It was the human Trixie who broke the silence.
“How dare you impersonate the Great and Powerful Trixie!” She stomped up to the flummoxed Equestrian Trixie and Starlight. “The nerve! Trixie will eviscerate you! Metaphorically.” She squinted, leaning around Trixie and inspecting her closely. “Even if this is an excellent forgery. Who are you? Talk quickly and Trixie might let you live.”
Broken out of her trance by the death threats (which were useful that way), Starlight leapt unsteadily in between the two magicians. “Oooookay! Everypo— everyone calm down! Let’s just, um, get somewhere else before we—”
“Everypony?” Human Trixie said, comprehension slowly dawning on her face. “You’re from Equestria!”
“Um, duh,” said Normal Trixie. “We just got through the portal. See?” She stuck her hand through the immaterial side, then pulled it out and shook off the mana residue. Human Trixie gaped.
“Trixie!” Starlight shoved her away from the portal, before turning to Human Trixie. Trixie H. “How do you know about Equestria?”
“Doesn’t everyone?” Trixie H. asked in confusion. “I mean, we have seven students who spend half their time with wings and tails, and Princess Twilight visits sometimes, and then there were the sirens, and the horse architecture everywhere around the school, and then—”
“Okay, point taken.” That made Starlight feel slightly less guilty about not keeping the Equestrian side of the portal as secure as she could’ve. Even if it raised so many new concerns.
Pony Trixie was returning Trixie H.’s examination. “Humans are so weird.”
Trixie H. jumped back. “We look the same! Stare at yourself!”
“Oh, Trixie will, don’t worry,” Trixie said, attempting to wink and looking more as though she were trying to get a fly off of her nose. “But it’s more convenient to do it with you. So hold still.”
Trixie H. reluctantly obliged. “So, why are you here? And why are you here at night? Also, who are you?” The latter question was directed at Starlight.
Starlight waved awkwardly. “I’m Starlight Glimmer.”
“Princess Starlight Glimmer,” Trixie interjected proudly. “She’s Trixie’s marefriend. Or whatever you call them here.”
She had to nip that in the bud. “Sorry, but I’m actually not, though I am a close—”
“Yes you are.”
“I’m not.”
“You aaaaare.”
Trixie H. was watching in baffled amazement. “Are you saying I end up dating a princess? But I’ve never even met you here!”
“That is not what I’m—”
“Yup!” Said Trixie. “Though I guess she’s probably not a princess here. That seems like an Equestria thing.”
Trixie H. looked at Starlight with the expression with which Twilight looked at particularly scintillating math problems. “Trixie appreciates this valuable information! You will not be eviscerated.”
“Trixie’s favorite non-activity!” The two high-fived (pony Trixie with a closed fist).
“But you still haven’t said why you’re here,” Trixie H. continued. “Are you hiding—”
“What the fuck is going on here?!”
The three looked towards the sound of the voice. Out of the darkness emerged a tall girl with orange skin, red and yellow hair, and a black leather jacket. She didn’t look particularly pleased.
Oh thank Celestia, another sane being, Starlight thought in relief. “Sunset! It’s good to see you!”
Sunset Shimmer stopped, her arms crossed irately. “Yeah, yeah, you too. What on earth are you doing here? And more to the point, what is she doing here?” She pointed at the Trixies.
Trixie H. gave an offended gasp. “And Trixie thought that after all we’d been through together, she would finally be free of—”
“Okay, yeah, forget I asked,” said Sunset, and she approached Starlight with her hand outstretched. In the time it took Starlight to remember exactly what Sunset’s magical ability was and to subsequently experience a flash of panic so vivid that the world seemed to light up as if strung in Hearth’s Warming Eve lights, Sunset had already paused and retracted her hand with a guilty expression. “Um… Right.”
Starlight managed to find her tongue from wherever in her stomach it’d retreated to. “Maybe not a good idea, yeah. Thank you?”
“Of course.” Sunset shot Starlight an apologetic glance, stomped over to Trixie H, and grabbed her arm. Her eyes lit up white, temporarily illuminating a swath of the parking lot and causing Starlight to turn away, blinking rapidly. “Nope, not you.” She leaned over to Trixie and did the same thing.
A second later, her eyes dimmed, and she stared at Trixie with her mouth open. “I— you— what? That is so stupid!”
“That’s what I said!” protested Starlight. “Also, that power is so unfair. Do you know how much work I put in to even be able to control minds? Reading them is so difficult it’s barely worth the magic expenditure!”
“Yeah, well, I can only read them, and sometimes inanimate objects—”
“You can read the thoughts of inanimate objects?!”
“—And it’s pretty much limited to… You can control minds?” Sunset looked at Starlight with a mixture of worry and respect. “…Why do you know how to do that?”
“I told you about my past, remember? When we were talking to Juniper?”
“Yeah, like a sentence. You never mentioned that.”
“I sort of tell everyone I know, I guess; it feels like the polite thing to do. I just assumed you knew too.”
“Wait wait wait, everyone in Ponyville knows that the Princess—congratulations, by the way—used to—”
Trixie stuck two fingers in her mouth and let out a shrill whistle that echoed off the brick walls of the school. “I’m glad you two are having fun, but we have sales to make! Chop chop! Starlight, come on, help me get the boxes.”
“Aren’t you, like, not used to having fingers?” Trixie H. asked. “How did you do that?”
Trixie shrugged. “Natural talent. Also, what does ‘fuck’ mean?”
