2 - Kinda Human
The fire burned.
In the transitional hours of late night to early morning, miles from anyplace she had ever been, Sunset Shimmer sat on a hill by an abandoned lighthouse. Thick with surrounding brambles, the solitary tower stood as a rotting sepulcher to days that had long passed it by. On a coast so famed for such structures the lonely monolith’s condition seemed shocking, but the hillock it stood upon was wooded, the placement poor, and the surrounding land in little better condition. The rusted signs marked the spot as private property, but whomever held it in trust had apparently too little interest to allow anybody to make it beautiful again. A gentle but extant slope led down to a watery cove, where a dusty beach lay unmarred by the prints of man or beast. By the light of the moon it was a foreboding place, likely connected to enough ghost stories among the locals to keep loitering teenagers away. Having no real plan beyond reaching the coast at all, Sunset thought it a spot of luck to find a place where she and her lover could enjoy their last few moments in privacy.
Here perched Sunset Shimmer, upon a hard log that had already caused her rump to go numb. She hadn’t moved in half an hour other than to poke with a stick the embers of the small conflagration she had created, and though her goal of the sea lay but a few score yards away, she had found herself unable to take another step. The coastal night was cold with salty seabreeze, but with her knees tucked to her chest and the flames licking a pile of gathered brush before her, the chill stood at bay.
The Smooze, again in the shape of an orb, sat far from the fire like an oversized tiger-eye marble. It was a creature of the sea, and though Sunset didn’t know for certain if it’s surface was combustible, fire as a concept seemed enough to keep it away. She looked mournfully upon her companion, knowing that the research team had every intention of finding out.
“We’re just wasting our time,” Sunset finally declared, her chin partially mooshed between her knees. “...aren’t we.”
From bonding with it, Sunset knew that for the Smooze to return to a state that would survive the pressure of the deep, it required materials so pure and precious that a mere ounce of them would cost more money than she could ever hope to see. Junk metal could only take the organism so far, and it was already at the peak of efficiency that the equivalent of soda and potato chips could provide. It needed saffron and caviar over lobster to move on, and she had no capacity to feed it anything but dime-store ramen noodles. Without anything more, their ill-conceived adventure was at an end.
The Smooze had adopted a metallic gray sheen; a uninspired color, like a rainy day taken form. Sunset looked upon it with her own flavor of despair, for even her fiery locks were now ruffled, weighed by moisture, and no match for the spry flames that reflected their color.
“Maybe...maybe we need a plan B. We could...I dunno...hide you somewhere. Somewhere they’ll never find you.” Sunset wracked her pressured brain, gritting her teeth in annoyance when a thought didn’t present itself. “But no matter where we go, they’ll still be looking. You’re too important to the project, and if I keep running they’ll know for sure that I took you. So eventually we’re just going to have to do this all over again--” she waved at the beach. “Say goodbye again, I mean. And who knows where you’ll have left to run by then.”
A siren blared in the distance. Sunset tensed. She considered stamping out the fire, abandoning her bags, pouring the Smooze down her shirt and running like hell, but the sound began to fade as quickly as it came. Local law enforcement, off on some unrelated errand. She ran her hand through her hair and bit her lip.
“This is ridiculous, I’m so jumpy I can’t even think.” She forced the wheels inside her head to twist to tortured life, and clutched at the first mad light bulb that flared up. “We...we just need more precious metals - really precious ones - to get you back to full health. I...I could rob a jewelry store, yeah…” she muttered. “I can do that, if I just pony up I’d have the power to. I wouldn’t hurt anybody and I wouldn’t take anything except what you need--”
Sunset paused. The Smooze was creeping up her leg, flashing colors of complaint. She made a face when it reached her knee and came to eye level.
“Alright fine. Do you have any better ideas?”
The Smooze sparkled placatingly, popping silly looking bubbles inside itself.
“S-so what if I’m stressed?” Sunset replied. “Of course I’m stressed. Can you blame me? I can’t just pour stress out of my body like...pouring you out of a fishbowl or something.”
Cycling with pastel silliness, the Smooze reached out a tendril and booped Sunset right on the nose. She went cross-eyed trying to bring the appendage into focus, but before she could say anything, it threw itself straight into her face. Sunset gagged and lost her balance, toppling backwards into the sparse, sandy grass, but her paramour gave her no time to recover. It moved over her with surprising speed, assaulting her under the arms, the sides of her torso, and even the little ticklish spots under her wrists that she had never told anybody else about. It knew exactly where to touch, and in the turning of a second Sunset Shimmer found herself writhing on the ground, cackling out her sorrows for all she was worth.
