The Fall of Canterlot Kingdom

by JzanderN

Chapter 8 – The Lovers

Hana wasn’t looking forward to breaking up with Sunset. She couldn’t stay her lackey any more and had no intention of putting it off, but the thought still left an unpleasant pit in her stomach. By luck, she missed Sunset at the start of the day, and couldn’t find her before the first lesson started. She bore no fruit during break, and started wondering where she was during lunch, but finally their paths crossed at the end of the day.

Sunset opened her locker, not seeming to notice Hana besides her. Hana took a deep breath, closed her own locker and started with a simple hello. Sunset gave no reply, as if she hadn’t heard her. It was only then Hana noticed the reserved anger on her face. She called her again.

“I have nothing to say to you,” Sunset said right in her face. Hana was left stunned with a sickly buzz in her chest as Sunset slammed her locker and walked away.

She quickly gathered herself – though the buzzing didn’t quell – and made her way to behind the school, where Alec and Devon waited for her. “Oh good. You’re here,” Alec said, his voice deadpan.

“Sunset had nothing to say to me,” she said. “It’s like she knew what I had done somehow.”

“Oh well,” he said, uninterested. “She’ll probably take revenge on you, so watch out for that or whatever.”

She sighed. “I know you don’t care about me, but you should care about yourselves at least. Sunset’s suspicious of you two, and the way she is now, she’ll likely do something just to make an example of you.”

“Great,” she heard him mumble. “In that case, the sooner we get this done, the better.” He and Devon huddled together, though they kept a slight distance from Hana, and the latter took his phone out.

“So, how do we get there?” she asked.

“An app,” Alec said without looking up. “You’ll have it too, after yesterday. You’ll know it when you see it.” She checked. There was no missing the new app on her phone; a red and black eye like she had never seen before. “Then you just need a name, place and ‘distortion’ as Fahran called it.”

She thought back to the previous day when she had eavesdropped on the boys. “Sunset Shimmer, Canterlot, Kingdom.”

“Candidate not found,” a mechanical voice said. Hana looked over to a confused Devon, and Alec repeated what she said.

“Candidate not found.”

“Maybe yours isn’t working. Let me try mine.” Alec opened his own phone and recited the words again, only to elicit the same response. “Why’s it not working?”

Hana shrugged. “I don’t know. Maybe she’s not here?”

He scoffed at her suggestion. “How can she not be here? Did she go for a roadtrip to another country? Did she take a holiday on another planet? Did she have errands to run in an alternate world?” He sighed. “Shouldn’t you know what she’s up to?”

“She never told me what her plans were. I only gave her information. What she did was none of my business.” And quite thankfully too. She didn’t know if she could have forgiven herself had she had an active role in many of Sunset’s revenge plots. She wasn’t sure how long it would take as it was.

Alec bored into her with his gaze before rolling his eyes. “Whatever’s going on, it seems like we won’t be able to go in today, making all of this a waste.”

“Well, I guess I’ll see you tomorrow,” Hana said. She turned around and made her way to the front of the school, not really sure where to go. The boys were quick to start talking behind her, sounding like they were arguing about something, but it was none of her business. Or at least she thought it wasn’t, until a hand on her shoulder caused her to turn around and see the two had caught up with her.

Alec looked slightly out of breath with a reddened face. “Devon wants to hang out with you,” he said reluctantly. “Just you and him.”

Hana looked behind him; Devon was standing not far away, looking at her and then quickly moving his gaze to the floor. “Why?” she asked.

Alec looked back at Devon, silent for a moment, before speaking. “Anyway, he’s invited you to have some coffee.”

She thought for a moment. “Okay, but if it’s just me and him in the café, people are going to think we’re dating, and none of us want those rumours.”

“Whoever said you were going to a café? We have a barista right here.” He motioned to Devon, who gave a small wave.

---

They never even left the school. Alec and Devon took Hana back inside to a seemingly random room she otherwise wouldn’t have thought much about. At first glance, it was only equipped to house two people, with one table, two chairs, and some random stored items, but the room and table were big enough to house more with the addition of a few more seats.

“This place has many unused rooms. This is just one we use sometimes,” Alec explained when she asked how they knew about it. She resisted asking if they had any permission to use it before he left the two to themselves.

