How to get Banned from a Store in under Five Minutes
Three Little Visitors: Pt 11
Twilight returned to the human world precisely one week, five days, and thirteen hours after departing. Or at least, that’s what Pinkie Pie claimed it had been.
“How could you possibly know that?” Rainbow dash challenged.
“You mean you don’t?” Pinkie asked, looking genuinely surprised. “You were making such a big deal of her being gone.”
“Yeah, sorry about that,” Twilight said, blushing a little. “I know I said I wouldn’t be gone long, but Princess Celestia had a few ideas and she couldn’t really spare much time away from court.”
Rarity smiled and stared dreamily into space for a moment. “Royal court,” she sighed.
“So we had to get things done right then and there,” Twilight summarised.
“So, hit on anything useful?” Applejack inquired.
“Yeah, we heard you were doin’ dark magic stuff,” Rainbow Dash put in, grinning and holding up clenched fists. “Tell me something spooky happened!”
“Spooky?” Twilight asked, bemused. “Not really.”
Rainbow’s shoulders slumped. “Seriously?” she asked, evidently greatly disappointed. “Come on, you can’t use buzz words like ‘dark magic’ and not expect people to—“
“It started a zombie apocalypse, didn’t it?” Pinkie said, folding her arms and adopting the quintessential expression of That Guy who had always known what it was that had happened was going to happen.
“Pinkie, darling,” Rarity began, her tone dripping with condescension. “I’m fairly certain Twilight did not start a zombie apocalypse.”
“There’s a number of things in Equestria that could cause zombies to rise,” Twilight said helpfully, “but the pendant shards aren’t one of them. There is the Arashanovac Amulet, or the Seven Statues of Beht.”
“Twilight, those things are from the Daring Do series,” Rainbow pointed out, as though worried for her sanity.
“True,” Twilight admitted. “But in Equestria, those things are all real.”
Rainbow said nothing for a few moments. “Yeah, I’m going to pony land.”
“Be serious for a moment, Rainbow,” Applejack said irritably.
“I’ve never been more serious in my life,” Rainbow replied solemnly.
“I best not tell her that Daring Do is an actual pony,” Twilight whispered to Sunset in a confidential tone.
“We’re not sharing the futon with her, are we?”
“Adagio, be nice.”
In what Sunset considered to be a rather old-fashioned way, her three children gathered around Twilight when Sunset had announced that she’d be spending a lot of time with them, and greeted her in as formal a way as they could; Sonata, all beaming pleasure, Aria looking unusually uncertain and frequently glancing at Sunset, and Adagio narrow-eyed and warily polite. Twilight greeted them all in turn, shaking Sonata’s child-sized hand, smiling at Aria, and trying to do the same for Adagio, although her attempt cracked a little under the coldly suspicious light in Adagio’s magenta eyes.
“She’s not sleeping here,” Sunset assured them, giving Twilight an apologetic look. “Rarity has offered her family’s guest bedroom. She lives just a street or so away above her shop.”
“Sounds just like Rarity,” Twilight chuckled with a reminiscent smile.
“So like I said,” Sunset warned, raising an admonitory finger. “Be nice.”
After offering Twilight a drink and setting the girls some new colouring books to have a go at, Sunset and Twilight retreated to her bedroom where, seated on the bed, Sunset explained the nuances of the occurrence with Pinkie Pie. Twilight was highly interested, having been longing for a fuller report in person.
“I think I should like to talk to Pinkie about it as well,” Twilight said, rubbing her chin. “But if your conjectures are correct, then we’ve gained valuable insight into the nature of these objects. And...” She swallowed. “About what you said before. About the Apotheostones.”
“You found Oldbark’s letters?” Sunset asked, perking up.
“Yes. And Princess Celestia confirmed what you say as well. For obvious reasons the information has been suppressed for centuries, but such items do exist, and they do in fact come from the still beating hearts of immortals, carved into jewels.”
“Not all that well suppressed really,” Sunset huffed. “The Alicorn Amulet was at least well known to students of magic.”
“True, but Princess Celestia told me that she believed that covering up everything that had already been known would have been too monstrous a task, and fraught with risks of rediscovery, so—“
“She laid misinformation,” Sunset said suddenly, starting to grin. “That’s brilliant.”
“That’s our teacher,” Twilight said, smiling fondly.
They sat reminiscing for a moment, until Sunset spoke up again.
“Well you’ll get your chance soon,” she said, breaking from her daydream. “Pinkie’s coming over soon to give me some reading material for the kids.”
“For the kids?” Twilight repeated, giving Sunset a knowing look.
