//------------------------------//
// Chapter 2: More Talking, Dinner 
// Story: The Equestria Club 
// by MythrilMoth 
//------------------------------//

"So how're things goin' over at Sunset's place?" Applejack asked as she and Rainbow Dash engaged in another furious video game battle.

Pinkie looked up from her phone. "Sunset says they're watching Kaijilla," she said.

Rainbow blinked. "Aw shoot, Kaijilla?" She looked at Applejack. "Raincheck?"

Applejack chuckled and rolled her eyes. "Sure, why not."

"SWEET!" Rainbow turned off the video game, grabbed the remote, and turned back over to the cable, then spent a minute finding the movie.

"What else are they up to?" Applejack asked as she put away the game controllers.

Pinkie's thumbs moved over her phone for a minute, then she waited for a reply. "She says they've mostly just been talking," she reported. "Twilight's friends are...an introverted bookworm, a laid-back dragon, and..." She blinked. "A psychopath?"

Twilight adjusted her glasses. "My counterpart sure keeps interesting company," she said.


* * * * *


"But why did Kaijilla protect us?"

"Maybe...perhaps it's because...Kaijilla is inside us all."

Ember burst out laughing. "The heck is that supposed to mean?!"

"Don't ask me," Sunset said. "I've seen this movie ten times and I still don't get that bit." She turned to Twilight. "Maybe it's a magic of friendship kind of thing?"

Twilight shook her head numbly. "I, uhh...I don't think friendship is a giant fire-breathing lizard," she said. "Then again, Pinkie Pie probably has a giant fire-breathing alligator costume lying around somewhere..."

Starlight blinked. "Why would Pinkie Pie have a giant fire-breathing alligator costume?"

Sunset stared at her. "Have you met Pinkie Pie?"

The title screen for a movie called Orcanado vs. Squidnami came up, accompanied by a dramatic cello sting and a visual of ocean water with blood and squid ink churning through it. Sunset groaned in disgust and changed the channel. "Ugh, so sick of those Orcanado movies," she said.

Ember tilted her head. "What's it about?"

Sunset rolled her eyes. "Tornados full of orcas terrorizing seaside communities," she said. "It's stupid."

Moondancer frowned. "Tornados...full of...orcas? How does that even...that doesn't even make any sense!"

"I know, right?"

Twilight blinked at the TV. "So...what's this then?" The screen showed two animated fish—one orange, one blue—frantically swimming through the ocean.

Sunset smiled. "Oh, this one's great! But you girls might not like it." She glanced at the clock. "Besides, we don't really wanna waste the whole evening watching movies, do we?"

Ember shrugged. "I dunno, this is kinda fun."

"We should probably think about eating dinner at some point," Starlight said. "I mean, don't get me wrong, these snacks are great and all, it's just—"

"Dinner!" Sunset groaned. "Oh, I am so sorry, I totally spaced!" She tossed the remote to Twilight and pulled out her phone. "I had thought about ordering a pizza, but I've been doing that a little too much lately and I don't know if you girls are up for that, so I thought I'd get sandwiches for everyone from the sandwich place down the street from here. That sound good?"

"Sandwiches sound good to me!" Starlight said brightly. "I love a good daffodil and daisy, especially the way that one place makes it."

Sunset grimaced. "Yeah, that's..." She coughed. "Humans don't generally eat flowers or hay or grass."

"Oh," Starlight said. She frowned. "So what do they eat?"

Twilight and Sunset exchanged glances. "Oh, the usual," Twilight said. "Lots of different veggies, fruits, cheeses, stuff like that..." In a small voice, she added, "Meat..."

Ember perked up. "Meat?" she said in an interested tone.

Moondancer's lips pressed together. "Meat," she said flatly.

Starlight blinked. "M-meat?"

"Yeah," Sunset said. "Chicken, turkey, pork, beef, that sort of thing."

"Oh," Starlight said, irises shrinking to pinpricks. "Oh."

Moondancer's brow furrowed; her cheeks shifted slightly as her tongue probed around inside her mouth. "That explains this dental configuration," she said.

