From Ashes, Acid, and Absinthe

by Hope

Chapter 6. Mistakes Were Made

The repainted white school bus rolled into the snowy mountain town of Mukwonago with a hissing of brakes, and Starlight led a handful of people off it and onto the grass of the park in the middle of town.

All around them, families were eating picnic meals and relaxing in the shade, utterly unaware of her.

Some of the cultists departed her side immediately, going to pick up supplies and groceries, their orders given by Starlight without words or effort.

“I’m looking for lone men, too young for the draft but old enough not to be missed from their families,” Starlight said aloud as she walked through the park, eyes drifting across the locals in their little groups until she spotted a man sitting on a park bench, watching the families idly as though wishing he could sit with them. “Like that one, see him? Men can be pretty dim, but think very highly of themselves, easy to make them feel they’re the ones calling the shots.”

Claire nodded attentively, hands clasped behind her back.

“So we want to convince him to come have a drink with us, be friendly and open, and once we get back to the bus, I’ll induct him. I’m certain he’ll be happier,” Starlight said casually, looking away and scanning for more targets.

Claire took her word for it and stepped up to the young man.

“Um… excuse me,” she said with a nervous smile, tucking her hair behind her ear. “Are you thirsty?”

“Huh?” the man said, looking up at her as his eyes slowly focused on her. He was wearing a grimy oversized t-shirt over a ragged pair of bell bottom pants. “Am I thirsty? Like, I’m always thirsty.” He reached over to a pile of papers sitting beside him on the bench and removed a page to hand to Claire. “My dog is missing. He’s like, my best friend in the whole world. We had a fight over a pickle sherbet sundae and...have you seen him?”

Claire tried to make some sense out of the flyer she had been given. The central xeroxed photo of a large animal was almost completely unintelligible, largely because it had been taken using a Polaroid while the animal was trying to knock over the photographer.

“Oh that’s a shame,” Claire said as she tilted her head and tried to read the flier. “Um… Well, maybe my friends could help you look for him? If you come with me, Starlight is my best friend, she knows all sorts of tricks for finding people.”

She turned to gesture back at Starlight, who was almost to the bus.

“Oh, OK,” the young man said brightly, standing up. “I really appreciate this! Name’s Rogers, by the way. Like the Mister.”

“Mister Rogers,” she chuckled, grinning. “I like that. Hey Starlight! We’ve got a lost dog!” Claire said as they approached her.

Starlight turned back, smiling a little as she took in the pair.

“Oh dear… A lost dog? Well, how long has he been missing?” Starlight asked politely.

“Three days!” Rogers wailed. “I’m so worried for him.”

Claire pouted at Starlight, who looked back to her with a slight air of incredulity, before she sighed, and gave in.

“Well… Have you tried praying for him to return?” Starlight asked, leading them back to the bus. “I know some prayers that actually work.”

“Yeah, well...wait, what? Are...are you talking about magic? Isn’t...isn’t that...blasphemous?” He looked nervously around him, then up, just in case God was listening in on their conversation.

“Not if you’re praying to God when you do it,” Starlight said honestly and openly, as she slipped her hand into her pocket and pulled out a silver cross, from the small cluster of holy symbols within.

She gestured him closer, and pulled her bag down to the bus steps, drawing forth a green bottle and a wine glass, putting a few drops into the glass and offering it to him.

“So, you pray to Jesus, or God, to find your dog, then you take the sacrament, you drink the wine, and God may answer your prayers,” she said as Claire stood next to them, smiling eagerly.

“Huh.” He scratched his head as he looked at both the cross and the glass. “Um, that sounds right to me.” He made the sign of a cross on his chest with a finger and bowed his head. “Hey, uh...God? It’s me, Rogers. It’s...been kind of a while, and I’m sorry for forgetting about you for so long. Like, there’s this dog, see? He doesn’t believe in you, but I’m sure if he’s back with me, I can like...take him to church or something. So, could you find it in your heart to find him for me? I’d be really grateful.” A few seconds passed as he looked around him. “Oh, and amen.”

Starlight, smiling beatifically, reached out and handed him the wineglass.

