Sun Redacted

by daOtterGuy

Scar Brand

Author's Note:

Content Warning
Scars, Branding

Connect. Connect.

Sunburst frowned. He wasn’t due back for at least several hours. He admonished his companion in his mind, stressing the importance of patience.

Connect. Connect.

He wasn’t sure why he even bothered lecturing them. Instead, he decided to ignore them and focus on his present circumstances.

“So, how is it being Twilight’s apprentice?” Sunburst asked.

“Stressful. Difficult. A lot of learning,” Starlight answered. She huffed, stirring her coffee with a stir stick in her magic. “I didn’t think I was that behind on basic pony decency, but here we are! Several mind control attempts later and still having to learn why that’s bad.”

“Well, now you know,” Sunburst said.

Starlight looked askance, hiding her expression behind a sip of coffee.

“...You know now, right?”

“I meeeaaan—” Starlight waved a hoof “—depends on the—”

“Don’t mind control ponies,” Sunburst deadpanned.

Starlight nodded.

“Or anything else for that matter,” Sunburst added. “And just to cover my bases, that does in fact cover everything, everyone, and the other races.”

“Ugh, fine.” Starlight rolled her eyes. “Don’t use mind control at all. I get it. I’ll write a letter later and shove it into Twilight's mailbox. Happy?”

“Very.” Sunburst sipped his coffee.

Connect. Connect.

“Later,” Sunburst hissed.

“What?” Starlight asked.

“Well, we’ll be doing our next activity together later tonight, right?”

“Oh, yes. That’s this evening.” Starlight giggled. “Never thought I would ever get you to agree to come with me to a nighttime kiting event.”

“It’s important to you, so it’s important to me,” Sunburst said. “You’ve loved kites since we were foals and considering how much you go along with my antique hunting, it’s only right that I indulge in your hobby at least once.”

“Thanks, Sunburst.” She beamed at him. “Can’t believe between starting a cult and leaving Sire’s Hollow that the one thing that stuck in my life was kite flying.”

“Yeah, it’s nice to see that some things never change.”

“Right.” Starlight tapped her coffee cup nervously. “Listen, Sunburst—”

“No more apologies,” Sunburst interrupted.

“But—!”

“It’s okay. We’ve—”

“But it isn’t!” Starlight slammed her hooves on the table. “I got so caught up on how you were ‘abandoning me’ that I didn’t even notice how much you were hurting too!” She looked askance. “I was your best friend and I didn’t even know what you were going through.”

You still don’t, Sunburst thought. “It really is fine, Starlight. It’s okay to just put the past behind us.” He held onto Starlight’s hoof. “We made mistakes, but we grew up and fixed them. Besides, at the end of the day, I really did want to leave Sire’s Hollow. Just would have preferred my Cutie Mark not auto-admitting me into Celestia’s School for Gifted Unicorns.”

“Yeah, that did suck…” She took her hooves out of Sunburst’s. “Hey, so, just to check, how did you get your Mark?”

“Why do you ask?”

“Well, talking today just made me think back to that time and—” She bit her lip “—My memory is a bit fuzzy on the details.”

Despite himself, hope welled up inside of him.

“O-oh? You are?” Sunburst said, forcing his voice to stay neutral. “What parts?”

“W-well.” Starlight furrowed her brow. “I know it was sunny that day.”

It was raining. “...Yeah, it was,” Sunburst agreed.

“We built a tower of books to play Jenga at…” She narrowed her eyes. “The Preservation Society, right? The library portion where my dad keeps the really old records?”

Firelight had made the area forbidden after that day without understanding why he’d done so.

“Yeah. We were using the books as the blocks and it had been your turn to pull a book from the tower.”

“Hmhm. I started to pull a book when…” She trailed off.

It appeared. It almost killed you. That had been the beginning of the end of our friendship as it was.

“And your mark… appeared…?” She concentrated in thought before immediately brightening up, all concern gone. “Oh right, of course! The tower toppled and then you used your magic to stop the books from falling on top of me. There’d been a really bright flash of light and you had your mark. It’d been really bright too, like the light of the sun.”

No. “Yep.” That wasn’t how it happened. “You almost got a really bad head injury.” Damn her for making you forget. “Lucky I was there to save you, huh?”

