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Etheria's Sunset

by Wanderer D

Chapter 1: Invitation to Party

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Invitation to Party

Etheria's Sunset

By Wanderer D

Invitation to Party

"Uh, what are you doing?"

"Gaah!" Adora whipped around, looking over from her preparations to her friends with a guilty smile. "Nothing!"

Glimmer and Bow—who had just walked into her room without knocking— were looking slightly confused and worried at the packed bags and equipment organized neatly on the side of her bed.

"Are you planning on going somewhere?" Bow asked, eyes wide. "Without us?" he added with a small voice. Then small tears formed on the edge of his eyes, threatening to become actual water fountains. "And you were not going to tell us?!"

"Oh… uh, hehe… yeah, about that…" Adora laughed with a little self-conscious smile as she rubbed the back of her head. "Yeah. I uh, was invited to this event and well…"

Glimmer's eyes narrowed. "Let me see the invitation. I didn't get one."

Adora cringed. "Yeah, I don't think you would have been invited, you see—"

"GIMME!"

"Right. Right." Sighing, the former Horde Captain picked up a nearby scroll and handed it over.

The Princess of Bright Moon snatched the scroll from her hand, giving Adora a mock look of disapproval before she opened it. She gasped in horror, joined by Bow, who had crowded in behind her to look at the contents.

"As you can see, it wouldn't' be appr—"

"I can't read this!" Glimmer said, waving the invitation in the air. "It's not even First One writing! How do you even know this is an invitation? Just how many languages can you read?! Are you going to get new powers out of this?"

With a half-lidded look of annoyance, Adora snatched the scroll back and opened it the rest of the way before passing it back to Glimmer.

"Ooooh!" Bow said, a look of dawning understanding crossing his face. "It's in several languages! That's very considerate!"

"Seriously though, am I the only one that thinks some of these look like doodles?" Glimmer asked.

Bow studied the spot where Glimmer was pointing. "Nope. Those are doodles."

"Pictograms." Adora rolled her eyes.

"Huh. Well, they could have put more effort into creating actual words. Now… where is good ol' Etherian… aha! Found it!" She cleared her throat. "Hello—why is the handwriting on your name different than the rest of the scroll?"

"Your name looks really funny in Pictorgam, Adora."

"Thanks Bow. Glimmer, I think it's because it was a generic scroll and they just added the name later?"

"That seems rather impersonal," Glimmer said, frowning in disapproval.

"It's not that strange," Adora said with a shrug. "The Horde did that when they were sending invitations to a large number of people."

"Figures an evil empire would do that kind of thing!" Bow hissed, shaking his fist angrily at the heavens.

Adora rolled her eyes.

"Right." Glimmer noted. "Anyway. It says:

Hello, Adora of Eternia!

It is my distinct pleasure to invite you to the "Former Super-Villain Par-tee, which will be taking place in some castle I will borrow at the appropriate time, and possibly let the owners know.

Maybe. I'm sure you know how it is, being a former villain yourself.

Make sure you bring enough clothes for a couple of days, a fun-loving attitude, and an open mind!

It is a convention/ball/something full of former villains, after all! Things can get quite chaotic. In a good way.

Once you are ready, punch the rabbit.

No time will pass in your world between the time you leave and when you return.

You may bring one guest with you.

"Former Super-Villain Ball?!" Glimmer half-demanded, half-asked.

"Guest?!" Bow cried.

Adora blinked. "Wait. Adora of Eternia? I didn't see that!"

"It's right here, but you have to touch the black blob on top of it to read it."

"Huh. I wonder what that means?" Adora frowned. "Anyway, what rabbit?"

Bow silently showed her the bottom of the invitation, which had a picture of an angry-looking rabbit.

"Huh," Adora said. "I'm sure that looked like a little blue guy before."

"Hello? Bright Moon to Adora?" Glimmer spoke up, shaking the invitation. "Why exactly weren't you going to tell us about this?"

"Well, yes," Adora chuckled. "Since it's full of formerly-evil people I was thinking I might skip on taking anyone with me this time around?" Adora replied with a nervous smile. "You know. Scout the event first. Make sure it's safe? Bring someone next year?"

"Nope!" Glimmer hissed. "You're taking us with you, and that's final."

Adora blinked. "It says here, very clearly—and in many languages—that I can take a plus one. You both would be a 'plus two', unless the Rebellion does math differently."

"We don't do math differently!" Glimmer took a deep breath. "Look, former villains can sort of stretch the rules, right?"

