SAPR

by Scipio Smith

A Misplaced Word (New)

A Misplaced Word

The title of the book was Prison Journals by Rudi Antonio. It was a large volume, well-preserved despite its age, with a handsome black cover – evoking something of a feeling of a jail – and the title and author's name picked out in gold letters. Blake had never heard of the book or author before, but as her eyes lingered upon the words 'with a new introduction by Sienna Khan' picked out in the same gold as the title near the bottom of the cover, she knew that at least somebody had.

Blake knew that her erstwhile mistress had been a historian before joining her parents in devoting themselves fully to the cause of the White Fang; in quiet moments, when she was in a restive mood, Sienna would occasionally reminisce about her time in what she described as the gerontocracy of academia, enduring the racism of tenured professors old enough to remember when faunus had been slaves; Blake sometimes thought that Sienna Khan must have been exaggerating about that. It was a part of Sienna's past that was not a mystery to her, and yet, this was the first time that she had ever held a book in her hands that dated from her time as an academic; everything that she had read from the High Leader had been written later, after she had committed herself first to politics and then to violent struggle. The fact that this tome in her hands predated all of that dated the book, or at least this edition; it must have been from quite some time ago for anything Sienna Khan had to say about it to be 'new.'

As she sat in the lounge of the skydock, waiting for a Skybus headed for Beacon, Blake wasn't sure what she wanted to read more: the book itself or the introduction by her former leader.

I wonder what she sounded like, back in those days.

"You're staring at that book as though you'd like to set it on fire with your mind," Twilight observed as she settled down on the grey padded chair next to Blake.

Blake looked up – to where Sunset and Rainbow were engaged in animated conversation on the other side of the aisle – and then beside her into Twilight's face. "I'm sure that someone has a semblance that would let them do that," Blake observed, "but-"

"But that would be an awful way to treat an old book, so I hope they wouldn't use it," Twilight replied.

Blake managed a slight smile. "It would be a pretty poor way to treat a gift, too."

"All the same," Twilight said, "is everything okay?"

Blake showed her the book cover, her finger hovering near the point about an introduction from Sienna Khan.

Twilight frowned. "Sienna Khan; does that mean something to you?"

Blake's eyebrows rose. "She's the leader of the White Fang."

Twilight gasped. Her mouth formed an O of surprise. "Really?"

Blake nodded. "You really didn't know that?"

Twilight shook her head. "The White Fang are quite the mystery."

Or humans just don't care to discover the truth, Blake thought, but that was possibly a little unfair and certainly rather unkind; the White Fang as a political group had become a marginal force long before her father stepped down and retired to Menagerie, and since assuming the role of High Leader, Sienna had done nothing to elevate her public profile. 'The cause is what matters, not my reputation,' she had been wont to say, before adding wryly that if nobody knew who she was, then it was harder for Atlas to order her assassination.

Adam, of course, had disagreed, both in the matter of holding his fame as the Sword of the Faunus of great import to himself and also in relishing in the notoriety that he enjoyed amongst their enemies, the terror that he inspired across all four kingdoms.

Of course, Adam never had any fear of death, at least none that he would allow even Blake to see.

"I'm a little surprised," she said, "that you haven't pumped me for information yet."

"What do you think you still know?" Twilight asked. "I mean, no offence, but you're a defector; the moment you left they would have moved their safehouses, changed their passwords, taken precautions against you… against you…"

"Against me deciding to betray my cause," Blake murmured.

Twilight's eyes were wide with concern as she reached out and placed a hand upon Blake's arm. "You didn't betray anyone until you were betrayed by the White Fang first; you kept all of their secrets until you were exposed."

"I went down to the docks before I was exposed," Blake pointed out.

Twilight hesitated. "True," she said. "But even so, you kept their secrets. And… all the more reason for them to take precautions about you leaking any information; the fact remains, any specifics you know are probably worthless now."

"Yet I'm not worthless to you," Blake replied.

"You're much more than a source of intelligence to us," Twilight assured her.

"Hmm," Blake murmured. "I'm…" she trailed off, her eyes flickering to Rainbow Dash across the aisle. "What am I to her?"

"A friend," Twilight said. "It's a great place to be." She smiled. "Nowhere safer, I guarantee it."

