"Sonata--"
"LOOK AT OUR LAWN!" Sonata screeched. "Our beautiful, pristine lawn, burned and crisped in criss-cross-crassery!"
"Sonata, you need to calm down."
"I need to calm down? I need to calm down?" The siren shook her bag. "Do you know. Do you know how much, just how much, your favorite fish costs, Adagio? Well do you?!"
"I used to buy it," Adagio pointed out.
"Yeah, sixty years ago! Inflation is a thing, Adagio! And we don't control Funafuti anymore, what we've got in the bank is pretty much everything!"
Sunburst adjusted his glasses. "Should... should we go?"
"Oh you are staying right where you're standing nerdy mcWizard, because I am done holding back, and everyone is about to get the tonguing they deserve."
"Tongue-lashing," Aria deadpanned.
"SHUT UP. Shut up, shut up, just SHUT. UP." Sonata took a breath. "Just... let me get my thinkings organized. Right. Right. Look. I get, right, that I'm the youngest and that I'm easily distracted and that, right, like, I... get that this was just an errand. Grocery shopping. Fine. Whatever. I'm good with that. The least you two could do is try, you know, to not have everything fall apart while I'm out buying your stuff, right? Like, no fires on the lawn, no, no damn cars through the wall, no raccoons in the bed, no, no no, no stupid blaring noise that masquerades as music or angry cops or, or, or---"
She fell to her knees, eyes wet. "Just stop. Just... just stop, okay? Just... can we have this thing we had, where we, we didn't have everything falling apart all the time? I want that back. Okay?"
"...Uh...." Flash Sentry glanced around awkwardly. "Um. Hey... so... uh... I guess, you know... we'll help fix the lawn."
"Yeah," Sunset agreed, awkwardly rubbing the back of her head. "This was kind of my fault anyway--"
"I was the one that designed the experiment," Starlight pointed out. "I'll... stick around too."
"And.... if you need help to get on your feet..." Twilight swallowed. "Well, I... my family's kind of got a little more money than is strictly necessary..."
Adagio grumbled. "By the torrid waves... Look, morons, our problems are our own, we don't need your help, we don't want your help, now skedaddle!"
"They are kind of responsible for the lawn being a wreck," Aria pointed out.
"Yeah, and can you see them actually fixing it?"
"Hey, look." Sunset held up her hands slowly. "I'm sorry, alright? For ruining your lawn, and... your lives, I guess. I'm not sorry for saving the world, but I should have done more than a token check on you after the battle of the bands. And I know just saying 'I'm sorry' isn't going to undo that, but I'd like to think... maybe I can help you, moving forward?"
"Yeah!" Pinkie cried out. "We'd all be willing to help you get your feet under you! I mean, we're okay with Sunset, and Twilight after that thing she did that she likes not to talk about, and Juniper after that thing with the mirror, and Starlight after... wait, did that even affect us?"
"I kind of agree," Rainbow said reluctantly, "but... I'm sort of focused on the whole 'Sunset got split into multiple parts' thing right now..."
"Well, that's over," Applejack pointed out. "Sunset's all one person again."
"Standing right here," Sunset pointed out casually.
"I'm just saying, though, this is just completely randomly something else. It feels like... we haven't even finished with the Sunset thing, we need some sort of... part where we all talk about what this means to us."
"Real life ain't a storybook, sugarcube. Sometimes things just happen and we roll with it."
"While I agree in principle," Rarity mused, "we do deal with extreme magical circumstances rather regularly. And they're usually handled by some sort of revelation on the nature of friendship and helping each other heal and all that. So I suppose we could, just to satisfy Dash, talk about what we all learned through this experience."
"Still standing right here," Sunset pointed out with a smile. "Hearing all of this. Not deaf."
"I mean, that kind of happens once a week in Ponyville," Starlight mused. "Something crazy goes down, and we all talk about how friendship works and what we've learned."
"Wait, are you saying magic forces people into a storybook model of life?" Fluttershy asked.
Starlight threw up her hands. "I'm just saying! This isn't really that weird, wanting to talk about things. That way we all learn something!"
"I learned a valuable lesson about self worth," Sunset offered. Nobody noticed.
"This is all very fascinating," Adagio drawled as she crossed her arms, "but you are all still on our lawn, a lawn which you wrecked in the process of cleaning your latest magical screw-up. As much as I want to just send you packing, the other sirens seem to want to enjoy watching you perform back-breaking manual labor in retaliation--a prospect which I do find to be amusing anyway, so for the moment I'm willing to concede. So long as said events actually happen, instead of just a bunch of teenagers gabbing away about storybooks and life."
"Hold up!" Applejack countered. "If'n we want tah fix yer lawn, we'll need to get new topsoil first, which means drivin' to the supermarket."
"And drawing up a shopping list," Rarity added.
"I don't think they sell dirt at supermarkets," Rainbow hesitantly pointed out.
"You've been to the wrong supermarkets," Fluttershy countered.
