3 - Learn More Who You Are
"So yeah. Clothes are very not optional here. It's rude and you'll get cold fast." Sunset halted her lecture, considering. "I think that covers the real basics of your new body and how humans work. We'll handle more after you get your feet under you better." She didn't halt her steps, however, as they both walked through Canterlot's leaf-filled streets.
Cozy was quiet as she absorbed it all. A twenty minute crash-course lecture on the human form and critical cultural differences was a lot to take in - particularly when she was still shaken. Her introduction to the automobile had been a bit more... abrupt than Sunset had intended. Flash had apologized afterwards, but the damage had been done with four squealing tires and a single hard stop that was too close for comfort.
On the plus side it confirmed to Sunset that for all the things she had done, Cozy Glow was not immune to fear. And that she wouldn't just blindly walk out into the street again any time soon.
They went half a block more in silence before Cozy finally spoke. "And no magic."
"No native magic," Sunset confirmed with her purposeful phrasing. "It really is amazing how they've come so far without weather pegasii or earth pony agriculture. They don't even control the sun and moon," she noted with a laugh.
Cozy actually shuddered. "They don't have any control over their world? It just... does things? And they don't go crazy?"
"Why would they go crazy?"
"Because!" Cozy threw her hands in the air - she was starting to get human physical expressions, even if she over-exaggerated them. "They don't have control of anything! How do they live like this?" She crossed her arms and fell into a familiar pout. "This dimension's stupid and I hate it already."
It took a lot for Sunset not to laugh. "It has a few upsides. Come on, we're almost to my apartment. I've got something for you once we're there."
'Something', as it turned out, was six large cardboard boxes. Cozy regarded them with more amusement than confusion. "I guess I can understand all the white, but..." She pulled the midnight blue jacket out of the nearest box. "This? I like crimson better."
"Rarity," Sunset said in simple explanation as she pulled extra bedding out of the closet for later. "I've spent enough time around her to understand basic color wheel choices. Dark blue jacket with a cream top should work with your tones." With her free hand, she pulled out her phone and quickly started to thumb something on it. "We might have to get her to adjust some of the stuff later on, since I guessed at your sizes. And she'll pitch a fit because most of this is second-hand and not bespoke enough for her. But it'll do for now. The portal's been pretty good about providing clothing when somepony comes over, but you need more than one shirt."
Cozy cracked open the next-nearest box. "Books?"
"Textbooks. You're gonna need 'em." For a moment Sunset left it at that before deciding to elaborate more. "You're in the same spot I was once - even if you can ace all of the math and stuff, the school expects you to know history. And since it isn't OUR history, you're at a disadvantage. There's a lot of books in there to help get you up to speed."
Cozy stuck out her tongue in disgust and closed the box back up again. "So that's the something you got for me? Hoof-me-down clothes and dusty old books?"
"Not entirely." Job done, Sunset meandered over to the coatrack and fished in her jacket's pocket. "Those are a lot more important than you're giving them credit for, but I actually meant this." She held out a thin black chunk of plastic and glass to the younger girl. "Your first phone."
The phone - a very cut-rate starter one on a fixed plan - turned over in Cozy's hands several times. "Uh, so?"
A smile crept to Sunset's lips. "You're not giving it the respect it deserves. Cozy, what you hold in your hand is something that would be one of the most powerful artifacts in the world back in Equestria. Not only can you talk to anyone anywhere no matter the distance, it can also instantly exchange letters with them, take photographs, act as a light source, play music, be a clock accurate to less than a tenth of a second, solve almost any math problem, create a navigation map between any two places, translate most languages and gives you the ability to read any book in the world." She paused to let that barrage sink in. "In this world, it's considered a standard everyday tool for anyone over the age of ten. What you've got there is almost literally a child's toy, and if something that did half of that existed in Equestria it would be something worth fighting wars over."
Sunset opted not to mention the sheer number of things that she'd locked Cozy's phone out of - there was obviously a location tracking app installed and she wasn't nearly dumb enough to let the little hellion access MyStable - but even without those she knew how wondrous the tool was.
And true to that, Cozy stared at the small black rectangle in her palm with new awe. "It can do all of that? And everypony just.. has one?"
"Yup." Sunset held hers up. "In fact, to demonstrate? While we were talking I used mine to have someone make dinner for us and bring it here, just using my thumb. It should be--"
The doorbell rang.
"--ahead of schedule."
Everything was set out on the table by the time Sunset got done at the door. She'd sent Sandalwood away with a pretty generous tip, hopefully generating some good karma for the days ahead. Almost a dozen containers were scattered over the table to present Cozy with a bounty of Canterlot's finest: take-out Chinese.
