“God damn it!” Sunset cursed, kicking the tree in front of her with her forelegs back at her camp in the Everfree. The mistiness in her eyes was not from the dust she’d just kicked up. “How could I let one god damn comment get to me like this? What the hell is wrong with me?!”
Sunset knew what was wrong with her. She was naturally hot-tempered, as proven by the screaming matches she’d had with Celestia before her exile, but she’d discovered on the other side of the mirror that a temper was something that could be exploited, so she’d learned to be cold instead.
She’d hardened her heart to become the pony that she was today, and she was damn proud of it.
Only… it wasn’t true any more. She could feel it. Ever since her connection to the Crystal Heart had been torn free, her once calloused and weathered heart was raw and throbbing, which was an uncomfortable level of physicalness to ascribe to such a metaphysical concept.
She didn’t very much like not having control of her thoughts and feelings—or the idea that they were the result of something that could be manipulated, bled, burned or broken.
Those were all supposed to be metaphors. She was no bleeding heart, god damn it, but now it was her heart that was bleeding.
Worse, it made her much more skittish of trying to do something similar with the magics of the Everfree. All of her efforts to open herself up to the forest were trepid and hesitant—and not entirely by choice. There was a none too small, visceral part of her that was terrified of being burned again, and that was a problem.
Ironically, her renewed sensitivity had made it so much easier to let herself get swept up in the whole totally-a-reformed-student act, only now it had turned out to be a liability even for that.
Sunset lit her horn and dropped a sun the size of a pony into the ground just outside of the cave she’d been using for shelter. The dirt instantly ablated and the rock hissed and popped as it melted. She was able to keep it up for a solid minute before she collapsed from the effort, leaving a bubbling crater that was too hot to even approach.
That was fine; she couldn’t have moved to do so even if she’d wanted to. Completely spent, she tried to pretend that the warmth from her little temper tantrum could fill the hole in her left by the Crystal Heart.
It couldn’t.
It was dark and the stars were out by the time Sunset Shimmer awoke from her self-inflicted exhaustion. Annoyingly, her first thought was that she had missed Pinkie Pie’s party. She immediately corrected herself, because it was really Pinkie Pie’s party that was missing her and she could clearly derive some vindictive spite from having ruined something that the simple-minded mare had been invested in, but frankly…
Her heart wasn’t in it.
Somewhere nearby, a cricket was chirping and Sunset's ear twitched.
Something felt off.
Still groggy and sore from her exertion, Sunset pushed herself up to a sitting position, holding her head—and that was when she felt it.
No.
That was impossible.
She was wearing a party hat.
A quick, panicked look around revealed no sign of anypony else nearby, but plenty of signs that she’d been pinked. The entire cave, which was more of a wide overhang in the cliffside a few ponies deep, had been done up with balloons, streamers and every kind of party decoration imaginable. There was even a table piled completely solid with food, desserts and even a punch bowl that looked like it was still cold.
Completely bewildered, she walked blankly in, taking in what had to be at least a cartload of supplies that had been set up without waking her.
The moment she crossed the actual threshold into the cave, several rapid pops echoed out and there was suddenly confetti everywhere.
Sunset cringed, expecting dozens of ponies to pop out of nowhere and yell, ‘surprise!’ at her, but aside from the pops and the barely there whisper of confetti in the air, everything was completely silent.
Slowly, Sunset opened her eyes back up and looked around, confirming that, yes, she was still alone.
Looking down at her hooves, she realized that she’d stepped on a pink, glittery tripwire attached to the confetti cannons.
Shaking her head, she stepped over the wire and went back to looking—and then there was silly string all over everything and the wheezing of several balloons let loose. Sure enough, there was a second tripwire of thin, dirt-brown thread one step past the first.
“Oh my god,” she said, bringing her hoof up to her rapidly flushing face.
If there was any consolation, it was that after two jumpscares Sunset was pretty sure that she was actually alone.
