//------------------------------// // Party Like There's No Tomorrow // Story: Sugarfree // by Wade //------------------------------// Party Like There's No Tomorrow • • • • “Dude.” Gilda’s grin grew impish. “Your goddess has the hots for you.” Joe scoffed, giving the griffon a bemused look. “Gilda, come on now.” He craned his neck to see if Celestia was still about, but caught no sight of her. That was fast. “The princess barely knows who I am.” A mock solemnity washed over Gilda’s face as she held her mug over her heart, raising her bent arm and similarly bent wing in the traditional griffon salute. “I swear to my tribe, the spirits, and Anzu himself.” She leveled a stoic stare upon him. “You’ve got a deity looking to jump your bones, dweeb.” Joe raised an eyebrow, trying to figure out her game. Gilda tended to take that kind of thing pretty seriously. He’d never seen her use it for some bizarre joke. “Yeah, oookay.” The griffon pulled in her wing and dropped her claw to the ground, giving him a half-lidded grin. “I’ll prove it. HEY STINKY PIE!” She bellowed, her voice echoing across the party. On the other side of the room, Pinkie sped up her intensely complicated story to a high-pitched flurry of squeaks, then waved goodbye to her captive audience of dumbstruck ponies. With three long, impressively high bounces, she landed right beside Gilda with an alarmingly loud thump. “Yup??” “Joe doesn’t believe me about the princess.” Pinkie seemed to just stand there, vibrating place in with slowly building intensity, eyes wide open. Gilda cleared her throat. “You know... the ‘snogging’?” She grinned, making two small air quotes with her talons. Pinkie looked up at the griffon in surprise. “Gilda!! We’re not supposed to talk about that kind of stuff!” The griffon gave a dismissive wave. “Aw come on, it’s Joe. He’s not gonna go around blabbing about it!” Pinkie returned to her internal la-la land for a few moments before suddenly springing to life again, prodding the little plush bumblebee in her mane while she sashayed her hips, in tune with a cartoonishly dorky, low-pitched voice. “Don’t be such a stick in the mud, Pinkie Pie! Do you want to tell the story or not?” Pinkie immediately deflated onto the floor, looking up at her toy. “Commodore Snugglebug! We shouldn’t!” Darting back onto her hooves, she wiggled the toy around with her head, pantomiming the voice once again. “If you don’t have the gemstones to say it, then I will! It all began—” Pinkie’s face collapsed into a fierce, challenging glare. “Oh no you don’t! I’ll tell the story!!” she shrieked. Gilda gave Joe a baffled look. With a few quick glances around the immediate area, Pinkie leaned in, giving two small inward waves of the hoof. They drew closer. Her eyes darted from one side to the other before she raised a hoof to the side of her mouth. “It’s not even really a story but... okay... don’t tell anypony though.” Joe nodded. “We were talking to Luna about this super secret thing? And she mentions off-hoof that she’d had—” Pinkie’s fur stood on end with electric giddiness, like a cat about to pounce. “—one of those dreams, about you! About biting your butt!!” Joe rolled his eyes, looking over at Gilda. Gilda chuckled. “Okay yeah, you know that part, but then Luna gets all defensive, apologizing to Celestia for fantasizing about ‘her’ stallion. Like it was this big thing between them. She starts going on about how the princess had already ‘staked claim’ to your rugged ass.” Joe raised a hoof over his mouth with a quaking chuckle. “Hooo-leee hayseed.” he shook his head, glancing between Pinkie and Gilda. “There’s no way.” Pinkie nodded with delighted glee, giggling like a schoolfilly while she pranced in place, from left side to right side, then back. Joe turned to Gilda, who had her claws over her beak, similarly amused. Joe chuckled, noticing the familiar white figure of Sunny Skies, who was simply standing there with the brightest, most intense blush he had ever seen. “Hey! You made it! Gilda! Look! Sunny’s here!” Joe thrust a hoof at Sunny, face alight with childlike excitement. Gilda didn’t respond, distracted by the unintelligible string of gibberish Pinkie Pie had begun speaking to herself whilst spinning in circles. “Okay you have got to try these donuts I made. Come on, they’re back here.” Joe reached out a hoof and touched her shoulder to guide her to the kitchen. Sunny startled at the sensation, snapping out of her thoughts and glancing at Joe in unpleasant surprise. Joe pulled back his hoof, feeling guilty. No touching. Right. • • • •  Sunny’s expression shifted to