Sunset rolled her eyes, turning to Sunburst. "So... hey, thanks for coming out for me."
"Hmm? Oh, not a problem. Well, not a big problem. It was just a matter of scheduling, which isn't a matter at all. Unless you ask mother, of course--"
"I'm sorry," Flash Sentry interjected, "who are you again?"
"Flash, this is my older little brother Sunburst. Sunburst, this is my somewhat dense but well meaning ex Flash Sentry."
"Older little brother?" Sunburst adjusted his glasses. "I'm older than you, actually."
"And you're still mostly a hikikomori, right?"
"A... what?"
"Sorry, human slang from a foreign country. I mean you're an asocial shutin."
"...well, no, I'm dating Thorax," Sunburst pointed out. "Or I was, anyway."
Sunset winced. "Bad breakup?"
"No, not a breakup, just... he kind of became the new leader of the changelings, and that takes up a lot of his time and we're living on opposite ends of the continent..."
"Long distance relationship, ouch. Bad enough here where we all have cell phones..."
Flash held up a finger, glanced over to where the other girls were busy arguing over dirt, and lowered it. "So... Sunburst, huh? I guess you've got a lot of stories about Sunset's childhood days?"
Sunburst chuckled. "Oh, no, not like that. But... you know there was that one time with Blueblood--"
"Oh don't you dare," Sunset growled. "Don't you even dare, Sunburst!"
"See, it was the Summer Sun Celebration, and Sunset decided to buck the trends and wear a tuxedo. Now I was alright with that, and so was princess Celestia, but the nobles of Canterlot are a bit too eager to interpret things for a scandal. And, as it turns out, Blueblood had a hangover from, well, let's just say there were a lot of mares involved..."
Sunset buried her face in her hands. "Why.... why do you do this to me, fate?"
"From our perspective, probably not," said Sunburst. "From Starlight and Princess Twilight's?" He looked about the scorched craters peppering the lawn. "They did mention how one of the timelines they visited was an ashen wasteland."
Also, the group may or may not have discovered narrativium.
In any case, good to see Sunset is back in one piece, even if the same can't be said for the sirens' lawn. Though now I'm curious about how Stellar Flare reacted when she learned she had a daughter.
... Does she even know now?
Sonachan is being assertive. We're so proud.
...Damn, Sunset WOULD look good in a tuxedo.
i wanna hear that story sunset story
This Sonata is a cool Sonata!
And this is still incomplete, so lawn fixing next chapter! Or Epilogue, possibly the same thing,
8995223
I imagine Sunburst and/or Starlight has already warned Sunset to stay far, far away from Sire’s Hollow. Just imagine if Stellar Flare found out about the portal... Fanfic writers, to your keyboards!
8995357
Sunsuited?
8995493
from the context given in this story i would say it take place after that but before sunset left for the human world
8995500
I wasn't aware there was already a story by that name?
8995511
sorry i was thinking of one of the eariler stories so i got mixed up sorry
this is the best I've seen of Sonata.
Huh, Angry Sonata. That's something you don't see too often.
There is no Walmart near Canterlot High?
Well, TECHNICALLY, it did keep Princess Twi from being able to help with stuff at the Friendship games. So, yeah, technically it did.
A lot of mares involved, you say? Now that's a story I wanna hear.
Also, poor Sunset...
8995863
Forget Wally World. Is there no Home Depot or Lowe's near CHS?
8995335
Many mares would.
8995517
They haven't wised up? Too dumb to live territory. This will be fun. Where'd I put my popcorn? *Starts cheering for the villains*
8995945
amen to that :p
8995335
Well for your information there's an entire story of how awesome Sunset is when she's wearing a tuxedo. It's called A Suit With Sincerity by Oroboro.
8995863 8995945
"Supermarket" specifically refers to chains like Zehrs (I'm Canadian) which are focused primarily on food and household consumables such as cleaning and hygiene supplies.
(The joke is that rural markets have a different definition of what qualifies as a "household consumable".)
Wal-Mart is what's known as a Big-box store or Hypermarket. (As evidenced by the fact that it began as a giant department store and added food later, while supermarkets began as giant grocery stores.)
Likewise, Home Depot and Lowe's are also not supermarkets because they arrived at big-box store status by diversifying from being hardware and/or appliance stores.
8997963
I see. I always saw it advertises as 'Supercenter' so I just assume it is a supermarket. 99% of my trips to Walmart were to buy food, so I personally accepted it as super-big grocery store more than a department store.
8998100
I haven't double-checked but, from what I remember, they originally introduced the "Wal-Mart Supercenter" as a way to distinguish the "merely a large department store" locations ("Wal-Mart") from the ones that were full-blown hypermarkets ("Wal-Mart Supercenter").
8995223 We need an epilogue that is just about the Rainbooms buying topsoil and restoring the Dazzlings' lawn.
Ok, Sonata rant was fun and I’m still just loving this !
8995223
Or if you want total things in a darker direction, they discovered Ka.
The She-Demon fled across the desert, and the Daydream followed.