The young man grabbed it, and then threw back the small amount of liquid again with a single gulp. “Ah!” he exclaimed, looking down at the hand holding the glass—there was a small fracture in the glass, which had cut into the side of his thumb when he drank. “Uh, sorry about staining your glass,” he said, gingerly handing it back. He then sucked on his thumb to stop the bleeding.

Starlight took the glass and set it into her bag, before looking back to the young man. Her eyes briefly changed color.

At a nearby supermarket, the automatic door opened and the manager walked out, holding a dog nearly as big as he was by the scruff of its neck and its backside. “Now get out, and don’t come back!” he yelled, tossing the animal to the pavement right in front of Rogers.

“It...it worked!” Rogers exclaimed. “Thank ya, God!” he exclaimed to the heavens.

“You’re welcome,” Starlight said smoothly, before stepping aside, leaving the stairs into the bus open, an inviting entrance, where Rogers and his dog would be safe.

“Yeah, sure…” the man said, his voice somewhat distant. “As long as you don’t have a no-dogs policy, I’m in. Come on,” he addressed the canine, “I’ve found us a new place to live.”

The dog looked at the man for a few moments before mutely following him onto the bus.

From inside the bus, Sunset Shimmer pursed her lips in thought. She had watched the entire scene, but she was not entirely sure what she had seen. At least, she hoped it wasn’t what she thought she had seen.

---

Ellen sat across the campfire from Sunset, squinting at her, examining her, a rattlesnake plush held to her own chest with both arms hugging herself.

“You’re not braindead like the rest of the dummies that follow Starlight,” Ellen grumbled.

Well, maybe I at least got to choose to be here. That’s what Sunset wanted to say. But as always, she knew to keep a tight control over what she said around either of Marcus’ daughters. So instead she chuckled weakly. “I recognize that line of thought,” she said lightly. “‘I’m the only smart girl in the room,’ eh?” From the look on Ellen and Mary Jo’s faces, she knew she was on to something. “Yeah, that was me, oh about seven years ago. That was fun, feeling oh so superior to the rest of my species. And collecting an overwhelming supply of evidence to back that belief up. So sure, go ahead, feel superior, if that gets you through the day.”

“And then comes the lecture…” Ellen said quietly, but still intending Sunset to hear.

“Now I grew out of it eventually.” Sunset sighed before gesturing to the other followers of Starlight out of earshot. “Most of these folks got themselves into trouble from thinking too much—that’s why they’re here. Between you and me, I do agree that most of them should be thinking a little more, though.”

“So are you gonna overthrow Starlight and tell them all to think for themselves?” Ellen asked with an eager smile at the idea of an assumed bloody revolution.

“Ooh...power. Hm...nah. Running this group doesn’t interest me. I’ve got...I think the equivalent expression is ‘bigger fish to fry’? Yes, that.”

“Marcus says you’re a traveler,” Mary Jo chimed in. “You don’t have an accent.”

Sunset laughed again. “Oh I have an accent. It just happens to be from the one other place with the exact same accent as this place.”

Mary Jo squinted at her suspiciously, but Ellen seemed less troubled by it.

“Soooo like… Are you from Canada?” Ellen asked curiously.

“Can-a-da. Isn’t that in Asia?”

Ellen giggled, but Mary-Jo just got more suspicious looking.

“Noooo, no! It’s north of America. You must be from a place with bad schools,” Ellen accused her.

“Or homeschooled like us,” Mary Jo muttered bitterly.

Sunset shook her head. “There’s nothing north of here but the frigid wastes. Overrun by yaks, I think. And yeah, definitely homeschooled.” She was trying her best to hold in her grin.

Mary Jo lost interest at the bit about yaks and went back to the funky looking stick she’d found, while Ellen had never been more engaged.

“Yaks are the big fluffy ones with horns, right?! I saw them on Mutual of Omaha’s Wild Kingdom.”

“Yeah, that’s them. Real big guys. Bad tempers like you wouldn’t believe!” She glanced over at Mary Jo. “I’m sure you two must be dying of boredom. I’d tell you some fairytales, but I think you’re just a little too old.” She got up. “Maybe I can find a Monopoly set around here somewhere…”

“I like fairy—” Ellen huffed as Mary Jo elbowed her in the ribs.

“Monopoly, yeah,” Mary Jo snapped. “Sure.”