Sunset blushed, but otherwise managed to keep her composure. “So what did you find out, anyway?” she asked. “You made it sound like you found out something important.”
“It might be important,” Twilight said slowly. “I didn’t want to get your hopes up too much. As you described, not much causes the pendants to react, especially not the clear ones.” Sunset agreed that this was the case. “Well, when I used dark magic to interact with the red shards, they finally reacted, just not very... well, it wasn’t what I expected.”
“Why? What happened?”
“Well, to be honest I expected the pendant to devour the dark magic, feed off its energies and perhaps regenerate. Repair? Do something!”
“It didn’t?”
Twilight shook her head in a lost sort of way “The dark magic was repelled.”
Sunset blinked. “I’m... sorry, what?”
“Every attempt to use dark magic on the red shards failed. We left the shards over night in a magically-enclosed crystalline container with a dark miasma. The darkness couldn’t get within a few inches of them.”
“Now that’s curious,” Sunset said, frowning.
“It was indeed,” Twilight said, staring at the floor as though remembering the experiment in detail. “But what was more interesting was what happened to the clear ones.”
Sunset waited for a moment for Twilight to go on. “Are you waiting for me to ask?”
“Huh?” Twilight looked up quickly. “Oh, sorry. Well, what you told me about Pinkie... when we used dark magic on the clear shards, they kind of... absorbed it. Not like the sirens absorbed dark energy,” she followed up, forestalling the question. “It was different.”
“Different, how?” Sunset asked, almost unsure if she wanted to know.
“We didn’t notice it until the next day,” Twilight went on. “But the shard had turned red again.”
Excitement erupted in Sunset’s stomach. “Just like the ones I had did!”
“Yes,” Twilight said, smiling. “They’d imbibed my memories through the dark magic.”
“Well surely that’s a big deal!” Sunset said with a laugh. She cuffed Twilight’s shoulder. “And you had me going about it being nothing special. What else did you find out?”
“Nothing other than what you discovered, I’m afraid.”
Sunset’s excitement dipped sharply. “Oh,” she said, glumly.
“Yeah,” Twilight said with a little sigh.
“No, come on,” Sunset rallied. “You have to have found out something. I mean, you had Princess Celestia with you.”
“Sunset,” Twilight said contemplatively, “how many memories are in the shard that has yours in it?”
Sunset blinked. “Um... I don’t know, actually. Only Pinkie saw—“ Sunset stopped herself. “Why do you ask?”
“The shard that I have has only had one, very short memory. The one time I used dark magic willingly, when helping to save the Crystal Empire. That’s why I was quite excited to come back and see the one that you had made. We couldn’t find out much just from one memory of something I already know.”
“And what exactly are you hoping the one I have can do?” Sunset asked, puzzled.
“What we primarily need,” Twilight said, raising a finger in instruction, “is a means to traverse the memories within the shards. To study them in an orderly fashion, rather than jumping randomly. We couldn’t access any of Sonata’s or Aria’s, as you discovered, without them to grant access. With your shard, we can practise sifting through memories in an orderly way. Hopefully, at least.”
“I see,” Sunset said, still feeling trepidation running up her spine.
Just at that moment, the doorbell rang.
“That must be Pinkie,” Sunset said, seizing upon the excuse to drop the conversation. “I’ll just go let her in.”
Pinkie was only too happy to help, although she like Sunset seemed to have reservations about using Sunset’s memories.
“They’re...” she said, looking for an appropriate description. “They’re, not good,” she finished, lamely.
Twilight looked between her two friends, at their closed and reluctant expressions. “If you’d rather I didn’t see,” she said delicately, “I’ll understand. You two can perform the experiment yourself if you want to. We have the TP of the shards fairly well mapped out, so there shouldn’t be any unknown variables.”
Sunset bit her lip. “I’d rather not,” she said tightly.
“They’re not that interesting,” Pinkie said with false humour.
“Just use Adagio’s!” a voice hissed.
They all turned quickly to the door. Through the crack shone a purple eye, its edges crinkled in scowl lines.
“Hey, now!” Pinkie said indignantly. “It’s rude to spy on people!” She paused a moment. “Except when wearing a disguise.”
“It’s okay, Pinkie,” Sunset said, hurrying to the door. She poked her head out and peered into the room. Sonata and Adagio were both happily still colouring, the television loud enough to mask the whispered talk coming from Sunset’s room. She ushered Aria inside and closed the door. “I think that Aria might want to help,” Sunset explained in response to Pinkie and Twilight’s questioning looks. “She’s concerned about Adagio.”
