//------------------------------// // Chapter 1: Good Morning Canterlot! // Story: The Tournament Of Friendship // by FourShadow //------------------------------// The early hours of the morning were still dark. Crickets chirped, the night owls hooted, and the suburbs were empty. It was the time of night when no one in their right mind should be awake… But someone was awake. In a normal bedroom in a normal house, on a bed with the covers tossed and turned by a restless sleeper, a teenage girl sprawled in a frustrated, defeated slump. Sporting rainbow colored hair and cyan skin, she cannot for the life of her get to sleep. Her eyes grew tired, heavy, and burning with frustration as she lays on her belly, staring daggers at the wall and trying not to look at her radio alarm clock. “Hmph… stupid Sunset, stupid Dazzlings, stupid stupid stupid…” she grumbled. She squeezed her eyes shut, trying to think of something, anything, to make her tired and let her sleep. “Gah!” Defeated, Rainbow kicked her blanket off as she sat up, at first full of wrath, then slumping forward in exhaustion. Rubbing her eyes tiredly, she finally looked at her alarm clock – noting the time with a groan, not of anger, but weariness. She sits on the edge of her bed, her eyes rove over the contents of her room: the guitar case carelessly tossed in one corner, a small dusty bookshelf of Daring Do books that have gone unread for a long while, the skateboard that hadn't been used in years, not since…. Rainbow Dash sighed, remembering who it belonged to. “Scoots…” She threw her palm on her cellphone which rested on a nightstand. Taking it out, she pulled up some photos on it and scrolled back. WAY back, back to a few years ago. Rainbow frowned, as she scrolled back, but she was more thoughtful… pensive even, as she finally picks out what she was looking for. On her phone, she scrolled up a photo of two girls. One of them was Rainbow Dash on the cusp of teenager-hood, freshman age, with a younger girl with short purple hair. Scootaloo, of course. The two of them were seated on a ramp at a skate park, grinning brightly at the camera. Rainbow couldn't help but smile. “Heh. First time we went to the skate park… that was a good day.” She scrolled through some other pics. A few other things of her and Scootaloo hanging out, playing soccer, video games, riding bikes, eating pizza… just two adventurous young girls having a ton of fun. Dash couldn't help but smile a bit. Until the next photo made her smile just fade away, in favor of a pained grimace… a picture of Dash, Scootaloo, and a bunch of other girls: Applejack, Rarity, Pinkie Pie, Fluttershy… and Apple Bloom and Sweetie Belle. All of them crowded together to make the shot, it’s a big party – a birthday party to exact. “I forgot about that…” Rainbow quietly whimpered. “I can’t believe I forgot…” Depressed, she scrolled through more pictures from the party. Games, the cake, presents, the group having fun – even Fluttershy, sulky and angry though she normally was, managed to crack a smile in one pic! But the party pictures quickly ran out, and other pictures appear now. Rainbow Dash stared, looking again – and yet, in some ways, for the first time – at pictures of her and Sunset Shimmer. The other Rainbooms are there too in some of them. Most of them just hanging out in the halls at school. And in the pictures, Sunset was there, with that cold and heartless smirk on her face and that ugly look in her eyes. The kind of look that would make your stomach upset just looking at it. Rainbow shuddered, swiftly deleted the photos of Sunset and the others from that time. Then, half-tossing the phone back in place, she sat back on her bed, pulling a pillow up to her as she slumps again, thinking. Rainbow whispered quietly. “Where did it all go wrong?” A part of her knew that answer… the day she chose to follow Sunset. But part of her didn't want to acknowledge that either. Rainbow Dash is mad at a LOT of people: Sunset Shimmer for what she did to Scootaloo and the others. The classmates who now pick on her and her friends and shun them with impunity. The Dazzlings and their friends who knocked the Rainbooms off their pedestal… But even if she couldn't admit it just yet, Rainbow Dash was mad at herself too. Because looking at those pictures of herself and Scootaloo from before, she can’t help but KNOW, that if