Two princesses landed in front of the white house in Fillydelphia where Private and his friends lived. Cadance took a quick glance around, but could see nothing out of the ordinary. The neighborhood was fairly peaceful. Twilight, in the meantime, approached the door and knocked.
The two alicorns took a step back in surprise when it was King Sombra himself who opened the door. That wasn’t what shocked them, it was what he was wearing. The dark unicorn closed his eyes and groaned slightly when seeing them. Twilight and Cadance meanwhile were trying to comprehend the fact the king had an apron on.
“I’m making…” Sombra opened his eyes a crack, he really didn’t want to finish that sentence. He didn’t need to. Coal came running and poked her head out the door.
“He’s learning how to make apology cookies,” the filly explained to the stunned princesses. She continued with a deadpan expression. “He has a lot to apologize for, but we are starting small.”
“What she said,” the king grunted and gestured to himself with a hoof. “You may proceed now with the mocking laughter.”
“What he means.” Now Dew appeared and proceeded to push Sombra away from the door as well as Coal. “Do please come in.”
Still too surprised for words, the two princesses entered the house. Sombra and Coal disappeared into the kitchen, while Dew led the alicorns to the living room.
“Foxy is with them in the kitchen. Private is at work,” the pegasus assured them and gestured for them to sit down, Cadance and Twilight found themselves soon on a couch while Dew took a chair. “So, surprise inspection? I am still working on the next report.”
“Yes, well, we just wanted to make sure things were actually okay,” Cadance finally found her voice. Unsure, she leaned a bit to the side to stare out at the living room entrance, trying to see to the kitchen. “I take it things are proceeding even better than we expected?”
“Yeah,” Dew smiled a little nervously now. “In fact, we had a bit of an unexpected development.”
“What kind of development?” Twilight wasn’t sure she liked the sound of that.
“Sombra was already retired. We never needed to convince him of anything,” the pegasus very quickly explained, ending with a nervous chuckle.
“Say what!?” Twilight Sparkle shouted. Cadance was again too stunned for words.
“Then why tell you that you needed to convince him? Why that deception?” the Friendship Princess gestured to the general direction of the kitchen.
“Well, strictly speaking, he never really outright lied or said that it was back to business as usual if we failed,” Dew Doe pointed out, granted the implication was sort of there. The pegasus sighed, the princesses waited for her to continue.
“King Sombra came here because he was lonely for Dark Pony company and suffering from sensory deprivation, due to the lack of Dark Ponies around him. The refugee descendants have to concentrate to feel the Dark Pony connection, but Sombra, being a full-blooded one, can always feel it,” Dew started to explain. “It turns out Dark Ponies actually need the presence of others of their kind or they start to eventually feel listless, even depressed and lonely.”
Dew and Cadance looked at Twilight, who gasped after hearing that. But the Friendship Princess gave them a signal she would speak later, right now it was important they hear more about King Sombra right now.
“Okay, I suppose I can buy that. That still doesn’t explain why he felt necessary to pretend he needed to be convinced to retire to be here,” Cadance pointed out.
“And that’s why he’s making apology cookies right now,” Dew chuckled at the odd looks she got from the princesses.
“It’s a thing mom had Foxy and I do when we were little. If we had done something bad, we had to make apology cookies and only the pony or ponies we had to apologize to could eat the cookies. We kind of continued doing that when we got older,” the pegasus told them.
“The nearest I can figure right now is that Sombra did it out of old habits. He knew we wouldn’t just welcome him back with open arms, and so played that trick to invite himself in. I’ve started him on therapy and I figured the easiest step right now was to apologize for that." She then added since she hadn't really answered why King Sombra had played that trick.
Twilight and Cadance glanced at each other unsure before looking at Dew Doe again. The pegasus looked as she usually did, aside from the protruding belly containing her unborn foal. Sombra’s mind control wasn’t exactly subtle, and her eyes weren’t green and glowing.
“Don’t say it out loud, but we are actually reforming him now since the retirement has already happened,” Dew whispered carefully with a weak chuckle.
“Okay, let’s go back to that. When did he retire?” The Love Princess still could barely believe it.
“He admitted to us that after his mother was resurrected and after assisting Twilight and her friends to capturing her, the thought of conquest no longer appealed to him,” Dew Doe told them and then went a little further into what King Sombra had confessed to them.
“Oh my gosh, I had a feeling there was something different about him, but since he disappeared, I could never confirm that,” Twilight gasped and grabbed her muzzle with both front hooves, half-surprised the other half-excited.
