The Transient Bonds of Winter (Fey Breeze)
Being gutted for use in a short war did a number on Swip’s body. Not her mind—this was far from the first time this sort of thing had happened—but her systems were stripped down to the basics and she was completely unable to fly, engage life support, or even fire the simplest of weapons. It was going to take a bit more to fix her than the last time she had been incapacitated.
So explorations to new worlds were put on hold. It just wouldn’t feel right to go somewhere new without Swip there to watch over them.
This did not mean the Sweeties weren’t working, far from it. The time had rolled around again for a special shipment to Earth Shimmer—though this time, it wasn’t merely a routine visit. Today. the scientists over in the Research Division had cooked together the most state-of-the-art reality anchors ever, courtesy of none other than Merodi Universalis’ own Corona Shimmer, Second of Research and source of the nation’s immortality serum.
To most, she was a sight to behold. A tall, thin woman with skin glowing a soft gold color. A horn and two pony ears poked out of her head while two brilliant wings sprouted from her back, the appearance of an alicorn-human combo that people still hadn’t come up with a name for. She wore a white dress with red highlights, white gloves with red crystals embedded in the back of them, and a pair of pointed red shades that screamed “ANIME” to anyone who had any idea what that meant.
To Suzie, Corona was just a friend who happened to be extra shiny. That didn’t stop Cinder and most of the other Sweeties from looking at her with awe. Cinder had been staring ever since she’d laid eyes on the angelic woman. Corona had opened the portal directly to Earth Shimmer under her own magic while the Sweeties carried most the cargo across to the other side.
Now, Corona was lounging on top of a large, cylindrical piece of technology made from pristine white metal. It was currently off—the screens displayed nothing, the lights were all dead, and miles of spooled cable were stacked next to it haphazardly. She traced the top gingerly with her finger. “You like what you see?”
Sunset Shimmer, reluctant deity of Earth Shimmer, looked into the face of her counterpart with a grin. “This’ll do it?”
“Well, not alone, you’re going to need to set up a dozen of these things all around the planet, and if we really are going to have Celestia City around we’re going to need to establish at least somewhat of a space network… but yeah, this bad boy will prevent your reality from breaking if you sneeze.”
Sunset raised an eyebrow. “I don’t break reality when I sneeze.”
“I’m sure you could if you tried, Shimmy.”
“...Shimmy?”
“There’s already a Sunny and you don’t have a name yet. If you don’t think of a better name for yourself in the next five seconds, you’re Shimmy.”
Sunset paused. “Wait, wha-”
“Shimmy it is.”
The newly christened Shimmy sighed. “Whatever blows up your skirt, Bloodbag.”
“Feisty,” Corona chuckled.
With a roll of her eyes, Shimmy pressed her hand to the reality anchor device, furrowing her brow. “...Yeah, I have no idea how any of this works.”
“I barely know how it works and I invented the dumb thing,” Corona laughed. “Put simply, it’s an anchor. It doesn’t matter how unstable or moldable reality around it is, it’ll hold it in place so long as it has the right power. Speaking of…” She pointed at the cables. “We’re going to need to start hooking these things up.” Remembering the Sweeties existed, she turned to them. “This… will take some time. Human magitech power grids are never very reliable. So just… go have some fun.”
Suzie nodded, turning to her crew. “You all go storm the NAHTII or something. I’ll stick around to oversee everything.”
“You really don’t need to do that,” Corona pointed out.
“I’m acting in the interests of Oversight.”
“This is Aid’s purview.”
Shimmy raised an eyebrow. “Why are you two even arguing? She can stay if she wants. It’s not like anything here is secret or dangerous.”
“Well, if it goes really wrong we could destroy the universe,” Corona pointed out.
“And is Suzie’s presence going to change that?”
“Wow, this is a pointless argument,” Nira observed. “Goodbye, goddesses.”
“WE ARE NOT GODDESSES!” the two sputtered.
“You can be the goddesses of not-being-goddesses!” Burgerbelle announced, appearing between them. She winked.
“That’s…” Corona began.
“...really dumb,” Shimmy finished.
“Exactly, fits you perfectly!” Burgerbelle scooped up Nira, Cinder, and Blink in her arms. “And now I run before I get smited!” She folded the four of them up into a origami crane and flew away.
“...She does realize I can sense her anywhere, right?” Shimmy asked. “Her signature’s the most unique thing on the planet right now.”
“Oh, she knows,” Suzie confirmed. “I don’t think she cares, though.”
“Why am I not surprised?”
Corona shrugged, flapping her wings. “Seen it all, maybe? I can relate.” She levitated one of the giant cables to her. “So… let’s find out where we can plug this in…”
“It’s not like we can plug it into the sun…” Shimmy mused, hand to her chin.
Corona laughed. “Yeah, definitely… not…” Her smile vanished and the gears started turning in her mind.
“Wait…” Shimmy gasped. “Can we? Can we really?”
“The logistics are a bit much for me right now but I’m sure we can create a workaround through clever portal tactics…”
“I’ll stabilize the inner spaces!”
Suzie sat down, smirking. This was going to be interesting to watch.
~~~
“Burgerbelle, you’re suicidal,” Nira muttered.
Burgerbelle had taken her ‘team’ to the local Everfree Forest to ‘hide’ from the ‘wrath’ of Shimmy without upsetting reality by ripping open a dimensional portal. Just a stroll in the magically oversaturated woods. Nothing all that special, right?
“...Can Burgerbelle even die?” Blink wondered aloud.
“Yes!” Burgerbelle confirmed.
“How can you be sure?”
Burgerbelle held up a hand and smiled. This expression jump-cut to one of existential uncertainty. “Mother of Celestias…”
Cinder rolled her eyes. “Come on, Burgerbelle, you can get hurt just like the rest of us.”
Burgerbelle cut off her arm with a pair of scissors, folded it into a paper airplane, and threw it. It did a few loop-de-loops before crashing back into her and becoming part of her once again.
“Burgerbelle: a walking ‘be proven wrong’ machine,” Blink narrated. “Here we see her in her natural habitat, proving logic is nothing more than an invention conceived in the flawed minds of man…”
Nira grunted. “Blink, we can do without the commentary, Burger’s good enough at it on her own.”
“Fly my brethren!” Burgerbelle shouted, spooking a group of geese considerably. Instead of fleeing, they jumped Burgerbelle with angry pecks. “Hey! Ow! I said fly!”
Cinder looked at her in disbelief. “Burger…”
“Goose problem, please hold!”
Cinder glanced at the phone in her hoof and burnt it to ashes. “Burgerbelle, why are we in the Everfree Forest?”
Burgerbelle stood up dramatically, a goose sitting on her head like a hat. “Good reasons!”
“Such as?”
“I didn’t want to go to the NAHTII?”
Cinder raised an eyebrow. “This was all random, wasn't it?”
“Is there really any such thing as luck?” Burgerbelle asked, one of her pupils splitting into seven for a split second. “If there is, I have all of it.”
Cinder facehooved. “Burger… You know what, nevermind.” With a roll of her eyes she decided she was done trying to extract some sort of sense out of the Flat. She wondered for the umpteenth time why Burgerbelle of all Sweeties was the second in command, and not Celia. Was it really just because Burger was one of the earliest members of the League?
That really couldn’t be it…
Though watching Burgerbelle trip over an obvious log and fall face-first into a cute, squealing frog made Cinder’s doubts in the Flat rise. She didn’t even really lead while they were exploring; she tended to take a background role and do random stuff. And when talking about Burgerbelle, ‘random stuff’ meant exactly what it sounded like.
What did Burgerbelle even do? Cinder had been here for well over a month at this point and she still had no idea. Burgerbelle was a good distraction? That worked, but there had to be something else…
“...Something just happened,” Nira said, furrowing her brow. “The magic changed.”
Cinder paused. She had to admit, the forest did feel… different, not that she was really all that good for scanning magic signatures. Her horn just buzzed differently when she lit it.
It was the sky whale that really told her something was different.
“What th-”
And then there was a hole in the ground where, really, there hadn’t been one before. The four of them tried to grab hold of something resembling ground, but it was all too far away for them. They fell, and had it not been for Nira’s quick thinking they would have all fallen in different directions. As it was, she was able to chain the four of them together in a Y shape, keeping them all from falling apart but not preventing Cinder from hitting an earthen wall hard enough to bruise.
They fell out into a wide expanse of twisting forest. Had they not been falling it likely would have been beautiful—the trees glistened with ethereal magics, the multiple suns rolled and twisted with the folding spacetime, and the world was full of every color imaginable, somehow both bright and dark simultaneously. Sparks of light flitted around with the flow of magic in this strange place.
And yet, all the Sweeties could do was scream and flail as they kept falling. Nira managed to latch a hook of dark magic onto a nearby chunk of earth, pulling them to a stop atop an amorphous blob of soil jutting out of a larger forest.
Cinder tore her head out of the ground. “Ow… Nira, couldn’t you have been a little gentler?”
“No!” Nira shouted, her dark voice coming out in full force. “This place is not for us, we must leave! Now!”
Burgerbelle took out her dimensional device and frowned. “We’ve moved universes. There’s no direct connection to Earth Shimmer, and this plane isn’t on the record.”
“We don’t have time for this! Set it to cycle until it finds a way out!”
Burgerbelle pressed a button, doing as asked. She turned around—and looked up into the face of a tremendous rock man four times her height. “Oh, hey, sweet! A golem! Hi!”