It also gave Sunset a chance to laugh as Cozy had reverted to the tightly-fisted 'hoof hands' that marked most newly arrived Equestrians. Laughter gave way to panic as she lunged before Cozy could try and manhandle the container of hot & sour soup and drink straight from the burning hot Styrofoam. "Whoa whoa! Hold on! Careful with that!"
"I'm hungry!" Cozy stomped a foot angrily. "Besides that stuff at lunch, I haven't eaten anything since before I was put in stone!"
Sunset plopped into the only other chair at the crowded dinette table. "And you'll get it, but there's a reason I ordered this. Beside the fact that it's amazing." With a flourish, she lifted up her utensils - a pair of chopsticks. "This is also great for learning to use fingers."
Cozy watched in confusion as Sunset deftly snapped the chopsticks in the air - then snatched a generous helping of vegetable lo mein up in them. Her eyes went to the other pair of chopsticks sitting on the table, then back to her own awkward hands. "I wanted to eat, not keep going to school."
The lesson was there, though, and Sunset wasn't going to budge. Her disinterest as she grabbed another helping gave no illusions of changing her mind. So Cozy picked up the two small sticks and... fumbled them back to the table.
When she did it a second time, Sunset snickered quietly.
The third failure ended with Cozy throwing the chopsticks across the room in anger.
Without a word, Sunset pulled another set out and set them in front of Cozy. She moved her own hand, tipping it so the younger girl could see just how the two sticks sat across the fingers - then snapped them a few times to demonstrate.
At first, Cozy ignored the guidance. She crossed her arms; she pouted; she looked everywhere but at it. She even tried ignoring Sunset despite having her nose pinched by the chopsticks. Hunger eventually won out over ire, and Cozy picked up her set again. Sunset snapped hers once more, showing in action how they sat.
This time, Cozy managed on the wobbling second try and captured a small portion of bok choy in garlic-ginger sauce.
And this time, Sunset smiled.
Cozy Glow wasn't entirely familiar with how humans slept, but she assumed the sound of snoring from the bed meant Sunset was out cold. Or that she was hosting a family of badgers in a burlap sack.
The couch was actually fairly comfortable, even if it wasn't meant as a bed. Something more permanent was supposed to be getting delivered in a few days, but Cozy? She didn't care. She wasn't going to be here that long.
Though the lights were out, the ambient glow of the city around them was far brighter than any night in Equestria. Plenty enough for her to be working in her still-fresh school notebook and start mapping things out.
"So the portal isn't guarded..." Cozy kept her voice low, barely above a whisper to herself. "Which means that they've got to have some way to open and close it. Celestia's in charge here, so she's probably got the tool with her or in her office."
A glance through the darkness to the loft where Sunset was sleeping, just to be sure. "She didn't seem to like me being in stone, so if I use that to get on her good side..." Cozy sketched out the beginnings of a social map of the school. It was painfully rough and most of those on it were descriptions rather than names - but it was a start. "If I work quick, I can get back before Princess Twilight knows I've left. They'll never expect me to escape already."
The pencil tapped her chin in thought. She needed her way in to access the Principal.... There. She drew a darker circle around one of the teachers: Cranky Doodle. Get in good with him, then use his relationships to connect to the rest of the staff. That was her way in to Celestia's good graces - and her way home.
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Cozy Glow, meet Mister Motion Detector and Mister Low Light Security Camera.
Also meet Mister Silent Alarm, Mister Night Stick, and Mister Handcuff.
And we mustn't forget their buddy, Mister Cell Door.
All of whom are GREAT friends of Officer Armor.
I'm loving how Sunset's slowly introducing Cozy to the himan world, especially her description of the phone.
Not sure if chinese food with chopsticks was the best first food for her to eat though.
I can't wait till her plan falls apart
9954376
Sunset's description of the phone is partially taken from an old thread I remember reading.
It asked: If someone from the 1950s time-traveled to today, what would be the hardest thing for them to deal with.
The answer: A smart phone. It has several magnitudes more computing power than existed in the entire world then; it can instantly connect with almost anyone in the world through voice, text or video; you can read any book or any newspaper from anywhere; it can play any music you want to hear or let you watch any movie; it can guide you to any location you want with nearly perfect accuracy; and it can solve almost any math problem you can think of. We use it primarily to look at pictures of cats.
Seems like cozy glow wants to leave already
9954627
So why did you leave out that last part?
9954627
We also use its blue light to deprive ourselves of sleep, with that and social media abuse leading to an epidemic of depression, anxiety, and other mental issues. Particularly in young people whose development is indelibly colored by this.
