//------------------------------// // 3. f3 e5, g4?? Qh4# // Story: A Trip Through the Mirror // by RainbowDoubleDash //------------------------------// For a good three-year-period there, Sunset Shimmer’s life had been so simple. Wake up. Go to school. Manipulate the school around her so that she remained in charge of the teeming throngs of teenagers who would one day form the core of her army as she marched back to Equestria and conquered it. Go to her after-school job as a cook and salespony at Summer Sushi. Go home. Do homework. Sleep. She wasn’t proud of the fact that sometimes she wished she could go back to those simpler times, but she also didn’t think that when one looked at how complicated her life had become, she could be blamed for wanting to go back to the days where months could pass without there being some kind of magical disaster. Years, actually. The entire three years she’d spent in the human world. But these past few months… There she was, minding her own business and doing her job of frying rice and cooking chicken and rolling up sushi, when all of a sudden screams started cutting through the mall. She tried to ignore it at first – it was a busy Saturday and it wasn’t like she hadn’t heard screams before, and ninety-nine times in a hundred it was nothing, some over-excited kids or irate customers or something. Of course, then the screams continued and got louder. Sunset looked up from the grill plate and saw people running, and not in a “ha ha let’s make idiots of ourselves in the mall” runs. No, their gait had an all-too familiar pattern to it. “Monster!” A few people cried out as they ran. Sunset took a moment to sigh. “Yup,” she said, switching off the grill plate, taking off her apron and hat and hairnet and tossing them aside, and going up to her boss even as she got out her phone. “I gotta deal with this,” she said, jerking her thumb in the direction the people were running from while she used her other thumb to start texting the girls: equestrian magic, mall, come quick. While Sunset and her friends kept their powers secret from most of the world, she had personally read too many comic books in her time and seen the angst it caused heroes like Arach-Kid to want to keep it secret from her boss. So the man nodded and wished her luck, and with that, Sunset was off, running against the tide of people. “Okay, bright smiles,” Sunset said to herself as she jogged. “Nevermind that it’s been a busy Saturday and I’ve been working at a hundred-degree grill for the past four hours, that doesn’t matter, because someone needs friendship right now. I am going to friendship the heck out of them.” She paused outside of a sporting goods store, ran in and grabbed an aluminum baseball bat, and ran back out while promising to pay for it later. “So much friendship…” She found a mall cop and an employee of Elusive’s Confidence standing outside of that store – no, not standing. They looked like they wanted to run, but they were stuck to the ground by some kind of greenish-black ooze, anchoring their feet in place. Sunset jogged up to one of them. “What happened?” she asked. The mall cop looked to her. “M-monster!” He exclaimed. He pointed at the store. “There was some shoplifter, a crazy girl with a dog and a parrot, loaded with cash – we tried to escort her out but then the animals attacked us, and they could talk, and then the girl – ” “She isn’t even human!” The employee called. “Some kind of…of horse-bug thing! She grabbed one of the security guys and dragged him inside!” Sunset blinked at that, head tilting to the side. “A changeling?” “I don’t know, I didn’t ask!” “Did it have holes in its legs? It’s important.” “I don’t know!” The employee repeated. He had fallen back onto his rear and was trying to pry loose the goo around his feet, but all that happened was his hands got stuck. “You gotta get me out of here!” “Get yourself out of here, it’s not safe and it hasn’t stuck you yet,” the mall cop countered. It would be the safe thing to do, for Sunset, but it sure as heck wouldn’t be safe for the mall cop that had been attacked and dragged into Elusive’s Confidence by the changeling. She grabbed the baseball bat tighter and headed inside the store, ignoring the objections from the two behind her. A thin trail of slime on the ground showed her that the mall cop had been dragged towards the back of the store, towards the fitting rooms, where she heard vague, hushed, panicked voices. Sunset stopped just outside the fitting rooms entrance, taking a few faux swings with her bat as she tried to listen in, but she couldn’t hear anything clearly – not the least of which was because of muffled whimpering and moaning. Sunset lifted her bat, readying it. “Hey in there!” she called. The voices stopped. “Hey, um…I’m going to guess that either you’re all changelings, or at least one of you is a dragon. The dog. And the fact that I know that should probably tell you a lot about me.” Silence greeted Sunset for several moments, before a scratchy feminine voice called out to her. “Are you Equestrian? Who are you?” “My name is Sunset Shimmer,” she provided. “I’m friends with Princess Twilight – ” That prompted an immediate reaction. “Oh gawk, we’re busted!” A male voice cried out. But more importantly there was the familiar scrabbling of hooves on tiles – and suddenly Sunset found herself face-to-face with a blue changeling. She raised her bat defensively, but the changeling didn’t attack her, instead dropping down to her haunches and holding up her front hooves, eyes clenched