Sunset turned to glare at Starlight, who laughed nervously. “Um, Trixie, given everything that’s happened here, I’m not sure it’s a great idea to go through with this. Maybe we should just go back to Ponyville and spend the evening in together?”
Trixie opened her mouth to respond, but Sunset beat her to it. “Oh, it’s too late for that,” she growled.
“Er… why?” Starlight asked apprehensively.
“Because she already got the word out, and if people show up and you’re not here and the portal is open, this is going to get even worse,” Sunset said, pre-empting Trixie again.
“Stop that!” Trixie protested.
“Maybe don’t be an idiot and I will!” Sunset stepped closer to Trixie, her faintly glowing eyes making her look like an incensed cat who’d somehow joined a biker gang.
“Wait, what do you mean she already got the word out?” Starlight asked, feeling rather left behind.
“I mean,” said Sunset, “That she somehow managed to contact someone through Twilight’s journal and tell them about this stupid plan of hers. Also, everyone step away from the portal, or one of you is going to fall through.”
Starlight groaned and turned to Trixie (who was listening intently to Trixie H.’s explanation of human curse words). “When we get back, we’re going to have a conversation about breaking and entering.”
Trixie shrugged. “You’re the one who told me that the castle had terrible security.”
“It wasn’t meant as advice—no, nevermind. Sunset, who in their right mind would get that message from Trixie and just go along with it, rather than telling you or the others?”
“Nobody, that’s who,” Sunset sighed.
Then who…?
Starlight’s question was answered by a faint bouncing sound, which slowly grew louder as she listened. “Oh, come on.”
“You said it, not me.”
A bright, almost luminous pink shape emerged from the darkness. “Hey guys! Are you selling yet?” Pinkie Pie chirped, grinning and hopping in circles around a bemused Starlight. “Sorry about the bouncing! I ate a looooot of vitamins! I lost them in my cupcake batter, but I figured why waste perfectly good batter? Plus, now that this batch is so healthy, maybe I can finally convince Dashie to have cake for breakfast!” She did a cartwheel in the Trixies’ direction and began orbiting them instead. “Ooh! Do you accept payment in Pinkie Pie’s Vividly Voluminous Vitamin Cupcakes? There aren’t a lot of words that start with V, but I made it work!”
Trixie didn’t miss a beat. “Well, you certainly can’t only pay in cupcakes, but I’m sure we can work out an exchange rate, right Starlight?”
“…Um,” said Starlight, who had missed many beats. Sunset was right. It looked like it was going to be more feasible to weather this storm than to prevent it. If only she’d bought a better umbrella.
She groaned. “Okay. Trixie—no, my Trixie—come on. I’ll help you set up. Sunset, I’m sorry about this, but can you help? There are a lot of boxes, and the sooner we get everything over here, the sooner we can leave.” Sunset nodded reluctantly, and Trixie smiled victoriously. “Okay. Okay. …Okay.” And they stepped back through the portal.
Fifteen minutes and an unnerving amount of haphazardly dropping boxes full of explosives later, a fireworks stand was set up in the parking lot to the side of Canterlot High School. Pinkie had somehow retrieved a pair of card tables from inside the locked school and draped a glittery tablecloth over them, and Trixie had unloaded a box full of colorful signs proclaiming the wares to be the best fireworks in this world and listing at least fifteen different varieties, most of which Starlight had never heard of. Another freshly-painted sign announced “Free Vividly Voluminous Vitamin Cupcakes with every purchase!” Somehow, they’d even managed to haul all twenty-four of the boxes over.
“How… does anyone… do anything in this world… without magic?” panted Trixie as she placed the final box on a pile labeled Medium Fountains (Warm Colors).
“Don’t ask her,” Trixie H. said, pointing over her shoulder at Sunset, who also looked quite winded and was sitting on the side of one of the tables. “They get to use magic whenever they want. It’s pretty unfair if you ask me.”
Sunset frowned. “You can teleport, remember?”
“Oh. Right. Well, Trixie isn’t used to her magic working. Which still isn’t fair.”
Starlight tapped Sunset’s shoulder before another argument could begin. “Okay, that’s all set up. You saw Trixie’s memories—how many people are we expecting?”
“Why not just ask her?” Sunset asked.
“I trust you to interpret her thoughts more than I do her.” Starlight glanced over at Trixie, who was excitedly explaining something or other about firework design to an enraptured Trixie H. and Pinkie.
“Okay, that’s not unfair. In that case, it shouldn’t be more than ten or so—at least, that’s what she thought.”
She’d better check. “Pinkie,” Starlight asked, interrupting the lecture. “Exactly how many people are going to be showing up here tonight?”
Pinkie giggled. “Well, I can’t give you an exact answer, silly!”
Of course not. “How about a range?”
“Sure!” Pinkie began counting on her fingers thoughtfully. “Anywhere between… no one and everyone!”
“...Everyone?”
“Yep! I told a bunch of people about it, but none of them have to be here because there isn’t an individual mandate for fireworks yet, so who knows how many will show up?”
Starlight felt as though several of her organs had deflated like spent balloons. Which, for all she knew about human biology, they had. “Great. Thanks.”
“No probs!”
She shared a look with Sunset.
As if on cue, a car faded into earshot. Despite Starlight’s prayers to the contrary, it turned into the school parking lot, drove in a loop, and elegantly backed into one of the many open parking spaces.
