//------------------------------// // War and Friendship (Part one) // Story: The Sun Never Sets // by Mr Fislewait //------------------------------// "Twilight? What's wrong?" Starlight and Sunset stared at their friend as she stood rooted in the doorway, her frame shaking like a leaf and tears beginning to trickle down her face. "You okay, Twilight? You look like you've seen a ghost-oof," Sunset found herself tackled by the alicorn in a firm yet gentle hug that kept her pressed to the bed. It was not uncomfortable but it was surprising if nothing else and probably not a great idea considering her current fragile state. "I'm so sorry that this has happened to you, Sunset, and you need to know that we are all going to be here for you and the princess loves you and forgives you for everything that happened in the past and nopony is going to blame you for this and you are welcome to stay at the castle when you get out of the hospital we are all going to support you through this and whatever happens we are are going to try to make things right and I can't even imagine how awful it must have been for yousoifyouneedtotalkaboutitthenI'mhereforyou butyoumightneedyourspacesoifyouwantmetoleaveyoualonethat'sfinetoo-" "TWILIGHT!" Sunset snapped. "Take a breathe, slow down and please could you maybe just loosen your grip a little? You're crushing me here." Twilight gave a sheepish smile as she stepped back from the bed, tears still running down her face. "Sorry, Sunset, I just, I just heard some news about you from Dr Horse and I guess I just hadn't realized till now just how bad the past few weeks must have been for you. I mean it's one thing to see the injuries but I guess I'd just imagined that's all it would be, that everything would just be skin deep," she let out another sniffle, desperately trying to maintain her composure. "Starlight, do you think you could maybe step outside? Me and Dr Horse have something to talk about with Sunset and I imagine she would like some privacy, it's a... a sensitive matter." "I'm okay with her being here, Twilight, the two of us have resolved our differences, it's all in the past. I don't mind her being here," that was certainly a surprise to Twilight. She may have wanted the two of them to reconcile but she hadn't expected it to happen so easily, judging by the confusion on Starlight's face her friend was equally surprised. "While I'm glad to hear that the two of you were able to sort out your differences I think you might want to hear this in private, Sunset," Twilight twitched her head towards the door motioning for Starlight to move but the other mare didn't seem to take the hint. "It's a bit of a personal matter." "Twilight, she's your friend, anything you have to tell me I'm sure she is going to hear sooner or later anyway. I'm probably going to be here some time so sooner or later I'm pretty sure all of your friends are going to find out I'm pregnant." Twilight's jaw dropped, had she been Pinkie Pie it would probably have slammed into the ground. "I mean, I'm guessing that's what you're here to tell me right?" Sunset asked nervously. "You know?" Twilight asked managing to get her jaw moving again. "She's pregnant?!" Starlight whispered. "Ahem," Horse cleared his throat. "As I had been trying to tell you before you burst into the room, Princess Twilight, it was Sunset that had suggested the tests in the first place. Now then, Sunset," he said trotting over to the bed and keeping on the side of her good eye. "As you predicted you are about four weeks into your pregnancy and with this knowledge in mind it is very important that we begin addressing your diet. It is clear that you have been through a great deal recently so we are going to be supplementing your meals with some medical supplements to speed up your return to a healthy weight." "Run it all by me later doc," Sunset waved her hoof in what she hoped was a dismissive gesture. "Right now, I think I owe Twilight some explanations." Horse nodded and left the room leaving Twilight and the two unicorns alone. "Okay then, I'm guessing you want to hear about where I've been, but first I have a question for you, what was with that freak out earlier?" "What was with me? What's with you? How are you taking this so well? I mean this is life changing news! If I were you I'd be freaking out right now, I mean how do you even feel about this? I just... it's all so awful, that somepony would force themselves on you, that some stallion-" Sunset's eyes opened wide and her face reddened into a deep blush. "Okay, story time is on hold. First things first, Twilight, stop whatever you are currently thinking. He didn't... I wasn't... Look I know who the father is, he didn't 'force himself' on me, when we slept together it was a consensual thing okay? Yes, a lot of bad things have happened to me over the past few weeks, but he wasn't one of them. He was nice, a real gentlecolt. He helped me through something of a rough patch, I did the same, and then one night we..." Sunset closed her eyes and stopped. Twilight and Starlight nervously exchanged looks uncertain if they should speak up or not, after about thirty seconds though the decision was made for them as Sunset continued. "It was cold, really cold. I'm not sure if either of us loved the other but