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The Conversion Bureau: Setting Things Right

by kildeez

Chapter 37: Chapter XXXVII: Japan At Last

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It was finally almost over. Their long journey, nearly at an end.

Celestia gazed out over the sea, and let out a breath through her nose. A few pristine feathers ruffled among her wings. Her back, for once, didn’t ache from sleeping on the ground, though now her wings felt heavy with the extra gristle. Just one of the drawbacks of sleeping on a beach: she was sure she had sand in places she couldn’t even imagine right now. But that was pushed back in the furthest reaches of her mind. She had one last leg for her journey.

As was usually the case, Twilight was up and already wide awake, still watching the tiny screen of the phone, still learning with an appetite for knowledge that could only be described as voracious. Her eyes flicked to Celestia, and she gave a tiny smile, but her focus went back to the tiny screen in an instant. “Good morning, princess.”

“And to you, Twilight,” Celestia replied with a tiny yawn. “Might I ask what has your attention?”

“Just…reading some history,” Twilight said dismissively.

“History? I knew you had a passing interest, but I never knew history to hold your attention like…” then Celestia paused, internally scolding herself. Of course, not pony history. She shook her head with a mild chortle to herself. “What have you learned, dear Twilight?”

“Some…interesting things.” Twilight sighed, sitting up. She shook her head despondently, then met Celestia with a deep gaze, setting the little electronic device aside, much to her surprise. “Princess, are we sure we’re on the right side?”

Celestia blinked with surprise. “Twilight, I would think that should answer your question.” She gestured to the sea, across which they had spied groupings of crumbling towers and burnt structures just the other day, remnants of the devastation wrought by a single mare’s bitterness and hatred.

“I get that, but the more I read of their history, the more I see how she…Xenolestia, might have had a point,” Twilight insisted.

If Celestia had less self-control, she might have scooped Twilight up by a hind-hoof and screamed into her face out of desperation. However, she instead nodded understandingly and gestured for Twilight to elaborate, as she knew her former student would be only too happy to do.

“It’s just…for all the destruction and death wrought by the First Contact wars, did you know it wasn’t even their most destructive?” Twilight said, sitting up and meeting Celestia’s eyes with her own worried gaze. “Not even their most destructive in the last century. That honor belongs to a conflict known as World War Two.”

“Two?” Celestia asked, an eyebrow quirking.

“Yes, their second one,” Twilight rolled her eyes. “And don’t even get me started on the semantics of that, there are actually numerous other conflicts from centuries before who’s scale would qualify them as ‘world’ wars. But nothing we’ve ever known in Equestria even matches the scale of these conflicts. World War Two alone killed nearly seventy million humans, nearly half of them civilians!”

Celestia watched with concern as Twilight laid back in the sand, brow furrowed with desperation. “I just...maybe the wrong side did win here. Maybe they would have been better off as mindless thralls instead of what they are.”

A few moments of quiet passed as waves crashed against the shore near them. Twilight watched Celestia with growing concern. Was her former mentor stumped by this? Was she really so unsure of their actions she was reconsidering everything? Was she about to tell them to turn around and go back, see if they could find a way home through that armada?

Then Celestia waved a hoof to her. “Twilight? Might I see that?”

Of course, Twilight obliged, giving up the tiny marvel with an eyebrow quirked.

Celestia scooped up the phone and began working it, just as she had on another beach hardly a week before. Twilight watched, sitting up in anticipation as her fellow princess worked. After a moment, the tinny sounds of wretched screams and explosions filled the air between them. Twilight sucked in a breath.

“Princess? What’re you...” she cut herself off as Celestia didn’t even look up, eyes glued to the screen. Obviously, she was looking for something, and it wouldn’t do too interrupt.

Finally, a tiny smile spread across Celestia’s muzzle. “Got it.”

“What did you find?”

“Something I saw during the flooding in the plains outside Trottingham last year.” Celestia held the phone out, paused on a video. Twilight could read the title at the top of the screen: “RAW FOOTAGE CHICAGO ATTACKS: RARELY-SEEN! UNEDITED FOOTAGE HLF CONVERSION BUREAU BOMBING.”

