Sunday, June 26, 2016
Sunday, June 26, 2016
Today's Horoscope (Virgo): Let he who is without sin cast the first stone.
Early Morning
I wake up with a bare pink ass in my face.
"Wakey-wakey, Flashie!" Pinkie coos. "You owe me some kissies."
The tent flap opens. "C'mon, y'all, we got a lot t'—seriously?"
"Oh, hiya AJ!" Pinkie says cheerfully.
Applejack groans. I can't see her face, but I can see the silhouette of her hand rising up to meet it. "Dammit all, Pinkie."
"Whaaaaat?" Pinkie whines. "He promised me kissies! You were there!"
"I uhh...don't think this is the time," I say. "Maybe later?" I look over at Twilight, who's just starting to wake up. "Maybe all three of us, y'know, tonight or something?"
"Hmmm...well, okay!" Pinkie giggles. She stands up; I hear cloth rustling, and then she slips out of the tent past Applejack.
"Hey! Y'all wash yer doggone hands now!" Applejack calls after her.
Twilight sits up in her sleeping bag. "It's gonna be one of those days, isn't it?"
I roll my eyes and get up. "C'mon, we'd better take the shit jobs this morning."
Twilight and I spend the next forty minutes or so cleaning up shit, then get cleaned up for breakfast. At breakfast, Shining Armor doesn't seem to want to look anybody in the eye. At first, I don't notice it, but after seeing Twilight slow in her eating and give her brother a frown, it catches my attention. He especially doesn't seem to want to look at either of us.
Sunset Shimmer, on the other hand, is in a spectacularly cheerful mood. She's chatting and laughing with an oblivious Scootaloo while they eat.
I nudge Twilight. "You don't think—" I whisper.
Twilight frowns. Her head drops. "I don't know," she whispers back. "I just...I just don't know..."
I look over at Shining Armor, then back at Sunset. Sunset notices me looking in her direction, winks, and goes back to her conversation with Scootaloo.
My jaw tightens. Throughout the morning's chores, I feel tense. I have a pretty good idea what happened...
Daytime
Around mid-morning, the truck arrives to pick up the order we've been packing. Big Mac, Shining Armor, and I load the apples onto the truck. When we're done, we take a moment to rest out behind the house with cold apple cider.
While we're resting, I decide to confront Shining Armor. "So," I say as I take a long swig of my cider, "you did it."
"Huh?" Shining Armor asks a bit nervously.
"After everything that's happened, you went and fucked Sunset Shimmer."
Big Macintosh turns a sharp glare toward Shining Armor.
"Don't try to deny it," I say. "Twilight and I both noticed something was up with you at breakfast."
Shining Armor hangs his head and sighs. He slumps down against the wall, cradling his bottle.
I shake my head. "You're an asshole," I say. "You know that, right?"
"Yeah," Shining Armor says quietly.
"Th' hell you doin' sleepin' around on your wife?" Big Mac asks in a soft, dangerous tone.
Shining Armor swallows nervously. "I—"
"Cadance wouldn't care if it had been like, Rarity or one of the other girls," I say. "She even said as much. It's just specifically Sunset Shimmer that's the problem." I take a long swig of cider.
Big Mac frowns. "Seriously?"
I shrug. "Cadance is...complicated."
Big Mac drains the rest of his cider in one swallow. "Ah'm outta here," he says. "See y'all at lunch after you git all this—whutever—talked out." He walks away, casting severe looks back at the two of us.
Once we're alone, Shining Armor sighs. "Look, I...I didn't mean to—"
I haul off and pop him one in the face. "Don't even."
He rubs at his cheek, spitting out a little blood, and sucks in a hissing breath. "Okay, I deserved that," he says. He presses the cold cider bottle against his cheek and winces as he slides slowly down the wall, drawing his knees up to his chest.
I take a deep breath, then sit down. "Why?" I ask. "Just answer me that. You know what she's put us all through. So...why?"
Shining Armor sighs. "It's stupid."
