//------------------------------// // How come it's fine when Sunset talks to herself, but it's weird when I do it? // Story: Equestria Girls: Symbol Of Undying Love // by vortex123 //------------------------------// 'Oh dang oh dang oh dang!' Was all Manny could think as he barely dodged a magic beam from Cold, who laughed as he fired at Manny. As it turned out, his ability to use magic was a fluke, a result of the weird gun. And since the effects of the gun wore off, Manny could no longer access his magic as easily as he could before. And to make matters worse, his chest really hurt. "Stand still." Cold said causally, as he fired what Gaster had said was a crushing spell normally used for making junkyard work easier in Equestra. "I need to crush you." Why do I feel like that's a reference from somewhere? "Is that really important right now?" Manny asked as Cold dodged another attack from the other Sunset, only for her to stab him in the leg. "Ack!" Cold flinched and jumped away, then turned and glared at the other Sunset. "You little-!" "Aw, that looked like it hurt." The other Sunset says in a mocking tone. "Yeah enjoy it while you can, brat, because it's the last hit you'll get in." Cold says as he readies another spell. The girl just smiled, then frowned as she put a finger in her ear. "Yeah? I'm fighting him. Because it'd be over too quickly if I did. What? Ugh, fiiiine, if you really want me to do it the quick and boring way." The other Sunset says, taking her finger out of her ear. Then suddenly, her eyes changed. The white in her eyes turned black, and her pupils turned slited. "Can you do that?" Manny asked his Sunset, who shook her head. "No. But I think I could learn it, since she's this world's version of me." Sunset says with a shrug. 'No, I'm not sure what, but something tells me this isn't something you can just learn.' Manny thinks, as looked at the other Sunset, who was now turning red. 'This feel…unique.' Manny thinks, as everything else fades from his sight, save for the other Sunset. 'Wrong.' Suddenly his eyes and head started to tingle. "Manny?" Looking around the other Sunset, Manny noticed transparent figures flouting behind her. They all had various negative expressions on their faces. Some were crying, some were extremely angry, some were scared. At this point Manny's eyes started to hurt, and he started to get a headache. "Manny." But there was one thing they all had in common, their attention was directed purely at the other Sunset. At this point it was getting difficult to breathe. "Manny!" Sunset's voice broke Manny out of his thoughts. "Huh?" Was all Manny could say as everything went back to normal, and the pain in his eyes and head vanished. As he regained his breath, he looked at the girl fighting. The the other Sunset, who hadn't noticed Manny staring at her, regained her normal colors. Looking around the other Sunset again, he no longer saw the transparent figures. "What the…?" "Finally!" His Sunset huffed. "What's the deal? Once you starting staring into my counterpart's eyes, you completely zoned out, and your eyes glowed green. Care to explain what happened?" Sunset asked with a raised brow. "I'll let you know when I figured that out myself." Manny says, scratching his head in confusion, then flinched and grabbed his chest. “You alright?” His Sunset asked as the other Sunset launches of the ground, heading straight for Cold. “Yeah…just a spike of pain.” Manny says in a pained tone. During this, not only had the other Sunset reached Cold faster then Cold could react, she also slashed his face with claws made out of magic. “You sure? That doesn’t sound very reassuring.” His Sunset pressed. Cold had staggered from the other Sunset’s slash, and countered with a kick to the jaw. “I swear if you keep talking like that, I’m gonna nickname you ‘Dictionary’.” Manny states with a sigh. “I’m fine, it's probably nothing.” Manny assures as the other Sunset shoot 3 fire balls at Cold. A little curious himself, he decided to check under his shirt to see if he could see anything. Once Manny could've sworn his heart skipped a beat, assuming Monsters had that specific mussel. On his chest was a massive 2nd degree burn in the shape of lightning going everywhere. Woah…" Was all Sunset could say as she stared wide eyed at the injury. The only thing Manny could think of was that he wanted it healed immediately. His hand suddenly blazed with green magic, which he immediately brought to his chest. Though much to his horror, the green magic disappeared when it got close to his chest. *BOOM* Both their attention, though only a fraction of attention from Manny, was brought back to the fight. The other Sunset was floating in the air, and she had 6 fireballs around her, the fireballs being a mix between green, dark purple and black. Looking at he eyes, they saw both of her eyes were completely great, and dark purple mist were coming from them. And in a crater in the ground laid Cold, in the process of getting back up. “Wow, I’m surprised you could tank that.” The other Sunset said, her voice and expression showing that in was genuine surprise, possible even respect. “And I’m surprised a kid like you has that kinda power.” Cold says with a grin. “We’ll pull back for now, but I’ll definitely be back for a rematch, kid.” With that, takes out a gem, takes his fallen partners away in a telekinetic grip. “Alright.” The other Sunset says, turning to her spectators, her eyes returning to normal. “Now that that’s taken care of, let’s…” She trails of as she noticed Manny’s burn marks. (Unknown Hospital) Examination room The other Sunset had called for a ride to a hospital, when asked why they couldn’t use the hospital they were at, the other Sunset had said it wasn’t that type of building. When asked to go into more detail, she just shrugged and said that was the exact explanation her dad had given her. During the ride, the three had a talk. Manny had stated that the burn was going back and forth between not that bad, to feeling like someone hit him with a bat, and it was getting progressively worse as time went on. And at some point in the conversation, the other Sunset had mentioned that she gotten the nickname “fire starter” when she accidentally set