Starlight wondered, not for the first time, how those vehicles worked. Magical transportation in Equestria—though thus far usually limited to trains—was considered safe and reliable because it was, well, magic. A properly-cast spell would maintain itself for years given power, whereas a machine would require constant maintenance. Not to mention the risk in prioritizing individual over public transportation, which she never would’ve supported in any hypothetical town she was in charge of. How did the public accept such a clear safety hazard? Were the laws of entropy somehow different in a universe without magic? Was she just biased by virtue of being a unicorn? Would earth ponies be a viable proxy demographic to research in place of humans?
Sunset was snapping her fingers in front of Starlight’s face. She blinked.
Two humans, who at a quick glance could only be Octavia and Vinyl Scratch, were standing patiently in front of her. Octavia raised an eyebrow, and Vinyl waved cheerfully.
“Oh, yes, sorry,” Starlight said, shaking her head. “I’m guessing you’re our first… customers?”
“So it would seem,” said Octavia, looking with what Starlight couldn’t help but feel was a judgemental frown at the hastily-constructed stand. “Two cases of chrysanthemums, please, and…” She squinted at a sign. “What on earth are ‘Alicorn Amulet Aerials?’”
“A new creation of Trixie’s!” Trixie answered proudly, vaulting over the fireworks stand to stand beside Starlight. “She was inspired to create them based on, um, certain past experiences. Don’t worry, they aren’t cursed. Probably.”
Octavia blinked. “I shudder to think why you have to clarify that.”
Sunset hopped down from her position on the table. “Not to be judgy, but what do you need fireworks for? I wouldn’t have pegged you as wanting anything here.”
“Oh, I don’t,” Octavia said. “But my partner here, well, she has her aesthetic tastes regardless of my best efforts, and I happen to be the one with a car. As for your ‘probably not cursed’ aerials, I think we’ll pass.”
“Are you suuuure?” Trixie asked, fluttering her eyelids.
Pinkie bounced over. “Ooh! Are you having a seizure? Raise your hands above your head!” Trixie swatted her away.
Before Octavia could respond, Vinyl, who’d been looking contemplatively at some of the boxes, made several rapid hand gestures at Octavia. Some form of silent communication? Starlight watched with interest. It was no wonder Lyra had wanted to visit this world for a longer period! Imagine the types of magic you could create with that much dexterity…
Octavia sighed. “Are you sure?” Vinyl grinned and repeated the gesture. “Oh, very well. But if you set your bed on fire again, I’m not giving you mine. You can sleep on the floor.” She turned back to Trixie. “One—one, Vinyl, I’m compromising—of the aerials, please.”
Trixie fist-pumped. “Excellent! You won’t regret that! And if you do, we won’t be here, so no refunds.” Octavia glared at her. “Hehe. Kidding. That’ll be twenty-one bits.”
“...Bits?”
Sunset smacked her forehead. “Did you seriously make this whole plan and not check whether Equestria and Earth use the same currency?!”
“Well, I figured it wouldn’t be a problem!” Trixie said defensively. “Countries besides Equestria use bits, and it’s all gold anyway, so what does it matter?”
Octavia’s eyes bulged. “Your currency is gold?”
“Um… Yeah, what else would it be?”
“Wait!” Pinkie shouted. Holding up a finger, she took off the bag slung over her shoulder, rummaged around in it, pulled out a lightbulb, and held it above her head. It clicked on obligingly. “I’ve got this! Sunset, what’s twenty-one bits in dollars these days?”
Sunset shielded her eyes from the lightbulb. “Uh, probably about thirty-two bucks, but I’ve only been to Equestria a few times in the past fifteen years, and—”
“Great!” Pinkie held out her hand to Octavia, who looked at it with mild trepidation. Vinyl shrugged, counted out thirty-two dollars from a wallet that Starlight hoped was imitation leather, and handed the money over. Pinkie took it, shoved it into her hair along with the lightbulb, and, with a sound like a cash register, pulled out something sparkly that she tossed to Trixie.
Trixie caught it, and held up a glittering, perfectly-cut sapphire the size of a golf ball. “Huh. That’s probably about right.”
Octavia gaped at her, and this time, Trixie H. joined her. “Where did you get that?” the latter gasped. “That’s like… like…”
Starlight didn’t see what the big deal was. “Are gems really that uncommon here? No wonder you don’t have magical transportation.”
Sunset sighed. “Yes, they are, and Pinkie, we’ve talked about this.”
“Aw, don’t worry, Sunny! These are leftover from ages ago! I didn’t forget your lecture.” Pinkie stood next to Sunset and mimicked her posture. “Pinkie, you can’t just bring magically-charged gemstones back from Equestria! Pinkie, the relative values of precious stones and metal in this world could destabilize the economies of two of the most important potential trade centers in the event of future interdimensional cooperation! Pinkie, you shouldn’t store money in your hair! Pinkie, stop copying everything I say!” She patted Sunset’s shoulder. “She cracks me up!”
Starlight was fairly certain she understood the implications of what had just happened, and she was equally sure that this was the time to get any bystanders out of the way before information that probably shouldn’t become common knowledge became common knowledge. “Okay! Well, thank you Pinkie, I think, but we don’t want to keep customers waiting.” She shot Vinyl and Octavia a look that hopefully wasn’t too panicked. Judging by their reaction, it was.
“Thank you… all… so much for your services,” Octavia said, grabbing Vinyl’s hand. “We should probably be going.”
Trixie nodded. “Of course! The Great and Powerful Trixie is nothing if not an excellent customer servicer. Hm. Don’t repeat that phrase in any reviews of our establishment.” She stared at a wooden crate for a long moment. Then she began squinting.