“Wa--waiahh..ahh..HAHAHAHHAHA…!! S-st-stop-somebody might heaaaarhhAAHAHAHAHHAH!!”
The Smooze had amazing tensile strength, but by virtue of mass alone Sunset had the edge in terms of raw power. She rolled several yards away from the makeshift fire pit into the pale moonlight with the Smooze in tow, but it was unphased by this. She was rendered powerless by the surprise attack, and the Smooze did not let up until Sunset surrendered completely over to laughter, tears streaming from her eyes; her jaw no longer capable of forming protests. Only then did the Smooze ‘accidentally’ slow itself enough for her to gain some ground. She threw her arms around the reformed ball and let its surface push her hair into the sand as it claimed her lips, their movements mutually slowing as they shared another tender kiss under the grace of the moon.
The Smooze held her there, the shivers rising from her body like steam and fluttering away. She kissed it with abandon, smacking noises rising from their union until it finally flowed off her her face to allow her breathe. Sunset drank in deeply of the crisp coastal air, lying prone as she sought to fill her lungs anew.
The Smooze had become opaque. Its reflective, silver surface was like a mirror, and Sunset saw herself in it, smiling brightly like a blissfully ignorant child. She stroked the Smooze lovingly as it displayed its feelings using her face, and touched her cheek; unable to recall when she had last seen herself this way.
She glanced down at the reflection of her neck. And then the answer came.
“Yes!!” Sunset shrieked, sitting up with such force that the Smooze was nearly thrown off of her. She grabbed it with both hands and kissed it once again, roughy and quickly. “That’s it! You’re a genius!”
The Smooze glowed interrogative teal.
“Don’t you see!?” Sunset sat the Smooze on her lap and gathered up the pendant around her neck in one hand, presenting it. “My geode! It’s not only made from precious metals, it’s also chock full of Equestrian magic! I bet it’s worth more than a thousand tons of platinum to you!”
The Smooze considered this. It’s hue darkened, and it slowly rolled off of Sunset’s lap.
“...what?” Sunset held the gem out further, as far as it could go whilst still anchored to her neck. “What’s the matter? This is the best possible thing that could have happened to us. You know it’ll work, right? This can get you home.”
Sunset got up on her knees and scooted forwards, but for every movement she made, the Smooze rolled the same distance away.
“Don’t be afraid. It’s magic...my magic. It’s the Magic of Friendship. It won’t hurt you, I promise.”
The Smooze began to flash complex swirls of color from all ends of the spectrum. They appeared even to a discerning mind as little more than a pretty light show, but Sunset had spent months intensely focused upon their study - she knew that the Smooze had something more complex to say. She watched the patterns patiently, and then snorted derisively.
“Tch, oh don’t worry about all that,” she said simply. “I can still see people’s memories even without my geode, It’s not as clear, but I’ve tried it before and it still mostly works. I can’t pony up or make lightshows or whatever without it, but…” she glanced down into her palm, where the gem waited. “...but that doesn’t matter anymore. All of that is pointless without the others. So you see? I don’t need it as badly as you do. You have to take it.”
The Smooze’s patterns continued. Sunset’s eyes narrowed.
“You’re being ridiculous. This is your life we’re talking about.” She pointed at the secondary nucleus, “And it’s not just your life anymore, even. I don’t have time to make friendship for other people anymore, and the world still goes around regardless. It doesn’t matter what defines me or makes me unique now, that’s not important. How can I just walk away from here with all my hocus-pocus intact, when they could find you and torture you to death trying to make you into god’s gift to clean energy? I can’t just let that happen--” Sunset folded her arms, “--I won’t just let that happen.”
The Smooze had neither eyes nor face, but it spun about and tilted itself in such a way that Sunset got the impression it was turning away from her and sticking its nose up. It sat perfectly still, save for the occasional ripple over its surface. It was capable of assuming an entirely solid shape, but she had observed in the past that it seldom did so unless required - typically there was always some sort of little shimmy to it, like ripples from a leaf landing in a pond. The pattern was akin to breathing, and it gave Sunset an idea. In a flourish of exaggerated movements, she scooted forward and pointed to the peak of the hillock that she had partially rolled down during the tickle-assault.
“Oh yeah? Well if you don’t become healthy again, what are you planning to do about that?”
It was the oldest trick in the book, but it was also a book the Smooze had yet to read. It became oblong and tilted in the indicated direction curiously. With perfect timing, Sunset ripped the geode from her neck, destroying the fine chain that held it, and jammed it into the Smooze’s body through one of the ripple-windows. To promote confusion she followed through with her lunge and tackled the Smooze like a fumbled football, throwing her body over it in the hopes that the few precious seconds before it altered itself to escape her might make a difference.