Still, she double and triple checked for another tripwire or any other surprises, but all she found was a small card on the table with the food.
“Hey Sunset,” she read.
“We’re super-duper sorry that Dashie was mean to you, so here’s a cake.
“Your new friend,
“Pinkie Pie.”
Sunset let out an involuntary snort of laughter. It was so… simple and stupid that she couldn’t even mock it. How was she supposed to be sarcastic when, ‘sorry we were mean, so here’s cake,’ was what it actually said.
Admittedly, it was some pretty good cake, so there was that. Boston cream was her favorite.
“This is so pathetic,” she said, not specifying whether she was deriding the childish decorations or herself as she licked chocolate off the plastic ring from the cake.
In hindsight, Sunset hadn’t given Pinkie Pie enough credit, either as a baker or as a party planner. Normally, planning was one of the last words that she would have associated with the spontaneous mare, but those tripwires told a different story, and as Sunset moved on to get some punch before it turned into a watered down mess, it became clear just how devious the seemingly simple mare could be.
It was the complete silence that did it. There was no phonograph off in the corner playing upbeat music or the sounds of a crowd, or the quiet hum of a refrigerator where she could put all this food that she couldn’t eat. Well, she could kind of blame all of that on there not being electricity run to her little cave in the Everfree, but it also made the whole scene entirely more creepy than it would normally have been.
It was designed to make her lonely, and she couldn’t even blame the fact that it was working on her bleeding heart. The fact was, being alone sucked. Hiding away in a forest with nopony around for miles wasn’t what she did. It wasn’t like her and she didn’t like it.
When she went to parties, she was the center of attention; the one wearing the crown.
And damn it, she couldn’t have asked for a better place to stalk Twilight from than right across the street from the library.
Ugh, fine. Maybe she would consider going back—but not right now. She still had cake to eat.
She blinked.
And presents to open. Right. This was supposed to be a house-warming party, wasn’t it? How had she missed that?
A minute later, she was staring down at a newly unwrapped blender.
An electric blender.
In spite of everything, the food spoilage issue, at least, was not unsolvable by Sunset. Cutie marks weren’t video game elements, so her propensity for setting things on fire didn’t mean that freezing things wasn’t cool too. Actually, for certain types of spells, there was barely any difference.
Sunset was just trying to decide where and how to set up the thermal transfer spell when she smelled something foul.
“Oh, come on!” Sunset groused, stomping over to the table of food. “What could possibly have gone bad in less than an hour?”
The answer was: Nothing. Nothing on the table had gone bad, nor had any durian or other highly contentiously pungent food or prank item been snuck in. In fact, remembering to use her nose properly, which she still forgot to do after spending so long as a human, she was fairly sure that the smell wasn’t coming from the food table at all.
Unfortunately for her, the fetid stench only got sharply stronger in the moment after the timberwolf’s teeth sank deep into her haunch.
“Aaauuugh!” she cried out, only managing to teleport out from beneath the wooden jaws before they clamped down completely and began to tear because teleporting away had become her go-to snap-reaction to problems since returning to Equestria.
She didn’t think looking innocent and giving the timberwolf puppy-dog eyes would have been nearly as effective at saving her life.
Still, even as she reappeared on the other side of the wide-mouthed cave, Sunset’s back left leg gave out completely the moment she put any weight on it. “F-F-F-Fuck!” she cursed, barely managing to remain standing as the injured leg curled up against her barrel.
There were three of them that she could see, and though they might have been attracted by the scent of the food on the table, she was the food that had their full attention now.
They were going to regret that.
Probably.
Maybe.
The truth was, Sunset knew plenty of magic, but she had never actually been in a fight with it. What experience she did have, she had gotten as a human and it had involved fighting dirty against human males.
It was barely enough to keep her from getting attacked from behind a second time, and she shot several blasts off with her horn in retaliation that seemed to do very little.
