It took close to fifteen minutes to explain everything I’d overheard to Susanne. I would’ve spilled it all a lot faster, but every couple seconds I kept prodding my forehead to see if my ugly pimple had grown. Immediately after that, I slid a hand down my spine to search for the hints of a tail. So far, so good. But that didn’t mean that one wasn’t already in the works.

I could tell Susanne wasn’t taking the news very well. She’d slammed her book shut without putting the bookmark back in. As a semi-bookworm, Susanne losing her place in her latest novel was close to being personally slapped in the face with a hardcover.

She pursed her lips. “You think… you think we should go talk to him?”

“I think we should get the hell out of the house, actually,” I replied bluntly, my sense of humor on the subject nowhere to be found. “And far, far away from Sombra. At least until we figure this out.”

“Sombra won’t take that well.”

“I don’t care how Sombra takes it. He’s crossed the line. If he’d have asked if he could do something like this, then it would be a different story. I would’ve still said ‘no,’ but… you get what I mean.”

As I spoke, I hurried around the room, gathering a random assortment of socks and pants and shirts. I hauled out the pair of suitcases in the closet and collected some toiletries from the bedroom bathroom. Easily the fastest I’d ever packed in my life.

I glimpsed Susanne chewing on a nail.

“Something on your mind?” I asked.

“A lot,” she replied, still chewing. “Did he happen to say anything about me? What… what’s going to happen to me?”

I shook my head and threw an extra pair of shoes into the suitcase. “No, but I could venture a guess.” I looked at her. “Sombra ever curled up next to you when you were asleep?”

She paled from the question. I took that as a definite yes.

“Then that means he’s trying to make you immortal, too. To keep me company, I guess.” I chuckled dryly. This was completely insane. How was it Steve put up with this type of crap for over a hundred years?

Having finally heard enough, Susanne left the bed and scooped out a few more items to pack. She said to me almost angrily, “He just has to be so darn cute sometimes, you ever notice that? I’d be reading and I’d fall asleep and next thing you know, he’s wrapped around my side with a big smirk on his face. That little jerk! Thinks he can just get what he wants, whenever he wants!”

I tried to soothe her a bit. “It might only be overreacting on his part, Susanne. Steve’s still fresh in the dirt and this might be Sombra’s way of dealing with things. Securing his caretakers for the next billion years so he doesn’t have to worry about it too much.”

Susanne’s pale face turned green. “Billion?”

What I’d said didn’t appear to have calmed her much. “Figure of speech. Try a thousand years, then.”

She rubbed at a temple. “Oh, so much better! I can’t wait to explain to my parents how their daughter’s became an immortal pony out of the blue!”

I lifted both hands beside my head. “Take a breath. Calm down. I’m on your side and thankfully we now know what’s going on and can react rationally. The last thing we want to do is lose our cool. What we also don’t want to do is confront Sombra while we’re mad, otherwise he might get scared and do something he’ll regret.”

Susanne exhaled slowly. “And he won’t freak out when he finds we’ve left suddenly?”

“I’ll leave him a note or something. ‘Gone to get bacon. We ran out.’ I’m sure he’ll understand the urgency necessary.”

It looked as though Susanne had more to say, but she held it in as she got dressed and grabbed her suitcase. I pulled on some jeans and brought my own bag to the door. I gave her a quick peck on the cheek, feeling a tiny bit more confident about everything after all.

I gave her a one-sided grin. “But say I was turned into a pony? Does that mean you’d leave me?”

She laughed tiredly. “You’d need to be one damn cute pony, Greg. And considering you never started off cute…”

I chuckled, then felt my elation drop. “This is insane,” I admitted, before I opened the door to the hall.

Sombra was already waiting there, a tight smile on his face.

He glanced up at me. “What’s insane, Greg?”

My eyes went from him to the suitcase in my hand. I gently set in on the floor out of sight. “Nothing,” I chirped. “Just how… thirsty I am, all of a sudden. Yep. Better head on down to the kitchen, then.”

“Oh?” Sombra brightened. “Why didn’t you say so? Here you go.” From somewhere in the gloom of the hallway came a floating glass of ice water. He set it in my trembling hand.