we were getting along well and we'd bonded over the few days we had known each other. That night we cuddled up to each other to keep warm and then... then we kissed," she laughed a short but happy laugh at the memory. "The world was ending around us, neither of us knew if there was anything left for us in the future and so we decided that, hey, there are worse ways we could spend what could be our last few moments in Equestria." "Who was he?" Twilight asked wrapping one hoof in support across the back of Sunset's neck. "He was nice, and I don't know if I loved him, but I definitely cared about him. That's all your going to get out of me though," Sunset said with an air of finality. "What? Why?" "Twilight, I know you, and if they are anything like my versions, then I know your friends. If I tell you who he was then somepony is going to go looking for him, the version of him from this timeline that is, and they will have the best of intentions in trying to bring the two of us together, but it will all blow up in our faces. He's never really met me, Twilight, he doesn't know who I am. I'm not just going to force myself into his life and dump some foal he never actually fathered on him. He was a good stallion, Twilight, I doubt somepony like him would fail to turn a few heads in a timeline where everything went right. Chances are he has a happy life with a family, maybe he's married, maybe he already has some foals of his own in this timeline. I'm not going to be some homewrecker, turning up out of nowhere and threatening to tear his life apart. That's the old me, I've changed Twilight." "You don't know that for sure," she answered. "There's no harm in just checking." "No, Twilight. Look I've had sometime to think this through, I had my suspicions even before I got back to this Equestria. I did some soul searching and I'm keeping the foal, I want to give it everything I never had when I was growing up. If you and your friends want to help that's fine, it'll be nice for the foal to have lots of honorary aunties to dote on them, but I'm keeping the father out of it and that's final." Twilight began to open her mouth to continue the argument but Starlight gently nudged her in the side and shook her head, the conversation wasn't getting anywhere, Sunset had clearly made up her mind on the matter. "Now then I think I owe the two of you a time travel story right?" Sunset cut off any further inquiry into the foals parentage, instead addressing the original purpose of the meeting. "It feels so long ago now but it all started back at CHS...." --------------------------- I'd been tasked by Vice Principal Luna to try and keep magic from interfering with this big event called The Friendship Games. To answer your two obvious questions Starlight, no this isn't the same Luna as here in Equestria, and yes where I was living magic was kind of a big deal. I'm pretty sure I left you a note in the journal asking for advice on what to do, Twilight... You did, I was looking over it last night in case I missed something important. Right. Well I left the note but then I remembered this weird figure who I'd seen hanging about the portal. Now the only other people- People? They don't call each other ponies in the other place, Starlight. Now could we leave the questions till later? This is going to take forever with you guys interrupting me every five seconds. Anyway the only other people who had ever shown an interest in the portal were myself, and the sirens, so it stood to reason that this figure was another Equestrian looking to get their hands on some magic. So, in the name of keeping magic out of the games I decided to check the portal in case they had left some evidence behind. When I got there it was immediately obvious something was wrong. The portal was open, but not like it was before. This time anybody walking past would notice it without even having to accidentally touch it and fall through. There were these weird circles and colored lights spinning across the surface and while nobody had noticed it yet it was only a matter of time before some stranger with a phone walked past and got a recording of the freaky magical special effects taking place at CHS. What I did next I regret immensely. I sort of assumed that this was some weird side effect of you opening the portal up again from your end so I decided to hop through and ask you to turn it off before somebody saw what was going on. Without any real magic on my side of the portal I could hardly go and analyze it from my end so as I saw it the only real way to fix things would be at your end. That's when everything went wrong. The journey through the portal was every bit as unpleasant as I remembered it being except this time it was...different. I have no idea how to even go about describing it but there was something fundamentally wrong in the experience, it felt more painful than normal, more disconcerting. When I tumbled out though I didn't notice anything fundamentally wrong. Checking myself in the mirror I was still me, the unicorn me that is, just like when I'd come through before. Even the room was as I remembered it, some out of the way storeroom for magical relics in The Crystal Empire. That should have been my first warning that something was up really. You'd mentioned