Year Zero, Weekend One
Saturday Morning found a half awake Rarity fumbling in front of her mirror, trying to find her toothbrush while she wasn't even fully functional yet.
Fun fact about discovering one's own brand new superhuman abilities: the shock absolutely ruined one's beauty sleep.
Reaching for what she was sure was her toothbrush, Rarity instead found herself holding her hairbrush in front of her mouth as if planning to brush her teeth with it.
As she did not have a beard or mustache, there was no reason for her to have it anywhere near her well cared for teeth. So, with a bit more force than was strictly necessary, she slammed the brush back on her private bathroom counter to be used later.
The resulting impact caused one of her beauty products to be knocked off her table and into the garbage can. Specifically, her toothbrush.
Rarity stared at the garbage can. The garbage can she had not emptied in over a week. The garbage can full of repulsive refuse that her wonderful, soft tipped, custom made imported toothbrush had just fallen into.
Rarity did the only logical action for this scenario.
"This is the! Worst! Possible! Thing!....." Rarity wailed, loud and dramatically complete with exaggerated and tragic hand gestures over the fall of her sacred toothbrush,only for purple light to form in he hands and take the form of a nearly identical toothbrush.
Rarity eyed the brush for a moment, before holding it over the sink with one hand. With her other, Rarity reached for her toothpaste, and squeezed.
The minty freshness within was promptly deposited on the energy construct bristles as if it were a legitimate plastic tooth scrubber.
"Well, I suppose I did need to replace that old thing anyway" Rarity nonchalantly shrugged as she began brushing as if she had not just been shouting about her poor brush.
....
It hadn't been much when Sunset found it all those years ago.
It was just an old warehouse, only distinct among its kin for having once been a factory at some point in the distant past, and for having a functional combination of a clock, some light fixtures, and a roof that was comparatively lacking in holes.
In her time she had added a few things here and there, found either abandoned, for cheap, or obtained via thievery and trickery.
Sunset's gaze slowly trailed over the faded factory walls until her eyes alighted on one of her few prized possessions and couldn't help a small grin: her motorcycle, propped up against the wall. She had found it rusted and abandoned in a junkyard; several months of summer later, she'd restored it to its former glory, and it had become an instant part of her image.
Over a dozen old tables of various make, from wood to plastic and metal, lined the walls. Covering them were boxes filled with a variety of books and miscellaneous things.
Some of the more dusty ones held the very first ones Sunset had obtained: paired with journals with which she had translated the alphabet she had used in the past to the one used here.
It was somewhat a lasting shame to Sunset's pride how much she owed to a book called 'The Hungry Caterpillar'.
Of course, Sunset had expanded her abilities vastly since she had learned the ways of this city, and not just when it came to reading the Latin alphabet.
A blue haze formed over one of the smaller holes in the roof. The haze spun, energy slowly coalescing in the air before solidifying into a solid patch.
Sunset gritted her teeth over the sloppiness of the spell.
She was supposed to be better than this.
She was a master of magics, a mage with few peers who were not immortal. And she was, rusty.
Unbelievably, frustratingly, maddeningly, rusty.
She was rustier than her door, and she could probably study tetanus from the oxidized piece of junk!
A hand, was no where near as focused a medium like, say, a horn for channeling power, as she was used to.
It didn't help that she had two of them. Sunset had determined that she could in fact channel magic through either hand as she could once her horn, but it was far easier to do so through her dominant hand.
Sunset wasn't sure if that was something she could fix. The entire 'dominant hand' thing had always confused her, she knew that people could train themselves to use both, but how long would that take?
Would it just be more economic to cut off her less dominant hand, or was the issue not a case of her magic being divided along two possible paths but an inferior channeling body part and cutting her hand off wouldn't help her in any way and only draw unnecessary attention to her.
Teenage girls missing hands were kind of an oddity in these parts.
Given how much progress she had made in just a few hours, perhaps these limits could be overcome with hard work and training.
Then again, would she really need that much more power than she currently had?
Assuming she wasn't going to get into duels with tanks, what in this world could threaten someone of her caliber?
GRUMBLE
.......Other than hunger, perhaps. She still had those apples in that stolen mini-fridge, right?
So, food, then some more practice to get her magic back to something respectable, bed; a perfectly productive Saturday.
And probably Sunday too.
....
