Two ponies and a dragon walked into a minotaur bar. Mind you, they didn't enter at the same time.
The first pony to enter was a blue unicorn named Cobalt, who bore a chef's knife cutie mark. Or at least, that was what he wanted the casual observer to think. In actuality, he was a red earth pony by the name of Red Fields, who just so happened to have a hobby of disguising himself, and who bore a throwing knife mark. It was certainly a useful skill for an assassin from a famous family of killers, but his disguise abilities served another purpose as well. Because of the fake horn, nobody considered it odd when he used unicorn-type magic.
The second pony to enter the bar was a little, prepubescent unicorn colt. He was tall for his apparent age, but simultaneously slightly underweight, making him appear like a walking stick figure. His dark gray fur was thick and matted, as if it had never been brushed once in his life. His mane and tail were similarly long and disheveled; the black mass of fluff on his head looked more like a lion's mane than a pony's and the tail dragged on the ground behind him.
The young colt looked around the bar with a ravenous, predatory gaze. His eyes hovered over each of the minotaurs, bulls and cows alike, before moving on to the next one. In a small mining village like this, there wasn't a single minotaur that a pony wouldn't see as a walking wall of muscle.
The colt sat down at the bar next to Cobalt, and waved over the waitress. "Could I get something big and filling? I could eat a mountain right now."
The waitress replied, "Sure thing, sweetie." She tried to give him a friendly smile - keyword: tried - but failed when she made eye contact with the colt. It came out as a malformed grimace-smile hybrid that quickly vanished. The minotaur waitress quickly sped away, knowing in her gut that there was something wrong with that colt.
After a few moments of silence, Cobalt, who was slightly drunk, decided to ask the question on his mind to the young colt. "You're awfully young to be on your own. Where are your parents?" Cobalt's accent clearly places him as a foreigner, one from Equestria, on the other side of the Minos-Equis sea.
"I'm on my own. My mom died in childbirth and my rapist, bastard sire got himself trapped in a hellish place when he pissed off a necromancer. Been on my own for practically my whole life," the colt replied matter-of-factly.
"Oh." Cobalt looked down at his beer. It was a heavy minotaur brew, and at that moment, was far more interesting for Cobalt to stare at than the colt next to him.
The waitress came by with a tray piled high with a large salad and bread rolls. The colt looked at it with mild disappointment, as if he expected something else, but then dug in with great gusto. Cobalt watched in awe as the little colt put away more food than even he, a full grown stallion, could eat, and then promptly ordered seconds.
His old teacher had once told him that unicorns have to eat extra food proportional to their magical strength; the stronger the unicorn, the more they needed to eat.
And before Cobalt knew it, his little companion was on thirds and was showing no signs of slowing. A small crowd had gathered to watch the colt eat, and were starting to cheer him on.
Finally, after the third massive portion had found its way down the colt's throat, he sighed in relief. "That hit the spot." The colt then set the requisite silver pieces on the counter, but made no move to stand.
"Cobalt, just because your teacher is temporarily disembodied doesn't mean that you get to slack off on your essays or project reports."
Cobalt's brain practically tripped over those words. "Wait, what?"
"Cobalt, would you kindly figure it out?" the colt asked.
But to Cobalt's mind, it was not a question; that was an irrefutable order thanks to the geas he was under. And there was only one pony in the world who could control him like that through it. "Sparkle?"
"In the new flesh," he - no, she - replied.
"B-but... You're a colt!"
"I am aware, yes."
"How?" Cobalt asked.
Sparkle shrugged. "When I was disembodied back at the Crystal Empire, I found that I couldn't access my pocket dimension, so I couldn't get to the spare bodies I had in there, Sombra and Tirek. Anyway, I needed a body, and fast, so when a group of ponies came out of the Empire, I latched on to the first mare I could find. Turns out, Ruby had an embryo already that hadn't developed its own soul yet, and my reincarnation spell latched onto that instead of making a new body."
"And the parents?" Cobalt asked.
"It turns out that my mere existence is like poison to the mother's soul. For the first few weeks, she was fine, but by the time I was ready to be born, her personality and memories had been mostly eroded away. Her soul gave out shortly after I was born," Sparkle answered.
"And the father?"
"Raped Ruby, along with countless other mares, repeatedly. The ex-king, ex stallion Sombra is currently enjoying my full hospitality in my pocket dimension."
Meanwhile in a parallel dimension...
"It's gone, it's gone, it's gone, it's gone, it's gone, it's gone..."