Sunset found the battered box and began to set the board up on the little table in the center of the room. The thimble was an actual thimble. She held up the substitute for the terrier, an arts and crafts project that honestly looked more like a pony. “Ah, this is adorable!” she exclaimed. “Dibs!” Then she took a closer look at it, and found that it looked exactly like King Sombra, right down to a piece of red string sticking out of its head. “On second thought, I think I’ll go with the thimble, instead.”

“I’ll take the horse,” Mary Jo said, holding out her hand.

Sunset used a pair of scissors to snip off the “horn”. “Just to be safe,” she said as she handed it over.

“Is there a racecar?” Ellen asked, her elbows on her knees, hands on her cheeks, looking for all the world like she was one minor disappointment away from pouting.

Sunset looked around, and dug a Matchbox ambulance out of another box. “This is the closest I can find. Ambulances are pretty fast, though.”

It easily dwarfed the pony and the thimble.

Ellen smiled a little, setting the ambulance on the start square, before the ground and building around them rumbled slightly.

Ellen immediately, and without any hesitation, crawled under the table and clasped her hands behind her neck.

Sunset looked around to try and find a source of the sound, and not spotting anything immediately, crouched down to be at eye level with Ellen. “Are you alright?” she asked.

“Haven’t you ever had Earthquake drills?” Mary Jo asked, admiring her little pony figurine.

“Well I usually rely on the ea...experts to tell me how bad it is,” Sunset admitted.

Ellen had her eyes closed, but seemed… calm. She wasn’t crying, just curled up under the table, waiting for something uncontrollable.

Sunset changed her crouch into a sit. “I guess we’ll wait it out,” she said. She looked around at the sturdy walls. “I think this building will stand..”

The cabin door opened, and one of the cultists stepped inside, spotting Sunset with a nervous smile.

“Alice? Starlight needs your assistance if you have a moment.”

“I’m coming,” Mary Jo said, standing and seeming to surprise even herself with the declaration.

“Are you going to be okay?” Sunset asked Ellen. “One of us should stay with her.”

Ellen looked up, and then looked at Mary Jo. They seemed to share something, briefly, before Ellen got out from under the table and took Mary Jo’s hand, hiding in her shadow like she had when they first arrived.

“We’ll both go,” Mary Jo declared.

Sunset led the pair out of the cabin, and towards the church, which was about half finished.

The roof wasn’t yet covered, open rafters letting in the sunlight into the walled off area: a flat stone platform where the Altar would eventually be. On that Altar Starlight was kneeling, facing away from Sunset and the kids.

But strewn all around her on the wooden floor were beakers, mortars and pestles, even a battery-powered grinder and a bunsen burner.

The bags and bags of Peyote which were open and spilling out onto the floor looked depleted, Starlight had clearly been working on purifying them into something usable.

“Starlight?” Sunset said gently, positioning herself behind and to the right of the young woman. She was close enough to reach out and touch her, and far enough to run away if necessary. She had, after all, seen some pretty bad trips.

“I hate Peyote,” the woman growled, her voice rough and low, almost not even sounding like her.

She coughed, and black mist swirled around her face before dissipating.

“I’m not connected… It’s too natural for me.”

Starlight turned and just barely looked at Sunset, her face still hidden from the girls. Her eyes were black with glowing purple pupils, and she had a nosebleed, her veins standing out bright on her face. It looked like she was straining herself, just sitting there.

“Siphon?” she rasped hopefully.

Sunset took in a couple deep breaths. “Horseapples,” she muttered under breath. This was black magic, and if there was one thing Princess Celestia told her over and over again never to mess with, it was black magic.

Never mind the fact trying to mess with black magic was exactly how Sunset wound up on Earth. No in fact, that makes a much better point—black magic was so messed up that it sent innocent Equestrians to Earth!

But Starlight was in trouble. It didn’t matter how suspicious Sunset had grown over Starlight’s activities recently, because at the end of the day, Sunset thought her friend had a good heart.

Sunset took in a deep breath, before letting it out in a huff. “Girls, this might get a little messy. So...at least try to keep your distance. I know better than to try to order you two around.” She didn’t bother to look back to see if her words got through to them or not.

