A dark void spread as far as Sunset Shimmer could see.
Slowly, a towering form faded into view before her. She craned her neck up, up, and up some more. Her jaw dropped. Principal Celestia loomed above her, taller than the tallest skyscraper, dressed in a flowing gold and white dress and wearing a gold crown that shone like the sun. A long, tapered shard of red crystal was affixed to her forehead like a horn. She folded her arms and looked down at Sunset imperiously.
"So pitiful," she said. "The little pony, the girl who rose so high and fell so far, and nobody remembers you. We would cry for you if We didn't have paperwork to file. So much paperwork, so many dead trees...yes, We will cry for the trees, but not for you.
"Your friends have forgotten you, stunted Sunset. F-O-R-G-O-T-T-E-N. You can make them remember, yes. You can roll up their memories. Or a reasonable facsimile thereof. Terms and restrictions may apply. Now! On to the rolling."
And then space contracted around Sunset, and she found herself standing in a vast, cavernous hall with towering walls and an impossibly high ceiling. A bright orange ball covered in red bumps stood in front of her. The floor was littered with reams of detritus, mostly arranged in curiously straight, neat rows; the rows weaved between the feet of colossal titans.
Celestia's face appeared above her.
"Today, you will be rolling around the school. We can believe in you for 23 minutes. No more and no less. No special hour-long episode for you today. Get it done in a regular episode's time."
Music began playing from seemingly nowhere, and the world came to life around Sunset. She grabbed onto the ball in front of her and started pushing it down the hall, watching as loose buttons and stray pieces of candy stuck to its surface. She skillfully weaved between the enormous feet of faceless people, picking up rows of random objects from paperclips to candy wrappers, the ball slowly growing in size.
A sharp jolt from behind sent Sunset and her ball careening into a wall, knocking half a dozen pieces of candy corn off. As she shook her head to get her bearings, she saw Spike the Dog dash past, chasing a squirrel. She started rolling again.
As the ball grew larger, she gained more of a sense of her surroundings, and realized she was rolling through the halls of Canterlot High. The faceless titans around her were her friends and classmates and teachers. With the ball growing larger, she started picking up things that had more personal, sentimental value: butterflies, which reminded her of Fluttershy; balloons, which reminded her of Pinkie Pie; diamond hairclips that reminded her of Rarity, row after row of apples for Applejack, sports trophies for Rainbow Dash, and books and nerd glasses for Twilight Sparkle. She smiled as she rolled up several Camp Everfree shirts which were hanging in the middle of the hall for some reason. She laughed as she collected movie posters from Daring Do.
In the music room, she added the Rainbooms' instruments to her collection. By now, the ball was large enough that the students in the hallways were taking notice of it and starting to edge out of its way. At some point, Spike got stuck to it, but he didn't seem to mind; he kept wagging his tail and barking happily.
Sunset saw the Dazzlings walking down the hall. She grinned as an evil thought crossed her mind. Putting all her might into it, she sent the ball rolling straight for them. They barely had time to react to the massive ball of stuff bearing down on them before they were rolled over and stuck to its surface, flailing and yelling and shouting. The ball wobbled as it rolled on, heedless of Adagio's tantrum but put off balance by her massive hair.
She rolled up her old bad-girl outfit, then the girls' dresses from the Fall Formal where she met her match in Princess Twilight. She rolled up Juniper Montage and Wallflower Blush. She rolled up Trixie. She even rolled up Derpy, who giggled enthusiastically.
Before long, the ball was too big to get through the hallways easily, especially since every time she hit a teenager, they got stuck to it. She headed for the front entrance and, with difficulty, rammed the ball through the front doors. Once loose outside the school, she rolled up more teens who were wandering around outside. She saw her friends gathered by the horse statue, and rolled them up too, along with the statue itself. She rolled out into the student parking lot and rolled up Flash Sentry's car, then Big Mac's truck, then Fluttershy's car. She rolled up the beat-up old school bus the Rainbooms had worked hard to refurbish into a tour bus. She rolled up Vinyl Scratch's transforming bass cannon convertible.
And on and on Sunset and her sticky ball of death rolled, picking up all the people, places, and things that made up her familiar, comfortable world, every fragment of memory she shared with her friends. Soon, Canterlot High itself was stuck to the ball, and she was halfway to Crystal Prep, intent on rolling that up into her collection too. By the time she got within rolling distance, though, a loud, blaring siren cut through the music, distracting her from the rolling...
A gong crashed somewhere high above.
Sunset blinked as she picked herself up off the floor. She'd rolled off her bed, tangled up in her blankets. Her alarm was blaring insistently. Her Switch slowly tipped off the edge of the bed; she scrambled to catch it before it hit the floor, and in so doing woke it from sleep mode. The colorful intro to Katamari Reroll filled the screen.
Shaking her head and laughing, Sunset put the game console back up on her bed, then untangled herself from her sheets. "Okay, okay, no more late night gaming," she said to herself as she rubbed the feeling back into her legs and got up to get ready to face the day, idly humming the same song from her dream.