"I didn't exactly come to Beacon looking for safety," Blake informed her, "and I don't think that I'd go back there looking for safety, either."

"No, I suppose you didn't," Twilight said. She pushed her glasses back up her nose. "It's entirely your decision, obviously, but Rainbow wouldn't be asking you to come to Atlas if she didn't want you there, and she wouldn't ask if she didn't think it would be good for you. Rainbow… Rainbow thinks you need a cause."

Blake snorted. "Rainbow might be right," she admitted. "Of course, if Ruby were here, then she'd say that, for a huntress, serving humanity is the cause."

"I'm sure it is," Twilight agreed. "But a lonely one for most huntresses."

"And in Atlas, you're never alone?" Blake asked wryly.

Twilight chuckled. "If you really want more of the sales pitch, you should go over and talk to Rainbow Dash. I'm just explaining why she wants you, and maybe… maybe telling you not to dismiss the idea out of hand. And not to dismiss Rainbow's ideas out of hand, either."

Blake raised the book. "Is that what this is about?"

"He was a Mistralian faunus," Twilight explained. "He was elected to the Mistral Council, not too long after the Great War, but he was arrested and imprisoned for… for the rest of his life. And while he was in prison, he wrote."

"About what?"

"Everything, as I understand it," Twilight said. "Philosophy, history, politics… he advocated for a march through institutions as a solution to the question of how to obtain equal rights for the faunus." She paused. “It was an approach that… fell out of fashion compared to more activist ways of… attacking the problem.”

“Literally,” Blake muttered.

“I got it for you,” Twilight went on, “because I wanted you to see that Rainbow isn’t just being naïve, or making excuses for her loyalty to Atlas; incredibly intelligent faunus have thought deeply about these issues and come to the same conclusions.”

“Has Rainbow read this?” Blake asked.

Twilight couldn’t quite stop herself from smiling. “No,” she said. “I love Rainbow Dash, but I’m not sure she’d have the patience to get through this.”

“But you introduced her to the ideas?”

Twilight shook her head. “Not until after she’d already had them. She came up with the basics all on her own.”

Blake’s eyebrows rose. “Really?”

Twilight nodded. “The way I remember, we were lying awake one night, and Rainbow had been staring up at the ceiling for a little bit when she said ‘You know, Twi, if we had some faunus senior officers, I bet things would be a lot better for all the faunus.’”

“Somehow, I suspect that’s a simplification of the arguments in here,” Blake said dryly.

“Oh, of course, but it’s a start, don’t you think?”

“I suppose so,” Blake conceded, “but it’s still a start that I don’t know if I want to be a part of.”

“I can understand that,” Twilight said. “We’re still asking you to take a great deal about Atlas on trust, with only a handful of people to really illustrate what the kingdom is like. And that’s after all the trouble you had with Rainbow Dash earlier in the year.”

“I’ve forgiven her for that,” Blake said, “but it did demonstrate to me the problem of making rash judgements and assuming groups to be heterogeneous. If I take you as the average of what Atlas is like, then I’d be making the same mistake from a different perspective.”

“Well, there are a lot more Atlas students around than just Team Rosepetal now,” Twilight said. “So you could get to know a lot more, different Atlas students if you wanted to?” She smiled. “Of course, you’d have to be actively considering Rainbow’s offer for there to be any point to that.”

Blake didn’t reply. Was she considering it? Ought she to be considering it? It seemed absurd that she was even contemplating a move like this. This was Atlas they were talking about: Atlas the cruel, Atlas the relentless, Atlas the city from which the blood of faunus dripped down upon the earth. Atlas of the SDC, Atlas of the military, Atlas that was all the evil in the world, the great enemy of faunus rights and of all faunus kind.

And yet, she was – almost in spite of herself – actually considering it. A part of her rebelled against the fact, but when Blake looked inside herself, she couldn’t deny the fact that she really was thinking about it.

Not because of the toys or the technology but because… because Rainbow was right about one thing: Blake did need a cause. It wasn’t enough for her to just fight to survive; she didn’t fight for her own glory like Sunset, she couldn’t devote herself to some – no offence – vague idea of service to humanity like Ruby or Pyrrha. She needed to be working towards something, something important, something that mattered, something that she could look at and say ‘yes, I did that.’