“Concerned in what way?” Twilight asked.
Sunset briefly explained what Aria had told her about how it had been Adagio, after disappearing with a mysterious person, who had attained and distributed the pendants long ago.
“Fascinating,” Twilight said, staring speculatively at Aria. “That’s a destination.”
“A what?” Pinkie asked.
“A destination,” Twilight said. “If we’re to traverse the memories in the shards, we need something to latch onto. Something that acts as a focus point, like a spot on a map. And we need details in order to do that. Aria can provide those details.” She smiled kindly at Aria. Aria didn’t smile back, but as usual looked indifferent and wary.
“Don’t mind that,” Sunset said with a smile, as Twilight looked a little off-put by Aria’s external coldness. “Aria’s just worried that Adagio might be interested in having the pendants again.”
“Has she told you that she wants them?” Twilight asked Aria.
Aria hesitated. Glancing once at Sunset, she proceeded to speak quietly, as though frightened of being overheard. “Not exactly. I just think she does. Adagio found them first, and brought them to me and Sonata. After I put mine on, I woke up in the big house. I don’t even know how we got there.”
“Big house?” Twilight frowned, evidently not understanding.
“I think she means the mansion where we found her and Adagio when it was snowing.”
Aria nodded. “Snowing,” she repeated, shivering a little as though remembering the cold. “We all woke up in the house, and I knew that the stones had done something. We looked for valuable things. I found the broken red stones before they did. I put them in a different room so Adagio and Sonata wouldn’t find them.”
“The red stone,” Twilight repeated. “It’s a poetical name, considering what they are.” She frowned a little at Aria when the little siren looked unenlightened. Then she looked at Sunset Shimmer. “She knows what these are, doesn’t she?”
“I don’t think so,” Sunset said with a shrug. “They lost their memories.”
“Well yes, I know that,” Twilight said, waving her hand. “But surely you told them what they are. The children do know who they used to be, don’t they?”
A peculiarly awkward pause followed here, during which time Sunset felt her internal body temperature rise. She hadn’t of course, and she saw no reason to do so, but the way Twilight spoke made her think that perhaps there had been a reason that Sunset hadn’t seen.
“I haven’t told them, no,” she said cautiously.
“Told who what?” Aria asked, looking between Twilight and Sunset.
Twilight looked flabbergasted. “Sunset,” she began, in the constrained manner of someone trying to intimate an important point without raising their voice. “What were you thinking? You can’t keep something like that from them!”
“Keep what from who?” Aria asked, more impatiently.
“It just didn’t seem important to tell them,” Sunset said, defensively. “I mean, do you think it is?”
“What do you think will happen if they ever find out for themselves?” Twilight snapped, evidently becoming infuriated by Sunset’s lack of understanding.
Because it’s important to tell your friends things
Sunset herself had said those very words to Sonata. Did that make Sunset a hypocrite? Undoubtedly. But on the other hand, what had happened when Sonata told her sisters what she had done? It’s difficult to say whether telling them had been a wise thing, or an unwise thing.
“Sunset?” Twilight prompted.
Sunset jumped a little. “Huh?”
Twilight sighed, giving Sunset a mingled look of sympathy and impatience. “It’s your choice in the end, I suppose, but I think it would be better if you told them before they assume that you’ve been hiding it from them.”
“Hiding what!?” Aria cried.
Pinkie, who’d been keeping unusually quiet during the exchange, suddenly clapped a hand to Aria’s mouth. All four of them looked towards the door, listening. But they heard nothing but the drone of the television, and after a few moments of nothing happening, Pinkie took her hand off Aria’s face. Sunset stood up and tip-toed over to the door. Opening it a crack, she looked out to see Adagio watching the TV, and Sonata pouring herself some juice. Neither of them seemed to have been disturbed by the sound, nor did they seem to notice, or perhaps not care, that Aria was missing. Sunset frowned as she closed the door again
Returning her mind to the subject at hand, Sunset supposed that Twilight had a point. She, Sunset, hadn’t really been keeping the history of the Dazzlings from them, it just hadn’t seemed relevant. They weren’t those people anymore, and as far as Sunset knew there was no way for them to become those people ever again. At least, not with magical powers. What had it mattered?
Looking at Aria however, Sunset remembered her suspicion that Adagio was interested in the pendant shards. Perhaps Adagio couldn’t get the pendant and its associated powers back, but what if she regained the memories of her past self? She alone, according to Aria, had known the origin of the three siren necklaces. Had she sought them out? Had she desired the power of them to save herself from whatever fate the man who took her away had in store for her? Or had she perhaps taken the stones simply to gain power for herself?