She thought the coffee would be simple; something bought from the store made in a machine with a button for them to have while they talked. She did not expect Devon to open the cupboard doors and find about thirty different types of coffee beans, gather what she thought were just unused cafeteria items, and start using them.

With that said, she didn’t mind sitting back and watching him go. She was surprisingly content to just watch him make coffee in such a professional way. Unfortunately, as Devon kept quiet, there wasn’t much to do other than watch the kettle boil or the clock tick. He looked back at her a few times like he wanted to say something, but always returned to his work. Eventually he came over with two mugs filled to the brim with coffee, somehow managing not to spill a drop from either. Hana could see the heat coming out of hers, but nonetheless took a cautious sip from it.

She had had coffee before quite a few times at the local coffee shop, though not on a regular basis. In comparison to Devon’s mixture, everything they served was cardboard, stale and stone cold. She almost spat it out in shock, but managed to keep all of it and its exploding flavours dancing on her tongue. “How did you learn to make this?” she asked after swallowing.

Devon shifted uncomfortably, looking around the room as if to find someone else to answer. She waited him out, however, and with no-one but him and her, he was eventually forced to answer. He had to repeat himself a few times, mumbling every time, before finally managing to say, “I was taught.”

She let out a small smile at his response. She tried to coax more out of him. “When? Where? By who?”

He muttered something, cleared his throat, and said, “a few years ago, my mother took me to a café called LeCheval to have my first, proper coffee, and not the… what she had given me before.”

Hana blinked. She was surprised he managed to say so much. “LeCheval. I can’t say I’ve heard of it.”

He nodded. “It’s a small café, but it’s homely. Comfortable. The people who go there are mainly older folk. And the man who runs it knows his craft. It was the most exquisite coffee I’ve ever had, at least until the next cup he made me. Everytime.” He grew a small smile as he reminisced. “I forgot myself and asked him straight up to teach me how to make it, and I don’t know why, but he accepted. I started working there part-time, and he taught me his tricks in turn.”

“Oh? So you’ve served coffee to people?”

He shook his head. “He said if I ever served a brew that wasn’t as good as his, I’d be fired on the spot and never hired again, so I never got around to it.” Hana wondered if it was just a self confidence issue, or... she looked down at her cup, wondering how good this barista’s coffee must be in comparison.

Devon was looking uncomfortable again, but not from talking. It was like he was trying to avoid a bad memory. “So what happened?” she asked carefully.

He only had to say one word to explain everything. “Sunset.” Vague memories came back to Hana of a small coffee shop with high standards, good coffee turned sour, and a finger pointed at the wrong person. She wondered how many other memories like that she made herself forget. “What did you do?”

He shrugged his shoulders. “Maybe she was mad at Alec, maybe she just saw me as an easy target, I haven’t the slightest clue.”

Hana sighed. “Yeah, you’re right. I’m sorry.” It was a bad habit she had, but that was no excuse for saying it. “And that’s why you’re so shy?”

Devon shook his head with a small smile. “I’ve always been like this. She just took away something I really liked from me. Forever."

“Did she do anything to Alec?”

He shook his head again and said nothing. Hana tried to think of something else to say, to change the topic. In the silence, she noticed that he was fidgeting. He was twiddling his thumbs, slightly shifting his body, and his eyes kept going back and forth between looking at and away from her. “What is it?”

He collected himself, though he still couldn’t decide where to look. “I mean… apart from the barista, my mother and Alec, you’re the first I’ve served coffee to, and I just wanted to know...”

Hana smiled. “It’s delicious,” she said, and he returned one of his own, no longer looking away from her. She let out a relaxed sigh. Much of the initial awkwardness was gone, though they still clearly had some things to air out. She endeavoured to get him talking more in the hopes of getting more results. “So what else did he teach you?” Devon looked directly at her in response, a twinkle in his eye.

---

Alec wandered the halls, trying not to think about Devon and Hana. He had no doubt he would start talking to her, and a small part of Alec admitted it would be best for the job, but he still didn’t trust her. He couldn’t trust someone who had been Sunset’s lackey. Not after what she did to Devon.

He shook his head and tried to distract himself by thinking of how to pass the time. Again. It was a small wonder he kept walking down the same halls while thinking the same things when he had no idea what he could do by himself.