one of guilt. No matter how many times she walked about in 'casual dress,' it still felt incredibly intrusive having ponies just... walk up and touch her. Shake her hoof, bump into her on the street, pat her on the back. It wasn’t like she hadn’t touched anypony as the princess — she did it all the time — but it was always her choice, something she did to them. Princess Celestia could stroll through the Canterlot market commons on Sunday afternoon, and the crowd would clear around her like oil in water. It was inconceivable that one of her subjects might impose a hoof on their goddess; a genuine offense, even. She wasn’t sure when this had began, but it was a long, long time ago. Even now, in such relaxed times as these, to place a reassuring hoof on one of her ponies was almost always met with nerve-wracked anxiety. She hardly even needed to look at Joe as the goddess of the sun to foster the same reaction. It had become a rather distant kind of normal, for her. Sunny silently cursed herself for feeling so foalishly resentful of Joe for overstepping a boundary she didn’t even want, one he couldn’t possibly know about. Even so. She felt how she felt. She followed Joe over to the small wooden table on which he’d stacked his beloved donuts. With a smile, she took one in hoof. Joe moved a foreleg between a large wooden keg and an open bottle of wine. "Alrighty, we’ve got beer and wine. What's your poison, sunbeam?" Sunny stared at the keg. By the stars, when was the last time she’d had a beer? She honestly couldn't remember. It seemed strangely, absurdly exotic to her now. "I think I need a beer." She smiled, taking a large bite out of the maple cake donut. It was unreal how good those things were. Joe beamed with pride, seeing her delight. Turning to the keg, he filled a stein of ale and placed it on the small coffee table beside her. With another eager chomp, she devoured the rest of the pastry, delicately licking her hoof to clean off the remaining sugar. With a satisfied sigh, she glanced up at Joe, who was watching the display with the dorkiest, most adorable grin she’d ever seen. She blushed. It was weirdly thrilling, letting him see her with her guard down. She sheepishly burped behind her hoof, turning to pick up her drink. Beside the mug stood a small, glass-framed photograph of a little colt, tucked into a hospital bed with a moori companion curled up beside him like a kitten. Her drink in hoof, she picked up the frame, studying the image. The colt was out cold, his forehead blackened by a starburst of charred hair branching out from a tightly-wrapped horn. The marking stood in stark contrast to his amber coat and dark orange mane. “...Is this you?” she asked, looking at the baker with concern. Joe fidgeted uncomfortably. “Yeah.” She flipped the frame around. The back was covered with signatures and notes from friends and family. Seraph’s was the largest and messiest, a foalish swirl of adorably horrid hoofwriting, ‘you’d better get better, you dingus!!’ it begged, alongside a potato-like picture of a pony she was pretty sure was supposed to be Joe. Others, she assumed, were his mother and father’s, schoolmates’, and Dive’s distinctive chickenstratch. ‘You’re a fighter, kiddo. Fight this.’ Then, she saw it. In the corner, etched with divinely ornate calligraphy. Hoofwriting that was at once indulgently old-fashioned and perfectly modern. Princess Celestia’s. ‘You are the strongest little pony I know.’ it read, flanked by her tight, wispy signature and a tiny little heart. Sunny furrowed her brow, trying as hard as she could to remember when, or why, she had written this. It must’ve been fifteen, maybe twenty years ago. That was a heartbeat. How could she not recall something so recent? Her memory sorted through dozens of similarly bedridden foals over the years, each she’d made a point to meet, speak with, and comfort, as best she could. If they had only one year to go, or fifty, they deserved it. Everypony deserved to be loved. “I was really, really sick, for a while.” Joe sighed, staring off toward the crowd. “I remember feeling myself almost... disappear, a couple times, one night in the hospital. It was the most scared I’ve ever been. Everypony was sure I wouldn’t make it.” she followed his gaze to Seraph, watching as the mare loudly boasted to a captive audience on the other side of the room. “Everypony but my sister.” Sunny turned the frame around once more, gazing at the curled-up filly snuggled against the colt’s side. Joe gently took the frame from her hoof. “I know it sounds weird, but... when I lost my magic, I couldn’t