"I got most of it working while I was in utero thanks to Thorn's help, so now Sombra's facing an endless loop of his personal horrors made very real," Sparkle said with a sadistic gleam in her eyes.
"Well, I'm glad you are healthy and... happy. Where is Thorn, by the way?" Cobalt asked.
The ex-mare said, "He should be here soon. Hey, are you going to eat that?" She pointed to his half-finished pasta.
"You're still hungry?" the shocked stallion asked.
His food was already in her mouth when she started answering. Through mouthfuls of food, she managed to spit out what the assassin understood as, "I'm aging ten times as fast during the day and over a hundred times as fast during the night. I need the calories."
Well, that answered Cobalt's question of how a colt that should logically be only a month old looked like a prepubescent about to enter his first growth spurt. "Hey, Sparkle, which pronoun do I use with you?"
"Either. I don't care," she replied, setting down the fork on the empty pasta plate. "I feel like a mare at heart, but we'll get weird looks if you call me a mare. It doesn't matter to me; it's just a word."
"Right," he said with a nod. The door to the bar opened, drawing Cobalt's attention to it. "Thorn's here."
The dracolich spotted them quickly and strode over. Undisguised as he was, Thornecrovitar made for a fearsome sight. He had long, sharp claws, a bladed tail, wickedly sharp back spines and teeth, eyes that glowed green, and pupils that undulated like black flame. He drew plenty of nervous stares as he walked through the bar.
"Hello, Cobalt. Long time, no see." He stuck out his thumb and smiled. "Hey Mom. I brought you more of the good stuff."
Snatching the bag from his grip, she ripped it open and drew out strips of raw meat. She wolfed them down without hesitation.
Cobalt gagged a little. He knew his teacher liked eating meat, but he couldn't stand the stuff. He'd eaten chicken once and had been sick for hours, while Sparkle, who had eaten the same chicken, had been completely fine. It was his earth pony nature rejecting it, he supposed.
Sparkle looked at him. She slurped up strip of meat and then said, "Don't ask."
"Sparkle, when were you planning on going back to Equestria? When I left, Shining Armor was kind of messed up; I think it would be good for him to see you again... For the first time," Cobalt suggested.
Sparkle paused her voracious eating. "Define 'messed up.'"
"Depressed, mostly. It was like I was talking to a golem, really. He just wasn't all there," Cobalt replied. "I think he took your temporary death much harder than he should have.
"But he knew I'd be back, right?" Sparkle asked, worried for her brother. "Right?"
Neither Thorn nor Cobalt answered. "Did... did we forget to tell him that I could come back?"
"Errr... We've kept so many things secret from uncle Shiny that I can't remember it all. I just don't talk to him about black magic," Thorn replied.
"I literally can't. I'm geas bound, remember?" Cobalt added.
"Buck. Buck it all to the pits." For a brief moment, Sparkle lost control of her magic. Dark energy erupted into the room, causing all the other occupants to freeze in place. "Sorry!" Sparkle called out as she reined her magic back in. Dropping back down to a more normal volume, she asked, "And did we ever send a letter to Twilight about all this?"
She looked at Thorn. He looked away.
"For crying out loud! Now they all think I really am dead!" The little foal necromancer slammed her head against the table, picked it up again, and then began stuffing it with more of her dwindling meat supply.
Her sister, Twilight, was the more neurotic of the two, and far less able to deal with stress. Even though they were technically the same mare, it had been twelve years since the timelines had split. Sparkle, the necromancer, had had a very different life than Twilight, the paladin and bearer of the Element of Magic.
"Hey, cheer up," Thorn said. "You've got me. I can send them a letter and we can get this all cleared up in a heartbeat."
Sparkle smiled and blushed.
At that moment, a defect in her new body decided to show itself. Sparkle's new body had bi-tribalism; it had improperly grown, resulting in it demanding her magic both like a crystal pony and like a unicorn. And while the conflicting demands on her magic hurt her control, it also caused another effect.
Like a crystal pony, Sparkle went transparent when she was happy. Her bones, because of her condition, did not. For a brief moment, Sparkle's entire skeleton was visible.
"Ahh! No! Bad body!" Sparkle said, forcing herself to become fully opaque again. Cobalt asked what just happened, so Sparkle filled him in to the basic details of her condition. She also told him of the heart problems that came with it, though told him she'd already fixed that defect.
After he was satisfied with the short explanation, she turned to her son (who was now technically older than her). "Thorn, take a letter."
He pulled a quill and scroll from his bags. It was always a good idea to keep writing implements handy. "Ready!"
"Dear BBBFF..."