The ‘golem’ smashed her into the ground like a pancake. She was fine. The dimensional device wasn’t.
Cinder facehooved. “Really Burgerbelle!?”
~~~
“And that’s how you wormhole to the surface of the sun,” Shimmy said, looking at her handiwork: a hole in the air that went directly to a raging inferno of hydrogen flames. Around it were several dozen magic circles courtesy of Corona. Currently the circles were just analyzing the energy and keeping it from torching the hill they were standing on, but they would be removed the moment they encased it in a heat-resistant casing that would convert the power directly into electrical energy for the reality anchors.
The two Sunsets high-fived.
“So, I see two reactions in quick succession from the energy companies,” Corona started.
“First: relief that we aren’t draining on their resources.” Shimmy deduced.
“Second: panic once they realize we might have just made their jobs obsolete.”
With a smirk, Shimmy continued. “Third: how can we profit off this new technology?”
Corona chuckled. “If you ever become full members your businesses are going to be in for a surprise…”
Shimmy frowned. “I still can’t believe you guys can get Earths to just sign on so easily.”
“Usually we have limitless access, your instability has been keeping us from giving out the full package and keeping careful watch.” Corona raised the strength of one of the magic circles to keep the barrier from faltering. “Under normal circumstances we can provide just about anything they want. Sure, we tell them we’re anti-big business, but no matter how they slice it they get more profit being part of us than not.”
“You have it lucky.”
“Now we have it lucky,” Corona corrected. “Back when we were first forming the two major Earths in our alliance tried to sue each other for copyright infringement…”
“That’s not what happened,” Suzie corrected. She was sitting nearby, eating lunch off a picnic blanket.
“That’s how Eve describes it!”
Suzie rolled her eyes. “They wanted to figure out copyright law. Eve basically gave them a middle finger after getting royally fed up with their antics and signed the Business Limitation Statute. ...Geez, I was still in college when that was going down.”
“Must be nice,” Shimmy commented. “Getting to go to college.”
“...Weren’t you in Celestia's School?”
Shimmy raised an eyebrow. “Human college, you know, the one you went to?”
Suzie nodded. “You know, it’s weird. Our worlds are both standard Equis-linked earths, and yet they’re wildly different. And I don’t just mean the whole ‘oversaturated magic’ thing, I mean we were different. On the surface we had the same things, but in mine… well for one, your Harmonism didn’t exist, we just had the standard religions.”
“The magic was the same though.” Shimmy walked up to Suzie and looked her over. “You have the human magic in you. And that… other thing, but I still sense it.”
Suzie smiled weakly. “I’ve never been able to actively use that magic.”
“There’s probably something we could do about that…” Shimmy said, hand to her chin. “I’ll get back to you on that. Right now…”
“The power of the SUN!” Corona yelled, cackling in mock malevolence.
“Maybe I should try to sound evil more often. Get fewer worshippers.”
Corona put a hand on Shimmy’s shoulder. “Doesn’t work, sorry.”
“Yeah, I know.”
As they returned to their work, Suzie pulled out her phone. Might as well check up on Burgerbelle, tell her Shimmy clearly didn’t care about the whole insult thing.
“...Unable to reach recipient?” Suzie frowned. That wasn't unusual in their line of work… when they were in separate universes. They were supposed to be in the same universe. “Hey, Shimmy, can you find Burgerbelle?”
“Easy peasy lemo-” Shimmy stopped in the middle of her sentence. “...How…?”
“You can’t.”
“No, I can’t, and she’s such a—oh.” She facepalmed. “Oh no…”
Corona adjusted her shades. “I both do and don’t like the sounds of this.”
“They fell into the local Fae Realm,” Shimmy explained. “I need to make some ‘calls’.”
Suzie scrolled through her list of contacts. “Do you mind if I call someone in too? If we’re dealing with Fay…”
“Universe is stable enough to handle a few more portals, it’s fine.”
“Question,” Corona said, holding up a finger. “Why aren’t we just charging into this Fae Realm and grabbing them?”
“Because that’s a good way to get the Fay to declare multiversal war on me.”
“...I swear I’ve lived this movie before.”
Shimmy rolled her eyes.
~~~
Nira rammed the head of the rock-creature into the ground, fracturing the earthen surface with numerous fissures. “You will leave us, beast of the summer, or you will suffer an untimely demise!”
“Geez, Nira, chill pill!” Blink shouted. “Look, rock guy, can you just… leave us alone while we try to figure out where we are? Kay.”
“I know exactly where we are. We are in a Fae Realm. We must leave as soon as possible.”
“Nira, scary voice,” Cinder pointed out.
“I am declaring my presence to this world so they will not dare!”
“There are about a dozen giants behind you indicating they probably will dare.”
Nira twitched, turning to see exactly what Cinder described. Giants with muscles so large they could be mistaken for fat to one as small as her. They all wore simple, brown robes, while the more violent fiery magics whirled around them.
Nira twitched, setting up a circle of darkness around her. “You will leave. Now.”
“Return to us what is ours,” the lead giant said, voice booming loud enough to rustle the trees around the Sweeties.
“...We haven’t taken anything,” Blink pointed out. “We literally just got here.”
“The artifacts are gone and you are the only mortals here who could have taken them.” The giant sneered. “It will do you good t-”
“Done talking!” Nira shouted, blasting the giant in the face with a beam of dark energy, knocking him into the others like a bowling pin.
“Nira!” Blink wailed. “Squiddy’s supposed to be the aggressive one!”
“We are getting out of this place!” Nira shouted, cutting herself to create a crimson knife. She sliced through the air, cutting a hole in space-time to another universe. A universe that happened to look exactly the same as the one they were currently in. “Oh for the love o-”
One of the giants who hadn’t been knocked over grabbed Nira with his fist. She would have been crushed had she not pushed back with all her magical might, the resulting reaction force sending her flying across the warped space into a tangled grassland.
Blink sighed as another giant attempted to step on her, phasing right through. “You really need t-” the next giant attacked with some sort of spiritual aspect to his kick, hitting Blink and tossing her next to Nira. “Looks like they got spirit magic…”
“No, really?!” Nira shouted, twitching. She produced several claws of blood and charged at the giant who had grabbed her, smashing into him hard enough to create a small crater. This was enough to break off the entire nodule of earth the Sweeties had been standing on, sending it tumbling into the warped space.
They bumped into a sky whale, prompting a deep, annoyed noise to ring from its lungs. This tone shook the entire battlefield once more, toppling giants and shaking Burgerbelle like a cymbal.
Cinder, to her credit, knew when she wasn’t going to be able to do anything in the fight. She was hiding behind a tree.
Hey, the tree ‘said.’
“Not right now,” Cinder muttered. “It’s fascinating that you can talk to me and all, but if you didn’t notice there’s kind of a lot exploding out there. Mostly because of Nira. ...Why is she so angry?”
The tree didn’t know. Or it didn’t respond. Cinder had no way to tell which. She wasn't even entirely sure it had spoken to her in the first place.
“Your friends seem to be having… difficulty with the Summer Court.”
“I said not right now!” Cinder hissed—then she realized that hadn’t been the tree. She looked behind her to see a pale skinned humanoid being with sharp ears, brilliant eyes, and eyelashes that were big enough to be utterly ridiculous in every context. This impression was only cemented by his exceptionally gaudy cloak covered in magical crystals and insignia presumably representing high status. Cinder couldn’t help but giggle. “Uh… sorry, thought you were the tree.”
“I will endeavor not to take that as an insult,” he said, looking beyond the tree at the battle taking place. “Pray tell, what is happening?”
“They thought we stole some artifacts or something. Nira—that’s the one flinging all the shadows around—went ballistic for no good reason. And Burgerbelle… is… playing an accordian?”
She was, in fact, playing an accordian. The notes were floating into the air before transforming into projectiles and ramming into the giants.
“...Curious,” the ‘man’ said, leaning in. “I have never seen one like her before.”
“Trust me, you don’t want to see another one.”
“I will make my own judgement.” He reached into his cloak and pulled out a tall scepter with a pink eye-shaped crystal at the head. “One moment, I shall clear up this rabble for you.”
“Oh, thanks!”
He stepped out from behind the tree, scepter raised. “Hello my brethren from across the seasonal divide, how goes your encounter?”
“JÖKULL HEKLAGI!” the rock man shouted, having just managed to stand back up. “What is your purpose here?!” Nira flew into the rock man like a dark bullet, knocking him over once again.
Jökull answered anyway. “There are rumors of artifacts that have been lost.” He held up his staff. “I have reason to suspect they are somewhere around here.”
One of the giants turned away from the Sweeties and glared at him. “Those artifacts are ours, Jökull.”
“This one isn’t,” Jökull pointed out, pointing it right at the giants. The pink light left the scepter and entered the eyes of every member of the Summer Court. In that moment, they knew one thing—one of their precious lost artifacts was flying through the air behind them. In unison they turned around and thundered away as fast as their massive legs would carry them, shaking the earth with every movement. They cried and screamed in lament as the precious artifact nobody else could see flew further and further away from them.
“Wow!” Cinder said, coming out from behind the tree. “That was pretty cool, Jökull!”
Jökull put on a smile. “I choose to take your use of what I presume is local vernacular as a compliment. Furthermore I-”
Nira came charging out of nowhere, plowing into Jökull with darkness briming from her horn. “Leave us!”