Humanized ponies struggling with chopsticks will always be funny.
Entirely logical deduction. Also completely wrong. To say nothing of how hard a nut Mr. Doodle might be to crack.
9954234
Which raises the fascinating question of how much the two Twilights tell each other, and what the local has told her family.
9955179
At least in my takes, not a lot.
Both Twilights are exactly the sort to go Prime Directive and not telling their alternate selves about possible future events for fear of polluting/influencing things. Rather, I can see them coordinating after the fact to see what has and hasn't lined up as an observational experiment in dimensional deviations.
(I also write human Twilight as being a bit jealous towards her alternate - teenagers have hard enough times living up to expectations and keeping a good self-image without being told that you could have been a magical flying hero-princess-horse that all your friends look up to. I like to leverage that a LOT in SunLight pairings. It's a good conflict source.)
9954627
Someone needs to introduce Cozy to the concept of nuclear weapons.
"This is an Ohio Class ballistic missile submarine. It's armed with twenty four trident intercontinental ballistic missiles, each carrying up to twelve W76 nuclear warheads rated at about 300 kilotons each. The missiles have a range of over six thousand miles, and each warhead carries the destructive power of all the princesses combined, and can destroy an entire city in one shot. So... just one Ohio class submarine thus has enough firepower to destroy two-hundred and eighty-eight cities at the same time."
"Th... That's crazy! And I was working with the most destructive creatures in Equestrian history!"
"Oh it gets better. There's not just one of these ships. There's fourteen of them.
"Tha- Two eighty-eight by fourte- over TWO THOUSAND CITIES!"
"Yep! Just one of these things could erase Equestria from the surface of the world. The whole fleet could erase every last patch of civilization from Equis in just thirty minutes."
"These apes are INSANE! What are these Ohios even FOR?!"
"Self Defense."
"Self DEFENSE?! Self defense from WHAT?! Hyper-Discord? What even-"
"Trust me, when it comes to making a mess, what you and those other two did don't hold a candle to what humans can do when you piss them off. Luckily, they're all aware of just how insane this kind of power is. They use it mainly to say 'don't mess with us, or we'll just END you.' It works surprisingly well."
"It's MADNESS!"
"Hilariously enough, they have an acronym that fits. They call the whole principle Mutually Assured Destruction... or MAD for short. They aren't stupid. They know EXACTLY what they have."
"...Can I go back through the portal now? I promise, I'll be good. I'll be good, and help princess Twilight run Equestria. Anything so long as I'm nowhere near those kind of insane weapons."
"Awww.... But I haven't even told you about the land based silos..."
"...I'll even do a thousand years in stone without protest! Two thousand years! Anything!"
"Sorry kiddo! You're part of the crazy hairless ape club now. No backsies!"
"AAUUUGH!!!!"
9955274
I do admit a love for introducing characters to concepts that are foreign to them but basic to the reader - there's great comedy potential in there.
As for the Ohio-class - Introducing Equestrians to human military aspects would be one of the more... tricky parts of exposure. (I consider that well-trod however, it's been done a hundred times in scifi with 'alien culture that knows no war'.) I suspect the only reason we're as okay with it as we are is humanity's inability to really grasp the practical meaning of numbers on that scale. ("One death is a tragedy, the death a million is a statistic.")
9955298
It's less about the military aspects for creatures that don't know war, and more about the shock value of just how inconceivably insane that kind of power really is. To posit to Cozy Glow, who just recently was teamed up with beings that were manifesting just enough power to wreck a town if they tried really hard, that not only do humans have that power out-gunned, but have it so absurdly out-gunned that 'total global destruction' is a 'casual' term...
Then you explain to her that there is zero magic involved, and that the process is done using rocks. (Significantly simplified.)
Then you stick her in front of Youtube.
She either swears off villainy, or turns into a James Bond villain.
Yikes, starting with chopsticks? A knife and fork would have been hard enough...
9959789
Not true.
The best way to train is to train the hardest way possible that can still be successfully performed. It makes all other tasks easy in comparison.
Plus, chopsticks aren't actually all that hard. You just have to get used to, and remember that one stick is actually stationary and resting in the crook of your thumb, locked in a counter-forced clamp by your ring finger. And the other actually sets up using the meat of your thumb as a fulcrum that is controled by your index and middle fingers.
Personally, my form is a bit off, but once I run myself through it once, the tactile memory of what feels right settles in and I'm good to go. I even gave myself a queck form check while typing this with a pair of pencils, and easily picked up a snickers wrapper.