There was, of course, the other option, that Adagio had been an unwilling victim of the pendants. Given how the shards had reacted in the siren’s mansion, that seemed at least possible, if not plausible. They had tried to latch onto the nearest source of magic they could find. What if Adagio had been ensnared in a similar fashion, and transformed into the villainous siren Sunset had known?
Then there was the big issue of trust. Sunset wanted the sirens to trust her, but trust was a two-way street. Without being unwise, she had to give the three of them reason to trust her, and trust them in return.
“Aria,” Sunset said, coming to a decision. “Do you remember what I told you about why I agreed to take you into my home?”
Aria nodded. The little girl had an unusual ability to sense moods for someone her age; the cautious look coming over her face told Sunset that Aria anticipated bad news. “You said you did it because you felt sorry for us,” she summed up.
“And do you remember why else?” Sunset prompted delicately.
Aria thought for a moment. “You said because you felt bad about those people who died. The ones you wanted to help.”
Sunset bit her lip, and then began to tell her the truth.
Aria listened to Sunset’s explanation without interruption. Her face grew paler and paler as Sunset revealed who the sirens had been, what they tried to do, and how Twilight and her friends had banded together to stop them.
“That’s not right,” was the first thing Aria could articulate. “Th-That’s wrong! I don’t remember—“
“We believe that your memories have been affected,” Twilight explained gently. “You changed from teenagers to children, we think, as a sort of regression. Like going back in time.”
Sunset, conscious of Aria’s tenuous grasp of English, re-explained what Twilight said into Aria’s native tongue, with the effect that Aria looked more horrified than ever. She looked at her hands, as though checking that they were still her own, and not those of a malevolent magical teenager bent on world domination. Sunset’s eye lingered on her still bandaged right arm.
“But...” Aria began, but then fell silent. She seemed to have no more to say.
Sunset was frankly surprised that Aria was taking the news as well as she was, and how quickly she seemed to be accepting it.
But then, Sunset thought with a twinge of guilt. She’s a child. I could tell her any old story and she’d probably eventually believe it.
“Why didn’t you tell us?” Aria asked. Another stab of regret bit into Sunset’s stomach as she heard the faintly accusatory, even hurt tone in Aria’s voice. “You said those people died.”
“In a way, they have,” Sunset said, not quite meeting Aria’s eye. “You aren’t those girls anymore. Who you were is gone. It just didn’t seem important to tell you—“ she stopped herself. If she was going to be honest, she had to give the entire truth. “The reason I didn’t tell you was because I thought that if you knew who you had been, and who I am, you wouldn’t ever trust me. You wouldn’t come to me willingly, and I wouldn’t be able to help you. I was worried that you might get hurt out on your own, without any help.”
Sunset waited for Aria to become angry, or dejected, or some other horrible emotion, but Aria’s next response was rather unexpected.
“You can’t tell them,” she said in a low voice.
Sunset looked instinctively at Twilight. The princess seemed the most caught-off-guard.
“Can’t tell...?” Twilight inquired.
“Adagio,” Aria clarified with a frown. “You can’t let her know this. Not now. And Sonata can’t keep secrets. Don’t tell either of them.”
“But why?” Twilight asked, flabberghasted.
“Adagio doesn’t trust people,” Aria said. She turned to Sunset, and gave her a very serious look. “You take care of us, and don’t ask us to do anything for you. If you try to keep the red stones away from us, then I trust you, and Sonata likes you, but Adagio doesn’t trust. Not anyone.”
“I didn’t think she would,” Sunset said, sighing internally.
“Well surely she trusts you,” Twilight said to Aria.
Aria shook her head. “She trusts us in a way, as her friends; we three have been together as long as I can remember. But we’ve never had much reason to trust anyone else. Adagio takes betrayal real bad.”
Whilst Pinkie interpreted some of this for Twilight’s better understanding, for Aria had slipped back into Greek in her preoccupation, Sunset considered Aria’s words. The teenage Adagio had been unpersuadable, possessive, and domineering. She was not quite so overpowering now as she had been, but a strong intolerance for breaches of trust meant that Sunset had to tread carefully. And she couldn’t help but feel that, somehow, she was already treading a thin line.
“Don’t you think that if I told them both now, they might not just take it as you have?” Sunset asked Aria.
Aria shook her head vigorously. “You can’t let her know about those stones!” she hissed. “She mustn’t have them!”
“She can’t use them like you three did before,” Pinkie pointed out. “What with the energy sucking and the mind controlling.”
