Detective Sure Shot stared at Rainbow Dash through half-lidded eyes, a tight, sharp frown on his face as he finished taking her statement.
It was crazy. It was impossible. It was the exact same story from all of the teenagers he’d interviewed. He couldn’t believe it. They had to be lying.
But, at the same time, had he not been the one on scene when they’d investigated the 911 earlier that day near the Everfree, he might have thought that one of these kids had somehow done it. But the… slaughter was the only word for it… of that entire family and the consistency of the horrific wounds, including those on the girl before him, between the two scenes gave him pause. It didn’t make any rational sense.
In the end, the only thing about the whole incident that he was sure of was that four innocent young lives had been brutally cut short, and a fifth had somehow barely escaped with her own.
“Thank you Ms. Dash. We’ll be in touch.” He said as he snapped his notebook closed and began to walk towards his partner.
“Yea…sure…” Rainbow said, still numb from shock. Turning, she trudged over to the bleachers, occasionally wincing from the many wounds that peppered her body. As she ascended the metal staircase, she found her friends were waiting for her, each one looking dejected and morose. The only one conspicuously missing was Princess Twilight, who had fled before the police showed. Though her presence might not cause problems, she wasn’t willing to take the chance, since she technically wasn’t from this world.
“Oh, Rainbow.” Fluttershy softly said as she got up and pulled her friend in a warm hug. Rainbow didn’t protest, instead letting the gentle embrace of her oath-sister wrap her like a security blanket. Reaching around, she returned the hug as she buried her face in Fluttershy’s shoulder, fighting back her tears. She wouldn’t cry again. She had to be stronger than that.
The others said nothing, simply letting Fluttershy comfort Rainbow. The whole situation had rocked them to the core. Up until now, their adventures had never felt really… well… real. Like they were some sort of magical fantasy story. That feeling had now been burnt away by the untimely death of four of their friends, and the near loss of one of their own. It was a cold, hard slap in the face.
Eventually, Rainbow and Fluttershy let go of one another and sat with the others, trying not to watch as the police carted off what was left of Blaze, Flitter, Misty Fly and Cloudchaser. None of the girls could look at the four yellow bags on the stretchers.
“Where’d the Princess go?” Rarity asked.
“She said that she’d meet us at Sugar Cube Corner in ah bit.” Applejack replied. “That she needed a little time to process everything before we meet up to figure out what we’re going to do next.”
There was a murmur of agreement between the five. They needed a plan. Especially after learning who was responsible for the attack, the very thought of the perpetrator filling them with silent rage. Sunset had really crossed the line this time.
“C’mon girls, let’s go. Nothin’ else for us to do here.” Applejack muttered as she got to her feet. The others soon followed suit, Fluttershy having to help Rainbow up.
The five of them made there way off the field to the parking lot, where they piled into Pinkie’s sedan and pulled onto the street. They drove in silence. Normally, Pinkie would be blaring some obnoxiously cheery music, but it seemed that even she felt the need for silence.
*Sugar Cube Corner, 10 minutes later*
Six girls sat around a large table in the back of the shop, each one nursing a mug of hot coco. Normally, they would be happily chatting, sharing stories and telling jokes. Now, all they could do was sit and brood.
Of the six, Rainbow Dash was the worst off, her shoulders slumped down pathetically and her eyes bloodshot and puffy. Her normal bravado was completely drained from her, leaving the brash young woman looking terrified and wretched.
None of them spoke. Instead, they simply sat in painful silence.
“Dead…” Rainbow finally muttered. It was the first thing she’d said since they left the school. “Misty Fly… Blaze… Cloudchaser… Flitter… dead. Just like that…”
Rainbow slammed her fists against the table, almost knocking over her mug and eliciting a startled yelp from Fluttershy.
“Damn it!”
Twilight reached out to place a comforting hand on Rainbow’s shoulder, but at the last moment thought better of it, and withdrew her arm, instead folding her hands over her lap and staring down into her coco.
Sunset… was that really you? What happened? Twilight thought as her mind replayed the horrible memory over and over, trying to comprehend the… thing… that Sunset had become.
“Rainbow…” Twilight eventually said, drawing the eyes of the table’s other occupants, “…I’m sorry about your friends. But, are you sure that it was Sunset that attacked you?”
Rainbow looked up at Twilight, her eyes filled with hot rage and her teeth grit.
“YES! The bitch had me by the throat.” Rainbow snarled as she got to her feet and pointed to the hand shaped patch of puckered, red flesh on her neck, “It’d be kinda hard not to know who it was when she was choking the life out of me! And what are you doing here anyway princess! Come to swoop in and save the day again!? This is your fault you know! You and that bitch Shimmer! You brought magic to our world! You left her here! First she stabs us in the back, then she turns into an even worse demon than she did the first time! God, if I thought kicking your ass would somehow make this all better, I’d be punching your face in right now!”