changing where you kept the mirror to your own castle but I'd never seen it there, from what I could recall the Equestrian side of the mirror was exactly as it should be. The room was darker than I had expected it to be. The times don't match up perfectly but I was pretty sure that if I came through the portal at midday it wasn't supposed to dump me into Equestria in the middle of the night. The first real sign I had that something was wrong was when I touched the mirror, it had closed behind me. I'm not going to lie, I had a major freak out right then and there. I'd considered coming back to Equestria in the past but the thought of being trapped here, without any of my friends at CHS knowing where I was or what had happened to me was terrifying, I hadn't even managed to say goodbye. That was when I realized just how odd it was that the mirror was there. There was no evidence of the equipment you had described that allowed you to open it at will, nopony had come to investigate my arrival and at about that point it clicked that you had mentioned in the past that the mirror was meant to be in Ponyville. I was Sunset Shimmer though, I wasn't going to let a few minor conveniences keep me down. I decided that the best case scenario was that you'd moved the mirror back to The Empire without telling me and that if I went to find somepony we could get everything straightened out by dinner. Worst case scenario something had happened to you and you might need my help for a change. In either case moping about in a storeroom was helping nopony so with all my stupid big headed confidence I strode up to the door and pushed it open. If I'd remembered any of the lessons Celestia had taught me I could have used a dozen different spells to check that door for traps, when you spend so much of your life devoid of magic though it just stops being second nature to you and you end up getting zapped in the face by a lump of black crystal. I don't know how long I was out but when I woke up I was in Canterlot. Except it wasn't really Canterlot, it was dark and there was nopony else there. Nopony but myself and the... there was an alicorn. She followed me everywhere, whispered horrible things to me, truths that I couldn't bare to hear. It was a nightmare, a literal nightmare. I won't.... I won't trouble you with all the details but somehow the crystal had trapped me with a monster who knew all of my fears. Sometimes she would attack me, other times taunt me. She would never leave me alone. A couple of time she conjured the shadows of...ponies. She forced me to fight them, compelled me to do so, I was powerless to resist. A few times I even hoped one of them might end me, put me out of my misery, but I was too good. I don't know how long I was actually trapped there but from later evidence I would guess it was about three days, three days with my own worst nightmare. Waking should have been a relief. Ha! Always be careful what you wish for. --------------------- It was an abrupt switch. One moment I was surrounded by a cloying darkness, fighting some twisted mockery of a real pony that the alicorn had set upon me, the next moment everything was white. My senses overloaded as I tried to adjust to the change, it was so sudden so drastic. The world was white and I was suddenly aware of a biting cold that seemed to penetrate to the bone. My body was sore all over but the worst pain came from a great gash on my forehead; the taste of copper filled my mouth. The sound was deafening, the heavy rumble of hooves, the clash of metal on metal. I could no more move then than I can right now, my body was weighed down by heavy barding and hoof guards clearly not built with a unicorn like myself in mind and I was physically exhausted despite having apparently been sleeping for some time. I could barely focus on anything, let alone defend myself with magic. As soon as I focused on one thing some fresh stimulus would break my concentration leaving my head swimming in pain. The first real coherent thought I managed was that I had fallen over into a snowbank and that standing in front of me was an angry looking blue mare in a uniform. "Help me," I managed to get out, though from the expression on her face I gathered she either hadn't heard me or simply didn't care, her eyes showed nothing but destain. "Troops, get ready to fall back, enemy reinforcements are inbound on our position and we need to make ourselves scarce before they are breathing down our necks!" I don't know who was shouting, I could barely focus on anything that was going on. For those first few moments my entire world consisted of me, the snow and the mare before me. "Got a live one here, commander! She's a unicorn too!" the mare shouted over the din. "A unicorn? Now that is real curious. Pick her up and bring her along, maybe she knows something." "Help me," I pleaded once more, staring up at the mare from my position on the ground. "Sure thing, commander!" She barked at the other voice before turning back to me with a smile on her face. She raised something large and metallic on her left (I couldn't make out what it was but could gather that it was some manner of weapon) then brought it swinging down with a great crack as it slammed into the side of my head and the world went dark around me.