“True. Functionally, they’re broken and useless for their previous purpose,” Twilight pointed out. “I know of no way that they can ever be repaired.”
“But possibly,” Sunset said anxiously, “if she saw the memories of her past self... honestly, I don’t know what might happen.”
“It would not be good,” Aria said firmly.
Sunset, Twilight, and Pinkie all looked between each other.
“Well, I suppose you know her best,” Twilight said in a resigned sort of voice.
“Did you come up with any ways of navigating the memories, by the way?” Sunset asked, bringing the conversation back to the original topic.
Twilight did not exactly reply to this. She smiled a somewhat self-satisfied smile. “Oh yes,” she said, suppressed mirth bubbling into her voice. She reached down the front of her shirt, and tugged out the head of a necklace, holding it dangling from a fine, silver chain. Sunset and Pinkie both leaned forward, Aria peering out from under their chests. A dark blue amulet of some shining smooth stone bordered with a silvery metal that seemed to glitter with star-shine dangled from the chain, in the shape of what was unmistakably a crescent moon.
“Pretty,” Pinkie said, ruining the moment a little.
“Compliments of Princess Luna,” Twilight said, bouncing a little on the chair in the manner of an Iron Man fangirl in the presence of Robert Downey Jr.
“Oh, nuh uh!” Sunset said excitedly. “Don’t tell me—“
“It totally is!” Twilight squeed.
“Princess Luna, at least by all I’ve read, had the power to enter dreams,” Sunset explained to Pinkie and Aria, who were both looking puzzled. “She could traverse the dreamscape and even enter the pony’s memories and subconscious mind. And she had near total control of whatever happened there, even delve into the memories of those she visited. She could navigate memories.”
“Exactly, and this little gem,” Twilight said, shaking the pendant a little, “should let us do just that.”
“You think it’ll work here?” Sunset asked, raising an eyebrow. “In the human world.”
“I don’t see why it wouldn’t. Both your journal and my crown worked here.”
“True,” Sunset conceded. “So how do we use it?”
“That’s the downside,” Twilight said, her excitement levelling off. “Apparently, it takes practise.
“Ah.” Sunset said, her shoulders slumping a little. “Well then...”
“Yeah,” Twilight muttered.
After a short pause, Sunset made yet another difficult decision. Twilight was her friend after all; of all the people Sunset could show her most painful memories to, she was surely one of them.
“You can use my memories,” Sunset said. She tried to put as careless a tone to her voice as possible, and as indifferent an expression on her face as she could manage, but she suspected that she either hadn’t done a very good job, or Twilight could simply sense her disapprobation.
“Thank you, Sunset,” she said earnestly. “We’ll have this solved in no time.”
After an hour or so of her, Twilight, and Pinkie studying the shards, Sunset confessed that she needed to go shopping.
“That’s fine,” Twilight said amicably. “Would you like me to go whilst you’re out?”
“No, no,” Sunset said, waving down the offer. “Please, feel free to stay as long as you like. If you need any help just call us, okay?” She mimed a phone to her ear with her thumb and little finger.
As she, Pinkie, and the kids all entered the nearest local supermarket, Sunset checked her bank account on her phone.
“Can we get these?” Sonata asked suddenly. Sunset looked down, and saw Sonata holding up a box of chocolate animal crackers. “Please?”
“If you want,” Sunset told her. “But that’s all the sweets you’re getting, okay? I can’t afford any more. You two can go pick something as well,” she said to Aria and Adagio. “And pick something the same size!” she called after them, as Adagio shoved Aria aside in her eagerness to snatch what she wanted. “Could you watch them while they pick out what they want?” Sunset asked Pinkie.
“Oh I’m sure they’ll be fine,” Pinkie giggled. “We’ll be able to see them from the fruit and veg section.
“I guess,” Sunset said, rather reluctantly. She found herself indeed keeping an eye on the kids as she and Pinkie ran through the fruit. Out of respect to Applejack, they never bought store apples, but Pinkie did retrieve a hand basket in order to stock up on bananas.
“We have to use up the whip cream soon,” Pinkie explained after stocking up 5 bunches.
Sunset decided not to inquire into that scenario, and glanced over to the kids again. She experienced a momentary and very mild heart attack when for a moment it seemed that Adagio wasn’t there, until she noticed a mane of orange hair over the top of the little sweets rack that Aria and Sonata were perusing.
“Momma-Sunset,” Pinkie snickered.
“Har-har,” Sunset returned sardonically. “Even if they weren’t my responsibility, it’d still be a stupid thing to let three six year olds go off on their own.”
“Of course, of course,” Pinkie said, her smile as wide as her shoulders.
