"Man, this is really good," Sunset Shimmer, said munching on her donut. The two were sitting in Canterlot Café, enjoying some freshly baked pastries. While Sunset still enjoyed Pinkie's pastries, the pink girl's was overtly sugary. The food here was more refined and sophisticated.
The clientele, with their odd fashion and somewhat haughty demeanors, seemed to be hipsters.
"This is artisanal bakery," Twinkle said with a smile, a plate of fresh-baked oatmeal raisin cookies in front of him. "Everything is freshly made," he said, gesturing with his thumb to the bakers who were kneading the dough directly behind the glass near the register. "Even the flour is directly ordered fresh from the mill."
"Wow," Sunset said. "It is pretty delicious, but expensive," Sunset said, looking at the prices with astonishment.
"Well, its a good thing we live in the 1950s [1]," Twinkle said with a smirk. "In this day and age, the progressive thing to do is for the man and the woman to split the check. Or the woman should pay entirely."
"I'm seriously reconsidering not shooting you with the tranquilizer dart," Sunset said with a smirk on her own. Twinkle chuckled a bit at that. "Twinkle, thanks for taking me out."
"You've had a rough past few weeks," Twinkle said. "I figured you needed a break."
"It isn't like I had it coming for a really long time," Sunset said with a sigh.
"You really got to stop dumping on yourself," Twinkle said with some exasperation.
"I'm not trying to," Sunset said bitterly.
"Look, I want to tell you a story," Twinkle said with a reassuring smile. "To make you understand that you are far from the only one who's acted like a selfish idiot."
"OK."
"A year ago, I got my learner's permit to start driving," Twinkle said. "When you get your learner's permit, it means you can only drive when there's an adult present." He let out a smile. "My dad, who works for the army as a logistics manager, spent that year on the West Coast doing training missions. So it was my uncle Auger who taught me how to drive."
A 14 year old Twinkle struggled to control the wheel of the car he was anxiously driving through the parking lot.
"Easy, Twinkle," Auger said. He was a portly man with copper red skin and silver hair, "this is not a race. You just have to park the car."
Twinkle, with sweat pouring down his forehead, kept hitting the brake several times.
"Twinkle," Auger said patiently, "you can't keep hitting the brake."
"I'm scared of crashing," Twinkle said fearfully.
"OK look," Auger said with a sigh. "I'll tell you when you need to brake." Twinkle looked at his uncle with some trepidation. "Trust me," Auger said with a reassuring smile. With some renewed confidence, Twinkle began moving the car again. Instead of compulsively breaking, Twinkle moved at a calm, albeit slower pace with Uncle Auger's help. With a cathartic sigh, Twinkle successfully parked the car.
"See, you even got it between the lines," Auger said reassuringly, "you just need to keep a level head when you're at the wheel, and you can accomplish anything."
"Thanks Uncle Auger," Twinkle said.
"Your Uncle Auger seems like a cool guy," Sunset said.
"He could be too cool," Twinkle said with a frown.
"What do you mean?"
"Well, the thing about Auger was this: he had a marriage with this really horrible woman who would humiliate him and throw things at him," Twinkle said. "The marriage ended when the women threatened him into taking her to dinner with a knife."
"Ouch," Sunset Shimmer with sympathy.
"My mom, who was his sister, let him live with us while he recovered from that horrible time," Twinkle said. "My mom figured he would be my parent while my Dad was out West. But he was a good guy, but...he kind of...spoiled me to make up for his loneliness."
"What are you guys going up?!" Yelled Rose as she saw Auger and Twinkle were downstairs watching a movie. "It is 10:50 PM! You need to be in bed Twinkle." She looked at the bowls of candy and popcorn. "And it's too late to have junk food."
"Loosen up mom," Twinkle said.
"Yeah loosen up mom," Auger said with a mocking smile.
"Bed," Rose yelled, pointing to the door that led to the stairs. Twinkle went upstairs with a sigh.
