meanwhile...: Tales of the Berylverse

by Shinzakura

Walls and Bridges, Part II

As he descended the stairs, Code noticed an odd thing about the house: it had a strangely equine motif, as if the owners really loved horses or such. There were also a lot of books and classical-style paintings, a sign of someone really into past culture. Of course, he really couldn’t complain; back home, his mother loved pink flamingos so much she practically wallpapered the house with them – and she actually did use flamingo motif wallpaper for her diner. As for his father, he was a fan of Masterpiece Theater and PBS, so seeing Brideshead Revisited on a bookshelf here didn’t seem too out of the ordinary.

As all of this flew around in his head like detritus in a storm, Code tried to recall what happened the previous day. The last thing he remembered was letting himself into Jade’s dorm room to check on Pearl (after her “episode” the other day, he was worried), but she hadn’t been there when he arrived. He’d waited around a few minutes, and then….

What had happened then?

The beads Jade hung up around her door frame had started to glow, hadn’t they? Yes, Code remembered thinking it was only a trick of the light at first. He reached out to idly grab them for a closer look and they’d seemed to glow brighter…almost as if they were reacting to him. Then they’d…made a doorway? No, that couldn’t be it. Code knew that was impossible, but there it was: an entrance to another room much larger than any of the dorms. And in that room was….

The details of the day before suddenly came rushing back to him, and Code started to wonder if he was going crazy as he started hearing voices. But no, he wasn’t crazy; the voices were definitely real and coming from elsewhere in the house. Code wasn’t so sure about everything else he suddenly remembered, so in the interest of not going crazy, decided not to think about it any further.

He did, however, follow the voices towards their origin: both female, and clearly bickering at the moment.

“Jade, Ah said you’re family and Ah meant that – but Ah also meant that you need to solve your own shit, okay?”
“Look, AJ, what was I supposed to do? I can’t exactly tell Sunset about all of this!”
“Yes you can! Ah thought you two were friends?”
“AJ, if you want to be technical, she’s my liegelady – way different from just being a friend. Hell, I’m not even sure where I stand with you!”
“That hurts, you know?”
“Sorry, I didn’t mean that.” A sigh. “Fuck, I am so Faustdamn confused right now….”

The moment he stepped into the kitchen, he found the two girls looking at each other. Applejack was seated at the table, a half-eaten omelet and toast on her plate. Across from her, eating from a sizeable plate of eggs, bacon and toast, was Jade, with a somewhat embarrassed look on her face.

As he approached, the latter looked at him. “So, um…hungry? I can fix whatever you want.”

Applejack grinned. “Go as expensive and exotic as you want. Ah figure she owes us for this.”

Jade’s eyes narrowed. “Yes, oh she who wanted a brie-and-applewood-smoked-bacon omelet with Iowa golden hash browns and Devonshire butter on San Francisco sourdough toast.”

Applejack shrugged. “Be glad Ah’m not mah friend Rarity. She’d be going for some really expensive stuff – shit Ah generally can’t pronounce.” With that, she reached over and plopped a bottle in front of Code. “And this is for you. Trust me, you’re gonna need it.”

Code stared at the bottle of tequila sitting just across from him. “It’s…” He looked at the clock on the nearby wall, “…7:30 in the morning.”

“Trust me, if Ah was old enough, Ah’d be taking a healthy swig right now.”

Code then turned his look to Jade. “Jade? What’s going on?”

“It’s a long story….” she said with reluctance.

“Well…if you’re friend’s right, we’re a thousand miles away from college with no explanation why, I got here by going into your room and then ending up in a freaky sci-fi hellhole with eight versions of what look like Pearl and you came at me with glowing purple hands and I must seriously have been slipped some weird shit by my roommate, because this is the only way any of this makes sense.”

“I wasn’t aware Rolling Paper did drugs.”

“There’s a reason why I gave you unopened drinks the last time you were at my dorm,” he drolled. “Besides, that’s not the point. What the hell is going on here?”

“Would you believe that you’re asleep, this is all a dream and you’ll wake up and everything will be fine?” she asked awkwardly.

Now it was Applejack’s turn to glare. “Jade….”

Jade sighed. “You know how hard this has been for me, AJ.”