“Awww, did our little Channel take a sip and not like what she got?” Mary Jo asked, her voice low and cruel.

“You know what? If she explodes, I’m not blocking you from absorbing the blast.” She then walked up to Starlight and raised a hand, nerving herself to go through with this.

Then she firmly grasped Starlight by the shoulder and spun her towards her, putting her face right up in front of Starlight’s.

There wasn’t any mortal emotion in Starlight’s eyes. No fear or anger, just a cold emptiness in inhuman pupils. She beheld Sunset, and waited, clenched fists trembling.

“I got you, Human,” Sunset assured her. When nothing happened, she shook her head. “Of course it’s going to be through the mouth. Why did I expect anything else?”

So she kissed her.

The pain was exquisite. No physical sensation, or bodily reaction. It was like her soul was being sandblasted and polished smooth by the friction. The black magic flowed out of Starlight and she fainted, collapsing to the floor of the church with a sigh, while Sunset stood tall, filled with power and the pain that had been ripping at her ever since that night when she’d first seen callous death on the planet called Earth.

Sunset shook, fighting to convert the darkness into something safe. She didn’t know what to do, so she did what Celestia did: she lectured the evil in her mind into submission. She’d save feeling stupid for later. Only then did she dare to release it.

Starlight blinked as the darkness left her eyes, as much the lack of light as the hints of corruption in everything she saw. She looked at Sunset, but she couldn’t see her, the glow being so intense as to be nearly blinding.

The girls certainly couldn’t see anything clearly through the glow.

But, with an effort, Starlight could see something. A silhouette, with flowing hair. She squinted to try and see better, and gasped at what she finally could see, in the brief moment before she became human again.

Sunset felt drained, so very drained. But she needed to be sure that nobody else was hurt. So she turned around, to see all of the magic rushing into the two sisters.

When they finished twitching, Mary Jo opened her eyes, but they were Marcus’s this time, as he smiled and took in Sunset through his daughter.

“You can convert it. Excellent. I’ll be there in a few days.”

Then, he was gone, and Mary Jo was blinking at Sunset with an expression of confusion, holding her sister’s hand tightly. “What happened to your ears?”

“What?” asked Sunset, reaching up. But all she found were her own pair of human ears.

“N...never mind.”

“Thank you,” Starlight whispered from where she lay on the floor.

“What were you thinking?” Sunset muttered in bitter disappointment, clenching her hands into fists. She then looked down callously at the young woman who had exposed her to the most-dangerous man on the planet. “I’m surrounded by idiots,” she snarled, before stalking back to the cabin, slamming the door shut behind her.

Starlight, despite being exhausted, slowly got up after watching Sunset go. She stumbled more than walked her way into the cabin.

Sunset was consulting a map, memorizing the landmarks. “‘In order to resist evil, you first have to experience it,’” Sunset quoted from memory, without looking up. “That’s what my mentor told me. And I said to myself, ‘Oh, I’ve been naughty plenty of times, I can handle it.’ But I was wrong, I didn’t know a thing about evil before I came here. But I’ve experienced plenty of it since I arrived. It looks like I’m pretty experienced now. You on the other hand absolutely can’t handle it. Which is too bad. Because I’m leaving.” She turned around, prepared to walk right out of the cabin.

“If you leave, then you’ll never have a chance to seize the casting as it is performed, and return to your world,” Starlight whispered, leaning against the wall, hugging herself.

“Oh, don’t try to use your honeyed arguments on me, Missy!” Sunset retorted. “From what I’ve seen, I’m not entirely sure that you’re substantially better than him!”

Starlight looked away, lips pressed into a thin line and tears in her eyes. “Maybe I can get better,” she whispered, pleading as if it was out of her control. “I… I want to be better.”

Sunset looked around her incredulously. “Then do something! You’re free on this world! That’s one of the very few advantages of being in a place without Harmony! Nobody’s forcing you to be bad or good.”

“No I’m not!” Starlight roared in response, staggering closer. “I’m not free! I never have been! Maybe you grew up in a land of magic where being good was just… there, always there at the edge of everything you’ve ever done, but I was raised by a raised fist and a cruel word, and until today, I had never felt harmony!” she sobbed, finally looking away. “When you took that natural magic out of me, I felt it. I…” she stopped, losing the words, falling silent and weak.