Rarity placed two plates piled high with the pinnacle of breakfast foods: delicious, fluffy blueberry pancakes. Humming slightly to herself, Rarity measured put a dollop of butter on both pancakes, and then carefully poured just the perfect volume of maple syrup (not that cheap watered down stuff, either: the real concentrated sugary goodness people steal for) first onto one set of pancakes, then the other: just enough to bring an explosion of flavor once the pancakes had absorbed the syrup, but not enough to risk the structural integrity of pancakes under a deluge of maple syrup that would reduce them to nothing so much as an unappetizing mush. With a small smile, Rarity went about chopping up several fresh strawberries to go with her masterpiece.
"Can I come in yet?" Sweetie Belle asked, muffled behind the kitchen's closed door.
"Now now Sweetie, you know you can't rush perfection," Rarity said, flicking discarded leaves into the trash.
"But why can't I be in there? I like watching you cook."
"Sweetie, you do remember what the Fire Department said last time?"
"Oh come on! It was only a little explosion..."
"Well, it was enough to put us on a watch list, dear. Just a few more moments patience, alright?" Rarity said.
There was nothing but silence for a few moments. "Fine..."
Finally done, Rarity put the bowl of chopped strawberries at the center of her modest table. With a smile, she undid the deadbolt locking the door and opened it.
Rarity nearly stumbled as her sister did her absolutely best to break the sound barrier and all but lunged for the pancakes her sister had so artfully created.
Rarity's eye twitched as Sweetie Belle upended the oh so expensive maple syrup onto her pancakes in a deluge of concentrated sugar, but she kept the smile on her face. After all, everything could be on fire. Besides, after this breakfast for two, the day-an entire, glorious, wonderful, and, er- nice day would be all hers.
Well, after she took Sweetie Belle shopping. That could only end so well.
....
Of course, as long as she checked her grocery cart for anything too expensive she might have tried to sneak in between the pancake mix and the paper towels, and she didn't try and buy any clothing from the racks of the mega-chain store, it shouldn't be too much trouble.
"Rarity....."
She didn't even need to look at her sister to know what she was going to ask "You have your gift cards, you can pick a game up for yourself. However, I reserve the right to veto any sort of M-rated, ultra-violent, over-sexualized material you might try to get for some inexplicable reason."
"Hey, this game's not sexualized! It's just thirty six hours of solid zombie ninja chainsaw mass-ac-res..." Sweetie Belle slowed down, slowly realizing what she said as Rarity raise an eyebrow. "Eh-hehe, I'll just go pick something else now."
"Fine" Sweetie mock whined, muttering something along the lines of, "Who needs chainsaws and zombie ninjas anyway." As her younger sister wandered off, Rarity's eyes wandered across the displayed titles, though her mind was less on them and more on the predecessors she had played long ago.....
Mario Kart 8
"Come on, come on, come on.......AHH! Alright, who used that shell on my Wart! Applejack!"
"Wasn' me Rainbow, Rosalina's ridin' this race cleaner than Big Mac's plate after harvest."
From her vantage point on the bed as her friends held out their wiimotes, Rarity rose a well manicured eyebrow as Fluttershy seemed to be slightly giggling to herself.
Marvel vs Capcom 4
"Why do you always pick to play as the Mane-iac? There are far better looking playable characters whose combos actually make some sort of logical sense" Rarity questioned Pinkie as the two held controller in hand, Rarity herself having chosen a character named Dante to play as, in no small part due to such...delightfully open attire or the relative elegance of his moveset..
"What fun is making sense? Plus, if I play as her, no one knows what she'll do next, she's just like me!"
"You do realize that is a bad thing, right?"
Super Smash Brothers
"FALCON...."
The bear with the bird in its backpack, coming from a game that Rarity herself had never heard of, formed a shield as the fighter charged up the flaming fist attack in the neat little game their cute little purple console was runnng.
"Punch....hey!"
"Sorry Applejack, but I just figured out how to do that. Now, take this!"
With a uppercut, the bear knocked away the fist fighter, depleting the last of Applejack's lives.
"GAME!"
"Ha ha, Rainbow Dash, champion of the universe!"
Elegant face contorted into an uncharacteristic frown, Rarity tore her gaze from the harsh reminder of her former friendships to a row of figurines.
As her gaze shifted by figurine after figurine, each memory of its own, Rarity's frown deepened and her heart felt just a little bit heavier
Electric mice and fiery dragons from battles long past, green swordsman and space faring foxes from adventures long ended. Plumbers and dinosaurs from challenges long surpassed, and bears who smashed alongside birds and that was all she knew of their history.