Sombra cocked his head to the side. “Aren’t you going to take a sip, given how thirsty you said you were?”

I brought the glass to my lips and more-or-less tilted the cup until I felt cold liquid touch my skin. For all I knew, there might’ve been pure unicorn formula in there.

To my side, Susanne started forward, her eyes darting from me to Sombra in rapid succession. “I was actually going to grab a glass of milk, actually. Warm milk. Hard to sleep without one. Care to join me, Greg?”

I nodded, thankful for the escape.

Sombra didn’t budge from his spot. “Well you’re in luck, then, Susanne.” Another glass appeared out of the darkness—a steaming glass of milk right into Susanne’s hands.

Sombra was nearly beaming now. “Anything else? I just wanted to make sure my two best friends have everything they need before bed.”

His toxic red-and-green eyes travelled from me to Susanne, almost as if daring one of us to ask for something more. Would a cheese pizza float to me if I demanded one? Honestly, I wouldn’t be all that surprised by this point.

“Odd choice of pajamas, isn’t it?” Sombra spoke as he noted my jeans and t-shirt. “You sleep in those now?”

I nodded faintly. “New fashion trend. Saves me a good five-minutes in the morning.”

“And the packed suitcases?”

My throat went dry. I drank some of my ice water and then put a hand to my tailbone again. Nothing… yet.

“In case of a fire,” Susanne wonderfully spoke for us both.

Sombra narrowed his eyes at us suspiciously. “Oh, all right. I guess that all makes sense. For a while there, I almost thought you two might’ve been… up to something.”

A pregnant pause followed that. Neither of us said anything.

“Well, goodnight.” Sombra leaned his head to the side anxiously.

I gave Susanne a gentle shove forward. She rolled her eyes and gave Sombra a hesitant head scratch, seemingly keeping the rest of her body as far away from him as possible.

“Goodnight… Sombra,” she said weakly, as she closed the door on his grinning face.

For a moment, she stared at the hand she’d used to touch him. Then she looked at me.

“I look any younger to you?”

The next morning was a rather quiet one. Tense and awkward.

I sat with a fresh cup of (personally made) coffee and watched TV as Susanne made herself toast in the kitchen. Sombra surprised us both by sitting at the kitchen island only a few minutes after we’d both entered. Current escape plans were immediately put on hold.

I tried to focus on the news report I’d randomly flipped to. A female co-anchor sat next to a wide smiling stallion in a blue suit coat and tie. His mane had been slicked back with a heavy amount of gel.

“Starting the morning off on a lighter note,” the stallion read clearly, “the White House had quite the surprise this morning when a man claiming to be the rightful President of the United States showed up at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue and demanded to be let inside. When further questioned on his claims, he loudly stated he was late for an important meeting and that the seventy-seventh elected President wouldn’t stand for such utter non-sense. He then went on to say that they had the wrong President inside.”

“Seventy-seventh President?” asked his female co-anchor, chuckling warmly. “Meaning he’d already finished his term?”

The stallion flashed his award winning teeth at the camera again. “I guess in his mind he must not have. All I can say to that is: I sure don’t remember voting for the fellow!”

The co-anchor laughed again, covering her mouth with a hand. “Oh, you! You’re such a card, you know that?”

The stallion shuffled the papers on the desk. “A Joker card, perhaps!”

I grunted in disgust. And here I thought ponies couldn’t possibly make news reporting anymore corny than it already was.

Before they cut to the whether report with trusty pegasus correspondent “Gusty Winds”, the co-anchor asked the stallion, “So, Creamed Corn, care to give viewers an update on—”

Click!

I shut the TV off. Guess I couldn’t ignore reality any longer. By that point the bits of buttered toast Susanne kept throwing at the back of my head to get my attention had begun to get annoying. I grabbed my coffee and sat down next to Sombra on the kitchen island. He had a magazine spread out in front of him, alongside a notepad and pen.

As I glanced over his shoulder, I saw a half-dozen crude doodles of unicorns and… more unicorns. It seemed Sombra liked what he liked. Not good news for us.

