//------------------------------// // A Professional at Work // Story: Remnants of a Dream // by Scout Charger //------------------------------// Most of the time Sunset Shimmer would have said Equestria was the overall better world to live in. Granted, that might have been a highly subjective point of view, but it was her home, a little bias was to be expected. The human world however had two significant advantages. The first was that cars, trains and planes allowed for an unprecedented average traveling speed. The second was a postal service that managed to get letters across the country in two days tops. In Equestria long range teleportation was something reserved to beings as powerful as Princess Celestia, while all others had to travel by train, airship or carriage. Secondly, Pegasi delivered letters could take up to a week or two to arrive at their destination. But since Sunset had asked two princesses for help, neither of those two were problems. In fact, with the help of Spike’s dragon fire Twilight had sent a letter to her sister in law directly after Sunset asked her to do so. Contrary to what Sunset would have liked, they didn’t start their talk instantly via the magical book, but instead Cadance wanted to meet her. Within an hour the three agreed on a time and a date to meet and discuss Sunset’s problem. Next Saturday was said date and, as agreed, Sunset waited at the portal for the two princesses to come across. Around three in the afternoon, after barely ten minutes of waiting the normally hard and polished white granite of the statue turned slightly translucent and rippled like water. “Here it goes.” Sunset whispered. Twilight walked through the portal first, wobbly like always but not that bad at all. The pink woman that followed her however was unable to cope with the sudden change regarding her center of gravity and nearly face plant it when she tried to drop to all fours. Wearing a big Smile, Sunset walked over to greet the two and offered Cadance a hand to help her up. “Welcome to the world of bipedal monkeys that think they are the pride of creation.” She snickered. With a small giggle of her own, Cadence took Sunset’s hand and pulled herself up. “Thank you, Sunset.” She started to use her arms for balance. “It feels sort of unstable and I constantly have to balance myself. Is that normal?” Twilight scrutinized her old foalsitter’s attempts to stand straight and started to correct her posture. “Your center of gravity in this body is significantly higher than what you are used to.” She pointed at Cadance’s waists. “About there, in the middle. Since you have no tail or wings to keep your balance you have to use your hips to shift your weight.” As Cadance took her first step as a human she let out a surprised gasp when she almost fell again. “Whoa, what was that?” Sunset snickered. “Being bipedal means you essentially fall over when you walk. Humans walk by shifting their weight slightly to one side, then lifting one leg, moving it forward and then falling onto it. To put it simply for a human to walk means to move forward in a series of well-orchestrated falls.” Cadance turned her head towards Twilight and raised an eyebrow. When Twilight just nodded and smiled bashfully the princess of love sighed. “Twilight told me it would be difficult at first but this is beyond what I expected.” She composed herself as best as she could and smiled towards Sunset. “Anyway, I was curious about the world behind the mirror and I always love to meet one of Twilight’s friends.” Sunset looked at her feet and took a deep breath when she suddenly found Cadance’s hand right in front of her face. “Ah, ah, ah! I know exactly what you want to tell me and I already know very well who you are and what you did.” Before Sunset could react to this sudden revelation, she found herself in a tight hug. “But I also know what you did to redeem yourself. I think you had enough time to wallow in self-pity.” A mischievous smile came to Cadance’s face. “It’s time to get you a coltfriend!” “In this world the correct term is boyfriend.” Sunset corrected with an uncertain look to her eyes. “And I don’t know if I like how eager you are about this. Can we please aim to make him not hate me anymore, at least for now?” Cadance shook her head and her grin grew to almost diabolical levels of glee. “I am the princess of love dear Sunset. I won’t aim for anything less than setting your hearts aflame!” A schoolgirl-like giggle escaped her. “Besides, there is no better past-time activity than shipping!” She added in a singsong voice. Sunset looked over Cadance’s shoulder towards Twilight, her expression begging for help and a way out of this. Twilight however only sighed and shook her head. “You can’t stop her if she gets like this.” She whispered. With no other option at hand, Sunset returned Cadance’s hug and silently prayed to the first divine being that came to mind. “Celestia have mercy, I did not know what powers I awakened.” After Cadance had gotten accustomed to her new mode of transportation, the three girls had entered a café on the outskirts of the city. In front of Sunset stood a steaming coffee, Twilight had a mug of hot chocolate and Cadance helped herself to a big strawberry sundae. With a gleeful shudder from the ice’s taste, Cadance looked at Sunset. “So, Twilight told me you