“I suppose that is good news, but that doesn’t change the fact he escaped custody. He’ll need to answer for that,” Cadance pointed out, not liking being the downer in this discussion, but felt they had to be realistic, especially if the king was genuine about having renounced his ways.
“That will in fact be a topic on my next report to Princess Celestia and Princess Luna,” Dew Doe assured her.
“Also, is it a good idea he’s around Private, retired or not?” the Love Princess then asked what was bothering her the most.
“That is where things are complicated,” Dew Doe sighed a little. Judging by the look on her face, this was something that had already been brought up. The pegasus took a moment to consider how to properly say this.
“To give a little context here, Private never really gave up on his brother. Even when Barricade practically destroyed his relationship with his entire family. Sure, Private was angry at him, hated how he was treating the rest of us, but he still wanted the brother he remembered back and was waiting and ready once Barricade finally came around,” Dew began and scratched her head, still a little unsure how to go into this next part.
“Private is still infatuated with the Sombra he met in the Dark Pony Empire. He hates the Sombra who possessed him and abducted his family. As odd as it sounds, he seems to be treating it as the same thing as with his brother. He’s met the good version of the pony before, so feels he can wait for that good version to come back. Am I making any sense?” Dew Doe looked at the princesses unsure.
“I think I get what you mean.” Twilight rubbed her muzzle as she considered what the pegasus just said.
“Private has told me he doesn’t expect anything to happen, but he feels if he can at least get his friend back, it would be something,” Dew Doe told them and had to take a moment to shift her weight a little. She was almost tempted to move to Private's napping spot and lie down there.
“Oh right, he had his memories of meeting Sombra as a prince locked up. Now that they are all opened up again and he’s sorted through them, he’s more ready to give Sombra another chance, especially if he is retired,” Cadance realized. She couldn't help but wonder if that had also played a part in Private accepting to be Sombra's custodian before.
“Which is probably why he’s treating it now more like the situation with Barricade,” Twilight nodded and then blinked as something came to her. “The map.”
“What about it?” her sister-in-law and Dew Doe looked at the Friendship Princess.
“The map is highly sensitive to friendship issues. Just look at the timing. When King Sombra is here pretending to want to be convinced to be retired, it suddenly goes on a fritz, the vortex happens and pulls out Prince Sombra and the colts,” the purple alicorn quickly explained. “What if it was about to signal a friendship problem right here, but at the same time the time aftershock happened, disrupting it?”
“Come to think of it, shortly after we decided King Sombra could stay, even after discovering it was a trick, Private’s cutie-mark seemed to glow for a split second, but I kind of thought I was just seeing things and ignored it,” the pegasus frowned as she thought this over. Twilight’s jaw dropped and Cadance was not feeling much different.
“I think I get what happened. The map was about to signal a friendship problem, knowing Private and Sombra, when he was good, considered each other friends. Clearly, King Sombra pretending to stay here to be convinced to retire was causing an issue, but at the same time the aftershock happens, so instead of signaling Private or even possibly Sombra that they had an issue that needed fixing, the map due to the vortex disrupting it, pulls out a version of Sombra that is still good because that’s the Sombra Private remembers.” Twilight jumped off her seat and started pacing around excitedly.
“Um, sure Twilight,” Cadance could really only say, not sure she fully understood that, and neither did Dew Doe.
“Tell me, are things easier now with Sombra?” the Friendship Princess looked at the pegasus.
“Now that you mention it, yes actually. He still has a bit of an attitude problem, but we are working on that,” Dew Doe confirmed. “And admittingly we were a bit stressed over how to convince Sombra. But it wasn’t really Private who sorted it out…It was Coal.”
Twilight promptly sat down on the couch again, summoning a scroll and a quill. Cadance smiled knowingly at her sister-in-law.
“Tell me exactly what happened,” the smaller princess then requested. Dew Doe eyed Cadence, who just gave her a sympathetic look. The pegasus shrugged and went into more detail on what happened that day.
“So you said you thought you noticed a faint glow on Private’s cutie-mark, but not on Coal?” Twilight asked as she ran over the scroll with her eyes to make sure she got everything.
“If it did we didn’t notice,” Dew Doe responded.
“What are you thinking, Twilight?” Cadance wondered. Her sister-in-law had dropped into thought.
“I think for your next report, Dew Doe, I should be there as well. But first, we need to go to my castle and check on the map and see if it needs to be fixed. That vortex couldn’t have been good for it,” The Friendship Princess responded and looked at a nearby clock. “When is Private coming home from work?”
“Oh, shouldn’t be too long now, maybe half an hour,” Dew glanced at the clock herself and saw it was well into the afternoon.