"Auger, I know you like being the cool uncle," Rose said with exasperation, "but you can't keep spoiling him."
"Let a kid have fun," Auger said.
"His father is a few thousand miles away," Rose said with consternation, "and you need to be that for him. Not be his best bud."
"Sometimes my uncle behaved like he was a college kid more than an adult" Twinkle said. "And because of that, I took advantage of his trust."
"How," Sunset asked.
"He worked as a plumber, and he had to do a plumbing job near the beach. He decided to take me for a practice drive along the beach." Twinkle let out a regretful frown. "This was when I was still on my permit, and I did something incredibly stupid."
"See you're making progress," Uncle Auger said as Twinkle pulled in next to a wooden building in the middle of Seaboard Beach. "You managed to drive along the scenic road." Once Twinkle parked the car, Auger got out of the passenger's seat carrying a tool set.
"Keep down the fort," Uncle Auger said. "I'll be back in a few."
"I will," Twinkle said. He sat in the passenger's seat for a few minutes until he heard a voice.
"Excusez-moi," a Champaignian voice said. Twinkle turned his head and saw a pearl white-skinned beauty with long light-pink hair in a bright pink one-piece swimsuit.
"I am, how you say, sorry to bother you," the girl said. "But can you, comment dit-,"
"Give you a ride," Twinkle said, his jaw almost hanging from his mouth.
"Yes, s'il vous plait," the girl said. "To ze...other side of the beach."
"Sure hop in," Twinkle said. The girl got in.
"Zank you," the Champagnian girl said. "I am Fleur."
"I'm Tinkle...I mean Twinkle," the red-skinned teenager said.
"You are a such beau mec," Fleur said with an appreciative smile.
"I don't know what that means," Twinkle said as he adjusted the manual transmission. His focus remained on the girl giving him a pretty smile, and he didn't pay attention to where he had moved it. "But I'm sure it was the prettiest thing I've ever heard." The girl let out a cute laugh that made the red-skinned teenager turn even more red.
"Anyways lets-," Twinkle put his foot on the gas, and before he realized it, his car rapidly went into reverse. Unable to maneuver, he backed into the locker room.
"I thought with my hormones not my brain," Twinkle said sheepishly. "And I ended up damaging a locker room, made my uncle lose my a lucrative contract, costed him thousands of dollars, nearly got myself and some poor girl killed, and got my uncle nearly kicked out of the house by my mom."
"Ouch," Sunset said with a wince.
"I was grounded for six months, and barred from learning how to drive nearly that time," Twinkle said simply. "I spent every weekend being my uncle's assistant during my punishment to make it up to him. I know what's it like to do something stupid and work hard to get back my family's trust."
"How's that the same?" Sunset asked. "That was one stupid, impulsive decision. I spent years hurting people."
"Do you think I deserve to be hated forever?" Twinkle said.
"No," Sunset.
"Then neither do you," Twinkle said. "I've done a lot of....idiotic things besides that," Twinkle said solemnly. "And if my teachers and parents treated me...the way I treated you, I'd have been kicked out of the house or kicked out of school a long time ago." Sunset still looked downcast. "Look, I'm not gonna lie. It really pissed me off to learn that this pretty girl from the school newspaper who pretended to be interested in my team turned out to be some creepy supervillain who sabotaged my team's hard work. But if I deserved forgiveness after doing the grunt work to make up for it, then so does that girl who worked nights lifting and moving heavy stones." Sunset let out an empathetic smile.
"Thanks," Sunset said with a warm smile. Her eyes widened. "Wait, you thought I was pretty?" Sunset said, a toothy smile forming on her face.
"I never said that," Twinkle said nervously, his already red face blushing.
"So you're saying I'm ugly," Sunset said dramatically.
"Oh please, that's not fair," Twinkle said with a mixture of exasperation and humor. "Anyways, it was wrong to prank you like that. And I should've been more grateful to you after you let yourself get dunked to pay.."
"Well you already made it up to me by standing up to Micro when you didn't have to," Sunset said. "And you also stood up for Quick." A grateful smile appeared on her face. "That was really sweet of you."