Trixie H. elbowed her. “You need to use your hands.”
“Ah! Trixie was getting to that part.” She did so, opening the box and placing several colorful packages and tubes into a paper bag, which she handed to Vinyl. “Thank you for patronizing The Great and Powerful Trixie’s Worlds-Class Fireworks! Come again whenever we do this again!”
“Which will be never,” interjected Starlight.
“We’ll see.” Trixie smirked as Vinyl and Octavia walked away and climbed into their car. “Excellent work, by the way, you two!” she said to an excited Pinkie and a less-excited Sunset. “Trixie will consider promoting you to minor assistants if you continue to be so helpful!”
Sunset shook her head. “Nope. One day of that was enough.” For some reason, Trixie H. pouted.
Two more cars were pulling into the parking lot. This was going to be a long evening. But now they had at least some sort of plan, so maybe it would get better.
It got worse.
Starlight stood at the head of a line that was really more like a crowd, listening to the seventh order of the past ten minutes from an irate Photo Finish. Or perhaps a calm Photo Finish; it was difficult to say. A loose system had developed: Starlight took orders and relayed them to Trixie, the Trixies packed orders and passed them to the line, Sunset helped the Trixies and occasionally discreetly bumped into a customer to judge whether giving them magical explosives would result in a major political incident, and Pinkie… well, Pinkie mostly juggled cupcakes and entertained the growing audience. Not that Starlight minded; if anything, keeping everything relatively sane was more important than whatever she was doing.
She’d foolishly hoped that, once things began, the voice in the back of her head telling her what an idiotic idea this was would recede, or at least be quashed by sheer volume of nonsense. This had not happened. In fact, the voice seemed to be continually raising its volume to compete with the crowd. At least now there was variety to the voices in her head.
After she formally took… whatever office she would end up taking, she was going to donate a thousand bits to every pony in Equestria who had to interact with customers on a daily basis. And then throw a brick at the mirror portal for good measure. And possibly a second one at Trixie.
And, while her mind had been meandering, she’d missed another order. “I’m sorry, could you repeat that?”
A young girl with silver hair who vaguely resembled one of the Ponyville schoolfillies gave an annoyed huff. “I said, just give me three of everything.”
Well, at least that was simple enough. “Right. That’s… $465.” She eyed the student, who couldn’t have been older than fourteen. “Are you sure you can pay for all this?”
“Don’t be ridiculous. Just because you can’t afford a better storefront or a nicer hat doesn’t mean everyone’s scraping the barrel.” The girl glared at her as she struggled to balance the five bags Trixie had unceremoniously dumped in her arms. “See if we ever take our business here again!”
“There isn’t going to be an–” And she was gone. Charming. Not for the first time, Starlight acknowledged that it was probably a good thing she didn’t have her magic here. Celestia only knew what she’d have done by now if she did.
We’re the Princess of Empathy. This is our job. Deep breaths.
The interactions continued in much the same vein.
“That’ll be $105, thank you!”
“That’s $60, have a good evening.”
“That’s… are you sure about— please be careful with those—“
“$49, thank you.”
“That’ll come to… come to…”
She blinked, arising from the haze of repetition (noticing, to her despair, that the line had only gotten longer since she’d last looked) to stare at the three girls in front of her. “I’m sorry, I feel like I recognize you from somewhere.”
The girl on the left, who had purple skin and hair that would look outlandish if she wasn’t standing next to two equally excessive examples, rolled her eyes. “Typical humans. Not enough blood in your stupid bodies makes it to your heads, and you’re all idiots for it.”
The girl on the right, who had blue skin, an enormous blue ponytail, and a maroon blazer, leaned around the girl in the center to look at the first in confusion. “Um, we’re humans too, right? Plus, we kinda had the same body plans even”—she glanced at Starlight—“before, anyway.”
“Shut up Sonata.”
“Sorry Aria.”
Alarm bells were ringing in Starlight’s head, creating a wonderfully dissonant harmony with the voices. “Er, when you say ‘typical humans,’ do you mean you aren’t…”
At that moment, Sunset, dusting her hands from the silver-haired girl’s ridiculous fireworks order, appeared beside Starlight. “Oh. Hey Dagi.”
The girl in the center—the tallest, and with seemingly more hair than body—smirked. “Shimmer.” Her voice sounded strangely older than she looked.
Maybe that was why she recognized them. “Friends of yours?” she asked Sunset.
Sunset tugged on the collar of her jacket. “...Something like that.”
“Ooh, I know this one!” The blue girl—Sonata—said. “We’re sirens who tried to take over the school with our magic and enslave all the students to help us get through the portal to Equestria and conquer it for ourselves, but Sunny and her friends stopped us and broke our amulets so we had to learn to sing all over again and it was soooo annoying but now we’re frenemies and we meet up when our tours take us near Canterlot!” She beamed at a stunned Starlight, but then her smile slowly melted off her face. “Aw, fishsticks, I wasn’t supposed to say that.”
The middle girl—Dagi? —shook her head pityingly. “And you were doing so well.” She turned to Starlight. “What? Don’t meet a lot of interdimensional immortals? I’m Adagio. This is Aria, this is Sonata.”
Starlight swallowed. “It’s funny you should say that. I’m…” She looked at Sunset, who nodded. “I’m visiting from Equestria, actually. I’m sort of a new princess.” She extended a hand. “Starlight Glimmer. Nice to meet you?”
