The bus rattled through the hills, surrounded by pine trees that reached into the sky, blotting out the sun.
Sunset was plastered to a window of that bus—she hadn’t seen anything this beautiful since leaving Equestria.
There was an old train station they passed, but the rails were still maintained, right next to a camp of some sort with a large lodge, which was all boarded up and likely abandoned.
The bus didn’t stop until several miles later, in the middle of the trees, at a solitary cabin that stood off the road by a hundred feet or so cloaked by a wall of bushes and trees.
“Alright, everybody off! I’ve got saws and branch snippers, we need to clear a spot to park the bus next to the cabin first,” Starlight said, smiling with the confidence of someone who knew how to lie.
The bus was loaded down with non-perishable food, water, and other supplies like pop-up multi person tents, but Starlight was clearly doing the math in her head, calculating their money, their supplies, and how long they could last without more income.
Sunset by contrast was tired of the long-term planning, so for once she was in the moment, looking up at the tall trees, and nearly tripping on some of their roots.
“Hey, friend,” one of the followers said as she stepped up next to Sunset, holding a hand saw out to her. “Want to tackle some together? I’m… I’m new,” she said with that awkward smile that seemed commonplace in the young and inexperienced who wanted to make friends.
“Sure!” said Sunset, eyeing the tool carefully. It looked identical to a mouth saw, except for the smaller grip at a 90-degree angle to what she was used to. “You can call me Alice.”
She had thought that last sentence through with care on the bus. If Starlight knew what she was, her true name was going to come out sooner or later, and she wanted to forestall arguments about her deceiving anyone. But at the same time, she still wasn’t comfortable using the name “Sunset” with other...no, with humans, period. It was scary sometimes how easily she slipped into the fantasy of being a permanent human, with Equestria as a poorly-remembered dream of ridiculous fantasy.
“My name is Claire,” she said happily. “Nice to meet you, Alice.”
They set about cutting wood until the light got too dim to see by, at which point the cut wood was trimmed and put into the cabin’s stove to burn. While a pair of the more long-term followers cooked the meal, everyone else started making a fire pit. Sunset took the opportunity to meet several of the other followers. For the most part they would respond with stories about how they realized the evils of society and how they were found by Starlight or Marcus. Sunset would simply nod in response to these stories, but say nothing about herself, deliberately cultivating an air of mystery.
This worked largely until dinner was served and the group gathered around the fire pit, at which point Starlight seemed to shoot Sunset’s mystique down.
“We’re going to go around the circle and tell each other about ourselves,” Starlight said with a friendly smile, nodding to her followers.
Sunset narrowed her eyes slightly before turning to Claire, who was sitting to her right. “You should tell your story first,” she said. Looking around to the others she added, “if she hasn’t told it to the rest of you already. It’s really good.” This stunt pretty much guaranteed that she would be last to speak, and in this way judge just how candid she needed to be when it was her turn.
Claire laughed nervously but sat up a bit straighter.
“Well… I don’t know if it’s that good, but… So my name is Claire Rockefeller, yeah uh… my family has a lot of money, and that’s sort of all they think about. They just care how much money I’ll make in the future, how much money they have in the bank… They don’t live, they just… feel empty inside. So when I turned eighteen, I took my savings and I left. I’ve been traveling the country, at first by car but I realized to really know this country, I had to leave that car. I had to be in the world. So I sold my car and started hitchhiking. Made it across the entire country, and I’ve met so many amazing people, but… This group, I finally felt like it was a good place to stay. I feel like this is home.”
With that, she looked to the next person in the circle, and the storytelling continued.
The common theme between them all was that they’d been lost, wandering, and found Starlight. She didn’t ask them to stay or demand it, but she seemed to draw in people like gravity.
And Sunset Shimmer for one had no objections to this arrangement. It was clear that nobody else was looking out for these people’s true interests, and Sunset had seen no trace of selfishness in how Starlight chose to use the power that she had been given.
But now it was Sunset’s turn to speak. “Come on, Alice,” a young man named Sam said from the other side of the circle. “Tell us how you got here. Tell us how you got so tough!”
“‘How I got so tough?’” Sunset asked, stroking her chin. “Let’s see...the beginning of my story doesn’t fit into any of yours: rich, poor, lucky, unlucky. I found myself in a situation, and I did the best with it that I could. I...may have made a mistake or two—although she made the biggest mistake when…” Sunset caught herself. “Let’s just say that it’s a long story, and really won’t make much sense to most of you.” She gave Starlight Glimmer a significant look at this point—she wasn’t completely sure how much the psychic knew, but it was more than enough for her to understand why she wasn’t saying any more about her youth.