I helped with that, Blake mentally corrected herself. It was arrogant to assume that she could or needed to do everything on her own.

But it was an arrogance that had a hold on her, like a leech with its teeth in her skin. She couldn’t seem to shake it off.

Atlas was attractive for that reason, after she’d been shown that not all Atlesians were terrible people and that faunus could lead reasonable lives there. Some of them at least.

But still… it was Atlas. A place she still knew little about.

She didn’t know. She just didn’t know. She’d wanted to go to Beacon; she hadn’t just chosen it because it was in the same kingdom as she was or even because Vale enjoyed a reputation for tolerance. She’d chosen it because it was the best, and she’d hoped that it would make her the best version of herself.

In spite of what had happened, did she really want to forsake that? To turn her back on it, and all for what? For northern dreams? For a promise of something that might never materialise? For the enthusiasm of a true believer?

And if she had to spend the next four years – or however long was left once the Atlesians were through with her – as an honorary member of Team SAPR, well… there were worse fates.

If Blake might be permitted, in the privacy of her own head, to use an animal metaphor: the collar didn’t chafe as much as she’d been worried it might, but that didn’t mean that she wanted to go back to the kennel.

Not definitely, at least; not yet.

“I’m sorry that we couldn’t find anything out about Tukson,” Twilight said softly.

Blake pursed her lips together. At the hospital, she had learned that Tukson had been recently discharged, but they had not been able to tell her – either because they didn’t know or because they weren’t authorised to tell Blake – where he had been discharged to; they had swung by the shop to find the place boarded up, with a sign stating that it was closed with no indication when – or if – it would ever reopen. And of course, his scroll had been disconnected.

It had occurred to Blake that he might have been spirited away into witness protection for his own safety; if that was the case, then she wished him all the best… but she wished that she’d gotten the chance to say goodbye.

She sighed. “At least they told me that he walked out of hospital on his own two feet,” she said. “At least I know that he’s okay.”

Twilight nodded, if only slightly. “You know, I’m sure that if I talked to General, then he could find out-”

“No,” Blake said. “That’s kind of you to offer, but you don’t have to do that.”

“It’s no trouble, really,” Twilight said.

“It’s probably for the best if I don’t know,” Blake replied. “Nobody’s supposed to know, isn’t that how it works? And besides, even if I did know… I couldn’t go and see him, or I’d risk drawing attention to him.”

“But don’t you want to see him again?”

“That doesn’t mean that he needs to see me again,” Blake said. “I brought Tukson nothing but trouble; in the end, I even brought Adam to his door. It’s best that… I hope he’s happy, wherever he is.”

The doors into the skydock lounge slid open, and Ruby and Penny both came bouncing through, accompanied by Ciel.

---

Twilight had actually gotten Sunset two books, one of which was a little bigger than the other. The first, and larger of the two, was called Prophet Narratives: Choosing and Power in the Religions of Remnant; it had a very striking cover depicting a woman in blue robes getting smote on the breast by a bolt of lightning hurled from out of a cloud – hurled by who, it didn’t say. It was not a new illustration – a look at the back revealed it to be a painting by someone Sunset had never heard of, but then she’d never heard of any of this until Twilight had brought it up to her. The book had no author, since it was a collection of traditional stories, but was noted as being collected by one Oswald Oakenshaft; Sunset had never heard of him either, but a quick look at the back of the book had provided her with a limited degree of enlightenment: not much was known about the man except that he had enjoyed a sinecure from the crown of Vale in the time of King Athelstan Whitebeard, two or three generations before the Great War, and he had used the income to spend his life apparently pulling together this book, considering he had no other accomplishments to his name.

The current edition – or the edition that she was holding in her hands, at least – had been published by a small press somewhere in Vale; Sunset doubted that many copies had been produced.

The same press had also published the other book that Sunset was holding in her hands: Red Queens, a book that had neither author nor collector identified but which Twilight had insisted had to be read in conjunction with the prophet book; they formed, according to her, two halves of a narrative of decline and fall, a statement which she claimed would make sense once Sunset had done the reading.

Sunset didn’t blame her for being cryptic; she had asked for reading material, not a story; she wanted to be free to make her own judgements about what she was reading – and take notes – without Twilight’s interpretation getting in the way.