"If you're not comfortable with it, you don't have to eat meat," Sunset said placatingly. "There's plenty of vegetarian options here. There's a lot of people who don't like eating meat!" She called up the number for the sandwich place on her phone, then looked around the room. "What do you all want?"

Ember grinned. "Anything meaty and tasty," she said.

"I'll take a barbecue chicken and red onion," Twilight said. At the disbelieving stares of Starlight and Moondancer, she blushed. "What? I've been to this world a few times, I...I've tried a few things..."

Sunset snickered. "And you two?" she asked Starlight and Moondancer.

Moondancer shrugged. "Anything without meat that isn't spicy," she said. "Maybe something with cheese."

"Anything with lots of vegetables that's flavorful," Starlight said. "Spicy's good. Oh, but no cheese."

Sunset considered that, then nodded and placed the call. "Hey, Poppyseed! It's Sunset. Got an order, I'll be by to pick it up in a bit. Uh-huh. I'll take one foot-long barbecue chicken onion on sourdough...Twilight, you want pickles? With pickles, one six-inch cheese melt on pretzel bread with marinara, no meat, no veggies...uh-huh, that's right...one foot-long spicy deli trio with provolone and marinara on regular bread, no veggies, one loaded veggie gyro with extra sauce and extra olives, no cheese, and..." She paused, touching her tongue to her front teeth. "One six-inch teriyaki chicken, light on the onions, whole wheat roll. Yeah, my usual. Oh! And a foot-long classic club on sourdough. No, no chips or drinks, we've got plenty. Yeah. Uh-huh. Okay, be there in a few."

As she hung up, she looked around to see Ember, Moondancer, and Starlight watching her curiously. "Who...were you talking to?" Starlight asked.

Twilight rolled her eyes. "They have a device here that lets you talk to people who are somewhere else," she explained. "Everybody has one."

Starlight blinked. "Oh," she said. "That...sounds really useful!"

Moondancer frowned. "You ordered six sandwiches, but there are five of us," she pointed out.

Sunset nodded. "Well, I know Twilight can take a foot-long, and I'm guessing Ember probably can, but you girls, I don't know about, so I got you each a six-inch, and myself a six-inch because I can't usually finish a foot-long by myself. But I thought it'd be a good idea to have an extra sandwich we can all share in case anyone's still hungry or in case you and Starlight decide you want to try a little meat after all."

Moondancer adjusted her glasses. "I guess that makes sense," she said.

Twilight smiled. "I know it seems strange, but trust me, in this world? You can try new things you can't usually do back in Equestria without really feeling guilty about it."

"If you say so," Starlight said skeptically.

Sunset stood and crossed over to her desk, digging out her wallet and her keys. "I'll be back in about twenty minutes," she said. She looked around. "Twilight, if you wanna go through the closet and dig out some board games, figure out what you girls wanna do while we eat...oh, and you can put whatever you want on to watch."

"Will do!" Twilight said. Sunset smiled, put her boots on, and left.

After a long moment, Moondancer asked, "Twilight...are you absolutely sure Sunset Shimmer is, you know...one of us?"

"What do you mean?" Twilight asked as she stood up and stretched.

"I think she means..." Starlight pursed her lips thoughtfully. "She doesn't...really seem like a pony, you know?"

"Oh," Twilight said. She laughed. "Girls...Sunset's lived in this world a really long time. I'm...honestly not even sure she's ever coming back to Equestria, even though Princess Celestia really wants to see her again." She smiled. "This is her home now. All her friends are here. She has a life here." She shrugged. "She's from Equestria, trust me, and she was Celestia's student before me. Her magic is as strong as mine. Well...when I was still a unicorn." She looked around the room. "But I think she's happier here. She misses Equestria sometimes, sure, and she misses having magic, but..." Her eyes misted. "This is her home."

Starlight gave Twilight a long, measuring look. "You want her to come back, don't you?"

Twilight ducked her head. "For a long time, I...I wished she would," she admitted. "We just...connect. Even when she was after my crown, I felt like we had a connection." She clapped her hands together lightly. "Right, so! Board games. Let me go find those board games, and...yeah..."