“More atrocities?” Twilight asked.

“Just watch,” Celestia smiled. “See if you can spot what I found.”

Twilight’s mind whirled with what a series of floods could have to do with what appeared to be some calamity in an urban area, but she obeyed, tapping a hoof to play the video. It immediately started where Celestia had paused it, opening with a scene of people running in the streets: a doughy businessman with a receding hairline and rumpled suit hurrying alongside a dark-skinned man with a heavy beard and glasses, both looking over their shoulders, jaws agape as they ran. A moment later, the camera panned to the side of a massive skyscraper, with smoke spewing from a huge hole in its side. Debris rained down to the streets below as flames flickered visibly beneath the rolling smoke.

The scene cut to someone wondering down a stairwell. Next to them, a woman in a tasteful blouse and skirt trotted along, head low, mouth shut as she focused on getting down the next flight of stairs. Somewhere far off, an alarm blared, and Twilight realized this had to be taking place inside the skyscraper in the first shot. After awhile, they came to a pause on a landing, where a man in a jumpsuit was crouched over another doughy businessman, this one with blood coming down the side of his face.

“Oh my God, Mike!?” The woman gasped, and the man in the jumpsuit looked up, revealing the “BUILDING MAINTENANCE” stenciled across his chest.

“He took a hit to the head, he’s okay, gonna get him down,” the janitor said, waving the walking couple off. “I got ‘im, just go!”

The pair hovered for a second, then kept moving, eventually being waved along by a security guard on one of the floors, who seemed to be counting heads as people filed past. Eventually, thankfully, the pair reached a lobby, where firefighters filed past in their distinctive black and yellow-striped jackets and sloped helmets, pushing through the crowd trying to exit through the wide front doors.

“This was following an extremist attack on one of...her bureaus,” Celestia says. “This particular Bureau was situated on the twentieth floor of a skyscraper, where a bomb was smuggled in using a man disguised as a maintenance worker. He stopped the elevator on their floor and detonated a large device hidden inside a mop bucket.”

Twilight watched the video one more time, then frowned, shaking her head. “I’m sorry, princess, I’m not sure what I’m supposed to be looking for here.”

“What I always look for during times of distress, my dear student,” Celestia’s smile warmed like the rising sun after a cold autumn night. “People helping people they have no reason to be helping.”

Twilight blinked, then rewound the video one more time. She saw people filing together, looking around in concern, holding the hands of strangers they’d likely never seen before. Here, a woman in a business suit tugs along a bum in a raggedy t-shirt. There, the janitor helping along a rich CEO, now that she got a look at “Mike’s” suit again and realized it was probably worth more than her old treebrary’s annual budget. What’s more, when she closed the video to set the phone down, she caught a glimpse of the account owner’s profile picture, and the likely cameraman: a unicorn stallion, grinning in front of a plain, gray background.

“In times of tragedy, especially those wrought by our own hoof, it is important to keep in mind the good in everyone, Twilight,” Celestia said with a smile. “A few greedy ponies cut corners on a dam that caused a terrible disaster in Trottingham, but hundreds of others rushed to their fellow ponies’ aid. Just like that janitor helped a man who likely turned his nose up at him not a few hours before. Just like a group of firefighters walked into a building while everyone else was busy running away.”

“Just like a random human office worker walked alongside a unicorn stallion to provide comfort and hope?” Twilight said with a smile.

Celestia nodded with a placid smile. “Humanity seems to have a deeper passion for what they believe in, and the lack of overall direction they’ve had in their history, whereas Harmony has always been there to guide ponies in one form or another, has led them to a bloody history that you and I can be grateful to have never known. However, that doesn’t make them evil, Twilight. The wonders we’ve seen them build, one of which you hold in your own hoof! The countless times we’ve seen them lay down their lives for one another in front of our very eyes! And most importantly of all...”