Adagio raised an eyebrow. “Charmed. You’re handling this rather better than the last princess we met.” She pointedly ignored the hand. Sonata giggled.
The irony of their story being presented to a newly-royal Starlight was not lost on her. “Well, I try to keep an open mind.” She decided that the sirens didn’t need to know about her past. Sunset was probably right that she gave that information out too freely. “And it sounds like Twilight had her reasons at the time.”
Aria frowned (or, she maintained the perpetual frown her face seemed stuck in). “You’re lucky you ever saw her again. We got so close. Stupid Elements.”
“No offense,” Sonata added to Sunset. For some reason, Sunset’s eye twitched.
If Starlight had met these three a year ago, this conversation might’ve gone drastically differently. She felt as though she were looking in a skewed funhouse mirror. With a bias towards hair. “I know the feeling. Should I call you Dagi, or is that just a Sunset thing?”
Sunset’s face bled from its usual orange to a shade of grapefruit. “Oh, please do,” cackled Aria.
Starlight knew she was poor at picking up on social cues, but she wasn’t that poor. “Oh! Are you two…?” She gestured uncertainly between Sunset and Adagio, who was grinning like a shark.
“I don’t know,” Adagio said sweetly. “Are we, Shimmer?”
Sunset looked as though she wanted to recede into her shirt. “It’s… complicated.”
Trixie, who had been glancing over for the past couple minutes in confusion as to why the line wasn’t moving, clambered over the table again. “Hold on, I thought you were dating the human Twilight from this world. What gives?”
“Why would you think that?!” Sunset spluttered.
“Um… because I’ve read your journal? Nopony talks like that about someone they aren’t dating,” Trixie said wisely. “Kinda weird that you tell our Twilight about it, though.”
“Well— Well clearly you didn’t read it very well! I said nothing like that. Besides, you couldn’t tell if I was dating Twilight from reading a journal.”
“Nope!” Pinkie’s voice said. Everyone looked down. She was laying on the ground between the sirens and the others, happily tossing a large gemstone to herself. “We can tell with our eyes, and our ears, and our common sense, and from the fact that you said it one time after you ate too many of my Copiously Caffeinated Coriander Clusters, and probably not with our tongues, but I guess I haven’t tried so maybe that too!”
Sunset glared down at Pinkie, somehow managing to say traitor with her eyes. “Do you want to find out if I can still shift into my demon form?”
Adagio waved a hand dismissively. “That doesn’t mean anything. Don’t be so closed-minded, isn’t that right Starbright?”
“Starlight.”
“Whatever. Shimmer is perfectly capable of… multitasking,” Adagio said. Sunset blushed again. “I’m not a human. Don’t assume I get hung up on whatever ridiculous moralistic trends are in for you lot this season.”
Starlight should probably have let this insanity go, but she couldn’t resist. “So, is Twilight with you as well, or is it more of a sharing situation?” she asked. Sunset looked betrayed.
“Oh please, that whelp is practically still a larva,” Adagio sniffed. “I’ve had flings longer than she’s been alive.”
“Have I mentioned that you’re disgusting?” Aria said, gagging.
“And you’re going to die alone.”
“I have Sona—”
“That might as well be alone.”
Trixie H. frowned, appearing next to her counterpart and surreptitiously stealing her hat. “Hold on, but Sunset is the same age as Twilight! So if they’re together, why would it be weird for you all to be?”
That couldn’t be right. “That can’t be right,” Starlight interjected. “Sunset was Celestia’s student over a decade ago, so she can’t be less than thirty. I mean, I guess that’s not a huge difference if you guys really are over a thousand, but still.”
Trixie furrowed her brow. “...Wait, but if she’s that old, how are she and Twi—”
“Okay! That’s enough of this conversation!” Sunset said, somewhat hysterically. “Great seeing you Dag— Adagio, hope you got what you wanted, but we’ve really got to move this line along!”
Sonata looked heartbroken. “But we didn’t get any fireworks…”
Sunset picked up a box at random, shoved it into her arms, and began to shove her along with it. “Now you did! Have fun! Come back another, less humiliating time!”
“Do we have to?” deadpanned Aria.
“Go suck a tubeworm, Aria,” Adagio said. “See you, Sunny~!”
They walked off.
“Did you know that gunpowder was originally invented by people trying to make potions to extend their lives?”
“Fascinating! Wait, what do you call it?”
“Um, gunpowder?”
“How odd; for us, it’s black powder. I wonder what gun means?”
“...Well, uh, either way, fireworks are actually one of the only things we still use it in! Usually, you want either less messy or more explosive stuff, but fireworks are supposed to burn slowly, and they don’t need to fly high enough that you need anything more efficient. Modern fireworks are barely different from ones from a thousand years ago!”
“Well, our fireworks evolve all the time! Would you believe that I’m the first pony to try enchanting the powder itself, rather than the casings or additives? I think, anyway. We don’t have a lot of pyrotechnicians in Equestria.”
“That’s really cool! I wonder if you could…”
Who was Trixie talking to now? After handling yet another mindless transaction, Starlight turned towards the voices, and saw her specia– her friend talking to a plainly-dressed blonde student whose delighted smile and mismatched eyes clearly identified her as… Derpy? What?
Well, why not? The world—worlds—had gone mad hours ago. Why would it stop now?
Customers be damned to Tartarus. Starlight allowed her head to clunk onto the table in front of her. A strange, human coin pressed into her forehead. She didn’t care.