* * * * *


When Sunset returned, she found the other girls seated on the floor around the living room table, her Sternhalma board placed between them. Judging by Ember's impressed whistle, Starlight's aggravated groan, and Twilight's giggle, something interesting had just happened.

"Hey guys, I'm back," Sunset said.

Starlight sighed. "Perfect timing," she said. "Twilight's kicking all our butts over here."

Chuckling, Sunset carried the large bag of sandwiches to the kitchen. "Nobody get up," she said. "I've got it."

"Nonsense!" Starlight said, standing up. "I'll help."

"Me too," Twilight said. Sunset smiled gratefully at them.

Working together, the three girls quickly gathered paper plates, two big bags of chips, a stack of plastic cups, a large bowl of ice with tongs, and three different bottles of soda and carried it all to the living room along with the sandwiches while Moondancer cleared away the Sternhalma board. Sunset glanced at the TV and smirked; apparently, the girls had been watching one of the movies about that boy wizard in Trottingham. Sitting down at the table, Sunset extracted one sandwich after another from the bag, checking them and passing them around. The last sandwich—the foot-long club—Sunset cut into five equal portions with a large knife, arranging it on a plate in the center of the table before unwrapping her own sandwich and taking a large bite. Across the table, Twilight dug into her own sandwich with gusto. Starlight watched her with a conflicted expression. "I can't believe you're actually eating meat," she said.

Twilight shrugged. Shaking her head, Starlight examined her own gyro with interest. "I don't think I've ever seen anything like this before," she said.

Swallowing, Sunset said, "They do have them in Equestria. They're just...really ethnic."

"Oh." Shrugging, Starlight took a bite. Her eyes widened. "Oh," she said through a mouthful of vegetables and savory juice. She chewed, then swallowed. "Wow. This is good."

"It'd be better with the feta cheese that normally goes on that," Sunset said.

Moondancer studied her own sandwich critically before taking a bite. She hummed appreciatively. "Not bad."

Ember had already taken a few large bites of her sandwich. "What kind of meat is this, anyway?" she asked. "It's pretty good."

"Pepperoni, spicy salami, and hickory smoked ham," Sunset said. At Ember's confused look, she clarified, "Those first two are a type of sausage. They're...mostly beef and pork. Mostly. I think." She shook her head. "Best not to think too hard about it."

"Works for me," Ember said as she went back to eating.

"You know," Starlight mused, "if I had anything to do differently about that little village I founded, I think I'd have let Sugar Belle in on the truth, asked her to be my witting accomplice. That way I wouldn't have had to suffer through those godawful muffins with the...rest..." She looked around the room.

Everyone was staring at her. Twilight was frowning. Ember was smirking, one eyebrow raised. Sunset's face was flat and expressionless, her eyes half-lidded.

"Of...course...if I had it to do over again, I'd...never have stolen all their Cutie Marks and brainwashed them in the first place?" Starlight offered with a sheepish giggle.

"How did you and those other ponies get by for so long?" Twilight wondered. "I mean, there didn't seem to be any farming going on, and without special talents, you couldn't have had doctors or..."

Starlight grimaced. "I had to use my magic for a lot of things," she said. "I convinced myself I was doing the right thing, but..." She sighed.

Ember shook her head. "It's nice to know all ponies aren't insufferably cheerful and perfect," she said.

Sunset snorted into her sandwich. "Not even close," she said. "Good grief, is that what you dragons really think of ponies?"

"It's...kinda the stereotype, yeah," Ember admitted. "Usually because whenever dragons migrate past pony towns, there's always all this singing and celebrating and stuff." She shrugged. "It's hard to think of ponies as anything but singing, dancing goofs when that's always what you see when you fly past."

"And most ponies think of dragons as gem-eating, fire-breathing jerks," Starlight said. Her eyes widened. "No offense!"

Ember chuckled. "None taken," she said. "Most dragons are gem-eating, fire-breathing jerks."

"Trust me, ponies are far from perfect," Sunset said. "Take me, for example."

"And me," Starlight added.

"And me," Twilight chimed in. "Actually, pretty much everypony has their flaws. They could be jerks, pushovers, have a bad temper, be stubborn, cocky, foolish, overly determined to invade other ponies' personal space...maaaaaybe a little obsessed with organization..." She shrugged and bit into her sandwich again.

