Day 2 (Ponies on Earth): Chapter 7: Stan Lee Cameo (P. Twilight Sparkle, P. Applejack, Sunset Shimmer)
P. Twilight Sparkle—Earth, Canterlot General Hospital. Before the dawn of Day Two.
The door to the hospital room opened, and Shining Armor stepped inside. He was still wearing his police uniform, and it stank to high heaven. “I drove straight here from the conference,” he told his parents, who were sitting in chairs in a corner of the room. “Fourteen hours, but other than Chicago it was a straight shot. How’s she doing?”
His girlfriend Cadance looked up at him from her chair at the patient’s side. “She hasn’t changed since we called you,” she said quietly. “No better, but at least she’s no worse.”
Shining Armor stepped over to stand beside Cadance. “She looks so fragile,” he remarked. He wondered why Cadance’s chair was set a full foot away from the bed.
Twilight Sparkle lay in that bed, tucked under the covers, with the exception of her left arm. Her eyes were covered with a thick band of gauze, and additional bandages adorned her forehead and face. There were big ugly bruises on her left cheek and on her left shoulder. An IV tube connected the inside of her left arm with a bag of fluid hanging from a stand.
It was then that Shining noticed the lack of a characteristic sound: Twilight’s heartbeat being emitted electronically from a vital signs monitor. There was no monitor, and no wires taped to her. Shining took in the look of the entire room in shock. “Where are we?” he asked at last. “This looks like a room out of World War II!” The only electrically-powered item in the entire room was the slowly flickering fluorescent light in the ceiling; even the clock on the nightstand was a wind-up. There wasn’t even a hydraulic lift under the bed—you had to operate a rotary crank to manually raise or lower it.
“Good guess,” said a doctor, walking into the room with a traditional paper file. “This room was in fact created as a set for the film Danger Hour. When it looked like the film was going to be a dud, Producer Canter Zoom had it converted into an operational hospital room and had it donated to the hospital with so much fanfare, we couldn’t turn him down, despite it being impossible to wire with enough electricity to run anything. I remember him countering that maybe we could use it in the case of a simultaneous failure of the power supply and our generators. And now...she’s making us use it. I’m Doctor Oath.” He had pale yellow skin and brown hair.
“Shining Armor, Twilight’s brother. Cadance mentioned that there was something unusual going on with her?”
Dr. Oath shook his head. “Now that’s the understatement of the century! What’s ‘going on’ with your sister is completely unprecedented in the history of medical science. Luckily, it appears to have absolutely no negative effect on her recovery.”
“What’s going on?”
“Well, before I start listing the impossibilities, I might as well start with a demonstration. Hold your hand a couple of inches over her head.”
Shining gave the doctor a confused glance, but did as he was told. “Woah,” he said after a few seconds. “My hand is heating up, but it feels like it’s coming from the inside. And the hairs on my arm are standing up.” He withdrew his hand and looked it over. The effects had stopped as soon as he was far enough away from Twilight.
The doctor sighed. “Twilight Sparkle is emitting energy from her head, of types that nobody has ever heard of before. Just now, your hand was being microwaved.”
“What?!” Shining looked back and forth between the doctor and the patient. “Even if that was possible, how can she not be affected?”
“I don’t know,” Dr. Oath admitted. “Nothing that she does has a negative effect upon herself, or any living being. Now electronics, on the other hand...We tried to x-ray her head, and the machine gave off a puff of blue smoke before completely dying. Not exploding, mind you...just dying. The tech later said that every single capacitor in the machine had popped at once. The same thing happened when we tried to perform an MRI; I had the foresight to use our spare machine, the one that only worked once every three times we turned it on. It popped all its capacitors as well. She blocks cell phones for a twenty foot radius.”
Shining Armor pulled out his cell phone and checked. Indeed, he had zero bars. “Although, I never get good reception in a hospital.”
“True,” the doctor admitted.
“Hey, here’s a new one,” said Twilight’s father Night Light, consulting his own cell phone. “My battery was 80% last night, and now it’s 100.”
Doctor Oath flipped open the chart he was holding to write that down.
“Do I need to worry about having this around her?” Shining asked, referring to his phone.
“Not so long as you’re either holding it, or it’s in your pocket,” the doctor told him. “A nurse put hers down on the night table, and we needed a stainless steel spatula to scrape it off.”
“I...I don’t understand,” Shining said, looking between the doctor and his parents. “I mean, we all knew that Twilight was an extraordinary girl, who would one day change the world. But I saw her science experiment, and there’s no way a model earth with a nine-volt motor to rotate it could cause...this!”