On the bright side, not even Sunset’s empathetic heart had any problem with escalating against what was basically the uppity wild magics of the forest getting ideas above its station.
…
Briefly—very briefly—Sunset considered what she could learn from the timberwolves that would help her on the way to her ascension, but the pain in her leg and the sticky sensation of the blood in her fur quickly reminded her that she had bigger things to worry about right now.
She could chase down some magical stick puppies later when she wasn’t bleeding out.
In fact… Why did she need to stick around at all? She had come here from Ponyville in a single chain of teleports and nothing but her waning ability to concentrate was keeping her from just running away.
Except… that had been a really nice blender. And she hadn’t even tried half of the pastries. She was Sunset Shimmer, damn it, and Sunset Shimmer would not just roll over and let a bunch of sticks playing pretend rut though her camp and ruin her things.
It had nothing to do with the fact that passing out halfway to Ponyville would have been an even worse idea than staying to fight.
Sunset carefully backed away from the timberwolves, putting the side of the wide-mouthed cave behind her to prevent herself from getting attacked from behind again. She was tempted to just light up her sun spell again and show them who they were dealing with, but there was no telling how long it would actually take to scare them off for good that way and, again, she didn’t want to pass out from exhaustion again when she was bleeding so badly. It was very likely that if she did, then she wouldn’t ever wake up.
Unfortunately for Sunset, discounting her first reaction meant that she was spoilt for choice. She was a planner, not somepony who made snap decisions, and all she really knew about timberwolves was that fire was probably a good bet.
Yeah, that didn’t narrow it down any.
If her shield spells were better, she would have preferred to box them in and watch them burn, but… they weren’t. Defensive spells in general had never been her forté. In fact, it was a miracle that she was as good at teleportation as she was—but come on; it was teleportation. Who wouldn’t practice it any chance they could get? It had paid itself off in just the first year in cookies stolen and ponies framed because she’d ‘been on the other side of the courtyard this whole time!’
A testing nip from one of the timberwolves brought Sunset back to the present, very aware of just how little space she had left. In fact, they were even backing off slightly.
They were getting ready to pounce, weren’t they?
They were getting ready to pounce.
Sunset cursed. All she needed was a solution, not a perfect one! Unfortunately, while fire was no doubt the answer, even dry wood took some effort to light, and the timberwolves were mossy, dirty and half rotten. A few bits were even green with new growth.
In the end, it was the sheer hate and vindictiveness for being put in her current situation that finally gave Sunset an idea. She had just asked herself what the absolute worst thing she could do to these poor excuses for topiary was, and it had come to her like a bolt from the blue.
Napalm. The answer was napalm. If the timberwolves had had any sense of self-preservation, the sudden grin on Sunset’s face would have sent them running then and there. They did not, however, and so they pounced—and Sunset took that chance to teleport behind them, turning the tables on them.
Of course, there was no spell that Sunset Shimmer had ever heard of to create napalm, and even if there was, the creation of a physical substance wouldn’t be entirely within her wheelhouse just because it was something that burned.
Entirely magical sticky gobs of fire, though?
Those were something she could just whip up on the fly—and she did.
The timberwolves did not enjoy it, and Sunset knew that she would never be able to use that spell in the presence of another pony.
Those were two entirely separate, unrelated points, mind. Her reluctance to let anypony see the spell had nothing to do with the fact that it was a war crime and everything to do with the fact that a spell for spraying a sticky, white (hot) substance from her horn was not something she wanted to be known for.
Or something she wanted to be wanted for, she supposed. The war crime thing was honestly a good point too.
It was only as she watched the three burning timberwolves run off into the forest dripping fire that she considered that maybe it just hadn’t been the best choice of spell in general.
Well, whatever. The Everfree wasn’t going to burn down from just one spell, and if it did, then maybe she’d inherit its powers that way?
Then again, she should probably do something about all this blood loss before she went around signing away the movie rights to her ascension.