Sunset grappled, rolling around with the Smooze in the sandy grass for a few seconds, but it was like trying to wrestle with a water balloon. Inevitably, the Smooze altered itself to make holding onto it impossible. It escaped and began to jump around in a flurry, bucking like a pony as it tried to expel the glowing object inside it, but the power and refined perfection the geode gave off was like a smorgasbord of raw lamb’s flesh to a starving wolf. The Smooze fed involuntarily until the geode discorporated. An orange glow lit the Smooze from the inside out, growing in intensity until Sunset was forced to look away, lest she go blind from retinal burn.
When the light finally faded and Sunset dared to blink again, her jaw nearly hit the sand.
“...wow…”
Before her stood the Smooze, as never she had laid eyes upon it before. Breaching six feet in height, it stood as the perfect silhouette of a chiseled yet androgynous humanoid, though it lacked entirely in hair, facial features, or discernable genitalia. Its body remained transparent, and the ripples flowing about its musculature gave it an otherworldly appearance, as the harbinger of some divinity. It glowed with the moonlight like a wraith from the deep. The only flaw it seemed to possess was a slightly distended stomach, where the secondary nucleus, borne of Sunset’s own genes, floated peacefully.
Covered in sand, dust, and residue from her lover’s form, Sunset rose slowly, unused to looking up at the Smooze. “I...is this...what you really look like…?”
The Smooze, its swirling colors brighter and more robust than ever before, nodded its expressionless head. Sunset marveled, circling the new creature with the rekindled fascination of a young scientist who had yet to be dulled by the grueling path of achievement. When she had made her circuit, she clapped her hands and grinned merrily, nearly hopping in the air with excitement despite herself.
“See, I told you it would work! Isn’t this wonderful!? You can go home now! Everything really is going to be okay!”
The Smooze flexed its palm and stared down at it. From there it regarded itself all over like a freshly rebuilt android, testing limbs and rotating joints that it didn’t actually possess. When it was satisfied, it turned to Sunset and simply opened its arms to her. Sunset required no hesitation, and as she leapt into its grasp, the Smooze lifted her a foot off the ground with ease and spun her about across the sand.
Sunset was no dancer - she hadn’t any practice beyond what the Crystal Prep girls had showed her way back in high school, and there had been no cause to use those skills in years. The Smooze was moving her across the base of the hillock in fluid steps that didn’t resemble any dance she knew of, but it compensated for her awkwardness by dipping and twisting her whenever she was about to fall. They were gyrations intended for two beings of the Smooze’s kind, and she found herself mingling with its body as it pressed her in and out of itself; the closeness beyond any form of human intimacy. When she finally managed a misstep so great that her partner could not compensate, she tumbled to the sand on her rump, her body hot and her cheeks volcanic.
The Smooze, still on it’s ‘feet’, paused to glow a merry magenta. She pretended to give it the stink-eye, and then cackled at the ridiculousness of it all as she collapsed on her back into a spread eagle position. There she gazed at the stars, finding in them a certain promise that hadn’t existed since the bewilderment of youth still touched upon her once-young mind.
A transparent humanoid appeared in her field of view, standing before the moon and plunging it into a sea of violet plasma. She gazed lovingly up at the Smooze, took its offered hand, and allowed it to pull her into a gentle embrace. With her ear against its chest, she thought that she could hear the sea.
“...you can finally go home,” she said simply. “I didn’t even know how we were going to pull this off, but it’s all going to work out now...you’ll be safe…”
The Smooze raised Sunset’s chin with a gentle grasp and ‘stared’ into her eyes. She hooked a wayward lock behind her ear and shared with her unprecedented partner another lover’s kiss; murmuring into it as the warm substance that made up the Smooze flowed about her lips and face. Sunset finally stepped away, determined not to let her resolve waver.
“It’s getting into the morning,” she said. “It’ll be light soon. You should go.”
The Smooze merely stood.
Sunset blinked and gestured towards the surf. “I know...I don’t like goodbyes either, but we can’t be sure nobody will be on the adjacent beaches in the morning, and we’d be noticed in the daylight for sure. Now’s the time.”
The Smooze took Sunset’s hand in its own. The transparent hand melted into hers and ran up to her elbow, until the pair was quite literally ‘arm in arm’. It gestured towards the tide, a romantic sangria shade predominating over its upper body. Sunset knew the Smooze’s ‘language’ well. Knew what it was asking of her.
“N-no, no,” Sunset pulled out of the grasp. “We talked about this. I can’t go with you. Even if I could breathe underwater, I’d be crushed by the pressure long before we got to your home. For us to be together you would have to stay near the surface. As long as they have some idea about your unique chemical makeup, they’ll have a way to track you. There’s nowhere up here that’s safe.”