“And a lot of it you brought on yourself. Ah’m not saying it’s not entirely justified, but…you trust me, right? You can trust others, too.”

“Yes, but you know why I can trust you. Otherwise, you wouldn’t know, either.”

“That’s not the point, sugar, and you know it.”

Code looked at both, an angry scowl coming onto his face. “Look, right now, I don’t give a fuck about whatever personal issues you two have with one another. What I would like to know is what the fuck is going on!”

The two girls looked at one another again, and Applejack commented, “Yeah, sorry, sugar. This is old hat for me.” She then looked at Jade. “All yours.”

The two were quiet for a few minutes before Jade finally said, “Fuck this….” and grabbed the tequila bottle, taking a swig from it.

“Are you sure that’s a good idea?” Code asked. “It’s morning and your friend said she’s not old enough, but honestly, I don’t think any of us are.”

Setting down the bottle, she said in a sad tone, “Oh, trust me, I’m old enough.”

“You turn nineteen in January. I saw your driver’s license.”

Applejack grinned and cracked, “Give or take about six thousand years.”

Code blinked his way through a pregnant pause. “What?”

“Do you know that book I have? The one that’s my favorite?”

“Yeah – A History of Equestria or something like that, by some author named Time Passages. I remember reading some of it and tried to find a copy of my own, but aside from finding out that the author is from New Zealand and writes non-fiction biographies, I never found anything else. I figured it was just a limited-run one-off just for him to get it out of his system or something like that. Why?”

“It’s my favorite…because it’s not fiction,” she told him, never wavering her gaze from him. “It’s history. Specifically, my history, or rather, the history of my homeland.”

He blinked once. Twice. “What?”

“Code…I’m…I’m not African-American, or even American. I’m not even human. I’m…” She took a breath, then exhaled. “I’m a unicorn.”

The response to that was expected: Code stood up and paced around the room. “Roll, you sick sunnabitch…I told you I didn’t want you to put shit in my drinks, but you fucking idiot!”

“This has nothing to do with your roommate, Code.”

For her part, Applejack leaned back in her chair. “Trust me, sugar, this isn’t the first time I’ve been present for this kind of admission. At least she’s doing it better than the last one I knew.” To that, Jade gave her an annoyed look that said Really?

Meanwhile, Code just continued to pace. “Look, I gotta wake up, get a hold of the real Jade and see if she can get me to the campus clinic. I’ll have to explain what happened, and it’ll probably get Roll in a world of shit, but Goddammit, Roll, you deserve it for doing this to m—” He suddenly found his head being turned around, surrounded in a field of mauve.

He was immediately turned to face a small animal the size of a German Shepherd; it looked like a toy version of a unicorn. The creature looked at him with sad eyes and said, “Code, you’re not dreaming.”

Code did the only thing he could think of: he passed out again.

“Okay,” Applejack grunted. “I take it back: you really screwed the pooch on this one, sugar.”

Jade brushed her mane out of her eyes and looked at her friend. “AJ, not helping at all.”

“Yeah, well getting teleported two time zones out of nowhere will do that to you,” she said flatly. “Now if you’ll excuse me, Ah need to figure out how Ah’m going to explain to my family why Ah can’t work at the store today, or for that matter, why Ah left the house at five in the fucking morning.” Getting up from the table, she departed the room.

Jade sighed and facehoofed. “Great, just great. I am soooo glad Lord Starswirl will never see this, because my old master would probably be laughing his plot off at me right now.”

After casting a wakefulness spell on Code and apologizing to Applejack, Jade brought the two back into the kitchen for another talk. This time, however, she opted to remain in her unicorn form for the whole of the conversation. These were two of her closest friends and two who now knew her secret. She owed them.

So, as the day dragged on and breakfast came towards lunch, Applejack offered to cook, since Jade was somewhat unable to. As she did, Code and Jade continued their conversation, and to his credit, he was starting to come around to the idea. “So…you’re clearly not a nineteen-year-old girl, but a six-thousand-year-old unicorn mare?”

Jade sighed. “This is going to sound funny, given how I look, but…I don’t consider myself a unicorn mare anymore. I’ve spent the last couple of years as a human girl and given that the time I came from is no longer there anymore, I have no reason to go back. Besides, I love Brae, and I’m going to be his wife someday.” She blushed at that, and despite the change in face, to him it seemed so much like his friend.