Please let us be almost out of products. Please let this line end. Or please, in the name of Celestia, let somebody with more of a spine than I have show up and—
“Hi there! I see we haven’t missed too much.”
Starlight reluctantly raised her head to see two figures who could only be the human counterparts of Celestia and Luna approaching.
She perked up immediately and sighed with relief. “Oh thank Cel– er, I’m so glad to see you, you have no idea. I’ve been wondering how to stop this for hours now and I didn’t know what to do; I mean, I have authority in Equestria now, which is crazy, but here it just feels… Please just do whatever you came here to do so we can close up and go home.”
Luna blinked. “Close up?”
“Yeah.” Starlight craned her neck to look around them at the somehow still-seemingly-infinite line behind the two sisters. “Aren’t you in charge of this school? You’re here to shut this down, right? I mean, this cannot be legal, it’s barely legal in Equestria!”
Celestia gave a confused smile, and Starlight barely had time to think how much younger she looked than her pony counterpart before she spoke. “Actually, Miss…”
“Oh, Glimmer. Pr– Starlight Glimmer.”
Celestia turned to Luna. “My, that name is certainly familiar. I’m beginning to think everyone from Equestria was named by the same person.” The two shared a laugh, and Celestia addressed Starlight with a grin. “But no! We’re actually here as customers. Do you have any roman candles left?”
What.
Starlight’s mind seemed to fill with static. She was vaguely aware that her jaw had dropped. I…
The principals looked at her with concern. “Miss Glimmer?” said Celestia.
“You…” she began.
“You are the one taking orders, are you not?” Luna asked.
Okay, that’s enough.
“NO!” Starlight shouted. She realized immediately that she was shouting, felt momentarily embarrassed about the crowd’s shocked looks, and then resolved to go right on shouting. “I am NOT taking orders! You know what? NOPONY is taking orders! We’re done!”
Trixie, Trixie H, Sunset, and Pinkie heard her (along with, presumably, the inhabitants of every street for several blocks) and looked over. Trixie walked over and whispered in Starlight’s ear nervously, “Is this a marketing thing? Because you’re pretty hot when you’re shouting, but I don’t know if—”
Starlight rounded on her. “You! This is your fault!”
Trixie looked resolutely unimpressed. “Is this like this thing with the table again?”
“Yes!” Starlight noticed out of the corner of her eye that the crowd was circling around them, but she didn’t care. “You knew this was a bad idea! I know you did, you’re not stupid, you’re brilliant, and you convinced me anyway because you know I care about you! Well, it’s done working!”
Celestia and Luna were exchanging confused looks. “Is this about something we did?” Celestia asked hesitantly. “We didn’t mean—”
Furious, Starlight glared at them. “And you! You two are authorities here, and you know damn well how important security around that portal is. You should know better! Do you think I would’ve let something like this happen in my cult?!”
An awkward silence fell over the crowd, which she took as a challenge. “Yes, I ran a cult! And I had an IMMACULATE CHAIN OF COMMAND! Unlike this catastrophe!” She was no longer entirely sure who she was shouting at. Fortunately, that was fixable. “Trixie. We’re going home. Now.”
Trixie, for some reason, didn’t look disappointed—she didn’t even look surprised. “You know, if you just—”
“I am a PRINCESS!” Starlight shouted. The pavement seemed to shake with the words, and a wave rippled through the crowd that looked too solid to be metaphorical.
Sunset gaped at her. “...Was that the Royal Canterlot Voice?”
“Yup!” Pinkie whispered to her, perfectly audible to everyone within a dozen yards. “It always sounds louder in this world.”
Starlight ignored them. “I am the Faust-damned Princess of Empathy, and Trixie, I let you get away with so much because I love you, but this has officially gone too far and it’s time I did my job and why are you smiling like that?”
In defiance of circumstance, reason, and everything other than her own personality, Trixie had a smirk on her face wide enough to span Ghastly Gorge. For some reason, Trixie H. looked nearly as smug.
“Trixie…” Starlight growled.
They remained silent. The crowd was beginning to murmur; Celestia and Luna had taken several steps back, though whether they’d been voluntary or induced by the RCV-enhanced shouting was unclear. Just as Starlight was about to begin yelling again—or maybe throw Trixie bodily through the portal and worry about everyone else afterwards—Trixie laughed.
“Starlight,” she said. “Why have you never admitted that we’re dating?”
Most of Starlight’s anger left her, replaced with utter confusion. “...What?”
Trixie leaned dramatically against her human counterpart. “You heard me.”
“Wh– You want to do this here?” Starlight looked nervously around at the crowd of what must have been dozens of students, not to mention Sunset, Pinkie, and an increasingly-curious Luna and Celestia.
“Mhm~”
“Well, um,” Starlight said. She’d said this before, after all, if not in as many words. “We’re not dating. You know that I don’t feel– Well, with my past, it wouldn’t be fair to anypony, especially you, to have to support me in a relationship right now. I know I’m a princess, and I’m getting better with responsibility, but I’m not… I don’t trust myself with that.” Had that explanation always felt so weak? And, for that matter, why was she letting Trixie distract her?
Because I love you, her self of moments earlier echoed in her head against her will.
“Aha!” said Trixie, stepping forward. “So, guilt. We knew that. You think I’m too good for you.” She stabbed at accusatory fist at Starlight, forgetting her new fingers in the heat of the moment. “You think everypony is too good for you.”
Starlight flushed. Yes. How could she not? “Trixie, we need to go home. We can talk about this later.” Whatever this was.
“And that,” Trixie continued, “Is why we’re here.”