Sunset forced herself not to sigh; it wasn’t worth fuelling Pinkie’s gaiety. “I’m trying not to make anything too complicated for dinner,” she said, swiftly changing the subject. “Sonata and Adagio are picky eaters. How does mashed potatoes, mixed veg, and popcorn chicken sound?”
“Like a farm at the movies,” Pinkie replied vaguely, inspecting the passion fruit.
Sunset was about to ask Pinkie to be serious, when Aria and Sonata returned. Sunset looked down and frowned. “Where’s Adagio?” she asked.
Sonata blinked and looked around. “Um...” she said, looking back.
Sunset looked at the rack of sweets where she’d seen the orange hair, and to her horror, saw a young boy with curly orange hair trip out to follow his nearby parent by the magazines. Sunset’s mouth fell open.
“Where is she?” she asked, fighting to stop the spread of the rapidly advancing panic surging upwards out of her gut. It had only been a few minutes since they’d been examining the sweets; Adagio couldn’t be far away.
“Front desk,” Pinkie said quickly, possibly noting the colour draining from Sunset’s face. “We can ask them to call her on the inter—“ she was cut off by the distinct and forceful utterances of Ancient Greek dialect, emanating several shelves away. Before Pinkie could utter so much as a syllable, Sunset had moved with the rapidity of a dream.
In front of the line of tills stood a woman in business-dress, holding onto Adagio’s wrist and talking sternly to a young man behind the counter of the customer service station. Ignoring Pinkie’s tentative warnings, Sunset made a beeline for this woman and without so much as beginning to consider the consequences, slapped her hand from Adagio’s wrist.
The woman jumped and turned around to find Sunset glaring at her with an intensity set to make the walking dead reconsider whether rising from the grave was all it was cracked up to be. The woman gave a short machine-gun cough and attempted to reassert her managerial authority.
“Who are you?” she asked, matching Sunset’s blazing look with a steely cold one.
“That’s none of your business,” Sunset snapped, stepping in front of Adagio. “What do you think you’re doing?”
The woman drew herself up a little. “This girl is a known thief in this store, and a suspected runaway child. I was about to call the police.” She glanced at the young man behind the desk. He was looking curiously at the development, evidently waiting to see how things went before acting himself. “I ask you again; who are you?”
“I’m,” Sunset began. She hesitated for a split second. “I’m her cousin,” she lied, shepherding Adagio further out of the woman’s line of sight as Pinkie and her other two children caught up. The woman’s eyes roved over them all.
“Your cousin,” she repeated sceptically.
Sunset’s insides burned a little fiercer. “Come on,” she said. “We’re going.”
“Excuse me,” the woman said loudly. “I think not. Are you responsible for these children?”
“Lady, I don’t care what problem you have with my cousins,” Sunset retorted, feeling blood pulsing in her ears. “If I see you touching any of them again, you lose the hand that does it.”
So saying, she strode away holding Adagio’s hand, leaving the woman red in the face and looking entirely astonished.
“Um... Sunset?” Pinkie ventured when they were back in the fruit and veg area.
“Are you alright?” Sunset asked, lowering down to Adagio’s level and looking her over.
Adagio didn’t respond. She let Sunset look her over, watching her closely as though trying to decide something. Sunset waited for Adagio to answer her question, but when the girl continued to say nothing, Sunset gently took the arm that the woman had been holding, and inspected it for any signs of bruising or redness.
“Hey, err, Sunset?” Pinkie said again. “Not trying to criticise how you handled that or anything, but I think that might have been the store manager.”
“So?” Sunset said coldly. “I don’t care if it was Principal Celestia; she had no right to do that.”
Sunset noted her three children giving her somewhat startled looks. She covered her lingering anger with a slightly tight smile. Now that it was over, she herself was a little surprised by the primal sort of rage that had bubbled up inside her, and began to wonder herself if maybe she’d overreacted.
“Well, I think maybe just a little,” Pinkie said reluctantly when Sunset ran this concern by her. “I mean, they did used to steal things. They probably did rob this place at some point. And I’m not sure how else she was supposed to stop Adagio running away.”
Sunset was considering for a moment there that Pinkie had some fairly cogent points, up until she was reminded of the grip on Adagio’s wrist. Once again she found herself becoming automatically defensive, and had to bite her tongue to stop herself saying something cutting. Possibly Pinkie could sense what Sunset was holding back, for she pressed the point no further.
“Maybe I did overreact,” Sunset muttered from in between her teeth. “Still...”
