Fool Me Once

by ericwinter

Chapter One

Author's Note:

Uh, hi. So this is my first time writing on this site, and really, my first time writing anything in the MLP-verse, aside from a short-lived attempt to stick the Elements of Harmony--the actual Elements, not the ponies associated with them--into another universe for... reasons. I don't really know what I was thinking. Anyways, hopefully this turns out a lot better, but if I'm doing anything egregiously wrong feel free to let me know.
Moving on, this is set only a few days after the Legend of Everfree, so keep that in mind. Also, I'll be putting my own spin on the human world's magic and supernatural side in general, so expect some things that aren't familiar at all. See ya, and I hope you enjoy!

“Are you sure about this Sunset?The last time you tried something like this…” Rarity asked her friend, frowning worriedly at Sunset. The bacon-haired girl just shook her head, smiling slightly.

“I was trying to use science to understand magic then, Rarity. It’s not surprising it turned out the way it did. But this time I’ll be using magic to understand magic, so with any luck it should work better.” Rarity didn’t look entirely convinced, but relented her questioning. The white-skinned girl stepped back, joining the rest of their friends around the room as they also watched in concern.

The Mane Seven, as many students in Canterlot High had taken to calling them, were situated in their usual band room, although most of the instruments remained within their cases and there was none of the usual excitement present. The reasons for that were simple, namely that they hadn’t gathered for a practice today, but instead to study the newest magical insanity plaguing their lives: the Geodes they had discovered at Camp Everfree just days ago. Or rather, Sunset was going to study them, while her friends were mostly just here as insurance.

“I still don’t get it. Why are you so focused on figuring this out, anyways?” Rainbow Dash asked suddenly, drawing the attention of everyone present. “I mean, we know how the Geodes work, right? They give us superpowers, like super-speed, strength, making things explode…” With each power she listed, the chromatically-haired teenager pointed at each of her friends, before pausing as Sunset spoke up to interrupt her.

“That’s just the tip of the ice-berg, Dash,” She said, shaking her head again. “You saw what Gaea Everfree could do with them, and she barely even knew what she had in her possession. Sure they give us basic powers, but what else do you think we could do with them if we actually bothered to learn? What could they do to us if we don’t?” Sunset sighed, looking down at the stone disk in her hands, reshaped from its original form to depict an orange sun when it had chosen her that day. What she didn’t say, what she didn’t think they would understand, was that this wasn’t just about being safe or smart. There had been a reason she was the first among them to truly accept the new gifts they were manifesting even before finding the Geodes. Sunset had been born with magic, lived with it for almost her entire life before coming to the human world, and then lived for almost three full years without even a drop of magical power. Now that she had some, untainted by insanity like with the Element of Magic or spent in desperate need like those stopping Midnight Sparkle, was it really a bad thing to want to explore it more?

“Ah agree with Sunset,” Applejack tossed in from where she was leaning against the piano. “Every time one o’ these magical doohickeys show up, bad things happen. Better safe than sorry, in my opinion.”

“Ooh, ooh, you mean like that time Sunset turned into a demon and mind-controlled the whole school? Or when Twilight accidentally stole all our magic and was peer-pressured into using it to win the friendship games but almost tore apart the universe instead?” Pinkie asked suddenly, bouncing up and sticking her hand in the air with all her usual sensitivity. As an awkward silence descended, however, she paused, glancing at the two girls in question, smiling weakly. “Uh, no offense.”

“None taken.” Sunset replied easily, rolling her eyes while Twilight mumbled out something to that effect, if a little more annoyed. She was starting to get over her past sins, but it was still a sore subject, while Sunset had moved on months ago and was used to the occasional comments. They kept her humble, if nothing else.

“Alright, alright, I get the point.” Rainbow Dash said, almost tactfully moving the conversation along as she waved away the concerns. “Still doesn’t explain why we all have to be here while Sunset does some sort of zen meditation thing. It’s going to be so boring.”

“Evidence dictates that delving too far into Equestrian magic can have detrimental affects on a person’s sanity, Rainbow Dash.” Twilight answered first, speaking up from her own seat to the side. “I think Sunset wants us to make sure she doesn’t go crazy.”

