Sunset Shimmer’s world was somewhere between a total black and a total haze. The last thing she remembered was stepping through the portal into some strange place she had never gone before, strange creatures calling her their friends, undergoing some magical transformation, and then something or somethings had exploded.
And there were several reasons why any part of that was impossible.
Her world came to and she found herself looking up at the sky. She groaned and rolled over, glancing up to consider the creatures standing over her. These so-called friends (yet another impossibility) all blinked and cringed and otherwise tried to shake the daze out of themselves as well. Whatever these creatures wore around their necks—strange stones by the looks of it—had lit up like a thousand suns and done something, but she couldn’t piece together what that something had been; had they shot a beam of magic at somepony?
Sunset looked up and spotted another girl across the way. The girl’s long, green, and shaggy hair accentuated the disoriented expression she wore on her face, and Sunset couldn’t readily tell if the color had drained from her face or if the pale-ish green color was her face.
How did she know they were girls? The voices and tones and tongues were sounds that she recognized and their soft and vibrant faces, strangely shaped as they were, looked delicate and feminine. But these creatures were strange. They stood on two legs and wore varied clothing and had strange appendages on the ends of their forelegs—could she even call them forelegs?
The six of them glanced at each other and let out a few pointed exclamations before cracking smiles and wide grins and jumping up and down.
“Hoo-wee!” The one with the stetson exclaimed with a thick voice. “Ah remember everythin’!”
“Me too! Me too!” another exclaimed. If cotton candy had been given a body and a personality, this girl had to be it.
Another one of the girls, who looked sleek and stylish and carried herself with a confident air, nodded. “And I as well. I would seem that whatever that memory stone did to us has worn off.” She turned and looked down at Sunset with a large grin on her face. “Looks like we have you to thank for that.”
Sunset frowned. “M… me?”
Another girl came forward. “Yeah! You!” This girl contained every color of the rainbow and, with the way she was built and subsequently carried herself, Sunset was sure this one could carry her easily. “That was awesome what you did!”
The girl with the large glasses, however, gasped. “Sunset Shimmer! Your geode!” she exclaimed, pointing at her neck.
Instinct prompted her to look down where she finally saw the remains of a necklace dangling off of her supposed neck. An orangish rock lay shattered on the ground in front of her.
The last of the girls stroked her long and flowing rose-colored hair. “Oh my…” she whimpered.
The rainbow-haired girl frowned, bent down, and picked up a rock shard. “Oh. Yeah. That kinda sucks. I guess her geode’s gone.”
The fashionable one raised an eyebrow; a few folds appeared in her meticulously applied eyeliner. “Oh. So I suppose that means no more mind powers, hmmm?”
“Aw, shucks, Rarity,” the one in hat said. “At least she’s okay. We’re all okay.”
“Well excuse me, Applejack, if I like to think about all the details. Besides, that geode is pretty important.”
The rainbow-haired girl picked up a few more pieces and then turned. “Hey, Twilight,” she said as zipped over to the girl with the glasses. “You think that we could fix this?”
Twilight adjusted her glasses and then waved her hands; the pieces responded by floating in front of her face. She examined them closely, groaning all the while. “I don’t know, Rainbow Dash. I’m not exactly an expert on these.”
“Maybe we could ask Princess Twilight about it,” said the rose-haired girl with a voice like a lullaby.
Princess who?
There was something wrong. Sunset clenched her fist.
“Huh,” Applejack said. “That don’t sound like a bad idea, Fluttershy.”
The cotton-candy one zipped over to examine the cracked geode floating in front of Twilight, stroked her chin, and then zipped over to Sunset. “You know,” she said, “now that I think about, maybe we could all go there and talk to her in person. I’ve always wanted to go there and—”
“Hold your horses, Pinkie Pie,” Rarity said. “Going to Equestria might be a bad idea.”
Now Sunset was sure of it. There were several things wrong.
Her hands balled into fists and she growled under her breath.
And, all at once, the six of them turned to face her. Any hints of smiles disappeared from their faces; a couple of them even shrank.
“Sunset?” Applejack asked. “You feelin’ alright?”
“No,” she sharply replied. “I have several questions.”
Twilight frowned, shot a brief glance at the lonesome girl a distance away, and then nodded. “Of course. What do you wanna know?”
Sunset Shimmer looked across them and snorted. “Okay. Who are you? Where am I? And what is going on?”
A long moment of silence passed between them as the six girls initially grimaced and exchanged raised eyebrows and worried frowns.
“S-sunset Shimmer, t-that isn’t funny…” Rarity quivered.
“And that’s another thing: how do you know who I am?”