feel the world, like I used to. It was like I went blind.” He gazed at the picture, at the blackened, bandage-wrapped horn. “You can’t imagine how alone that felt.” After a distant moment, Joe slid the photograph back onto the table, cracking a tiny smile. “When she was there, I could feel her. Right there next to me. Somepony who wanted me just to be okay.” Sunny tilted her head, giving the stallion a heartbroken look. “Joe...” Slowly, she raised a hoof, gently pressing it against his own. Joe pulled away with a flustered, awkward chuckle. “Sheesh, listen to me. You just got here and already I’m dumping all this depressing shlock on you.” He raised his drink and took a sip, looking out the window. “You should see our balcony! The view’s gorgeous this time of night.” He moved to start toward the window, then suddenly stopped, dead in his tracks. For a moment, he held the pause, squinting his eyes in confusion. His mouth opened a bit. “What in the...” Sunny gave him a puzzled look, then turned. She didn’t quite understand what she saw. Ponies were slowly pouring out of the room and onto the balcony, their heads craned and their eyes wide with awe. A slowly intensifying moonlight bathed everything in sight, almost as if it was the middle of the day. Sunny noticed an eerie silence had suddenly and strikingly befallen the room, Seraph halting her story mid-sentence to float outside with the rest of them. She stared in utter confusion, trying to imagine what it could possibly be that captivated them so. She turned to Joe, exchanging a baffled look with the stallion. Joe put down his mug. “Hold on, I’m just... gonna check on what this is.” He started for the open window, but felt a hoof against his foreleg. Sunny stood beside him with a firm glance. She was coming with, whether he wanted it or not. Joe’s ears flattened against his head, clearly displeased, but he didn’t stop her. They pressed into the herd of ponies, squeezing through the open window and onto the increasingly crowded balcony. Before and below them stretched the open market commons, populated by hundreds of unicorns, ponies, moori, and pegasi. She had never, in all her countless years, seen the commons so crowded at such a late hour. Every pony in the city must have been out tonight, standing or floating in place, their heads craned upward. Sunny swallowed, feeling a hoof on her shoulder. Joe’s voice was soaked with dread. “Sunny.” She felt him gently shake her. “Look.” She craned her neck upward, and felt her mouth fall open. She couldn’t even... begin, to understand its size. It filled the sky. Utterly, filled it. She pressed several long, deliberate blinks, hoping to grasp its immensity, to mentally step back another few magnitudes of scale. No dice. She started where she could: It was brilliant grey-white, a sky ceiling of vast mountains and deep craters, beaming with a silvery-blue light such intensity it almost hurt to stare at it. But stare at it she did. It was the moon. Somehow, against all measure of reason and belief, it had come to them. She couldn’t tell how far from the ground it was, but it was far, far closer than it could possibly be. Miles. Just a few miles away. It was impossible. “Isn’t he pretty?!” Sunny slowly followed the voice back down to the balcony, staring blankly at the simple pink mare that sat with her back to Sunny, gazing up at the unthinkably colossal planetoid above. Pinkie turned her head to the side with a smile, her irises burning with a fierce red-pink coloration. “Commadore Snugglebug said he might drop by for a visit, but I never thought there’d be so much of him!!” her voice had become steady and controlled, yet boundlessly cheerful. There wasn’t the slightest hint of distress or anger, just simple, excited delight. Sunny swallowed, her ears flat against her head. She hadn’t the slightest idea what to even think about this. Her senses completely failed her. She had no idea why, but she couldn’t feel a bucking thing from the moon ahead. At all. It was like it wasn’t there, like it was made of nothing. But she could feel the air pressing down on her, and see it, see its light brightening up every structure in sight. She knew it was there. “When he told me all about his birthday, I knew I just had to bring him by! Everypony deserves a party for their birthday!!” Sunny turned to look at Joe, but he offered no sign of interest. Like everyone else’s, his eyes were locked onto the moon — half-lidded, cloudy, but now burning with a light around the iris similar to Pinkie’s. She pressed a hoof against his chest. “Joe?” she whispered, her voice taut with terror. He blinked, very slowly, but remained in place. She pressed harder, shaking him. “J-Joe?!” Nothing. Pinkie turned to face Sunny, standing on all fours. It was then she realized how much larger the pony had become. The mare now towered above her, at a size at least that of an alicorn. Her gently-waving locks of curly hair growing almost as fast as her toothy smile. “I thought, ‘what better place to have a party than the castle!?’ Why, they’ve got the biggest, most splenderrific present I’ve ever seen wrapped up in that room, ready to go! Commadore Snugglebug thinks it’ll be just perfect!!” She looked up at the sky with a giggle, bobbing her head from one side to the other, the plush bumblebee in her mane flopping about. A light crept up its little stitched body, from its feet to its big, wavy bee antennae, and slowly, it seemed to melt into her head. Absorb into her. She laughed at the sensation, shaking her mane as it disappeared into her. All that remained were two, long, cartoonishly cute bumblebee antennae, each twitching about with a mind of their own. Pinkie waved them in a lazy circle, eyes turned up to watch them twirl about. The two antennae perked into the air for a moment, stiff, while Pinkie’s grin seemed to fade. She gasped inward with two sharp breaths, then paused, scrunching up her nose. Finally, she chirped out a high-pitched sneeze. In an instant, the air above them ignited into a reddish-pink aurora, buffering the moon and the kingdom with a blanket of eerie, crimson moonlight. Sunny’s heart fell as she stared into the light. It was the one from the book. The one her sister had rallied from the sky every night. The one that had snuggled its way into her ponies’ bellies, one cupcake at a time. The red glow seemed to coil around Pinkie like an intangible whirlpool of quicksand, spiralling in from the sky. Her mane shimmered into a stunning pink-white ethereal wave, each incredibly long curl stretching into a waving tendril of bubblegum hair. As she rose into the air, propelled by nothing but an audible hum of energy, she resembled a twisted echo of Celestia’s Summer Sun Celebration, each band of pink hair its own point of reach. She had only grown larger, now almost the size of a young dragon. Sunny had never seen a single creature like her, and she had seen every living thing on Equestria. With a grimace, Sunny poured everything she had into her horn, hoping against hope that she might raise the moon into its rightful place, far, far away, as she had every night for a thousand years. She felt nothing. Then, she felt that nothing grab hold of her. It was like all the magic in her body was being forced out by something she couldn’t sense, save for a dull, numb heaviness. With a startle, she pulled back, trying to sever the spell, but it wouldn’t break. It poured through her, a raging, unstoppable torrent of nothingness. Her horn glowed red hot from the stress. Her flank shook as she struggled against the force building before her. She stammered out the only words she could. “P-Pinkie... please...” The bubblegum creature spread its glowing tendrils wide, the teeth of her smile an iridescent white. “We’re going to have the biggest, bestest birthday party ever!” she chirped, her sugar-sweet voice swimming with anticipation. “And everypony’s invited.” A thin red force bellowed out from the mare, tearing at the ground, obliterating Joe’s roof, and surging through every pony in sight. Sunny felt the air rush against her face, just before it hit. Everything went black. * * * A time passed. Years, decades, centuries. An absurd amount of time. When Sunny’s vision came back to her, she was in a forest. Or... no... that wasn’t right. She was a forest. How this was possible, she couldn’t say, but she had no body or hooves or eyes or ears, just trees and dirt and tiny, strange, alien little critters crawling about. She could feel the world beneath her, and around her. She felt like maybe she was the world, crazy as that seemed. She also realized, slowly, that this world she had become wasn’t Equestria. She knew that because she could see Equestria, hanging above her in the sky. Every continent, every snow-peaked mountaintop, every yawning body of water, every thing, just floating there in the sky. She stared at it for a while, recognizing the broad landmass her ponies called home. It seemed different, somehow. Younger. There were no towns or cities or farmlands, just forested growth. This was a long time ago. An astonishingly long time ago. Millenia upon millenia. Back before she and her sister had first been