Sunset grabbed Starlight by the wrists, refusing to allow her to slump down. “You felt Harmony? I…” She let go of Starlight, looking into the distance in awe with unfocused eyes.

“I felt the joy I have brought people, and all their pain too,” Starlight whispered. “Not just one, or the other. Not… Not a punishment. It was just… There. Roger’s joy as he hugs his dog. His emptiness, as I told him to get on the bus. Facts, but… Beautiful facts. I felt how much better I could be, and for once in my life, I wasn’t being taunted with it. I just had to reach out…”

She held a hand out, as though grasping something in front of her.

“That better me was right there. So close...”

Sunset turned her head to look helplessly at Starlight. “Marcus is coming back. If I had the time, I could finally get the hang of this, and we’d be able to stand up to him. But now...why does happiness keep slipping from my…” She held up her hands, looking as if she couldn’t even remember what they were called.

“He’s mortal,” Starlight said softly as she slipped a stiletto switchblade dagger from her clothes and held it out to Sunset.

It shimmered purple, and carved by hand into the blade were three words.

“All My Loathing,” Starlight said out loud. “I put it… here. For him. I don’t… I’m trapped unless he goes. But now I know I can’t do it alone. I’ll die.”

Sunset’s eyes welled up. “Please don’t ask me to do that. It’s all I have left, all that keeps me from being the worst kind of you. If I do that...I don’t think I deserve to go back if I do that.”

“Then help me do it,” she pleaded, closing the blade. “Put me in position, and my rage won’t fail me. But alone? Alone… that stuff will own me. I won’t be anything but magic. And magic… doesn’t care,” she said, haunted as she looked down at her hands.

Sunset sighed. “And then you’d throw away everything you just accomplished. And besides, I can’t be sure he couldn’t take me over as easily as he did his girls—I’m human here, with all of the human vulnerabilities. On my world, there would be a counterspell, but here…? That’s what I’m afraid of, Starlight: that he’ll use me to do what he wants. And that might include killing you.”

“Blood,” Starlight said as she collapsed onto the couch. “He works from blood. He doesn’t have my blood, but he has theirs. My ritual… I bond people to my blood, there’s a drop of it in the absinthe. That’s how it works. No counterspell, no resisting it, no freedom… Ever,” she whispered as she sat down and looked at her switchblade, contemplating her own harmony, and whether killing would be too much for her, if all her rage had been stored for nothing.

Sunset sat down hard into the nearest chair, her face in her hands. “It’s dark magic,” she grumbled. “It’s aaallll dark magic. This world can’t even seem to sustain the other kinds for more than a few seconds at a time.” She thought for a few moments.

“I wish we could,” Starlight whimpered, as tears started streaming down her face. “I want… I want magic that feels good,” she admitted, lips trembling. “I want magic that makes me happy, that doesn’t…. eat away inside of me, but this is all we have, Sunset. Even this...harmony I just experienced, it’s just so...painful. And wonderful. And I can’t pull the two apart. So...this is it. Just… just the worst kind of thing, for the worst kind of world.”

Sunset got up with purpose, grabbed Starlight, and kissed her again. And shared some of the unicorn magic she had kept for herself.

Starlight clung to Sunset, gasping as the magic shimmered across her mind, and some dim spark in her heart was reignited. The switchblade dropped from her hand, forgotten on the carpet.

“W… what?” she asked weakly. “What was that?” Starlight asked, putting a hand to her racing heart. “Like… You… fixed something in me.”

“It needed fixing,” Sunset said simply. “That was my job before: find and fix the little problems so the Princess could worry about the big ones. That was the second kind of magic, by the way. We...we just called it ‘magic’, since that was the one native to my species.”

“Why did you do that?” Starlight asked. “I saw that make you weaker. You were going to leave a few minutes ago… What made you do that for me?” She blinked up at Sunset in awe.

“I just remembered,” Sunset said, her eyes sparkling. “Dark magic is pathetic, compared to real magic, and I just proved I can summon that kind just now. I think there’s a small chance that we can pull this off.” Her eyes hardened as she thought about what Marcus could do with dark magic, what Sombra had come so close to accomplishing. “And if that doesn’t work, I’ll absolutely help you slip your dagger into his heart.”