"I care about Quick," Twinkle said firmly. "The kid is like a little brother to me. Sprint and the rest of my team sees him the same way."
"I do to," Sunset said. "He's the only other person besides my current friends to be consistently nice to me since I got back."
"He did throw those balloons at you," Twinkle said sheepishly, "but mostly because we wanted to...indoctrinate him." Twinkle frowned shamefully.
"Don't worry," Sunset said. "I kind of did the same thing with Snips and Snails. I promised I'd make them popular if they did everything I said. And they always obeyed me."
"Were you going to give them power once you became this magical princess," Twinkle said jokingly, "or would you be like 'you are no longer useful to me', and drop them through some trapdoor or something?"
"You think I'd do that," Sunset said defensively.
"You were like some kind of supervillain," Twinkle said plainly. "That is part of the supervillain playbook."
"I imagined myself as an honorable supervillain," Sunset said. "No I was planning to make them a member of my court. Even the Demon was nice enough to give them some powers, instead of destroying them once she no longer needed them."
"So why did you stop hanging out with them?" Twinkle asked.
"Well, Luna told me not to," Sunset said. "But I realized...the two weren't really the friends I needed. I mean, they're loyal, but in the way that a robot is. They never question anything you say, and they never offer any differing opinion. I realize that being around them was preventing me from growing up." Her mouth set into a frown. "But Quick isn't like that. In a quiet way, he still tried to be nice to me while you guys were hurting me."
"Really," Twinkle said.
"Quick is a sweet guy," Sunset said with a small smile. She then frowned. "But...to tell you the truth... he seems to be...not all there. He's shy and stammering. Is there...something going on with him?"
"Look Quick isn't crazy," Twinkle said. "He's not dumb, he's really fast and really tough. But...he's had a hard life."
"Can you tell me more," Sunset said.
"I may have forgiven you, but I'm not close enough to share my friend's secret with you," Twinkle said with narrowed eyes.
"Fair enough," Sunset said. "But why would he tell you them?" Twinkle looked down shamefully. "Twinkle what's-,"
"Let's just say that Sprint and I haven't always been nice to Quick," Twinkle said with disgust. "When he came to the tryouts, we didn't always think the best of him."
"Are you maggots ready to train?!" Sprint said to prospective members of the track-team.
"Yeah!"
"Are you gonna work hard?!" Twinkle yelled.
"Yeah!"
"When we say jump, what will you ask?!" Sprint.
"How high!"
"Alright then," Sprint yelled. "Get your butts to the field!" The group of students ran to the field to start their warmups.
"Exc-c-cuse me," a voice stammered. The two captains of the track team watched some sweaty redhead dwarf with pale skin approach them.
"I'm Q-quick Pace. I-i-is this the tryouts," the kid stammered looking somewhat timid. The two athletes looked at each other, silently communicating an idea, before looking at the kid with fake smiles.
"Sorry," Twinkle said. "We're actually...uh...full."
"Full?"
"We have too many people trying out today," Sprint lied as well. "But we can have a special tryout for you Short Stack at...5PM tomorrow."
"O-o-K," Quick Pace said. "S-s-s you guys tomorrow." The diminutive kid walked away.
"S-s-see you...never," Twinkle said mockingly under his breath. He began laughing alongside Sprint.
"You sent him on a goose chase and made fun of his stammer?" Sunset asked with disbelief and a little anger.
"Like I said," Twinkle muttered regretfully. "You're not the only one who's acted like a jerk. But yeah, I did look down on Quick for his height and stammer."
"What made you change your mind."
"Quick told on us,"Twinkle said. "Mrs. Harshwhinny dragged us into a meeting with Quick's mom. His mom told us about what he went through...and how Quick really needed a friend." Twinkle looked sad remembering what he learned. "Sprint and I felt horrible for being such bastards, so we at least gave him a chance to tryout. He turned out to be like...lightning on his feet. So...we took him under our wing."