“There were dozens of witnesses,” Cadance told him, “including myself. All she did was put her head in an oven.” On seeing Shining’s horrified look, she reviewed her words. “No, I mean she stuck her head in her neighbor’s experimental oven, which then blew up in her face.”
“And it wasn’t some kind of strange space oven,” Twilight’s mother Twilight Velvet said, with a completely straight face. “Twilight had never touched it before the accident.”
Shining sighed as he took all this in. “Have you told anybody else about this? Brought in experts from out of state? Called in the Church?”
“Her condition is stable,” the doctor said. “Bringing in anyone else stands a good chance of changing her life forever. Your parents thought it best to wait until she wakes up, so that she can have a say in that decision.”
“At least for now,” Twilight Velvet added. “If she gets worse, or if she stays under for more than a few days, then I definitely think we should ask for help.”
Shining shook his head. “I...I don’t know what you should do, so I’ll defer to your judgment.” He looked down at Twilight with a note of bemusement. “Although if she does get turned into a lab rat, you can bet that she would end up leading the team to study herself within a month.” He looked back up at the doctor. “Do you have any idea when she’s going to wake up?”
“None,” Doctor Oath replied. “We don’t even know why she went into a coma in the first place.”
“And the eyes?”
The doctor furrowed his brow. “The damage is extremely severe on the left side, less so on the right. She’ll only be able to see out of one eye, for the rest of her life.”
“An eyepatch,” Shining said.
“I know!” Cadance exclaimed. “It’s extremely morbid to think about, but the idea of Twilight in a lab coat with an eyepatch...just seems right.”
“You want to know what’s really morbidly funny,” Shining said, walking over to stand beside Cadance, so he could look over at his parents. “This whole thing feels like something that would happen to her. I expect her to wake up and now she’s Jean Grey from the X-Men.”
Twilight Velvet’s face went ashen. “This is just like the start of the Dark Phoenix Saga,” she said.
The rest of the family, all of them huge nerds, knew exactly what she was talking about.
There were no further developments in Twilight’s case in Day Two.
Cadance, after several hours of indecision, finally returned to Crystal Prep to work, starting with catching up on her enormous backlog of phone calls. Many of the parents of the other Science Fair students wanted to make sure that whatever happened to Twilight Sparkle wasn’t infectious. And Fluttershy’s parents hesitantly informed her that they had obtained the help they needed from the Church. Cadance had seen no reason to inquire further on the matter, and the Shys were glad they didn’t have to talk on the subject—or any subject—any longer than necessary.
Shining Armor finally took a shower.
P. Applejack—Earth, Apple Ranch. Before the dawn.
When Applejack woke up and discovered that she was still human, she was overjoyed.
“Wake up, Little Sister,” she said after bursting into Apple Bloom’s room. “It’s the start of a wonderful day!”
“Is school canceled today?” Apple Bloom asked, rubbing an eye with one hand.
“Well...alright, it’s a mostly wonderful day,” Applejack said. She then turned and skipped down the stairs, whistling a happy tune.
Downstairs, she helped her mother set the dining room table for breakfast, and then kissed the forehead of Granny Smith when she hobbled into the room.
“Land’s sake, Girl!” Granny commented. “What’s got you so bubbly?”
“Just...” Applejack looked around, to see Buttercup serving breakfast to Big Mac and Bright Mac as Apple Bloom slid into her seat. “Having the whole family together. I’ve learned to really appreciate that recently.”
Bright Mac reached over to tussle Applejack’s hair as she sat down. He didn’t say anything else and he didn’t need to—Applejack knew it was one of the ways he expressed his love for her.
“Apple Bloom, how many times have I told you: no phones on the table,” Buttercup warned her daughter.
“But Ma, the second Tangled trailer just dropped last night!” Apple Bloom exclaimed, her eyes still on the screen.
“Aren’t you getting a little old for Disney movies?” Bright Mac asked, snatching the phone out of her hands and putting it down on a nearby table.
“I’m never too old for quality filmmaking, Pa!” Apple Bloom exclaimed. “And besides, the lead character is voiced by a Markist!”
Bright Mac picked up the phone and glanced at it before showing the others: a still image of the trailer showed a man entering a tavern accompanied by a woman armed with a frying pan and a chameleon. The lighting of the shot made it obvious that these were the main characters, and the chameleon was the only one with a Markist color scheme. Again, he didn’t have to say anything to get his point across.
“It’s depicting a Grimm fairy tale, so they’re being historically accurate!” Apple Bloom sputtered. She followed this with what she considered conclusive evidence of the film’s worth. “And one of the main characters is a horse!”
