5 - It's About To Blow
Sugarcube Corner was the designated meetup spot after school, and Cozy got there late. Her instructions were that she was supposed to catch up with Sunset after classes to be introduced to more of the human world. But Cozy wasn't in a rush - there was something to be said for basking in a plan well executed and enjoying the victory. It had been a while since she'd been able to do that. The Rainbooms would be there waiting no matter how long she took.
They were. That all seven greeted her entrance with cold stares and crossed arms was an ill omen.
But this was hardly the toughest crowd Cozy had faced, and her gormless cheerful grin didn't falter. "Hiya there, friends! Golly, what a crazy first day!"
Applejack's eyes bored into Cozy's skull. "Weren't ya supposed ta be comin' here with my sister?"
The first hint of trouble itched at the back of Cozy's mind. "I'm sorry, I couldn't find them after class. I thought maybe they came here first!"
Rarity raised her phone, inspected the screen for a moment, and turned it towards Cozy. "They did not. I expect then that the text from my mother that Sweetie Belle has been given detention for a month because she and her friends were caught stealing test answers is somehow unrelated to you?"
Oh, right. Instant communication across any distance. That was a thing here. Cozy gasped loudly, not giving up even though she knew she was in trouble. "They did what? Oh dear oh my, what ever could have made them do something like that?"
Normally it would have been Rainbow Dash that took up the next part on behalf of Scootaloo, but she didn't seem in much of a mood to talk. Just glare angrily at Cozy, lips curled into a snarl.
Instead, it was Sunset. "You can drop the act, Cozy Glow. I already told them about your past."
The younger girl twitched, almost breaking character as her anger boiled to the top. "Awww, Sunset. I thought you promised you wouldn't ruin my chances at friendship by saying mean things." Cozy frowned extra-wide. She considered some tears, but those might be needed later.
Sunset kept her arms crossed and expression stony. "I said it wouldn't be the first thing I told them about you, but I did say I'd let them know. And now they know everything."
"Eeeeverything?" Cozy batted her eyes playfully, knowing for certain that Sunset didn't know all of what was planned. She couldn't.
With a frustrated sigh, Sunset stood and grabbed Cozy's hand. There was a momentary flash of white in her eyes, followed by a smirk. "Her plan was to trick other students into doing things so she could rat them out. She'd make herself Mr. Doodle's prize stool pigeon, and use him to get into Principal Celestia's good graces. Then she'd have access to Celestia's office so she could open the portal, sneak back to Equestria and disappear into one of the bigger cities to plan her revenge."
The other six shifted uneasily - the raw, smug sarcasm that dripped from Sunset was a worryingly familiar to how she had been before the Formal. "Not bad. Deductions for your plan being so simple - the whole thing's pretty low effort. And you made a rookie mistake by not checking your end goal and just assuming Principal Celestia had control of the portal. Eff-Why-Eye, it only opens from the other side and nobody but me can communicate back to Equestria and ask them to open it." She paused, tapping her chin in mocking thought. "But more complicated isn't always better, and you get bonus points for taking the initiative and launching your first attempt less than twenty-four hours after coming into the dimension. Six out of ten."
Sunset stepped back from Cozy and mimed dropping the mic.
Cozy Glow didn't get that part at all.
Not that it would have mattered if she did - Cozy was too busy being absolutely livid that Sunset somehow knew everything and was condescending enough to actually grade her on her escape plan. "How did you just--"
"Time to put the cards on the table." Sunset gave a little nod to the other girls - they nodded back. "So, you remember how I told you that this dimension's got no native magic? Well, it doesn't. All the magic here leaked in from Equestria. Or it was put here on purpose - that portal's been used as a dump for Equestrian criminals and dangerous artifacts for a long time. Most of it doesn't matter right now, except these." She took the gem on her necklace between her fingers, holding it out slightly. "These geodes are this dimension's versions of the Elements of Harmony. Mine lets me see your memories."
The others knew their cue. Seven girls glowed with a bright light - hair lengthened and pony ears sprouted from their heads. Nobody else in Sugarcube Corner batted an eye.
Until Cozy Glow started screaming.