have … boy…troubles?” Her pronunciation of boy seemed a bit odd. After all, the word usage of this world was still alien to her. Sunset however nodded. “Well, you could say it like that. Do you want the long or the short version of the story?” Cadance rolled her eyes at the question and smiled. “Give me the long one! You want me to be able to help you properly, don’t you?” Sunset took a deep breath and leaned back in her chair. “Ok, first of all, I did only get to know him since I am friends with Applejack. He is some sort of friend of the family if you will. I never even noticed him before that and as far as I recall I never did anything to him while I was the school’s evil queen of sorts. He seems to have kept a low profile if he never showed up on my radar to bully him.” “So you fell in love with one of this world’s Applejack’s friends?” Cadance asked before she licked a dash of whipped cream off her spoon. Accompanied by a heavy sigh, Sunset shook her head. “Not at all, I merely knew his name and face. But the last time I was on vacation in Equestria I met his equestrian counterpart.” A huge grin crept onto Cadance’s face. “Love across dimensions?” Twilight tilted her head in confusion and decided to interject. “Ok, Sunset, you kept his name to yourself all the time and only referred to him as, well, him. Now I’m really curious who it is.” Sunset chuckled and winked. “Well, there was a certain mapmaker pony who you hired to give me a tour to the Castle of the Two Sisters when you had to attend this sudden princess stuff. Remember?” Twilight’s jaw dropped. “You mean Scout, Scout Charger?” With a firm nod Sunset explained. “Yep, Scout.” She took a deep breath. “We were at the castle, had some time at our hooves and just began talking. He told me about himself. We talked about my past and at some point we talked about his crush.” “I’m confused. So it all started with the Scout from Equestria. But you told me a week ago that you slept with a boy, so I presume it was the Scout of this world. Which would mean that it wasn’t the Scout from Equestria and I don’t know if I should view them as one and the same or not and I get confused.” Twilight took a few deep breaths trying to calm her nerves and to comprehend the situation, with little success one might add. Finally, she looked at Sunset pleadingly. “What exactly did happen?” Cadance however looked at Sunset dead serious and managed to start to be intimidating. She gestured for Sunset to go on and, with a steadying breath, she continued. “The equestrian version of Scout didn’t have a crush on me, we talked about another pony. But I liked him and thought he was really cute and I was pretty sure that he fancied me a little bit. However, I don’t think he would drop the mare he has fallen for, not matter what. So I guessed that this world’s version must be somewhat similar to him and I wanted to see what would come from that.” It seemed that Cadance was now taking it all rather seriously and looked Sunset directly in the eyes. “So you approached this world’s version of him and became his friend?” Sunset nodded. “At first I was just curious how the two differed. I got to know him better and we hung out a few times, nothing special really. I think I kind of fell for him a bit, but I never really found the right time to make a move.” She rolled her eyes and sighed. “Well, not until our school trip at least. At the last night I we met at a bar, had a few drinks and had a fun time. When we returned to our hotel … I had enough courage in me to finally try my luck, enough liquid courage that is.” Cadance crossed her arms and gave Sunset an uncharacteristically neutral expression. “So you slept with him and after that something went wrong.” Sunset nodded and cast down her eyes. “What exactly did you do that made it all go downhill?” The uncharacteristically quiet princess of love asked. Sunset gave Twilight a pleading look, she didn’t know why but she couldn’t tell Cadance that she lied and tried to trick Scout. She was the princess of love after all. Surely it wouldn’t sit right with her to hear stuff like that. Twilight picked up her friend’s silent cry for help and cleared her throat. “This world’s society is a little different than ours. Having sex directly at the start of a relationship isn’t seen as normal or positive, on the contrary, it’s viewed as shameful and wrong. As far as I understand it, Sunset therefore tried to swindle her way out of it. Not the best course of action, but that’s not the point. Scout seemed to have picked up on it however and was understandably angry at Sunset.” “That was when I first asked Twilight for help.” Sunset added with barely more than a whisper. “She told me to just be direct, apologize to him so we could be friends again and everything could be just like before. And when I tried it the next time I saw him, it seemed to work fine at first. But just when I offered him that we could forget it and go back to how it was before he freaked out. He suddenly was mad again. He asked me if this was a game to me, if I thought that I could just do what I wanted and then pretend nothing has happened. It was extremely confusing and very sudden.” Cadance was watching Sunset over the remains of her strawberry sundae and frowned. “Did he say anything else?” Sunset wanted to shake her head, when she