She had no rational argument to give, or any point other than her gut reaction. She forced a deep sigh in an effort to calm herself, and suggested that they continue shopping. But the full ramifications of Sunset’s actions weren’t felt until they paid and reached the exit. There, the young man from customer service, nervously pushing back his short mane of bright green hair, passed Sunset a yellow sheet of paper.
“We’ve been banned from the store,” Sunset said conversationally to her three children. “On the grounds that I threatened the manager with violence, and that the three of you are known shoplifters.”
“Shop lift-ers?” Sonata said, confused.
“Thieves,” Pinkie said.
“Oh,” Sonata said, nodding her comprehension. “Right.”
Pinkie narrowed her eyes. “You... know that’s a bad thing, right?”
“Uh huh,” Sonata answered cheerfully, grinning her gap-toothed smile. Pinkie didn’t look entirely convinced.
“Oh well,” Sunset said, not much concerned. “There’s more than one supermarket in town.”
“That’s hardly the point, is it?” Pinkie asked nervously.
Sunset shrugged. “Maybe I was wrong to flip out like that,” she said nonchalantly. “But that doesn’t make what she did right.”
Pinkie didn’t pursue the subject, and remained relatively quiet all the way back to Sunset’s apartment. What Sunset didn’t know, absorbed as she was in the dregs of her anger, was that the main reason for this was because Pinkie was giving Adagio a curious look, who in turn was watching Sunset closely from behind.
“Um... did something happen?” Twilight asked as she opened the door.
Sunset sighed. “Is it that obvious?”
“Furrowed brow, distant expression, and overall air of preoccupation usually means that you’re thinking hard about something, and usually something has to happen to provoke said thinking.” Twilight grinned. “Trust me, I get that a lot.”
Sunset smiled a little too. “Well... had a run in at the supermarket.”
“What kind of run in?”
Sunset proceeded to explain what happened, although she was interrupted a few times by Pinkie. To Sunset’s irritation and bemusement, Pinkie seemed to remember things differently than she did. The way Pinkie told it, the manager didn’t seem to have done so badly during the encounter, whilst Sunset had been rather unreasonable.
“Whose side are you on?” Sunset snapped, giving Pinkie a burning look.
Pinkie leaned away, shrugging. “I’m just tellin’ it how it was!” she said quickly.
“Sunset,” Twilight interceded, placing a hand on Sunset’s shoulder. “I’m sure that the manager was at fault in how she apprehended Adagio, but by all the two of you have told me, I think that you yourself could have handled the situation better.”
Sunset felt her throat tighten with indignation. With a patience born of her guilt-laden post-villainess lifestyle, she stopped herself from retorting; she really had no desire to fight with Twilight or Pinkie over this. Yet at the same time...
“I’m going for a walk,” she muttered curtly, storming out of the door.
“Walk? But you just came—“ Twilight said, before Sunset slammed the door. “...back,” she finished. She and Pinkie looked at each other, with identical looks of unease.
Sunset walked quickly. She had no particular destination or even any idea of one. She just needed to walk, to burn off some of the frustration in her guts and brain. Walking seemed to do the trick. The brisk breeze of the sunny spring day rushed against her face, throwing her hair out behind her as though they were real flickering flames. Before long, she came to the park again, and thought that she’d take a turn around the ponds before heading back; surely she’d be all worked off by then.
The thing was, she couldn’t even explain to herself why she was so angry, or why it was lasting for so long. Just the thought of that woman holding Adagio...
An image flashed across her mind; a brief snippet like a movie projector on the fritz, of Adagio sitting in the darkness, her face expressionless and her eyes blank. Her hand was extended in front of her, and a large hand connected to no one was grasping her wrist as though to pull her into the dark.
Sunset shivered and shook off this disturbing thought.
To her surprise, as she strode through the twin thickets of trees lining the middle path to the largest of the ponds, she felt a tug on the back of her coat, and she turned around to find Adagio standing behind her with a rather severe look on her face.
“Adagio?” Sunset blurted. “What are you doing out here?”
Adagio didn’t reply for a short time. She stared up at Sunset with a strange mixture of wariness and curiosity on her face. Sunset rather felt like a dangerous but fascinating animal that Adagio wanted to pet, but was afraid of being bitten.
“Don’t think that you own me,” she said finally, in a defiant voice.
The statement was so out of the blue, so at odds with anything Sunset had expected, that all she could do was stare.
“Um... what?” she croaked.
“I said you don’t own me,” Adagio said louder. Sunset was very glad to be alone in and amongst a veritable wall of trees; someone might be led to think this a sinister conversation if overheard.
“What in the world makes you think—“ Sunset began, getting down onto her haunches with her elbows on her knees.