Sombra was nodding, interested. “All right, Susanne, so what’s your second favorite color? And remember, red and black aren’t viable options. No one likes those two together.”

Susanne was looking away from him, nibbling on the side of her toast. “Can I get back to you on that?”

“Nope.” Sombra shook his head, staring at his magazine. “I really want us all to answer this questionnaire. I feel it’s important that we get to know each other a bit better.”

“You don’t think you know me well enough, Sombra?” Susanne asked softly, spacing her words to take up as much time as possible.

Sombra frowned deeply. “No! Now second favorite color. Now!”

She shrugged. “Lime green?”

Nodding, Sombra made another note. “So sunflower yellow and lime green. Those should go nicely together, I think. I’ll have to dig out my old Crayons before I can be sure.”

I guess that was answer enough. Favorite colors? As in mane and tail colors? Susanne was indeed on Sombra’s pony-creation-station list. She even got to pick out which colors she wanted. I wondered what Sombra would say if I told him I wanted an all-black dye job and a warped red horn? Would he consider it stupid or love it to bits? It was difficult gauging how Sombra would react. One moment, he could be as sweet as a kitten. The next moment, he could suddenly become a kitten you’d have no troubles drowning in a lake with your shoes and socks still on. That was saying a lot, too. You know how uncomfortable wet shoes felt?

Sombra went down his list of questions. “Susanne, have you ever had a dream about flying? Or, say, about moving things with your mind? And if so, which one did you like better?”

Susanne nearly choked on the remaining bit of her toast. The favorite color questions might not have set off any giant alarms, but this one sure had. “I had a dream about being human before,” she said casually, “I think that was my favorite dream of all.”

Sombra giggled. “Sorry, no human dreams in the questions here. Just to be safe, I’ll answer this question for you. I do know what’s best sometimes.”

As Sombra jotted down a few more lines, Susanne shot me a look and mouthed the words, “Do something!” At that, I shrugged and glanced over at Sombra. What did she expect me to do? Karate chop his head and hope to be done with him once and for all? Didn’t she realize who we were dealing with? The first time he’d died, he’d split an entire universe in two. The second time he’d died, he’d transported millions of inhabitants just by thinking about it. If he suddenly died in the kitchen, what the hell would happen to everyone? Or the world for that matter? What happens if he’s thinking about cereal at the time of his death? Would the world’s water supply suddenly be full of Fruity Pebbles and milk? Or would the Grand Canyon suddenly fill up with bacon and eggs?

After those random images, I thought of Sombra in a completely different light. If he still had these types of mystical powers, then a lot might still be resting on him. But how could something so powerful be incased in something so nefarious and stupid? Was some higher being testing us just by having Sombra exist to begin with? Maybe more importantly: why?

I shook my head. I was getting off track. Priority number still one remained the same.

1. Don’t become an immortal pony.

2. Take out the recycling.

Number two could wait, though. First—

Suddenly, Susanne was looking at me expectantly. So was Sombra actually.

“What?” I blurted out.

Susanne gave me a thin smile that made my stomach drop. “Sombra told me he was planning on heading for a nap. I told him not before Greg gives him a pet. You were telling me just yesterday how fluffy he was.”

Sombra turned on his stool and looked at me as if I’d suddenly become a personal never-ending potato chip dispenser. “Really? You said that? I have been trying a new conditioner.”

I gave a glance to my wife that told her she’d pay for this later. Then I gave Sombra a hearty scratch under the chin. It was only after he’d left to go to the couch that I realized he’d never asked me what my favorite colors were alongside Susanne’s.

Maybe I really was destined for black on black.

Susanne gave Sombra’s snout a sharp flick as he snored on.

“What did you do to him?” she asked in a hushed tone. “I know he’s a heavy sleeper, but…”

“I drugged him,” I answered plainly, standing next to her overlooking the couch.

“Drugged him?”

“Yep. A week’s worth of sleep-aid in his morning cup of gravy.”

“Think he’ll be all right?”

I turned to her. “I think it would take a lot more to kill a pony that has a daily gravy intake schedule.”