tightly shut and streaming tears. “I’m sorry I’m sorry I’m sorry I didn’t mean to but the human attacked my friends and my friends attacked first but they thought that I was being attacked and Gallus’ wing was broken and I didn’t think it was fair because we hadn’t done anything so I grabbed the human and cocooned him and plee-hee-heease don’t expel me!” Sunset stared a moment more, before lowering her bat. She leaned around the corner, and saw a dog and a parrot with a broken wing – and shoved into one corner, a human completely wrapped up in a black-and-green changeling cocoon, looking unharmed but unconscious thanks to the sedatives within it. Sunset looked between the three. She found herself pinching the bridge of her nose. “Okay, what?” An explanation had needed to wait – the actual police were on the way, after all, as well as Sunset’s friends, though she had texted them to let them know that the crisis wasn’t the fighting kind, at least. Fortunately – and naturally – Rainbow Dash had arrived first thanks to her geode’s power giving her super-speed, so that at least solved how to get the changeling, dog, and parrot out of there without anyone knowing. The changeling – Ocellus – had helpfully cut open the cocoon containing the store clerk just before being carried off, at least, so he would be fine. The three had also let Sunset know about another interloper – a pegasus pony in the form of a young girl, Cozy Glow. Sunset had found her not at the Pomme store, but instead at the nearby book store, having taken refuge there when the commotion had started. She’d been suspicious of Sunset and her baseball bat, but when Sunset had name-dropped her friends and knowing Princess Twilight, Cozy had instantly warmed up to the girl and thanked her profusely for getting her friends out of trouble. Fluttershy had been called in to attend to Gallus’ wing, but with the four Equestrians being so cooperative there was no longer a need to interrupt anyone else’s day, so Sunset had let them know that the crisis had been averted. And so she found herself looking at a sniffling changeling in human guise, a dragon-turned sheltie who alternated between nudging the changeling with her nose and growling at anyone who got too close, a griffon-turned-cockatoo who Sunset was pretty sure was playing up his injury for attention from Fluttershy, and a pegasus-turned-human who was fidgeting under Sunset’s gaze, playing with the straps of her backpack. “Okay, so…this was a school project?” Rainbow Dash asked once the four had finished explaining everything. She let out a grunt as she crossed her arms. “Glad to know that we’ve been upgraded from being Equestria’s dumping ground for villains, at least.” “Rainbow Dash!” Fluttershy objected. “I’m sure our friends on the other side of the portal don’t think about us like that.” “I dunno, you heard them: that Star Swirl guy is apparently still around…” “And is a jerk,” the dog, Smolder, insisted. She waved a paw at herself. “Look at this! Why do only ponies get turned into humans?” Sunset sighed. “I have no idea, you’ll have to ask him.” She crossed her arms as well, looking between the four. “Personally I’d think a bigger problem is breaking into Princess Twilight’s castle and using the portal without permission.” “Did you have permission?” Cozy asked curiously. “I was a messed-up foal with delusions of grandeur, unlike you four,” Sunset said. “I mean, come on, all this for school? How bad do your grades have to be to make this seem like a good idea?” “My grades are fine!” Ocellus insisted, then wilted when she realized that it didn’t exactly help her case. She was sitting on the ground, and tucked her knees up against her chest, hiding a little behind them. “I only overheard Counselor Starlight talking about it,” Cozy said, “I just thought it sounded cool. A whole world on the other side of a mirror! But then…” she trailed off, looking to Gallus and Smolder nervously. The two looked back, and sighed as one. Gallus nodded. “It was our idea,” Gallus admitted. “And…yeah, okay, we do have a project on foreign magic due in a couple days. And we figured that if we did it on a race no creature has ever heard of before…” “You’d get accused of making stuff up and fail?” Rainbow Dash asked. “But Princess Twilight knows you guys exist!” Smolder objected. “And most of Equestria doesn’t,” Sunset pointed out. “Couldn’t you draw any conclusions from that?” The four interlopers looked between each other. Ocellus just folded up on herself more where she was sitting on the ground, burying her face in her knees and hugging herself tightly. Smolder let out a very canine whine, flopping onto her stomach, while Gallus used the alula of one wing to continuously poke himself in the forehead. Cozy Glow chewed nervously on her knuckles and clutched her backpack even tighter. “I – I d-don’t want to get expelled…” Ocellus stuttered. “The changelings have c-come so far…I only w-wanted to spend time with my friends…” Smolder, Gallus, and Cozy all moved in and hugged Ocellus tightly, trying to cheer her up. Fluttershy, meanwhile, came up alongside Sunset, looking at her pointedly. Sunset couldn’t even match the gaze for a moment before she let out a sigh, turning back to the four interlopers. “It’s…okay, listen,” she said, getting their attention. “I’ll go back through the portal with you and talk to Princess Twilight, make sure she doesn’t do anything too bad. You did want to do a school project so, really, she’ll probably let you all off with only a month’s detention or something.” “Or even less,” Rainbow Dash observed with a knowing smirk. Sunset shot her a glare, but the blue girl only shrugged. “What? You know it’s true.” She clasped her hands beside her face. “‘Oh my Celestia! My students cared so much about their grades that they crossed whole worlds! And they did it together because their friendship is so strong!’ That’s her. That’s how she’ll sound.” Chuckles from the four interlopers confirmed the likelihood of that, and even Sunset had to laugh a little as well. “Okay…yeah, you’re probably right. But…” she looked back to the four. “As for the project…sorry, can’t help you there. You can’t do your project on human magic because humans don’t have magic. Rainbow Dash has super-speed, and I can read minds and Fluttershy can talk to animals, but that’s because Equestrian magic leaks into this world.” “But those…those Pomme things?” Cozy asked. “Phones. They’re a kind of advanced technology.” Sunset shook her head. “Sorry, humans make do without magic. It took some getting used to for me as well, I thought that so much here was magic, but…” The four stared uncomprehendingly. Gallus finally broke the silence. “Oh come on!” He exclaimed. “You mean I got my wing broken and I’m down twenty-five bits for nothing?! I don’t – what is this even gonna be like back in Equestria, is it gonna be my wing, or one of my paws, or both, or…?” Sunset shook her head. “Come on, let’s find out – and get you four home.” She pointed at the portal. “In you go.” They stood, Gallus being picked up by Ocellus, and walked towards the portal. “Maybe advanced enough technology is magic…” Gallus tried. “I don’t think that’ll work with Headmare Twilight,” Smolder said. “I’ll help you two pick something else,” Ocellus promised. Then the four were through the portal. Sunset sighed rubbing her eyes. She felt Fluttershy’s hand on her shoulder. “At least this time there wasn’t some big crisis,” she reminded Sunset, smiling. Sunset returned the smile. “Yeah, you have a point. There was a lot less running around and worrying about the end of the world than normal. Just some harmless kids.” Headmare Twilight had said that she was disappointed in the four of them for using the magical portal without permission, of course, even if it was for a school project. But when she’d learned the reasons, and with Sunset there to smooth things over, she’d only settled on a week’s detention, as well as insisting that the four of them better have very good projects…but the fact that she’d shown interest in Gallus’ suggestion that maybe human technology was their magic had resulted in a notable glint in her eye and a request for him to elaborate. He’d seen his opportunity and pitched his idea, theorizing what a world without magic would develop like, getting help from Sunset…and then stopping a few minutes into it, saying that it was a shame that it couldn’t be a full project and he’d just have to do it on diamond dogs or breezies or something. It had worked like a charm. Twilight had said that Smolder and Gallus could do their project on humans. Ocellus stuck with the project on the yogi of yetis that she was doing with Silverstream, while Cozy had partnered with Sandbar to do a project on buffalo and their shamans. Fortunately the project wasn’t one that had to be presented to the class, so humans could remain secret. But that wasn’t what mattered to Cozy Glow. Nopony, or any creature for that matter, had noticed the backpack-turned-saddlebags she’d been wearing when she came back to Equestria, but hadn’t left with. Sunset Shimmer hadn’t known that the backpack had been a new acquisition to start with, of course, and Gallus, Smolder, and Ocellus had been too busy with their own concerns and emotions. Cozy played it completely cool as a cucumber for the entire dressing-down that Twilight had given them, and during Cozy’s extended apology. The apology was important, or more specifically, the fact that Cozy didn’t once try to shift blame or downplay what she’d done. That meant what she’d done was an honest mistake. Anypony could have done it, and Cozy was sorry, wasn’t she? So it showed that she knew what she’d done was wrong, and she’d learned her lesson, and so she could be trusted. In fact, her honest repentance, if anything, made her even more trustworthy. Just like she’d hoped. That night, Cozy snuggled into the top bunk of her dorm room, firefly lantern beside her under the covers while she hugged her mountain of stuffed toys close. She had her new saddlebags under the covers with her, and she took out everything she’d procured from the human world. Mostly, they were books: The Way Things Work. A Student’s Guide to Analytical Mechanics. A Brief History of Time. A Short History of Nearly Everything. The Prince. Power Force Six volumes one thru three, because she was still a filly and so occasionally needed a break from work. And most significantly, she pulled out her brand new laptop computer, turned it on, opened up its disc drive, and put in the compact disk containing the Encyclopedia Atlantica, just like how she’d been shown how to by the helpful store clerks that she’d visited once she’d managed to get away from the other three. The power on the laptop wouldn’t last forever, but she was sure she could find some way to charge it in Equestria. While she was waiting for the Encyclopedia Atlantica to install, she scrolled over to the Games section, and opened up the Chess program. White or Black? The computer asked her. Cozy chose black, and grinned. “Your move,” she informed it.