After all, Twilight only hoped and believed that magic existed – or had until she had learned Sunset’s secret; Sunset knew full well that magic existed and understood a fair bit about how it worked, so it was likely she would pick up on things that Twilight had missed.

She hoped so, anyway; it might be that all magic in Remnant was as alien to her as Ruby’s silver eyes – something Sunset hadn’t quite had the nerve to mention to Twilight, if only because she wasn’t sure that Ruby or Pyrrha would appreciate her giving out Ruby’s secret to just anybody – but she doubted it. Twilight’s description of her magical rescuer sounded very much like the sort of thing that an alicorn could have done; although, if all wielders of magic in Remnant were on par with alicorns, then Sunset might be in a bit of trouble if she ever met one.

And if they existed, then she did mean to meet one, if only to find out where they got their power from.

“Prophets, huh?” Rainbow asked from where she sat down next to Sunset in the lounge of the skydock. They were having to wait a little bit for a Skybus to arrive. “Twilight told you that she believes in…”

“Magic?” Sunset suggested.

“Mhm,” Rainbow murmured. “Do you believe it?”

Does the eagle believe that it can fly? “Yes,” Sunset said. “It surprised me when Twilight told me you don’t.”

“Why?”

“Because she’s supposed to be your friend.”

“Twilight is my friend,” Rainbow replied loudly. “It doesn’t mean that I have to think everything that she thinks, believe everything that she believes.”

“You’re also friends with Pinkie Pie,” Sunset pointed out.

“Yeah, and you show me one thing in one of those books that sounds anything like what Pinkie can do, and I’ll agree with you it’s magic,” Rainbow challenged her. “Twilight says that you can look back in these old stories and see that there are lots of things that keep coming around over and over again. And she’s right; they are all full of the same stuff.”

“You’ve read them?” Sunset asked in astonishment.

Rainbow nodded. “The Red Queen book is pretty cool, full of heroes and villains and fights… although I did have to get Twilight to tell me what half the words meant. But the fact that a lot of the same stuff keeps coming up doesn’t mean that it’s true; it just means that the people who came up with this stuff didn’t have a lot of ideas of their own.”

“What makes you so sure?”

“Because if there really are people who have amazing powers like that, then where are they?” Rainbow demanded. “Twilight thinks that they’re still out there, but where? I’ve never seen them.”

“Twilight has,” Sunset pointed out.

“Twilight thinks that she has,” Rainbow replied. “Did she tell you she took a pretty bad bang on the head?”

“She told me that she was in a car crash,” Sunset answered.

Rainbow leaned forward in her seat. “Listen, I am beyond glad that Twilight survived that, and I don’t pretend to know what happened on the road that day, but I know that a flying woman with white hair didn’t come out of nowhere and kill all the grimm by shooting lightning out of her hands.”

“Again, why so sure?”

“Because, again, why did she only do it once?” Rainbow demanded. “I love Twilight, but why did she get to be saved when nobody else does? Why come out for one person and not for others?”

“Twilight says there are others,” Sunset replied.

“A few, but that doesn’t change my point,” Rainbow insisted. “If there are people out there with… with magic powers, then why don’t they use them? It’s game time, come on, get off the bench.”

“Maybe they’re afraid of being discovered?” Sunset suggested, thinking about Pyrrha’s nervousness around Ruby’s eyes and what would happen to Ruby if the secret of those eyes became widespread.

“So they’d rather let people die, come on!” Rainbow snapped. “What is this, a gloomy superhero movie?”

“This is nobody’s story but ours,” Sunset declared, clenching one hand into a fist. “But not everyone can be Ruby or Pyrrha or even you for that matter. Just because someone has power is no guarantee that they’ll be minded to use it for the greater good. Or even to use it at all. Some people just don’t have the guts for the fight. Some people aren’t suited for it. Would you want Fluttershy out on the front lines just because she had magic?”

“Don’t be ridiculous,” Rainbow said instantly. “But if Fluttershy did have power like that, she wouldn’t just hide in a hole so that nobody knew existed. She’d… I don’t know exactly what she’d do because I don’t know what her magic would do, but she’d do something, even if it was just like magically healing animals or something.”

Sunset shrugged. “Like I said, not everyone has that kind of spirit.”