the girl in those pics – the kid who looked up to her, called her an awesome big sister – saw her now, or saw what she’d done elsewhere… Rainbow Dash flopped back onto her bed, a pillow over her face. Her voice muffled under the cotton. “I’m sorry, Scoots…” She laid there for a minute, before listlessly pushing the pillow off her face. Curling up, pulling her tangled blanket over her sloppily, Rainbow Dash closed her eyes. A couple of tears slip down her face, to her shame, but she couldn't bring herself to wipe them from her cheeks. For a few hours, she just laid there… and finally, due to sheer exhaustion, she slowly started to drift asleep... “GOOOOD MORNING, CANTERLOT CITY!!” Rainbow Dash jerked awake and thrashed in surprise, falling out of her bed and slamming onto the floor with a thud. “Ow!” Sitting up, Rainbow Dash saw the source was her alarm clock radio having gone off. She glared with massive daggers at the alarm. “Grrr… seriously?!” She wanted to go back to sleep, but she knew she couldn't. The time was already here to get up for the morning. The radio continued on cheerfully, oblivious to her exhausted frustration. As Rainbow struggled to get herself dressed for the day, the radio show began. “My name’s Incognito Mike!” “And I’m Wiretap!” "Now, whatta we got this morning, Wiretap?” “Well Mike, it’s a gorgeous October morning here in Canterlot City. Halloween’s in a few weeks and if the weather holds it’s gonna be a great night for trick-or-treating!” Wiretap said with enthusiasm. "Whoo! I’m sure we got a lot of listeners looking forward to that big day.” “I know I sure am, Mike.” Mike chuckled. “In other news, the trial of local teenager and would-be criminal mastermind Sunset Shimmer just concluded. Miss Shimmer, for those of you who haven’t heard, was arrested on multiple accounts of vandalism, robbery, harassment, and even apparently assault of fellow students!” The former athlete froze, her face going tight. Wiretap whistled. “A real piece of work there, Mike.” “Tell me about it! Anyway, Miss Shimmer has been sentenced and won’t be leaving prison anytime soon, I can tell you that.” “And thank goodness for that!” Rainbow scoffed. “Hmph. Yeah, I guess…” “Say Mike, weren’t there some other girls on trial in that case? Some flunkies to Sunset Shimmer, if I remember correctly? At the precise moment, Rainbow Dash stepped out of the bathroom brushing her teeth. The moment she heard mention of her and the Rainbooms, she nearly choked on her toothbrush. “You’d be right, Wiretap. Apparently there were a group of other girls involved in several of Miss Shimmer’s crimes. But here’s the interesting part: they were only sentenced to community service, apparently due to a plea for leniency – from one of the girls that they harassed!” Rainbow Dash’s face fell in shame, thinking back to Adagio Dazzle asking the judge for leniency. To today, she still didn't understand; how could someone be so willing to forgive? “Dang. Talk about lucky.” Wiretap blanked. Rainbow snorted at the comment. ‘Lucky?’ For what definition of luck? She might not be in jail but she was in no way lucky to be out in the real world. “Bet those girls are real popular right now…” “Yeah… must be tough to be them right now…” Rainbow sighed before going to spit her toothpaste out. Wiping her mouth, she glared at the radio, muttering. “You have NO idea…” In another bedroom outside of the suburbs, way out in the city, a girl was awake. Thought it'd be hard to call her room a bedroom. It was dull and lifeless, lacking any color; there are bookshelves immaculately organized and kept, there is a desk with a top-tier computer there, but no decoration on the walls, no sense of personalization to the room. It resembled more of an office than a home. At the desk, a teenage girl sits. Her eyes glued intently to a video screen from a news feed. On the screen, shaky video footage records a car speeding down the street… followed by an improbable thing, a giant three-headed monster. "Make what you will of it folks! Either a Japanese parade has come to Canterlot, or it would seem monsters in fact, are real. Just a few hours before Sunset Shimmer's arrest, video footage of what appears to be a dragon-like monster was found stomping down the streets that night. In addition, there appeared to be six mysterious girls who were leading them back. And that’s not