“Skipping ahead a bit, I was arrested.”
“For what?” asked Claire.
“For disrespecting The Man?” asked Sam.
“For suddenly being in the wrong place at the wrong time, with the wrong dress code.” A few of the young women laughed in understanding at that last bit.
“I was put in a rather rotten foster care home, where...certain wrong things were going on.” She stopped to dismiss the memories. “I don’t want to go into specifics. I escaped from there as soon as possible.”
“Did you do something to stop those...things?” Starlight interrupted. From the look on her face, she had come up with some rather lurid guesses about what Sunset wasn’t saying.
Sunset suspected that Starlight wasn’t even close in guessing that had actually happened. “Directly...no. The woman running the place had things set up so she’d never be caught doing those...things. But I’ve come to learn that people like her value money more than freedom or reputation. And she was cheating the federal government out of a couple million dollars of tax revenue over the past fourteen years...So I used the big oppressive organization to take out the little oppressive organization. She lost every dollar that she had, was thrown into the street where she had to beg for food and a place to sleep, and when all the charitable organizations of her own religion turned her down, she was taken in by a group of Irish Catholic nuns…”
There was a look on Sunset’s face at that moment, a look of satisfied retribution, that was more than a little terrifying. If any of Starlight’s disciples thought that they might take advantage of the new girl, that thought withered on the vine after seeing that look.
Eventually, Sunset dropped back down from her memory-induced high, to see the others looking at her in amazement and a bit of horror. “Oh, um...and I made sure the big oppressive organization never found me again. The end.”
“Quite the ending,” Starlight nodded sagely. “Wrapped up neat like a bow, and then you came with us because… Well, I know things,” she said coyly. “Knowledge is power, is it not?”
Sunset blinked in a mock-innocent manner. “Me? Wanting something from you?” She shrugged. “That can wait. Right now, I’m just interested in helping. ‘Quid pro quo,’ as the lawyers might say.”
“And helping each other is great!” Claire said, putting a hand on Sunset’s shoulder. “And Alice can help us all, just as much as we help her.”
Starlight looked to Claire as she spoke, and something glinted purple in her eyes, before she smiled. It was the smile of someone who had just spotted something they were looking for.
“Claire… How would you like to take your initiation rite?” she asked with an even, unemotional tone.
Claire blinked back at her with wide, innocent eyes, smiling.
“Oh… Now? I’d love to! If it’s alright?”
The circle all joined in, encouraging her, rejoicing. Many of them recounted their own initiation, but Sunset knew enough from her studies to see this as what it was. Love bombing, a way to turn the ritual into an exciting joyful experience no matter what it actually was, and a way to emotionally bond someone to a group.
It could be innocent, it could be nefarious.
But soon Starlight was leading Claire to the cabin, but she paused at the door and looked to Sunset.
“Would you like to watch?” she asked Sunset, grinning.
“As an outside observer?”
“As an academic,” Starlight countered.
Sunset smiled. “Sure. I could even tell you what you’re doing wrong.”
Starlight laughed and held the door open for her, joining Claire in the cabin.
After digging around in a backpack, Starlight set out a dark green bottle on the table, followed by a special metal spoon with slots in it and a hook on the end, a pale green glass cup, a plastic bag of sugar cubes, and then two other plastic bags.
“And you’re certain you want to follow me?” she asked Claire.
Claire nodded happily. “I want to be together with all of you. Do good, and… save the world.”
She clearly felt the words were a little silly, but she meant them.
Starlight nodded, and turned to Sunset.
“Have you poured absinthe before?”
“I’ve only read about it in books. I’ve always wanted to. Lord Byron’s a hero of mine.”
Starlight chuckled a little. “He wasn’t bad, I think I’m better,” she said with a wink. “The key, firstly, is that it has to be the right Absinthe. Wormwood based, and if you add some things it works better.”
She held up the bottle, showing some remains of mushrooms and strips of bark at the bottom of it, half disintegrated.
She put the spoon on the lip of the glass, and set a sugar cube onto it.
“You have to pour slowly, I’ve made a song to measure the time it should take to fill the glass,” she told Sunset, Claire listening along intently.
“Life is a joy in Our Town,” Starlight sang softly, in a somewhat sad tone until she looked up to Claire. “We're all equal here. No one is superior, And no one shakes in fear.”
