Lunchtime again.
Dash, Pinkie, and Rarity were the closest thing she had to friends in this world or the other, which was kind of sad when you considered she’d only spent a few days with them, so she decided to sit down over there.
They accepted her back into the fold easily enough. Twilight came into the cafeteria a moment later, looking completely bewildered. She’d mostly taken classes that were just her, Celestia and Sunset at this point so, Sunset had little doubt that she was the only person the other girl knew.
Twilight almost immediately spotted Sunset but simply froze in place instead of coming over. Sunset knew Twilight was too socially awkward to just walk up to a table, but she needed this idiot to be on her side. She forced herself to be nice and pointed at the chair next to her.
“Sit.” Sunset found Twilight responded well to orders.
“Right!” Twilight went back into military mode and sat down quickly.
“Ah hey.” Dash leaned forward to peer past Sunset and look at Twilight. “Who’s this?”
Knowing Twilight was going to have trouble introducing herself, Sunset put her arm around the other girl, giving as friendly a smile as she could.
“This is my friend Twilight Sparkle,” said Sunset. “She’s a transfer student.”
“We’re really friends?” Twilight sparkled at the idea.
Hardly. But Sunset needed her.
“Of course!” Sunset gave her a fake, but practiced, smile.
“Really?” Dash stood up. “I love transfer students! I’m Rainbow Dash, that’s Rarity and-“
“Suspicion!” Pinkie hit the table with the palms of her hands as Dash pointed to her. “The last person you said was a transfer student was you! How do I know she’s not you in disguise?”
“Because then who am I?” Sunset asked.
Pinkie Pie’s mind was blown by that. She counted each of her fingers and nodded.
“Oh, hey! That checks out.” Pinkie waved to Twilight. “Hi, Twilight!”
“I’m surprised I haven’t seen you yet,” said Rarity. “What classes are you taking?”
“Well I’m taking a few special classes,” said Twilight. “With Sunset! Celestia let me go to the front of the line if I agreed to help her with something. It’ll be a while before I take normal ones.”
“Ah, with getting her out you mean,” said Rarity. “Yes, I have some vague memories about something like that happening before. Celestia needs to bring in an outsider to get rid of problems she can’t solve herself. I’m certain you’ll be just like the rest of us before long, though.”
“I hope so!” Twilight nodded. “I love learning so much! To get to go to a place where I can just learn new things forever, surrounded by people who are motivated and kind - this really is a paradise!”
“But you don’t learn anything,” Sunset reminded her. “Because you keep forgetting it all?”
“No, it just means I’ll never run out of things to learn, right?” Twilight looked around the table nervously to gauge the others’ reaction.
“Right on!” Dash gave her the thumbs up. “See you got the right idea, Twilight. You should come hang out with me after school.”
“Really?!”
“Sure, I love new kids,” said Dash. “What are you up to later?”
“Twilight still hasn’t been to her new house yet,” said Sunset. “We could go with her.”
“That’d be great,” said Twilight. “To be honest I’m a little nervous.”
Twilight seemed more comfortable talking to the others now. Sunset started eating her food, quietly thinking for a moment. Plotting.
Sunset needed to think of some way to get Twilight more interested in hearing about Equestria, but it was difficult broaching the subject given the culture that surrounded her. She decided to just listen carefully, waiting for moments to drop hints about Equestria that would raise her curiosity. That was the best bet.
“Oh, hey! That’s one of those things.” Twilight noticed Rarity on her phone. She snapped her finger, trying to remember what it was called. “A cell phone, right? Can I see it? I’ve never seen one of those outside of a movie.”
“Why of course. Just don’t drop it.” Rarity handed it over. “These cost a whole month’s allowance.”
Twilight started poking around on it in a manner similar to how Sunset had when she first got her hands on one. Only Twilight spent much less time poking around and instead tried something Sunset hadn’t, namely talking to it.
“Look, just activate the internet for me,” she said to it. When it didn’t respond, she looked surprised and turned it sideways. “It says it’s locked? Like some kind of video game? Explain yourself, phone.”
Twilight jabbed it two more times with her finger.
“Cell phone!” Twilight loudly announced to it. “Rarity gave you to me! You must obey! Hey, what’s this thing’s name?”
The others found this hilarious and laughed. You could kind of talk to cell phones, but not exactly like that.
“Here.” Rarity held out her hand for Twilight to give it back. When she did, Rarity unlocked it with her fingerprint and handed it back.
“Oh.” Twilight rubbed the back of her head. “It’s just a basic biometric. Guess that’s to be expected with something so old fashioned.”