"NO. NO! THIS IS NOT HAPPENING." She let out a ragged, primal screech. "YOU CAN'T DO THIS TO ME! I'M SMARTER THAN YOU, THIS IS CHEATING! YOU CAN'T BEAT ME! IT ISN'T FAIR!" Cozy's saccharine persona disintegrated as she dropped to the floor and flailed. Now the rest of Sugarcube Corner was paying attention, and decided it was time to finish their coffee elsewhere. It looked like Those Girls were up to something again, and nobody wanted to be too close.
The seven girls waited it out, letting Cozy exhaust herself. It took several minutes, but eventually the energy of her tantrum simply ran out and left her in a panting heap on the floor.
"That was half the reason I was asked to take care of you, Cozy Glow." Sunset crouched beside her charge. "You can't trick me. You can't get a plan past me. Every time something seems off, or I suspect you're up to something, or you just seem too smug? All I have to do is touch you and I'll know everything."
History repeated itself. Cozy looked up at Sunset from a heap on the floor, eyes red and tired. "So you are my jailor."
Once more, Sunset shook her head. But this time, she didn't wait for Cozy to take her hand. She grabbed the smaller girl by the shoulders, lifting her to her feet. Cozy didn't struggle - she'd run out of fury for now. "No. I'm still someone who was a lot like you once."
After placing Cozy in a chair, Sunset took her own seat. "There's one last card for me to put down, and that's the other half of why Princess Twilight asked me. My own past."
"What, you were a pegasus?" Cozy laughed weakly at her own joke. No one else did.
"I was Princess Celestia's star student," Sunset started as she utterly ignored the attempted snark. "Her personal protégé. And that meant I had it all - I was brilliant, more powerful than any unicorn even twice my age, I had direct access to the Princess and spent my time surrounded by luxury." She paused. "Sound at all familiar, Cozy Glow?"
Sunset didn't give her the chance to respond. "But it wasn't enough for me. I wanted power. I wanted control. To rule and have everypony bow to me. To love me. To worship at my hooves. For Celestia to respect me like I was due." Her fists were clenched now, balled tight enough to tremble with the effort. "So I threw it away by betraying the Princess and I fled here to seek power."
Here, Cozy finally cut in. "Gee, how'd you betray her Sunset?" What the words lacked in earnest curiosity they made up for with spite.
The verbal knife jammed into Sunset's ribs, and she winced. "Broke into the Restricted Section and studied dark magic to try and make myself an alicorn."
Smugly Cozy noted, "I was an alicorn."
"You were also a lawn ornament," Sunset snapped. Her own burst of anger was strong enough that Fluttershy put a friendly but firm hand on Sunset's shoulder just to be sure.
Things were quiet for a minute - Cozy squirmed gleefully as Sunset slowly regained her composure. But the story wasn't done.
"Once I came here," Sunset finally continued, "I got to work on getting that power. It was what you did but backwards, Cozy - instead of taking away all the magic in the world, I started with a world that didn't seem to have any. What it did have was friendships and relationships - which I exploited ruthlessly. I lied. I cheated. I stole, bribed, blackmailed, bullied and in one case briefly kidnapped."
There was a momentary pause as she felt the other girls stare incredulously at that tidbit. Sunset diverted from her tale to clarify that. "Micro Chips. Needed him out of the way to adjust the grading curve on a test." The rest nodded in acceptance of the dark logic, so Sunset could continue. "And I won, Cozy. I ruled the school like a queen, and everybody bowed to me. Even most of the teachers did. I had almost absolute power by the time I came back through the portal and stole the Element of Magic from Twilight."
As she spoke, the magic around the girls started to fade. The other six Rainbooms returned to normal as it did - but Sunset didn't. Her ears and hair remained up, with a slight glow around her. "And then it took exactly one student standing up to me to make it all fall down. Less than two days later, everything I built over three years was completely destroyed and I went from total control to my last stand. Which involved me transforming into a creature of dark magic and then being blasted by a friendship laser powerful enough to leave a crater deeper than I am tall." Sunset pointed an accusatory finger at Cozy. "You know what that's like, don't you?"