The last drop of absinthe fell through the spoon, now clean of sugar, and the shot glass was full.
Starlight then took the other two bags and opened them, gesturing for Claire to lean forward.
“This is where it gets a bit more intense,” Starlight said with a kind smile, as she stuck a finger into one of the bags and drew it out, covered in black ash. “Claire, do you give me permission to lay claim to your soul?” she asked gently.
Sunset might have been worried by this question, if she believed in the existence of a soul. Oh, she did believe in the immortality of the spirit, but that was so different from the Christian conception of a soul that...look, just ask an expert on Egyptian mythology to explain the difference between the Ba and the Ka without getting your eyes to glaze over.
Claire took a shaking breath. “Yes. If anyone, I give it to you.”
Starlight marked a six pointed star on Claire’s forehead with the ash, then drew a line down over her left eye onto her cheek.
“Now, Claire, I need you to give up your Self, your Strength, so I can use them,” Starlight said as she dropped a stamp of acid into the glass, and held it out.
A spark of impossible light shimmered across the surface of the liquid, as Claire drank it, eyes closed.
Sunset stopped breathing.
When Claire opened her eyes again, they were shimmering with the same color as the liquid. She sat perfectly still, perfectly obedient.
Starlight smiled, and looked to Sunset.
“What do you think?” she asked, putting the ritual tools away.
Sunset pointed at the glass. “That was octarine. Pure, unfiltered octarine!”
Starlight smirked. “That’s what you’re going to focus on?”
“But...octarine!”
“Humans aren’t supposed to be able to see octarine,” Starlight said, her smirk growing into a cheshire grin.
“I...but...Then how come you’re able to see it?”
“I can’t, normally,” Starlight said, before bringing her hand up in front of her eyes and snapping her fingers.
Her pupils shimmered purple, and then glowed.
“But… I don’t stay normal, normally.”
“Good,” said Sunset. “I like that color better than the other one.”
Starlight blushed a bit and looked away, before clearing her throat and looking to Claire.
“Thank you for joining, Claire. You can go out and celebrate.”
Claire stood and nodded. “Thanks, Starlight!” and she jogged out of the door to the cheers of the group, another wellspring of magic linked to Starlight Glimmer.
“This is all so different,” Sunset said, mostly to herself. “The flows are all through the minds, but turned orthotically...I can almost see it.” She blinked out of her trance and looked over at Starlight. “Your eyes are too small.”
“What?”
“Not you personally. It’s a human problem in general.”
“And what were you then, if not human?” Starlight asked curiously.
“I thought you knew. I thought you saw right into my heart and saw me as I really am.”
Starlight bit her lip, and nodded slowly.
“I could tell you what I saw if you want a very long description, but it’s not physical. I didn’t get an anatomy diagram, I just got… I saw your Fates and Destinies, your Names and your Heart. None of that tells me what shape you had before you came here.”
Sunset grinned. Finally, here was something she had over the person who intimidated her so much. “Well, it was close enough to human for your purposes. The two realms are linked on a rather deep level. Similar folk stories. Same shape for teacups. That sort of thing. We just sling around magic like you do electricity.”
“But you had bigger eyes,” Starlight pointed out. “You said humans were too small, so yours were bigger?”
“Oh, yeah. Great big, ‘see into your soul’ kinda eyes. The eyes are a direct extension of the brain, you know. Has to support three entirely separate systems: one for thought and motion, one for the direct manipulation of reality, and...we never did figure out what the third one did. Maybe it’s for faster-than-light travel or something.”
Starlight grinned. “I bet you’re embarrassed by how adorable you were before, so you don’t want to say. Faster than light bunnies.”
“Bunnies? Bunnies! That’s despicable. I’ll have you know that they based Duck Dodgers on me!” And then she laughed out loud. “Just kidding.”
Starlight squinted at her. “Mmmmhm. Let’s go tend to the Cult,” she joked. “Then it’s bedtime, missy. We’ve got a compound to build.”
“Will, do, Princess,” she said with a formal bow.
Starlight hesitated much longer, cheeks red, and almost asked a question, before she ducked out of the cabin and tended to her flock, leaving Sunset alone with the table all laid out with her ritual supplies.
Sunset frowned for a moment at her inability to comprehend human magic, then followed her out into the night.
When she finally slipped into her sleeping bag several hours later, it was with a sense of satisfaction with how this group she had fallen into had turned out.
‘At least there aren’t any actual children in here. Everyone is clearly making a free decision to submit to Starlight. Add some kids and this turns into a cult.’