It was also a small wonder that he bumped into someone with how little focus he had of where he was going. The sounds of crashing and scattering accompanied his trip to the ground, and he opened his eyes to see he was surrounded by streamers and unblown balloons.

“Oh my gosh! I’m sorry!” he heard a voice and a mass of pink appeared in front of him; he couldn’t decide which had come first. “I was carrying all these decorations and was in my own world, thinking about another world where you could change meanies into goodies, and *boom!* I crashed into you! Although it wasn’t really a *boom!*, but a *crash!* would have been redundant!”

Alec was dumbfounded. Her tirade (half of which he couldn’t even comprehend, and the other half sounded like a child) had confounded him, but even the sight of her alone overwhelmed him. She was pink. Alarmingly pink. Her hair, her body, and too much of her clothing were pink, though thankfully her top was white to break it up with blue shoulders to match her eyes.

Her introduction took a moment to digest. “It’s okay, I was in my own world too,” he eventually said, though I don’t think in the same way you were, he thought to himself.

The girl blinked and her entire demeanor changed from concern to the most happiness he had ever seen in one person. “Oh, good! I’m Pinkie Pie! What’s your name?”

Too much pink. “I’m Alec.”

She gasped as if taking in all the air in the room. “Alec? As in Alec Trigg?” He nodded cautiously, getting the feeling that he would regret it. By the look in her smile, he was right to be so. “Your teacher told me you’d be helping set up the Fall Formal! But then she said you were busy.” If Pinkie was bothered by that fact, she didn’t show it. “But wait! You don’t look busy. You look like me when you’re wandering the halls, waiting to crash into someone to do something with!”

Alec rubbed the back of his head. “Well, I was supposed to be, but it kind of got pushed to tomorrow.” He hoped it was tomorrow.

“Oh! So you’re free?” she seemed to look happier, if it was possible. “Then will you pretty please help me?”

He tried to say no, but it stuck itself in his throat. The look on her face – happy, expectant, and almost pleading – struck him deep in his core. He tried to resist, tried to come up with an excuse, but it was futile. Something about her eyes kept him truthful. There was no other way out of it; he had to tell her outright. Somehow, he had to say no.

---

Hana never gave much thought to how many types of coffee there were, or if there were any beyond whatever it was they served in stores . Turns out there were 30, something she was having a hard time believing despite now knowing them all. Though to be fair, she might have actually been having a hard time believing Devon was capable of talking this much.

“... they call it a mocha because the beans are exported from the port city “Mocha” in the Republic of Yem-Yem,” he went on, until he eventually stopped and stared at her. “Why are you looking at me like that?”

She laughed. “I’m sorry, I just didn’t think you had this much talk in you.” He backed down, abashed. She waved his concerns away. “Honestly, I don’t mind. It’s far better than the alternative. If it makes you feel any better, ask me any question. I’ll answer.”

Devon looked up at her, worry in his eyes. He took a deep breath and asked, “why did you stay with Sunset?”

Hana let out a breath of her own. He wasn’t pulling any punches. “Well, it all started when she joined my friend group. She wasn’t always like this, you know. She used to be kind and fun to be around. You remember she won that first Fall Formal completely legitimately? But something got in her and she started acting out every now and then.” She let out a small laugh. “That must have been her Palace developing, or taking effect, or whatever.

“Some of the group were quick to leave, not putting up with any of her behaviour. They were the smart ones. They were also the first victims; the first ‘traitors,’ as she called them. She made it very clear very fast that we were either with her or against her, and it would be best to be with. After that, it became a game. How much each of us was willing to put up with before it would be better to endure the punishment. And I lost.”

Devon looked sad as he looked at her. “You were scared,” he said.

She slowly nodded. “I hope so, because I’m far more scared that there was a worse reason. One I would find much harder to forgive.

“Anyway, let’s not let Sunset drag this conversation,” she said, punctuating her words by slapping the table. “Let’s forget about her and have some fun drinking coffee.” She raised her cup, and Devon did the same. They gestured to each other and took a sip from the still hot, delicious coffee.

---

Somehow, Alec had to learn to say no. How, he had no idea, but he had to find some way. He won’t always be able to rely on excuses, as evidenced by his helping with the setting up of the Fall Formal party.