"Probably. I still want to hear it."
He shakes his head and shrugs. "Back in high school, back before I really met Cadance, there was this girl. She was..." He chuckles. "She was my dream girl." He looks up at the sky, a faraway look in his eyes. "Copper Penny," he says. "She was smoking hot and she knew it. You know those cheesy old movies where the geeky guy sees the super-hot dream babe walking down the hall in slow motion, with smoke and hair metal and all that?" He sighs wistfully. "That was her.
"All the guys wanted her. She was super popular. She was nice to all the right people, and kind of a bitch to everybody else. But nobody cared, because she was just so...amazing." He takes a drink of cider, grimacing slightly. "But I was a freshman and she was a senior. I never had the nerve to try to talk to her, and even if I did, well..." He chuckles. "It wouldn't have ended well. But oh, at night, after Mom and Dad and Twiley went to bed, I'd—"
"I get the idea."
"Sorry." Shining Armor coughs once and shrugs. "Anyway, Sunset Shimmer...she looks exactly like Copper Penny. And I know what an evil, manipulative bitch she's been to everybody. But..."
"But suddenly, this girl who looks like your old high school wet dream starts hitting on you and showing interest in you, and it's every adolescent fantasy you ever had come to life?"
"Yeah," Shining Armor says in a quiet, rough voice.
"And all the people she's tried to kill, blackmailed, bullied...none of that ever crossed your mind?"
Shining Armor looks away.
"Her trying to kill your own wife and sister, none of that mattered? All that mattered was living out some adolescent fantasy?"
Shining Armor says nothing.
"Don't bother coming inside for lunch," I say. "Just stay out here and think about what an asshole you are." With that, I finish off my cider and head inside to wash up for lunch.
The atmosphere at lunch is...tense.
"Where's Shining Armor?" Sunset asks as she starts cutting up a piece of ham.
"He isn't feeling well," I snap, glaring at her. "Seems to have come down with something."
"Well, that's a shame," Granny says. "Reckon we'll let 'im be fer th' rest of th' day."
"Eeyup," Big Mac grunts.
The girls aren't buying it, but nobody seems to want to say anything. All through lunch, Twilight alternates between glancing questioningly at me and glaring accusingly at Sunset.
After lunch, Twilight and I drag Sunset out behind the stables. She looks honestly confused and surprised. "H-hey guys," she says. "Wh-what's up? I—"
Twilight hauls off and slaps her. "Bitch," she snarls.
"Sunset, why," I say, rubbing my eyes tiredly. "Why were you so adamant about getting Shining Armor to have sex with you?"
Sunset looks back and forth between us. "Oh, that's what this is about," she says. She shakes her head and rolls her eyes. "You two are taking this way too seriously."
"Too seriously? Too seriously?!" Twilight shrieks. "You've spent the past year trying to kill me and everybody I care about and you just fucked my MARRIED BROTHER WHO HAS A KID ON THE WAY and I'm not supposed to take this SERIOUSLY?!"
Sunset blinks, flinching away from Twilight. "...wow," she says. She casts her eyes down. "When you put it like that, I kinda sound like a monster bitch, huh?"
"You are a monster bitch, Sunset," I point out.
Sunset bows her head, wrapping her arms around herself. Tears well up in her eyes.
"Don't try to get sympathy from us," Twilight hisses.
"SHUT UP!" Sunset snaps. "YOU DON'T KNOW ANYTHING ABOUT ME! YOU DON'T KNOW HOW I—"
I step between them. "BOTH OF YOU, calm down." I turn to Twilight. "Go pick apples," I say. "Or something. Anything you can't hurt yourself or someone else doing."
Twilight glares at me, her chest heaving.
"GO," I insist. "Get control of yourself. I'll deal with this for now." I sigh, then take her chin and turn her to face me. I look her right in the eyes. "She deserves whatever you want to say to her, whatever you want to do to her. But give me a few minutes first, okay?"