“...the ones just trying to help in a time of need?” Twilight asked.

Celestia only smiled. “There’s beauty here, Twilight. It might be a little dirtier than we’re used to, but it’s there. And it’s worth protecting.”

“Hundreds of people are laying down their lives to do so right now,” Twilight said, standing in the sand and lowering her head with a determined glower. “Thank you, princess.”

“Of course, Twilight.”


Five hours later, somewhere over the Sea of Japan, Twilight’s worries had officially shifted from whether she was on the right side of a growing international conflict to how to defuse said conflict.

Hey, she had to do something with all that worry built up, and she was always the pragmatist.

First of all was just the problem of making it into Japan. From what she could tell, this world’s “United Nations” had designated it some sort of Disaster Relief Zone (understandable given the absolute devastation it had faced). Now, “Disaster Relief Zone” sounded a bit friendlier than “Active Warzone,” but only a hair. Disaster Relief still meant soldiers to distribute supplies, act as police, and watch any sensitive areas that might have survived. And soldiers meant trucks, guns, some of the ‘tanks,’ she had read about, and probably a whole host of things she hadn’t. She tried to remind herself about Jerusalem, how they had managed to break into a heavily-guarded and walled city, but every time she did another voice piped up they had only gotten lucky, choosing a landing time that happened to coincide with a local militia attack.

No such militia existed here, she’d already checked. And this land had way more reason to want her mentor’s head.

Her worries spiked as the distant, green dot of land on the horizon started getting bigger and bigger, slowly growing to dominate the horizon. After a few minutes, the silhouettes of buildings began to sprout from the land’s surface. She swallowed. Soon, it would be time.

She let out a surprised squeal when suddenly, Celestia careened into her side, sending her spiraling towards the sea below. Still spinning, dazed, she hardly fought back as the larger princess seized her around the waist, carrying her the rest of the way to a tiny island, basically a pile of rocks in the sea with only a few gulls for inhabitants.

“Princess!” She gasped, regaining her breath as Celestia took cover with her behind a rocky spire. “What’s…”

Celestia raised a hoof for quiet, and Twilight’s lips practically sealed on their own. She watched as Celestia crept around the spire, peeking her muzzle around it towards the island. “Drat,” she cursed under her breath.

Matching her former instructor’s caution, Twilight crept in at Celestia’s side and eased herself around with even greater caution, carefully working her way up by inches, slowly craning her head until she could just peek around the stone. “Dammit,” she muttered her own curse.

If Celestia heard her or even knew Twilight was there, she made no indication, as her eyes remained locked on the small flotilla of boats shooting ahead faster than any yacht Twilight had ever seen, with a roar she knew could only come from a human engine. At an initial glance, she might have dismissed them as pleasure cruisers, were it not for the great UN logos emblazoned on their sides and the massive guns sitting in their bows. Behind the small flotilla, she could see even more boats, their white contrails tracing them out. From here she still couldn’t tell if they were all UN, but did it matter when they knew humans could communicate through the air with the push of a button?

“So much for sneaking in,” she sighed, sinking to the rocky ground with a thud.

“Just another obstacle, Twilight,” Celestia said with a smile, though it was too thin and too forced to be convincing in the slightest. Twilight could see the way her former teacher’s smile wavered, and understood it all-too-well. They were so close to their final goal, at last within hoof’s reach of the land they had traveled so far to reach. And it was locked down so tight it would be impossible to get any closer.

She leaned back against the rock, drifting into her own thoughts, trying desperately to find some way around this. They could try invisibility spells and teleportation, but that would be rendered useless the moment they walked into those cursed Inhibitors the humans were so fond of. She tried thinking up non-magical ways through, but her only idea there was diving down with Celestia and holding her breath, hoping to swim the entire distance before they ran into an Inhibitor and drowned.

And…now the thought of swimming along with Celestia as merponies and frolicking in an undersea kingdom was stuck in her head. How wonderfully helpful.

“Ladies.”