"No? The point of former is t—"

"Right. So. As your sponsors and personal friends (as well as legal representatives of the Bright Moon Kingdom personally held accountable for your compliance and loyalty to the Rebel cause), it is our pleasure—no." Glimmer cut herself off, shaking her head and raising a fist to the air. "It is our responsibility to accompany you in this unique—and life-changing—event."

Alora took a deep breath and rubbed her forehead. "I'm not going to win this, am I?"

"Nope!" Bow said, crossing his arms and glancing at Glimmer with pride. "She's been practicing her arguments just in case we need to corral the other princesses again, or if her mom decides to—"

"Right." Adora interrupted. "Look, I was about to head out, so why don't you two run, get your things, and meet me here in ten?"

"Okay," Glimmer said, "we're all set!"

Adora had cleared the center of her excessively big room, figuring that—since it was ridiculously, unnecessarily and decidedly uncomfortably big—she might as well actually use the extra space to limit the amount of possible destruction that could come out of using a scroll of dubious magical origins in a way that it wasn't intended to be used.

"According to the instructions, my plus one would simply have to be in contact with my body for this to work," Adora said, "so I think you guys can just hold on to my arms or something."

The other two nodded, placing their hands on her shoulders. She gave them a dubious look and shook her head.

"Well, I guess we'll find out if this works! Here we go!" She touched the rabbit.

The trio waited patiently, but nothing happened after a few seconds, so Adora looked at them. "Seems like it won't work for three people."

"Aww." Glimmer sighed, looking dejected.

"I don't think that's the problem." Bow narrowed his eyes, looking at the parchment. "You forgot to punch the rabbit."

"Oh." Adora shrugged and punched the critter. Immediately rainbows exploded out of the scroll, wrapping around the three of them.

"Why does it have to be rainbows?!" Adora shouted in frustration. "Why can't it be a blob of dark energy?! Crackling red lightning?"

"But rainbows are cute!" Glimmer countered.

"I KNOW!"

With the sound of an oiled pig escaping capture, the trio materialized in a burst of energy a few feet off the ground. They gasped and let go, seeming to hang in place for a few seconds before gravity took hold of them and they fell into a heap on the cold, stone floor.

"My, my. What have we here?" a slightly amused voice said from somewhere above them.

"Ugh. Come on guys, get off of me."

"Right, right…" Bow groaned, rolling off to land on all fours.

Glimmer stood up, then offered her hand to Adora, helping her up. The trio then turned to face the source of the voice… and gasped.

It was like nothing they had ever seen before. It had a face that looked like a mixture of a goat and a horse, mismatched eyes, horns, appendages, and a twisted smile with one large fang showing... and it was wearing a tuxedo.

"So glad you could make it!" it said. "Can I please see your invitations?"

The two Etherians and Adora immediately stood straight. "Uh, yeah! Here it is!" Adora said, sweating a little.

The creature took the scroll, then, instead of unscrolling it, it proceeded to tear it to pieces. The shredded parchment then fell into a blender, where some sugar, spice and rainbows mixed it into some sort of green goo. The creature drank the concoction, then frowned. "It says here that you had a plus one. And here I see plus two."

"Well," Adora shifted in place, "that's—"

"We're with the Rebellion!" Glimmer interrupted. "We do math differently!"

The creature's eye narrowed. "I see."

"Y-you really do!" Bow stammered, staring at the giant, yellowish eye circling them.

The eye blinked itself out of existence and the creature clapped. "How delightful. If you're willing to push the boundaries of what is allowed, I can hardly blame you!" It leaned across the desk and winked at them. "We are "former" villains, after all!" He said, giving three little badges that looked just like his face to them. "Keep those close and don't lose them!"

It then motioned with its lion claw to an exact copy of itself that was waiting patiently by the door. "I will take you to your room, then you can mingle!"

"Um, I don't see that many people?" Glimmer ventured as they walked behind the creature's… other… it.

"Oh, don't worry, everycreature is just arriving at different intervals in the time-space continuum."
their guide said, waving its claw lazily as another crack of energy and pig squeal echoed behind them.

"Works for me!" Adora said hastily. "Come on guys!"

It didn't take long to find their way to the 13th floor of their "hotel". Which was confusing for several reasons.

"Weren't we at ground level earlier?" Adora asked.

"And in a castle?" Glimmer added, looking down from the wall-sized window that overlooked a vast ocean and a small beach. "This doesn't look like a castle."

"What's room service?" Bow asked.

"Oh," Discord—as the creature had identified himself after Adora had finally thought to ask—said, putting down their bags. Which they had left back in Etheria. "You wouldn't want to use that. Unless you had a lot of money to spend."

The trio looked at each other.