“Nira, no!” Cinder shouted, tackling the dark mare from the side. “Jökull saved us! We are not going to attack him like that!”
“Bu-”
“NO BUTS!” Cinder cut her off. “...Sorry Jökull, I don’t know what’s gotten into her today.”
“I am not upset with her violent tendencies,” Jökull said. “In fact I find them quite… endearing.”
“Well, that’s a relief!”
~~~
“Fae Époque,” Suzie said, suddenly. “That’s what we call it.”
“You bothered to name it?” Shimmy asked.
Suzie nodded. “It’s a collection of stitched-together universes of whom the inhabitants are aware of the multiverse. Even if trying to talk to them is like…” She read further down the article on her data pad. “Like ‘trying to speak to a dolphin in spanglish’, we do still need to have them categorized. Doesn’t matter how loose the fairies are, this definitely qualifies as a Class 3 Society according to the article.”
“Like you? Really?” Shimmy seemed surprised.
Suzie shrugged. “I’m not exactly well versed in Fae Realms. What I do know is basically what I’m reading from this article. They’re loose collections of universes unified by the type of life found within—fairies. The conglomerations tend to interact with other universes physically, without the need for tearing portals. Beyond that they vary considerably.”
“So… fairies,” Corona concluded.
“You might want to watch your tongue, lest you wish to insult the very beings you desire conference with and suffer a chilling end.”
The two Sunsets and Suzie turned to see a tall, pale blue woman with pointed ears and four-fingered hands walking up to them, a smaller woman with lightning-blue hair standing at her side looking decidedly more normal in visual appearance if not expression. The icy woman’s face was level, her golden eyes calm, while the other person had such a confused mess of emotions on her face the best Suzie could read was ‘very, very devoted to the tall one.’
“...Winter, how did you…?” Shimmy asked, raising an eyebrow.
“I have eyes in many places,” the tall woman responded.
“Can we back up to the ‘chilling end’ part?” Corona asked. “Every time I’ve been frozen it’s gotten… uncomfortable for everyone involved.”
“Winter here is referring to the Fay of Fae Époque,” Shimmy explained. “If you call them fairies that’s a good way to either get punched or get a curse on your entire bloodlines. Or something.”
“Hey! The mistress doesn’t curse!” the other woman said, indignantly. “She plays her subjects fair and square.”
“You are going to make me all kinds of uncomfortable, aren’t you?” Corona asked.
“...Probably?”
“Guaranteed,” Shimmy said. “The power of love decided to take hold of a Stockholm Syndrome case here in Indigo.”
Indigo glared at her.
“That’s the simplest way of putting it, calm down.”
“You did just call her insane,” Suzie pointed out.
“Are you defending her?”
“No? Just saying you shouldn’t expect her to be calm.”
Corona glanced from Winter to Shimmy. “Why did you call them if you don’t like them?”
“I didn’t call these two,” Shimmy explained. “They just… showed up. And they won’t go away. And I’m going to have to find some way to pay them because they always find a way to charge me.”
“Twas I what be summoned,” a tiny, familiar voice announced—in the form of a small humanoid with flitting wings. “Name’s Seabreeze, if’n ye dinnae know..” His eyes flicked from one Sunset to the other. “Though I suspect ye mayhap met a reflection, aye?”
Corona smiled. “Corona. That’s Suzie.”
Suzie waved happily, taken in by the adorable Seabreeze. She knew better than to call him cute—versions of him tended to be cantankerous.
“A pleasure ta meet ye, wanderers.”
“Seabreeze here is a Fay,” Shimmy explained. “Though he’s separate from the kingdoms inside Fae Époque, showing loyalty to neither side.”
“Which are?” Suzie asked.
“Do we farm the mortals or hunt the mortals?”
“...Grim.”
“You are oversimplifying the symbiotic dynamic between Fay and mortal beings,” Winter said. “Nothing is taken without something given.”
“Aye, though ye words and japeries usually leave ye abundant fer their pain,” Seabreeze muttered.
“It is only unbalanced if you choose to view it as such.”
“I know ye still adhere to the rule of truth, Winter. Tell me, do you choose to view the exchange as balanced or unbalanced?”
“My opinion has fluctuated on the matter over the course of my life.”
Seabreeze looked ready to shout down at her for the non-answer, but he was interrupted by a dimensional portal ripping into reality. Shimmy twitched with visible discomfort at the hole’s sudden appearance. On the other side was a unicorn mare with a snow white coat and curled mane with pale green eyes. As she crossed the veil between worlds, her form automatically adjusted to that of a human—her horn transforming into a crystal, though she kept the bushy tail for some reason.
“Greetings, Shimmy ‘Sunset’ Shimmer, arbiter of reality,” she said with a bow. “I am Fuyu of the League of Sweetie Belles, and I humbly apologize for scarring the fabric of your reality.”
“Okay, how did the nickname spread already?” Shimmy asked.
“I’ve been updating your wiki entry,” Suzie offered.
Shimmy took this in, looking back at Fuyu’s bowing form. “You know, this kind of reverence, the kind without the worshipping, I could get behind. Thanks, Fuyu. ...Do I need to tell you to rise?”
“Nope!” Fuyu said, standing straight up. “Anyway, I hear we’ve got a problem with another Fae Realm and that my expertise is required?”
“Fascinating…” Winter said, looking Fuyu up and down. “From which realm do you hail?”
“Fae Alabaster,” Fuyu answered. “And you are Winter, ex-princess of the Winter Court of Fae Époque. Charmed to see a hybrid being such as yourself, you must be proud.”
Winter’s smile shifted imperceptibly. “I certainly carry my head high these days. Now, fey?”
“Fay, though we don’t use such terms in Fae Alabaster.”
“How do you differentiate Fay from fey?”
“There is no need, fey are Fay, we are as one. Fairies, even.”
Indigo seemed disgusted by this, though Winter’s face was level as ever.
“Sounds like ye have the opposite problem of our realm,” Seabreeze observed.
Fuyu shrugged. “It is another line of thought.”
“Hold up!” Corona said, raising a hand. “You’re all just saying ‘fay’ over and over again. But I can tell there’s different meaning behind it every time you say it. But the words sound the same every time!”
"Perhaps they do to you, but I find them quite different," Winter replied. "Though, it can be difficult to translate a language built around the vibration of one's inner sparks to one produced by a collection of meaty strings in a wind tunnel."
Seabreeze gave her a flat look. "Aye, and the courts care for precision in wordin', so a mortal what uses the wrong word at the right time might be findin' their contract not quite what they be expectin'."
"That is a benefit," she conceded.
“The translation spell takes care of that for things like bugs, hive-minds, most eldritch abominations, and even those weird mushrooms that talk by smell,” Corona argued.
“This world could understand the Fay before we came to the universe, right?” Suzie asked. “The translator spell probably isn’t doing anything.”
“And they haven’t mentioned the Faye,” Indigo pointed out. “Or the Fæ, that’s a real doozy.”
Corona put a hand to the bridge of her nose. “All right, not dealing with this. Uh… Seabreeze! How do we get to Fae Époque?”
“We are goin’ to the forest an’ walkin’ in through a weak space,” Seabreeze answered. “You, lassie, be stayin’ right here.”
“What? Why?”
“Ye may not be a goddess...”
“...Ugh...” Shimmy said.
Corona nudged her counterpart playfully. “Heh, I’m less goddess than you.”
“...But am I right in assumin’ ye got yerself powers o’ great reality warpin’?”
Corona glanced back at the sun portal she was currently keeping locked in magic circles. “...Maybe?”
“Then I doubt they’ll take kindly to ye presence, ye ken?”
Corona folded her arms and grumbled incoherently.
“All the rest ‘o us are Fay or once Fay,” Seabreeze glanced at Winter as he said this. “Except you, Suzie. If ye be comin’ along, you’ll need some protection.”
“Does that have to do with this ‘swapping chakras’ thing?” Suzie asked, holding up the tablet and pointing at an annoyingly small section of the article.
“...Th’ fact that these things are now in the invisible library’s books is somethin’ I was not prepared to think about t’day.”
“It makes everything a whole lot more interesting,” Fuyu said. “Just imagine—all the rules are laid out where everyone can see them, allowing a set of background rules to build up. And as those are written down by those in the know and with the will, then more background fills up until the complexity of the system rises beyond the realm of sanity!” She clapped her hands together.
Winter raised an eyebrow. “Do you not become lost within your own words?”
“Does such a thing not happen to all at some point in their life?”
“Surely its frequency is heightened with such a legalistic tangle?”
“Many would say it provides order.”
“Others still that order is suffocating.”
Suzie turned to Seabreeze. “Is this normal?”
“Yep,” Seabreeze sighed. “Just ignore them, they’ll go on for a while without actually sayin’ anythin’ concrete and then say some half-truths before wrappin’ it up with a signal that makes no sense.” He turned to Suzie. “Ah’ll need t’ forge one of those bonds with ya. Simply put, we exchange parts of our spirit to form a connection. Dependin’ on the bond, different things happen, though you’ll always gain some protection in th’ Fae and I’ll gain some protection in the… Earth Shimmer, I s’pose.” A frown passed over his face. “Or mayhap in whatever realm ye be born from... tis been a while since I’ve known bonds what cross realities. Anyway, I won’t be unwound by salt, you won’t get eaten in the Fae.”
“Which bond do you suggest?”
“Water’ll prolly be the best, easy to make and it ain’t on fire. It’ll ground you emotionally too, so ya don’t lose it when those two drive your sanity to the end of its ropes.”