Code turned to Applejack. “And you’re human?”

Applejack looked at him. “Not that it should be any concern of yours, but yes, Ah’m human. Most of the time, anyway. Long story there, trust me. And before you ask, so’s Braeburn. He’s mah cousin, and Ah think mah parents would’ve mentioned something if things were different.” She then dropped a couple of plates in front of them. “Okay, hope you like your burgers well done.”

To Code’s surprise, Jade shapeshifted into the girl he knew right in front of him. “Thanks, AJ,” she said with appreciation.

“Hey, as annoyed as Ah am with you right now, Jade…we are family. That ain’t gonna change, and you know it,” Applejack said with a fondness that Code noted.

“So…the big question, and yeah, you probably answered it already, but…why?” Code asked. “I mean, you said you’ve lived here for two years without being detected, you have your ‘parents’—” he said, adding finger quotes, “—and you’re technically an adult already. So why live like a teenager?”

“Because I am one, physically. I don’t really understand how it all works – even now, the ponies in Equestria that study this still don’t get it either – but with some exceptions here and there, we generally show up the same age as our counterparts. My counterpart – the human Jade Lily – lives in Arizona and attends ASU. Aside from our names and looks, there’s nothing in common between us. If anything, she’s more like Iris…just without the bad parts.”

He shook his head. “I’m…still trying to wrap my head around that, too. This Iris person…you say that she was your old roommate, that she killed Violet and when we found out, she was murdered by the person in charge of the cult she was a part of, a person who doesn’t have eyes, but has far more magic power than you do and was powerful enough to completely wipe her from existence?”

“Not exactly from existence,” Jade said, clearly shuddering, so much so that she had to set down her food. “Last week I found an article from a newspaper in Oregon that said that a family was killed in a car accident eighteen years ago.” She paused. “Including their infant daughter, Iris Nightshade.”

“But that’s—”

“Impossible?” Jade finished for him. “I wish I could say it was. I don’t know, and I’m not going to risk a trip out to Oregon to find out the truth. Iris…despite everything…she was my friend, someone I trusted. If things had been different, it would probably be her in your shoes right now. But she was brainwashed by that cult she was in, forced to do things I’m sure she wouldn’t have done if she’d known any different. And now? Now, I’ll never know.” Jade turned away, sorrow in her eyes. “That’s the thing I’ve had to keep under wraps. It’s not a lie…not exactly…but the truth? Well, you’re having a hard time believing it and yet….”

“Yeah, I get what you’re saying.” He sat there for endless minutes, and then finally reached for the half-empty bottle of tequila, pouring himself a shot. “So how do I figure into all of this?”

“Look, Code, I’m still trying to figure out how the hell you got into my dorm room,” she told him. From the look in her eyes, she seemed angry, but at the same time, the tone in her voice was one of both resignation and, in a sense, relief.

“You gave me the spare code key to your dorm room, remember?” he reminded her.

“That still doesn’t explain—”

“You told me that you’d planned to be out all day today,” Code replied back. “Something about a day trip to Duluth?”

Jade’s eyes widened; in everything, she’d completely forgotten about that. “Oh, shit….” she mumbled into her hand as she facepalmed. “I completely forgot about that.”

“Was it a lie?”

“Um…not really. It was going to be part of a class research trip. Now I’m going to have to cover my ass on that on top of everything else,” she groaned. “But that still doesn’t explain why you were there.”

“I was worried about Pearl. She was in bad shape last night, worse than I’d ever seen her.” He paused. “At least until last night. I…I didn’t imagine any of that, did I?”

There was a heavy pause. “No,” Jade admitted.

“Is she real? She said she came from Ding Dong, Texas—”

“There’s a place called Ding Dong?” Applejack interjected. “Fuck, and Ah thought Beehive was a weird enough name for a town.”

“You live in a city called Canterlot, which used to be Camelot and was originally Poverty Flats, if I remember you saying,” Jade reminded her.

“Yeah, point.”

“That’s not the point!” Code slammed his hand on the table, and the look in his eyes was suddenly angry. “Jade, you lied to me about her! You made me care about a girl that doesn’t exist!”