“But no one has it?” Rainbow replied. “Nobody, out of all the people who have ever had these special powers, nobody has wanted to do anything with them? Everyone who's ever had them has been too afraid of being found out to ever show their powers? I don’t buy it. I don’t buy that people are like that. I just… I don’t buy it.”

Sunset could see Rainbow’s point. She knew that the Atlesian girl was wrong – there was at least one form of magic in the world that had not come from Equestria – but at the same time, that very wrongness proved Rainbow Dash partly right, because Summer Rose had used her powers; she had not been more afraid of her gift being discovered than of the cost of not using them.

But at the same time, Summer had not been discovered; her silver eyes remained, for the most part, a secret.

“Maybe they have used their gift, but… subtly,” Sunset suggested. “In ways that didn’t attract attention.”

“Or maybe it’s all a great story but one that doesn’t mean anything,” Rainbow said. “Why do you want to believe in this so much?”

“Why do you want to steal Blake so much?”

Rainbow’s eyes narrowed. “I’m not stealing Blake; who would I even be stealing her from?” Rainbow answered her own question a moment later. “It’s you, isn’t it?”

Sunset brushed her trousers idly with one hand. “I have no idea what you’re talking about,” she said quietly, looking somewhere else.

Rainbow snorted. “I really do think Blake would do great in Atlas. I really believe she’d be better off there than here.”

“You think everyone would be better off at Atlas.”

“I don’t think you’d be better off at Atlas; you couldn’t cut it.”

“What do you mean I 'couldn’t cut it'?”

“You don’t have the discipline,” Rainbow explained.

“You think that Blake has discipline?” Sunset asked, her eyes boggling.

“I think she could have, which is more than I could say about you,” Rainbow replied. She folded her arms across her chest, even as she crossed one leg over the other knee. “Do you honestly think that being an ordinary huntress will be enough for someone like Blake?”

“You say that like there’s some shame in being an ordinary huntress,” Sunset muttered.

“No, I didn’t,” Rainbow said sharply. “What I mean is… huntsmen and huntresses from the other kingdoms defend the status quad-”

“Quo.”

“Huh?”

“Status quo, not status quad.”

“Whatever,” Rainbow said. “The point is that they defend it. They defend the kingdoms, they defend villages, they defend whoever pays them, and that’s fine, but there’s no way that that will be enough for Blake. Blake wants to change the world, and she’ll be able to do that as an Atlesian officer.”

“How much world-changing does the average Atlesian officer get up to?” Sunset asked.

“Well… not much, on average,” Rainbow admitted. “But Blake’s not going to be an average officer; she already knows General Ironwood, and she’s got time to get to know him even better, see what a good man he is, how trustworthy he is.” She paused. “I’d put my life in his hands a hundred times over before I’d do the same for your Professor Ozpin.”

Sunset snorted. “I actually agree with you on that, and I’ve never even met your general.”

“You don’t trust the headmaster?”

“Neither do you.”

“Yeah, but he’s your headmaster; if you don’t have any faith in the guy, then what are you still doing here?”

“I have faith in myself and my team. I don’t need to believe in Professor Ozpin or his reputation,” Sunset insisted. “He knows more than he lets on. He plays games with us.”

“You got that right,” Rainbow muttered. “He knew about Blake all along; he knew everything. Just because it all worked out in the end doesn’t mean that… I mean…”

“Yes,” Sunset agreed. “I know exactly what you mean.” She fell silent, albeit only very briefly. “I suppose that I’d like to believe it,” she said, after a moment, “because I’d like to believe that there’s some wonder left in what is kind of a grim world.”

“I wouldn’t like to believe that everyone who's ever lucked into power put themselves ahead of everyone else,” Rainbow replied.

“And I wouldn’t like to lose Blake,” Sunset admitted. “Not even to another team, certainly not to Atlas, but we don’t always get what we want, do we?”

“I don’t know. I think I’ve gotten pretty lucky that way,” Rainbow said, with exaggerated mock casualness.

Sunset huffed. “Of course you have.”

The doors into the Skydock slid open, and Ruby and Penny bounced in excitedly, chattering to one another so quickly that their words became lost in a blur as they spoke over one another; Sunset wondered how they could possibly understand what the other was saying.