Suzie nodded. “So… how do we do it?”
“Just be willing to enter into the pact and, well, feel.”
Outwardly, nothing visible occured. Inwardly, Suzie felt part of her get removed and replaced with something smaller, more flighty.
Seabreeze looked at her quizzically. “...Is there somethin’ else in there with ye?”
Suzie nodded slowly. “Afraid I can’t talk about it. Shouldn’t be of any concern, though.”
“Fair ‘nuff. Now you’re with me, Winter’s with… herself, but everyone will recognize her, and Fuyu’s already one o’ us. From another realm o’ Fae, but the Fay would simply treat her as a continental foreigner.”
Fuyu tore herself away from Winter. As usual, the cold woman’s face was unreadable—but Indigo’s expresion betrayed an annoyance. Suzie made note of this. To read Winter’s emotions, use Indigo as a signpost.
Fuyu looked between Seabreeze and Suzie. “Wow, you guys can do bonds a lot quicker than ours can. Ours are a lot more abstract and require a lot of singing and dancing.” To illustrate her point, she did a cha-cha maneuver.
“Anyway, we best be off,” Seabreeze said, ignoring the display. “Do ye mind?”
Shimmy shook her head, teleporting them to the Everfree Forest in an instant. Soon, only her and Corona remained.
“So…” Corona said. “Back to the sun battery?”
“Back to the sun battery.”
An orange flew out of seemingly nowhere and hit Corona in the head.
“...What the…?”
“I’m relevant!” shouted a voice.
Corona turned to see a man dancing on a roof a fair distance away. “What?”
Shimmy chuckled. “Who’s more goddess now?”
“How does this mean I’m more goddess than you!? It’s an orange!”
“That’s a fun story. I’ll tell you later.”
“Shimmy!”
~~~
Jökull examined the four Sweeties before him. “Why, this is unfortunate! Not a single one of you have a bond! Don’t you know that’s dangerous?”
“I want nothing more than to leave this wretched hellhole,” Nira growled.
“Nira, calm,” Blink demanded.
“Calm!? Do you know what these Fay beings do to worlds?! They corrupt them from the inside out until everything is nothing more than a game and free will is an amusing trait they give out to stave off boredom!”
“I’m pretty sure that’s just your world.”
Nira glared at Jökull. “It matters not, Fay are liars, manipulators, and thieves.”
“...We have some Fay in the League, you know. Remember Fuyu? ...Oh, wait, that’s why you don’t like her.”
Jökull turned to Cinder. “Is this their usual method of discourse?”
“Usually it’s Blink and Squiddy instead, but otherwise this is pretty normal.”
“Perhaps you will be of a more reasonable sort. Not all creatures of this realm are as understanding or as educated as I, many would simply attack you for no reason—no need for some mysterious missing artifacts. You are unprotected mortals in our realm, it is well within my right to kill you should I so desire.”
“Oh.”
“However, if we were to form a bond, exchange parts of our souls, you would have my protection. And, through association, your friends would at least be partially protected. It is better than nothing.”
Cinder raised an eyebrow. “Exchange parts of our souls?”
“It is not painful, nor is it permanent. It can be revoked whenever you wish.”
“Uh-huh. Jökull , thanks for saving us, but I smell a trap.”
Something glinted in Jökull ’s eyes that Cinder couldn’t identify. “I will endeavor to protect you regardless.”
Yeah this guy is totally trustworthy. “If you want. We won’t mind compa-”
“I’LL TAKE THE BOND!” Burgerbelle shouted, jumping on Jökull. Before anyone—even Jökull—could say or do anything there was a bright flash of fire and the two fell to the ground. “Yes! Fire bond!”
Jökull had the decency to look surprised by the encounter. “Wh…”
“BURGERBELLE!” Nira, Blink, and Cinder shouted.
“What?” Burgerbelle said, snorting. “I’m protected now!”
“Y-yes you are…” Jökull said, tapping his chest for a moment. “...Could I have refused that bond had I thought to try?”
Burgerbelle shrugged.
“Curious… Why fire?”
“It’s funnier this way.”
Cinder facehooved. “BURGERBELLE! Come ON! We… UGH!”
Burgerbelle just winked at Cinder.
Nira glared at Jökull. “We’re stuck with you until you get us out. So get us out. Earth Shimmer. The one with the recently restored magic and the not-a-goddess.”
“I know the world of whence you speak. If you wish to return a direction to go will be, unfortunately, where the giants of the Summer Fay ran off to.”
“Maybe we can actually beat them up this time…” Blink said, rubbing her hooves together.
“Violence is the way of the Summer Court. You are with me, of the Winter Court. We shall move with grace, precision, and cunning.”
Burgerbelle slipped on a banana peel and landed on her hands.
Jökull looked at her with a curious expression, but did not comment on her antics. “Come. Our journey awaits.” He set off across the rippling lands, slowing not at all for the Sweeties, his overly-adorned cloak billowing behind him.
Blink whispered in Cinder’s ear. “Any Rarity that sees that thing would faint instantly.”
Cinder chuckled softly, most of her joy cut short by frustration with Burgerbelle. Who knew what kind of plans this Jökull guy had for them? He admitted to being cunning! That pretty much guaranteed he had some kind of angle...
~~~
Suzie would have liked to enjoy the Fae realm. She would have welcomed the opportunity to sit, relax, and take in the wondrous colors, rolling hills, and stars sparkling across a sky too small for them. A true place of beauty and mixed realities.
There was only one problem with that.
Winter and Fuyu.
“How about this?” Fuyu asked, taking two pinecones off a nearby tree. The moment she had entered the Fae realm she had reverted to her true form, that of a white fox with nine tails. “Each of these represent a reward. One is of power, the other is of knowledge. You cannot know which is which prior to the choice. Each could come with any number of benefits and detriments. Do you take a reward, or refuse?”
“I raise the stakes,” Winter said, grabbing both pinecones. She retained her pseudo-human form upon entering. “I say I will take whichever reward you don’t.”
“If one is clearly worse than the other…”
“Would you really be so foolish as to offer an unbalanced choice?”
“Perhaps I was gambling over what you would pick?”
“A dangerous but invigorating gamble. But your trick would only work for one arrangement of the game—me picking alone, or both of us picking. You would not be able to account for both.”
“The same is true in reverse—how would you know what game I was playing?”
“I would ask you questions until I knew you.” She tossed one of the pinecones to Fuyu. “I choose whatever this one is.”
“I never assigned them for certain in my mind.”
“Then the outcome has become truly random. By the way, the Winter Court is this way.” She continued to lead the small group through the realm, knowing the place like the back of her hand despite only rarely having come since her encounter with Earth Shimmer.
“Isn’t she amazing?” Indigo asked Suzie.
“They’re both nothing but words,” Suzie muttered. “Can’t they just… talk like normal people?”
“They ain’t normal people,” Seabreeze pointed out.
“You talk normally enough.”
“Aye, but I ain’t a normal not-normal person.”
Indigo nodded. “They are speaking the way of the Fay. I only wish I was so skilled so I could give my mistress the sparring partner she desires.”
Suzie looked Indigo up and down. “There are a large number of things wrong with the way you said that.”
“That’s what they all say.”
“Perhaps the unanimity should get you to reexamine your principles?”
Indigo huffed, returning to Winter’s side rather than continuing the conversation with Suzie.
“Seabreeze, you are the only sane one on this trip,” Suzie commented. “...I should have brought Celia.”
“My ‘sanity’ may just be the bond talkin’, lass.”
“...Great,” Suzie said, rubbing her head. “How much further?”
“We’re here,” Winter said, walking up to… nothing. It was an empty patch of grass under the warped, starry sky. She held out her hand—and everything went dark. Suzie could still see the rest of her group, but there was nothing but inky blackness all around.
“Who seeks counsel with the Winter Court?” a voice declared from all directions.
Winter spoke for them. “Winter Lights and Indigo of Earth Shimmer, Hrávanónar Tuilëva Seabreeze, Fuyu and Suzie Mash of the Merodi Universalis League of Sweetie Belles.”
“Purpose?”
“Lost mortals in the Fae.”
And like that, suddenly Suzie could see the Winter Court. Tall, humanoid, lanky creatures with cold skin, hard eyes, and wiry hair that somehow accentuated an ethereal beauty. Many were elves with pointy ears, but others looked more ghostly, or more hairy. But they all stood far above them in seats shrouded in darkness and cold.
Suzie could not tell who spoke with each voice. Clearly it was not the same individual every time, but she could never make out any of the mouths moving.
“Who are the lost?”
“Members of the League of Sweetie Belles,” Winter reported, gesturing to Fuyu.
“Cinder Belle, Blink Belle, Burgerbelle, and Nira,” Fuyu listed. “They have no bonds and are surrounded by danger. We seek assistance in their return. As the Winter Court, you have knowledge of the realm.”
The Court was silent for a moment. Perhaps they were deliberating, and none of the visitors could hear it? Suzie couldn't be sure, and this continued feeling of uncertainty was testing her.
“Easy, lass,” Seabreeze cautioned with a whisper. “I can feel ye fury buildin’ from over here. It would not be wise to anger the Winter Court.”
Suzie nodded slowly, but curled her hands into fists.
The Court finally responded. “Mortals get lost within the Fae regularly. Why are these any different?”
“Is it not clear?” Winter asked. “They are decorated members of Merodi Universalis, a foreign society of wanderers.”
