//------------------------------// // Sunset Shimmer // Story: A Is For... // by shallow15 //------------------------------// A IS FOR... An “Equestria Girls” fanfic by Erin Mills “My Little Pony: Equestria Girls” ©2017 Hasbro/DHX Media Sunset Shimmer awoke with a start. Her heart was pounding in her chest, and she could feel sweat in her hair. She swallowed heavily, then took several deep breaths, allowing her heartbeat to slow down. She let out a huge sigh and rubbed her face. The damn nightmare again. The same one that had come night after night for the last two weeks, ever since the night of the Fall Formal. Dark magic, demon wings, giant rainbow laser to the face, followed by the revelation of just what a horrible person she was. An endless parade of the pain and misery she caused marching across her brain on a nightly basis, culminating in the demon version of herself clawing out her heart and tearing her limb from limb for her “failure.” She flopped back down onto the bed and threw an arm across her eyes. She groaned loudly, before rolling over and looking at the battered alarm clock on her nightstand. It was almost six in the morning. She groaned again. Might as well get up. No point in trying to go back to sleep. She rolled out of bed and walked down the steps leading from the loft that served as her bedroom to the main area of her small studio apartment. She walked under the loft where her microwave and mini-fridge sat next to her desk. She opened the fridge and pulled out a half gallon of milk. She walked across the room to where her sink and cupboards were, pulled out a box of cereal and a bowl, and made breakfast. She took the bowl over to the couch and sat down. She picked up the TV remote from the battered coffee table and clicked it on. She flipped through the channels until she found something that would serve as background noise. She stared at the screen without actually seeing what was on it and mechanically munched on her cereal. After a few moments, she looked around the apartment. Wow. I really don't have anything to show for all of that, do I? Sunset frowned and got up from the couch. She walked over to a nearby closet, stopping to put her bowl in the sink. She opened the closet door and knelt down. She pushed a couple of plastic storage tubs aside, before pulling one out and opening it. She pulled out a large cloth bag, cinched with a draw string. She opened the bag and dumped the contents out. About fifty gold coins and a few gemstones bounced and clattered across the hardwood floor. Sunset frowned, did some quick mathematics in her head, and sighed. I'm gonna have to get a job soon. Part-time, at least, to make ends meet until graduation. Graduation. The thought hit her hard enough to cause her to sit back. She only had a couple of years before she was going to be expected to leave Canterlot High, and she had no idea what she was going to do with the rest of her life. Her entire life's plan had gone up in a blast of multicolored magic, leaving her with nothing. Sunset swallowed and began gathering up her remaining funds back in the bag, forcing her worries about the future to the back of her mind. They'd come back eventually, but for now she didn't want to think about it. She dropped the bag into the bin and put everything back the way it had been. She closed the closet and went into the bathroom, stripping off her pajamas and starting the shower. She spent the next twenty minutes under the hot water, scrubbing, washing, and doing everything she could to keep the litany of self-loathing that had been running through her head every waking moment she wasn't at school at bay. Eventually, the water started cooling off and she was forced to get out. She toweled off, dried her hair, and went back up to the loft to get dressed. She pulled on her magenta t-shirt with her cutie mark on the front and her favorite orange skirt. She skipped her jacket and boots. It was Sunday and she didn't have anywhere in particular to be. She trudged down the stairs to the main room and slumped onto the couch. She sighed again, grabbed the video game controller off the coffee table and switched the TV feed to her console. She loaded a fighting game and began playing, trying to lose herself in the bright colors, catchy music, and the assorted mayhem. She lasted one match before she turned the game off. It wasn't helping. She got up off the couch and walked over to the small kitchen table that was against one wall. Normally, the table was covered with papers and notes on the portal, her plans to deal with Celestia's guards if they proved to be a problem when she stole the crown, and assorted notes on Twilight Sparkle and the Elements of Harmony she had gathered the last time the portal had opened and she'd gone through for reconnaissance. Every moment of her free time for the last few years had been spent plotting her return to Equestria and eventual takeover of her homeland. After the Fall Formal, she had come home after a night of punitive bricklaying, saw all her plans scattered across the table, then gathered them all up and burned them in a bucket behind the apartment building. Now the table was empty except for her already finished homework. The textbooks were stacked neatly, her notebook next to them. The rest of the table was just as empty and barren as she felt. Sunset slumped into one of the chairs and picked up a pencil. She flipped the notebook open to a blank page, rested her chin on one hand and idly began doodling with the other. As the pencil moved, she thought about what she was going to do with herself, now that she knew revenge and conquest, even if they had worked, wouldn't have made her happy. The magic had made that clear to her. She could remember it all. The feelings of helplessness as the magic overtook her, amplifying her worse traits and turning her into a demon. Pain as the wings and tail ripped through her back. And then, after Twilight Sparkle and her friends managed to channel the magic correctly, she felt all that power getting scoured out of her, followed by being shown every rotten thing she had done since coming to this world, and then for an encore, it showed her every rotten thing she had done in Equestria. That was painful, but what came afterwards was devastating. It showed her who she used to be before ambition had become her primary motivator. She saw early days as Princess Celestia's student. Private lessons, picnics, hours long study sessions together in the library. She saw happy days as a filly with her parents, before the accident that had taken them from her. She saw what she could have had if she hadn't lost her way. She felt a little piece of herself die as the truth of her life was laid bare. She had nothing. No friends, no family, no place where she belonged anymore. All sacrificed for the sake of a poorly thought out revenge that ultimately would have amounted to less than nothing. The truth was simple and plain. She was broken. Broken, alone, and forgotten. There was a loud cracking sound as the pencil snapped and scraped across the paper, breaking her train of thought. She looked at the nub, then put the pencil down and got up from the table. She sighed and went looking for her jacket and boots. She needed to get out of the house. The notebook page had been filled with a meticulous, highly detailed sketch of a barren desert landscape. The ground was cracked and shattered. A dead tree was in the foreground, its limbs and branches empty. Fragments of dead wood laid on the ground at the base. Far off in the background, the silhouette of a small unicorn with a limp mane walked off into the distance. The entire picture told a story of loneliness, loss, and despair. It would have won awards in any regional art competition it had been entered into. Sunset didn't give it a second glance as she left the apartment.