“Cookies are ready!” Coal announced as she bounced into the living room. After her came Foxy and somewhat reluctantly, King Sombra. The king was holding a tray of cookies, on them was written in red frosting ‘I’m sorry.’
“What’s going on?” Foxy asked when seeing the thoughtful expression on Twilight Sparkle.
Starlight Glimmer turned her head when hearing the doors opening to the map room. She arched her brow when seeing who was walking in behind Twilight and Cadance. Dew Doe, Private Iceland, Foxy Stripes, Coal and finally Sombra. The unicorn wasn't sure what to make of this.
“Um, I got your message to meet you here. What’s going on?” Starlight walked over to the group, glancing warily at King Sombra, who just watched the entire group with a neutral expression.
“Starlight, remember the spell we used to fix the map last time?” Twilight asked her student counselor. Starlight nodded. The princess then proceeded to explain to her what was going on.
“Uh, guess it is a good point that this vortex may have caused some damage,” she could really only say. The unicorn mare then walked with the princess over to the map.
The other ponies could only watch as the two lit up their horns and fired two different colored magic energies at the map table. For a brief moment, the map was revealed, then seemed to glitch for a second before stabilizing. Starlight and Twilight didn’t quit, but continued to pour their energies into it.
Suddenly sparks of energy, similar to the vortex energy shot out of the map and dissipated in the air. Private and Coal blinked when hearing a sound and when they looked at their flanks, their cutie-marks were pulsating and glowing. The others also noticed. Dew and Foxy’s jaws dropped. Sombra just arched his brow. He had no idea what was going on.
On the map, miniature versions of their marks appeared, floating over Fillydelphia. Private stared at it, stunned. Coal tilted her head in confusion. Their actual cutie-marks had stopped glowing. Then the miniature versions of the marks vanished and for a brief moment, theirs started pulsating a glow again.
“Whaaat just happened?” Foxy asked. Most of the ponies shared her confused expression, albeit Sombra looked more skeptical.
“We basically reset the map, so it resummoned Private and Coal for the friendship problem, but since it's already sorted, it signaled that the mission was complete,” Twilight turned around to explain to them with a smile.
“Wait, we were being summoned to solve a friendship problem?” Coal blinked. She recalled hearing something about the map in Twilight’s castle doing that from Dinky.
“You already solved it, Coal. You and Private,” the Friendship Princess told her with a chuckle.
“How?” the filly was even more confused now.
“Of course, Coal was the one who saw that Sombra never specified who he meant that needed to convince him. Private figured out that he was lonely for Dark Pony company,” Dew Doe realized and looked at her niece. “Coal, knowing her uncle so well, knew he was trying to tell Sombra to stay, that it was alright and we wanted to help.”
“What are you all talking about?” Sombra asked. Nothing that had been said made any sense to him.
“The Tree of Harmony fuels this map. It knows Private still sees you as a friend and that you see him as a friend, despite what has happened between you two in the past. By not being honest with him about why you had arrived at his house so suddenly, you were causing an issue. The tree knew what ponies were needed to resolve that issue,” Twilight turned to Sombra and without any reservation gave him a friendly smile. “It knows you are no longer our enemy.”
Good thing I canceled my plans to destroy it a while ago then, Sombra thought, his only outward response the slight raising of one eyebrow.
"Good thing then that Coal convinced mom and me to bring her back," Foxy remarked, then thought it over. "Say how does this work exactly?"
"Generally the map summons those needed for the mission to the castle, then they go to whatever place on the map their cutie mark hovers over," Starlight explained.
"These cutie-marks of yours keep getting more confusing," Sombra grumbled. The other ponies just giggled at his remark. The Dark Pony then glanced back, thinking he heard many hoofsteps.
The doors to the map room suddenly swung open as Rainbow Dash, Applejack, Rarity, Pinkie Pie and Fluttershy came barreling in. Most of them looked ready to fight, safe Fluttershy, who looked just more worried.
“It’s okay girls,” Twilight quickly called out to her friends. Clearly they had heard from someone that King Sombra had just arrived in Ponyville. The mares had stopped short when seeing there was no battle going on and everything did look fairly peaceful.
"What the hay is going on?" Applejack asked, glaring suspiciously at the king.
"Yeah, what is he doing here?" Rainbow Dash snorted and pointed a hoof at the Dark Pony.
Sombra sighed and gave Coal a glare, who just grinned right back at him. Then using his magic he summoned the tray with what was left of the cookies and presented them to the confused, newly arrived ponies. They all looked at the tray and then skeptically at the Dark Pony.
“I made…” the king eyed the filly again who just nodded sharply. “Apology cookies.”
End chapter 11