“You are aware of the multiversal classifications, yes?” Fuyu prodded. “We’ve come here before, no doubt willing to give the information away.”
“We received them,” the Court answered.
“Respected them?”
“Their power.”
“Some would say the Fae scoff at other powers,” Winter said. “Surely you are aware of the tale? The theft of Vivio Takamachi?”
“Some would say that was a foolish thing to attempt and that the Fay responsible should have been handed over to the TSAB.”
“Some would say it never happened.”
“Some would say speaking of it at all brings uncertainty and confusion to the proceedings.”
Fuyu chuckled. “Some would say all legends are rooted in truth, and that such uncertain court phrasing was telling. I say Corona Shimmer is a friend of Nanoha and we can just get an audience with Vivio at any time we wish. If I recall correctly, Vivio is currently in the Q-Sphere!”
“That won’t be necessary,” both Winter and the Court said at the same time.
“Naturally, seeing as it seems unrelated.”
Suzie had no idea what had just transpired, and she hated it. At least eldritch beings were upfront about their senseless nature. It was as if these Fay were pretending to have an actual conversation, but instead talking about something completely different. Really should have had Celia do this.
Then she got an idea. “Hey…” she said to Seabreeze.
“I’d rather not play ‘translator’ where they can hear me,” Seabreeze whispered back.
Suzie twitched.
“Returning to the matter at hand…” Winter began.
“Your presence,” the Court responded, at a convenient time where it couldn’t be said they interrupted, but they might as well have. “Jökull will be glad to see you.”
“Ah. My cousin has switched their names?”
“As is their right,” the court agreed.
Suzie gave Seabreeze a confused look. “What...?”
“Heklagi Jökull. Or Jökull Heklagi now. Which would make her male now...” Seabreeze took in Suzie’s expression. “We be form-fluid, lass, what surprises ye? I bore my second child.”
“...right, sorry.” Suzie turned her attention back to the conversation.
“And I take it cousin has fared well?” Winter asked.
“Rising much as you once did, before your disgrace,” the Court responded.
Winter raised an eyebrow. “How direct.”
“There’s enough disgrace to go around,” Fuyu said. “But we have not returned to the matter at hand. The lost mortals?”
“Are no doubt within the Fae.”
“We seek to have them returned.”
“What do you offer?”
Fuyu smirked. “They have with them a high value member of the League, the Flat Burgerbelle, and a mage of dark soul magic, Nira. The first merits a trade of virtually any good or knowledge, while the other should be removed from the Fae as soon as possible for the sake of stability.”
“Detail your offer.”
“Make a request, we barter from there.”
“Their value is unknown to us.”
“And your value of standard trade goods is unknown to us. Make a ridiculous request. Write up a contract or deal or whatever you want to call it today.”
“We will not at this juncture.”
“Ah,” Fuyu said. “I see.” She turned to Suzie. “We’re done here, they have no idea where the Sweeties are.”
For the first time Suzie saw Winter visibly react to something. Shock that Fuyu had said something that, clearly, should not have been said.
Fuyu rolled her eyes. “Give me a break, normally I’d love to keep playing, but the lives of four people are in danger, as is any Fay next to Nira. We’re wasting time here, we should move on.”
“Such disrespect!” the Court shouted.
Suzie pointed a finger at a random member of the Court. “Leading us on with false hope when people are in danger is disrespectful to us! So it’s only fair that we get to be a little disrespectful to you.”
“Lass…” Seabreeze cautioned.
“Leaving is probably a good idea…” Indigo said, tugging on Winter’s sleeve.
The Winter Court was silent.
“...an even exchange,” Winter Lights surmised. “Distaste by both parties. Well played, liltaruscuitë.”
“Court is adjourned,” the Court said. “A matter involving the Summer Court demands our attention.”
“...Since when does the Summer Court want to speak with ye?” Seabreeze asked.
“They do not. They are charging blindly in our direction.”
Suzie snapped her fingers. “Probably has something to do with Nira.”
“We wish to accompany you to the Summer Fay,” Fuyu declared. “A request where time is of the essence. And if you doubt my pure intentions… Suzie, why do you want to follow them?”
“I want to get my team back and keep them out of danger.”
“She is not a liar, nor is she a Fay. It is no secret that she has not kept up with these proceedings as we have spoken. You may take her word as it is—simple.”
“Very well,” the Court declared. “We leave immediately.”
Suzie wanted to punch something.
~~~
The Summer Fay had lost their illusory artifact long ago. This did not stop them from continuing their journey—something had taken their artifacts. With the Sweeties gone, the illusion was still their best lead as to where their artifacts had gone.
They weren’t paying the best attention to where they were going. Which was great for Jökull. The Sweeties—particularly Nira—were of a different mindset.
Namely, figuring out how to tear Jökull ’s soul right out of his body and run it through a meat grinder without damaging Burgerbelle. Or, failing that, convincing herself that adding more insanity to Burgerbelle wouldn’t do anything. The Flat would be fine. Her soul was moldable and more self-consistent than most… If she tore at the bond she could probably create a one-way feedback loop and get rid of this stupid Fay that was probably leading them into a death trap.
Nira lit her horn…
Burgerbelle slapped her in the face with a slapstick. “No! Bad Nira!”
“Burgerbelle I swear if you d-”
“Shhhhh…” Burgerbelle said, pressing a finger to Nira’s muzzle.
“Your awareness of your agents is worthy of respect,” Jökull noted.
“It’s all in the wrist!” Burgerbelle said, hefting the slapstick. “Now, where can we get lasagna in this joint?”
“Your unique set of abilities ensure you can create it on your own.”
Burgerbelle grinned, produced a lasagna, and then ate it in one gulp—pan and all.
Nira twitched. Burgerbelle knew about Nira and the Fae Realms. Or she should, anyway. If she hadn’t been paying attention…
“...The giants stopped,” Cinder called from up ahead. “I don’t know why…”
Jökull walked up to Cinder and put a hand to his eyes, seeing the Summer Fay in the distance no longer moving, but talking. With a bit more effort, he made out some pale humanoid figures at their feet, presumably talking back.
“It appears they’ve run into some Winter Fay,” Jökull observed. “Currently talking.”
“It’ll devolve into fighting?” Cinder asked.
“In most cases, that would not be so, but these Fay have been having a particularly taxing day and are ready to accuse everything for stealing their artifacts. Violence is very possible.”
“Hmm.” Cinder commented. “So, how do we get around them and go home?”
“We will wait for them to finish, and then move through whatever remains,” Jökull said with a smirk.
“Uh-huh…” Cinder frowned. “Burgerbelle, can we go around?”
Burgerbelle was nowhere to be seen.
“Burger…?”
Then they heard her say “hi guys!” from a distance, her voice carrying impossibly. They turned and their jaws dropped. Burgerbelle was standing between the Winter and Summer Fay, waving excitedly at them.
Cinder facehooved. “BurgerBELLE!”
Jökull’s confident smile had vanished, replaced with a flat expression no doubt hiding whatever his true emotion was.
Burgerbelle started talking again. “So I heard you like artifacts…?”
~~~
Suzie and her group moved with a half-dozen members of the Winter Court, cresting a ‘hill’ until they could see the ‘conflict.’ Suzie had been told to expect one of two things: tense arguing, or Summer-initiated fighting.
Instead, she was witness to a small number of giants and elves staring in disbelief at a Flat tossing a bunch of bronze mudkip statues onto the ground.
The Winter Court wasted no time—rushing down to meet their brethren and assist in whatever the bizarre situation was. Suzie moved to join them, but Fuyu put a paw on her shoulder and pointed toward somewhere in the distance. Suzie could just make out three Sweeties and what she hoped was an elf, though it was a bit too shiny.
“I’m not sure what’s happening,” Seabreeze admitted, glancing from the Flat to the Sweeties across the divide. “Fuyu?”
Fuyu shrugged. “Burgerbelle has a reputation for doing things that have no precedence. Or sense. For all I know she’s asking them for a hot dog.”
“...Another sort of being…” Winter mused.
“Mistress?” Indigo asked. “Do you know of her kind?”
“No…” Winter said with a smile.
They saw Burgerbelle pull out a lasso and throw it into the air, landing it right on one of the giant’s noses. A bunch of air horns blasted, making everyone hold their ears in pain.
“What in blazin’ Fay-blight does she think she’s doin’!?” Seabreeze shouted. “Is she suicidal?”
Suzie smiled warmly. “No. She’s Burgerbelle. She knows exactly what she’s doing.” She looked at the other Sweeties across the divide. “Let’s not interfere, she’s got this.” She pulled out her gun and shot a weak plasma bolt right at Nira’s hooves, waving to grab her attention.
Nira teleported Suzie, Seabreeze, Fuyu, Winter, and Indigo across the divide. “Get us out of here.”
Suzie raised an eyebrow. “Why?”
Nira pointed at Jökull. “This guy.”
“He’s got Burgerbelle in some kind of bond!” Cinder said, half-panicked. “She’s listening to everything he says, keeping us from… just… He’s got some kind of plan, okay? And Burgerbelle can’t see it!”
Suzie chuckled sadly. “Cinder… Burgerbelle knows what she’s doing. She always does.”
“How!? She’s led us right into this… guy’s thing! If you didn’t get here he would have… Actually his plan is probably still on. You! Stop your plan!” She seemed to realize this was a little stupid after she said it.
“Is this what gratitude looks like among your kind?” Jökull asked.