The mares sprang up in surprise, gazing over to a large stallion with a pure white coat. He stood with the rigid poise of a royal guard. However, rather than golden regalia, his body was clad in the heavy vest, sloped helmet, and ballistic glasses they had come to associate with human soldiers. More surprisingly, one of the humans’ guns was strapped to his side, resting with its barrel pointed at the ground.

“What in Equestria…” Twilight breathed, unable to quite process the combination of pony stallion with human kit.

“Celestia and Twilight Sparkle?” The stallion asked, tilting his head up.

Twilight sucked in a breath, mind spinning, trying to come up with the best way to respond. Was this stallion a friend? Foe? Did the fact that he hadn’t attacked yet mean he was here to help? Or was he just luring them into a trap where there magic could be rendered useless?

Luckily, Celestia was used to being a bit more proactive. “Yes,” she said, pushing away from the rock and striding a few steps closer. The stallion didn’t step back, though one of his ears did give a nervous rustle beneath the bulletproofed meshing. She paused short, gazing down at him with all the gentle kindness centuries of experience could give her. “I am Princess Celestia, and may I ask who you are?”

Though his face remained stoic, there was a pause as his mind visibly shifted around, trying to grasp for a response. He’s terrified, Twilight realized as she saw the big, blank expression in his eyes and the way he had to actually force his tail out from between his hindlegs. Then again, she could hardly blame him. He likely knew just as well as Twilight did how the “other” Celestia dealt with traitors, hay, he probably watched some of the executions and tortures carried out on HLF-sympathetic stallions and mares.

“I am PFC Sunny Daze, with the 1st Royal Guards Detachment,” the stallion said, barely holding down the shiver that visibly threatened to overwhelm his entire body. “I have come to retrieve you in the name of King Shining Armor.”

This time, he did flinch back. If there was a sentence which would have the other Celestia burn him alive in rage, that would have been it. She had tortured another Twilight half to death just for being Shining Armor’s sister, and his ascendancy to the throne following the restructuring of Equestria under UN control likely hadn’t cooled that rage.

However, the princess merely gave a slight nod, that warm smile not even flickering. “We would be most honored for the escort, dear stallion.” She intoned, motioning for him to lead the way.

With a slight inhale, the stallion turned and trotted down the side of the rock, and the princesses followed, reaching a tiny outcropping. He held up a hoof. “Before we go on…” he said, reaching into one of the innumerable pockets on his uniform and pulling out something metallic. Twilight’s breath caught in her throat, but the items clattered to the rocky ground with a hollow sound that put her at ease, just in time to scare the daylights out of her again.

What rolled to her hoof was a magic suppressor. A futuristic one, with a little screen on the side and some circuit boards in place of a keyhole, but still a suppressor. It rolled so one opening faced her, revealing a series of barbs that would have had it labeled a “cruel and unusual device of torture” in Equestria. Something like this in her Equestria would only be used as a centerpiece to a museum exhibit devoted to remembering the cruelty of some long-ago dictator.

“You…have to be joking,” she said, gazing up at the stallion.

However, his stony face told her he wasn’t one for jokes. “You will receive no aid from us otherwise, ma’am.”

To Twilight’s shock and dismay, Celestia had picked up her suppressor, an even larger and more barbaric device that she now turned over in her hooves. “P-Princess!?” She gasped, gaping at her former teacher.

Celestia sighed, eyeing her former student over the metal cylinder rolling around in her hoof’s grip. “It’s the only way to guarantee passage. We don’t even know where to go once we make it to the mainland, Twilight.”

“We’ll…we’ll…” Twilight’s ears folded down, her gaze sinking to the small metal cylinder at her hooves. Suppressing herself with such an awful-looking device felt like willingly joining one of Sombra’s slave coffles heading into the crystal mines. But any other way forward had too many variables, too many unknowns to even be considered.