She nodded. “True. So what now? We just leave and think of a better way to approach this?”

“You want to talk to him one-on-one still?” I indicated the notepad Sombra had been writing in earlier. While he was sleeping, her and I flipped through it and took turns grimacing and moaning by what we found inside.

Besides the scant section of questions and answers near the front (mostly useless notes—as Susanne and I seemed destined to become unicorns no matter what), Sombra had also taken it upon himself to start a self-made comic book where he was the star and we were his sidekicks. The unicorn Susanne watched over the “Som-base” and the “Som-signal”, while Sombra and I tangoed with the horrendous likes of Twilight and Discord, who were generally defeated with little to no effort on our part.

Here was page 16:

Left panel, speech bubble—SOMBRA: “You should’ve known you two stood no chance against me and my immaculate mane!”

Right panel, speech bubble—DISCORD: “He’s right.”

Was this what immortality did to someone? Rotted their brains until each and every one of their thoughts made sense when looked at in a certain light? It would’ve made sense for Sombra. Even a thousands years ago, he was the type that thought he knew best. Before he only wanted to control kingdoms; now he only wanted to control the few friends he had.

I would openly welcome a war against Sombra than whatever this was becoming.

It was clear the contents of Sombra’s book had cooled Susanne’s willingness to try and reason with the pony. Like me, she’d agreed some distance might be good to get our thoughts together and stay safe. Remain human, too.

She was chewing on her nail again. “He’ll trash the place—the moment he sees we’re gone. I just know it.”

I put a hand on her shoulder. “Then we’ll hire someone to clean it, although I’d doubt he’ll go through the trouble. Wrecking a house takes motivation and energy… and Sombra has neither. The worst he’ll do is, I dunno, clog the toilet out of spite.”

Susanne sighed. “What an ass.” Then she caught herself and blushed. “I mean… Sombra’s the ass, not his… you know… never mind.”

I pulled the car keys from my pocket. “Let’s blow this place.”

A ways from home and I knew something was off. Sixty years ago, cars stopped being mostly dependant on gas. Thirty years ago, they found ways to make them self-drivable. Ten years ago, they’d become so sleek and so streamlined, owning a car had become more akin to sitting it a comfortable metal box until you arrived at your destination.

On the car’s touch-screen, I searched out the nearest hotel and booked a room under a fake name. Then I feed the directions to the car and off we went, as quiet as a whisper. I should’ve felt better than I was: our bags were packed and we were giving ourselves some room to breathe. Was I feeling bad for Sombra for some reason? I wasn’t sure. Maybe it was that nagging feeling that he might be cleverer than he let on. He got us good with those cute little naps before, hadn’t he?

“We could always send a neighbor to check on him,” Susanne said reassuringly.

“But you forget how few neighbors we have,” I reminded her. “And that fact none of them like Sombra.”

That was when black smoke started pouring through the micro-thin air vents and into the car.

“Smoke?” Susanne shouted. “How could the car be smoking? Its ‘engine’ doesn’t even use—”

I missed whatever she’d said next. The following moment, the car swerved sharply to the left and then to the right. The autopilot must’ve been screwed up.

I took control of the car and gripped the wheel with both hands, but it did little good. The smoke billowing out of the vents had become so thick and so invasive I couldn’t see anything out of the windshield. My foot went to the brake and I gasped. Something had already hammered down the accelerator.

I veered to the right to avoid oncoming traffic and the car dropped off the road, stopping the moment it made impact at the bottom of a shallow hill. I hardly felt the crunch of metal at all. The airbags didn’t even deflate.

“You okay?” I asked Susanne, waving away the smoke. She gave me a nod and undid her seatbelt. It was weird, the smoke. It was so thick, I’d expected to be choking by now, but—

The thick smoke collected and solidified in the backseat as the shape of a deeply frowning Sombra.

“How could you!?” he started the conversation off loudly.

“How could we what?” I yelled back. “You just crashed our car!”

“That’s because you left me all alone!”