“Old fashioned?” Sunset knew it was going to be considered an uncouth question. “What would even come after this? Brain implants? Robots?”
“Ms. Shimmer,” Rarity spoke over her. “Must we remind you that it is against the rules to speak of the human world here?”
“Yeah! This is way better than modern technology anyway.” Twilight shook her head. “Back in the 21st century, everybody lived stress-free lives because you could use your cell phone to talk to your friends whenever you wanted, and you could pick what you saw.”
“We said no talking about it,” Dash reminded her.
Sunset realized she probably wouldn’t be able to get much out of Twilight while the others were around. She’d need to corner Twilight later.
“Right, sorry.” Twilight covered her mouth.
“Well Equestria’s technically not a human world,” Sunset said, taking the chance to bring it up. “I used to be a unicorn.”
Interestingly, from what Sunset read, unicorns didn’t just not exist in the human world, but were the go-to example for mythical things. That was funny because humans were the mythical creatures to Sunset.
None of the others had heard that fact up until now. Sunset had been carefully saving it. If talking about Equestria was a faux pas here, then the knowledge that unicorns were real was enough to keep them from objecting for a moment.
“So you’re a horse?!” Pinkie was the first to stand up and comment. “I knew it!”
“Okay, first of all, be careful with that. If you call an earth pony a horse you can get in a lot of trouble,” said Sunset. “But also, technically ponies are a type of horse."
“Unicorns are cool,” said Dash, “but wouldn’t having hooves be really inconvenient most of the time?
“I kind of preferred being a pony. Your horn is basically a staff so you can use magic by yourself.” Sunset pointed to where her horn should have been. “It’s way easier levitating things with your mind than picking them up with hands.”
“Hold on, you were able to use magic without a staff?” Twilight asked. “I knew there were other dimensions, but I thought only fae could do that.”
Honestly, Sunset didn’t know how Celestia used magic now that she thought about it.
“There are all sorts of magical creatures there, actually. Most of the ones I knew were animals like me.” Sunset bit into her sandwich. “But we really shouldn’t be talking about that, right?”
Rarity gave her a nod and went back to eating too. But thankfully, that did make Twilight look curious.
Maybe she was a little closer now.
Later that day, the three of them came up to a perfectly normal house.
“Whoa! I get to stay in this place?” Twilight marveled at it. “How many other students are in the building?”
“It’s just you.” Dash laughed. “Everyone gets their own house. Didn’t Celestia tell you that?”
“She did, but...“ Twilight ran inside, spinning around in awe of the first room. “This is just so huge! And it has a couch in it?!”
Twilight ran up to the couch and felt the cushion carefully. Dash was much more adventurous and jumped on it. Twilight became emboldened by this and jumped up and down on it a few times too, the two of them laughing together.
“Just this one room!” Twilight looked around the living room. “It’s enormous! And there are more rooms? Am I allowed inside all of them? I won’t get in trouble?”
“Totally!” Dash laughed.
Twilight’s initial attempt to go into another room resulted in an empty closet, though she was impressed she could step inside it.
“Oh wow!” Twilight opened the door to her bathroom next. “A private bathroom?! This is incredible! It’s like I’m a millionaire! Wait!”
Twilight ran into the room and got down on her knees, running her hand along the rim of the bathtub.
“Is this a bathtub?! I’ve only ever seen one of these in movies!” Twilight looked up at the showerhead. “Wait, it’s a shower and a bath? That’s so weird. I had no idea they did that.”
Dash laughed.
“You’ve seen a lot of stuff in movies, huh? Transfer students get excited about the craziest stuff!” Dash slapped her on the back. “That’s what makes you guys so much fun. But it gets better. Cause guess what, new kid?”
Twilight looked up at her with wonder, as if nothing could top having her own private bathtub.
“Every house here has two bathrooms in it!” Dash opened her arms wide.
Twilight gasped.
“What?! That’s too much!” Twilight jumped to her feet. “I don’t deserve that much! I’d feel terrible! Can Celestia take it away? What do you even do with two bathrooms? You can’t use two at a time, can you?”
“It’s for like when other people are over,” Dash explained. “And you don’t gotta worry about it. We feed Celestia, she takes care of us! That’s the deal.”
Twilight looked over the bathtub in earnest, hitting the faucet, not understanding how to operate it until Dash came over and turned the water on for her.
“It’s so much water!” Twilight ran her fingers through it, splashing it around as it got deeper. “And it’s so clean!”
Dash splashed Twilight with water, who looked shocked at first, but soon laughed and splashed Dash back.