There was a low, sliding sound, and Twilight only raised an eyebrow as she watched Celestia press the suppressor down as low as it would go on her horn, grunting with discomfort, but not pain. She turned to Twilight and tried to give her a reassuring smile as the little device beeped and emitted a low green light from its LCD screen. Twilight returned the smile with maybe half the believability, then, with a sigh, clamped her suppressor on as well. She could feel her connection to her magic being pinched off, slowly drained away. This wasn’t like when the humans’ Inhibitors were around, where it felt like some part of her had merely gone asleep, as if she’d lain on a leg too long. This felt like severing a part of herself, like tying a cable around her leg too tightly and cutting off bloodflow.

She glared at the stallion. “Happy?”

He only let out a tiny nod, then turned from the mares, pressing a hoof to the radio clipped to his shoulder. “C’mon up, Samudra, we’re ready for ya up here.”

The voice crackled back: “Roll for Initiative.”

“A solid fourteen,” the stallion replied with a visible eye-roll.

Twilight smiled. She didn’t know much about tabletop gaming, but she did recognize one of her brother’s nerdy references. Perhaps she knew this other stallion better than she thought.

After a few moments, a small, metal tube emerged from the water, and a hatch opened up on top. Twilight blinked watching it, wondering if this was yet another human marvel. First metal ships the size of castles, now sailing under the water? How was it they didn’t have any magic!?

Her awe at the machine was only mildly diminished by the cramped quarters inside. Celestia had to keep her head low just to keep the tip of her horn from scraping against the sleek, metal interior and catching on one of a thousand little metal nooks and crannies. “Bit cramped, isn’t it?” She asked.

“Easier to keep things stealthy the smaller we are,” the mare sitting in the cockpit remarked, not taking her eyes away from the open glass before her. She was a cream-coated earth pony in a blue shirt, her mane done up in a tight bun, sitting in a low chair bolted at the front of the ship.

Twilight’s brow furrowed. “Where did you get this ship?”

The mare only smiled. “His Majesty can be a shrewd negotiator. Every country’s looking for a leg up on their neighbors, some are willing to sell us things not exactly allowed under UN Resolutions in exchange for the service of a couple unicorns, or a few books of magic theory.”

His Majesty... Twilight was used to ponies referring to Shining with terms of reverence, of course. Rising to such a high rank in the guard would do that for a stallion. But His Majesty? Associating that level of reverence with the stallion that had played Lady Trottenpot at her tea parties was going to take a long time to wrap her brain around.

Then the stallion clambered down from above, his weapon still slung at his side as he sat facing the royal mares. The hatch shut with a little whine, and her ears popped with a sudden rise in pressure. The ship quaked, then slipped beneath the waves, the water lapping at the viewports suddenly inundating them, the sun completely cut from her view. To say the experience was a bit claustrophobic would be an understatement. This was like being buried alive, complete with a cramped coffin.

The light slowly faded, and the steady hum of the engine behind her filled Twilight’s ears. Despite herself, she found she could only take short breaths, as though subconsciously trying to conserve oxygen. Then a wing wrapped around her shoulder, and she smiled, pulling it tight around herself as she gazed up at the princess. Celestia looked no worse for wear as she gazed down at the smaller alicorn, and Twilight smiled back up at her as their journey beneath the waves continued.

Eventually, the water outside darkened, a shadow visibly shrouding itself over the viewports. Twilight couldn’t help a sharp intake of breath. Of course, she had to figure that wherever the submersible was taking them would be secluded, but now it felt like an extra layer of dirt being thrown over their coffin. The mare pressed a hoof on the radio clipped to her ear. “Samudra inbound.”

A moment passed, and then the radio crackled: “Saving Roll.

“Nat twenty,” the mare replied.

A moment later, they surfaced, water falling away from the viewports and revealing the deep, pitted rock of a cave. Twilight sucked in a breath. The hatch whirred open once more, and the stallion made the slightest motion to bring his hoof closer to his weapon.

“Up the ladder...please,” he said with a moment’s hesitation.