Cozy shifted uneasily in the chair. She didn't answer.
Sunset leaned forward - it made Cozy lean back in the same measure. "It burns, doesn't it? But not like fire - it's more like frostbite when the power gets ripped out of you. It makes you tired and cold and it hurts down to your bones. You can feel being empty and afterwards? Even though you know you're your normal self again there's that sense of being less. Even if you hated what the power made you, losing it still makes you want to cry for a month because you had so much and then it was gone forever." She leaned back again, expression softening.
"That's why Princess Twilight said I could help you. That's why I want to help you. Because I am you, Cozy Glow. And I know that the aftermath of being blasted into the ground was the best thing to ever happen to me." Sunset turned to her friends with a smile. "Best thing," she repeated.
The others smiled back, though Applejack motioned with a hand over her head to remind Sunset about the ears. A slight blush touched the Equestrian's cheeks.
Cozy continued to pout. "So why should I care?"
"Ignoring that I could send you back to Equestria as a statue, you should care because it's better for your life." Sunset reached back to the table, grabbing her coffee. "You don't believe that any more than I did before I had my laser revelation, but it's the truth. Pretty soon, you're going to realize that and I want to make sure you can turn your life around without the same problems I faced when I did." She paused to sip the now-cool latte and wet her throat. "Trust me, there were a lot of them."
"A lot," Rainbow Dash impulsively added, tone halfway between it being a confirmation of fact and a threat for Cozy's future. Applejack leaned over and gave Rainbow a (mostly) gentle thump upside the head.
Again, Cozy wondered how the alternate versions of these people beat her.
But Sunset didn't have a different version in Equestria, and she was clearly beating Cozy right now. Sunset had the experience to spot most of Cozy's plans, the magic to see through the rest, the ability to punish her and the temper to go through with it. There was no winning path. There didn't even seem to be a delaying path - Sunset could figure out if Cozy was being earnest in less than the beat of a wing. What was there but surrender and hope for an opportunity later?
So Cozy Glow hung her head. "Fine. You win. I give up! Just... just friendship at me or whatever. Get it over with." She braced.
Sunset's hand gently set on Cozy's shoulder. Cozy flinched.
"A wise human once said that the first step to solving a problem is admitting it exists," she counseled. "You told Princess Twilight that friendship is power. But I don't think you understand what friendship or power is. So we'll start there." Sunset looked again to her friends, most of whom nodded. Rainbow Dash's sour frown was a reminder, however. "Well, we'll go there second. After we have a talk with Principal Celestia about what really happened and get the Crusaders out of trouble."
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Why can't Cozy steal the geodes from them and throw them in a Garbage Truck and let a compacter do the rest?
Gaaaaah I love Sunset in this chapter. I love declaratory speeches and pontifications and stuff; I think that's part of why I like Aaron Sorkin's writing so much, as well as one of the main reasons why I love Babylon 5. The bit where Sunset is talking about what losing absolute power feels like was brilliant.
To play Cozy's Advocate for a moment, Cozy could have paid attention to the fact that Sunset's mentioned that there is magic here, either leaking in or in the hands of other exiles, and thus start looking for a way to overcome the Human-7. That being said Sunset's ability to just read her mind with a touch would make this extremely difficult to pull off. Just saying that while Sunset definitely put her in check here, she was not necessarily checkmated yet.
9976944
Firstly, because if the geodes go missing then the Human-7 are going to know exactly who did it, and even without their geodes they're seven reasonably fit seniors in High School and Cozy Glow is a Freshman with absolutely no special powers. I'm not even saying they could "beat her up", just that she has no real ability to stop them from shoving her back through the portal to a waiting Twilight in retaliation.
But secondly and more importantly, because it doesn't address the real problem, which is that Sunset and the human world in general knows her. Cozy Glow's "power" depends on her ability to manipulate others and that no one knows what she's really about or who she really is, but that doesn't exist here. It's the Rusty Bucket problem from "Frenemies" for her writ large. If someone doesn't want to do what she wants them to do she has no ability to force them (and Rusty Bucket didn't even know who she was and was genuinely friendly, he just had no desire to help her climb the mountain).
