Blood and Ponies

by GreyGuardPony

Epilogue: Union

The crinkle of a page turning fluttered through the cell.

Shang Xiang Sun’s eyes scanned down the page, drinking in every word. A collection of other books on Equestrian journalism were on a little cart across the cell. Sun had to give Equestria credit. They had an amazing rehabilitation program.

Buttercup had done her job well and a deal had been struck. Now Sun would be spending time in prison until she was deemed “no longer a danger to society”. She could live with that. Especially since she could actually work on finishing her journalism degree. Though, as there were no real records from her now non-existent college, it was more starting over again. Such was life, she supposed.

It had been a few weeks since her sentencing and she had started to settle into a routine.

“Mail call!”

Dropping her book back onto the cart, Sun hopped to her feet and and strolled over to her cell door. The pegasus guard on the other side had a trio of letters tucked under his wing. He passed them through the bars, Sun eagerly taking them to see who had written her this time.

The first featured the flowing script of Fluttershy. That wasn’t surprising as they had been exchanging letters since the sentencing, usually discussing some of her lingering feelings about her time as a bat pony. She had been showing a bit more confidence as of late, which was nice to see.

The second was from Deep Digger and cut straight to the point. She’d be coming by for another visit this weekend to do some more work on their book about the old world and Sun’s life during it.

The third was more of a surprise. The violet colored envelope bore the name of Twilight Sparkle on the return address. Flipping it over, she popped the wax seal and unfolded the letter within.

Hello Shang,

This is a bit of an odd letter for me to write. Since our little adventure in Manehattan, I’ve been talking to Princess Celestia about your world and what she remembers of it. ...I will admit, it took me a little bit to get over the fact that Celestia kept this information from me, but after a bit of a heart to heart, I think I understand her mindset a little more now.

But that’s not the important thing. The important thing is that she also told me about a previous student of hers. Her name was Sunset Shimmer and apparently she had been able to work out some bits and details about your world during her studies with Celestia. She vanished after she and Celestia had a fight about some kind of magical mirror she was convinced would help her become an alicorn.

I need to do some more research and track down where this mirror might actually be, but I figured you’d want to know. You might not be the only thing left over from the world that was!

-Sincerely,

Princess Twilight Sparkle

Sun sank into a seat on her cot, her mind drifting back towards that strange white void she had been in before her curse was broken. The voice had called her “daughter of Eve”, with no commentary on her being the last or not.

…Just what had this Sunset Shimmer found?

- - - -

Sunset Shimmer grumbled under her breath as she fished in her jeans pocket for her apartment key. With her arms full of grocery bags, it wasn’t exactly an easy trick to pull off.

“...This would have been so much easier if I was still a unicorn,” she hissed under her breath. “Stupid world. Stupid humans!”

Her attempt to become an alicorn had not gone to plan. For the low, low price of burning down her relationship with Princess Celestia, she had gotten herself a world full of bipedal hairless apes, whose magic was so damn unreliable it had almost blown her up the first time she had used it here!

Finally, her fingers closed around the key and she managed to jam it into the lock and slip into her apartment before dropping any of her bags. She had grown so tired of this world. The bitter irony of her search for magical power leading to a world that seemed to lack it in any real concentration was enough to make her puke. Even worse, when she had gone back to the portal to return to Equestria and perhaps beg for forgiveness...she had found the damn thing sealed.

Walking to her kitchen, she caught her reflection out of the corner of her eye in the hallway mirror. Long blonde hair, pale blue eyes and fair, peach colored skin. She sighed. She missed her two toned mane. She missed her amber colored coat.

She missed her home.

Despondent, she went through the motions of putting the groceries away. Her apartment was a far cry from her lodgings in Canterlot. Small and cramped it was furnished with cheap, second hand furniture that always made her back ache. But it was really the best she had been able to manage. At least she had been able to use her magic to establish an identity and get her into a college where she could establish some sort of life in this stupid world. ...Going through high school again had not been fun.

Just as she put the last of her food away, there was a knock on the door. Sighing, Sunset stomped back across the apartment and yanked it open.
Two women in dark colored suits were waiting on the other side. The one on the right had dark brown hair, pulled back into a neat ponytail, pale skin and was wearing glasses. Her partner had the chocolate brown skin of this world’s people of african descent and wore her dark brown hair short and somewhat wild.

“Hello! Are you Sadie Summers?” the bespectacled woman asked, her voice light and cheerful.

Sunset nodded at the mention of her alias. “That’s me.”

Both women flashed badges at her. Sunset’s hair stood up as she took in three bold letters. FBI. She had learned not long after her arrival in this world that they were one of this nation’s law enforcement agencies.

