Starlight's Shattered Glass

by jrock117

Result of Second Sight/Further Discussion on Humans

"She knew the whole time," Sunset held her head in her hooves at the table, "and played along while I was more terrified than I had any right to be." Starlight gently rubbed the mare's back with a soft hoof, doing her best to ease her friend.

"At least you admit that you overreacted." Starlight hoped her tone conveyed a sense sympathy rather than awkwardness at the previous situation. If Sunset noticed her effort, she didn't show it.

"It's so stupid." She whined to herself, shaking her head left and right.

"To be fair," Sunburst began, "Princess Celestia does have a pretty intimidating presence."

"Ugh!" She gave a loud groan as she threw her hooves into the air. She leaned back her chair, pushing away with yet hooves on the edge of the table. She, very visibly, tightened her jaw as she held herself at a leg's length away from the table. Luckily, it seemed before she could blow a gasket, she reigned herself in. "I... I should go and apologize to her." She rested her head on her hoof. Both Starlight and Sunburst nodded in encouragement, trying to raise their friend's spirit.

Sunburst took the lead. "She came all the way down here just to see you."

"Probably wanting to make up for the years you two missed," Starlight followed. Sunset's face fell at that reminder.

"Years we missed because I was such a-" Sunset's voice didn't exactly trail off, so much as it just stopped. She looked at the table, bringing Starlight's attention to the spot. She knew it had been recently polished, and could only assume Sunset was looking at her own reflection. She roughly got off, the chair squeaking in protest, and trotted to the door. On her way, she looked back at Sunset and Sunburst. "I might need you guys to come with me. Just so, y'know, I don't break down or anything." She stopped at the door and stared at it. "There's a lot of emotional baggage I didn't get to unpack last time."

---~<P>~---

Can't even cook gravy without fucking something up. Jason stood at a microwave, brown stained paper towels in hand, as he cleaned it out. He tossed his current set of paper towels and grabbed another set, continuing to wipe away at the runny mess. How the hell was I supposed to know the customers would take so long?

You're in a super market, of course customers will take longer than necessary. It's your fault for cooking it that long.

I thought it would be fine!

Jason had spent his cleaning time mentally arguing with and scolding himself for the current situation. After placing the gravy in the microwave, a group of customers had shown up, so he put the timer for four minutes thinking it would be fine. It was not, as the current situation showed. He hadn't heard the beep, signifying that it was done, nor had he heard the pop from the gravy bag, yet here he was.

You can't just assume things will be fine if you do something differently.

I had customers, I didn't want the gravy to cool off before I got done with them.

Jason's train of thought came to a halt right there. With a heavy sigh, he tossed another set of dirtied paper towels into the trash and grabbed just one more towel, doing a small wipe to finish the job. That's fucking stupid, it has to go through several runs before it's even ready to serve, anyways. Why did I worry about something that stupid? With the wad thrown away, he closed the door and checked the time.

---~<P>~---

"Do you think she went to talk with Twilight?" Sunburst said as the trio rounded a corner through the crystalline halls.

"She did mention Twilight had written you were here." Starlight looked over the many doors of the hall, most of them filled with, as Twilight called them, mini-libraries, while others remained as fully furnished guest rooms. "What if there's a friendship emergency that requires the entirety of Ponyville to hole up in the castle? I can't just leave them be with cold, hard floors." That was her mentor's response when she asked about them.

"Still mad that she did that." Sunset noted. Her pace quickened as they rounded another corner, quickly closing in on Twilight's office, the one she used for signing official documents. "Though, I guess I needed that little nudge. Celestia knows I probably wouldn't have talked with her otherwise."

Starlight narrowed her eyes at the orange mare as she noticed that last sentence. "'Celestia knows' as in the saying, or 'Celestia knows' as in your mom?"

"Starlight." Sunset said a bit hastily, with a quick turn of her head and a tad bit of sharpness to her tone. It elicited a short snicker from Starlight, while Sunburst decided to hang back from the annoyed mare, obviously not wanting to be caught in the hypothetical splash zone. Before much could happen, their attention was brought to the door they were certain the princesses were behind. Light chatter could be heard beyond the door, the melodic voice of Celestia being the deciding factor to go in. Sunset, taking up the front of the trio, opened the door, immediately noticing the smell of tea. It seemed the pair of pony princesses weren't chatting about anything important as Celestia almost immediately ended the conversation, rather giving her daughter her attention.

By quickly cantering over and enveloping Sunset in, quite possibly, the fluffiest wing hug she could muster.

"Ah, there you are, Sunset. I was worried you wouldn't show up." She nuzzled into the smaller pony's mane, clearly content with the situation and not caring for any on-lookers. Sunset, however, had an expression frozen without emotion. Her annoyed glare from earlier turned into a blank stare, as if trying to bore holes into a wall behind the larger of the two. Starlight tilted her head at the display as she examined her friend a but mire. Sunset seemed almost unresponsive, as if this wasn't what she had expected. A small orange glow caught her attention, near around Sunset's chest, the light from her geode catching on newly formed tears. Sunset, without another second to waste, hugged her mother figure with all she could, a big goofy smile on her face as tears streamed down. Starlight couldn't help but daaw at the situation.