"I guess the only pony that even comes close to being perfect is Princess Celestia," Starlight said.

Sunset stopped eating and stared at her. "You're...kidding, right?"

"Oh boy," Twilight muttered around a mouthful of chicken and pickles.

"What, you don't think your immortal sun goddess is perfect?" Ember asked, raising an eyebrow.

Sunset let out a harsh bark of laughter. "Not even close," she snorted. She cut her eyes over to Twilight, as though daring her to say anything. "No matter how much ponies might worship the ground she trots on, Celestia is just as flawed as anypony else. She's just a lot better at hiding it."

"She'd have to be, being thousands of years old and all," Ember remarked thoughtfully.

Twilight looked as though she was desperate to come to Celestia's defense, but even as she opened her mouth to protest, she paused. She bowed her head and sighed. "You know what? I want to tell you how wrong you are, but...you're not. I mean, I used to think Celestia was perfect, and I guess even now I have this idealized mental image of her that I've had since I was a little filly..." She shook her head. "But honestly? When I think back on some of the decisions she's made just since I moved to Ponyville, I have to wonder."

"Does she still troll the Gala?" Sunset asked. "I'll never forget the year she doctored those nasty hors d'oeuvres with puffer peppers."

Moondancer nearly spit out a bite of her sandwich. "She did what?!"

Twilight's face turned red. "You mean all those stuffy Canterlot ponies...?"

Sunset nodded, a shit-eating grin spread across her face.

Twilight paled. "How did Celestia even get away with that?"

Sunset snorted. "Conspired with the kitchen staff to blame the whole thing on a clerical error with the ingredients."

Twilight groaned. "Yeah, that sounds about right," she said.

Ember tilted her head. "What are puffer peppers?"

"They're a rare type of chili pepper from Alpacapulco," Twilight explained. "They're kinda-sorta banned in Equestria...well, whole peppers are. The extract is fine, but nobody really uses it because it's not worth the effort and expense when more common peppers are better-tasting."

"So why are they banned?" Ember asked.

"They make you swell up with gas," Sunset said. "Instantly. Like a balloon." She smirked and added, "and particularly pungent ones, well..." She glanced at Twilight.

Twilight grimaced. "I never believed it until I saw it one time with my own eyes. One of Applejack and Rainbow Dash's stupid dares. Somehow, Rainbow got hold of a few puffer peppers. Then they were too embarrassed to go to the hospital, and Zecora had to come out to Sweet Apple Acres to deal with it. She...was not amused."

Ember blinked. "Hospital? For gas? What, you ponies don't fart?"

"Oh, we fart," Twilight said. "That's kinda the problem. You see, certain cultivars of puffer peppers, well..." Her face turned scarlet. "They make you fart, well...fire."

Ember raised an eyebrow.

"And ponies, well..."

Starlight paled. "Did...did their tails catch fire?"

"Yep," Twilight said in a deadpan tone, eyes half-lidded.

"Whoa," Ember said with a grin. "That's...that's really dumb. I mean, fire's nothing to a dragon, but you ponies aren't dragons."

"That does sound like exactly the kind of stupid thing Rainbow Dash would do," Sunset said. "I can't picture AJ doing something that stupid, though."

Twilight rolled her eyes. "When it comes to their 'most daring pony competition', AJ's common sense goes right out the window. I'll never forget the year they made complete fools of themselves at the Running of the Leaves. And I wasn't there for it personally, but I heard all about this one from Pinkie Pie: One time, they decided to try to prove which one was the most daring pony by covering themselves head to tail with bees."

Sunset raised an eyebrow. "Bees."

"Bees."

Starlight blinked. "Bees?"

"Bees," Twilight repeated flatly.

Moondancer frowned. "Your friends are idiots," she said.

Twilight sighed. "Yeah...sometimes." She smiled faintly, shook her head, and went back to eating.

"So Sunset! What is it you do in this world?" Starlight asked as she licked juice from her fingertips, then scrubbed them dry with a napkin. "Do you have a job, or are you researching something for the princess, or what?"