She didn’t mean it. At least, she was pretty sure she didn’t mean it. Violence was never the answer on Equestria. But...this wasn’t Equestria, was it? There was no amount of magic big enough to generate a sustainable Harmony Field on a world with this many intelligent life forms on it. For a brief moment, Alice and Sunset warred for supremacy in her mind. The ever practical version of herself won out in the end: Decide on using the dagger when all hope is lost. Don’t let the thought corrupt you before then.

Starlight watched silently as Sunset warred with herself—it was something she was well familiar going through herself. She coughed softly when it looked like Sunset’s thoughts had gone as far as they were going to go. “Then…Then I guess I’ve got some work to do.”

All My Hate, the switchblade which lay on the carpet in front of Sunset, hummed softly with dark magic. It was potent, and eager to be used.

---

Ellen looked back and forth between the copse of trees before her and her sister. “It’s not just me, right?” she asked. “The cabin absolutely was right there, right?”

And then she looked again as Sunset and Starlight walked out of the cabin.

---

Later that night in the church, Starlight resumed the work she was required to do.

Fifty pounds of cactus which she first stripped the skin from, before grinding into a fine paste. The paste was pressed to split fluids from solids, and then the solids were dried, the magical potency extracted through a sieve of copper threads.

She evaporated the liquids slowly, keeping the temperature low and just barely creating a steam that filled the half built church with the pungent smell of the earth, and something strange within it.

But by the time the cult was serving dinner at the fire pit outside of the cabin, Starlight had abandoned her vest and her hat, and her sweat streaked face at least held a smile, while she very gently and carefully ferried three glass bottles into the church’s basement. She set a guard and finally walked over to the campfire to sit down heavily next to Sunset, trying to stifle a yawn.

“Probably potent enough to level a city,” she mumbled to Sunset proudly, quiet enough that noone else would overhear.

Sunset rolled her eyes. “Invent a formula for un-levelling a city, and I’d be impressed. But yes, that should do it.”

“Okay, okay, I get it,” Starlight agreed, eyes sparkling a bit as she got a bowl of stew. “Creation and healing over destruction, I’m sure I’ll figure that stuff out someday. Maybe I can figure out how to grow plants in a certain way,” she pondered.

The girls sat down across the fire from them, talking to each other about their music, a plush rattlesnake again tucked under Ellen’s arm.

“So, when is somebody going to pass the potatoes?” asked Sunset. She reached forward, her hand clenched a bit like a hoof.

Starlight gasped.

“What?” asked Sunset.

Starlight looked around at her followers. “Oh, nothing,” she said, deciding to bide her time.

---

That time came when Sunset was getting ready for bed. Starlight stepped into the room, and closed and locked the door behind her.

“Hey,” Sunset said nervously. “Just because we kissed a couple of times doesn’t mean that I think about you that way. I don’t think I can think romantically in this form anyway. A rather unfortunate limitation, if you ask me.”

“Oh, I wouldn’t assume you would be attracted to me,” Starlight said casually. “After all, your kind usually go after young virgins, right?”

Sunset reached up to tap the tip of her non-existent horn and then, after a thought, moved it out to where human’s conceptions of unicorn horns extended. Sort of like if she was an alicorn. That put a smile on her face. “I knew the guessing game would have to end eventually,” she said. “Oh, and everypony’s a metaphorical virgin on my world, so I’m not even going to correct you on that last part.”

“Oh no,” Starlight snickered, covering her mouth with one hand, before biting her lip. “No no… Every…. Pony?”

Sunset swore. “I knew I’d screw up on the pronouns sooner or later. And yes, pony. As in ridiculously cute. But you knew that already.”

Starlight wheezed as she put her forehead on the wall and both her hands clasped together to her mouth.

“Okay but… God, there’s such a huge difference between seeing a magical glowing spirit in the form of a small horse and then having them tell you they’re called ponies!” she insisted.

“That’s racist,” Sunset said as seriously as she could, before bursting out in a loud guffaw. “I...I almost said that with a straight face.”

“Then I’m firmly racist,” Starlight replied, laughing along with her. “Okay, okay….”