Speaking of which, it was no wonder he was asked to help; Pinkie was the only other person working on it. There was a brother and sister – from the farm, if their accents were anything to go by – who brought more supplies to them every now and then, but they never stuck around for more than simple chatter, the brother even less so.

Pinkie didn’t seem to mind that she’d be doing it alone without him. She seemed happy enough that he was here for now, even though he insisted he definitely wouldn’t be there tomorrow. Still, as they spent their time decorating the room, although her mood never deflated, she seemed to be expecting something more and more.

“That’s odd,” she eventually said. “Sunset hasn’t come yet.”

Fear jumped through Alec’s body. “Sunset’s coming?”

“She usually does,” the farm girl said, putting down a box of supplies on a table and leaning against it. “She likes to come in and tell us what we’re doing wrong, like she’s some sort of Queen.” Alec couldn’t help but smirk a little. “But she should have been here by now.”

“Yeah, well she’s not around today,” he said. He regretted it as soon as he realised what he said.

“Really? Where? Why? How do you know that?” Pinkie asked, suddenly close to him. The farm girl was looking at him too, the same questions undoubtedly on her mind.

“I don’t know. I just… a hunch?” he gave a smile, hoping she would buy it.

Pinkie stared suspiciously at him for a few seconds longer before she perked up. “Good enough.” The farm girl didn’t seem as accepting of his answer, but said nothing. He decided the best option was to knuckle down until they were finished and he could go.

Thankfully, he didn’t have to wait long. Apparently Pinkie had accommodated for no-one helping her up until this point, and had even prepared in case no-one could help her tomorrow. Nonetheless, she asked him to help one more time and he insisted he would definitely be too busy, though he ended up agreeing to “consider helping again” if he found himself free. He couldn’t tell if she was joking or not when she said she’d keep an eye out for him in case he was, or when she said she’d make no promises about not crashing into him if she found him.

Alec sighed at the thought. He soon found himself at the coffee room he left Devon and Hana in, and when he opened the door he was greeted with the sight of Devon shaking, his face red and bearing a smile that split it in two, and letting out small squeaks. He couldn’t see Hana’s face; she had her back to him, but also her face was buried in her hands and seemingly trying to dig itself deeper into them. He heard Devon say, “that didn’t happen,” between his giggles, and Hana replied with a muffled, “I wish it didn’t.

“You two seem to be getting along,” Alec said, not sure how to feel about it. He was happy to finally see Devon finally talking to someone else; he just wished it wasn’t Hana.

“It’s a start,” Devon said quietly, his giggles calming down. “What have you been up to?”

Alec sighed. “Doing exactly what I’ve been trying not to do –” he moved a chair to the table and collapsed into it “– setting up the Fall Formal. If we can’t enter Sunset’s Palace again tomorrow, we need to stay away from school. I can’t be caught here again.”

“But what about all my gym homework?” Devon asked. “Won’t you help me do that in the gym afterschool?” Alec rolled his eyes, a small smile on his face.

“I’m sure it’ll work out,” Hana said. “Did Sunset come by, tell you everything was wrong and order you to fix it?” Alec shook his head. “Then she’s gone for sure, though who knows where. But there’s no way she’ll miss the Fall Formal, and there’s no way she’ll have it looking how someone else wants it. She’ll be back tomorrow to tell them how to finish it.”

“Well,” Hana said, standing up and stretching, “I guess the best thing to do is go our separate ways until tomorrow. Same time?” Alec gave a reluctant nod and she left.

“You guys seemed to be getting along,” Alec said once he was sure she couldn’t hear them.

Devon nodded. “She’s nice.”

“She’s Sunset’s lackey,” Alec tried to warn him, but he was quickly interrupted.

“She was Sunset’s lackey. Big difference.”

“She was Sunset’s lackey until literally yesterday. I don’t see the difference.”

Devon smiled. “I think you’ll see it tomorrow.”

Author's Note:

I am thou, thou art I...
Thou hast acquired a new vow.

It shall become the wings of rebellion
that breaketh thy chains of captivity.

With the birth of the Lovers Persona,
I have obtained the winds of blessing that
shall lead to freedom and new power...