…Wait a minute.
“For you see!” Trixie twirled dramatically, and Starlight, even distracted, saw her face light up for a fraction of a second upon completing the spin without losing her balance. “The Great and Powerful Trixie has concocted this brilliant scheme in order to prove the Wonderful But Self-Effacing Starlight wrong once and for all!”
Pinkie let out a comically dramatic gasp. Sunset was looking more exasperated by the second. Trixie H. looked exactly as smug as Trixie. And Starlight felt a strange mixture of emotions rising in her throat. “...What exactly…”
“Don’t worry, dear, I practiced this part,” Trixie stage-whispered, before raising her voice back to its impressive full volume. “The Insightful and Emotionally-Astute Trixie knew full well that your guilt complex would never let you admit your true desire for emotional and physical intimacy”—Starlight blushed—”and so she devised a plan! Did you really think her foalish enough to engage in this shenaniganery without ulterior motive?”
To be entirely honest, she had. Not that Starlight had judged her for it, of course; she accepted Trixie for her flaws, not despite them, which was the only reason she’d agreed in the first… Oh.
Trixie seemed to take her silence as confirmation. “You may have believed it, but it was all of it mere chicanery! The insanity of Trixie’s plan was not a flaw—Nay, it was by design!” By now, she was performing to the audience as much as to Starlight. “And now, thanks to Trixie’s Great and Powerful brilliance and your unwitting but characteristically excellent assistance, you have proof, once and for all, that Trixie is just as stupid, selfish, shortsighted, and foalish as you ever have been or ever will be! Tell Trixie that she’s too good for you now, Starlight!”
Starlight’s mouth hung open, as did much of the crowd’s. She couldn’t. She may have had hangups about her past—she’d be the first to admit that—but she would also reluctantly admit that she’d done nothing egregiously villainous in over a year, had saved Equestria three times over, and had, somehow, been judged by Harmony itself as a worthy member of quasi-divine royalty.
Trixie, on the other hoof, had just risked interdimensional security—had risked everything—to make a few bits and serve her own reputation. No, Starlight corrected herself; she’d risked everything on a stupid, insane, convoluted plan to convince Starlight to date her.
It was ridiculous. It was shallow and blatantly unethical. It was a violation of everything any other friend of hers would believe in. And it perfectly proved Trixie’s point.
Starlight reached for the part of herself that had always reacted with instinctive guilt at the idea of placing herself as a romantic equal to anypony—and found nothing.
Trixie was right. She wasn’t too good for her. And Starlight was good enough for her in turn. She always had been.
As Starlight stared silently, some of the confidence drained from Trixie’s expression, which, by some cruelty of fate, made her even cuter. “Starlight,” she said, stage persona discarded. “I’ve had to watch you convince yourself that you don’t deserve anypony for months. I hoped I might be able to, well, pester you into thinking otherwise if I made it obvious what I thought about you, but if saving the world and becoming a goddess couldn’t make you believe in yourself, I didn’t know how I ever could. So…” She gestured weakly at the fireworks stand, the school, and the enraptured crowd. “But it worked. You stood up to me and told me I was wrong in front of everybody. You were a princess, for Celestia’s sake!”
Trixie stepped close to her, and placed her hands on Starlight’s arms, her expression so devastatingly insecure that she nearly didn’t look like Trixie at all. “Honestly, I feel like I don’t deserve you. But I don’t want to start this whole thing all over again. So… Be my marefriend? Please? If you want to?”
Thoughts cascaded through Starlight’s exhausted brain. “Trixie… I…”
On one level—a significant level—she was furious. Of course she was. This, this infuriating, performative, unnecessary manipulative nonsense, was the reason half of Ponyville couldn’t stand Trixie to this day. It was something Starlight would’ve done two years ago. It was completely unjustifiable, and it drove her completely mad that, no matter how many times she repeated this in her head, the mare standing in front of her refused to be any less beautiful, and her words refused to be any less the sweetest thing anypony had ever said to Starlight in her long, checkered life.
She should lecture Trixie on responsibility. Tartarus, she should barely want to be friends with her after this. She should report this to Twilight immediately and push for the portal to be moved somewhere less accessible.
So, naturally, she let out a strangled, exasperated groan, and, as the crowd gasped, she kissed Trixie.
Her lips immediately slid off Trixie’s unfamiliar human face.
Oh. Right.
Dammit. Well, it wasn’t as if things could get any more humiliating. Starlight leaned back and carefully placed her hands on Trixie’s shoulders to hold her in place. After taking a moment to smugly admire her shocked expression, she tried again, more slowly. This time, the kiss held.
It felt right. So right that she took nearly a full minute to enjoy the sensation of her strangely vertical body pressing against Trixie’s before pulling back to address the excited crowd, some of whom had begun cheering. “Don’t you all have anything better to be doing?!”
The students, most of whom at least had the decency to look embarrassed, mercifully began to disperse.
Shaking her head, she again turned to Trixie, who—Stars above, she’s beautiful when she’s happy—was staring at her with glazed eyes and an adorable grin. Eventually, she seemed to realize that her lips were no longer against Starlight’s and returned to reality with a start. “Er. Sorry that ended up being so… public. I know that’s more my thing.”
Starlight shrugged. “I’ll probably never see most of these people again. Besides, I have to get used to appearing in public one way or another.”
Trixie giggled. “What about kissing your special somepony in public?”
Starlight gulped. “Foal steps.” She’d have to get used to hearing the phrase special somepony directed towards herself and not immediately pushing down any positive feelings in favor of denial.
