Letters From a Little Princess Monster

by Georg

99. Tripartite - Part Seventeen

“I don’t see how you can do that.”  Trixie regarded her husband with a scowl.  “Particularly in Celestia’s study.”

Green Grass could not answer since he had his mouth full, but after considerable chewing he leaned over the tiny hippogriff chick and—

“Bleah,” declared Trixie and turned her back, regarding the small collection of unicorn-ish students around one of the tables.  It was break time from their lessons, snack time for little Princess Puffball…

If Trixie ever had a foal, Green Grass was not going to name it.  Or feed it.

Anyway, having the whole pyrotechnic crew inside her teacher’s sanctum sanctorum was making her itchy, even though the melted window had been replaced so expertly that Trixie could not tell which one it was.  Bookwyrm was awake for a change, craning his neck and looking around the room for sparkly dragon treasure, even though he was still not willing to let go of Sweetie Belle’s horn to explore.  

Sunburst had been spoiling the little dragon with tiny flecks of gemstones, which provided excellent practice for the students to get their magical manipulation skills sharpened.  The teaching combination of Green Grass and Sunburst had proven to be synergetic beyond her expectations, but they had the mind of a child split between the two of them, so she should have expected it.

A faint noise attracted Trixie’s attention, and she slipped out into the hallway where Starlight Glimmer was impatiently waiting.  The former villain had not wanted to be directly involved with teaching the children, in the capitol, under the eye of Princess Celestia.  It was an obvious sign of guilt, but Trixie had to consider it a positive since she had similar feelings.

“What’s up, Mayor?”  Trixie double-checked the door to make sure no small alicorns were hiding behind it, then continued, “Are you starting to backslide?”

“Ye—”  Starlight hesitated, then added, “How did you know?”

“Been there, done that.  As a mayor, too.”  Trixie shrugged.  “The old me is right below the surface.  Every so often, it pokes up.  She pokes it down.  I suppose it’s a lot like Twilight Sparkle and her inner monster.  We’re a twisted little group of misfits, aren’t we?  And yet, together we help each other become better despite our differences.”

Starlight nodded reluctantly.  “It hurts to admit it.”

“Hurts more to deny it.”  Trixie took the bottle of bourbon out of her cloak and gave it an obvious shake.  “Care for a snort?  It’ll take the chill out of the morning.”

“No,” said Starlight bluntly.  “You know, I haven’t seen you take a drink in the last few weeks.”

“One of my monsters comes wrapped in glass.”  She put the bottle back in her new cloak and tucked a corner of it over her orange coat, trying to conceal the way her ordinary winter hairs were poking through in mottled patches of blue.  “Change is good.”

“Too much change too fast is destructive.”  Not skipping a beat, Starlight opened the door and brought the inevitable eavesdropper into the corridor with them.  The little alicorn did not look upset at being found out, but rather contemplative as if she were chewing on a very difficult thought.  Starlight apparently had just enough experience with Twilight to realize that was a bad sign, but she was trying to remain positive, much like Trixie.  “Isn’t that right, Twilight?”

It was Twilight Sparkle’s turn to nod.  “Change should slow.  Tirek back in Tartarus.  Scootaloo flew.  Changelings changed.  Windigo stopped.  Conch will visit Ponyville in winter.”  Her eyes darted in Starlight’s direction.

“Equalist stopped,” said Starlight.  “And Discord…”  She thought for a while and said something Trixie had not expected.  “Do you think he threw your game?”

“Game?” asked Menace.

“He set up your three challenges.  If he hadn’t, three major disasters would have swept across Equestria, counting me.  Then he just happened to get caught unawares enough for the Elements of Harmony to petrify him.  Again.”

“Discord…”  It was obvious that the little alicorn was struggling for words, which was why Trixie was floored when Twilight sat down and began to scratch lines on the granite floor.

“He faked it.”  Trixie ran through her memories, focusing on the last few moments of their encounter with the chaos entity in the Crystal Empire.  “I see now.  He could have dodged, teleported away, or turned the Elements into yogurt.  But he set up this whole thing, then stayed put and he’s a statue.  Or at least until you grow up and become more ‘fun.’  Apparently, I’m not challenging enough to hold his interest.”

“We’re not challenging enough,” said Starlight.  She looked out the window at the end of the corridor and considered the swirls of snow gusting around Celestia’s castle.  “That’s not a bad thing.”