“Look, I’m sorry, okay? I wasn’t aware that you were going to start falling for her. That wasn’t her purpose! She was meant to be an early warning system in case those who had come after me before were going to come after me again. Hell, originally she wasn’t even corporeal – I changed her from a hologram to a golem after I had an unannounced visitor,” Jade commented, looking at Applejack.

“In mah defense, Ah didn’t know Sunny was gonna head to see you first thing,” Applejack told her.

“Look, I don’t give a fuck about that, okay?” The look in Code’s eyes was anger. “I came over to check on her because I was worried, okay? Worried about…about some girl that I cared about and one you’re saying is just some magical flesh robot?” He gripped the side of his head, shaking it in confusion. “Was all of it fake? Was the day that she kissed me fake too? Just some programmed protocol that—”

Jade looked at him with surprise. “Wait – she kissed you?”

“Yes! She even told me at one point she wanted to go out with me, but she was afraid that she’d be stepping on your toes, since you’re her roommate. I take it that was a lie as well?”

“Ah am soooooo glad Rainbow ain’t here for this,” Applejack said to no one in particular. “You’d never hear the end of it.”

“AJ, shut up,” Jade told her, then turned to Code. “Code…are you serious about this?”

“Yes, I’m serious! What, you want pictures or something?”

“Look, Code…I know you’re not going to believe this when I tell you, but….” She sighed. “I never programmed her to do any of that. She was just supposed to be a normal roommate, and that was that. That’s why I told you she had a boyfriend. Not because she actually has one or because she could have one, but…she’s not supposed to be capable of it.” When Code looked at her oddly, she stated flat out, “Think about it: can a robot love? Is a robot capable of love?”

“Of course not! Otherwise we’d all owe our Roombas an apology or something.”

“That’s basically what a golem is. To use a human equivalent, it’s a simulacrum.” She broke out her phone, went to the Wikipedia page and passed it over.

He read the article, then looked up at her. “So, she’s a replicant?”

“A what?”

“You mean like Blade Runner?” Applejack asked. When Jade looked at her, the teen shrugged. “You’re telling me Brae or Summer haven’t shown you that?”

Now it was Code’s turn. Grabbing his phone, he brought up the appropriate page on Wikipedia, passing that over to her, Jade read over it, then read it a second time. “I…guess? I mean, this is all just make-believe to me.”

“Yeah, well a few hours ago, you and all of this was just make-believe to me.”

“Hey, at least you didn’t reference Battlestar Galactica,” Applejack cracked, only to get stared at by both of them. “So much for helpful support, Ah guess.” She then looked at both of them. “You know, both of you are spinning your wheels here. If you’re that worried about her, why not go check on her?”

Later that afternoon in Jade’s alchemical lab, Code looked at the eight tanks, all carrying the girl that he liked. Except…now he wasn’t really sure if she was real…or a girl. Seeing her – all eight of her, floating, unconscious and asleep in the tubes was bad enough; worse so that all of them were her. But it was the fact that she floated in the tank there, completely nude…and with nothing to hide…that truly underscored the truth of it all.

He would have half-expected the girls present to give him some lecture about respecting Pearl’s privacy, but…it was hard to worry about privacy for someone who had no private parts. Furthermore, it was hard to worry about privacy for someone who technically wasn’t a someone.

And yet…seeing her like this? It was like she was in critical condition, like she was on the verge of death.

No. Something inside of him told him that it didn’t matter what she was. This was Pearl, a girl who liked him…and a girl he liked, too. Maybe he was weird for falling in love with the magical equivalent of a robot; certainly, there had been tons of stories about that since the first fake girl caught the attention of the first real guy. Plus, he was certain that what she was doing, hinting that she wanted to be with him, couldn’t be just programming and code. He knew computers and code and that world. Maybe Pearl’s coding was far above anything he was used to, but Jade had said it was magic and if so, magic didn’t play by the rules he knew. That meant that when it came to her, the rules he knew went out the window.

He leaned against the nearest container. It didn’t have to be this way, and yet….

“What the hell?” He heard Applejack’s words and looked at her. She was looking at him, completely shocked. So, for that matter, was Jade.