"Can you give me an idea of what you learned?" Sunset said.
"All I can tell you is that he has a tumultuous family history, he's been picked on a lot for being short, and he was badly bullied for being left-handed."
"What does being a lefty have to do with anything?" Sunset said.
"Well let me put it this way," Twinkle said. "You ever heard of the Ameliorist Brotherhood?"
"How could I not," Sunset said with a smile. "600 million people around the world follow it. All these politicians in North Terra ever talk about is living according to 'Ameliorist Values'."
"Yeah. I had to spend my childhood learning those values," Twinkle said with a sheepish smile. "My mom would drag me to Temple every Friday night. It was one of the most boring things ever. Anyways, in the Great Text, there is a book called "Regeneration." It talks about the great battle between Vida, the Creator God, and Mortem, the Destroyer God that the Great Text claims led to the creation of the universe. One verse goes like this: 'I will strike you down my left hand/ With this gesture, wickedness shall triumph.' "
"So?"
"Because of that one line, some Fundamentalists believe that left-handed people are born evil," Twinkle said scornfully, "and that being a lefty is a sign that you are possessed by Mortem."
"Really?" Sunset asked.
"Yeah."
"You're serious?"
"Yeah," Twinkle said. "Quick had one of those people as his third grade teacher."
"Ouch," Sunset said.
"Ouch indeed," Twinkle said. "The woman kept berating him and calling him an abomination, and told him he had to write with his right hand or else he'd end up Down Below."
"Did he learn," Sunset said.
"Yes," Twinkle said with a frown. "But forcing a lefty to use their right hand is like mental torture, because your forcing them to act against their own brain when you do that. A lot of his stammer is because of that."
"That's horrible," Sunset said with sympathy.
"Yeah," Twinkle said.
"I kind of can relate to what he went through," Sunset said in a sad tone. "I know what its like to have a part of you suppressed."
"How do you mean?" Twinkle asked Sunset.
"You know about how I'm actually a unicorn, right?" Sunset said. Twinkle started to chuckle.
"What's so funny," Sunset asked.
"After you turned into a demon, I originally thought you came from some hardcore demon world," Twinkle said, "it was kind of funny to learn you came from some pony world my ten-year old sister might see in a little girl cartoon." Twinkle started to chuckle some more. "The idea of being conquered by a pony-," Twinkle began chuckling some more.
"Anyways, in my world, magic is everything," Sunset said. "We live it, breath it, and play with it. When you're a unicorn, that's even more true, since we can directly wield it with our horns. My magic potential is why I was selected to become a princess' student."
"Wow, that must've been a sweet gig," Twinkle said.
"Yeah," Sunset said. "But then I ended up here, and I suddenly had no magic."
"What was that like?"
"It felt like a...limb had been cut from my body," Sunset said, shaking a little, "but my brain didn't get the message. My instincts told me to use my magic, but then I remembered I couldn't do it. I was like a runner who lost his legs, but kept forgetting it went he went to bed, and discovered it by falling out of bed the next morning."
"Ouch," Twinkle said sympathetically.
"And...also," Sunset said sadly. "It felt like a huge part of my identity was gone. At home, I was somebody important. Here...I was just some random kid. I felt," her eyes watered for a second, "useless."
"Is that why you were always hurting everyone?" Twinkle asked empathetically. "Because you felt worthless and had this mental block in your brain? I mean, you said your plan was to weaken us emotionally, but were you also just taking out a lot of pain and frustration."
"I guess," Sunset said sadly.
"And was controlling everyone and winning all those crowns your attempt to feel important and strong to make up for your own feelings of inferiority."
"After ruining my own life...I guess to make myself feel better, I had to ruin everyone else's."
"Well that's over," Twinkle said with a kind smile. "You stop doing that, and you're choosing to move forward. And if you can do that, so can everyone else."
"Thanks," Sunset said.
"So what was this pony world like," Twinkle asked.
"What do you want to know?"
"Everything."