The Smooze seemed unconvinced. It stood there, scant yards from freedom, and again sought to envelop Sunset’s arm. This time she pulled back sharply, her brows going heavy over her tired turquoise eyes.
“No, you don’t get it. You don’t understand how human beings are. It doesn’t matter if you’re…” she gestured at the Smooze, “--this, now. You’re too valuable to them. They’re never just going to let you run free. Even if they believe you’re a sapient being and they don’t try to harvest you for fuel or cosmetics or some other damn thing, the best you can hope for is to be a specimen for the rest of your life.”
The Smooze glowed in the raspberry colors of Sunset’s best friend.
“I-it doesn’t matter if I tell Twilight about this now!” Sunset replied. “Maybe now she might believe me, but even then, even with our powers, we can’t protect you from the entire world! Even if we could, what sort of life would that be for you? Don’t you want to go home? Don’t you want to see your family and friends again?”
The Smooze’s color became a soft yellow. It was the color of truth - an insistence by the Smooze that it was happy only with her, and didn’t require its own world anymore. Sunset might have acquiesced, until she caught sight of the tiny tinge of putrid, liar’s green that the Smooze was trying to keep behind it. Transparency had its disadvantages, and to Sunset, the meaning was unmistakable.
“See!? You’re not happy here! You can’t be happy here! What about our...our…” Sunset pointed straight at the nucleus in the Smooze’s stomach, “--what about that? It’s not fair to raise it like this! It deserves to go home!”
The Smooze turned from the water. Interposing itself between the sea and its partner, it tried continually to grab at Sunset’s arm.
“St-stop it!” Sunset cried, her brain instantly going on emotional damage control. “We promised we wouldn’t do this! We made a deal to stick with the plan once our minds were made up!”
The Smooze leaned in to kiss Sunset, but she stepped back. Her teeth ground into a snarl, for fear of what might come out of her if she didn’t force it down with anger.
“This isn’t fair!! Do you think this is only hard for you? I’ve never felt like this about anybody before, and even though I know I’m never going to see you again, I know this is the right thing to do! How dare you just chuck it all out the window at the last minute! Do you enjoy ruining me!?”
The Smooze darkened to a smoke color. It’s ‘feet’ melted into the grassy sand like tree roots, and it folded its arms in defiance. Sunset shoved at it, but it was no ordinary human, and she stood no chance of budging it so long as it could weld itself to the spot.
“So you’re just going to stand there like an idiot until they find you, unless I agree to spend the rest of both our lives, and our...our…” she finally used the word, “our child’s life on the run!?”
The Smooze, merely nodded in response. It was livid with vile green and black, but Sunset saw only red.
“Don’t BET on it!”
With that, she turned and dashed towards the apex of the hillock. Her teenage boots, worn and sitting unused in the back of her closet for years, chose that moment to fail; her right heel cracking apart against a rock. She toppled over, her vision blurred with the moisture that threatened to rip holes in her, and tore furiously at each boot until she had pulled them both free. Barefoot she reached the summit. There, she grabbed the largest flaming branch from the fire in both hands and whirled on the Smooze, brandishing it like a baseball bat.
“You’re going to leave!” Sunset roared, the heat bringing an instant sheen to her brow. “Or so help me I’ll make you leave!!”
Sunset sprinted over the return distance down the slope like a charging thoroughbred, her legs pumping with the beat of her belabored heart. She took a running swing right at the Smooze’s head, but the creature dodged the blow easily without so much as moving one foot. Again and again Sunset swung wildly at its upper body, but the Smooze’s quickness and ability to alter its form however it pleased made every attack an exercise in futility. Exhaustion set in, and when the branch was finally too hot and heavy to control, Sunset used the last of her strength to simply lob it at her target. She Smooze’s body split in twain down to the waist, reforming without injury when the branch sailed by.
Sunset collapsed onto her knees, unable even to cry for the greedy gasping of her lungs. She held her splintered palms before her, gazing at them in futility, and was about to hide her face from the world with them had the Smooze not finally set itself to action. It knelt beside her, it’s color back to a soothing, shimmering, sunset orange, and stroked her from the top of her head to the middle of her back.
Sunset wanted to throw herself into its embrace, and if she had any luck, drown herself in it until she could never feel anything ever again. Instead, knowing her attempt to sway it had been futile, she employed the only weapon she had left to see to its safety in the deep, beyond human reach. In her mind, she smashed through the glass cover and slammed her palm down on the red armageddon button.