Ciel followed a couple of steps behind, moving at a more controlled and graceful pace.

“And that bit when Lady Jaye rescued the Councillors like wam-bam!”

“And then Roadblock took out Kobra Commander’s airship with a single shot to the engine!”

“That was an impressive piece of marksmanship,” Ciel agreed. She was the first to notice Sunset and the others. “Good afternoon, everyone.”

“Hey, Ciel,” Rainbow said, grinning. “Ruby, Penny.”

“Greetings, everyone!” Penny said, waving enthusiastically. “Ruby and Ciel and I just got back from seeing the best movie ever!”

“Let’s not be hyperbolic,” Ciel murmured.

“Yeah, it was pretty great, but it still would have been better if we could have gotten to see Grimm 3,” Ruby said.

“You like the Grimm series?” Rainbow demanded. “The second movie made the Atlesian soldiers out to be totally incompetent.”

“They weren’t incompetent; they were just caught by surprise,” Ruby replied.

“When the grimm attacked in the reactor complex, half of them shot one another!”

“Calm down, for goodness’ sake; it’s just a movie,” Sunset said.

“It’s bad enough that everyone thinks that we’re a bunch of robots, but everytime we’re not, we’re absolutely useless,” Rainbow griped. “It’s really annoying.”

“I feel your pain,” Sunset remarked dryly.

“What movie did you actually go and see?” Twilight said pointedly, glancing at Rainbow from over the top of her spectacles.

“Real Atlesian Hero: Retaliation,” Penny announced.

“There, you see,” Twilight said. “A nice action movie with no Atlesian incompetence in sight.”

“Unless you count the fact that the entire Council had been replaced by Kobra agents and nobody noticed,” Ciel pointed out.

Twilight sighed. “This is why I only take you to watch cartoons with me,” she told Rainbow Dash.

“But it was rather enjoyable nonsense,” Ciel added, “and Penny had a good time.”

“I certainly did!” Penny cried. “It was so exciting, and it all seemed so real, and Ruby Roundhouse is so cool!”

“Yeah, she is pretty cool,” Rainbow agreed. “It’s a shame they couldn’t get her to play Daring Do; she’d have been great at it.”

“I thought Chestnut Magnifico did a pretty good job,” Twilight said.

“She didn’t have the physicality,” Rainbow argued.

“Ruby Roundhouse has arms like mine,” Twilight pointed out.

“Yeah, but she moves like she knows what she’s doing,” Rainbow said. “Chestnut doesn’t quite have that.”

“What are you talking about?” Penny asked.

“Daring Do, Penny; we’ll have to show you those films some time,” Rainbow said.

“But didn’t you just say you didn’t like the actress?” Penny asked.

Rainbow shook her head. “She wasn’t bad; I just think that it could have been better. Still, classic films based on great books; they just… could have done with someone… someone with muscles like Pyrrha.”

“Pyrrha would be a terrible actress,” Sunset said.

“What makes you say that?” Penny asked. “She’s really pretty, and she knows how to make fights look epic!”

“True and true, but I don’t think she could act,” Sunset explained.

“She has spent half her life in the public eye,” Ciel pointed out. “Some might call that a performance far more demanding than short bursts on a film set.”

“That may be so,” Blake allowed, “but judging by the way that she feels about that performance, it’s probably safe to say that she wouldn’t enjoy acting.”

“And hence, she wouldn’t be good at it,” Sunset declared.

“Oh, hello, everyone,” Pyrrha said as she and Jaune walked into the lounge. Both of them had their arms full with brown paper bags, out of which various groceries were starting to protrude into view.

“Pyrrha!” Penny cried. “We were just talking about you!”

“Penny,” Ciel said softly, as she crossed the lounge to sit down next to Rainbow Dash. “That is not something one says.”

“Not even if it’s true?” Penny asked.

“Especially not if it’s true,” Ciel informed her.

“That only holds if you’re saying stuff behind somebody’s back,” Sunset countered. To Pyrrha, who was looking a little apprehensive, she added, “We were just pondering whether you’d be a good actress.”

“We agree you have the looks for it,” Blake murmured.

Pyrrha let out a little nervous laugh as her cheeks reddened. “Well, that… that’s very kind of you, but I’m afraid that I’ve no desire to pretend to be someone I’m not.”