“Well I suppose it can’t be that bad, then,” Buttercup joked.
Applejack looked warmly around her. She had no idea what this “tangled” thing was, and she didn’t care. What mattered was that Applejack got to have her parents back. And she got to see her newborn sister grown into a quirky younger sister that she would be proud to call part of her family.
Despite the fact that this place had school, it was still Paradise.
Sunset Shimmer—Earth, Centerlot High Office of the Vice Principal. A half-hour before First Period.
Sunset Shimmer may have been hot-headed, even by her own admission, but she never faced off against a new threat without preparing herself first. It was for this reason that she stopped herself outside Principal Celestia’s office yesterday morning and made a hasty retreat on seeing the mountains of paperwork that this world’s educational system sustained itself with.
From there her goal was the city library. It took her an hour of scoping out the building to figure out the correct excuse to get in without getting in trouble: Earth had homeschooling.
And then in the library she discovered the Internet, and it blew her away. If there was some way to physically bring that into Equestria, she could have toppled the Equestrian monarchy with that alone. Toppled it to make way for a democracy! Imagine the look on the Princess’ face when her own subjects demand that she step down so they could take over!
Sunset would almost accept not becoming an alicorn, not replacing Celestia as sole ruler of Equestria, if only to see that look on her hated mentor’s face!
But alas, the Internet was not portable between worlds.
And so she used it instead to prepare her way into high school. And to put together her list of goodies she could port into Equestria before the end of the third day. Her plan was flawless...except for the part where Principal Celestia failed to actually carry out her job duties.
“I thought I would be speaking to the principal of this school,” Sunset said for the third time, to the third person: Vice-Principal Luna.
“Well, she’s busy giving an interview to the Outsider press,” Luna patiently explained. “Taking credit for all of the recent innovations at the school, including the ones that I, her sister, were responsible for. But nobody ever wants to interview me...Now, let’s look at your paperwork.”
For a moment, Sunset was profoundly disappointed that she wouldn’t have the chance to bamboozle her sworn enemy’s dopple directly. But then she caught on to the fact that the Vice-Principal was this Celestia’s sister. Princess Celestia had had a sister, Sunset knew, and she thought that the sister’s name might have been Luna. Luna appeared alongside Celestia in the oldest of the stained-glass windows, such as The Defeat of Discord. But then she stopped appearing. Sunset supposed that Princess Luna must have died at some point, but why wouldn’t there be a memorial window devoted to her by the surviving sister? Unless...the two of them had had a falling out. Princess Celestia was notorious for how long she carried the very few grudges she had. This...this could work out for Sunset after all...
“Sunset? Sunset? Are you there?”
“Huh?” She finally noticed that the Vice-Principal was trying to get her attention.
“It says here that you’re the daughter of the Uzbek liaison to the Church, Folderol.”
“That’s right,” Sunset lied, wearing a proud smile.
Luna worked her computer with a frown. “I wasn’t even aware that there was a Markist presence in Uzbekistan.”
“Oh there’s been a mission there since the 1950’s,” Sunset said, calling upon the results of her all-day research. She inwardly thanked the inventors of caffeine supplements for keeping her going through that research and today’s interview looking none the worse for wear. “They’ve been used as a backdoor to Cold War diplomacy since the Cuban Missile Crisis. For decades they’ve been striving to keep alive the culture and traditions of the America they left behind.”
“I see,” said Luna, continuing to perform various searches in vain. “I can’t seem to get access to their educational records.”
“Oh?” Sunset asked in mock ignorance. “Their system is rather primitive, I’m afraid. You might have to request my records via paper mail.”
Luna sighed and turned away from her computer. “Very well. My sister and I will be fine taking you on your word, Sunset. You can begin taking classes today, and in the...two weeks or so that it will take to get your paperwork, we can re-evaluate your placement.”
“That’s fine with me,” Sunset said, batting her eyes in an expression of innocence.
Luna blinked, feeling something particularly off about this Sunset character. “Now let’s discuss your parents. Your mother is raising you by herself, yes?”
“That’s right,” Sunset said. “She is very busy.”
“I tried to call her while I had you waiting, and...”
“Yes?” Sunset asked, leaning forward.
“She wasn’t very cooperative. Wanted to know how closely I was related to the British royal family, and hung up on me on discovering that I was a...filthy peasant. I did the proper thing, and held my tongue.”
(This was not the first time that Luna had been tempted to reveal that her sister was the secret head of the entire Markist religion.)