The two of them kept splashing each other with the child-like wonder Celestia promised Sunset, laughing like this was the first splash fight either of them had ever had. In Twilight’s case that may very well have been the truth.
Sunset stood back and watched this with horror more than amusement. A bathroom and clean water were all it took for Twilight to declare this place paradise? Maybe whatever was on the other side of this pocket dimension wasn’t worth going to. Maybe it wasn’t even worth saving.
Maybe even weirder was the fact that Dash loved splashing around in the water just as much, even after being in this world for a decade. The students here always did seem to have that child-like amazement at everything they did, just like Celestia promised.
“Uh oh!” Dash, having gotten distracted, accidentally allowed the bathtub to fill up until it started spilling over. “I’ll go get your parents to clean this up.”
Dash left the room quickly after turning the water off. Twilight remained fascinated by the water.
“Aren’t you impressed by this?” Twilight asked Sunset. “I can’t possibly imagine why you’d want to go back to your world when this place is so amazing.”
“I had a bathtub where I was from,” said Sunset. “The air was clean, and I could see the sun. Maybe I was a little ungrateful for... basic necessities or something.”
Was that the lesson Sunset was supposed to learn from all of this?
“Wait you did?” Twilight looked genuinely surprised by that. “But it’s only a matter of time before someone ruins it all, right? It’s inevitable. The people in charge will always take everything away from you and the masses will always cheer for it.”
“I don’t think that’s inevitable,” said Sunset. “I hate Princess Celestia, my version of her, but even I have to admit she wouldn’t do something like that. Everything is fine. Relatively speaking.”
“What?” Twilight was clearly confused. “Celestia is in your world too?”
“Basically, a unicorn version of Celestia is the ruler of my world,” said Sunset casually, as if she hadn’t meant it to be confusing. “She’s ruled for over a thousand years and hasn’t destroyed the environment yet.”
“You’re lucky then. Sometimes I wish Celestia or Luna would just conquer all of us,” Twilight admitted. “But, I guess I already have that here, so-“
Dash came back with her ‘parents’, so Sunset decided to drop the subject.
Twilight was clearly interested now. This was too easy.
They went through all the rooms after that, Twilight marveling at each of them in turn. Sunset did passively gather a few things from the tour. Twilight commented that her bed (which was fairly large) was bigger than where she used to live, and was surprised that the lights needed a switch instead of ‘just knowing’ when to turn on and off.
Eventually, they got through all of it and went back down to the living room, sitting down on the couch in front of her TV.
“I still can’t believe I actually get a house.” Twilight looked up at the ceiling in awe.
“Do you really not have houses where you come from?” Sunset sat on the couch next to her.
“There are houses, it’s just no one can afford to live in them,” Twilight explained, seemingly in a better mood than before. “My capsule was maybe a little bit bigger than a bed, just high enough for you to go on your knees and almost wide enough to hold your arms out to the side. But it had a TV on the one side and a bunch of drawers along the wall, so I had it good.”
“What do you mean no one can afford houses?” Sunset asked.
“We don’t talk about the human world!” Dash jumped over the back of the couch landing between the two of them. “You don’t seriously want to think about that kind of crap, do you Twilight?”
Twilight shook her head.
“Great! Nothing we can do about it anyway.” Dash grabbed the remote and turned the TV on. “Guess how many channels we get out here!”
“Channels?” Twilight asked. “I don’t understand.”
“It’s like...” Dash scratched her head with the remote. “Well, point is you get 172 of them!”
Dash flicked through a few channels.
“Oh wow! You can change it?” Twilight leaned forward, excited at the possibilities. Maybe they only got one on the outside?
A few minutes later and the two of them were happily singing along to some theme song. Sunset wasn’t paying much attention, though, only pretending to. She was plotting
Twilight was kind of an idiot in some ways. It wouldn’t be too hard to take advantage of her…
Just a few fake smiles, assure her they were friends a few times…
Pretend to love her…
Sunset suddenly felt sick.
“I’ll be right back.” Sunset got up and moved rapidly to the bathroom, Dash making some inappropriate joke as she left.
Sunset stopped by the sink, looking at herself in the mirror. It’d taken her all day to realize it, but she’d been planning on emotionally manipulating Twilight, pretending to like her, to use Twilight like a tool. That was the exact same thing Celestia had done to her! What she was angry about in the first place!
She laughed slightly. Princess Celestia did raise her so why not? Why would she be any different?
Sunset splashed some water in her face.
Whatever!
Twilight was already kind of helping her. Sunset just needed to stay the course, not get distracted, not get tempted, and she’d be fine.