“They are correct in their deductions, cousin,” Winter interjected.
“Ah, Winter!”
“Not surprised to see me?”
“I said no such thing.”
“Words are not always needed, with family.”
Indigo pointed at herself and grinned.
“While I do love myself a good family spat, I doubt we have time for such things,” Fuyu said.
“And who might you be, fair vixen?” Jökull asked.
“Fuyu, Fae Alabaster.”
“A kitsune…” Jökull mused. “One of a different mythology... and your name! Are you aware of the etymology, cousin? Such a graceful way to explain a concept so simple to home!”
Indigo gasped.
“Your pet is such a burden on you,” Jökull continued.
“All gifts come with a price,” Winter noted.
“All prices come with a gift, as you no doubt know too well.”
“...Explain?” Suzie asked Fuyu.
Fuyu smiled. “Jökull is mocking Winter’s name as simple, and calling me a ‘better Winter’ since ‘Fuyu’ means ‘Winter’ in a literal sense. Furthermore there’s a back and forth going on here about Winter being turned into a human as a price, but that giving her a few curious benefits paired with Indigo’s position as emotional support and a servant—but also betraying Winter’s own feelings on any given matter with her reactions.”
Jökull stared at her in disbelief.
“What? Thought I had to follow your rules? Tough.”
“There is merit in listening,” Winter said with a wry smile.
Nira growled. “Fuyu, if you value your cont-”
“And you can quit being racist,” Fuyu interrupted.
Nira blinked. “...What?”
“You. Being racist. You hate Fay. I’m a being of spirit, I can feel that dark energy billowing off of you like a tangled prison. You’d think being part of the League would iron that out of you.”
Nira glared at her. Then, without the darkness in her voice, she spoke. “Fuyu, if you would be so kind, would you direct us away from this… Jökull and return us to the proper reality?”
“Time will tell.”
“Fuyu…”
She pointed a tail at Burgerbelle. “We still have to resolve whatever that is.”
Cinder blinked. “Nobody knows what she’s doing?”
Everyone shook their head—even Winter, in a shocking moment of honesty.
“But…”
Suzie put a hand on Cinder’s shoulder. “I know it’s hard to get Burgerbelle, or to trust her with your life. But she’s come through so many times. Watch—see what she does. Nira, move us a little closer, but keep us far enough away that we won’t interfere.”
“...Fine.”
There was a flash of darkness…
~~~
Burgerbelle cleared her throat. “I like trains.”
A train barreled out of nowhere and flattened her into the ground, startling the Fay around her considerably. She popped back up with a sproing noise, unharmed.
“...This foolishness has gone on long enough,” one of the giants said.
“Has it? How long is enough?” Burgerbelle pulled out two hourglasses, one larger than the other, but the larger one had sand pouring through it faster. “These two are equivalent but one has significantly more substance than the other. Ro sham bo, you know?” She crashed the two of them between a pair of rocks, transforming the glass to paper in the process.
“You interfere with our quest!” the giant roared. “We must reclaim our artifacts! You clearly do not have them, for no fool such as you would have the power. The gall, yes.”
“We do not have your artifacts,” an elf said. “You must be mistaken. Under the influence of something, perhaps?”
“The influence of your spells. The Fall Court has no need for our artifacts, and the Spring would not perform such a large heist. It falls to you.”
“Or loose fey.”
The giant bristled. Unlike the impassive elves, it was easy to tell that the giants were insulted by that.
“What about Fai?” Burgerbelle asied. “Or Fax? Fee, Fie… Nah, don't see a way to pronounce fo like fae, sorry.”
The elf tried to ignore her—but even he couldn’t fathom the words coming out of her mouth. He simply had to ask. “Fai?”
“You haven’t heard of the Fai? Ooooh, this is good! Did you ever hear the tragedy of Darth Plagueis the Wise? I thought not, it’s not a story the Kingdoms would tell you. Of course, I won’t either, because I’m not a copypasta machine. Today, anyway. Lasagna? I have leftovers.”
“You have a story…” the elf said, narrowing his eyes. “Why do you not speak it?”
“I don’t know, maybe because it’s locked behind a dimensional barrier a million degrees of separation away from here? Sad, but relevant!” She put googly eyes on the back of her head and started spinning around like a coin.
“Which world?”
“You can find a version of it on Earth Shimmer, through that invisible library thing. But I am the invisible library! I am thou, thou art I, rinse and repeat.”
The giant glared. “Invisible library… knowledge… you do know where our artifacts are!”
Burgerbelle grinned. “Oh yeah, totally.”
“I KNEW IT!”
“They are known to use sarcasm,” the elf observed.
“...She is unique.”
“But she is one with the invisible library, which is a haven of lies deeper than most Fay can fathom.”
“She could have been lying about that.”
“Precisely.”
Burgerbelle put a hand to her face in mock surprise. “Nani! Am I the opponent of both Summer and Winter? Oh the tragedy, for there is no season in the middle! What doth be?”
The Fay had nothing to say to that.
With a wink and a quick dance, Burgerbelle leaned in, simultaneously looking at both the elf and the giant, somehow. “You want to see a magic trick?”
“No,” the giant declared.
“Yes,” the elf countered.
“Good! Time for the wheel of fish!” She pulled a game show wheel out of nowhere and leaned on it. “So here’s how this works. I spin the wheel and whatever’s on it, happens.”
“What’s on it?” the giant asked.
“A lot of fish.”
“So if we landed on cod…”
“Cod to the face!”
“I don’t-”
She spun the wheel. Both the elf and the giant covered their face—but the wheel landed on red herring. “Oh boy, looks like we got the one result that wasn’t fish! It was… egad! A dimensional tear in reality forms, bringing great chaos to all!”
Nothing of the sort happened.
“Come on, that’s your cue!” she said, pointing at the Fay.
“We would do no such thing,” the elf said,
“Yes you would.”
“No, we would not.”
“Yes you would.”
“No, and your repetition means nothing.”
“Yes we would.”
“No you would not!”
“No we wouldn’t.”
“Child! End this game or there will be consequences!”
“No, you wouldn’t.”
“YES WE WILL!”
A dramatic silence fell over the realm, punctuated only by Indigo’s facepalm.
“My my…” Burgerbelle said, leaning in. “Did you just lie? But wait, that’s impossible…” She put a hand to her face. “So, naturally, you must really be about to open that dimensional fissure!”
The elf’s face made no effort to hide his rage. “...Yes it would… seem so…”
“Yay! May I suggest a location?”
~~~
Corona and Shimmy pressed the on switch. The reality anchor shot to life, every light shining with a green ‘OK’ value and the screen displaying a happy Sunset Shimmer chibi face.
“...Nice touch,” Shimmy said.
“Thanks.” Corona put her hands on her hips, examining their handiwork. The cylindrical reality anchor had a metallic sphere levitating atop it with antigravity magitech, drawing power from the solar portal inside to both levitate it and transmit power directly to the reality anchor. So long as the sun burned, the reality anchor would function for this section of the universe, ensuring nothing would threaten the fabric of reality here again. Naturally, they had installed safety procedures in the solar battery—the portal would close if there was ever a breach, and there was enough power stored in batteries to ensure the reality anchor could shut down safely at all times.
“I think we deserve a reward,” Corona said, levitating the pack of soda Suzie hadn’t drunk on her little picnic.
“Heck yes.” Shimmy said, breathing in the unfamiliar air of stable reality as her hand enclosed around the cold beverage. “You know, I’m still keeping the rest of reality together… but I’m still standing here. And I don’t feel any ripples, tears, or miniature magic singularities trying to tear this apart. ...Life is good.”
The two of them popped the tabs of the cans.
And then an immense dimensional fissure opened up in the sky and dropped several elves, giants, and Sweeties into a pile on the soft grass just beyond the reality anchor.
“YEAH!” Burgerbelle shouted, standing on top of the pile. “ACT CLEAR! Rank? SSS!” She bounced off the pile and landed in front of Corona and Shimmy. “Good to see the reality anchor working!”
Shimmy looked to her, to the pile of Fay and other creatures, and lastly at the fissure in the sky that still hadn’t gone away. “...Am I supposed to say ‘good job, you found them!’ or ‘oh no, what did you DO!?’ I really don’t know here.”
Burgerbelle shrugged. “Not my department.”
It was at this point Jökull dug himself out of the pile and stood up tall. He cleared his throat, looking around—and then caught sight of the two Sunsets.
“Ah, godlings.” He bowed formally. “My apologies, but it appears my kin have made an error in their judgement. Twere it allowed--”
“Allowed, perhaps, but as of yet such should be decided by the court on whole.” Winter stepped out from behind the pile. “Or was the throne reclaimed in my absence?”
“Oh joy,” Shimmy grumbled. “Fay politics.”
Cinder managed to worm her way out of the pile. “Is that worse than normal politics?”
“That depends on your viewpoint,” Fuyu replied. “It’s more honest, but far trickier.”
“Ah, yes, the throne.” Jökull smiled gallantly, nodding to Winter. “Were you not responsible for its fall?”
“I did not kill my father.”
“That much is true.” Jökull turned to Suzie, holding out a helpful hand and pulling her out with a gentlemanly air. “You travelled with my dear cousin to save your own... do you know what she has done?”
“I read her file.” Suzie let go of his hand, brushing it off absently. “Arranged the death of the king. If I know anything about your people, that was actually a compliment.”