Fluttershy gasped and folded together. “Sunset… we’re your friends. We… we’ve known you for three years.”
Sunset crossed her arms and snorted. “And just how is that possible? I just got here.”
Fluttershy shrunk down even more and whimpered. “Oh my…”
Rarity blinked and leaned forward, looking into the pits of Sunset’s eyes. “You… you don’t…?”
Twilight’s jaw dropped. “Oh my gosh… Don’t tell me…”
Several sets of eyes trailed down to where, intermingled with the remains of the supposed geode, lay the shambles of what had been a grey-ish slab of rock. Their faces grew paler with every piece that their eyes crossed over.
Pinkie Pie grabbed Sunset by her shoulders and held her to face. Her eyes shook in their sockets as she looked over every inch of Sunset. “Sunset. It’s me. Pinkie Pie! Don’t you know?”
Sunset blinked and scanned the creases on Pinkie Pie’s face and how they accentuated her stare. It made a shiver run down her spine. “No,” Sunset replied, instinctively slapping Pinkie Pie’s hands away. “I don’t know who you are.”
“Oh for land’s sakes!” Applejack cried. “She doesn’t remember!”
“Remember what?” Sunset asked.
“Oh gosh!” Twilight screamed. “Oh gosh!”
“Sunset Shimmer!” Rarity shouted, shoving her way between Pinkie Pie and Sunset. “You look at me right now and tell me that you remember!”
Sunset blinked and scanned their faces again. They each looked like the life had been sucked out of them.
And no one, pony or otherwise, had ever looked at her like that before.
“No way!” Rainbow Dash clutched her head as her eyes darted across the ground. She finally settled on the stone remnants scattered across the ground and she practically threw herself onto them and began scooping them up. “Maybe we can put it back together! Maybe we can get her memories back!”
Fluttershy also bent down to collect the pieces, although not before wiping some moisture out of her eyes. “Oh dear! Oh dear…”
Applejack whirled. “Twilight! We can fix this, right?”
Twilight, who had already started hyperventilating, fell onto her haunches.
As the six of them continued shouting and crying and otherwise fumbling over each other, Sunset turned her eyes again to the girl across the way. She looked similarly spooked, judging from the way she stumbled backward. Sunset could spot the bits of moisture in her eyes and the tremble in her features.
This girl, whoever she was, glanced about every direction at once and then turned to the opening in the fence behind her. She stumbled and fell onto her face, but she immediately got up and, without even stopping to brush herself off, bolted down the path and disappeared into the woods.
Some bits of Sunset’s breath left her as she considered the departure. Who was that? And why had they reacted like that?
Something was wrong. Something was definitely wrong. But now she had no clue. And it was only then that an uneasy sensation, a twisting, manifested somewhere within herself.
Several million questions clouded her mind, especially as she turned her attention back toward the group of girls in front of her. She now studied their faces closely and tried to make sense of them. Who were these people and why did they know who she was? Why were they concerned about her? What were they concerned about?
Sunset frowned. How had she ended up there? Had she really just stepped through the portal? Was that what she really remembered?
She shuddered once more and then straightened up. While Pinkie Pie and Rarity backed away, Applejack knelt next to Twilight and held her tight.
Rainbow Dash growled. “That Wallflower! It was her! She did this!” She glanced where the departure had once been standing and then looked around the area. “Where is she!?” she seethed, standing up in a huff, “When I get my hands on her…”
Rarity turned to look down at Rainbow Dash. “Oh, absolutely. I have a few choice words for her!”
“Easy there, ya’ll. We got more important problems,” Applejack said.
And then, finally, words fought their way up Sunset’s throat before she became even aware of them. “Will somepony please tell me what’s going on!?” she screamed.
All at once, the girls fell silent and turned to face her. Those on the ground rose to their feet (with some needing help). They exchanged uneasy glances.
Rarity sucked in a breath. “Is… going through the portal really the last thing that you remember?”
Sunset blinked. “Yeah. It is. What of it?”
“Oh by the stars,” Rarity wheezed.
“You make it seem like I don’t remember something. So… what?”
Applejack adjusted her Stetson, stepped forward, placed a hand on Sunset’s shoulder. “Sugarcube… you… coming through the portal was a long time ago. You don’t remember any of the last three years and change…”
Something went thump in the pit of Sunset’s stomach. “I… what?”
“You’ve lost all your memories,” Rarity quivered. “You don’t remember all the time you’ve been here. You don’t remember us!”
Sunset narrowed her eyes. “I don’t understand. What happened?”
At that point, Twilight stepped forward. “Sunset Shimmer… I think we have a lot of explaining to do.”