Adagio’s eyes narrowed. “You took me back from that woman. I’m not yours to take! We live with you; that’s all!”
“Adagio, I don’t own you, I care for you,” Sunset explained, unable to help one corner of her mouth twitching. The notion was so ridiculous that it seemed somewhat amusing to her. “Those are very different things. I don’t expect anything from you.”
Adagio looked unconvinced. “Then why did you get so angry?” she challenged.
“Because I thought she was hurting you,” Sunset said, unable to keep a little laugh from her voice. “The way you were shouting, I thought she was going to break your arm.”
Adagio blanched and looked away. After muttering darkly for a few moments, she met Sunset’s eyes again. “Why would you care?” she asked in a petulant mutter, evidently struggling for things to say.
“Because I care about you,” Sunset said, slowly and clearly.
These words had a remarkable effect. Adagio’s angry expression froze, and her eyes wobbled slightly in her head. After a few moments she swallowed, and it looked difficult.
“No you don’t,” she said quietly, looking away again.
“I do,” Sunset said as solemnly as she could. “Of course I do.”
“Why would you?” Adagio snapped. “What do you want?”
“I don’t want anything,” Sunset replied. Then she amended “All I want is for you to trust me. Trust me that I do care—“
“Liar!” Adagio bellowed, angry tears glistening in her eyes. “You’re a liar! You want something, and I’ll never let you do it!”
“Calm down—“ Sunset reached out, but Adagio flinched away from her.
“You’re a liar!” Adagio shouted again. “I’ll never trust you! Never ever, ever!”
And with that, she spun around and ran away back towards the road.
Under any other circumstances, Sunset would have felt impelled to go after her. But two things combined to stop her. The first was that the outburst had rendered Sunset’s limbs feeling numbly like they had turned to jelly, as though her bones had dissolved out of her. And the second thing was that in some sensible corner of Sunset’s mind, she knew that there was absolutely nothing that she could do, nothing that she could say, that would change Adagio’s mind.
- To be Continued
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Well, that was depressing.
5953180 Damn. I made Aku feel sad.
Perhaps I am too powerful
This is getting dark
5953198 Oh indeed. I wonder if I should add a dark tab, since it's going to get darker.
5953189 Truly you are a master of the feels
Aw man... that was a heavy chapter all around. Wow. Which is rather ironic considering that the title of the chapter made me laugh out loud!
I knew this would come back around eventually. And there's still a certain legal document she's been hiding...
Nice chapter. Please continue.
Thought it was going to be a more light hearted chapter, then got punched in the gut with feels.
All in all, another excellent chapter.
Damn. Sad day for the Shimmy.
I hope Adagio will come around one day.
5953189 You fool! You have acquired too much power! You'll destroy us all!
Sunset is going to have to tell Adagio eventually, against Aria's wishes, isn't she?
I'm glad you've seemingly given Aria a big part, having her know something the other two don't. Tons of fics have her kinda be on the sidelines.
Ouch. Trust issues. Takes years to grow out of those.
Sunset, you're in for quite the ride.
Damn, that last line broke me...
5953223
Hmm...
If what I think happened to Adagio happened...
Maybe.
Probably.
TAKE ME WITH YOU!
And then, poor Adagio
5955004 I've often observed that Aria often doesn't have a critical role in many stories, even if she is figured prominently. People don't seem to imagine sometimes that if a character is to be significant enough to be featured, they need to do something. Their appearance otherwise is frankly just an elongated cameo.
5954216 Oh god you're right!!!
5953903 One thing that's almost always guaranteed with me is the injection of feelz.
5953687 Indeed. Let's keep that certain document in mind. In the words of homeland security: I don't know where. I don't know when. But something will happen.
Thank you, no questions, bye!
Great, you made my mind fall into the gutter again.
Heh, I'm having this problem in real life too sometimes.
I love Aria in this story. As easy as it is to sympathize with Adagio or laugh with Sonata, it's incredible how developed Aria really is as an insightful, dynamic character (which is rare). "You can't tell them" is a fucking astounding twist.
Sunset just says 'here, come romp in my mind' that's a true friend right there
"Sonata and Adagio are picky eaters" hah did Sonata get pickier now that she's not starving?
"Sunset noted her three children": squee! her three children!! squee again at overreacting Sunset
Adagio is shockingly much a child, despite all her maturity and aging experiences, it's heart-rendering
Fascinating? You find that FASCINATING?! If you knew half the s*** those assholes had done to her you would definitely say not fascinating at all and downright sick and every last one of those Society members should burn in hell