“A compliment and insult, lass,” Seabreeze muttered. “A compliment in that she would not kill him herself, and arranged an extravagant death that would lead to conquest. An insult in that he was in her way.”
Jökull sighed. “Must you always explain the dance? The intrigue is half the enjoyment.”
“Such is true,” Winter allowed, “yet also true is the improvisation, the balance as more pieces come along.”
“I see your time in the mortal realms has not lessened your tongue’s flexibility.”
“Ah, perhaps. Yet I find my pet has far surpassed me in that.” Winter smirked. “Though if we speak of the weaving of words, I do retain my mastery.”
Indigo blushed, but her expression was proud. “Thank you, mistress.”
“Too much information!” Suzie snapped.
Winter conceded the point with a nod. “Of course. You may explore the rejoicing of life in your own time. As to you, Jökull --”
“What of me?” Jökull asked. “I merely wish to ensure this incident does not cause fault between Fay and godling. Twas an incident caused by...” He gestured at Burgerbelle. “That one.”
The Flat gasped dramatically. “I never! Was I the one who opened the fissure?”
“If we lay responsibility of our king’s death to our princess, so to do we lay responsibility of this rend to your trickery.”
Winter quirked an eyebrow. “You concede her words control, then?”
Jökull paused, looking from Burgerbelle to the pile slowly disentangling itself. “...It is best to respect even those who are fools,” he replied. “For disrespect leads to dismissal, and dismissal leads to ignorance, which can lead to surprise. Something, dear cousin, which you are intimately familiar with.”
“Quite intimately,” Winter agreed. Then she sighed, a motion of melodrama and grace. “Very well, I shall toast your intellect. Pet? The chalices.”
Indigo followed her gesture to the soda cans. “Uh... oh! Right. Your will be done, mistress!”
Jökull followed her with his eyes. “Such confusion. Does she require tending?”
“Rarely, though I suspect her addlement comes from the observation of this... being.” Winter nodded toward Burgerbelle. “An interesting one, would you not agree?”
“Quite fascinating.”
Indigo returned with two soda cans, holding them out. Winter took one, giving her a fond smile as she did so. Jökull took the other, his own grin brash and confident.
Burgerbelle pulled a comically oversized bomb with a skull on it out of her hair. The fuse was lit, and almost gone. “Wow, I’ve been holding this thing for a while. Isn’t it weird how fast fire burns?” She turned to Jökull with an innocent smile. “A bond of flames just ends in an explosion!”
The fuse ran out. The bomb did not explode, rather essences of fire that should not have been visible, but were anyway, swapped between Burgerbelle and Jökull. Instead of being knocked down like last time, Jökull remained standing—with a soda can in his hand. A can made of aluminum.
Without the bond shared with Burgerbelle, he was no longer protected in this realm from that particular material. His form lost all cohesion and he phased out of reality with a pop, forced to return to Fae Époque.
Winter idly caught the falling soda can, handing it off to the Flat. “A toast to my dear cousin and his foolish ignorance of cold iron.” She clinked cans with Burgerbelle, opened the tab, and sipped. “My word, but this brew is foul as ever...”
“Aluminium,” Burgerbelle said, specifically using the British pronunciation. “By the way, the drink is awesome.” She put on a pair of sunglasses and blew an air horn while several suspiciously chip-like illuminati triangles whirled around her head.
“Okay!” Blink shouted. “Before we do anything else, who wants to see the magic trick Burgerbelle promised a while back?”
The elf groaned. “Spare us the indignity…”
Blink coughed. “I think you’ll like it.” She touched the bag sitting on her back, allowing everyone to see it. Grabbing hold of it with her magic, she held it in the air and started shaking. Dozens of magic artifacts lined with gold, precious gems, and other ethereal qualities began falling onto the ground.
The Summer Fay stared at them in disbelief.
Blink tossed the empty bag away and grinned. “I’ve been stealing these from Jökull for the last half hour.”
“He… the…” a giant grabbed the artifacts. “This one is broken!”
“Some of them were sewn into the inside of that cloak of his. I didn’t get them all.” She pointed at the fissure in the sky. “I don’t know about you, but if I were you I’d hunt him to the ends of reality for this.”
The giants wasted no time. They were large enough to jump back through the open fissure and let out bellowing roars of intense rage. “JÖKULL!”
Blink turned to Winter with a smirk. “Sometimes you just need to be invisible to win. He won’t be a problem again. Probably.”
“You returned all the artifacts?” Winter asked.
“Yep!”
“...Hmm…”
Corona started levitating the elves back through the fissure while Shimmy stitched up the hole.
Cinder tore her attention away from Blink and Winter, walking up to Burgerbelle. “Burger?”
“Yes, my favorite cheeto?” Burgerbelle asked, sliding as if on ice.
“I’m sorry. I… I thought you were an idiot.”
Burgerbelle picked her up and grinned. “I know. I made a point of putting on a show to impress you. Went a little overboard, maybe. But it was still fun, right?”
Cinder smiled warmly. “Yeah, it was fun.” She hugged the Flat—such an awkward sensation. “I’ll try to trust you from now on.”
Burgerbelle rung a bell. “And thus, we have reached the moral of the day!”
“Pretty sure the moral is ‘don’t mess with Fay politics’.”
“That goes without saying.”
“Does it?” Winter asked, walking up to Cinder.
“Yep!” Cinder beamed.
“Then why say it?”
“So there’s a moral,” Burgerbelle replied. “It’s a ka thing.”
“Ah, Ka. The sea of fate, as it was called when I learned of it.”
Cinder tilted her head. “That is an interesting description...”
“But an apt one. Ka does not affect you any more than you affect it. Is an ocean shaped by the shore, or do the waves define the beaches? The answer is both, and yet it is not relevant to the fish who swim within, nor the birds who dive only to feed upon them, nor even the beasts of the land that sip only from distant rivers.” Winter gestured broadly. “And such is true with ka--it can be manipulated, true, but does it determine or is it determined? Do those who write stories create, or are their creations sent to their mind? The answer is null--cause and effect flow both ways. I am in the ka now, but I can step out easily, and rejoin later. Or never.”
“There’s no such thing as a world without ka,” Cinder pointed out.
“There was once, before the Tower. There may yet be again.” Winter shrugged. “It may take so long that none will know its significance, but... well, the Fay have always intended to outlast Ka.”
Suzie stared in shock. “...But your kind are some of the most reliant on ka…”
Winter smiled at the disbelief on their faces. “Oh, did you not suspect? Very well, I shall not reveal any more secrets today.”
Cinder shook her head. “Do you like being confusing?”
“Confusion can lead to victory, as so demonstrated by your companion.” She glanced at the Flat. “An interesting name you have chosen... related to your first, grandest victory I presume?”
Burgerbelle raised an eyebrow. “Who told you?”
“You did, just now.”
Burgerbelle opened her mouth. For a moment, there was only a dial tone.
“I have lived amongst humans for some time,” Winter pointed out. “They may be limited, but they do have some interesting tricks.” She turned to the unicorn. “And you... Cinder. A name you chose yourself.”
Cinder glanced away. “It’s not based on any victory.”
“No... but names are the beginning of things. A cinder, the last remnant of a fire, perhaps about to die... yet not dead yet. It could start a new blaze, one that rips through a forest... or one that is used to forge great tools. Cinder... a volatile name.” Winter nodded. “I approve.”
“...I am not sure how to take that.”
“As is fitting. My apologies, I must tend to my pet. I would not want her distressed.”
The two of them watched her walk to Indigo and put a surprisingly gentle hand to her shoulder.
Cinder’s features scrunched up in confusion. “...do they actually love each other, or...?”
Blink shrugged. “It seems genuine. Weird, but genuine.”
Nira was glaring at the pair.
“She’s not a Fay, you know. Not anymore.”
Nira looked up at Suzie, a guilty look crossing her features.
Suzie sat down next to the unicorn, looking into the distance.
“I-”
“You need to stop lying to yourself,” Suzie said.
Nira stared at her in shock.
“You haven’t moved on.”
“The darkness is no longer a part of me! I am n-”
“That doesn’t mean you’ve moved on.” Suzie grimaced. “Your behavior today was unacceptable.”
Nira ran through several possible responses in her mind. None of them seemed right.
“You should be more honest with Sweetaloo. She’s really helped the rest of us.”
Nira said nothing.
“...We can’t help you if you don’t let us.”
“It’s painful.”
“We want to share that pain with you.”
“...You really don’t.”
Suzie sighed. “...Baby steps, I suppose…” She stood up, patting Nira on the head as she did so. “We’ll talk more later. Right now…”
“Is this a bad time to request payment?” Fuyu asked.
Nira glowered at her, but Suzie held up a hand. “Fuyu--”
“I don’t want to request a payment, but I have to to keep up appearances in front of Fae Époque. Lissee, I advised you and led you through a Fae realm, sooooooo...”
“How about I arrange some lectures on the differences between Kitsune and Gumiho”
“Yep, that oughta do it! So long as whoever speaks mentions the Huli Jing as well.”
Suzie pinched her brow. “All right, all right. Well, thanks for the help with the fai.”
“You mean Fay.”
“That’s... gah.” Suzie threw up her hands. “What did I say?”
“You said Fai, which is a Fay that originates from an artificial origin. Computer spirits and the like.”
Nira snorted. “I thought it was a nonsense word Burgerbelle came up with.”
“It was, and now it isn’t. Which is appropriate, since Burgerbelle might be a Fai.”