Not even the figures she did not remember made her feel any different, for the life forms with paint guns made her think of summers spent witnessing the orange and the blue due battle with water guns.
When Sweetie came back from the bowels of the electronics section with a game featuring a pink round life-form, Rarity's eyes were hidden underneath her hair, which cast a long, melancholy shadow across her face.
She didn't talk much at all for the rest of the shopping trip, no matter how much Sweetie pestered her.
....
"It's not like I miss them. I don't......"
"......"
"They betrayed me first!"
"...."
"I don't know what you are implying. I do not get depressed when I hear sports teams, see butterflies, attend parties, or taste apples!"
"...."
".....Okay, that one time didn't count! I had something in my eye.....for hours.......and I had allergies at that one point and that one point only...."
"....."
"Rarity, are you talking to Opal like she's a therapist again?" Sweetie shouted from across the house, too busy with her new game to enter Rarity's room.
Rarity raised her head from the purple energy shrink couch, even as Opal glared at the back of her head through the shrink-esc glasses formed on her face "No......"
"Right........" Sweetie did not sound convinced, but didn't burst in. Past experiences had taught her that such things never worked out well for either of them. Plus, new video games were far more important, and safer for her mental health.
With a heavy sigh Rarity got off her created couch, the furnishing vanishing into purple dust along with Opal's glasses as she walked towards her window, her face retaining a heavy frown.
"Why do I still miss them?" Rarity asked no one in particular about her former friends. Opal, having followed her to the window merely rubbed herself against Rarity's leg with some purring.
Rarity's face adopted a sad smile at this gesture, "Aren't you sweet."
Opal smirked back at her before the sound of her garage door began to reverberate through the house, shaking it to the core.
"......took them long enough" Rarity muttered to herself in regards to her returned parents with more than a hint of annoyance at them. Something glittering caught her attention out of the corner of her eye.
It looked metallic, like it had slipped out of the gutters or some other part of her roof.
A purple sphere formed around the falling mystery object and flew into Rarity's outstretched hand.
Holding the sphere like one might a capsule of untold riches, Rarity frowned when she noticed that it held a locket inside.
One covered in dirt and gunk and.....other things that clogged gutters.
Thankfully, she had a bathroom with cleansing, running water.
And soap. Lots and lots of beautiful, life-saving, soap.
So, with a quick washing the gunk was revealed a locket made of gold, with a purple diamond in the center.
"Oh my........" Rarity said in amazement "Why, how ever did you end up on my roof?"
The locket proved itself less talkative than Opal, but Rarity didn't mind as she made for putting it on.
Fantasies of showing off the beautiful pendant to her peers at school came crashing down by Reality. She highly doubted her parents would even entertain the story that she just found a gold locket on the roof. With a sigh, she slipped the locket into a pocked...at least, until she could get a reasonable explanation for it."
....
Sunday night found Canterlot City police sirens blaring, swarmed in front of a warehouse. Half a dozen police vehicles were parked outside, making enough noise to rouse anyone from slumber.
One might think they have discovered the lair of a mysterious teenage mage with no records to her name, but that lair would be on the other end of town. Questionable warehouses could be found in many parts of any city after all.
No, these men in uniform had been called here, to a most unusual sight.
Dozens of gang members.
No, that wasn't it. The police had run into dozens of gang members before. Most of the time they were armed and resisting arrest.
What was unusual, however, was that the gang members were all unconscious.. Usually immobile gang members the police came across were dead or high.
Kneeling in front of one of the unconscious gang members, an officer was checking for identifying marks "Captain Armor, they're the Garble Dragons."
The lead officer in question, a pale graduate of one of the city's highest ranked private academies, rose an eyebrow in surprise "The Dragons?"
"Yes sir."
"Captain, we've done a sweep of the warehouse, it's filled with that new drug we were warned about! Phoenix eggshells, I think they call it!"
"Understood. Call precinct for additional transport, and get everything in this place marked down. I want to get that garbage, and the peddlers of it, off the street! Also, restrain them so if any of them get back up, they won't try anything funny."
"Sir!" as his men began darting past him with cameras, tape, and handcuffs in hand, Officer Armor had a thoughtful frown mar his features.