fire to a giant block of ice without the use of dark or chaos magic. While the Equestrian Sunset was wondering how that was possible, Manny asked if they could call her that to easily tell each other apart, to which she responded “sure, I wouldn’t have told you if I didn’t like being called that. If anything I’m proud of it, I got it by doing something that confused my chaos magic teacher.” (From this point forward, the human Sunset will be called Fire Starter, and the Equestrian Sunset will be called Abbey, though this’ll only be with both Sunsets, Gaster, and Manny. Everyone else will call them by the name they know them by.) Fire Starter and Abbey were talking about the difference between their worlds magic when they had arrived at the hospital. As it turns out, while magic was much more varied and free flowing in Abbey’s world, common magic users in Fire Starter’s world had much higher potential then Abbey’s. Now in the examination room, while the two girls picked up the conversation they were having before, Manny decided to talk to Gaster. Not wanting Fire Starter to think Manny was crazy, Gaster decided to bring Manny to their shared mindscape. Mindscape “Ok, we should have plenty of time to talk here, and possibly go over some magic exercises. Though since your body and possibly SOUL are damaged, you can’t use your actual SOUL for that.” Gaster says, looking at me. “So what were you about to say back in that weird place?” Manny asked, relieved that he could no longer feel the pain. “As I was saying, when creating your body, I had pulled three things together. One was my own magic, another was from an experiment long ago, and the third was from the void itself. Of course I unfortunately can’t take all the credit for the creation of your body, some of it goes to the same person who made that girl who could hear and see me. The void is toxic by nature, but when manipulated in a certain way, can safely create many things. Of course, when I attempted this long ago, it…did not go as planned. But by the looks of it, someone found my notes, and refined them." Gaster explained. "And those 'void chains'?" Manny asked. "The experiment I was talking about. They were the result of studying my top assistant at the time, her name was Kaede, truly a special girl that one." Gaster says with a smile, staring off, remembering fond memories from long ago. "Could you tell me about her?" Manny asked. "Maybe another time, right now we must focus on the present." Gaster says. "Now listen carefully." With the Sunsets "I still can't believe that dark magic is not only legal here, but also encouraged." Abbey says, scratching her head. "'Dark' does not mean evil. Darkness is a natural force that exists in harmony with light. It's not dark magic that corrupts the user, it's corrupted users who misuse it's power. Take what happened in the fight I had with Cold for example. I used enough dark magic to kill a normal person, but-" Fire Started explaining before lifting her hand and gaining a concentrating look. Suddenly a sphere made of rainbow light appeared in her hand, giving off a wave of peace and tranquility that Abbey had never felt before. It was like whenever her mom had hugged her whenever she was feeling down, and always cheered her up. It was definitely powerful, but also comforting."-as you can see, I'm still able to use harmony magic." "That's harmony magic!?" Abbey asked in shock, then remembered how Celestia would talk about how friendship spawned harmony. 'I'm still mad at her, but if I knew this was what she was talking about, I might've payed more attention to what she was saying.' She thinks, getting into a thinking pose, then raised a brow. 'Wait…if she was so knowledgeable about harmony, why did she never use it when we had arguments? Based on what I'm feeling, it should've easily calmed me down enough for her to get her point across, plus she wanted me to be harmonious anyway. So way didn't she?' She thinks with a frown. "Yep, I personally feel like dark magic is better, but many people like harmony magic more." Fire Starter says with a shrug. "Whatever makes them happy I guess. "Hey Fire?" Abbey called. "I have a question." "And I might have an answer." She says. "Is there anything that could take away the ability to use harmony magic?" Abbey asked. "Well that depends on the user, for some it's because they no longer care about what they use to view as harmonious, for others it because they've done something (or caused something to happen through in action) that they regret to a point that their magic will react to their desire for punishment. To be more clear about the first one, it's normally because they're still in the process of figuring out what their new views on harmony are. It could also be because they've become greedy for power, not wanting others to gain enough power to challenge them." Fire explained. 'Could that be the reason she refused to let me achieve my destiny? But even though I'm angry at her, I can't say that's the case, it just doesn't sound like her. If she didn't want others to gain too much power, then why would she not only build a school, but take on a protégé? Maybe to use as a tool? But again, that doesn't make sense. If she wanted a tool, then she could've just use a mind control spell to make me absolutely obedient to her, but she was very pushy about me making friends of my own. But at the same time, what else could it be? I don't know somepony more stubborn in their beliefs then her, and she's Princess Celestia for ponies sale! What could a mare like her have possibly done, or not done, that was that bad? Wouldn't ponies know if she had done something bad enough to lose harmony magic?' Abbey think, gaining a headache from the confusion. "This makes no sense." "What fun is there in making sense?" A new voice says, startling Abbey. "Mr. Discord, what're you doing here?" Fire asked. "Well I'm here to examine the sleeping kid here, since his body is so out of the ordinary. Glad he decided to save me time and go to sleep himself, now I just gotta lock him in his sleep." Discord says before snapping his fingers. A flash of light covered Manny, then disappeared, locking Manny in his dreams. "Now let's see what the problem is."