Twilight recoiled in horror from Rainbow Dash’s outburst, pushing her chair backwards to get some space.
“Rainbow, sit your ass down right now!” Applejack snarled as she got to her feet and slammed her palms onto the table, rattling the mugs and plates. “This ain’t Twilight’s fault!”
“Don’t you be defending her!” Rainbow hissed back, “She should have taken Sunset back to her magical horsey land the first time she came through. Instead, she left that bitch here, and now a bunch of my friends are dead. Because of HER!” Rainbow shouted before pointing at Twilight, who shrunk down into her chair.
“That isn’t fair, Rainbow Dash.” Rarity interjected. “We know you’re hurting right now, darling, but there’s no way she could have known that Sunset would turn on us again.”
“Oh really, and why’s that!? Eh?”
“Because the Elements cleansed her.” Twilight said levelly.
All eyes turned to Twilight.
“Care to repeat that princess.” Rainbow snarled as she stood over Twilight.
“The Elements cleansed her.” Twilight repeated, not bothering to get up, but instead choosing to meet Rainbow’s fierce glare. “The Sunset that bullied all of you was purged of all wicked and cruel thoughts when the Elements purified her. If she hadn’t, she wouldn’t have been able to call on their power when we fought the Sirens.”
“Then explain to us, oh wise and great Twilight Sparkle, why she started spilling everyone’s embarrassing secrets all over the Internet! Or why she was trying to kill me!” Rainbow hissed.
“Wait… what are you talking about?” Twilight said.
“Are you fucking dense! I could see her face! That thing that almost snapped my neck was Sunset!” Rainbow snarled.
“No, not that. I’m talking about the first part. What do you mean she was spilling secrets?” Twilight said, her voice laced with shock.
“Anon-A-Miss! Sunset’s little MyStable alias. Stupid little bitch started spreading our secrets for everyone to see.”
“But, that’s…” Twilight said, at a loss for words.
“Ah’m afraid Rainbow’s right, sugarcube.” Applejack said as she balled her fists on the table. “It started with me, then spread to everyone in the dang school. Shouldn’t have trusted that snake in the first place. She even had the gall to lie to us about all of it.”
“It’s true Twilight.” Pinkie chimed in, her voice flat and devoid of her usual cheer. “She just started being a meaniepants again one day out of the blue.”
Twilight’s mind was reeling. This didn’t add up. From her correspondence through the journal, she never once saw any sign that Sunset was reverting. In fact, it was quite the opposite. Before she’d left to go see Shining and Cadance, Sunset had sounded so happy about spending time with these girls.
The angry texts to Sunset from the others were starting to make sense.
But something didn’t feel right. Even if Sunset had reverted to her old ways, she wouldn’t gain anything form posting everyone’s secrets for the public to see. After all, even at her worst, Sunset was meticulous. A strategist. If anything, it would have decreased the amount of power she had, because she couldn’t hold something over her victim.
No. Something was just not adding up.
“Show me.” Twilight said, her voice tight with conviction.
“What?” The other girls replied in unison.
“Show me.” Twilight repeated. “I want to see it for myself.”
“Yah don’t believe us?” Applejack said with a scowl.
“I believe that you believe what you’re saying. But I need to see it for myself. Please…”
The five other girls looked at each other. With a sigh, Rarity pulled out her phone, and tapped the face a few times. Handing the device to Twilight, she leaned back in her chair.
“Here you go, dear. I must warn you, it’s not pretty.” Rarity said with a small frown and a touch of bitterness in her voice.
“Thank you, Rarity.” Twilight said as she began to scroll through the posts.
As the page slowly loaded, Twilight’s eyebrows knitted into a scowl. It was awful. Some of it was just embarrassing stories, but there were things that were far more personal. It felt unclean, reading everyone’s secrets like this. But what caused her blood to boil was the page practically screamed at the top of its lungs that it was Sunset Shimmer who’d written everything. Yet, despite trying to look like it was Sunset, Twilight found herself unable to believe that it actually was her. And, as she read, she saw things that began to solidify that doubt. Scrolling back through the text, it began to crystalize, till it was hard and solid as a slab of basalt.
“Sunset didn’t write these…”
“What do you mean, ‘Sunset didn’t write these’?! Of course she did!” Rainbow snarled.
“No. She didn’t.” Twilight said coldly as she set the phone on the table. “Look, I’ve been corresponding with Sunset for months now. I know her writing style. There’s a certain… flow and rhythm to it. An academic precision. A personality. And this…” Twilight pointed to the phone “this is not Sunset.”
“What makes you so sure?” Rarity said, her features still hard.