Sunset’s open palm caught the Smooze right on the cheek. It hadn’t been expecting the blow, and thus her hand passed through it with some spray, as if slapping the surface of a swimming pool. With her eyes shut tightly, Sunset began to scream.
“I don’t love you!! I never did! Everything I told you about my friends was a pack of lies! Human beings are all the same! I’ve just been testing you for months now, like we’ve all been doing since we found you! If you don’t go away, I’ll put you in that tiny container and take you right back to the laboratory, so they can pick you and your awful little spawn thing apart!”
The Smooze hesitated. It removed its hand and stared dumbly, as a fountain cherub made from the very water that pumped through it. Sunset fixed it with a stare worthy of her earliest days in the human world, when the power of warped Equestrian magic held her in sway.
“Didn’t you hear me, you dirty monster!? I’m a human! How could I ever love something as ugly and twisted as you? Nobody here cares about you, so there’s nothing left for you here now! Get out of my face!!”
The Smooze, lanced by the evil in Sunset’s burning gaze, lost its perfect balance and stumbled backwards on its humanoid limbs, forgetting even to cushion the blow by altering itself. It shook its head a few times and continued its clumsy retreat, until it was once again back on its feet and on its way to the water.
Sunset didn’t watch it go. With her hands cupped over her ears, she sprinted up the hillock and madly kicked sand at the embers of the fire, just to watch them die.
“God-DAMMIT!!!”
The cry tore through the waning hours of night, and with it escaped the last of her inner flame. She threw herself to the ground, only avoiding the burning sparks by coincidence, and gave herself over to a howling sorrow that shamed the wail of a banshee.
In that place, Sunset Shimmer wept with a raw intensity that frightened her, for she had never in her life allowed the floodgates to be so thoroughly obliterated. Power could not be hers. Friendship had gone cold over the years, and now, even love was beyond her reach. She had come full-circle from those early days; once again miserable and alone, she could do nothing but hug her shoulders and curse herself for a fool with a litany of explicit verbal abuse.
Time passed, and somewhere around the moment where the night sky became pregnant with the promise of dawn, Sunset ran out of tears. With her voice all but gone from wailing and pain in her ankle from where the broken boot had twisted her gait, she rolled onto her side, facing the sea, and stared dully at the empty beach through bloodshot eyes.
But the beach was not empty.
There, standing up to its gelatinous calves in the water, stood the Smooze. It had been watching her all the while, standing there at a distance and waiting patiently to see her face one last time. It glowed with a fantastic pattern of glittering brilliance in the colors of Sunset’s hair, and raised one arm in a motionless wave.
Sunset found her way to her knees. She choked on bile and reached her hand out as if to touch it from a distance, as children pretended to squish the sun between their fingers.
“Please…” she whispered to herself. “...please don’t come up here...I’ll die if you come up here…”
The Smooze paused. It then completely lost its form, oozing out into the open water like a second skin over the waves.
This time, Sunset watched it retreat. When it was a hundred yards from land it began to writhe, as though with pain. Sunset rose with concern, adrenaline pushing her to automatic pilot, but was stopped in her tracks when she saw a small portion of the Smooze’s body break entirely free from the rest of it. The new shape moved with an infantile uncertainty, and as the Smooze swirled around it to carry it safely out to sea, Sunset could see the secondary nucleus at the center of the new creature’s form.
“That…” Sunset blubbered. “That’s...my…”
Her legs moved. Before she knew it, she was at a run.
“W-wait….WAIT!!”
This time Sunset’s footfalls were true, and she was at the edge of the tide in mere seconds. Never breaking her stride she waded into the sea, continuing her calls until the surf broke as high as her chest.
The Smooze, and its offspring, were gone.
“I just...wanted to meet you once, that’s all…”
In an adopted world, where no ponies moved the clouds and no princess kept the moon, Sunset Shimmer stared out across the endless expanse of blue horizon. The plan had gone off exactly the way she wanted it.
And now, she had nothing.
* * * * *
------------------------------
Time: 04:18:31 am
From: Twilight Sparkle
Why did you turn your phone off?
The last place the GPS said you were was in the train station. There was only one train leaving around then, and you weren’t there when I arrived. Did you take the train? Why?
Sunset, please...what’s going on? I still don’t believe them when they say you took the sample. You know as well as anybody what’s at stake here. What this could mean for the world if we complete our experiments. But I have to know what’s happening here.
I’m sorry for snooping, but I found the itinerary and the passenger list. I’m already en route. Please talk to me when I get there.