“I’m special agent Temple Shaw. This is my partner special agent Isabelle Zabkar. We’re investigating some reports of identity theft in the area. Can we talk?”

Sunset frowned. “Do you have a warrant?”

Agent Isabelle shook her head. “This is just a conversation mam. Hoping to find a few leads.”

Sunset shrugged. “Sorry, I don’t really have anything I can help you with. I’m just a girl going to school for architecture.”

“You haven’t noticed any strange behavior from some of your fellow students?” Isabelle asked. “Because we have good reason to believe that there is an identity theft ring operating out of your college.”

Sunset shook her head. “Nothing has stood out, no.”

Before Agent Isabelle could ask any further questions, something in Agent Temple’s pocket began to beep. The agent removed a device that...well, it looked like a smartphone. Agent Temple frowned as she looked at something on the screen and then looked up at Sunset.

“It’s her. She’s the reality deviant.”

“What?”

Agent Isabelle’s arm lashed out, a hand closing around Sunset’s neck like a vice. Sunset could only hack and cough as the dark skinned woman effortlessly lifted her off the ground.

She smiled viciously at Sunset’s discomfort. “Well, well, well. Temple, I do think we’ve hit the jackpot! And I thought this little bitch would just point us in the right direction.”

Sunset did the only thing she could do. She channeled her magic through her hands in a wild and uncontrolled burst. Agent Isabelle was sent flying backwards, crashing into the side of a dark paneled van parked on the street.

Sunset gasped for air as stumbled back to her feet. Her body was aching from that blast, the backlash of magic having torn through her body in addition to throwing her attacker away.

Isabelle pulled herself from the side of the van, cracking her knuckles as she advanced, a murderous look in her eyes.

“I’m going to tear you apart!”

Sunset prepared to channel again, ready to fight against whoever these strange women were. She-

Pain tore through her body as electricity coursed through her. Agent Temple had jabbed a taser like device into her side and she collapsed to the ground again, her body twitching from the electricity.

“I could have taken her!” Isabelle shouted.

“Not without doing a lot of damage to her!” Temple snapped back. “She’s no good as a subject if she’s broken! Now help me get her in the van.”

Isabelle grabbed her legs, while Temple grabbed her arms. They began to haul her towards the back of the van when the sound of singing began to float through the air. The agents froze, dropping Sunset as they began to sway in time with the lyrics.

Feel the wave of sound,

As it crashes down,

You can’t turn away,

We’ll make you want to stay!

Three new women were advancing down the street, clearly the source of the song. The pale one in the middle had a mass of truly voluminous reddish-orange hair and wore and expression of smug superiority as she sang. To her right was a tanned skinned woman whose dark brown hair was pulled back into a pair of pigtails, that had some purple streaks dyed into them. To the first girl’s left was another pale skinned one, wearing a chipper expression as she advanced. Her hair was pulled back into a single ponytail.

Just as soon as she finished taking in these arrivals, Sunset heard the screech of tires on asphalt. A red colored pickup truck came to a screeching halt just behind the van. A blonde haired woman was behind the wheel, dressed in simple jeans, a button up red blouse and a cowboy hat.

“Unless ya wanna wind up in a lab, get in!”

Sunset didn’t need any convincing. She practically dove for the passenger’s side, tearing open the door and toppling onto the seat. The other three girls clambered into the bed of the truck, before the driver slammed on the gas and roared off, leaving the strange agents far behind them.

“I suppose I owe you one,” Sunset breathed after a few long silent minutes of driving.

“Couldn’t just leave ya to the likes of them,” the blonde girl spat. “Name’s Jackie by the way.”

“Sadie.”

“Nice ta meet ya Sadie.”

“So...just who were “them”. I’m guessing they weren’t actually the FBI?”

“Nah. They’re a whole hell of a lot worse.”

“But who are they?”

“They’re the Technocratic Union, sugarcube. They control the world behind the scenes. Consider this your introduction to the resistance.”

Author's Note:

I just can't resist the urge to sequel bait, can I?

And in case you weren't sure....yes, Agent Temple Shaw is this universe's Sci-Twi.

Pencils down, death rays ready. The Technocratic Union will get to work.

Comments

[TheStratovarian]

So this is a step into mage, and hunter then?

Still, interesting take on the trio, and looks good as a hook

[aline1]

I admit I am not highly familiar with world of darkness old or nor new but I greatly enjoyed this story.

Somehow I suspect twilight's encounter with Sunset will be caused by different events than what happened before just by going by why we've seen in this epilogue if there is a sequel.

[Admiral Stoic Rum]

nice hook, more please. I wonder if you're going to include The Lost in a story.

