Chapter 1: The magician and the policeman.
Sighing once again, Canterlot City’s police officer, Shining Armor, turned right on his nightly patrol. It wasn’t his turn to patrol, actually, but driving late in the night through the empty streets helped him think.
His life hadn’t been good these last few months.
He had finally proposed to his high school girlfriend. Everything had been going great. That is, until the wedding’s rehearsal where his little sister had acted all crazy and jealous, and he had committed one of the biggest mistakes in his entire life.
His sister had been telling him that his bride wasn’t acting like usual. After very long and tiresome arguments, he had exploded and he expelled her from his wedding and his life… Only to find out on the big day that his bride, Mi Amore Cadence, was being impersonated by her cousin Chrysalis, who resembled her so much that it was practically impossible to tell the difference with all the makeup she had used.
On top of that, Chrysalis had given him a more subtle version of the rape drug, making him very gullible and unable to distinguish the differences.
But thanks to his stubborn sister, she and the true Cadence had appeared in the middle of the ceremony. There was a big commotion. Yelling, insults, people running around and bumping into each other…
At the end of the day, Chrysalis had escaped. The wedding was postponed, naturally, and his bride was sent to the hospital with malnourishment and dehydration because Chrysalis had locked her up in a basement. And if that wasn’t enough, his little sister had stopped talking to him. She wouldn’t even look at him.
After that, Shining thought that after falling so much, he could only climb his way up again. But sadly, life had other plans. His sister had gotten so mad at him, that she changed the plans they had worked on together. When she entered college, she would move with him and his wife. But now, she had decided to live in the campus’ dormitories instead.
At the same time, his relationship with Cadence had begun to fall apart. Not only was she really hurt for the way he had treated his sister, whom she had taken care of when she was a toddler, but she felt betrayed when she knew that Shining had slept with her cousin.
Naturally, Shining got angry at that. She was blaming him when in reality, he had been a victim too. Even after every trace of the drug Chrysalis had given him left his body, he still suffered sequels. More than once, when he was with Cadence, he had flashbacks about the times he had with Chrysalis.
Little by little, the tension in their relationship was getting bigger and bigger, and the date of their wedding day was delaying more and more.
In the end, they decided to take some time apart in hopes that the distance would help their love heal. They hadn’t planned that it would be more than just a couple of days. But those days turned into weeks, then months, and when he realized, it had been six months since their failed wedding on June.
They never talked about it, but it wasn’t necessary, for they knew very well that their relationship was over.
When Shining Armor got to that conclusion, he felt as if he had woken up from a dream. And, come to think of it, in some way, it had been like that.
She was the lead cheerleader in high school, the top one in grades, thrice queen of prom dance, and she was in almost every committee.
He? Well, he was just a geek that spent every weekend playing dungeons and dragons with his friends in someone’s basement, and having very long debates about which brand of comics was better.
The very idea of two people from completely different worlds ending together was ludicrous, at best. Something that you’d only see on cheap soap operas or teens’ series. Many people had told him that their relationship wasn’t going to end well, and he had always answered that they were wrong. They had to be wrong.
Yet, in the end, they had been right all along.
He sighed again as he watched his clock. Almost midnight. Instead of driving to the police station, he turned to the other side, where his house was. Everyone in the station knew that he was having a very bad moment. Fortunately, his boss had been very comprehensive and had allowed him to go home instead of returning to the station. He only had to report through radio.
It was a preferential treatment, obviously, but everyone knew that he was soon going to be ascended to departamental boss, so, naturally, nobody wanted to say anything about it.
He quickly grabbed the radio, informing that he was off for the day. Once he got the confirmation, he decided to do one last round in an attempt to clear his mind. But he didn’t have much luck.
Resigned, he decided to go home for good. But when he was crossing the bridge, something caught his attention: A feminine shape was standing at the other side of the railing. He didn’t need to be a genius like his sister to understand what that girl was trying to do.
He quickly stopped the car, doing his best to be as silent as possible, knowing that if he startled her, he would only force the very situation he was trying to avoid.