I pointed a finger at him. “We were going to the store. You were asleep, so we didn’t tell you. We forgot to—”

“Lies!” he trumpeted. “Oh, how many lies can you contain in that frail human body of yours, Greg? Hmm? One? Two? A trillion? How many until they start shooting out your ass?”

“I am not lying, Sombra,” I tried to explain.

Wisps of smoke still clung to the ends of Sombra’s shoulders. I don’t think I’d ever seen him so mad before. “You don’t think I’d recognize sleeping pills, Greg?” he spat. “After what Steve tried to do to me all those years ago, I made sure to develop an immunity to them—to make sure something like that would never happen again! And now look what you’ve done! Trying to abandon me? What did I ever do to you?”

“Greg.” Susanne patted my shoulder, but I ignored what she said. “Greg, that sign on the side of the road just disappeared and came back. It’s not even the same sign—”

Sombra’s anger was making me angry in turn. “Good question, Sombra! Since when is it okay to turn humans into ponies? Or into immortals without asking first?”

Sombra pursed his lips and glanced away. “Well… I sort of thought you’d welcome the surprise…”

“Well, guess again, buddy boy.” I jerked a thumb between myself and Susanne. “Since you’re here, I guess we’ll say it now. We don’t want to be ponies. Or immortals.”

He nodded slowly. “Today, you mean. But later…?”

“Highly doubtful.”

Sombra displayed his fangs and gave a little giggle. Adding that image to his continuous tendrils of smoke and I was actually a little scared of the fluffy grump at the time.

“Then I guess you’ve both found yourselves in quite the predicament, haven’t you? You might have discovered my plans to transfer magic to you via cuddling, but look at where you are now,” he said snidely. “Stranded at the side of the road in a dead car? Miles away from home? Soon night will descend, and with it the darkness and the cold. If you both don’t wish to freeze to death here, you’ll be forced to snuggle up next to me!”

Then he laughed wildly. Or as wildly as a defunct villain that had just threatened me with snuggles could manage to.

I counted on my fingers. “First: it’s the middle of summer. Secondly: it’s half-past one in the afternoon. Thirdly: we’re only like two miles from home. We just left, so we’re gonna walk.”

It looked as though Sombra hadn’t thought this far ahead. He did this weird blinking thing that meant he was attempting to think clearly again.

His eyes popped open when he finally had his eureka moment. “Aha! But you are both forgetting one very important thing! The Sombra Stipulations. You’re supposed to do what I say, no matter what! And now I want you to be my very best pony friends, forever and ever.”

The idea of karate chopping him came to mind again.

“Those were a guideline, Sombra,” I explained. “Nothing is set in stone and that doesn’t mean we have to do anything you say. What it actually means is we need to do what Steve says. And since he’s no longer here, it falls to our judgment to do what’s best for you.”

“Isn’t what’s best for me doing exactly what I want?” he pouted childishly.

“No. So cut out this pony business so things can go back to normal, okay?” I closed my eyes and took a breath. “Nothing needs to change, Sombra. We were doing just fine before. We can… we can go back to that and we’ll forget all about this, all right?”

Sombra set his over-sized head on the back of Susanne’s seat, making her angle away from him. He moaned out, “I just miss Steve, is all. He was a good friend and now I don’t have anymore friends to call my own.”

“We’re your friends now, Sombra,” Susanne told him carefully, “but friends need to be honest with each other.”

A few tears fell down Sombra’s cheeks. “I doubt you’ll be my friends anymore… I might’ve really screwed things up here…”

When Susanne stretched out a hand to him, I shook my head at her and she stopped. Sombra might’ve been in full-blown sad mode, but that didn’t mean his eyes matched the rest of his perfect performance. His eyes watched my wife’s hovering hand greedily.

As she pulled her hand back, Sombra growled and flung himself into the backseat again. “Fine! Be that way! Who needs friends like you? Steve went to the ends of Equestria for me. What have you done? Made me lunch?” He barked out a single laugh. “You’re both lucky I haven’t booted you out of my house yet.”

When no one said anything for a time, Sombra added quietly, “You’re still coming back to the house, right?” He didn’t look at either of us in the eyes. “I mean… where else would you go?”