"Why, so you can fuck her just like my brother fucked her?" Twilight seethes.
"No, so I can talk to her, maybe find out what her problem is."
"Her problem?!" Twilight throws her hands into the air. "Her problem is she's a twisted, psychotic bitch!"
"Yes, she is, but so was Eris."
Twilight flinches. "That's not fair," she says softly.
"Go," I repeat. "Calm down. It's not like Sunset's going anywhere. You can go off on her later."
Twilight gives me a hard glare, but relents. Shooting Sunset one last evil stare, she stalks off, fists clenched at her sides.
Sunset takes a deep breath. "Thank you," she says shakily.
I turn around and slap her harder than Twilight did, knocking her off-balance. "Fuck you," I snap. "You knew damn well what kind of trouble you'd cause by screwing Shining Armor."
Sunset slumps against the wall and slides down it, curling into a ball. Her eyes fill with tears. "N-no," she says. "It...it isn't like that. I wasn't..." She buries her face in her hands. "I...I need to tell Twilight and...and Cadance..."
"Tell them what?"
"That I...that I'm sorry..."
I sit down across from her, cross-legged, folding my arms. "Are you?"
She sniffles, looking up at me. "I..." Her breath hitches. "I know you don't believe me. I just...I didn't do it to hurt anybody. I really just...just wanted..."
"Wanted what?"
"To be treated like I'm not a disease for just a few minutes," Sunset says quietly. She looks up at me. Her eyes are wet and clouded. "Don't you get it? That's all I want. I want someone, anyone to give a damn about me. I've seen you and your friends and the way you are, I've listened to all your fights and all your laughter and everything you've all done together for months and I want that." She hugs herself tighter. "I want that," she repeats in a hoarse whisper.
"What does that have to do with screwing Shining Armor?"
"Because he made me feel like a person!" Sunset shouts through her tears. "In that barn last night, it wasn't all the stuff I've done and all the hate everybody has for me, it was just him, me, and an old blanket. No talking, no shouting, no slapping, just..." She waves her hand and sighs. "Just doing something normal. Something human." She looks at me over the tops of her knees. "I've been trying to do normal things with you and the girls ever since I got here, but there's always this tension. Always this suspicion. Always this mistrust."
"Gee, I wonder why."
"LOOK, I GET IT, OKAY?!" Sunset screams. "I'm the world's biggest CUNT! I deserve your hate! I deserve your scorn! I deserve to be tied down and spanked until my ass bleeds!" She buries her face in her thighs, her shoulders shaking. "I just..."
She starts sniffling. Faint sobs, muffled by her jeans, fill the air between us.
Seeing her like this, I almost feel sorry for her. I almost feel pity...
"Sunset, what are you trying to pull here? Really. Be straight with me."
She doesn't talk for a long time. When she finally does, she looks up at me with red eyes. "I'm not trying to pull anything," she says hoarsely. "I just...I screwed up. I wanted to feel like somebody cared about me, even if it was just for a few minutes, and..." She trails off, scrubbing her face with her hands. "Ever since I moved into the dorm, I've been trying," she says. "After I saw how easily you all forgave Fluttershy for everything she pulled, I thought hey, maybe if I can show them I can be a decent person, that I can be fun to be around..." She sighs. "I hoped maybe..."
She falls silent for a minute. When she looks up at me again, her eyes are full of loneliness and pain.
"I hoped the girls would maybe want to be my friend." She looks away, her swollen eyes half-lidded. "I guess that was a stupid thing to hope for."
I watch her for a time. "Yeah, it was," I say. "Because you've been going about it the wrong way. And the fact that you've got all that blackmail material on all of us isn't helping."
Sunset sniffles. "If I didn't have a trump card, you'd all kill me. Or have me thrown in jail. Or..."
I stare at her. "Do you really think that little of us?"
"I don't know!" Sunset cries. "I don't..." She hugs her knees tightly. "I'm scared. I just...I don't know what I'm doing anymore, and I don't know how to...how to..."