“Definitely,” Starlight said.

It hurt. It hurt so much because it hadn’t been her but him who’d made the tower topple. The one to unleash the Rift hidden inside one of the books. The one to bring it into being.

That awful monster that had infected Starlight with its Obsession.

Connect. Connect.

“I need to go.” He stood up, unable to handle the pain. “I forgot about something important that I have to deal with before we can do the kite flying tonight.” Partially true. “I’ll meet up with you later, okay?”

“Oh! Um, okay.” Starlight looked disappointed. “I’ll see you at the festival then.”

Unable to bear it any longer, Sunburst left. She still didn’t know. Still didn’t understand why she had nothing to apologize for. The reason she’d become so obsessed with Marks in the first place.

If he’d just not gotten this cursed mark, none of Starlight’s mistakes would have happened.

If his Mark hadn’t been able to do what it did… they’d have still been friends.

He wound his way through the streets of the Crystal Empire, hooves clicking on tiled streets until he came to the back of the palace. A small burst of magic from his horn and the secret door opened, allowing him to descend into the dark depths.

After a moment, he found himself in a cavernous crystal room roughly in the shape of an octahedron. To one side were fogged-over crystal walls only viewable from up close. On the other were stacks of his lab equipment and a glass monitor hooked up to a crystal array.

In the center, on a pedestal, was the Crystal Heart.

Well, one of them.

Con— You’re here!

The Crystal Heart’s high pitched, foalish voice echoed in his mind. It had the energy of a young foal discovering the taste of candy for the first time.

“Yeah, hi,” Sunburst groused. He shucked off his cape, hung it on a nearby rack, and made his way to the monitor. “What happened? Why were you trying to contact me?”

I wanted to chat!

Sunburst glared at the physical form of the Crystal Heart.

Fine. The results from our first test run just came in.

A thrill of excitement rushed through him. He logged into the monitor with a tap of his hoof and navigated to the relevant results with a burst of magic.

Coco Pommel. Malformant Brand of Desire Empress’s New Clothes. Success.

“...huh.” Sunburst chuckled. “Huh!” Then he started laughing hysterically. “It worked! It actually worked!”

“Yeah it did! Does that mean we’re moving forward with World End Orchestra?”

He grinned widely, showing far too many teeth, a slightly crazed look in his eyes. Using his magic, he pulled an iron branding rod from out of the equipment pile and slung it over his shoulder.

“Yeah, it does. Don’t have much time today, but—” He trotted toward the far wall with the fogged over crystals“—We can at least get the next Brand ready.”

Yay! Then everyone gets to be safe and happy?!

“Well, no. Coco was the first step, this is the next. After that, there will still be a whole lot of things to do before we reach that point. And even in the short term, we’ll have to extract Coco before Redacted gets a hold of her. That’s for later, though. What’s more important is that we have an actual first success.” He laughed. “After so many failed attempts, we finally managed to get the Brand to work!”

Yeah! … Hey, Sunburst?

“Hm?”

We’re doing this to destroy all the Malfomants… right?

“Yeah?”

Well, does that include—

“You are not on the list,” Sunburst replied. He meant it. “You’ve been a huge help and proven to be the exception to usual monsters. I promise that I won’t hurt you. Ever.”

Okay, Sunburst! So, we protect the ponies?

“We protect the ponies,” Sunburst agreed.

He felt the anti-magic field wash over him as he approached his destination. Illusions melted away, revealing the black scars all across his body. The wounds that proved his devotion to the cause and effort to see his dream come true. An Equestria free of Malformants.

As he approached, the crystal wall cleared revealing a strange bipedal sheep. The Malfomant Do You Dream of Sheep?

His next test subject.

He swung the brand forward until the flat end faced the abomination. He charged his horn. His Cutie Mark began to pulse with sickly yellow light. The end of the brand rod began to glow.

Sunburst plunged it toward the Malformant’s chest, laughing as he did so.

Comments

[FanOfMostEverything]

The content note for this chapter is currently on the bottom of the text.

(Also, outstanding work thus far.)

[daOtterGuy]

11886186
Oops. Sorry about that. Fixed.
And glad to hear you're enjoying the story :)

[Sunny]

I love how each is its own short little story of sorts, connecting and weaving into the larger narrative