepper can come through.
Jumping down, she conjured a ball of tungsten, then cast a delayed heating charm on it. It darted forward, hovering over the next wave of enemies, before suddenly glowing incandescently hot and exploding, sending countless droplets of molten metal raining onto the assembled paper cutouts, igniting a vast area of them.
Ok, maybe should have used molybdenum. I actually got a little winded there.
At that moment, Sunset heard a tremendous clamor of scratching from the right. A skull crested over a ridgeline, reptilian and carrying immense serrated teeth. The rest of the proto-dragon skeleton stepped up to follow it, and it impossibly bellowed a war cry without any lungs.
Humans would call that a dinosaur, but I’ll call it backup.
At that moment a horde of smaller skeletons crested the ridge as well, running forward on two legs with their backs level, forearms bearing wicked claws held in readiness. Though relatively smaller, the dromaeosaur skeletons were still over three ponylengths from the tip of their snout to the end of their tail.
The skeleton horde poured down into the army like a bleached tide, sweeping forward as they leaped onto and shredded their paper enemies, scraps of paper flailing in the breeze.
“Sorry about the delay, Sunset.” Ghost Pepper crested the rise, perched on the head of a massive sauropod skeleton. He gazed down and proclaimed “Sickle claws beat paper.”
Sunset teleported next to him. “How many of these did you find?”
He looked down. “Enough, Ah think.”
“Well, I’ll just go and make sure.” Energy blazed from her horn, and a wave of red sparks drifted down to the skeletons. As one, they jerked and their spree of shredding increased in pace.
“Accelero? Nice choice.” Ghost dipped a hoof into his saddlebags. “Stuffed poblano pepper?”
“Sure.” Sunset levitated the proffered item over to her mouth and bit in. “Not as spicy as I expected.”
“It’s not a very hot pepper. Ah figured I didn’t want to burn your dainty mouth.”
Sunset gazed down at the swath the skeletal reptiles were cutting through the army. They’d managed to divide it into separate chunks, and were in the process of surrounding and further subdividing one of them. The giant skeleton that had marched at the head of the force had taken up Sunset’s former position on the pass, daring any of the dark army to pass it; so far none had tried. Sunset couldn’t see any sign of leadership with the army, and it had begun milling about in panic.
She took another bite. “That’s some nice flavor balance. Black beans?”
“Yeah. Ah put these together for my hike over there while you were sleeping. Had a few left over.”
“As impressed as I am that you found time and ingredients for this, I’m impressed you’ve got such good control over all those dromaeosaurs. Not one of them has even tried to attack me.”
He shook his head. “They’re pack hunters. Ah’m only directly controlling like a tenth of them.”
“Well, it seems to work pretty well.”
At that moment, sparkling lights indicating “Quest Complete!” popped up between them, and ethereal fireworks began to pop over them. The scenery, armies, and even the massive sauropod skull they were standing on faded out until they were once again on the endless gridded plane.
“Discord!” Sunset growled. “Are we done now?”
“Well, I suppose so.” Discord popped in. “You seem to be enjoying each other’s company now.”
“Well,” Sunset hedged, “I guess that’s true.”
“Huh, yeah.” Ghost Pepper shrugged.
“Something seems to have ruined my mood just now though.” Sunset growled, “I did say something to you earlier.”
Discord rolled his eyes. “Oh, that thing about cutting me? Take your best shot. I won’t mind, I swear to Fluttershy.”
Something about that struck a nerve in Sunset. She knew, logically, that she shouldn’t feel slighted that Discord considered her beneath him, as he was so arrogant as to consider everycreature beneath him, and also so powerful that it might well be true.
Buck that, take him down a peg.
Sunset reared up into a rampant posture and whinnied shrilly, pumping her forelegs as red sparks flew from them. Red aura flickered around her horn and further red sparks flew from the middle of her back.
Ghost Pepper stared at her as the display progressed, the sparks and aura becoming an inferno that lit up Sunset, backlighting her and making her appear larger and more aggressive. He could almost see a crown of solidified fire floating around her head.
“Raaah!” Sunset yelled, and a chunk of the burning aura split off into a javelin shape that glowed like metal heated blindingly hot. She suddenly lunged forward, half jumping, and the javelin shot forward, appearing to Ghost as an even redder dark streak heading for the horizon.
Discord had been prepared for the attack, and stood somewhat to the side after a dodge that neither of the ponies present had been able to see. He turned his head to reveal the cheek with a cut in it that bled a “liquid” that flickered like a malfunctioning LCD display. “Congratulations, Sunset. I guess now I have to upgrade you from ‘ant’ to ‘venomous spider’ in my future dealings.”
A rolled up newspaper appeared over Sunset and smacked her to the ground. “Discord.”
“I did say you were a venomous spider.”
“Discord, did you just reference that stupid cat comic?”
“I have to get those references from somewhere.”
“Fine. Get this thing off me, it’s actually pretty heavy and I’m exhausted.”
Sunset landed on the cushion back at the Licensing Bureau building with an “Oof,” followed by Ghost Pepper landing on another cushion. Less than a second later, there was the sound of a door opening and the unicorn clerk returned to his station.
“Ah, Miss Shimmer. I was afraid you had left.” Sunset knew he’d been taking his sweet time in hope of her making some sort of scene, but Discord had brought them back to right when he’d returned.
“Thank you very much, sir.” Sunset trotted up and accepted form 449-AK ‘Declaration of Reform Responsibility’ into her aura.
“Don’t mention it.”
“Ah suppose it wasn’t all bad. And doin’ that with you got all my itches out.”
“Don’t say it that way, someo–somepony might get the wrong impression.”
“Well, whatever you say, mistress.” Ghost chuckled.
Sunset was able to facehoof while walking without falling over. “I regret everything. Speaking of regrets, now I’ve got to make up with Charge Carrier.”
Ghost shook his head. “Well, you made more of an effort to put her behind bars than you did with me, but then it all came undone.”
“Oh?” Sunset turned to him and stopped. “I knew something had happened to cause the case against her to be dropped during the third appeal, but I missed the details.”
“There was a Parliament a few years before you left, and her old dam was on it. So the right honorable Duchess Spear Carrier’s got a vote in Parliament for… whatever it was, Ah didn’t keep up details. So she asks Celestia, straight up, for a pardon for her daughter in exchange for her vote. Whatever it is is important enough that she’s willing to do a blatant favor trade like that and that’s the end of the story.”
Sunset burst out laughing, causing nearby ponies on the street to slowly back away. “Oh. Oh wow. So I’ve already bailed her out then.”
“Whaddya mean?”
“That Parliament was for me. It’s the only way to get a certain magic license.”