Good point.

The three of us went to the living room where I paced back and forth in front of them. I don’t recall remembering a time when Sombra wasn’t at least somewhat relaxed; at the moment, he looked close to terrified. I almost found myself pitying the poor bastard.

Before he met Steve by pure chance, Sombra hadn’t had a friend in the world. He hadn’t deserved one and at the time he wasn’t looking for one, either. Then he found Steve and they’d formed an odd bond together—neither having the energy or willingness to cast the other aside even when they maybe should’ve.

That didn’t mean Steve really taught Sombra a thing about real friendship, though. On the contrary, it only distorted that view and focused it in a worse direction. By living with Steve for over a hundred years, Sombra only wanted Steve as his friend. Sure, he tolerated Steve’s wife and his kids and his kids’ kids, but only to a necessary degree. From what I heard, none of them had ever called Sombra a genuine friend.

As long as Sombra had Steve in his pocket, he had that bit of happiness he clung to like rare treasure—almost as if to make it official to all those that thought he could never make a friend in his entire twisted life.

But now that Steve was gone, Sombra had set his eager sights on making new friends as quickly as he could, uncaring how he got them or kept them to his side. Steve remained beside him because their friendship grew from nothing until it formed into something real. All Sombra was trying to do now was skip over the getting-to-know-you phase and get right to the best-friends-forever part.

If only someone had told him that wasn’t how it worked.

“Ever thought of making new friends, Sombra?” I asked him gingerly.

“Why would I?” he replied, almost harsh. “I had Steve. And now I have you two.”

“Well…” I thought on that, “sometimes it’s nice to have more than a few friends—to help give perspective on things.”

Sombra raised a brow. “Is there a ‘friend store’ we could go to?”

I grumbled. “You can’t just buy friends, Sombra.”

“Steve bought you.”

I raised a finger to object, then thought better of it. “What I mean, is that you need to try and make friends.”

“I was trying to make fri—”

“Not as is in ‘make new unicorn friends that never die and do what you want,’” I hissed out before he had the chance to finish his thought. I ran a hand through my hair before continuing. “You’re immortal, Sombra. You could have loads of friends if you wanted them. Ponies. Humans. Whatever.”

Susanne slid over to Sombra on the couch, still keeping a safe distance away from him. “Haven’t you ever thought about finding a nice mare to settle down with?”

He looked at her perplexed. “What?”

“Or a stallion. Not judging or anything.”

Sombra surprised her with a chuckle. “Oh! A mare for sex! That’s what you meant. Ha! It’s been a while. In my old kingdom there actually was a store for that, if you’d believe it.”

I snapped my fingers in front of his face to remove his dreamy smile.

“I’m sure I could ask around,” Susanne said, “find a mare that might be interested. You ever been on a date, Sombra? A real one?”

“Is that that wine and food thing? And there’s a table? And usually two forks are on the table?”

Susanne hesitated, before saying, “Yes. Exactly that.”

“I don’t know.” Sombra put his head down. “My blog hasn’t been doing all that well, to tell you the truth. I don’t know if any ponies would like me.”

“Can’t hurt to try.”

Sombra turned to me, his eyes shimmering faintly. “Can’t you two just be my friends?”

I patted his shoulder, uncaring if it was all some trick or not. “We are your friends, but that doesn’t mean you can’t have more than two. It’s only normal. You might think you understand friendship, Sombra, but…” I really had no better way of putting it, “you’re actually rather terrible at it. Horrible and terrifying and just plain weird.”

Susanne leaned back in the couch with a sigh. “Can’t be easy, though; being immortal and trying to figure out friendship correctly. Too bad you couldn’t just ask another one of them how they handle it.”

Knock-knock-knock.

All three of us turned to stare at the entryway doors.

“That was—” creepy, I was about to finish, before a bubbly voice from outside overrode me.

“Hey, Steve! You dead yet? Does that mean I can come visit now?”

Sombra inhaled to scream.

Author's Notes:

This chapter has not gone through an editor so all mistakes are my own.

I am sure there are many, as always.