“It gives us some slack time,” admitted Trixie.  “I can have the same colors and cape for more than a moon at a time.  And you and Sunburst can go visit your parents for a week or two.  Don’t tell me otherwise.  It’s important to take advice while giving it.  Twilight showed me how important your loved ones are.”

Monster reached into her saddlebags and removed two small pieces of paper, which she floated over to Starlight.  To nopony’s surprise, they were round-trip train tickets to Sires Hollow, business class, and Starlight silently tucked them away for later.

“And she showed me how to plan ahead in a way you can’t turn down,” continued Trixie.  “It’s been a very busy last few moons.  I’m just glad Twilight doesn’t see any more troubles coming at us.”

Trixie paused.  “You don’t see any more troubles coming at us, do you Menace?”

Monster shook her head, then slipped back inside the room with her little friends to allow her teachers some privacy. 

Trixie eyed Starlight for a moment, checked to make sure a little evesdropper was not lurking behind the closed door, then said, “You can’t get ahead of her.  All you can do is be prepared to run like heck to catch up.  Do you think she’s up to something?”

“Of course.  She’s too quiet.”  Starlight considered the closed door.  “You know, we have got to be the worst possible role models for somepony who might run Equestria some day.”

“I’m not sure about that.”  Trixie nudged the bottle of bourbon in her cloak just to hear it gurgle.  “You, me, Discord, Chrysalis, Tempest Shadow, Diamond Tiara.  We’re not the role models here.  She is.  And she’s just a child now.  As teachers, we’re providing educational examples of what not to do, and how to change for the better.  She’s like a magnet, attracting all kinds of ne'er-do-wells like us and making the world a better place.”

“What happens if she attracts somebody too powerful to change?”  Starlight hesitated.  “Like Discord, I suppose.  Good point.”

“And I made her promise not to look for trouble without getting the advice of several of her teachers,” added Trixie.  “Four or five, at least.  So we have nothing to worry about short-term.”

The Canterlot Museum of Natural History had guards and some of the most clever alarm spells anypony had ever created.  For all intents and purposes, they might as well have left the doors open this night.

A small shadow flitted among the exhibits, passing by the occasional guard like they were blind.  This time, Monster avoided the mechanical fortune-tellers and strange rocks, ornate costumes and labeled artifacts, heading straight for the perverse mirror which had given her the first glimpse of Starlight Glimmer.

Well, after a brief stop at the guard’s break area for several cups of what they considered coffee.

The quiet room holding Clover’s Mirror was trivial to access, and gave Monster some mundane privacy by the simple act of closing the door once she was inside.  There had been far more potential in the simple object than she had seen the first time she touched it, and a different approach was warranted for the results she was seeking.  Rather than going inside the mirror like she had before, Monster sat down ever so carefully in front of it, reaching out with her new magic to bend the reflections in the dim light of the quiet room.  Ever so slowly, images began to form on the walls, fuzzy at first, then shifting colors until they turned green in one way or another.  There were far too many ways to mess up a spell this complex, but Clover the Clever had left behind a little something in her creation, a trace of her spirit that guided Monster’s magical touch.

It was probably why almost all the images she brought out of alternate dimensions were green.

Once she was sure the spell had stabilized, Monster looked back at what she had summoned.  Most of the creature images against the walls were ponies, generally shaggy stallions with various hats, although there were several mares, a few griffons and other creatures, and one philodendron in a chipped pot.  Oddly enough, there was also one cheerfully yellow stallion trying to control a wriggling little colt, neither of which matched the color scheme of the spell.

“Sorry,” said the struggling stallion, who lost his grip on the little unicorn colt and promptly dove under the table to catch him again.  “Green Grass is in a meeting with my wife and can’t take the spell call right now.  I’m Baked Bean.  What did you need, Twilight?”

“I… didn’t think you would know me.  You know.  This way.”  Monster rubbed a hoof against the coal-black hairs of her coat.

“It would take a lot more to hide your inner self,” said Baked Bean from under the table.

“And the rest of you?” asked Monster, looking around the dozens of images projected against the walls of the small museum room.  They all generally nodded, with several holding up scribbled notes.

“Oh.”  Monster shuffled her hooves, trying to look confident.  The spell she had used with Spike’s help in the museum yesterday was supposed to have sent copies of her problem description to the copies of the appropriate tutors, but there had been no way to check in the short time they had before the museum’s smoke alarms had gone off and the guards hustled them out of the room.  She had stayed up most of several evenings in a row preparing for this, and even coffee was starting to betray her.