9959873
I eat with chopsticks all the time, and have for about fifteen or so years now, ever since I had a half-Chinese girlfriend in high school and so learned how to use them so I could actually eat when invited over to her house for dinner. Chopsticks are that hard when compared to simple slicing, skewering, or scooping with a knife, fork, or spoon.
I wouldn’t go that far. When I’m teaching people how to do a job at work I don’t start with the most difficult tasks, I start with the easy ones that can be intuited with minimal instruction first, and let them perform those tasks until they become rote. Then I step up to harder tasks that aren’t as intuitive, and scale up from there.
Ultimately it probably doesn’t matter too much; Sunset isn’t making anything remotely like a misstep here with Cozy.
Then again I suppose with how intelligent Cozy is starting with a harder task actually makes sense from that perspective. Cozy is smart, knows she’s smart, and enjoys being treated like she’s smart. So in that sense it definitely builds up their relationship.
9959873
9959881
Actually, the background of why chopsticks is a bit different. Other flatware exists in Equestria - we've seen forks, spoons, knives and the like at place settings so it's reasonable to assume Cozy is at least somewhat familiar with them. Chopsticks, however, we have not and their use is entirely dependent on having fingers. Equestrian 'sticky hooves' couldn't make them work, which meant they were a brand new exercise for Cozy to deal with.
Alternately, Sunset felt like take-out Chinese and the practice was a good excuse.
can't wait to see Cozy's plan fall apart......................
(also, LOVING this story.)
Trying to get someone who is new to having fingers to use chopsticks? I’ve been trying to do that for years and still can’t figure it out. Cozy is great at adapting.
I think it's funny that Cozy just assumes Celestia is in charge of the portal in the human world, when it's most likely Sunset. It's going to be funny watching her figure it out.
Forced to use chopsticks to her. she should’ve just given her a fork superior utensil
Thus, Cozy Glow learns of one of the classic blunders: Never try to conquer on an empty stomach.
9955399
I read a sci-fi story some years ago, in which alien races were deeply frustrated with humans, and part of it was because every human military strategy came down to throwing rocks. Bullets? Small rocks, thrown really hard. Orbital bombardment? Rocks from space. Nuclear weapons? Rocks thrown at each other.
Bunch a' monkeys. At least it's not poo.
Cranky Doodle?
Ok, Cozy Glow. Best of luck.
Good story. I'm really enjoying it. When I stumbled upon this story, it reminded me of another I recently wrote and finished. It's called "The Shadow Queen". I really encourage you to check it out. I think you'll find this one up your ally. The main difference here is it focuses on the human version of Cozy Glow, and also an older version of her (so everyone else is older too).
As for this one, it feels rushed but that's still okay. Maybe I'm simply comparing it to my story which is a slow-burn compared to this, but many others still said they stayed engaged.
One thing that stuck out to me in chapter 2 was when Sunset told Principal Celestia and Luna about Cozy's criminal history. I understand that Sunset did it to warn those two, but I immediately thought about the situation from Cozy's perspective and realized how Sunset suddenly set Celestia/Luna against her due to that warning. I like how Cozy addressed that later to try to calm that aspect down. I realize she is just being manipulative, but she also had a point. Sunset, I figured, should have sympathized with Cozy. After all, she suffered something just like this during the second movie "Rainbow Rocks". Everyone was set against Sunset then except the mane gang.
Cozy seems to be adjusting fast in this story which again leads to the fast pace of the story, but she is supposed to be smart so I can forgive and even except this.
This morning, when i thought about this, I thought about how Cozy should miss her parents or family during this arrangement, then it occurred to me that should be true for Sunset as well. Why don't we ever hear of Sunset Shimmer's family back in Equestria, and where is her human doppelganger?
One thing that has been said before about Sunset that I personally agree with is the fact that she probably personally identifies more as a human now at this point. For her to sink into this role that completely and to help explain her troubled history, it occurred to me that, most likely, her backstory involves her being raised at an orphanage and never getting adopted. That's why she used to be against friendship, and that's also why she doesn't miss any of her "family" back in Equestria. I think she never knew them. Furthermore, she has sort of a "rebel" attitude which suggests a troubled history.
I know your story is listed as complete. ironically it ended the day I posted my first chapter of "The Shadow Queen". That's an interesting coincidence. Really encourage you to check it out.
All of these ideas I have about the characters your story probably doesn't cover. I just wanted to let you know some of the things that went through my head as I read your story. There actually are a lot of interesting questions issues about paralell universes brings up.
Lol
Momset: I’m not mad I’m just disappointed
Huh, Sunset's geode powers are kinda the ultimate foil for Cozy's "talents"