“I am sorry about that,” Sunset lied. Inwardly however, she gloried in her triumph in discovering a human candidate to be her mother that was even more stuck up than Blueblood’s Uncle Bronze Heart.
Luna sat back. “I don’t think we have anything else to talk about then. You’ve been registered for all of the classes you requested, all of which you have convinced me you are qualified for. I have the necessary paperwork, all signed by your mother. You’re free to start classes in fifteen minutes. You’re free to go. Unless...”
“Yes?” Sunset asked out of honest curiosity.
“Is there anything you’d like to speak with me about?” Luna said. “I am also this school’s psychological councilor in addition to the discipline and support duties that go into being vice-principal. That’s my degree over there.” She pointed at a framed certificate on the wall behind her.
Sunset leaned forward to peer at it.
“There seems to be something troubling you, Sunset. I can tell. You’re being very polite with me, but I can tell there’s a lot of anger simmering inside of you. Is it possible that you are here in America against your wishes?”
“Oh no, I definitely want to be here,” Sunset said, leaning back in her chair. “It gets me a chance to get away from her.”
“Your mother?”
Sunset nodded.
“Would you like to tell me about her?”
Sunset leaned forward eagerly. This was what she had desperately wanted to do from the moment she found out that there was a second Celestia in this world: to verbally call her teacher out, to tear her to ribbons while another Celestia listened and nodded in approval. This wasn’t exactly the same thing, but if she was right about the rivalry between the two human sisters, in some ways this might even be better. “She’s just...so perfect,” she began. “In the eyes of everybody who looked up to her in her country.” The speech had been expertly crafted, with each pronoun carefully corrected to the human version, and with nothing to give away that she was talking about a pony instead of a human. “Her every thought was for them. For what she could do for them. For what she could do to them. Because Mother is the greatest manipulator of them all, so successful because she always did it for them, and not for herself. But it was for her, for her sense of superiority. She’d trick her enemies into giving her exactly what she wanted, again and again, and thinking they were getting one over on her! I’m so glad to finally get away from that, to finally be in a land that does not worship the ground she walks on.”
“That’s rather harsh,” Luna said calmly, trying to use the tone of her voice to tamp down on Sunset’s growing mania. “Surely she didn’t treat you that way.”
“Not at first,” Sunset said, looking back on happier memories. “She used to always tell me, and show me, how much she loved me. But then she realized how my mark could benefit her, and I became another pawn to her. And I could never get that old relationship back.” She paused for a moment, thinking about the unexpected words she had just said. “She was wrong, by the way. I couldn’t be the perfect p...person she wanted me to be. I had a temper and maybe...I didn’t suffer fools as gladly as I should have. She showed me the life I could have had if I was her perfect daughter, and then made sure I could never have that life, as punishment for failing her. That’s why I’m going to this school, Miss Luna. Because it’s the last place she’d ever want me to go.”
“Because it’s public? And it’s Ms. Luna. Not Miss.”
“Yes, Ms. Luna. Do you have any advice for how I should be living my life?” She batted her eyes again. This is going to be rich, she thought.
“Well sadly, you can’t change your family,” Luna said, standing up.
Sunset stood up as well.
“I don’t know you that well yet, so it’s entirely possible you’ve already thought about this.”
“Yes?”
“Have you considered defining your life separate from your mother? It seems to me that you’re focusing so much on your problems with her that maybe you’re not considering who you might be if she were no longer in your life.”
Sunset rolled her eyes. “I’m never going to be rid of her,” she said.
“You may think that because you’re young, but everybody dies eventually.”
Sunset held her tongue, then looked up at the source of the new ringing sound. “I’m going to be late to class.”
“Yes, go ahead. Your free period is right before lunch, and at least for now, I am your homeroom teacher, so perhaps we can continue our conversation then.”
“I look forward to it,” Sunset said, bowing her head before turning to leave.
Luna frowned in momentary confusion. Sunset’s gesture was the formal farewell given to a princess.
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The notes for Chapter 7 will be released with Chapter 8.
11184856
umm, from what im reading, Rarijack is implied.
Well, yeah. She released the magic smoke.
The real reason the family enrolled her a Crystal Prep was to provide her with an institute full of fools who would laugh at her.
Ah, familiarity. Though if it were my family, it'd be a Star Trek reference.
An avatar of the human internet somehow invading Equestria... Well, there's a novel nightmare.
Definitely something for Sunset to think about when she ends up on the wrong end of the portal. Every problem is an opportunity... but she'll probably have a lot more on her mind by that time.
11184971
A novel nightmare you could bring to life in Group Precipitation.