-----------------------------
It was the final message out of half a dozen from Twilight, and it was barely ninety minutes old. Sunset chuckled in the face of her phone and helplessly shook her head. She might have known that if anybody could pick up her trail and follow it both quickly and accurately, it would be the superior intellect and cunning of Twilight Sparkle. With no more need to hide herself, Sunset pressed the sleep button and tossed the phone aside, where it landed with a soft thud in the grass.
The sun was not yet up, but the moon had already become transparent with morning light, and would soon be gone. The dawn was gradually dismissing the fantastical night, and Sunset found that the tower she had made camp under wasn’t even a lighthouse at all. It was merely a tall storage shed made to resemble one, probably as a result of an old architect who had become enamored by the local flair. It remained ruined by time; its position on the small hillock quite useless for any beacon to the sea mounted in its eaves.
The campfire, though contained, devoured its latest fuel with whetted rage. Within Sunset watched the last vestiges of her past die, for she had tossed into it her entire outfit: the ill-fitting plum skirt, the old, spiked leather vest, the shirt bearing a personal emblem that had once been her ‘cutie mark’ in a different life, and her damaged boots. The clothes were too stained with residue from the Smooze’s body, and she had resolved to leave as little trace of it for the eyes of man as possible. With any luck, the research team would be disbanded for lack of proof to their claims, and memories of the Smooze would die off for good.
In Sunset’s luggage were no less than three replacement outfits. They were all products of the research laboratory store, and donning any of them was an admission that it was truly all over. Thus she sat naked in the shadow of the faux lighthouse shed, warming herself by the ashes of her youth until she could bring herself to cover up.
Sunset touched her neck, and pulled from it the empty chain that had once anchored her geode to the world. It was useless now, but she had felt a need to dangle the broken chain across her collarbone still. It had been a constant presence on her body since those many years ago at Camp Everfree, and she only felt truly naked in the absence of the thin links.
Her phone beeped again. The assigned tone indicated another message from Twilight, who no doubt had a GPS fix and would be there soon. Sunset retrieved the device, but ignored the message to type out one of her own.
------------------------------
Time: 05:49:47 am
From: Sunset Shimmer
Everything is fine.
I don’t know where the sample is--
-----------------------------
Sunset paused in her typing. Her original plan had been to lie - to claim she had no idea where the 'sample' was. She had been extremely careful covering her tracks at the lab itself, and there was no longer any trace that the hazmat container, now also destroyed by fire, had ever been in her possession. She had even worked out an elaborate story to explain her coincidental departure, involving emotional issues stemming from the monotony of her life. It wasn’t entirely untrue, and if anything, she hoped it might help to open a dialogue between herself and her best friend of old - Twilight Sparkle.
She had planned to lie. But all she had left were her memories, and they proved to be a final scrap of evidence she could not bear to part with. She backspaced.
-----------------------------
The sample...it’s gone now, Twilight.
I’m sorry, but we’ll never see it again.
Meet me at the GPS coordinates. I promise I’ll tell you everything.
-----------------------------
Sunset muted her phone and placed it aside. From her luggage she retrieved the juvenile music box, where she placed the empty geode chain to live anew. For a time thereafter, she watched the miniature Dorothy within the box turn to the Tin Man’s tune. Heedless of the great outdoors, she stood up tall, bearing herself to nature, and turned to the sea. The breeze licked her fiery locks and kissed about her form, but she stubbornly refused to shiver. She placed a hand on her fallow stomach, appreciating the irony of it all, and then held her arms akimbo; the melody bringing a tune to her lips.
“...just because I’m presumin’...that I could be kind-a human...if I only had a heart.”
Sunset Shimmer considered her future. It was practically a certainty that she would be fired, and probably blacklisted from other doctoral research projects. Likely she would face criminal theft charges, and due to any sort of evidence to back her claims, she might even be subject to psychological evaluation.
But she wouldn’t have had it any other way.
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I called it! I'll give this a read later when I'm free.
9134020
You did, well done
I never thought this could work, but it does. And it is fantastic.
9134153
I didn't either! It was a lovely challenge, contest or no!
No friends. No family. No loved ones, she saw to that. No future.
What's left for Sunset Shimmer?
9136056
How far to go, to do the "right thing", no?
Sorry, not quite sure how I feel about this.
I love that it’s a thing, though! Don’t get me wrong, I absolutely adore you for trying such an outlandish ship, and while I was a tad disappointed that it was taken so seriously instead of being light-hearted and silly about Sunset’s paramour being gelatinous, I think it’s super cool that you put the effort in to make it serious and convincing. The way the Smooze communicated with Sunset, I really liked, and I thought it was impressive how you could make most of this essentially Sunset monologuing while still being fairly engaging. And I liked how all the backstory was worked in.
