Chapter 17

Sunset Shimmer rode her motorcycle down the winding road through the woods.

It was now Saturday morning and she was on her way to Fluttershy’s house to bring my keys back to me after Twilight had mistakenly brought them back to school with her.

Normally, Sunset would not make such a long trip just to bring someone their keys, but this situation was different; these keys belonged to someone that Sunset had spent the entire week thinking about non-stop and had become fascinated -- even borderline obsessed with in the process.

“Where has he lived?....What has he done?...Who has he known?...Did he influence any major events in this world's history?” she thought, her mind racing as the sound of the V-twin engine echoed off of the trees as they passed her by.

“What does he want with Fluttershy?” she continued. “What have they been doing out there all week, alone together?”

Like the engine beneath her, Sunset's mind droned on endlessly, even as she approached Fluttershy’s driveway. She rolled in and circled around before parking the bike, then shut off the engine and kicked the stand down and then finally, hung her helmet on the handlebar.

It was another beautiful day; sunny and warm, and not a cloud in the sky. Sunset stood in the driveway, stretching her back as she looked around, noticing the gravel looked like it had been levelled and raked and the tree that Pinkie had blown down was gone. It looked surprisingly normal, like nothing had happened the week before.

She decided to head inside and see how things were going.

Sunset opened the door slowly, knocking quietly. “Hello?” she called out, peeking her head inside.

The first thing she saw was me; sitting at the table with a cup of coffee.

“Oh hey,” I said, glancing toward the door when I noticed her.

Sunset heard the shy girl’s voice come from the couch next. “Is she here?”

“Yeah I’m here, Flutters,” Sunset answered, stepping inside and closing the door before taking off her boots. “Hey Golds,” she said as she took my keys out of her leather jacket and tossed them to me.

I saw them coming towards me from the corner of my eye as I took another sip of my coffee and quickly snapped my arm out to catch them without turning my head.

“Wow, good catch!” Sunset said, eyebrows raised.

Silently, I nodded, then took another sip.

By then, Fluttershy had gotten up from the couch and was approaching us at the table. “I’m glad you’re here, Sunset,” she said quietly.

“It’s good to see you too, Flutters.” Sunset raised a finger. “Could we just hold that thought? It was a long ride out here from the city, and I’ve gotta use the little girl’s room, if you don't mind.”

“Oh! Of course,” Fluttershy answered, gesturing down the hall and then folding both hands in front of her green skirt.

Sunset pranced quickly down the hall to use the bathroom. When she was done, she flushed the toilet and stood in front of the mirror, adjusting her fiery locks of hair, trying in vain to fluff out the helmet imprint left there from the long ride.

From the corner of her eye, she noticed a hand print on the mirror in the lower left corner. Not thinking much of it, she went back to checking her appearance; she looked at her eyes, making sure there was no gunk in the corners, then she gritted her teeth, checking for any bits of food stuck between them. She then noticed another hand print on the mirror, this time down in the lower right. It looked to her as though someone with wet hands had been leaning against the mirror.

“Hm,” she wondered aloud, chewing the inside of her cheek, but quickly decided not to dwell on it much. She headed back out to the main room to find Fluttershy and me sitting across from each other at the table, silent.

“Must have been a pretty quiet week here,” Sunset thought, watching us sit there like old people at a retirement home.

Sunset walked to the door to take off her jacket and then set it down on top of her boots. She was wearing a fuschia T-shirt with a large red and yellow sun on the chest, portrayed in a tribal style, below which resided a pair of tight blue jeans. She came back and leaned on the end of the table, looking at my girlfriend first, and then me.

"Um, so I wanted to apologize again for last week, Golds," Sunset said, scratching her earlobe somewhat nervously.

I looked up at her. "Hm?" I replied absentmindedly. "Oh, yeah...that was crazy."

As I returned my eyes to the steamy beverage before me, Sunset arched an eyebrow, noticing the strange lack of interest in what had happened the week before, which still had her feeling pretty overwhelmed; in fact, texting the other girls late in the week had revealed that all of them were still reeling from what they'd learned that night, even several days afterward. Wondering about the change in attitude, Sunset glanced at Fluttershy, who just stared down at the tabletop.

“Sooooo…” Sunset said, “how’d it go this week? Everything OK?”

I nodded. “Yep. We’re good.”

“Has it been this quiet here all week?” she inquired, curious to hear more.

I shook my head. “Um, no…not all the time,” I said, sounding like I was hinting at something.

Sunset frowned. “What’s going on here?” she wondered. “What does that mean, Golds? What happened?”

I looked at Fluttershy. “We’ve gotta tell her.”

The shy girl lifted her head slowly -- sitting with her arms wrapped around her waist in a very defensive posture -- to look at Sunset, who was looking back at her with a concerned brow.