"Besides," Discord said, "don't forget that this is a three day convention/party. Food and drinks provided! It's so much better to mix and mingle. Cause some chaos and good fun!" he added, grinning, before pulled down a zipper out of thin air and stepped through it, closing it behind him.

"Well, that's a thing," Bow muttered.

"Come on guys!" Glimmer said, a wide grin on her face. "Let's go check out the party!"

The ball room was surprisingly not a room at all. It would be more appropriate to say that it was a very large cavern with large stalagmites and stalactites that were covered in some sort of iridescent fungus. A tiny plate next to one read, "Courtesy of Jarlaxle".

Adora noticed this absently as her eyes scanned the surprisingly large crowd of peoples in the cavern. And she meant that.

There were creatures of all shapes and forms. A green, muscular guy with a turban on his head was talking to an incredibly attractive young man in golden armor. A short man with spiky black hair and a serious expression was talking to another young man who had some sort of symbol scarred into his forehead and a large gourd of some sort on his back.

A man with long blonde hair and serrated teeth was talking to a dark-gray, almost metallic looking guy with also serrated teeth.

"There's a lot of fangs and teeth around," Bow said in a low voice, looking at a large, muscled humanoid in slimy black with a white spider logo of some sort on his chest. "Why the teeth?!"

"Oh man," Adora was grinning, "This is more like it! No frilly dresses! No formal dancing! Just badasses all around!"

"Why am I not surprised that this is your comfort zone?" Glimmer deadpanned.

"Oh! An arm-wrestling match!" Adora hissed excitedly, pointing a finger at another pair of odd individuals. "Let's go challenge the winner!"

"I don't know," Bow said, glancing at the massive creatures currently engaged in that activity. One of them, a huge, muscular man, was missing half his face, making him look like he was grinning all the time. He scanned the crowd, "Maybe we sho-Adora! Look! Horses!"

Adora immediately turned away from measuring her possible opponents and turned around, scanning the cave. "Where!?"

Bow pointed. "They went that way!"

"Let's go!"

The trio made their way around a talking dinosaur that turned into a robot—with serrated teeth—who was currently trying to show off his moves to another attractive-looking young man in some sort of silk-like robe.

They went past the sabertooth talking to the strange four armed blue creature and weaved through the crew of Discord Butlers that were in the process of offering snacks to the guests until they saw them.

"Oooh!" Adora squealed, eyes shining. They were small horses of different colors. One of them, purple with a pink and deeper-purple mane, even had wings and a horn, just like Swift Wind!

Adora knew the different hues probably had different names. But she didn't care about that. It was adorable! Currently, it was in the company of another horned horse, this one a much lighter shade of purple-pink, with again purple-like mane with blue highlights.

"I know what you're thinking," Bow said, "and the proper definitions are," he pointed to the winged, horned, horse, "I'd say… mulberry coat, with purple and raspberry mane?" he pointed at the horned horse, "and pale heliotrope coat, with light purple and aquamarine on the mane. That would be my bet."

"Bow."

"Yes?"

"I don't care. Come on."

They followed the horses, who stopped and waved at something, then trotted over. Adora watched with a certain amount of envy as they were greeted by a very tanned human girl, who hugged them both. And… she blinked. "Is it me, or does the purple girl look a lot like the horned winged horse?"

"Don't you guys know it's rude to stare?" Glimmer sighed, grabbing them both by the arms. "It's a party! Mix!"

She led them over to the group, which was now chatting animatedly.

"So, as you can see," the horse with the horn and no wings was saying, "I just had to ask Twilight to come with me."

"Yeah," the redhead with blonde highlights said, laughing. "I can only imagine how wild things would have gotten with Trixie here…" she trailed off. "Wait, didn't Trixie almost destroy Ponyville twice? Shouldn't she have received an invitation?"

"Nope!" Discord said, appearing right next to them, and startling the group from Etherea more than the horses and humans. "The first time was an accident, the second mind control through an evil amulet. When she had the ability to join the dark side, she helped Starlight, myself and Thorax stop Queen Chrysalis."

"I still think you should have invited her, Discord" the horse with a horn and wings said. "Not only did she technically become evil for a while, she later on became a good friend. Next year?"

"Pff. Fine," Discord said, rolling his eyes. "I'll also invite Gilda since we're at it." He glanced at the Adora and the others. "Ah, what have we here? Our rule-bending guests!"

He puffed away and reappeared next to them, barely dodging and instinctual blast from Glimmer. "It seems you were about to introduce yourselves! How rude of me!" He seemed like he was about to say something else when a serious burst of energy from the other side of the cavern made the place tremble. "Oh my, you must excuse me. Vegeta has just met Sasuke."