Sunset cracked her knuckles. “Alright, this won’t take too much, so I might as well try it.” She put her hands to her temples and concentrated.

As Starlight watched, the motes of dust in the air began to rearrange themselves and change colors. In a few seconds, there was a semi-transparent pony sitting on the bed next to the human Sunset Shimmer. “There, did that work?” the two of them asked in unison.

Starlight walked closer, no longer laughing but awestruck as she kneeled next to the bed and reached out, her hand brushing the ghostly unicorn’s mane ever so carefully.

“Yeah,” she whispered.

“Ah,” Sunset said, opening her eyes. “It’s good to see me again.” She looked at the way the pony leaned into Starlight’s hands. “You know, I’m seriously considering taking you back with me when all of this is done,” she mused. “Equestria really could use a human with hands. You could probably take a couple hundred years off of the Princess with just one massage session.”

Starlight chuckled a little, but her eyes were fixed on the pony still.

“I don’t think that I’d last long, even if I want to explore a world full of ponies, it sounds glorious,” she said softly. “I’ve been human too long. Maybe you could find some kids. Take them, they’d grow into it.”

Sunset sighed, as the pony faded away. “Now why did you have to make this serious? I can’t just take ‘some’ kids. I’d want to take all of them.”

“I’m a naturally serious person,” Starlight said with a wry smile. “And I dunno, kidnap every kid from Earth and take them to a better world? Doesn’t sound toooo evil to me.”

“Believe it or not, the law of supply and demand also works on perfect little pony worlds. Also, if I did that Earth would declare war on Equestria. And if there’s any race capable of inventing trans-dimensional travel just to beat up on some poor innocent ponies, it’s you guys. No offense, Starlight.”

“My human instincts want to point out that just saying ‘poor innocent ponies’ makes me wonder what heinous activities ponies get up to,” Starlight said, smirking while she stood and brushed off her knees.

Sunset turned around and picked up the yarn version of King Sombra, and handed it over to Starlight. “Oh, we can get pretty bad. It’s just that your scale is so, so much wider than ours. I’m pretty sure you can also be much better than us—it’s just that I’ve never actually witnessed that kind of goodness in person. In pony. Whatever.”

Starlight looked over the little pony as she sat down on the bed, frowning a bit.

“You probably had a heart attack when you found out about the World Wars.”

“I dunno,” Sunset said, putting her chin in one hand. “The second one eventually boiled down to being a pure good-vs-evil scenario. Well, as close as humans can get. We’re used to that. It’s kinda weird—you have so many crimes we don’t have, but then we’ve got attempted genocide. Only twice, but any number greater than zero is really unacceptable.”

"Attempted Genocide," Starlight mulled over the words. "What, the warm colored unicorns against the cool colored unicorns?"

“Oh, sorry about that. We’ve got more than just unicorns on the planet that the unicorns named after themselves. Pretty much any fantasy creature you can think of? We probably infected your minds with it. Maybe. Assuming that’s how it worked. And even then it gets screwed up so you confuse the alicorns with the unicorns. So more like the unicorns trying to magic the earth ponies and pegasi out of existence.”

Starlight pondered it all, before squinting at Sunset.

“Okay, so cute little ponies waging war, fair enough. I still find your pony form… very cute, very huggable. I bet we could fully shapeshift you if we used a bit of Octarine.”

Sunset smiled. “That would be nice. But...I still have these ‘street smarts’ for a reason, and they’re not to ‘cute’ every human I meet into doing my bidding.”

“It’d be effective,” Starlight nodded firmly. “Very effective. You’d rule the world within a week.”

“If that was true, why isn’t Mickey Mouse your President for Life?”

Starlight laughed. “Alright. But… Maybe when we’re done with this, before you go home… We could spend a day hanging out as your real self?”

“Sure. I’ll definitely put that play date in my calendar. In pen, even.”

Starlight hesitated, her hand on the doorframe. "Promise?" She asked softly.

“Promise,” Sunset replied.

Comments

[redandready45]

Sunset smiled. “That would be nice. But...I still have these ‘street smarts’ for a reason, and they’re not to ‘cute’ every human I meet into doing my bidding.”

Sunset, that's the most obvious strategy in the world!

Simply give humans your pony eyes, and you'll conquer Earth in a week.