“Is something wrong, Flutters?” Sunset asked. She recognized Fluttershy’s demeanor; it was something she’d gotten very familiar with during the time that she had bullied the pink-haired girl in high school over eight years ago, before she’d become her close friend.

I answered for my girlfriend. “Not really…wrong…per se…” I nodded to Fluttershy. “You might as well just show her.”

Fluttershy nodded silently and stood up. She made her way over to the knife block on the counter and pulled out a large cleaver. Without hesitation, she turned back to us and placed her left palm flat on the table in front of Sunset. With her other hand, she raised the cleaver above her head and swung it down hard, driving the blade across her fingers with a dull thud.

“FLUTTERSHY! WHAT THE FUCK?!” Sunset yelled, recoiling and turning away, covering her eyes with her forearm. She held that position for a few seconds, gritting her teeth, waiting to hear the shy girl's cries of pain.

But there was only silence.

Sunset finally decided to look, and slowly turned to face Fluttershy, curious to see what had happened. What she saw was Fluttershy looking back at her with the cleaver still resting on the back of her hand.

Incredulous, Sunset stared at the delicate, yellow fingers as Fluttershy lifted the blade away; her eyes wide when she saw that there was no damage done. “Uh…what in Tartarus just happened?”

Fluttershy then ran her fingers through her hair, exposing her forehead so the red-head could see where the wound from last week should have been.

Sunset quickly realised there was no wound there either.

Then, she looked at me. “What’s going on?” she asked, confused and frantic.

I shrugged. “I’ve got no fuckin idea,” I said. “We noticed it yesterday.”

Sunset leaned closer, glaring at me under her brows. “Noticed what?”

“Flutters is like me now.”

Stunned by the response, Sunset closed her eyes and shook her head. "Like him? How is this possible? Pressing her fingertips firmly to her temples, Sunset opened her eyes to watch the shy girl, who she'd known for a decade now as being meek, shy, scared of everything -- even loud noises; but who had just then -- to Sunset's utter shock -- tried with full intention to chop her own fingers off.

Unsuccessfully.

Of all the people in the world, who would ever expect such a girl -- the epitome of sweetness and innocence -- to become something so...unbreakable? How would this change her? What sort of things would she do in the centuries ahead?

All of these questions began to rush into Sunset's head at once, cluttering her mind with a swarm of voices as she stared blankly at the shy girl, watching as she quietly slid the cleaver into its home in the knife block, then folded her hands in front of herself and calmly made her way around the table to return to her seat.

The scene played out before the red-head, seemingly in slow motion and in a strange, muffled silence. She hadn't even noticed the question being asked of her, which had sounded like nothing but low murmurs in her ears as she stared absentmindedly at the harmless-looking animal lover.

The muffled voice rang out again, catching Sunset's attention this time. Jarringly snapped back to reality, she shifted her eyes onto me and quickly realised that I had been asking her something. The situation was rapidly overwhelming the red-head, so rather than trying to respond to whatever was said to her, she absentmindedly spit out a question of her own.

“Whoa, whoa, wait…you can give people your power?”

I chuckled casually. “Apparently. I didn’t know I could, but…here we are.”

Sunset furrowed her brows, confused. “But...you’ve never done it before?”

I shook my head. “No, ma'am. We’re not sure why it happened.”

“Oh,” Sunset said, her eyebrows rose as she realised that Fluttershy and I were just as befuddled about it as she was. Determined as always to be the problem solver of the group, she quickly decided to try to figure out how it happened. “OK, well…let’s go back. Trace your steps: what did you do this week?”

I took a deep breath, trying to remember how the week played out. “Well; Monday she slept all day while I fixed up the yard,” I started, shifting my eyes to the ceiling.

As I spoke, Sunset shook her head at herself for not thinking; she could read minds for crying out loud! Why bother asking these questions? “Oh hang on, duh! Let me just take a peek at her mind,” she huffed, stepping over to Fluttershy and reaching her hand out.

Not listening to the red-head, I had continued to ramble on about the week. ”Tuesday we had sex…uh...like, a lot.”

Sunset suddenly turned to me, her turquoise eyes wide with shock. Her fingertips were only inches from touching Fluttershy’s arm when she pulled back, stopping the mind read. “WHOA! Hey…you guys had sex?”

I looked at my girlfriend, hoping she wouldn’t be too embarrassed. She did blush a little, but nodded, looking up at Sunset.

“Wow,” the red-head said, then paused. “Just…next time give me a little more warning than that.”

I cocked an eyebrow. “Why?”

Sunset sighed, then gestured to Fluttershy. “I was about to read her. I would have seen it…you know…you guys; gettin it on.”

“Ah,” I replied. “Sorry.”