That being said, there were a couple of parts that didn’t quite sit right with me. I think chief among those was when Sunset was going over what happened to her friends--Pinkie’s and Rarity’s just felt jarringly dark, without seeming to serve much purpose other than shock value. Feel free to correct me if I’m misunderstanding the intent there, though. It wasn’t a glaring flaw, I think, but it did kinda yank me out of the story for a little while.
And I will admit to not being the biggest fan of the ending--but this is predominantly an “I didn’t like this” complaint, not a “This was handled poorly” criticism. It felt like the “right” ending, in some ways, but I wasn’t thrilled with how Sunset’s life is in such shambles at the end, and I was rather desperately hoping that it would play out differently as the climax drew closer.
So, sorry, bits of this didn’t quite work for me. But it was a cool read, and I’m extremely happy to see people trying stuff like this. Thanks for writing this, and I hope the judges like it
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Oh psh, there's no need to be sorry. I appreciate well thought out comments, be they praise or critical
Let me see if I can offer some insight as to what was going on in my head for this tale:
My reasoning for avoiding a comedic story was twofold. The primary reason was that I have a thing for challenging myself, and making a pairing with...goo, funny, is the obvious and easy way to take it. Certainly there's merit in that still, but regardless of the contest, I wanted to see if I could take a really outlandish ship and make it work in an unexpected way. The secondary reason does have a bit to do with the contest description, given that it says they're looking for bittersweet and some misty eyes - comedy can provide that, but it's not as conducive to it.
As for the rather dark 'where are they now' Mane 6 descriptions, the intent there was to paint a general backdrop of gray, sorrowful skies in this interpretation of Sunset's future. Pinkie and Rarity do end up with a happy ending, but talking with the Smooze about the rough road to get there is intended to represent a bond with the creature that goes beyond lovey-dovey. She's trying to say "I'm comfortable with you, and you're so intimate to me that I'm going to trust you with the dark and dirty side of my best friends, that I would never tell anybody whom I have a lesser bond than love with."
Telling off the Smooze and claiming she never loved it was something Sunset hated herself for, but it's also something I could see her doing - accepting the role of "bad girl", that she's dealt with before, for
the sake of her lover. I'd intended to portray at least a ray of sunshine for her at the end in the sense that she can't really know for surethat she'll never see the Smooze or her offspring ever again, and now at least she has that to live for. That, and she's hopeful that coming clean with Twilight will establish a dialogue between them again, and maybe renew their friendship. Sunset cries it out, but she walks away from the whole thing with her characteristic head held high. As for the offspring, the Smooze getting pregnant instead of its human female lover I just thought made for interesting irony.
So yeah, I see what you're saying. It's a cloudy tale, with a silver lining that might be a bit thinner than I intended. Sorta makes me want to bust out a sequel to see where it might go. The only direction left for Sunset is up!
9141693
Thoughtful comments are my favorite kind too, so I try to give them out where possible
Totally fair! I will admit to still thinking that Sunset being shipped with the Smooze could be hilarious if the tone were different, but I can’t fault you for liking challenging things. The pairing made this very unique, and I’m happy to see that regardless of whether it’s funny or serious
Ah, okay. So, I can totally agree with you, on some level, but at the same time I’m not sure how clearly that came across to me--that Rarity’s and Pinkie’s came first, to me, really made it feel more like “This is a super bleak world and nobody gets their happy ending without suffering” as opposed to “Sunset’s future is kind of a dreary one.” I know that’s a bit of an exaggeration, since even Pinkie and Rarity are said to be happy in the end, but I think Rarity’s in particular left a bad taste in my mouth for a while. And while the later parts of that section didn’t quite follow the same trend, I also don’t think they ever quite countered that first impression that Pinkie’s and Rarity’s gave me.
Part of that is a bias on my part, though, I’m sure--I tend to not be the biggest fan of people suffering pointlessly, so Pinkie and Rarity both falling into dubious circumstances as a result of their environment (College and fashion industry, respectively) really bugged me. Like with the ending, at least part of this is me not liking it as opposed to it being flawed.
This makes much more sense, thanks! Yep, can totally see how the darker details do have something of a purpose to them. If I might make on suggestion, though, I wonder if that might be highlighted more by dwelling on Sunset’s friends’ flaws rather than their circumstances? With Rarity’s in particular, I’m left fixating on what happened to her, whereas it sounds like, with what you’re saying, it’d make more to highlight not just that it was a bad situation, but that she went along with it for a little while?
So, I can totally see that, and, looking back at the last few scenes, I can totally see how the ending isn’t quite as bleak as I’d first thought--the bit with The Smooze staying long enough that its child pops out before it really vanishes, while it’s subtle, I think definitely does leave a bit of room for hope.