all…” Other clips of footage played on the news screen, recorded from various cellphone cameras or such. The wild, frantic battle between the three-headed Siren monster versus the Five-Headed Rainboom Hydra. Also captured in some shots was the demonic form of Sunset Shimmer, engaged in combat with the six girls. “Dragons? Monsters? Demons? It all seems impossible, but the footage has been studied and so far declared to be undoctored. So does this mean that the events here really did happen? That magic is real after all? We’ll have more on this story as it develops…” The teenage girl who observed the footage frowned, irritated by the lack of concrete information. Her eyes were a hard shade of violet; piercing and intense in their gaze. Her light purple fingers flew over the keyboard as she did some quick searches on the internet… “Twilight?” She was too focused on the screen to even pay attention to the male voice calling for her. “Twilight!” Until someone rapped sharply at her door, finally snapping her out. “It’s time for school! You’re going to be late, come on!” The bespectacled girl sighed in frustration, and closed out her browser windows. “I’m coming, Shining Armor!" Twilight called. With practiced familiarity, she quickly snatched up her schoolbag and other essentials, and stepped out to meet her brother; an adult with pale skin and dark blue hair. This is an all-too-familiar dance for him, and he looked disappointed as they walk downstairs and out to his car. “You keep doing this, Twi. I know your research and stuff is really important to you, but one of these days you’re going to miss school if you don’t get your head out once in a while!” Twilight sighed. “I wouldn’t be missing anything important, and you’d never let me miss school.” Shining sighed. “You’re right…” They get into the car wordlessly, and Shining starts it up, pulling out to drive her to CPA. They were making decent time, despite the amount of cars that were already out and about. But after five minutes of uncomfortable silence, Shining Armor finally spoke up. “So, uh… you give any thought to what I said, about the Friendship Games?” Twilight paused. "I have.” Silence hushed over the car as Shining waited in vain for an answer. “Aaaand?” “I’m not interested, Shining Armor. It’s pointless,” Twilight deadpanned. Shining raised a brow. “Pointless? Hey, come on, I think that’s pretty harsh. Lots of people enjoy the Friendship Games, I’m sure that you could have some fun too if you--“ Twilight retorted, “If I tried? Is that what you mean?” Her tone makes Shining frown, sadly. “…I’m sorry. I just… I worry about you, that’s all. I’m your big brother, I went to Crystal Prep too, and I – I just want to make you don’t miss any opportunities. That’s all.” Twilight says nothing. The silence is a familiar answer to Shining, and the rest of the ride to school passes without another word between them. Eventually Shining Armor was at the school, slowly pulling up in front of the school. With a lot of time still available, there were a few students just hanging around outside talking with one another and just chatting the time away. "Have a good day at school. Okay?" Twilight waited. "I will." She got out of her seat, and opened up the door in the backseat, grabbing her belongings. "Goodbye, Shining. See you after school." Just like that, she closed the door, and waved to Shining Armor as he drove off. When they get to school, only then does Twilight speak, and it’s more of a perfunctory “goodbye” than anything else. Twilight walked straight into the school without looking at or addressing any of the other students. Straight as an arrow, she headed inside the school without a second glance. She pushed past several of them, and walked straight into an old storage room, deprived of it's original contents and turned into Twilight's own research area. A dark and cramped space, full of charts, graphs, and some odd equipment, with most of the light coming from Twilight's laptop when she turned it on. "Magic..." Twilight scoffed. "That's crazy. Whatever is causing these disturbances, these - monsters - it's dangerous..." Twilight then looked down on one of the tables. A small circular device, with a string wrapped around it, a soft hum of energy emanating from the inside. Her eyes reflected off the starry cover, serious as ever. "And I must find out what it is..."