//------------------------------//
// Introduction 
// Story: Letters to Sunset 
// by SurprisePinkiePinkiePie 
//------------------------------//

Twilight Sparkle was stressed.
With good reason, too. She was in a foreign world- one she was visiting for the second time and one she had been in for a few days now, but that didn't change the fact that it was a completely foreign world. She had to cope with her human body she had no idea how to use, she had to rely on her friends to supply her with basic needs for the week, and she had to learn to write a counter-spell on her own without any sort of context on how to write a counter-spell in time for the Battle of the Bands.
With all her friends relying on her to get the counter-spell done, it was no wonder that she didn't notice Sunset Shimmer excusing herself to go to the bathroom. By an improbable coincidence she happened to decide just a few seconds after Sunset had left for the bathroom that she needed a break from all the pressure. 
"I'm just going to the bathroom," she murmured. "Back in a minute."
She began walking towards the bathroom. She was around halfway through the hallway when she was distracted by the sound of someone slamming their locker door shut. She turned to see Lyra Heartstrings screaming in frustration, throwing her backpack onto the floor and furiously searching through it. 
"Lyra?" Twilight asked nervously. The green girl looked up, blushing slightly.
"Oh, Twi, thank God- I'm super embarassed to ask this, but.....Do you have a tampon?"
"Eh?" muttered Twilight, sifting through her brain to remember what a tampon was. Sunset had definitely told her about it at some point- was it something humans had to have with them for some reason? Something about periods- apparently humans bled out of their.....parts......for a week every month and this was considered totally normal. Humans were weird. "Err, sorry, I don't have one."
"Ugh!" screamed Lyra, putting her bag back on and running off. Twilight stared for a few seconds, then went on into the bathroom. What she saw would change everything.
Sunset Shimmer was lying face-down on the floor, her skin now a softer yellow than Fluttershy, blood slowly dripping from her left arm. "Sunset!" screamed Twilight, kneeling down to check if she was okay. 
That was when it all started to go fuzzy. Maybe someone had heard her scream, or maybe she had told someone to get help, but either way it wasn't long before Principal Celestia and Vice-Principal Luna were in the bathroom examining her. Police were called and students were sent home. An email was sent out but most of the kids were used to only checking their emails once a month and assuming anything important would be sent through texts, so it was a great shock to everyone when the whole school was called for an assembly as soon as school started the next day,
"Twilight!" called Rainbow Dash, running over to her friend. "You and Sunset didn't come to the sleepover last night. What gives?"
Twilight bit her lip. She had gone back to Equestria for the night to tell her friends about what had happened, to have a shoulder to cry on and to make sure they knew she might not be back for a while. She didn't feel ready to tell Rainbow and the others just yet. She looked down and started walking faster, pretending not to hear.
Rarity followed after them. "Sunset's not answering the phone, darlings," she said sadly. "Twilight, do you know if anything has happened to her?" 
Twilight pretended not to hear them once again as they sat down in the gymnasium. They saw Principal Celestia, a solemn look on her face, slowly walking towards the microphone on the stage, her sister following her and standing off to the side. 
"You may all be wondering why the school was closed yesterday," she began. "A certain....event....took place shortly after round three of the battle of the bands that required me to close the school temporarily so the police could investigate."
The students all sat up eagerly, wanting to know what could possibly warrant an investigation. A few older students began chatting amongst themselves, but Luna's piercing glare was enough to get them quiet.
"Shortly after round three of the battle of the bands, Sunset Shimmer was found dead in the bathroom. It's currently being ruled as suicide."
The students gasped. The room descended into whispered chatter, from strangers murmuring about whether that was the same girl that turned into a demon, to ex-bully victims muttering about how she deserved it, to her peers trying to figure out why she would have possibly killed herself. But most of the chatter came from the same six girls.
"She WHAT?" choked Pinkie Pie.
"Oh my....oh my gosh...." muttered Rarity.
"She was suicidal?" asked Applejack. "Ah mean, Ah knew she'd started hurting 'erself, but Ah....Ah never thought...."
"I had no idea," muttered Fluttershy meekly before grabbing Twilight into a hug, softly crying into her shoulder. 
Celestia coughed slightly. "School is suspended for the remainder of the day. Class will resume as normal tomorrow but those who shared a class with Sunset will not be required to bring their books for those classes as the lesson will be devoted to talking about her death. The battle of the bands is cancelled, and remember that you can always talk to our school counselor if you need help coping."


      *                                    *                                 *


Partly out of fear that Princess Celestia would blame her, partly because she felt the need to be with others going through the same experience as her, Twilight ended up staying in the human world more often than she expected. She would stay in the pony world for around a week, then spend anything from two days to a fortnight with her human friends in Canterlot High. 
It wasn't long, of course, before she announced to her friends that she had an idea and that they had to meet at Fluttershy's house that night. It was just under a month since the initial assembly, and still not much was known. Apparently the police were going to read out her suicide note in a week, but apart from that, the school as a whole had no idea what she had been going through that drove her to kill herself.
Rainbow Dash stared at Twilight's 'idea', which was a small, dark blue book, with no words on the cover. She took it and flipped through it. Just a bunch of lined pages, like the books they wrote in at school. She put it back down, and stared some more.  "A journal?"
"Kind of," she explained. "The counselor gave me the idea of writing a letter to Sunset, to......to tell her all the things I want to say to her now. I figured that we could all use a chance to......talk to her......in a way." 
She gulped, took a pen from Fluttershy's desk, opened the book, and started writing.