While he got closer, he noticed a couple of things. Like the discarded, empty beer cans on the floor next to a backpack and a book. He noticed the peculiar hair colors of this girl: golden tufts tangled in a red mane, looking like fire, even in the dark, snowy night. And lastly, this girl looked like a teenager, more or less his sister’s age.
Suddenly, in a fast motion, the girl swallowed the rest of beer from the can. She dropped it to the river, and after a couple of seconds, she moved a leg forward, so she would fall to the water.
For an instant, Shining’s mind switched the image of this girl about to suicide, with the image of his sister. He remembered how devastated she looked that day, and he panicked.
“Stop!” He yelled.
The girl turned to look at him, losing her balance and falling.
Thankfully, she fell to the bridge’s side, bumping against the railing and bending her body in a failed attempt to fall to the ground.
Shining sighed for the upteenth time that day. He got closer to the girl, who was panting tiredly.
“What do you think you’re doing?” He asked. Since he was just a couple of inches away, he was sure he’d catch her if she tried to jump again, so he felt brave enough to start interrogating her.
She looked up at him. Her gaze was clouded and uncentered, unable to point which of the three or four was the real one.
“None of your business,” she babbled angrily. Her mind decided to forget the suicide, so she climbed the railing, falling on the floor like dead weight.
“Where do you live?” He asked, hoping that the girl wasn’t too drunk to have forgotten it, and at the same time, that she was drunk enough so that she’d tell him easily. He didn’t want this girl to spend the night in a cell.
“Why do you want to know?” She blurted, or tried to do so. She was looking about 10 inches at his right. Shining turned around, making sure that there wasn’t anyone else. He decided to ask her address once again. “What? You wanna know so the others can come to bother me at my door too?!” She growled, making Shining raise an eyebrow. Maybe, this girl thought he was someone else.
“Well, forget it! I won’t tell you I live in Walker Street 12507!” She said, trying to get on her feet. The key word being “trying”.
Happy with his answer, Shining picked up the backpack and the book, ignoring the cans. He grabbed the girl by the arm and as nicely as he could, he dragged her into the car. He quickly got in the driver’s seat and started to get this girl to her house so her parents would take care of her.
As he drove, he thought that something was amiss. But it wasn’t until he got to the address that he realized that something was wrong.
It wasn’t a residential area, it was industrial. And the address the girl gave him was of an abandoned factory.
Clearly, the drunk girl had given him the wrong address. He turned around angrily, ready to yell at her for making him waste his time. But his surprise was great when he saw the back door open.
That was impossible! Police cars were designed so that the back doors wouldn’t open from the inside!
Hearing metallic sounds, Shining turned to the street. He saw the girl playing with her keys, struggling to open the factory’s door. Maybe this girl was so confused that she really had thought that this was her house. But that theory was destroyed when the door opened.
Getting off the car, Shining walked to the door. This was very unusual, and he didn’t like it one bit. His police mind started to think of many scenarios, every one being worse than the others. Maybe this girl had ran away from home, or maybe she was working as a prostitute! He moaned angrily at the thought that would carry the arrest of an underaged prostitute.
“I’m home!” She yelled. Shining decided to look inside, taking his hand to his gun just in case. But he only saw the girl standing in the middle of the room, which hardly resembled a living room. “Oh, that’s right. I live alone,” she said to herself, giggling softly before letting herself fall on a very worn out sofa.
Shining took a good look at the place. There was an old, dirty sofa, a few wooden tables that were about to give up, a laptop on top of one of the tables, a trash can full of fast food envelopes, and metallic stairs that probably lead to a room that looked similarly. And somehow, everything was very clean. The place looked somewhat habitable.
Shining turned to the girl on the sofa. He decided that he had to put an end to this.
“Alright, stand up. You’re coming with me to the station,” he ordered. The girl moaned, not wanting to move at all. “Besides, I need you to tell me your name.”
Apparently, this created a reaction on the girl, who turned her head to look at him and frowned.
“Why do you wanna know that?” She growled.
“So I can contact your parents,” he answered angrily. He hated dealing with drunk people and their lack of logic.
His words seemed to make an impact on the girl, for she stopped frowning and looked thoughtful.