“What’s up?” he asked them both, noting their faces. It didn’t help when they pointed at him, and he turned to look at where they pointed. His hand, flush against the glass of the tank, glowed with a magic circle that burned with the same color as his citrine eyes. Even more shocking, despite the fact that Pearl was in a deactivated mode, she too placed her hand against the glass, as if to reach out to him.

With a surprise, he pulled his hand away from the glass, looking at the amber glow that remained on his hand until it softly faded away.

“That’s…not supposed to happen, is it?” Applejack asked Jade.

“No,” Jade commented, equally astonished. “But I think I know what it means.” She put up her own hand and a diffuse glow came around it. “AJ, concentrate on your power and do the same.” When Applejack did so, Jade stated, “Code, do what you just did.”

“What did I just do?”

“Just…focus, okay?” she told him. “Trust me. I won’t let anything happen to you, I promise. Just focus on your power and it should come forth.”

“Like a Jedi or something?” he asked.

Jade laughed. “Something like that, yes.”

Looking at her worriedly, he closed his eyes and focused. Once again, the glow and magical rings surrounded his hands, but it was a far weaker force enshrouding his hand as opposed to Applejack or Jade.

“Well, that confirms it,” Jade said, looking at the far different appearance of his magic. Looking at him, she said, “You have human magic, Code. Apparently, you come from a human magical bloodline.”

Applejack looked down at hers, which was blobby and shimmering, and looked more like Jade’s. “Then why isn’t mine like…?”

“Well, you told me about how your magic was awoken by Princess Twilight, right? My guess is – and no offense, AJ – that you probably don’t come from a magical family at all; instead, you got your powers via the Elements. Call it a magical transfusion, if you will.” She then pointed at Code. “But yours, Code…it looks like everything I’ve ever read up on about human magic. In Equestria, we rarely use magical circles, but they don’t look as complex as that – and they certainly don’t encircle our horns.”

He looked at his hands, and a smile of wonder came onto his face. “I’m a mage?”

Jade shook his head. “No, I don’t think so. Think about it: for starters, if you were, then Iris would have probably tried to get to know you a little better. Given that she didn’t know who you were at all, either the Ordo didn’t know about your magic, or just as likely, didn’t consider it a threat.” She went over and took his hands, looking at it intensely. After a few seconds, she pulled back. “You have very little magic, so much so that it’s almost nonexistent.”

“Nonexistent?”

She nodded. “You had a mage in your bloodline at one time, but it’s been so long or so far back that it’s been diluted by the rest of your ancestors. Your kids or grandkids will likely never have any at all. And while I can teach you how to use what little you have, it’s going to take a lot of training, maybe making sure you have access to a magical artifact you can draw from and even then, it’s going to exhaust you after a while.”

“But if I need training to use it, then why did it appear when I touched the tank?” he asked. “And why was Pearl trying to reach out to me?”

Jade didn’t have an answer to that, but it was Applejack, surprisingly, who did: “Could it have been the Dance?” the blonde asked. When both of them looked at her oddly, she then explained what had happened between Sunset and the human Sunset, who had apparently (and unintentionally) received her magical powers from the alicorn. When one Sunset tried to teach the other how to use it, the first thing they did was the Dance of Magic.

“They…didn’t have that in my time,” Jade explained. “It’s far more recent, I guess. But if what you’re saying is right, then it’s something that happens between two individuals who are intimate with one another.” She looked at Code. “I get that you have feelings for her, but the Dance shouldn’t happen, unless….”

“She’s got feelings for him, too,” Applejack noted.

“But that’s—”

“Impossible, sugar?” Applejack noted. “One of mah best friends, as well as mah future cousin-in-law, are both horse-like aliens from another dimension. Ah have magic powers of mah own, and when Ah’m fully powered up, Ah grow pony ears and my hair gets long enough that it looks like Ah have a tail. Want to tell me exactly how you define impossible? Because Ah think that word’s run out its welcome.”

“But even still….”

“Jade?” She looked at Code, who went back to the tank, and had placed his hand against it once more. As expected, the unconscious Pearl slowly reached out and touched the side of the glass where his hand was as well. His magic activated, and to Jade’s surprise, so did Pearl’s. Even more so, despite being in a deactivated state, a soft smile came onto the golem’s face.