called into being. She soon came to notice a feeling, something primal and ugly, boiling within her. Within every leaf and tree and speck of dirt. Anger, fear, frustration. She felt a tickle, miles and miles away, and with a blink, she could see it. A vast, towering pillar of light reached out from her, from the ground, into the sky, through the void and all the way to Equestria. Within this light she saw dozens and dozens of dragons, of all shapes, colors, and sizes, drifting upward, as high as they could go. They were all following the light, trying desperately to escape the world that raged against them. They had lit a fire they could never put out. Like remora fish clinging to the belly of a whale, each dragon was flanked on all sides by moori, pressed against their bodies and under their wings, somehow guiding them, or lifting them, she couldn’t tell. It was a corridor. An escape route off this world and onto the one that towered above them. The rage built, and built, and built. It needed them. It needed their words and their stories and their will, or it would have nothing. Below the pillar of light, a claw formed out of the ground, made of dirt and rocks and trees and coral and every last little thing that made up the world. Vast waterfalls poured off of the widening digits as the planet reached out toward the evacuees, wrapping its inconceivably massive claw around the exodus of dragons and moori. It grasped the pillar of light like a pinecone, and with all its unthinkable might, it squeezed, sending shimmers of errant light up and down the ethereal corridor. With a glint of the eye, the largest of the beasts turned around, shaking off its dozens of moori servants and barrelling back towards their world with a fury. It tore out the side of the corridor, and immediately began blasting searing streams of white-hot fire against the claw. A fire so torrid, so drenched in rage, all it left was grey charcoal. The claw clenched tighter, sending glowing cracks of stress along the base. Soon. A furious scream crackled from the dragon’s maw as it pivoted along the wrist, tearing at its base with an uninterrupted stream of nightmarish wrath. Trees and dirt and plantlife evaporated into grey dust, writhing in a fire so hot it turned rock to ash. The claw surged, now without a base, and collapsed into a million pieces. Three more rose from the ground alongside it, reaching far into the sky, and coming down on the enormous drake with a savage weight. Sunny stared up at the sky, seeing the last of the dragons disappear into the towering, lush world above. It was over. They were gone. She felt the world’s mind blind with fury, and then, blessedly, she awoke. * * * It was still night when Sunny gasped awake, half-buried in roof tiles and wooden planks. She coughed for a few moments, clearing the dust and soot from her lungs, shaking her mane to clear the little bits of wood and brick that clung to her body. Slowly, she climbed to her hooves, and gazed up at the sky. The moon still hung where it had before, and its red lights still shimmered. In the distance, she could just make out the creature Pinkie had become, giggling as she passed over streets and looped around buildings. Below her, in the commons below, she saw hundreds of her subjects slowly trudging toward the castle, all at the same speed, all with the same dull, listless, mechanical tempo. She felt her heart sink. Her little ponies needed her. She closed shut her eyes, and focused on the memory of her transformation. She knew before she even tried that it wouldn’t work. She could only barely feel the magic of the world around her now. It wandered and fled in all directions, chased away by the drifting red lights overhead. It would run scared, all the way out of the city. She knew it would. Sunny knew magic better than it knew itself. All around her lay debris from Joe’s apartment. It had held, as all buildings had, but his roof was completely sheared off. The wave had trashed the inside of his living room with the fury of a flood. Ponies, unicorns, pegasi, and moori trudged about, dragging bags of sugar and trays of cupcakes from Joe’s ‘quarantine’ hooflocker into the cobblestone streets outside. She could only guess where they were bringing it. But she had a pretty good hunch. As she rounded the corner, she could see what she thought was Joe’s flank sticking out from inside a closet. Only, his wrappings had been torn loose, hanging around his leg. She stared at the stallion’s bizarre cutie mark, not sure what to make of it. She’d never seen one of an eye before. She couldn’t imagine