“...you’re saying this just to screw with us, aren’t you.”
“Not just to screw with you... but yeah, eighty percent of this is screwing.” Fuyu beamed. “Don’t worry, though, the Fay in Fae Époque have no reason to interfere with your Fæ, especially after a fey and a Fai showed their faye up so thoroughly.”
Nira leveled a flat look at Suzie. “I can still be annoyed by them, right?”
Suzie groaned. “Why do I even bother...”
Burgerbelle threw a golden gauntlet down in front of Winter. “I know how this has to end.”
Winter raised an eyebrow, taking a step away from Indigo. “Did you perceive my intentions?”
Burgerbelle grinned and put on a pair of star-shaped sunglasses that had sparklers affixed to the rims. “Maybe, maybe not. Elves like you have illusory ‘glamours.’ Put them to use.”
Winter nodded. “Challenge accepted.” Her eyes sparkled for a moment—and then her face was replaced with the cringiest of emojis: the laughing tears. This was promptly followed by a blue screen of death and an error message that read “I just don’t know what went wrong! Insert cheese to restart the universe.”
Burgerbelle took out two pills: one red, and one blue, each wearing a pair of ‘cool’ sunglasses. “What if I told you this wasn’t the meme you thought it was?”
“I would say you were making good use of your flaming pants,” Winter commented, pointing at Burgerbelle’s pants, which were aflame. Normally glamours were completely illusory, but Burgerbelle’s presence… for once, it wasn’t to her benefit.
“This is fine,” Burgerbelle said as her legs charred. “Everything is fine.”
Shimmy glanced at the reality anchor nervously. “...It can handle this, right?”
“Flat antics are the primary mode of prototype testing,” Corona answered. “It’s fine.”
Winter’s hand suddenly resembled a raptor claw. “Is the fire fine, because it is turning your legs into a delicate powder?”
Burgerbelle turned to dust, reforming behind Winter with a large box whirring with several gears. “Come one, come all, to SCP-914 MINI! Let us have some SCIENCE!” She popped open the front of the gearbox, threw in a Bradburger, and set it to “1:1”. She kicked the gears and a wet hamburger shot out. It would have hit Winter’s face had she not caught it in a catcher’s mitt.
“OUT!”
“FORE!” Burgerbelle called, dribbling a basketball into Winter’s face. Then she used a broom to turn the bottom half of Winter’s body to pure ice. “Tune in next week for news on the brand new sport—Winter Surfing!”
Winter tried to twist out of the way, but already found herself on a wave of red kool-aid.
She took advantage of this. “OH YEAH!” She suddenly had the strength to break through walls—which, in this case, were made out of Burgerbelle.
“WE HAVE AN ALIEN INTRUDER!” Burgerbelle shouted over the communications network in the Burgerbelle maze. “ARM UP, LADIES!”
A dozen adorable Burgerbelles in little soldier hats lined up, tearing Burgerbelles off the walls to create papercraft guns. They shot at Winter. She turned the bullets into bubbles with a sudden Infinity Gauntlet from nowhere. She snapped—and the walls of Burgerbelle turned to dust.
“You’ve forgotten the seventh stone!” Burgerbelle called, holding up a pink crystal.
“What is that?”
“LOOOOOOVE!” the Burgerbelles shouted.
“I have forgotten no such thing.”
“Oh y-”
Burgerbelle stepped on a garden rake and the handle flipped up, hitting her in the face. She fell over, dizzy.
“I did it!” Indigo squealed. She tried to say something further but it just got caught up in her own excited squealing.
“The greatest of glamours is love,” Winter said, standing mockingly over Burgerbelle. She swept Indigo up in an overdramatic tango motion and ran away with her in her arms.
Suzie gawked. “Did… did she just… out meme you?”
Burgerbelle coughed as if injured. “That’s… just what I want her to think.” She produced a black communicator. “Sometimes, all you need is something simple.” She pressed a button on the communicator. “Tactical nuke incoming.”
A bomb dropped from the sky. Had it been real it would not only have decimated Winter and Indigo, but all the people nearby, the reality anchor, and probably most of the universe.
All it did was knock Winter and Indigo over, face-first into a convenient muddy area.
“That’ll teach you to challenge the meme queen!”
“We aren’t done yet!” Indigo shouted, standing up tall. “We’ll take you to the ends of the earth!”
“That’s it, I’m done,” Shimmy said. She levitated Indigo, Burgerbelle, and Winter into the air. “Just because the universe can handle this stuff now doesn’t mean I want it. Goodbye.” She flicked the three of them through a dimensional portal. With them gone, she let out a sigh of relief.
“Awww, now we don’t get to see who wins,” Cinder complained. Then a lightbulb went off in her head. “Wait a minute, that’s the point isn’t it!?”
“Did Burgerbelle have a dimensional device?” Nira asked. “Her last one got smashed...”
The Sweeties all shared a look.
Shimmy sighed. “Don’t worry, I just kicked them over to my Equis.”
~~~
Meanwhile, in the Equis that was trying very hard NOT to be called Equis Shimmer but failing miserably…
Twilight Sparkle watched as a papercraft godzilla tried to eat her castle.
“...I think I need to have a few words with Sunset.”
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Despite the chapter title, Winter has made no bonds in this story.
the memes are strong with this one.
I maintain that Shimmy should've made another avatar just so she could say both at the same time.
And here I thought it was the Continuity Stone.
In any case, delightful breather chapter. Though the idea of Flats as Fai is more than a little terrifying. Still, this does usher in greater integration between Earth Shimmer and the Merodi, for good and for ill. (And I still need to decide whether I want to introduce the MU as strictly Oversaturated World canon...)
Looking forward to more, especially since it'll finally force me to read Mono's masterpiece. You have no idea how awkward it was to meet her face to face without having read it.
Okay, I'm confused, I thought this was suppose to bring endings to abandoned stories? The Enchanted Library is complete, it even has a sequel that is still in production. So, what's going on?
9638725
LSB will cross over with any fic it wants. Out of ALL the fics it has visited, it has only provided an ending for Sunshine and Fire. All the others are just there for fun/other reasons. The resurrection of dead fics is a purpose of LSB, but it is far from the only one.
-GM, master of fics.
9638853
Any fic huh? Does that include my little dashie? Or Faust help us “cupcakes?” (Shudder)
9638993
I would presume if it is suggested it is viable. There have been stories that have been rejected.
That said, suggestion does not equal acceptance.
9638725
There's been established that MERUNI (Said as not to confuse it with MU - The universe of Mahvels) has sev'ral exploration Teams... LSB go to wherever they please, the bringing conclusion to universes whose research is incomplete is a bonus
9638993
If it's suggested on the group forum, yes, they will be considered. Though I will reject a fic if I don't like it / don't feel like I can do anything with it.
-GM, master of fics.
Regarding Fay and Ka.
Betting the Tower was Fay-made...
That's why they're all spread out across the Multiverse, etc.
Best line this chapter.
Oh my god, that meme off was so off the walls. I love it!
I don't know if it's just me but I never found this version of the Fey be to confusing
I think my IQ just dropped by 15 points by reading this. What the shit.
9633388 wrote : " Unfortunately, if you keep with your idea of having 'many multiverses', you cannot write in SotS canon. It's explicitly stated that there's only one multiverse, and a lot of the overall themes of the story don't work if existence is truly infinite. "
There actually is a way it can be done. Have the "infinite" multiverses be nothing more than a simulation. A bored Class One's "experiment". Kinda like the Watchmaker and his globe-world.
While the inhabitants of the simulation think it's infinite, it's not. Also, how they think ka works, isn't how it works. (They think it works opposite than it does. And being a simulation, there are no Prophets amongst them. So, they believe it works differently than it really does.)
This way stories set in my "Clusterverse" would actually be compatible to migrate for use in Songs of the Spheres.
9642016
That's what we call a Secluded Multiverse Cluster, which works just fine. Many, many, many universes / locked away sections of the multiverse THINK infinity exists, even if it's just an illusion. Good eye.
-GM, master of infinitum.
Agreed
...I don’t know anymore. And I LOVE IT.
Now that sounds like bullshit if I've ever read it
9639920
Agreed. The joke is the biggest joke's on them trying to deny the joke isn't while trying to claim the second-biggest joke's theirs.
Good Cinder.
I read that as music instead of magic at first. My first thoughts were 'Since when is Nira Aware?' Oops.
That is highly disturbing. She's probably right, but I wonder if she knows what this place is or just guesses.
Kept reading, apparently she does know it, at least enough to identify it as fae.
No Cinder, bad guess! I was willing to give him just enough trust to not try to ditch him, but that phrasing is a bad sign. The enemy's enemy is not guaranteed to be a friend.
Hmm. There is definitely a sense of mounting frustration from Cinder at Burger. I suspect it will come to a head in this chapter, and fear what may come if it festers.
This game of telephone is quite amusing.
It occurs to me that I find a lot more to say if I keep a diary of sorts down here, writing as I read. Maybe I'll make it a habit.
9639920
I keep up pretty well too. Admittedly I do so by taking my time, and sometimes read a passage more than once, so I wouldn't do well in practice, but in this format I can usually keep up. For example:
Vivio Takamachi was either a fae who stole something from the TSAB and was arrested or a sapient magical artifact that was stolen by a fae before being reclaimed by the TSAB. Either way the threat of exposing something about the event was used to pressure the Winter Court to help them.
At least, I think that's what happened.