The Sunset Shimmer Social Link of the Jester Arcana has reached rank 6!
Your power to create Personas of the Jester Arcana has grown!
I stand up, sigh, and shake my head. "Get yourself cleaned up," I say. "Wash your face, get something to drink, go sit in your tent until I call you. I'm gonna go try to talk Twilight down, then I'm going to tell the others we need to have a long talk tonight."
Sunset nods miserably, stands up, and wipes her eyes with her arm, sniffling. She trudges back up to the house. I pull out my phone and text Twilight. After a minute, I get a response telling me she's in the west orchard.
It takes me ten minutes to find her. She's rubbing the back of her hand and glaring up at a tree. "What's wrong?" I ask.
She shoots me a vicious look, then resumes glaring up at the tree. "There's a bat hiding up there," she says. "It flew down and scared the hell out of me. It scratched my hand..."
"So let's get away from this tree," I say. I frown. "The hell's a bat doing in an apple tree, anyway?"
"No idea." We walk some distance from the tree, then Twilight stops and looks over at me. "So?"
I sigh.
Twilight frowns and crosses her arms. "Don't tell me she told you some sob story and now you pity her."
"I do pity her," I say. "But pity and forgiveness aren't the same thing." I jam my hands in my pockets. "Look. Sunset's a messed-up bitch who's done messed-up things. I don't trust her, I don't expect you or anybody else to. But I think..." I take a deep breath. "I think she's just lonely and wants to make friends and doesn't know how."
Twilight snorts. "Please."
"I'm serious," I say sternly. "Now, why she wants to try to be friends with us, the people she's fucked over the worst, I have no idea. I think..." I look off in the direction Sunset went in. "I think she thinks we'll forgive her the way we forgave Fluttershy if she's just honest and tries to be nice."
"That's not happening," Twilight says, but her voice hitches. "Especially not after she screwed—"
"Twi..." I take a deep breath. "She says the only reason she did that is because Shining Armor is the only person here who isn't treating her like a disease. I believe her. I mean, I believe that's what she believes. Now, I talked to your brother earlier, and his reason for screwing her is...honestly? It's bullshit." I spend a minute telling her what Shining Armor told me.
Twilight gawks. "Oh my god, seriously?" She shakes her head. "That idiot! I ought to—"
"Let Cadance deal with it," I say. "This is between them, not us. We've got our own problems."
"He's my brother!" Twilight cries. "It's absolutely my problem!"
"Shining Armor already knows what a low-down dirty dog he is," I say. "You laying into him and making him feel like more of a dog isn't helping. Let this scab over." I sigh. "Right now, we need to deal with Sunset Shimmer. We need to get everybody together tonight and sit down and talk to her. Let everybody hear what she said to me. I think...I think that's the right thing to do right now." At Twilight's doubtful look, I pull her into a hug. "You trust me, right?"
Twilight sniffles. "Of course I do. It's just—"
"I know." I kiss her gently. "Let's try doing this my way, okay? We've already done enough screaming and slapping and hitting people today."
Twilight nods. "A-alright."
I frown, looking up at the tree. "In the meantime, let's figure out what the hell's going on with that bat..."
By the time Pinkie calls everybody to the house for supper, we've made an unfortunate discovery: half the trees in the west orchard are infested with bats.
Evening
As soon as we get back to the house, I tell Big Mac and Applejack about the bats. Big Mac lets out a long-suffering sigh. "Dammit, not th' damn bats again," he mutters. "We went through this before."
"What do we do about it?" I ask.
Big Mac shakes his head. "Gotta get a specialist out here," he says. "Ah'll put in th' call first thing tomorrow. They got ways t' git bats outta them trees." He frowns. "Y'all sorted out that mess with Shining Armor an' that girl?"
I grimace. "We're working on it. We're actually going to have a big meeting with everybody after supper, there's a lot to talk about and that's only part of it."
Big Mac scratches his head. "Alright," he says.