And just like that, he was gone, leaving two groups of people staring at each other awkwardly until Bow coughed into his hand, smiled and stepped forth. "Hi! I'm Bow! And this is Glimmer and Adora!"

That seemed to snap them out of the stupor. "Sorry!" the redhead said. "Allow me to introduce everyone. This is Princess Twilight Sparkle, this is Starlight Glimmer, this is Twilight Sparkle, or as we call her 'Sci-Twi', and I am Sunset Shimmer."

"Nice to meet you!" Glimmer said, jumping forth to shake hands with both humans and bump fist-to-hoof with the horses. "So, which one was the evil one?" Glimmer asked.

"Glimmer!" Bow hissed, while Adora groaned.

"Sorry!" the princess cringed. "I'm just curious! And it's a former-villain party! It can't be that rude to ask!"

"Well," Sunset glanced around. "I'm not sure I would just ask everyone here, it might be painful to disclose that information… In my world, I was the villain. Turned into a demon, tried to take over another world with an army of teenagers to exploit the unlikelihood of the ruling body attacking innocent children."

"In mine I brainwashed a whole town for years, and later on changed the timeline several times and almost doomed the world," Starlight said with a nervous grin.

"Wow." Bow said.

"But they are better now!" Princess Twilight said. "They both discovered the magic of friendship and are now 100% good!"

"Well, I wouldn't say 100%..."

"Starlight!"

"I mean, of course we are, right Sunset?"

"Sure."

"So, I gather from that that you're not from the same world?" Adora asked. "So, is this a party that happened before or—"

"Nah," Sunset said, "I tried to take over their world with my teenage army of doom. I was originally a unicorn too."

Adora was right by her. "You can turn into a horse?"

"Um... " Sunset looked Adora up and down. "Uh, yes? Under very specific circumstances?" she narrowed her eyes. "Why?"

"Oh Adora loves horses," Bow explained as he walked over to shake hands with Sci-Twi. "Is there a reason you and the princess look so similar?"

"Oh, I'm her alternate reality counterpart," Sci-Twi said. "But while Twilight does magic, I invent mechanical things, for SCIENCE!"

The words "for science!" were repeated by different individuals across the cavern, almost as if they were part of a cult of some sort.

"That's amazing!" Bow gushed, entwining arms with Twilight. "I'm an inventor myself! Created all my arrows!"

Twilight blinked. "Arrows? I'm just learning how to shoot a bow properly at school with my friend Applejack!"

"So… I assume you're the former villain?" Sunset asked Adora, who shrugged.

"I mean, I was captain of the Evil Horde, although if I'm honest I wasn't aware of just how bad it was until recently. Then I obtained magical powers, became a part-time princess and well... the rest is history."

Starlight slid over to them, leaving Twilight and Glimmer to talk about princessly duties. "Huh, so, any big conquests?"

"I mean, I could have, but I joined the guys before that became a thing… Bow and Glimmer, they really helped me realize how things were."

"Yeah…" Sunset and Starlight glanced over at Princess Twilight. "We know the feeling."

"So…" Adora rubbed her arm. "Do you arm-wrestle or hunt or fight around here?"

Sunset grinned. "I think we can find something to do." She motioned a passing discord to bring a tray of drinks. "But first, a toast! To new friends!"

The sunlight of the late afternoon seeped through the windows of castle Bright Moon, creating a warm, orange-red tinge across the lavish interior. The only sounds were the snores and grunts of sleeping people, peacefully dreaming away.

That's when three loud knocks were the only warning before Queen Angella opened the doors. "Glimmer? Are you here? Are you asleep?"

She sniffed the air and frowned. "Adora? Glimmer? Why does it smell like alcohol? I demand an explanation! Have you been drinking? We need to have a talk, young ladies..." she trailed off as she approached the large bed. She blinked. "Glimmer?"

"What?" a voice asked.

"No… no, I think that's for me…" another, familiar voice said from the pile. "Mom?"

"Glimmer…" Angella growled. "Explain. Now."

Glimmer slowly sat up, burped, and looked around. Next to her, an equally disheveled Starlight Glimmer was trying to shake Bow awake with her hoof, while Sunset and Adora snored in each other's arms.

Almost reluctantly, the last four days and nights came back to her and her eyes widened with worry as each memory slowly but surely fit together to build up a very bad situation. "Oh no."

To Be Continued…?


Author's Note

I'm publishing this because:
1) She-Ra is awesome.
2) ^
3) Starcraft: Queen and Country will be posted tomorrow.

I'm not sorry for the story.

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