Celestia nodded, climbing up and out with Twilight trailing right behind, out into a small underground pool in the center of a cave. The moment their hooves touched ground, the whirr of the hatch filled the air once more, and the submersible vanished under the water. Twilight swallowed, and moved to bring up a quick flare on her horn, only to curse as it sparked and fizzled beneath the suppressor, albeit enough to light up the muzzle of a pony in the darkness.

She let out a frightened squeak, darting back. After a second, there was a series of cracks, and a pile of tubes ignited in the dark, dropped by hooves clad in human camo until the whole cavern was illuminated. In the dim, green, flickering light, a few squads of ponies in human gear were revealed.

Surrounded, Twilight realized, not that it mattered much. The only way she knew out was through the pond, which wasn’t much help without the submersibleand her magic. And though she could see open cavern behind most of the stallions, she knew traversing a cave blindly with no real idea of an exit could very easily be a death sentence.

She raised a hoof. “We mean you no harm. We came with you willingly and restrained.”

“And that is the only reason you are both still alive.”

A shiver raced up Twilight’s spine. That voice was so familiar, yet so...cold. Hearing that cold edge in that voice felt like watching Fluttershy suddenly whipping around and pulling off a series of kung-fu moves against a changeling invasion.

Still, she swallowed her fear and lifted her head. “Good afternoon, your Highness.”

Shining Armor stepped out from the darkness in the cave, his gaze cold, his brow furrowed to make the scar tracing down his face and along his neck stand out all the more. Twilight swallowed and tried to meet the stallion’s gaze, yet despite him sharing the same teal eyes she’d known from the day she was born, it wound up being much harder than it should have been.

“Look at me.” The stallion barked, his voice filling the cavern. Then, there was a pause. “Please.”

Her eyes rose. Teal met lilac. Slowly, Shining’s gaze softened, though not as a pony meeting a relative long thought lost. Rather, his eyes met hers as a pony meeting another who was obviously scared for their lives.

“Like I said, if we wanted you dead, we would have killed you already.” He said, though his voice was gentler this time, a hair above normal speaking tone. He turned to Celestia, and the cold frown froze into his gaze once more. “We saw what you did in Jerusalem.”

Celestia opened her mouth, inhaled, then closed it again with a small nod.

“Was London you too?”

Another small nod.

Shining followed the nod with one of his own. “And I am to believe you’re here to do the same?”

“Please,” Celestia finally spoke, taking a step forward. In a flash, the stallions’ weapons all rose, locking on her. Celestia took a step back, but kept her eyes on Shining. “We know of the atrocities she committed.”

At that, Shining let out a short guffaw. “You know, do you? How would you? How could you possibly?”

Moving slowly, cautiously, Celestia poked a hoof back into her wings, keeping her eyes on all the weapons now trained on her. Twilight’s heart leapt into her throat, where it now beat twice as hard as usual. Finally, Celestia’s hoof returned, holding the tiny device they had stolen from the prison ship what felt like years before.

Shining’s eyes narrowed on it, then eased. “Ah. I’m a Nokia stallion myself.”

“Y-you see? That’s how we knew,” Twilight said, her voice coming out in a squeak she hadn’t been prepared for.

Another moment passed, and Shining’s head dipped. “No, you don’t know. Maybe you read the news articles, even listened to a few interviews, but you have no idea how badly she fucked us over, how badly that hurt.”

His gaze wandered away, locking on some far-off corner of the cave. “You don’t know the fear of realizing doing the right thing means not just betraying your kingdom, but also taking on a god. Or what it feels like when that god realizes what you’ve done, and feeling like an ant under her hoof, waiting to be stepped on. That’s all we were, in the end. Ants. She liked watching us scurry around and make trinkets for her. And the humans...I dunno, maybe she got bored with the regular ants? Wanted to try her hoof at crafting life?”

He chuckled. “Too bad her first try at it was every bit a twisted joke as she was. Newfoals...damn, I wish she’d just killed ‘em. That would’ve been better than looking into those eyes and knowing that used to be someone’s husband, or wife, or daughter, or even just some lonely middle-aged accountant who was never good at anything but working a calculator. Even that is just so much more than what’s there in front of you.”