---~<P>~---

"You sure you're not crazy?" The silky smooth voice of his coworker came with no hesitation. His name was John, a big guy, standing just a little under six foot ten. Looked like he could throw Jason without much trouble. Much to Jason's discomfort, John's eyes always had this shifty quality, like he was always suspicious of something. This was the other closer, and he had come in not too long ago.

"Right now? No clue." Jason responded. He had told his coworker about how he saw Davis ride down the street, fall, then vanish. "I've told myself I've gone crazy before, but this might be the icing on the cake."

"You swear you saw him?" John's eyes shifted at him, making Jason uncomfortable.

"I swear I saw something," Jason corrected, "whether or not it was what I think it was, I have no idea." He felt his phone vibrate in his pocket. Who's texting me at this time?

"Hey, Jason." Jason turned and saw his boss, Rob, calling to him from near the back room, waving his hand in a "come here" motion. "You're closest, I need your help. C'mere for a sec." Jason turned to John, who offered little more than a shrug, and went over to the sink, conveniently filled with dishes to keep himself busy. Jason rolled his eyes and followed Rob into the back room, and again into the cooler.

"You looking for anything?" He asked.

Rob spent a second or two looking over the boxes. Did you forget something else? "Do you know where the broccoli salad is? I can't seem to find it, and it's dated for tomorrow so it needs to be put in the fridge." Jason immediately gave Rob an irritated look.

"Dude, that's already in the fridge." He felt the bite in his tone, but it seemed Rob hadn't noticed.

"Really?" His boss turned to him and back to the boxes before walking out of the cooler, Jason following along, to the fridge and opened the door. "Nice work, man." He gave Jason a thumbs up and a smile before walking back to the cooler. "I need to rearrange the rest of the cooler, so you stay on counter with John, good? Good." Before Jason could say much, his boss power walked back through the back room. Jason just stood there with a dumbfounded expression.

"What the fuck is he on?"

---~<P>~---

"We think the best course of action is to try and find these missing humans on our side." Twilight brought up a map of Equestria and placed it over the table. "The only problem we have, we don't even know where to start looking." With her magic, she grabbed an inked quill and circled a few locations on the map, mainly being woodland areas and towns near forests. "I tried searching as many newspapers and reports from different towns and parks as I could for any unidentified creatures, hoping to find any that looked primarily ape-like in appearance. I went as far back as a month," she crossed out the towns with her quill, "but I haven't found a thing related to mysterious creatures. I had a bit more luck with the parks, but they just turned out to be red herrings." With that, she crossed out the forests.

"Wow," Starlight walked closer to Twilight, examining her mentor's work, "you put more effort into this in an hour than I did in three days." A hum from Celestia caught their attention, the large mare looking thoughtfully at the map, Sunset still wrapped in a wing.

"Miss Glimmer?" Starlight did her best to give her utmost attention. "From what I remember of Twilight's letters, you said he had covered you and Sunburst in blankets when you tried to measure the magic properties of the surroundings?"

"I did." Starlight nodded. "He didn't want us to be seen by anypony. He said humans don't have the best reactions regarding aliens."

"What if somepony is helping to hide these humans?" Sunset said from the comfort of her mother's wing.

"One of three possibilities, I think." Celestia gave her little girl a smile, the middle part of her statement having been parroted by Starlight and Sunburst. A high pitched squee caught everypony's attention.

"I think I know where you're leading with this!" Twilight's magic levitated the map and rolled it back up, placing it back into one of the cubbies in the room, taking numbered cards from the same cubby and lifting three into the air, numbered one to three. "One, somepony is trying to protect the humans from being spotted." She rose the second a bit higher. "Two, they are trying their best to hide from the population." She rose the third one, her smile slowly turned into a more serious frown. "Or three, they aren't even in Equestria's borders."

Author's Note:

I was planning on uploading this on the 17th, just a couple days before the first year anniversary of this story, as I thought that was when Ace Attorney would release for console... Not so, as it has released four days prior to the writing of this Author's Note. So, this chapter shall be uploaded on the 20th, the actual first anniversary.

I am so proud and happy with this story and what little attention it's garnered, and I know It can be better. I will be taking a break from writing further chapters so as to focus on my other projects (and beating the Ace Attorney Trilogy for the second time).

A friend and I have been talking and planning a little fanfic for JoJo's Bizarre Adventure, specifically for part four, so a majority of that time will into making that into a beautiful piece of work and possibly be the most planned out project I work on.

That being said, I will still be working on this story in some capacity. I have taken very much notice as to how bad the previous chapters are in terms of grammar and WORDS FUCKING MISSING!!! So, I will be editing these chapters and making corrections in word choice, grammar, and putting the actual words in the story to begin with!

So, thank you, to all of you who have been reading from a year ago and from today and everywhere in between. You have been a driving force as to why I've kept this up for this long. Thank you, from the bottom of my heart.

Boy, if this ain't the biggest Author's Note I've written. Feel free to leave your thoughts down below.

Edit: I will be posting a little blog post related to Phoenix Wright the same day I upload this chapter, so look out for that if it might catch your interest.

Comments

[Shiny Kelp]

I will be taking a break from writing further chapters so as to focus on my other projects

Well, that's a long break if I've ever seen one :P
Jokes aside, a bit sad to see this story in basically indefinite hiatus, especially now that there's mystery and questions all over the place.