"I'm a high school student," Sunset replied, munching on a potato chip.

"Really?" Starlight asked. "I was under the impression you were older than Twilight."

"I am," Sunset said with a shrug. Her brow furrowed. "Portal turned me into a young teenager when I first arrived...this world and Equestria are parallel, but there's some weird..." She made a vague gesture with her fingers. "Timey-wimey stuff going on nobody can explain. This world's timeline and Equestria's don't match up at all, even though six months passed for both me and Twilight between the first two times she came here."

"We actually sat down and tried to figure it out once," Twilight said with a grimace. "That was the same day Sunset introduced me to something called tequila." She blinked. "I don't really remember much about that."

Moondancer looked around. "So how do you afford this place?" she asked. "I mean, everything here looks nice and expensive."

Sunset cringed. Twilight frowned, then reached over and squeezed her hand. "It's okay," she said softly. "You're not that person anymore, and you're making amends for who you used to be."

Sunset sighed and smiled. Clearing her throat, she looked at the other girls. "Let's just say it involves a very lonely, very wealthy old man who outlived his entire family and whose granddaughter I happen to look like, and leave it at that."

Starlight raised an eyebrow. "Isn't that inheritance fraud?"

Sunset narrowed her eyes. "I prefer to think of it as my reward for keeping a lonely old man company in his final days," she said tersely. "And are you really in any position to judge me?"

Starlight winced. "No, I...I guess not."

Twilight grabbed a napkin and a piece of the club sandwich and handed it to Starlight. "Starlight! You need to try this. I promise you'll love it!" she said loudly and a bit too cheerfully.

Starlight blinked at it, wrinkling her nose. "W-well...alright."

Moondancer frowned slightly, then reached for a piece of the club sandwich herself. "I guess I can try it for research purposes."

Ember grabbed one as well. "I'm just still hungry," she said.

Twilight and Sunset each took the remaining two pieces.

"So what exactly is on this?" Starlight asked. "Just so I know what I'm eating."

"Roast turkey breast, honey ham, applewood smoked bacon, lettuce, tomato, two different kinds of cheese, mayonnaise, and honey dijon mustard," Sunset said.

Moondancer took a bite. After a moment, she adjusted her glasses. "That's actually not too bad," she said.

Starlight tried hers. "Huh," she said. "I can't really even tell that's meat. Not that I've ever tasted meat, so I don't even know what meat tastes like."

"Eh, if it's mostly bird meat, you won't really notice," Ember said. "Especially not with all this lettuce." She quickly finished off her piece of the sandwich, then let out a loud belch.

Starlight glowered at her. "You could say 'excuse me'," she said.

"Excuse you," Ember said in a chipper tone, smiling cheekily.

Sunset's eyes flew open wide. "SO!" she declared loudly, clapping her hands together. "It's starting to get kinda late. Why don't we finish up, get this mess cleaned up, then go get changed into our pajamas?"

"Yeah, then we can do sleepover stuff!" Twilight said with a bright smile. "Makeovers! Pillow fights! Truth or dare!"

Nobody noticed the evil smirk that lit up Ember's face.

"Sounds great!" Sunset said. "Twilight, why don't you help the girls get changed since they're new to human clothes."

Ember's smirk faded. "Yyyyyeah, about these...pajamas," she said. "What's the point? I mean, I got the whole 'humans don't walk around without clothes' thing, but you've got separate clothes for sleeping in? That doesn't make sense."

"Well, ponies have pajamas too," Moondancer pointed out. "They're just...not something most ponies bother with."

Sunset grimaced. "Okay, three things. One: being naked at a slumber party isn't really a good idea in general, even if we are all from Equestria here. It's bad etiquette. Two: I've gone native enough that it'd make me really uncomfortable, so please don't. Three: Trust me, you don't want to. These human bodies lose heat really quickly at night. You'd wake up with a cold or something."

Ember rolled her eyes. "Okay, fine." She got up, finishing off the last of her soda, and stretched. "Lead the way, Princess."

Twilight giggled giddily as she started clearing the table. "This is gonna be so much FUN!"