There was another moment of silence, and finally he shook his head. “We were the ones who deserved to be wiped out for supporting her. The fact that Equestria still exists is a mercy. Or hell, maybe it’s a punishment. Maybe we all died when the Barrier fell and the bombs dropped with it, and this is some level of Tartarus where we get to live a sort of half-life at the mercy of the people we wronged, always on our bellies, always reminded of our mistakes.”

At last, that cold gaze returned to the mares in the middle of the cavern. “So don’t take it personally when I tell you, princess, how badly I want to see your brains splattered all over this cavern floor.”

The weapons around them hadn’t wavered in their aim once since their majesty had started talking. If anything, Twilight could somehow feel hooves tightening around triggers ever so slightly more. It would just take a tiny twitch of muscle to end this all here and now.

Yet, Celestia pressed onward. “Yet you haven’t.”

Shining took a breath. “No.”

“Why?”

His eyes drifted from Celestia to...her. To Twilight. Celestia followed them, then smiled warmly. “I see.”

“The Celestia I know never would’ve shared her power. Not in a million years. She never would have allowed another being as powerful as her to exist.” He rose to his hooves. “Plus, the mere fact that she’s alive...”

His voice choked itself off, and he cleared his throat. “I...need to know if that’s her.”

“M-me?” Twilight raised a hoof to her chest. “I’m...I’m me, I...”

“Tell me something that only Twilight Sparkle would know.” He replied, voice low, dangerous. “Tell me something only you could possibly tell me.”

Twilight balked, looked away. “I-I don’t...”

“Then how can I know you’re who you appear to be?” Around her, Twilight heard the sounds of dozens of weapons shuffling, being raised. “How can I know you’re Twilight Sparkle?”

“I-I don’t know...I...” She shook her head. “C-could I tell you something about biology? Or...no, I might get it wrong, biology was never my strong suit…”

Shining Armor’s frown deepened.

“I...maybe my library? I-if your Twilight had a version of one, or--”

“A week before I left for the guard, you took the fall for shattering mom’s flower vase. Why?” Shining barked.

Twilight looked over to him, eyes wide and blank. His glower deepened. The rifles around the royal pair rose. Then, slowly, a smile rose on Twilight’s face. “Because mom said she would keep you from leaving if you broke anything else in the house. ‘I-if you’re too clumsy to hold a jar and not break it, how can you hold a spear and not gore somepony?’” She giggled, forgetting their dire straits in a moment. “And it was her cookie jar, not her flower vase. She hated vases, remember? Said they were just prolonged funerals for living things.”

For a moment, Shining glared, and Twilight wondered if she may have gotten it wrong. What if she’d misremembered? What if things had played out another way in this Shining’s universe? Plenty had happened differently that she already knew of, after all. She thought she could see the rifles rising once more in her periphery. Then, suddenly, his ears folded down. He stepped towards her, expression an unreadable neutral until he was right in front of her.

“Twily?” He asked quietly, and finally she could see the tears shimmering in his eyes.

Seeing him like this, she couldn’t help but have a few tears to blink back herself. “I-it’s me Shiny, I prom--”

That was as far as she got before he lunged forward to embrace her. The rifles all around finally lowered, the soldiers remaining stoic as their king embraced his sister for the first time in half a decade. “I thought I’d lost you...” he whispered, voice quaking.

Twilight choked back a sob of her own. “I’m sorry you went through all that, I’m so sorry.”

“It wasn’t your fault.” He gasped. “None of it was. I’m only here because of you and I--” he fell quiet, holding her, sniffles turning to groans, groans turning to sobs, sobs turning to wails. Shining’s wailing filled the cavern, echoing off the walls around him as he finally cried for the pain, cried for his nation, cried for every pony he’d lost in a single day of insanity and nuclear fire. Cried because finally, finally, he’d gotten a little bit back that he thought he’d never have again.

Next Chapter: Chapter XXXVIII: Introductions Estimated time remaining: 3 Hours, 53 Minutes
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