[F0lkL0re]

A rather nice ending there GreyGuardPony, with a very interesting sequel hook as well.

Huh shouldn't Ming have started rotting due to direct sunlight or has she reached the Kuei-jin version of golconda?

I was thinking of asking about weather the eg mirror existed in this story or not, now I'm going to have to start speculating about it's origin and nature, though it does look like it's a version of the world of darkness that skipped the end times.

Oh goody the New World Order also known as the part of the Union I fear the most, after all the others just want to kill you and have a willingness to work with mage's without stabbing them in the back ( got to love the Void Engineers), the NWO on the other hand want to convert everyone and are conditioned to be unbending in their war on all "deviants".

The sirens are part of the traditions (probably Ecstatics), this can only end well, doesn't necessarily mean that their good guys after all war makes for strange bedfellows (also Nephandi infiltrators are a thing)

I'm both going to laugh and feel sorry for the Twilight's when meet each other.

8702996
The lost are new/chronicles of darkness this is old world of darkness.
Edit: you want changeling the dreaming not lost, also known as the nice whimsical part of oWoD.

[Admiral Stoic Rum]

8703014
Ahh yes I am most familiar with New WoD. I understand the backstory of this one because I watched a Lets Play of Vampire. Gopher be Blessed. Hail our Dark Lord.

[PhycoKrusk]

I admit, I always did like the Technocracy, particularly the idea that there were still some individuals within it who remember why it actually came to be and were still de facto good guys, even if they were nominally villains.

[GreyGuardPony]

8702911

Mage at the very least.

8702977

Yeah, in this timeline Twilight has not gone through the mirror portal yet. She doesn't even know where it is.

8702996

Maybe. The descendants of the fae are still around in Equestria. The Breezies are a good example.

8703014

I...actually completely forgot that keui-jin rotted in the sunlight. So that's a hole I'll have to back fill at some point. :P

I had actually pictured Sci-Twi as a Progenitor or a member of Iteration X. Some classic, mad scientist goodness.

[F0lkL0re]

8703127
Yeah a progenitor or Iterator would make a lot of sense for Sci-Twi but then again so would being an Etherite ( for SCIENCE!!!), I was just thrown off by the dark suits and FBI disguise they were using as I usually expect the other conventions to use a different theme.

So I'm curious GreyGuardPony who was the woman in Sun's dream in the original version of the story

[GreyGuardPony]

8703192

Troile.

The idea was that she had basically used 10 dot power bullshit to travel through the blood into the descendant of her line that wound up in the Ankaran Sarcophagus, that she had enchanted to be immune to the passage of time (which is why she didn't have Temporis anymore. She burned it all in the sarcophagus) .

It had been part of a plan by Lucifer and Ming to knock a potential threat off the board. Because with Sun staked, the anti-deluvian would pop into her body and be trapped there. Then they could deal with the ancient later.

In this new timeline though, Troile never pulled off the body steal, because the wards that kept her locked under Carthage just broke and she rampaged across Northern Africa for a bit before being killed by one of the Wyrm's super powerful spirits. Because none of the bad guys in the Apocalypse really worked well together.

[F0lkL0re]

8703210
Interesting

So does that mean that the Morning Star and Dark Father are still bopping around or did they get finished off in the final nights and never made it to the pony times?

Huh for that matter who and what else made it to the pony times, after all we know about the princesses, Discord, Chrysalis and Ming so God and Writer alone know what survived.

[Admiral Stoic Rum]

8703127
Not sure if the Gentry are part of the old. Still remarkably fun thinking of a human changeling popping out of the hedge in Equestria thinking it has only been a few months.

[F0lkL0re]

8704099
There's no hedge or gentry in dreaming, changelings in dreaming are humans with fea souls instead of people kidnapped and changed by alien monsters from another reality, one of the big conflicts of dreaming is the fight of the changelings to stop banality from destroying imagination and creativity as that is what lets them exist and fuels their magic.

There's a reason I referred to dreaming as the nice whimsical part of oWoD even though it's still about the end of the world like all the other oWoD setting's, it's received quite a bit of derision for its lighter softer nature from more than a few players over time, which makes the fact of changeling the lost's darker more brutal nature rather amusing in hindsight.

I suggest giving the white wolf wiki a browse as it's a really good resource for learning the basics of the various settings white wolf and now onyx path publishing have released over the years.

Have a look: http://whitewolf.wikia.com/wiki/Changeling:_The_Dreaming
Edit: damnit I just remembered the TV tropes page : http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/TabletopGame/ChangelingTheDreaming

[Bloody_Tofu]

I have no idea why I haven’t followed you already for all your other stories I love. Brain derp.

Great story with a great mix of lore and action.