“Look, right here. The author didn’t punctuate these sentences right. This one is full of coma splices. In this one, they used a semi-colon instead of a colon. They forgot to capitalize a formal name in this one. Here they try to sound scientific, but they just used a bunch of big words. Incorrectly at that. And here, they use ‘to’ instead of ‘too’.” Twilight said as she scrolled through the posts. “Sunset’s a gifted, and meticulous, academic. Even her hand-written letters to me are precise, grammatically perfect, and have a certain linguistic flow. She’d never make these sorts of amateurish mistakes. Even if she was trying to mask her style by intentionally including these sorts of errors, it would still, on some level, sound like Sunset.
“Also, what would she get out of it? What could she possibly have to gain? The Sunset I know could concoct a better way to get her power back in her sleep. When she was in control of the school, did she ever do anything that could be so obviously traced back to her? Or do anything that would weaken her grip on everyone?”
“No… she didn’t…” Pinkie said.
“So why would she do something like this? If she went back to her old ways, would she suddenly and drastically change her approach to the point where not only was her involvement advertised, but make it so she couldn’t actually get anything out of it, and all but guarantee that she ended up as a social pariah? None of those things sounds like Sunset, now do they? So, let me repeat myself: I don’t know who this is, but I can say with absolute certainty that it wasn’t Sunset.”
As Twilight went through her explanation, there was a mounting sense of dread in the room, a slow chilling of smoldering anger into icy horror that settled into the guts of everyone present.
“You… you’re wrong.” Rainbow said, her voice shaking. “You’re just trying to cover for her…”
“No Rainbow, I’m not. Regardless of everything she’s just done, I can tell you, right now, that Sunset wasn’t responsible for this.” Twilight said as slapped the phone onto the table and shoved it back to Rarity.
“But then…” Fluttershy said, before her hands flew over her mouth as a fresh set of tears began to well up in the corners of her eyes, “We…”
All five of the human girls’ faces sank, all of the vitality instantly drained out of them.
“No…” Pinkie whimpered, her hair deflating and becoming completely straight.
“Mah Gawd. She was tellin’ the truth…” Applejack whispered as she stared at her lap.
“What did we…” Rarity said.
“But… but, she… but I…” Rainbow muttered as she dropped back into her chair, looking even more drained than before.
A heavy silence fell onto the room, each of the girls processing the horrid revelation that Twilight had just dropped on them. Each one wanted to deny it, but Twilight had made a compelling argument. Now that they’d stopped to think, really think, nothing Anon-A-Miss did sounded like Sunset, new or old.
For Twilight, it was another piece of the puzzle falling into place.
“Tell me what happened…” Twilight said in a low voice, a subtle hint of anger tickling along the edge of her words.
The other girls in the room didn’t reply. How could they? Still, they had to tell Twilight something. They at least owed her that.
In the end it was Applejack that spoke up.
“It started about ah week and ah half ago…”
And with that, Twilight listened intently as Applejack explained what had been going on. The slumber party and the first post from Anon-a-Miss; the second post and fact that the photos were the same ones that Sunset took; the subsequent posts and the escalation; the implication that it was Sunset and Sunset’s fervent denial; Principle Celestia expelling her; Sunset getting attacked as she left the school for the last time…
“…after she got kicked out of school, none of us saw her again, and the Anon-a-Miss posts stopped. We figured she’d got the message and left town, or went back to Equestria.” Applejack finished, her face looking like she wanted to throw up. The other girls didn’t look much better.
“So… I just want to be absolutely sure I’ve got this right: somebody started posting embarrassing stuff on this… internet of yours… and you all concluded that it was Sunset because the poster was obviously going out of their way to paint a target on Sunset by using her personal sunburst and a silhouette made up to look like her, proceeded to ostracize her and not trust her when she repeatedly plead her innocence, didn’t lift a finger to help her when she was expelled from school, stood by while she was yelled at and beaten, and just concluded that she was responsible when the scandalous posts stopped at the same time she disappeared? Is that all?” Twilight said levelly as she looked around at the girls, none of which could meet her eyes.
“That’s… not all, dear.” Rarity finally said, shame painted all across her face, “We… may have expressed our… anger… towards her in an… inappropriate fashion…”
“You mean threatening her, right?” Twilight said coolly.
The others looked up in shock.
“How did you…?” Rarity gasped.
“The reason I’m here right now is there was something wrong with the journal that I use to correspond with her. The only thing I could get out of it was a desperate plea for help. When I got here, I went looking for her at her house… her abandoned house… and found two things: her phone with a few very choice threats on it. Something about boots, ambulances, sewing needles and Dobermans if I remember right.” Twilight said with now only thinly veiled venom.