remembered what Scout had said before he left. “He only said something about hurting a man by taking away what he holds dear and reminding him of it. It sounded like some random emo quote from the internet.” Suddenly, a huge smiled appeared on Cadance’s face and all the weight Sunset had felt pressing her down just vanished. The feeling of being judged was gone in an instant and all that was left was an overwhelming feeling of safety. Slowly, Cadance rose from her seat and went around the table. Her hand reached for Sunset’s shoulder and she suddenly found herself in a hug that was so warm and so gentle that even a mother’s loving embrace would pale in comparison. Before Sunset could ask what was going on or even react in any way, a gentle whisper came to her ear. “I know you are terrified and that you think you messed everything up. But I need you to just calm down. We will fix this mess and I promise you everything will be fine.” Cadance’s voice was smooth and full of confidence. At this moment it was unquestionable to Sunset that she knew exactly what went wrong and how to make it all better. With her eyes slightly watering, Sunset hugged Cadance back and mumbled. “I don’t know what it is about you princesses. You always manage to make a pony fear your judgement and then you are just so nice and all bad things go away.” Cadance chuckled and hugged Sunset a little tighter. “That’s our job silly.” A very long hug later, all three girls sat in front of new sundaes and let the cold sugary goodness calm their nerves. Sunset had chosen something that was called a Lemon Lime Taste Sublime. It was a nice medium sundae with three scoops of lemon ice cream, whipped cream, lime sauce as well as small lime chunks and bits of white chocolate on top. Twilight was indulging herself in the bliss that is vanilla ice cream with hot raspberries, whipped cream and cookie crumbles. Cadance all the while enjoyed another strawberry sundae and hummed a happy tune. When they had finally eaten their treats, Cadance looked at Sunset with a smile. “Okay, since we now all had our fair share of feel good food, are you ready to get serious?” Twilight and Sunset looked at each other before they looked at Cadance and said in unison. “We are!” With that Cadance leaned back and gave the two girls a gentle smile. “Ok, first let me tell you what I think happened in this boy’s head. I assume he found some proof or simply believed in his memory after the school trip, even though you tried to convince him otherwise Sunset. What happened from here is rather common for males of any species I’ve ever met.” She sighed and shook her head in disbelief. “Almost all of them are uncertain when it comes to relationships, to varying degrees yes, but still uncertain. They doubt their abilities and maybe their attractiveness when a female they fancy rejects them. What happened here is likely that Scout interpreted your attempt to cover up the truth as rejection and reacted by rejecting you in return. Twilight’s advice to speak to him and apologize was a good start, as you might have guessed by the partial success. You essentially made him open up to you by offering him hope. He hoped he was false when he thought you didn’t want him. Then you two dealt him a low blow by offering him to simply forget and move on. I’ll admit this is rather rare in Equestria because our social dynamics are quite different, but I’ve heard of a few reactions like this. When you offered him to start over, you may have intended to be friends and build up a ‘proper’ relationship from scratch. What he heard however was more along the lines of ‘It was a mistake, let’s never talk about it again and I regret it deeply’ or something similar. Anyway, you get the idea.” Sunset cocked an eyebrow and scratched her head. “That doesn’t make any sense. I never said I regretted anything. In fact it…” She bit down on her tongue to stop herself from saying any more. Cadance smiled knowingly. “Sunset, I think I have a pretty good idea of your opinion on the matter. Anyway, it doesn’t really matter what you said, more important is what he heard. What is important now is that you make a decision.” Slightly horrified and taken aback, Sunset shook her head. “Waitwaitwaitwait! What do you mean I have to make a decision?” “You simply have to choose what you want to achieve.” Cadance raised one hand and explained calmly. “I could help you make it up to him by helping you to say what you want to say in a way that he will understand. At the end of the day you’ll get yourself a colt … I mean boyfriend, sorry.” She raised her other hand and tilter her head. “On the other ho…hand we could also clear the whole thing up, explain to him what happened and why it happened and aim to make him forgive you. I doubt you will become a couple like this but after some time to let the emotional turmoil calm down you are likely to become friends again.” Sunset looked at Cadance’s hands, both offering to her a possible future. All she had to do was to decide which one she wanted. Normally it would be easy, but what the princesses didn’t know was that this world’s Applejack was also involved. Sunset couldn’t just take Scout for herself, she also had to take care that the friendship between AJ and Scout got fixed. She looked Cadance in the eyes, heaved a heavy sigh and nodded. “Ok.”