“Haven’t you done that already?” Blake asked. “Isn’t tournament fighting just performing in front of a crowd?”

“More than I would like,” Pyrrha conceded, “but there is an undeniable element of skill to it as well, and besides, I’ve given up tournament fighting.”

Penny sighed dreamily. “I wonder what it’s like to be a star, to know that hundreds of thousands of people are going to rush to see you.”

“Are they seeing them or seeing the characters they play?” Pyrrha asked.

“It’s the stars, isn’t it?” Jaune said. “I mean, that’s why they get paid the big lien, right?”

“You would think,” Ciel observed, “but many industry insiders believe that the era of the traditional movie star is coming to an end as audiences narrow their attention to a few tentpole franchises based on well-known intellectual properties.”

Everyone stared at her.

Ciel looked at them. “What?” she asked evenly.

Twilight cleared her throat. “Anyway,” she said, “Pyrrha, Jaune, where have you guys come from?”

“Shopping, by the looks of it,” Sunset said.

Jaune laughed. “Yeah, we did pick up a few things on our way back, but only after we’d gotten back from the ice rink.”

Sunset’s ears pricked up. “'The ice rink'?”

“As it turns out,” Pyrrha said, “Jaune is very graceful.”

Ruby grinned. “So you guys finally went on your first date?”

Pyrrha chuckled, “I suppose we did, yes. It was…” – she glanced at Jaune, a soft smile playing across her face – “wonderful. For me, anyway; I’m not sure how much fun I was to watch flailing about on the ice.”

“I don’t know, that sounds like it could have been fun,” Sunset said.

“You weren’t that bad, Pyrrha,” Jaune assured her. “You did pretty well for your first time.”

“That was because I was using my semblance to adjust the movements of my skates,” Pyrrha confessed. “Not something I’m particularly proud of, but I didn’t want to embarrass myself too much on, well, on our first date.”

“But you did have a good time, right?” Jaune asked solicitously.

“Oh, of course,” Pyrrha assured him, as she sat down next to Sunset. “You were quite the sight to see. Every day, you reveal more and more talents.”

Jaune took a seat beside her. “Our town, the place where I grew up, sits between a forest and a lake; it’s beautiful, the water is practically silver. In the summer, you can fish in it, but in the winter, it freezes over most years, and that’s when we go skating on it.”

“I see,” Pyrrha said fondly. “You’ve certainly learned well there; I don’t think I’ll ever be as good as you.”

“I’m glad you two had a good time,” Sunset said, “but I don’t get why you went shopping afterwards.”

“Jaune’s going to teach me how to cook,” Pyrrha explained.

Sunset’s eyebrows rose. “Okay, but why?”

The groceries in the brown bags in Pyrrha’s arms rustled a little as she shrugged her shoulders. “I think that I should probably learn how to take care of myself if I don’t want to rely on my mother and my family.”

“You say that like you’ve been cut off,” Sunset said.

“I know that I haven’t been,” Pyrrha acknowledged, “but as I was saying to Jaune, it feels a little disingenuous to simply carry on as though nothing has happened between us.”

“Or you could just call her and put all of this behind you?” Sunset suggested.

Pyrrha sighed. “Please, let’s not have this conversation again, Sunset,” she begged. “Besides, what brought you into Vale?”

“Book shopping,” Sunset replied. “Twilight brought Blake and I some presents.”

“That sounds very kind of you, Twilight,” Pyrrha said.

“Just a few things I thought might interest them,” Twilight responded sheepishly.

Pyrrha leaned over slightly to get a better look at the books resting on Sunset’s lap. “What are they about, if you don’t mind me asking?”

“Magic.”

Ruby gasped. “You mean like my silver eyes?”

Rainbow’s ears twitched. “What’s this about Ruby’s eyes?”

Sunset twisted around in her seat. “I don’t suppose that I could say ‘nothing’ and you’d believe me?”

“No,” Rainbow said. “I really wouldn’t.”

Twilight frowned. “'Silver eyes'? What are you talking about?”

“You don’t know?” Sunset asked. The one kind of magic that we know for sure existed, and you’ve never heard of it?

“No,” Twilight replied. “That’s why I asked what Ruby was talking about?” She glanced at her. “Do you… do you have magic too?”