But then I think that might’ve been undercut a bit by the second-to-last paragraph? Just looking at this part:
It’s all about the bad things that Sunset views her future as holding--as you said, she’s optimistic and, in some way, satisfied, but to me, her positive feelings were mostly concerned with the past and what she’d already done than with what could possibly come next for her. The part with Twilight does make her optimism for the future a bit more explicit, but I think that kinda felt like a tragically necessary step down from her companionship with The Smooze, which makes it feel a bit less substantial.
If I’m being entirely honest, I don’t think this needs a sequel? I dunno, while the ending didn’t quite do it for me (Could definitely have done with the silver lining being a tad thicker, personally
), it seemed like it wrapped up the part of the story that was most interesting, which makes me a bit skeptical of the idea of a sequel.
But if you think you can make it work, go for it! Sunset x Smooze is not something I’d want to discourage often
And, just to reiterate, because I’ve spent most of the rest of this comment criticizing it, I did enjoy reading this story. It stumbled slightly once or twice for me, but I’m glad to have had a chance to read it.
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Honestly I don't think this is all that likely to get a sequel, unless people are really gung ho about seeing one. I have so many other projects, commissions, and sequels to other things that have been waiting way longer. I just mean that if there was to be one, it would likely be more positive than this, since I feel as though Sunset is at the bottom of her barrel and only has up left as a direction to go.
Again, don't worry about being critical. I tend to be more critical than complimentary when my comments get complicated. In my mind, what I'm trying to tell the author is that I was interested enough in their story to want to share my feelings about it. Clearly you read this, and you took the time to think about it, or you wouldn't be able to comment as far as you have. The only time I would take any sort of exception to critical commentary is if it shows that the reader didn't read the work in question at all (in which case their opinion, be it positive or negative, is worthless), or if it's just blind hate without reason. By the same token, I hope you're not feeling as though I'm trying to challenge your opinions with any of my responses. I'm not one for doing stuff like that, but I do like to share at least what was going through my head in such situations, for clarity's sake.
I usually don't go back and alter stories that have already been published (because as far as I'm concerned that's the same thing as pulling a book off of a Barnes & Noble shelf to edit it - if it needs editing it shouldn't have been published in the first place), but this one may warrant a tiny exception. The second to last paragraph was intended to be Sunset considering what her future is likely to hold, but I suppose it comes off as a bit too much 'tell', since it's not clear she's attached to those thoughts.
If it helps to take into account, not all the Mane 6 ended up on an unhappy road to their goals. Some don't go into in great detail, but again, all the bits about them are intended as mood-setting stuff, to set a 'bleak' tone for the story yet suggest the possibility that Sunset might be able to be happy too, at the end of her tunnel. I have one other story with similar tales of 'where are the EQG girls now' that has a more positive spin on it, if you like
How did you take such a ridiculous pairing and make it so bleak? I'm honestly kind of impressed.
In any case, I don't usually read this sort of story. I know it's a probable outcome—goodness knows I haven't talked to any of my high school friends in years—but it's not an outcome I like to consider. Still, this was an excellently crafted drama, set closer to the center than the series's usual place on the idealism-cynicism axis... though the impact's slightly reduced when there's undoubtedly a place waiting for Sunset in Equestria. Thank you for this.
(And I can't help but think that there was one way to get Twilight to face facts, or at least take a look at herself:
"So, what you're saying is so you're so focused on what we can learn that you don't care who you'll hurt or what you'll tear apart in the process."
"Sunset, that's—"
"No, no, it's fine. I just wanted to confirm who I'm working with. Midnight.")
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That's precisely what I wanted to do here. Take an idea as comical as Sunset Shimmer and The Smooze, and make it...not comical at all. I really wanted to challenge myself with this, so I tried to avoid going the route I thought would be easiest (humor). Not that making this pairing funny doesn't have merit, but that's the first place my brain would go if anybody suggested putting these two together. And thus, it was just what I wanted to avoid. You have a point about Equestria, but I was trying to stay off of that as an option for Sunset entirely and place her only in her chosen world, as I thought including it might detract from the general theme. I wanted her to be hoping to make amends with human Twi who had been there with her all those years, rather than just thinking on giving up and escaping back to her old life.
It sounds like you enjoyed it, and I'm glad for that. Perhaps it worked out in the end
Why did you have to make me hurt? ;_;
9292938
Because cleansing hurt is good
That was simultaneously heart wrenching, beautiful, and a bit terrifying... Well done!
9629907
Terrifying, hm? That's an interesting way to put it, I'm glad you enjoyed!
Nice ending