what it was for. With a dull tug, the pony emerged from the closet with a heavy bag of sugar hanging from his mouth. Her eyes widened as his face came into view. “Joe?!” she gasped, briskly trotting to the dazed stallion. He showed not the slightest shred of recognition, numbly tugging his bag of sugar past the coffee table and toward the door. She felt tears welling in her eyes, pangs of despair tugging at her chest. She watched as he pulled at the bag, barely noticing as it caught on the side of his sofa and tore open, spilling the tainted white powder across the floor. He regarded the mess with bland disinterest for a moment before reaching down and slowly, listlessly burying his muzzle into the pile of sugar. “Joe... please say something...” Sunny tried desperately to push the stallion back, to keep him away from the sugar, but he pressed forward like she was nothing but a strong wind. She leaned her shoulder into his, hoping and praying to the stars he might stop, that he might feel her. Her hooves scraped along the floor as he swallowed mouthfulls of the sweet powder, like a cow chewing grass. Her cheeks were streaked with tears. “...Can you even hear me?” Silence. She felt him bend down to shovel another heap of the powder into his mouth. Slowly, heavily, she pulled away to look him in the eyes. Empty, cloudy, vacant things, held down by a burning ring of pink. She closed her eyes and held her horn against his. Her heart ached, wishing she knew a single thing she could do to bring him back. With a dismal sigh, she wiped her eyes against the back of her hoof, and turned toward the door. She was going to fix this. She just would. “Cub...” Her heart leapt. She spun around, staring at the stallion with puffy, tear-streaked eyes. He’d raised his head, eyes wide and trembling. Sugar peppered his muzzle. “Joe?!” “Cubbard...” Joe’s eye twitched, his hooves shaking. His voice was tinged with a guttural strain. She held a hoof to her mouth as the crack down his horn began to glow with a dim but increasingly intense orange light. The surrounding horn heated at a fierce rate, taking on a light red tint. “G-got -uu... smm... smnthh...” he stuttered. Jolting slightly, rhythmically, like he was about to sneeze, or throw up, or both. His horn burned white. Sunny turned to the cupboard. It now lay on its side, half-crushed under a mound of roofing. She cast Joe a concerned glance, then cantered over to the destroyed cabinet. Pawing the sides away, a pile of coffee mugs poured out, most of them in pieces. Among the ceramic shards lay a dilapidated ball of wrapping paper. Plucking it out with her mouth, she placed it on the coffee table, and pulled it open with both hooves. With a tug, the paper fell open, revealing a simple coffee mug. Its handle had snapped off and a deep crack ran down its right side, with several smaller chips lost in the pile. She picked it up with her hoof, and turned it around. Across the front there was a little cartoon sun, smiling as it beamed out rays of yellow light. ‘You are my sunshine’ it read, in big, friendly letters. She looked up at Joe. He had desperate tears running down his cheeks, babbling confused, strained, random words to himself, under his breath. He blinked hard, several times, trying to clear his head. His eyes were wide with terror. She had seen those exact eyes... somewhere. It was years and years ago. For a moment, just one moment, she had it. They were on a roof. The castle roof, in a storm. Water bore down on them with a fury. She had stood fast, unwavering against the harsh winds and explosive thunder. Looking down, a flash of lightning had illuminated the amber colt at her hooves, barely holding up his head to stare back at her. Two green eyes, a blackened, shattered horn split between them. Try as she might, Sunny couldn’t recall when it had happened or why. But she would never forget those eyes. A fear so consuming, only a child could know. “Joe...” Sunny trotted to his side, and pulled him into a hug. They just stood there for a time, feeling his racing heart. His trembling steadied, then settled. His heart wound down, beat by beat. His breathing became regular. She pressed her face into his neck, her eyes closed. She spoke softly into his twitching ear. “I’m here. I’m right here.” After a minute or so, she felt a gentle hoof at her back as he brought his foreleg around her. He pulled her tight, and let out a long, shaky sigh. “It felt... felt like... nothing.” She heard him say. He pulled her tighter. “I was just... gone.” The subtle hum of his horn settled into silence. “Then I felt you.”