“'Too'?” Rainbow repeated. “Twi, what is this ‘too’? Did you find some proof of-?”

“You know what, this is not really a conversation to have in a skydock lounge while we wait for a ride home,” Sunset said quickly.

“Is it a conversation to have at all?” Pyrrha murmured. “Ruby, you don’t have to say anything.”

“I don’t mind,” Ruby said quietly. “I trust Team Rosepetal, and Blake; I mean, we’re all friends here, right?”

Pyrrha nodded gently. “If this is what you want,” she said.

“How about this?” Jaune said. “We go back to Beacon, I’ll make dinner – I’ll show Pyrrha how to make dinner – and then we can all meet up in our dorm room tonight and talk about all of this stuff. All nine of us. And we can celebrate a successful mission at the same time.”

“Do you want to celebrate a successful mission?” Pyrrha asked, a touch of anxiety creeping into her voice.

Jaune hesitated, but only briefly. “Yeah,” he said. “Yeah, I do. Even if it didn’t go perfectly, we still got the bad guy, and we all made it back in one piece, and it feels like something worth celebrating.”

“If we’re going to celebrate, then Sun should be there too,” Blake pointed out.

“True, but…” Sunset trailed off, unsure of how to wonder aloud if she trusted Sun with Ruby’s secrets, still less with her own. “Can he keep his mouth shut?”

Blake’s face assumed a pensive expression. “I… think so,” she said. “He wouldn’t deliberately betray anyone’s secrets, and… I’m not sure who it could accidentally slip out to at the moment.”

Sunset looked at Ruby. “It’s your call.”

“I trust Sun,” Ruby said quietly.

Sunset leaned back in her seat. “Then it looks like we’re having a room party.”

Comments

[sunset-starlight]

Okay she better reveal she's from a different world.

[MSie95]

So they just spill the beans like that? To the people they (somewhat) trust but they could try and keep secrets better. They really should talk about it. Especially if those secrets belong to someone else. Hope they promise to keep quiet about it. Huh, would Dash feel bad for keeping such a big thing secret from her superiors? Or Ciel for that one?

It's quite interesting to hear something about Sienna.

[Lancerguy]

The more I read the more I am convinced my theory regarding sunset is correct. She definitely believes in Ruby’s good judgement and ability to keep her mouth shut (never said she never miscalculated) Ciel going full sugarcoat was a nice touch (although to be fair anyone going full sugarcoat typically is) and having sienna be a historian made my day

[Mastermind4892]

Thank you! I’ve been hoping to see Blake’s own introduction to the existence of magic this time around! Not to mention Twilight’s sheer enthusiasm as seeing Sunset demonstrate magic before her eyes. She will have a lot of questions...

Not to mention that I am sooooooooo looking forward to Rainbow and Ciel’s reaction. There is so much more to the world than their high-minded perceptions ever imagined.

“The universe is not stranger than we imagine... it’s stranger than we can imagine.”
- Captain Picard

[JMP]

Twilight's gifts are very thoughtful. Interesting that she ended up getting Blake a book with an introduction by Sienna Khan without knowing who she is. The books she bought for Sunset sound like more insight on past Maidens, which...I honestly don't really remember when in this story Sunset originally started to research them.

“I’ve forgiven her for that,” Blake said, “but it did demonstrate to me the problem of making rash judgements and assuming groups to be heterogeneous.

I feel like that should be homogeneous? "Hetero-" means different. Blake assumed all Atlesians were Jacques Schnee, and so thought they were all alike.

[Animatorsnake]

Wow, just drop the secret that instantly, honestly I do expect this from Ruby but come on Sunset you could had whispered or tell your team later, not blurt it out like that

[Snowdrifter]

Sunset leaned back in her seat. “Then it looks like we’re having a room party.”

And suddenly a wild appears!

[Raul]

Okay, Ruby totally would he the one to let the cat out of the bag and that situation was a great way to do jt!

[Stet709]

“She has spent half her life in the public eye,” Ciel pointed out. “Some might call that a performance far more demanding than short bursts on a film set.”

Celestia has to put on a public face, but as we've seen in Horse Play, it doesn't mean she's cut out to be an actress (no matter how much she wants to be).