“So… You’re gonna get me to my parents?” She asked, and she sounded strangely hopeful.
“Yes?” Shining answered, confused. Normally, there were two different alternatives that lead to these kind of situations. One, if the teenager is the typical rebel that runs away because they think they’re smarter than their parents. And the second one is if the parents are real assholes, enough so that they think it’s better to live alone by their own means.
“Alright,” she answered calmly. Her expression then turned into one of anger. “When you find them, let me know. I wanna meet them.”
“Meet them?” Shining asked.
“Yeah, you know. Hi! I’m Sunset Shimmer. Remember? The baby you abandoned in an orphanage without even giving her a name!” She yelled the second part of the sentence, and then let her face fall between the cushions of the sofa.
Shining’s eyes widened when he understood the situation. Rubbing his forehead, he thought of what he should do. But there were some questions he needed to ask first.
“Who’s been taking care of you?” he asked. The girl, whose name he now knew was Sunset Shimmer, muffled something through the cushions. “What?”
“I take care of myself,” she growled with her eyes narrowed. “I’ve been taking care of myself since I got here.”
“And when was that?”
Making a pause, Sunset tried to think, which proved to be too much of a challenge, as she felt her mind all fuzzy. In the end, she just could remember one thing.
“The Pegasi lost,” she said.
It was one of the things she could remember about her first days here. She had heard something about pegasi, and she had wanted to talk with them. That is, until she discovered that The Pegasi was the name of a football team from the next town.
Shining’s eyes sparked in realization. The Pegasi was Cloudsdale’s Football team, a team that had never lost a game, except for the tournament of… “Nine years ago!” He yelled. If his suppositions were correct, this girl had been living by herself since she was about eight years old.
Nine years living alone, doing who-knew-what to survive.
She looked healthy, though, he’d give her that. She didn’t look worn out like other girls in her situation. Which was hard to tell if it was a good or a bad thing.
“And before that?” He had to know the whole panorama so he could chose the best course of action.
“The princess,” she answered.
Shining raised an eyebrow. It seemed that she was starting to ramble.
“The princess… of course…”
“Yes, Princess Celestia,” Sunset said, not noticing the sarcasm on the officer’s voice. “I was her personal student and protégé in magic.” Shining only looked at her. “You don’t believe I was her apprentice!” Sunset suddenly blurted. “I was the best magician in the School for Gifted Unicorns!” She yelled, standing up.
Shining couldn’t help but chuckling a little.
“So you’re a magical unicorn?” He asked with amusement in his voice.
Sunset tottered with her eyes narrowed. She took a few seconds to answer.
“Well… I’m a human now… But that’s because of that stupid mirror!” She concluded, and fell onto the sofa in a sitting position.
Shining shook her head.
“Alright, I better take you to the station,” he said, getting closer to her.
“No,” Sunset said pouting. She extended her hand to him, and it started to glow with a cyan color. Shining’s body glowed with the same color, and before he knew it, he was thrown back, landing on his back.
For a couple of seconds, Shining only stared in silence at the girl, who once again collapsed on the sofa.
As any fan of comics and games of roles, he had always imagined himself as a mage, or that he’d meet one. Of course, he had never thought his fantasies would come true, much less that it would be a drunk teenager that had been living on her own since she was eight, and just an hour ago had tried to suicide.
Finally, he took a decision: Take her to his place.
He quickly searched the place, and easily found the bedroom where the mage had her clothes. It was pretty bare, just like the living room. A brass bed with a white mattress and white bed sheets, a wooden desk worn out for the moist, and a green wardrobe.
Using the backpack he had taken form the girl, he started to take some clothing changes for her. It was hard not to feel like a perverted psycho when he grabbed her underwear, especially because the girl had a very sexy taste on panties.
When he finished, he grabbed the backpack and got to the girl, who was sleeping silently. He did his best not to wake her up and carried her to the car.
He knew very well that what he was doing wasn’t right, and that it was very near to become a kidnap, but he had to know more about this girl. Besides, the way he had met her only told him that she needed help.
And he wanted to help her.