An ill-preened griffon with a tricorn hat cleared his throat and addressed Monster authoritatively, as if he were a professor in a school.  “We have searched the archives of our institution and did not find any mention of this ‘Sunset Shimmer’ among students or faculty.  Perhaps we are a few dimensions orthogonally displaced from your locus.”

“Likewise,” croaked what appeared to be a very large green frog sporting a bowler hat.

“I’m not very comfortable with magic,” said Baked Bean as he straightened up from behind the table with a squirming bright yellow colt securely grasped in a way to prevent any more escapes.  “Shouldn’t you talk to your Princess Celestia?  Mine sent our Twilight Sparkle into something called a human dimension some time ago and came back with a report that Sunset Shimmer had… Well, it was rather confusing, but she is a friend now.”

“Ours has a book,” said a pale, mostly hairless creature with bushy eyebrows and a fashionable beret.  “She uses it to talk with Princess Twilight about friendship.  And human girl things against pony girl things, I presume.  I don’t snoop on them,” he added quickly.  “Well, I didn’t believe them at first, but when the boat trip we were on turned into an island survival ordeal… Did you know you probably have a human analogue in our… that is her dimension?”

“A duplicate,” said another more normal-appearing stallion with a battered fedora.  He was using one hoof in order to get a small green alicorn to take a bottle and manipulating a small black box with the other, while having poor luck with both tasks.  “You’re not old enough to be dimension-hopping, young lady.  Sunset Shimmer was in a high school last I understood.”

“He’s in college here,” corrected a young green mare who was wrestling a similar green alicorn foal through bottle-feeding with much the same degree of difficulty.  “Crossed wires on the portal last week when we tried to hook up a portal at Missus Bruener’s farm and he came spilling out with most of his fraternity.  I really don’t think any of us can help you with Sunset Shimmer, Twilight.”

“Undoubtedly, your dimension has a reciprocative connection to the dimension your Sunset Shimmer is currently located in,” said another one of the more ‘normal’ green stallions, who was wearing a flat black hat and puffing on a pipe.  “A thaumic inversion as opposed to particle physics, so you do not need to be concerned over proton-antiproton collisions destroying the universe when connecting to it, but there seems to be a proportional reflectional inversion of some sort associated with all of our dimensions that causes the alternate dimension to periodically appear and link to the original in a 1:1 relationship regardless to space/time associations.  I’ve worked out the math, if you want to take a look.”

“Yes, please,” managed Monster through her disappointment, although another yawn fought its way through her willpower.

“Could I get a copy?” asked several of the other green stallions and various creatures at the same time, along with the human saying, “Let me get you my e-mail address.”

There was a curl of green smoke, and a thick sheaf of papers dropped in front of Monster while the pony with the flat black hat continued, “It’s not really something where we can assist, Twilight Sparkle.  You’re going to have to work this out on your own in good time, and without spells.”

Most of the images sagely nodded their heads, except for Baked Bean, who was frantically searching for his escaped little unicorn colt again.

“I understand,” said Monster reluctantly.  “Magic would make things worse.  Sunset was Princess Celestia’s magic student.  Knows all kinds of magic I don’t.  Still needs friends, though.  I can do that.”

“That will wait.  I’m sure that when you eventually meet her, you’ll be friends.  Isn’t that right, guys?” said one of the images, and most of them nodded in response.  “See, Twilight.  You just have to be patient.  And get some more sleep,” he added.

“Indeed,” said an odd green and white striped pony.  “Godspeed.  Good night, Twilight.  Sleep tight.”

It was probably for the best.  Repeating the saying to herself did not help Monster feel any better, but there was no real other option at the moment.  Sunset Shimmer was a grown pony, older than Trixie, and Monster had enough problems making friends with ponies her own age.  Well, her apparent age.

Bits of Monster had faded away while parts of Twilight Sparkle rose to the surface, much like her winter coat was speckling her dark hairs with little flecks of purple.  In five years or so when she became much older, she could try to breach the dimensional barrier and meet Celestia’s former student.  She would be much more Twilight Sparkle then.  It was the sensible solution.

It sucked.