Supper is more tense than usual. Shining Armor isn't looking at anyone. Sunset is an absolute wreck. Twilight spends more time glaring at both of them than she does eating, and when she does eat, she does it viciously.
Granny Smith looks around the table, frowning. "Alright, whut burr done got in y'all's britches?"
"Yeah, you all look kinda..." Rainbow says, frowning.
Sunset looks at Shining Armor, who looks at Twilight, who glares at him, then turns away.
I shake my head. "We have a lot to talk about. All of us."
Applejack frowns. "Coach done porked Sunset, huh?"
"Yeah."
"WHAT?!" Rainbow cries. "DUDE! NOT COOL!"
"Oh, you're one to talk," Fluttershy snorts. "You were feeling her up that one day—"
"Enough," I say. "After supper, we're going to talk about a lot of things."
Nobody seems happy with that, but everybody settles for shooting accusatory glares and disgruntled frowns around the table as they pick at supper. When we're finally done, Granny and the four younger girls take care of the dishes while the rest of us move off to the living room.
"Okay, let's get the worst part out of the way," I say. "Last night, Shining Armor and Sunset Shimmer snuck off and had sex." I glare at Shining Armor. "I kinda saw it coming, but I hoped—hoped—he'd have better sense."
Shining Armor refuses to look at anybody.
"But we're going to let Cadance deal with that," I say. "After all, it's between them."
Rarity frowns. "To be honest, Nurse Cadance has extremely little room to complain here, even if..." She glares at Sunset. "Even if it was with her."
"And that right there is the other thing we need to talk about." I take a deep breath, look around the room, then look at Sunset. "Sunset. Everything you said earlier today. Did you really mean it, or were you just playing me?"
Sunset frowns miserably. "I meant it," she says. She looks around at the girls. "I know you all hate me," she says. "I know I've done terrible things. There's nothing I can say or do that'll make up for everything I've done." She rubs her eyes, which are still red and swollen. "I just...I don't want to be alone anymore. I've been alone for so long..." She sighs. "I told myself I didn't need friends. I told myself only weak people needed friends. But seeing you all, watching you work together, watching you deal with all the shit I've thrown at you, spying on you all, just watching you all since I've been at the dorm..." She trails off, hanging her head. "I'm jealous, and I'm miserable, and...and I want to try to...to show you all I can change." She looks up, her gaze sweeping around the room. "That's all I want. A chance to change, to try to make friends." She lets out a snort of dry laughter. "I've spent so much time and energy on you all, trying to hurt you, doing all kinds of things to you...the sad thing is, you're the closest things to friends I have." She buries her face in her hands. "I'm pathetic."
"Yeah, you are," Rainbow says coldly.
"You seriously think any of us would ever want to be your friend?" Fluttershy says in a cold voice.
"No, I don't," Sunset says hoarsely. "But I had to try." She looks at Fluttershy. "They forgave you. After everything you did, they're all your friends. Don't I deserve that chance?"
"Oh, bullshit," Rainbow snaps.
Fluttershy flinches. "That was a cheap shot," she says.
"I know," Sunset says. She sighs.
"Sunset," I say, "if you're serious, if you really want us to take anything you're saying seriously...if you want to have any chance whatsoever at any of us seeing you as anything more than a complete monster, you know what you have to do."
Sunset meets my gaze for several seconds. She swallows, then nods. She pulls out her phone and throws it to Fluttershy. "There," she says hoarsely. "You do it. That way they'll know there's no tricks."
Fluttershy frowns, but unlocks Sunset's phone and starts tapping the screen. We all watch her silently for almost two full minutes. At length, she lets out a shaky sigh.
"It's all erased," she says. "Every last scrap of blackmail she has on everybody."
"And the backup servers?" Twilight asks.
"Shut down," Fluttershy reports. "All of them." She looks up at Sunset, her eyes sharp. "That was all of them, right?"
Sunset nods.
Rainbow blinks. "Wait. You mean...that's it? It's over?"