After leaving the café, the two walked around a small park, while Sunset answered all of Twinkle's questions about Equestria.
"Out of all the things that stood out to you about Terra," Twinkle said, "what was the thing that stunned you the most?"
"The size," Sunset said.
"The size?"
"Terra Prime has 4.5 billion people. The United Provinces has 240 million people. In my world, the total number of sentients is 15 million. About 7 million are ponies. The rest are dragons, hippogriffs, centaurs, minotaurs, zebras, cows, and others."
"Wow," Twinkle said with amazement, "we really dwarf your world."
"Let me put it this way. This version of Canterlot has about 50,000 people here. By United Provinces standards, it is a pretty mid-size city. But in Equestria, it would be one of the top ten cities. Heck, your version of Manehatten has 6 million people. 80 percent of my whole species could fit into one North Terran city."
"Wow," Twinkle said. "I can see how that can blow your mind."
"Yeah," Sunset said.
"This is a bit of a silly question but did you ever consider conquering this world?" Twinkle asked.
"Yeah," Sunset said. "But I didn't have any magic, let alone a spell that could subjugate billions. And well..."
"What?"
"I kind of think you're world is.... kind of scary," Sunset said.
"How?"
"Well, it just there's so much death and destruction that has happened through Terra Prime's history." Sunset said with a frown.
"Um, your kind of one to talk," Twinkle said with a frown. "You were a supervillain."
"I know," Sunset said. "But here in this world, wars and atrocities happen in scales that a pony in Equestria can't imagine. The two Meridian Wars separately killed more people than there are ponies in Equestria."
"Yeah, I can see how shocking that is," Twinkle is.
"But it isn't just wars. It was also...genocide," Sunset said with a shiver.
"Genocide doesn't happen in your world?" Twinkle asked.
"No," Sunset said. "Wholescale destruction of groups has never been the goal of the most evil villains in Equestria's history. My demon self might murder rivals or torment prisoners, but she would never consider slaughtering whole groups of people for something as arbitrary as language or culture." She shivered. "The Genocide of the Yehuvian people was a horror story not even the most twisted pony could write."
"I still can't believe it either," Twinkle said sadly. "Millions of people slaughtered like they were insects. But things are better than they were."
"Can you really say that?" Sunset said. "Your world has been locked in a struggle with the Changeling Alliance for generations. And the UP government spends a lot of money in the military."
"Well, we have the right to defend ourselves against the Changelings."
"Yeah but why do so many people live and work for a place so horrible," Sunset said. "When I first came here, this world seemed like a science fiction utopia. Yet people waste knowledge and money to find ways to kill one another. They waste it to defend old grudges, to fight for deities that no one can prove are real, and to suppress and control others. Why though?" Sunset sat down tiredly.
"Well, let me put it this way," Twinkle said, sitting down next to Sunset. "Why are some kids bad?"
"Because they dream of conquest?" Sunset asked cheekily.
"In your case," Twinkle said ironically. "By why else."
"Because they have bad homes," Sunset said.
"Yes," Twinkle said. "You say that Terra Prime is some science fiction world. But for the vast majority of world history, human beings didn't have that abundance. We had to compete for our food with other animals. We didn't have Pegasi that could bring us rain, nor Earth ponies that could make the soil grow food. It was harder for us."
"I see your point."
"If you wanted food, you had to hunt to get it," Twinkle said. "Our cavemen ancestors had to fight to gain control over hunting grounds."
"But then you guys learned agriculture" Sunset said. "Why didn't things get better?"
"That wasn't always perfect," Twinkle said. "Things were good when weather was good. But if you were an ancient civilization, and you had a drought, you were done for. Remember, they didn't have pegasi that could bring them rain. You couldn't farm if there wasn't much rain. Would Equestria be as great for ponies if there was no magic? You became a jerk partly because you lost magic."
"Good point," Sunset said.