Jade looked at the two of them: guy and girl, doing what naturally came to males and females with attractions to one another. Even though they were different species (and even that, as well as gender, was up for debate in Pearl’s case), the look of bliss on her face, as well as the worry and care on his made it clear what they thought of each other.

What if the same was between me and Brae? she asked herself. What if this was the way he found out what I was? A flash of imagination hit her, and it was suddenly her in the tank, with Braeburn standing just outside it, a worried and confused look on his own face. She turned to Applejack, who stood there, arms folded and looking at her with sympathy.

“What do I do, AJ?” she asked.

“Ah dunno.” The blonde turned to look at the two at the tank. “But Ah do know what pain is, and worry is. And after having seen what it’s like to lose a friend to death? Ah just never would want to be in that situation ever again.” She nodded her head towards them. “And it’s gotta be a billion times worse if the person is someone you intimately care about.”

Jade looked at the two for the longest time, then at Applejack, then back to the pair again. At last, she sighed. “I don’t know if I’m doing the right thing, AJ. Just bringing her into existence is technically illegal by Equestrian standards.”

“This ain’t Equestria, sugar,” Applejack reminded her. “And Ah can’t speak for Sunny, but Ah know you didn’t mean to do anything to hurt anyone. Ah think she’d understand that.”

“Then what do I do about them?”

Looking at the pair, Applejack said softly, “Maybe you shouldn’t do anything. Maybe it’s them that need to sort this out.”

“Dude, you just need to chill, okay?” Rolled Paper said to Code a couple of days later. They were back in their dorm, and at the moment, the former was seated on the couch, watching football and for a rare change, not high as a kite. “I can roll us a couple of blunts right now. Should just take the edge right off ya, man.”

“No…no thanks,” Code replied. He felt sickened. He hadn’t spent the night there in Oklahoma – Jade had cleared him out and told him he needed to go back, as she had to think about what to do with Pearl. He in turn asked if that meant “deactivating her” and Jade sadly admitted that it was possible. At that point, Code wanted to fight her, but…Jade was his closest friend. Right or wrong, he had to trust her. Furthermore, the look in her eyes was one of loss and confusion – the same look when she’d found out that Violet had died.

He hated leaving. He hated walking out of her dorm room as if nothing was wrong. He hated spending all of yesterday and a good part of today, skipping classes and sitting in a funk. He’d gone by Jade’s dorm the first thing this morning, but she hadn’t answered, and given that she’d taken his spare key that she’d given him, there was no way to know how she was handling, either.

“Trust me, man, I’ll get the bong, we’ll order some pizzas, and everything’ll be bliss, my man,” Rolled said with a lazy grin. “Good times.”

“No,” Code replied. “I’m good.”

A knock on the door got him out of his reverie. “I’ll get it,” Code commented, hopping out of his chair to answer the door. If nothing else, it would at least get Rolled off his latest attempt to get him stoned.

As he got to the door, he found a familiar figure standing there. “Hi,” Jade told him with a wave.

He leaned against the doorframe. “Hi, Jade….” he drawled, unsure of what to say.

She looked at him. “Look, I thought I needed to tell you this in person: I’m sorry about what happened this weekend, Code. I needed some time to figure everything out. And I mean everything. I’m in uncharted territory here, especially in regards to…well, you know.”

“And?”

“It wasn’t an easy decision,” she sighed. “It wasn’t one I wanted to make, but AJ told me that I wasn’t being fair to you – or honest with myself – if I didn’t make a final call. But I don’t want to put anyone in danger – not my family, not my friends, not innocents. And leaving things as they were didn’t sit well with her.”

“She’s a smart kid,” Code admitted, not sure where the conversation was going.

Fortunately, he didn’t have to guess.

“Hey, we’re going to be late for class, Jade! And you know how Prof. Gradecurve gets when we’re even a minute late!” To Code’s shock, Pearl appeared there, a smile on her face and light in her eyes. “Besides, you’re not allowed to flirt with him!”

Jade snickered. “Oh, really?”

Pearl mock-pouted. “Yeah, really! Now go away, I need to talk to him!”

“Fine, fine. I’ll wait over here, but remember that I still need to talk to him about something.”

