King Sombra stood in the shadows, glowering at the students of Twilight's School as they walked about, talking and laughing with friends or hurrying off to their next incredibly boring friendship class. He was certain that studying such activity was dealing expansive damage to both his mental wellbeing and his overall darkness, but he had nothing else to do. After his recent defeat at the hooves of six colorful mares with undestructable sparkly rainbow power, he had not managed to get any sort of body back. He was considerably angry about this. One cannot strike fear into the hearts of others when one does not have a body. He couldn't even haunt the place; he had no power to move objects around or create spooky noises.
He frowned in frustration and moved across the hallway, standing directly in the path of a pink hippogriff student just to see what would happen when she walked right through him.
She walked right through him, taking absolutely no notice of him. None at all. Not even a bit of a shiver. It was disgruntling, to say the least. Apparently all the stories he had heard about ponies without bodies were completely false.
Sombra groaned and went back to the shadows. The situation was hopeless. Hopeless. H-O-P-E-L-E-S-S. There was zero chance of his getting his body back. If only he had created a magical ring that held half his life force and therefore could return him his body but had been stolen by some random crystal warrior. At least then there would be SOME chance of getting it back. Especially if it was in the paws of harmless rabbits and he had nine super-strong black ghost monsters to go after them for him. THAT would've been cool.
Unless, of course, they somehow managed to throw it into an active volcano and destroy it. Then he would've been killed twice.
I must be going nuts.
Shaking his head to clear it of these crazy thoughts, Sombra glared at every student in sight, then crossed the hallway and followed the pink hippogriff into one of the open classrooms. If it could even be called a classroom; it had evidently decided it wanted to be a farm instead. There was straw littering the floor and apple pulp spattered on the walls. The desks were all covered with dirt. It made quite a bit of sense that the only beings inside of it were some strange-looking yak and an odd pony with a cutie mark of three turtles. What the hay THAT signified, he had no idea. Was the pony some kind of turtle raiser?
Pondering this (as he had absolutely nothing else to do), he barely noticed as the trio engaged in friendly conversation, until they all suddenly burst out laughing. Sombra watched them and felt very strange. They all seemed so... happy. None of them were trying to kill or enslave each other, or steal each other's food.
"Hello," said Sombra, knowing that they couldn't hear him. "You all look like you're having a good time. I half wish I had gone here when I was your age. Of course, they didn't have things like this back then. Only orphanages and coal mines." I must be going nuts. He couldn't believe he had actually just said he wanted to go to a friendship school. Had he forgotten who he was? Of course, if he HAD gone to a friendship school, he'd probably be a very different kind of pony. With a body.
"Sandbar, you are HILARIOUS!" the pink hippogriff exclaimed, jumping into the air for a brief second before landing with a thump. She continued to laugh as Sombra regarded them in puzzled confusion. What was so hilarious, exactly? He couldn't believe himself, but he kind of wanted to know. He also wanted to know what that pony's special talent was. He guessed that he was the "Sandbar", since that wasn't a yak name.
Sombra thought for a moment. Maybe he could still spy on minds, even if he didn't have his magic. He edged closer to the pony and tried to peek inside his mind...
...and suddenly he was staring at the room through a very different set of eyeballs.
Oh no.
Oh no, no, no.
He had accidentally taken over the pony's body. And he could already tell that this pony would be of absolutely no use to him. He was an earth pony, after all. He had no magic.
Sombra, realizing his mistake, tried desperately to get out of the pony's body.
It wasn't working.
He was trapped. He was going to be trapped in somepony else's body for all eternity. He really, really didn't want to be trapped in somepony else's body for all eternity!!
He froze, startled, realizing that he had accidentally said the last three words out loud. With Sandbar's voice and mouth.
The yak and the hippogriff stopped laughing and stared at him, confused. Their names flew into his head - well, the pony's head - "Yona" and "Silverstream".
"Huh?" said the hippogriff in confusion (or Silverstream, as Sandbar's head called her).
"Uh.. n-nothing!" Sombra stammered. "Just - uh, thoughts. Yeah. Um. What were we talking about?" Hopefully this pony whose body he had taken over wasn't the articulate philosopher type.
"Yona say funny joke, and Sandbar add on to funny joke," the yak explained, while Silverstream continued to stare, puzzled.
"Oh, right!" Sombra said, trying to play along while figuring out how to LEAVE THIS CURSED PONY'S BODY. "Uh, you tell one, Silverstream!"
"Okay!" said the hippogriff brightly, the confusion fading from her face. "What did the big tomato say to the little tomato when it fell behind?"
"Uhh... hurry up or I'll make you into tomato sauce and serve you on spaghetti?" Sombra guessed.
Now they were both giving him weird looks. What had he said?
"The answer's, 'Ketch-up!'," Silverstream hiccuped.
"Oh! Ha ha ha... ha ha..." Sombra tried to laugh, but it came out sounding extraordinarily evil. He hadn't actually laughed for a very long time.
Yona and Silverstream exchanged glances. "Uh.... Sandbar, are you okay?"
"YES!" Sombra said. Whoops. Now it sounded like he was yelling at her. "I mean, yes." That sounded better. "I'm fine. Uh, should we be getting to class?"
"School's over for the day..."
"Oh, is it?" Sombra desperately hoped he didn't look as nervous as he thought he did. "I barely noticed. Time flies SO FAST nowadays..." Think like Sandbar. Think like Sandbar. For being present in the pony's brain, it was certainly very difficult. "Um. I better get home then. Got - LOTS of HOMEWORK to do!!" Wait. Was this a boarding school?
"Okay!" said Silverstream cheerfully, sweeping a stack of books off of a nearby desk and folding them underneath one of her pale pink wings. "Just remember to come to Professor Fluttershy's classroom tonight for the sleepover with the others!" she called as she headed out of the classroom door.
"Yeah, okay," Sombra muttered. He certainly had no intention of joining a foal hippogriff's slumber party. Especially not in the classroom of one of the cursed ponies who had robbed him of his material body.
"Yona hope Sandbar feel better in morning," said the yak nervously, picking up her own stack of books.
"I'm fine," Sombra repeated, stopping himself from gritting his teeth. "Goodbye, Yona."
"Bye, Sandbar" said the yak, sounding strangely mournful as she followed her pink friend, casting a worried glance back at him over her shoulder as she walked out into the hallway.
Sombra breathed as sigh of relief as soon as he was by himself again. Now was time for work. Time to figure out how the hay to get out of this Tartarus-forsaken body.
He was NOT going to be stuck as a colt earth pony for the rest of his life.