"Nowadays, food and other stuff are easier to get," Twinkle said. "Whenever there is a drought in Savannah, you can just bring in food aid from a place that has plenty of it. But that abundance hasn't erased our competitive instincts that precede our modern industrial society by millions of years. Nor has that abundance reached everybody."
"That is a good point," Sunset said. "But imagine what could humans do if they could live together in peace and harmony like ponies do."
"Do ponies really live in peace and harmony?" Twinkle asked Sunset with a smirk.
"Yeah," Sunset, even knowing the question might be loaded.
"You told me that ponies united because they needed to fend off these evil ice demons."
"Yeah the windigos," Sunset said. "Only by learning to live together in Harmony can ponies fend them off."
"Are they really learning to accept each other," Twinkle asked, "or are they being forced to tolerate one another or else face a frozen death?" The question gave Sunset pause.
"I never really...thought about it that way," Sunset said.
"Would the pony tribes ever have worked together if there were no windigos?" Twinkle asked. Sunset was more or less speechless. "This isn't a world where gods and spirits have guided us to make the right or wrong choices. Human beings didn't know the things we know now. When we couldn't find answers, we invented our own myths, and our competitive instincts made us fight over which was the correct myth."
"In other words," Sunset said. "This is a hard world."
"Yep," Twinkle said. "But things have gotten better over time. And I personally believe the people after us will live better." Sunset smiled at Twinkle's optimism.
"How do you know so much?" Sunset asked.
"I want to be a history teacher after I do the draft," Twinkle said.
"That's cool," Sunset said.
"I'm glad you think so," Twinkle said with some frustration. "My dad thinks I should stay in the military, like 'real men' do."
"Really?" Sunset said.
"Yeah," Twinkle said with a roll of his eyes.
"In my world, we celebrate when a pony discovers what they want to be," Sunset said.
"You mean the 'Cutie Mark' thing," Twinkle said.
"Yeah," Sunset said. "You're right that ponies may not be perfect and we have it easier. But nevertheless, we feel that you should be happy doing what you love, and you should celebrate someone's passion, no matter what it is. Don't listen to your dad. Do what you makes you happy." Twinkle gave a warm smile.
"See, you're not useless," Twinkle said.
"What?"
"You said you felt useless not having magic," Twinkle said, "but you just helped me. By giving me good advice. And you didn't need magic to do it. Even if you never use magic again, you'll still be perfect the way you are."
Sunset couldn't help but feel one of the happiest smiles form on her face.
"So how's Applejack," Twinkle said as he pulled into Sweet Apple Acres, steering with his left hand.
"She's finally doing chores," Sunset said sadly. "But she's like a robot, and hardly talks to anyone." The car stopped in front of the house.
"Don't worry," Twinkle said in a low quiet tone with pitiless eyes, "we'll catch the punk who did that to her. And when we do, he'll be lucky if Garda finds him first."
"Uh, you're grabbing my hand," Sunset said with a small smile. Twinkle noticed his right hand had unconsciously reached Sunset's.
"Sorry," Twinkle said with a blush, removing his hand.
"Don't worry about it," Sunset said with a wave.
Sunset got out of the car and went to the door, while Twinkle followed close behind.
"Thanks, I had a great time," Sunset said as she reached the door.
"Good enough not to tranquilize me," Twinkled said with a smirk.
"Almost," Sunset said with a faked sneer. "Anyways, I'll see you tomorrow."
"See ya," Twinkle said, watching Sunset as she entered the house.
"So how was yer date with your new beau," Granny asked Sunset with a smirk as she came into the living room
"Twinkle's just a friend," Sunset said.
"Friends don't usually escort a lady to the door to make sure she's safe," the green-woman mocked.
"Good night Granny," Sunset said, turning to walk up the stairs. As she walked up, she felt something she never felt before since she came here. It wasn't the joy she felt when Applejack became her friend. It wasn't the relief she felt when Apple Bloom finally forgave her.
Being with Twinkle made her feel something different. Something she never got from Flash. She felt...warm and fuzzy.
Sunset didn't know what it was, but she knew she didn't want it to go away.