As Jade walked a slight distance away, Pearl looked at him. “So…about this past weekend….” she began.

“Pearl, listen: you don’t have to expla—” Code began, but Pearl cut him off.

“I…I guess I should have told you that my disease is worse than I said it was earlier, and that I have to go to the hospital for blood transfusions occasionally. Jade told me that when I passed out, you were really worried, and when you guys called the ambulance, you were completely freaked out. That you spent the entire weekend by my hospital bed until the doctors sent you home.” She sighed. “Trust me, between my parents blowing a fuse, Jade chewing me out and the doctors giving me a lecture, I’m really sorry about putting you through the wringer, Code. I really am. But….” she said, a smile creeping onto her face.

“But?”

“Tonight. 7:30, pick me up. I made reservations at Keewenaw’s at eight, and then we can go hit that movie I wanted to see at 9:30.”

Code blinked. “Huh?”

“Good! I’ll see you tonight then! Gotta go!” With that, she headed towards the elevator. “Jade, you coming?”

“Uh, no – I need to talk with him about the other thing that came up this weekend,” Jade commented.

Pearl’s smile briefly fell. “Yeah. I heard about that. Well, you two have me, so that’s a consolation prize, right?” And without even thinking twice, she went up to Code and kissed him deeply for several seconds before breaking off, breathless. “There’s more where that came from,” she said with a wink before rushing back towards the elevator. Waving goodbye to the pair, she then headed off.

Code stood there, amazed, while Jade giggled. “3.0,” she said after a second.

“3.0? But I thought—”

“I nearly did. But then Applejack told me that if Pearl really reacted to you that way, she was capable of other things and I didn’t have the right to interfere between what goes on with you two. And she’s right, you know: I don’t have that right to interfere…especially when things get to that stage.”

“That stage?”

“You know, when a filly and a colt really really love each other….”

“No! I mean, I thought….”

“Like I said – 3.0. I made a lot of changes to her, and she’s as close to a normal human being as can be, although she has pony magic instead of human magic, and I’ll still have to switch her mental core out between the eight different bodies, so she’ll ‘be going to the hospital’—” Jade commented with finger quotes, “—once every couple of months.”

“That still doesn’t answer—”

“Yes, she can.” That put his further question on ice. “Trust me, it was hard to make those adjustments, but I, ahem, found a willing volunteer to model.” She tapped him on the shoulder and added, “Oh and AJ says if you so much as even think about her while you two are getting intimate, she’ll know and she’ll drive from Canterlot just to kick your ass.” Code went pale, and Jade added with a laugh, “Well, I couldn’t very well use myself as a model, right? That’d be all kinds of awkward.”

“As if it isn’t already?” Code asked.

“Just take care of her, okay? She’s not the Bride of Frankenstein and even though I don’t consider her my daughter or anything – that’d be creepy as hell – she’s still my roomie and my friend, so don’t hurt her, okay?”

“Um…yeah. Of course.”

“Good. Now if you’ll excuse me, I need to get to my class.” Whistling the tune to the theme from Weird Science, Jade went off, towards the elevator and the rest of the day.

Comments

[Flynt Coal]

And so Jade's allies increase, and by extension Sunset's. But will it be enough to beat such an ancient and powerful enemy?

[red-sun]

love is complicated

[lighting_spark]

“Good. Now if you’ll excuse me, I need to get to my class.” Whistling the tune to the theme from Weird Science , Jade went off, towards the elevator and the rest of the day.

I didn’t know that song was actually from something decide Androids

[Starcat5]

10080959
Given that said Organization implied that their last resort was the magical equivalent to a "Dirty Bomb"*, but were confident that it wouldn't be needed? It is going to take a bit more than a small army, a hand full of Magi, one borderline unkillable but otherwise offensively limited shapeshifter, and one Alicorn to save the day.

*Or maybe it was something on the larger end of a mid-sized nuke. It has been a while since I read the relevant chapter of the relevant fic. Either way, the implication was "Big Boom, Massive Civilian Casualties/No Survivors".

[Starcat5]

10080959
...wait. Shimmy has magic now? Which fic was this "Dance" mentioned in? It seems that the more side fics I read, the more side fics I have apparently missed.