Sunset sighed, pinching the bridge of her nose with her thumb and forefinger as she turned around, walking back to the end of the table. “That’s the last thing I need after that time Rainbow Dash had that guy from her work spend the night,” she explained, with a shake of her head. “There were hand cuffs, and things going into places that shouldn’t have been…”

I grimaced. “Yeesh, you read her after that?” I asked.

“No!” Sunset said bluntly, glaring at me. “Well, not intentionally; fucking Rainbow came up and grabbed my hand on purpose so I would see it. She thought it was pretty damn funny,” she sighed, shaking her head again. “Real fucking funny, Dash!” she muttered to herself before turning back to us. “I couldn’t look her in the face for two weeks after that.”

Fluttershy and I watched her for a few seconds.

I won’t lie, I smirked a little at Dash’s prank.

Sunset finally ran a hand down her face, letting her palm slide off of her chin before bringing herself back to Fluttershy’s situation. “OK, so you guys had sex,” she paused, floored yet again by the revelation. “Wow, really?” She looked at Fluttershy and smirked, showing a bit of admiration for the shy girl, who'd finally decided to come out of her shell, which was good; except for the unexpected conundrum she now found herself in.

Fluttershy was immortal. Indestructible. Forever young.

She was never going to die.

The stark reality of it struck the red-head all over again, and she began to rub her chin when another thought came to her.

“Oh...shit," said Sunset, remembering suddenly what she’d just seen in the bathroom. "Well, that explains the hand prints on the mirror."

"Oh," I replied, after a second's confusion. "That was from the third time, actually. I was drilling Flutters over the counter and she-"

"OK shut up!" Sunset shouted, closing her eyes and waving me off with both hands. "Holy shit, you guys," she glared at Fluttershy, who innocently shrugged her shoulders and stared back with a face of scarlet.

“Well,” Sunset continued after a short pause, “Wouldn’t that be it? The reason she became like you; cuz you guys had sex?”

I was already shaking my head before she finished. “No, it’s got nothing to do with that,” I replied. “I’ve been with lots of women over the years and they’re all dead now, so...yeah.”

Sunset chewed on her bottom lip, ruminating to herself as her eyes shifted up to the ceiling. “Hm…”

We remained silent for a minute.

Then Sunset looked at me suddenly, cocking an eyebrow. “Wait; did any of those women happen to have Equestrian magic?”

I drew in a breath to answer. “Well,” but then I stopped. “Hang on…” I thought. “Oh shit!” The realisation hit me like a ball-peen hammer to the forehead, and I looked at Fluttershy, who was staring at me with vacant eyes.

“No,” I answered flatly, as I turned to face Sunset again.

“That’s gotta be it then!” Sunset proclaimed, slapping the table. “Fluttershy’s magic did something, and must have made her become like you.”

I shook my head, confused. “Wait, slow down...how would that even work? And why would it happen?” I found myself looking to Sunset for the answers now; she was obviously the bigger expert on that magic, which was from her world.

“I don’t know,” she answered. “Back home, I knew all about Equestrian magic; but in this world, it’s got a mind of its own. I can never predict what it’s going to do here.”

Fluttershy listened intently, but remained silent. What must have been going through her mind?

“OK, how about this,” Sunset offered. ”Did you guys use protection?”

Fluttershy and I shook our heads.

“Uh…why?” I asked, unsure of what that had to do with anything.

“Well, you said last week that no woman you’ve been with has ever conceived. Maybe Fluttershy’s magic allowed her to conceive, but instead of creating a 'new' life,” Sunset said, doing air quotes, “maybe it created ‘everlasting' life, like yours.”

My girlfriend and I looked at each other to gauge each other’s reactions.

Was this possible?

With an exasperated groan, Sunset suddenly buried her face in her hands and scolded herself. “No, that makes no sense. Come on, Sunset!”

I shook my head, pointing a finger at her. “No, wait; that’s a decent theory,” I said. “There’s just no way to prove it, that's all.”

Sunset slid her hands partway down her face, enough to uncover her eyes so she could look around the room for a bit, before leaning with her hands on the table, letting her head hang down as she thought; red and yellow locks of wavy hair sweeping the smooth table top. “Well, what would Twilight say?” she thought out loud.

Sunset lifted her head, stood up straight and put one finger in the air, imitating Twilight’s voice, saying: “In science, to prove a theory, you must conduct experiments that show consistent and repeatable results that support your idea.”

I frowned at the suggestion. “Repeatable results?” I muttered. “What is she saying? That I should fuck anoth-“

I stopped when I realised something. “Oh shit!”

Looking across the table at Fluttershy, I could tell right away that she was about to have the very same revelation because she was staring back at me; frozen in place, her mouth gaping with a look of utter shock her eyes. Gasping, she covered her mouth for a brief second, then, speaking for the first time during the conversation, shouted:

“RARITY!”