“Exactly.” Sunset said, inclining her head at the lavender-skinned girl. Both of them knew better than anyone the dangers inherent in such a thing, having both been victims of it before, and they both knew the importance of having people to drag them back from the darkness. Finally, the last of their septet spoke up from her customary corner, voice quiet but still audible.

“Is-is that likely?” Fluttershy asked, suddenly looking very worried, but Sunset shook her head.

“I don’t think so, but like Applejack said, it’s better safe than sorry.” It had, after all, taken the entire set of Geodes to truly send Gloriosa off the edge into becoming Gaea Everfree, but only one corrupted Element of Harmony to transform Sunset into her demon form. The most powerful of them, perhaps, but it still meant there was a certain margin of error allowable. Add in the factors of Sunset having long since given up most of the deep-seated issues that those corrupted by magic usually possessed before encountering it, while at the same time intentionally diving into the deep end of the power in these Geodes, and it became a complicated process to predict. Equestrian magic wasn’t meant to mingle with humans, making it twist in strange ways when it did. But if anyone could figure it out, Sunset was it.

“Alright, I’m going to get started now.” She announced, cutting off any further conversation at the knees, before settling into her chosen position for this process. Unlike last time she tried to make a study of how magic worked in the Human world, there were no large scientific machines or measuring tools about, and she wasn’t wearing a lab coat. Instead it was just Sunset, in her usual ensemble of skirt, t-shirt, black leather jacket tossed on top and boots on her feet, sitting cross-legged in the center of the Band Room. Closing her eyes she breathed in deep, before focusing on the amulet in her hands, and the faint but easily noticeable presence of magic she felt within.

Sunset had always been an exceptional mage before fleeing from Equestria. She was, after all, Celestia’s star student, and while she could never quite match up to Princess Twilight on an even scale, the same could be said of pretty much everybody. Even after being stuck in a world with no discernable magic for her to access, she never forgot the skills she learned earlier in life, and now put them to good use. Without her horn she couldn’t simply cast diagnostics charm, of course, but that was okay. She had another method for studying the magical artifact in her hands, ironically granted to her by that very same thing. Reaching out to the power in her Geode, Sunset easily inverted it, diving inwards rather than outwards as she sought to understand.

At first, Sunset didn’t notice the change, to focused on her work as she was, but slowly the vague fuzz that built in her mind cleared, first into whispers just on the edge of hearing, then into words, lazily drifting thoughts that sought to distract her. Sunset tried to shrug them off, but then she noticed a single commonality between them all: concern. And not just concern, but concern for her. Giving the equivalent of a mental blink, Sunset turned her focus aside for just a moment, long enough to recognize just what she was hearing. They were thoughts, carried on the winds of magic for her ears alone. Her friends’ thoughts to be exact. Here was Applejack, running through a mental checklist of all the usual factors that signified a magical transformation--glowing eyes, wings, horns, and so on--there was Rarity, doing much the same but instead of vigilance this was curiosity, her artist’s mind wondering at fashion options for the more benevolent instances she had witnessed. Rainbow Dash, of course, was being her usual self in thinking the words bored, bored, boooooored, over and over so hard Sunset would have thought the girl knew her thoughts were being read if she didn’t know better, and Twilight was barely focusing on her surroundings at all, and instead thinking about homework--namely, homework three weeks in advance of their current assignments. Sunset just barely managed to suppress an eyeroll at that. Fluttershy’s thoughts were almost as quiet as her spoken voice, but filled with a maternal worry as she agonized over the thought of potentially having to fight Sunset if she lost control. Pinkie, on the other hand, the bacon-haired girl purposefully kept her power far away from--one foray into that crazy rabbit hole of a mind was more than enough, thank you very much.

As fascinating as all this was--and also terrifying, considering the privacy concerns of being able to read the minds of everybody around her--Sunset was eventually forced to turn her attention away from the thoughts of her friends and focus once again upon the wellspring of power in her hands. Even now she could tell that this was only the beginning, as now that she knew to look there were several more senses hovering just past her reach, waiting for her to dive deeper in and grab them. Her Geode, the analytical part of her mind noted, seemed mostly concerned with sensory powers, as already she could feel her awareness being heightened more and more the deeper she dove in. It did make her wonder if the others would be similarly aspected. Physical attributes for AJ and Dash, perhaps, with Pinkie and Rarity being destruction and creation respectively? Fluttershy seemed bent towards communication, and Twilight’s might be fine manipulation, at least if her theory was correct. Sunset could also be way off the mark, but then she pushed all those concerns aside so she could focus once again. Pulling more and more power from the Geode as she immersed herself further into it.