"First the Windigos, then the Hydras, now the Dragons.....one every night since Friday, and that's not even getting into the complaints coming in from Sweet Apple Acres in that same period of time. This can't be.....no, it isn't a coincidence.....but what is it then? Are we dealing with some new gang who doesn't want competition and has some odd morality to them who have something against fruit, or is there a vigilante in Canterlot City?" as he wondered this, his eyes wandered up to the ceiling, only to freeze when he caught motion.
What he saw was gone just as quickly, causing the officer to hope he really hadn't seen something.
Because as much fun as it would be to prove to Twily that one could study comic books productively, he really didn't want to end up being Commissioner Gordon.
.....
"So, for some reason the events of Friday were not picked up by a majority of the planet, living or technological. The possibility of it evading human senses is not what we find hard to believe, there are after all forms of light and decibels of sounds even we cannot pick up."
"However, the fact that all technology designed to pick up unusual phenomena such as this failed to do so is both surprising and concerning."
The voice that was communicating this message was not physically present by the entrance to Canterlot High School, originating from a radio frequency. It was male and sounded serious, all the while tinted with genuine concern over what had happened over the last few days.
"This is not the first time that strange energy has been detected in this single portion of Canterlot City. The cause of these energy readings has been something we've longed been interested to research further, though the logistics of openly investigating it within a highly populated and scrutinized area have long prevented it. What you have observed, as well as your fellow members of The City, is something completely different."
"Human-Beings affected by these strange energies, to the point of gaining unique abilities. While we have witnessed similar phenomenon in the past, it has never originated from the energy connected to Canterlot City before, though different forms of foreign energies have had similar effects on Humans and some of the other forms of flora and fauna found here. We can only assume that this phenomenal is a result of the nature of Humanity and the other species native to this planet as Chaos Lifeforms, which makes them far more susceptible to such mutations."
"Where this energy came from, the extent of the impact on mankind, and what the affected plan to do with their abilities is the most important quandary we must strive to answer. Our surveillance has managed to determine that several students at this school are among the affected. Your mission is thus, to observe them and report back to us if they display any unexpected side effects, or choose to use their powers for nefarious and harmful reasons. Should that come to rise, then we will be forced to take actions to spare humanity from a very real threat."
The receiver of the communication shook her head, as if not being particularly fond of the idea of being responsible for the 'containment' of a fellow classmate.
"You know that I do not say these things lightly my friend. I will be the first to say I have often hesitated to act in the defense of this planet for far too long many times, yet I also take note that I have stopped more threats to this world with kind words and guidance than with my guns. Sadly, sometimes the guns are necessary. I believe strongly in the potential of humanity to chose the right thing, and many times I have been proven right. I hope to be proven right this time."
"Now, I must end this transmission. I have been requested to observe a new experiment ongoing in the Garden. We have high hopes for it, though I must also be ready in case it detonates violently. I leave you with this however: first of all be on the lookout. If you were able to pick up the unknown energy, it is very likely that They are also able to see it. We may wish to engage Them to stop their cruelties as soon as possible, but none of us wish to draw in more of the innocent into such a conflict than is absolutely necessary".
"Secondly, you may inform Octavia of your mission, to whatever degree you see fit."
As the message ended with the speaker giving his name and signing out, the audio waves that were playing across a pair of purple shades died away.
Leaning against a statue of a proud looking horse, a blue haired girl in white pushed herself off the statue and turned for home, to prepare for school tomorrow.
A frown never left her expression all the way.
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awesome chapter... i'm confused on how Octavia some how got in on this... either we will find out later.. or not..
poor poor Sweetie belle the feels are real..
welp keep it up.. can't wait for more.
6978553 I thought it was explained in chapter easily enough: Vinyl is a member of an mysterious organization known as the The City. Octavia and Vinyl are virtually always paired as friends or lovers, and thus Octavia is aware of The City.
6979063
ohh my bad.. didn't see it the first time i read the chapter.. after reading your comment and re-reading i see it now... always again keep up the great work and can't wait too see more...
"Purple Light To Form For He Hands"
I Think You Mean Her.
"Just A Few More Moments Patience"
Just A Few More Moments Of Patience...
"runnng"
Running
like i said via PM i would come back and re-read.. i found these mistakes while reading..... and like i said in my first ever comment.. Awesoem Chapter.
The italicized words are redundant.
I’m guessing she doesn’t know much about video games?
Sweet Apple Acres? Why did they call?
So this has happened before?
Who are they talking about?