“GO TRIXIE! I KNEW YOU COULD DO IT!” shouted an entirely-too-loud voice from entirely too close to Starlight’s ear.
Trixie, on the other hoof, took it in stride and bowed. “Thank you, Pinkie! The Great and Powerful Trixie is glad to know that people in some worlds appreciate the value of a good scheme.”
Starlight turned to see an ecstatic Pinkie, an oddly wistful-looking Trixie H, and a Sunset Shimmer who looked like she wanted to go the way of the departing crowd and return to the presumably more sane parts of her life. Starlight couldn’t exactly blame her. Still, looking at her, a question arose.
“Hold on,” she said to Sunset, who looked up. “You read Trixie’s mind earlier. How did you not see… that?”
Sunset waved her hands about vaguely. “It’s not a precise thing. I saw that Trixie was thinking about you, um, a lot, and I saw that she wasn’t sure you reciprocated, so I didn’t want to pry. I just looked at what she’d done in the past half hour or so.”
Despite having a thousand of what should probably have been prior concerns, Starlight couldn’t help but fixate once again on Sunset’s incredible abilities. The time they could save rehabilitating Equestria’s villains… “Fascinating! You can isolate emotions and thoughts from events, then? What about events heavily influenced by perception? Or dreams? Wait, here!” She placed her hand on Sunset’s bare forearm; the orange woman’s eyes immediately flashed white. “Can you see what I dreamed last night? Does that count as emotion, or as memory? Or is it both?”
Sunset’s eyes returned to a normal color. Her face, though, paled nearly to white, and she didn’t lower her arm when Starlight released it.
Starlight’s brow creased. “...Sunset?” She waved a hand in front of her face.
“...Dust…” Sunset breathed, nearly inaudibly. “Wind and dust…”
What? Starlight nearly put her hand back on Sunset’s arm before pausing and placing it on her jacketed shoulder instead. “Are you…?”
Trixie tapped on Starlight’s shoulder. “Darling—ugh, that sounds too much like your other friend—do you or do you not have a bunch of memories of the time you destroyed the world over and over again that you think about, like, every day?”
Starlight blinked. Sunset did not. Oops.
Before she could panic, Pinkie had bounced over. “Don’t worry! This has happened way worse than this before. You should’ve seen her when she forgot to take off her geode and Celestia shook her hand at the awards ceremony in the spring!” She placed her arm around Sunset’s shoulders and began to slowly walk away from the school. Sunset stumbled along with her, muttering quietly. “She’ll be okay in an hour or so. I’ll have her text you! Well, with the book. Bext you! She’ll want to congratulate you two. Byeeee! Have a safe trip!” She waved happily and turned to focus on helping Sunset.
Starlight gulped.
“That,” said Trixie H, “Was hilarious. Can we keep you?”
Trixie reached across Starlight to swat at her. “Get your own marefriend! You’re younger than me anyway, wait your turn.”
“Fiiiiine.”
“She’s not wrong, though,” Trixie said. “Even if it does mean we need to carry all of this ourselves now.” She looked critically at the lonely fireworks stand and the piles of mostly-empty boxes.
Starlight shook herself lightly. Right. She could apologize to Sunset later. Pinkie said this had happened before. It’d be okay. Everyone would be okay. Though the boxes really were a lot to carry.
Suddenly, she heard footsteps—oddly muffled ones, but, then, humans wore softer shoes—that didn’t originate from her or either Trixie, and turned around.
Derpy, standing startlingly close to her, waved bashfully. “Um, I know you said to leave, but I thought you might want help cleaning up?”
Starlight smiled gratefully. “That’d be wonderful. Thank you.”
Sometime between one and forty hours later, Starlight lay in her bed in her palace room. Trixie lay next to her.
They hadn’t done anything, well… like that. Not beyond one or two dozen more kisses of varying length. But, after all the chaos and exertion, and given the late hour, Starlight hadn’t been able to resist offering the showmare a more luxurious bed. Despite her usual insistence on the ‘comfort’ of her wagon, Trixie’s eyes had lit up at the offer, and now she was curled up at Starlight’s side, using a wing as an awkward blanket.
Starlight wasn’t actually sure if she was asleep. She mumbled occasionally, but, knowing Trixie, maybe she continued to rehearse her shows in her dreams. Hopefully, there would be many more nights like this, and she’d get to become used to her… marefriend’s… sleep patterns.
That thought stuck in her head like a pebble in a wheel. She was dating Trixie. Her stomach filled with butterflies at the thought. Finally.
Accompanying the butterflies was a separate wave of astonishment at the idea that she was in a relationship at all. Her! The pony who hadn’t even had non-brainwashed friends until scarcely a year ago.
Surely, she thought as her eyes lazily alit upon different kites hanging from the ceiling in the dim light, she should be nervous right now. There were so many things she could do wrong, so many new mistakes to make, so many new risks and trials and potential potholes.
Yes, a much larger part of her replied, but I’ll be with Trixie while I face them.
And that, more than anything anypony had tried to reassure her with since her ascension, made everything seem okay.
Soon, she began to drift off, losing a moment here, and a moment there, as her normally unremarkable bed grew more comfortable by the second. But, before she could fully turn over and embrace both her special somepony and the dreamworld, Trixie’s voice reached her ears.
“...Starlight?”
By Celestia, she could listen to that voice for hours. “Myeah?”
“We forgot Lyra.”
“...Yeah. We did.”