9976962
No, I agree. Cozy isn't out of the game, but she's realized that she's at least currently thwarted until a good (really good) opportunity presents itself.
Also, loves me some B5. I would love to write soliloquies as strong as that show had.
9976967
Well you're definitely not off to a bad start with Sunset there!
Oh, speaking of Cozy and chess, Jyc Row dropped this last week:
And now I find myself wishing I had any skill at animation because listening to it all I wanted to see was a video of Cozy playing a game of chess against herself, not unlike Xehanort is in the opening to Kingdom Hearts 3.
9976944
because that's a shit ending and you know it
Why would you tell her that? Darn it, Shimmer, you backslid all the way to villainous gloating. For shame.
Huh. I thought she was talking about Spike, though I suppose that was more hostage-taking than kidnapping.
"Laser revelation" is the polite version of Dash's preferred term, "the rainbow bitchslap."
It's also a great band name.
I do see a few possible avenues for Cozy, but they're so incredibly risky and time-consuming that she may just accept her fate. If nothing else, it beats getting petrified again. And with Sunset riding herd, she may even stop plotting revenge long enough to realize she's happy.
9977015
I am absolutely going to have to use 'rainbow bitchslap' in a future fic somewhere because that's a great line.
Excellent heroic speech, and one that could have only been delivered through Sunset's unique perspective. Princess Twilight would be proud.
Oh my gosh. This chapter was so satisfying...............Sunset was a wise choice to take care of cozy glow.
Very in character for Cozy to throw a tantrum when things don't go her way. Good thing she has Sunset to help her out.
"Oh, I am sorry, I am usually far more composed. I am just a little bit absolutely livid."
That was the quote popping into my head when reading that.
Loving this so far!
9977523
TFS Frieza’s is the best.
“Sso, Namekian, what do you think of my third form?”
“I think Ridley Scott is gonna sue someone.”
”I don’t know what you’re talking about — hhhhggghhhaaahh LET ME TOUCH YOUR SSKIN.”
I was enjoying this story up till this chapter. I just feel now that it's going too devolve into a series of deus ex Sunset, catching Cozy through walls of plot armor. I hope I'm wrong and this will be a battle worth watching.
9977732
Cozy's down but not out and while Sunset's got the upper hand she isn't invincible.
There will be an opportunity or two in Cozy's future. She just has to be friendshipped at while that opening develops.
Cozy should be happy she only has to deal with a contact psychic and her band of friends with minor powers, and not say: Takamachi Nanoha* and her giant pink friendship beams of determination.
Though I personally think it's a mistake to give a manipulator a Full Disclosure as to how their powers work. I guess even reformed villains have to monologue a little.
=========================
*
"I'm going to help you, Cozy! I'm going to burn away the pain and the anger and I'm going to show you what it means to be loved!"
[STARLIGHT BREAKER]
"What are you doing?! You idiot! How are you going to show me love with that ... much... Mag- OH DEAR GOD!!!!"
"STARLIGHTOOOOOHHHH!!!!"
"BUREAKAAAAAAAAAH!!!!"
"NOT ANOTHER FRIENDSHIP LASE-"
==VIDEO FEED INTERRUPTED==
That Sunset speech.... DANG. You basically captured everything that made Sunset awesome and compacted it onto a small speech. Well done.
9977015
Which could also be considered a Rainbow bitchslap.
I can't help but feel like revealing the geodes and their magic to Cozy this early is going to backfire on Sunset eventually. But that's mostly because we saw Chekov's Luna in the previous chapter. :V
It seems like Cozy won more out of this round than she lost.
She may have lost use of the CMC (unreliable assets at best), had her first plan fail (which was doomed anyway), and now Sunset and Co are 100% certain she is not to be trusted as opposed to only 99.9% certain as they would be otherwise.
In return she gained knowledge of how the portal works, knowledge of Sunset's power and how it works, knowledge of how to communicate with Equestria.
9984952
Ikr so awesome
9977732
Literally the shows magic is “plot armor”?
Just realised that with Sunset able to read minds, she's exactly like the thought police. It's literally 1984.