Monster slowly slipped back into the corridor leading to the room she was sharing with the rest of her friends while in Canterlot.  The school field trip week had been fun, admittedly.  They had visited the zoo, several impressive civic structures, and a discovery zone where they had made a number of discoveries that Cheerilee had admitted were educational, even if they were moderately destructive.  Monster had even had a nice, long talk with the old government pony carrying the battered thermos, making sure to give him credit for how she and her friends had managed to defeat King Sombra and leaving him mostly perplexed.  But happy.

The process of running a proper palace was far more complicated than any spell she had ever seen, and the ponies who ran the place for Princess Celestia and Princess Luna were skilled in their craft.  Some of them had even gone back with Laminia to the Storm Kingdom so they could help Fizzy run her new organization, which gave Monster a little flutter in her tummy since the Office of Diplomatic Support Services had sent her original father along with the group.

Everything changed, despite the way Monster wished she could be in a snowglobe where flakes of artificial plastic in glycerine were the only things that moved.  Once it got colder in Ponyville and there was more snow, Scootaloo said she was going to show them all how to snowboard.  Twist was already looking forward to it, and had bought a dozen splints and braces to go with hot chocolate and marshmallows.

But for now, bed.

Or maybe…

The simulacrum spell she used to leave an image of herself in the bed used only a teeny bit of her essence instead of the third she had used so long ago during her parents wedding.  It made a good distraction, so nopony was going to notice if she slipped into a side room and read through the ‘consult’ notes that Other Green Grass had given her.  It was a very thick sheaf of paper, filled with small words and numbers, which made it unbearably tempting even if she did not have any more coffee.  There were enough thoughts whirling around in Monster’s mind that she would be unable to sleep for more than a few minutes at a time anyway.

It took several doors to find a side room with a desk where she would not be disturbed, and Monster stumbled a little when hefting the stack of papers into proper reading order.  Fatigue slowed her normal frantic rational mind into something a little more reasonable, allowing her to spread out the tidy sections of mathematical formulae and consider the interphase of dimensional physics while the back of her head considered a different, much more personal problem.

Sunset Shimmer ran.

Monster was very familiar with running.  She ran to things that needed fought, and away from things which frightened her.  What little she had been able to find in the bits and fragments of Sunset’s life indicated she had been… Was a very powerful unicorn, probably recruited by Princess Celestia to use the Elements of Harmony before things went terribly wrong.

The temptations of power.  A demand to access the archives where forbidden spells were stored.  The hint that she wanted to become an alicorn.  The fear that Monster could feel from Princess Celestia when she mentioned Sunset in passing, not the fear of conflict or violence, but the deep regret of somepony she cared very much about who she would never see again.  To apologize.  To forgive.  Much like her sister.  And Monster.

Having that much faith in a pony, trusting them to do great things, depending on them, loving them.  And then Sunset Shimmer wanted more, something that Celestia would not, could not give her.  It hurt Celestia, deep inside where she dared not show it.  Sunset Shimmer must have been hurt even more.

Luna fought.  Sunset ran.

Somewhere out there, Sunset was bleeding from a wound which would not heal.  Not without help.  Five years would be too long.  Five days was too much.  Twilight Sparkle was the Princess of Friendship.  If that title had any meaning at all, she could not leave this problem untended.

It had been a mistake to call upon her tutor as an advisor in this matter.  She needed to find somebody who knew the same pain that Sunset went through, the same tearing of the heart, betrayal of trust.  Not like Celestia felt when she had to imprison Luna in the moon.  Somebody who had to run, not fight.  Somebody who knew exactly what Sunset Shimmer felt like.

Nopony came to mind, even as the hours passed and she worked through pages of dimensional theory that stuffed her foggy mind to the brim with images and ideas.  Several times, Monster’s nose brushed against the paper as she nodded off into the fuzzy world that bordered sleep.  Each time, she straightened back up, organized her notes, and began again, hoping to find some sort of solution to her conundrum in paper and ink.

Coffee would have helped.

Eventually, the inevitable happened.  Monster rested her head for just a moment against the smooth papery surface of her notes, breathing in the scent of alien ink and foreign ponies as thoughts of Sunset Shimmer wafted through her mind.  As relaxing muscles made her weight increase, the paper wrinkled beneath her nose, and the thinking part of Twilight Sparkle’s mind took on other tasks during slumber.

Somewhere, Sunset Shimmer needed her almost as much as Monster needed coffee.

Two vectors which intersected.

Somewhere nearby.

At a door.