She didn’t notice the barrier until her metaphorical nose smashed up against it. Sunset had been focusing on some of the newer gifts she had discovered--heightened hearing, a strange sort of vision that pierced even her eyelids and made the entire room seem to be painted in colorful pastels even more than usual, and strange, shifting visions of events that were utterly without context and made no sense to her, such as random snips of conversation between people she didn’t recognize--when suddenly the well of power stopped, almost completely cut off short. In the first few moments of disorientation as Sunset suddenly found herself struggling to grasp any more power, she thought she had reached the end of what her Geode was capable of. It wouldn’t be surprising, already Sunset had discovered much more power dwelling within than she had originally expected, a veritable sea of magic being contained in that tiny stone disk, but as she inspected it more closely with the vague and arcane senses she was still familiarizing herself with, it became clear that there was more than met the eye. The Geode, Sunset realized suddenly, was not a container of power, as she had originally assumed, but rather a conduit, with miniscule amounts leaking through from some other source to fill it. Even now she could detect the trickle spilling through that metaphorical bottom of the bucket, weling up bit by bit to replenish what she was channeling through herself. That worried Sunset, a lot. Magical artifacts with defined powers were one thing, but the Geode was starting to remind her more and more of the Element of Magic she had once stolen from Princess Twilight and which had turned her into a demoness bent on world domination. That, too, was a conduit to a greater power, and it was Sunset’s lack of understanding in that regard which led to her downfall. Harmony did not look kindly on those who tried to twist it for their own purposes. Sunset didn’t think the geode was connected to Harmony, not with how different the magic felt in her grasp, but that was even worse in her opinion. Harmony was good, when not being used by those who did not deserve power, but whatever was on the other side of this connection was an unknown.

If Sunset were anybody else, what she tried next probably wouldn’t have worked. Even her friends, also chosen by these conduits of magical power to wield them as they saw fit, would likely have trouble piercing the barrier between the Geodes and their source of power. Sunset, however, was not just anybody else. Even before escaping Equestria she had been a powerful mage, in whom the potential for ascension to Alicorn-hood resided, and afterwards she had had more than one scrape with great and terrible power. Wielding a corrupted Element of Harmony, experiencing both sides of a Harmonic blast, bearing enough magical power to seal even dimensional breaches with a thought--all these and more she had done, and things like that left a mark on someone, down to the very soul. So when Sunset tried to push against the barrier separating her from the knowledge of what might be threatening her friends every time they wore the geodes, she did not relent even when it failed to budge. Instead she pushed, and pushed, and kept pushing-- until finally, with a sound not unlike the shattering of every piece of glass in the world echoing in her ears, the walls came crashing down and she was flooded with magic as it poured through the gap. For a single, glorious moment, she understood. All the knowledge of the world was at her fingertips, past, present, and future were hers to see and the minds of all easy plundering--

And then Sunset Shimmer screamed.

XXX

High, high above the world of Earth, seven bright lights taking the shape of a seven-pointed star shone in the sky. To some, it was simply an interesting constellation. To others, they were a pantheon of deities, watching over the world. And to a very, very few who knew the truth, they were both and neither at the same time, shards of divinity left without bearers and just waiting to be claimed by those mad, clever, or powerful enough to try. yet whoever they were, all noticed when quite suddenly one of those lights disappeared. In the chaos that followed, only one thing was clear. The Seer’s star had disappeared, and there would be oceans of blood spilled to find it.

Comments

[Blue Horizon]

Interesting premise, decent writing. You have several rather lengthy paragraphs that could be broken up. And various other issues here or there, but... that was an interesting start and a nice premise.

I'll stick around for some more.

[Ri2]

Dammit, Sunny, what have you done now?

[Pete100]

So sunset basically screwed everyone over?

[Spellflame]

10835108
Hey, better to know of danger than to be ignorant