Sunset shrugs. "There's still three Hunter Shadows left in Zodiac. Nothing I can do about that. Just because I can make them go after certain people doesn't mean I know where they came from or why any of it exists in the first place." She looks around the room. "Everything I could've done to hurt you all is gone. You can call the cops on me or kill me and bury me in the orchard or whatever now. I'm completely at your mercy."
"Why do I find that hard to believe?" Rarity asks skeptically.
Fluttershy spends another minute fiddling with Sunset's phone, then tosses it back to her. Sunset looks at it, then wordlessly pockets it.
I look around the room. "I don't trust Sunset Shimmer farther than I could throw Big Macintosh," I say. "But earlier today, I talked to her, I listened to her, and I heard something honest in what she said." I take a deep breath. "I think maybe she really does want to try to change." I look pointedly at Sunset. "Nothing she could possibly do could make up for all the shit she's put us through. I honestly doubt she's through doing things that'll aggravate, annoy, or upset us."
Sunset looks away.
"But..." I pause, looking around at my friends. "I think we should see how this plays out. Give her a chance to convince us she can be a human being."
"Are you serious?" Applejack says, staring at me.
"Yeah, I am."
Rainbow groans. "Oh god, leave it to a guy to get all sappy over a chick with big tits."
I stare at Rainbow. "You're kidding, right? She raped me. You think that's some shit I'm just gonna ignore?"
Rainbow grimaces.
"Look, I'm not saying we just forgive Sunset for all her sins and blow rainbows out our asses like some little girls' horse cartoon. I'm just saying we should wait a little while and see if she can change." I look at Fluttershy. "I mean, if we don't at least try to give her a chance the way we did with Fluttershy, we're a bunch of hypocrites."
Fluttershy scowls at me. "Seriously, stop comparing me to her," she says.
Pinkie's hair droops. "You know, he's not wrong," she says. "We did kinda let Fluttershy off the hook really easy and she did some pretty sick stuff." She gives Fluttershy an apologetic look.
"Pinkie," Twilight says with exasperation, "Sunset Shimmer is the reason your family—"
Pinkie holds up a hand. "Don't," she says. With a sigh, she adds, "That was gonna happen anyway. Honestly? Sunset may have actually done me a favor." She looks around the room. "Sure, what she did was awful and really screwed me over, but..." She looks at me. "It happened at exactly the right time. Flash, Cadance, Auntie Velvet...they all stepped in to help me right away. What if I'd already been in college when my family decided to cut me off? What if I'd been all on my own without anybody to lean on?" She shakes her head. "I'm not blaming Sunset Shimmer for what happened with my family. If they were a real family, it wouldn't have happened at all no matter how many embarrassing pictures or videos she sent them."
Twilight blinks. "I never really thought of it that way," she says softly.
Pinkie suddenly glares fiercely at Sunset. "Don't get me wrong, you're still a bitch," she says. "And if you hurt anybody I care about ever again, nobody will be able to find what's left of you." Her hair and eyes suddenly return to normal. "But I think maybe Flash is right. If you're really done trying to hurt us, well..." She looks around the room.
Everybody fidgets, looking at their hands or their laps or each other. Nobody wants to say anything.
I clear my throat. "We need to sleep on this," I say. "We're all running too hot right now. Too much has happened."
The others get up and start leaving, heading for the camp. Nobody is looking at Shining Armor or Sunset. Before Fluttershy leaves, I catch her by the arm. "Swap tents with Applejack tonight," I whisper. "I want you keeping watch over Sunset tonight."
Fluttershy glares at me.
"Don't give me that look. You know why—"
"Yeah," Fluttershy says resignedly. "Okay."
By the time Twilight, Pinkie, and I get to our tent, I feel drained. I crawl into my sleeping bag, doing my best to ignore the palpable unease and tension I feel from Twilight, as well as the worry and doubt Pinkie is radiating.
I'm not even sure what I'm trying to accomplish here...
Why am I willing to give Sunset a chance?