“That’s not all though. I also found this.” Twilight hissed as she pulled a sheet of paper out of her pocket and tossed it onto the table. The others all stared at it, unsure how to respond.
“What is it?” Fluttershy asked.
“Read it…” Twilight said as she crossed her arms and glared angrily at the girls.
Tentatively, Rarity reached out and picked the paper up, before she unfolded it and began to read. Half way through, her hand shot up to her mouth and she gasped in horror.
“Aloud Rarity. Read it aloud to everyone.” Twilight growled.
Swallowing hard, Rarity began to read.
“To whoever finds this letter,
My name is Sunset Shimmer. Recent events in my life have stolen any and all reasons for me to continue going on. As such, I intend to drown myself tonight at Lake Everfree. Nobody has forced me to write this, and I am doing this of my own free will.
To all of those who I have wronged in the past, I’m sorry.
To my former friends the Rainbooms, I’m sorry. I’m sorry that I hurt you in the past, and hope that at the very least, my death will give you some closure and let you move on.
To whoever is behind Anon-A-Miss, congratulations. You’ve won. For whatever reason you had for doing this, with me gone, you will have what you want.
To Princess Twilight Sparkle, I’m sorry that failed you. I only wish I knew what I did to make you stop replying. For whatever I did, I’m sorry. And I’m sorry I’ve wasted the chance you gave me. We may have been enemies, but I had hoped that one day, you might have eventually loved me the way I loved you. But now I see that I was deluding myself.
And to Princess Celestia, I’m sorry. I’m sorry for being such a disappointment. I’m sorry that I failed you. I’m sorry that I couldn’t hold out longer. You and Twilight were both the light in my life that gave me hope.
But now, that hope has been drowned out in darkness. And I can’t bear it anymore.
Sunset Shimmer.”
Pained silence fell over the entire room.
“Does that sound like someone who was guilty? Someone who was getting what they wanted?” Twilight growled, fresh tears in her eyes, “Well, does it?”
“Twilight, you have to understand…” Pinkie began, but Twilight cut her off.
“SHUT… UP! There’s nothing to understand; you turned on her with the flimsiest of evidence, threatened her, stood by while she was forced out of school, assaulted, and driven to that.” Twilight spat as she pointed to Sunset’s letter.
“Well, what about you? Why weren’t you there for her?” Rainbow said, a touch of defiance in her voice.
“Don’t you even try to pull that on me Rainbow Dash. I live in another world, and as you’ve so delicately pointed out, I’m a princess. As much as I want to always be there for all of my friends, there’s only so much that I can do, especially for Sunset. I wanted to bring her back the first time I came through the portal, but she chose to stay here to make amends to all of you for what she’d done in the past. She literally refused to go home until she became a better person, and made things right. And I came here as soon as I could, but it was obviously far too late.” Twilight said, wet lines tracing their way down her face. “Regardless of how it happened… somehow Sunset’s been turned into that… abomination… and I have no idea what to do. Whatever she’s become, its nothing like anything else I’ve faced… in either world.”
The room fell silent again as the weight of the dread and guilt in the atmosphere settled down on them, threatening to crush them under its colossal pressure.
“I… need some air.” Twilight said as she rose to her feet and made her way to the exit. None of the other girls said anything, though she was sure that she heard Fluttershy start sobbing as she reached the door.
Standing outside Sugar Cube Corner, Twilight leaned up against the outer wall as she tilted her head back to look at the sky. It was gray and overcast, its oppressive pall smothering the whole city. It was somehow appropriate.
“Oh, Sunset…” Twilight said as the tears flowed from her eyes.
*In the Deep's space*
The Magister floated in the calm void that was the Deep’s embrace, her body diffused into its hot, icy mass.
What had happened back there?
She had found one of the aspects of the Sky, and had it at her mercy. She would have preferred to torment it longer to deepen its despair, but when it spoke her old name, some echo of her false-self had reacted, and she had been overcome with rage.
Then another one had appeared.
It would have… should have been so simple to kill them both. Neither knew how to properly call on the Sky to aid them in their leprous campaign of deception, so they were succulently easy prey.
Yet, something went wrong.
An echo of an emotion from her false-self. Some wretched feeling at seeing the purple-haired one. It distracted and confused her, aspects of her false-self flooding into her mind. The wave of conflicting sensations had left her vulnerable, so she retreated back to the Deep.
Why? She was the enemy. She was the main source of the Sky’s power in this world. It should have been nothing to tear off her head and devour the Sky’s delectable essence like soft, ripe fruit. To cut off the Sky’s conduit to this place and leave the rest of the rot exposed to be carved out like so much gangrenous flesh.
It was the remnant of her false-self that had stayed her hand. It was the only explanation. She needed to weaken the Sky’s influence further by cutting all ties to her false-self before she could confront the six that bore the Sky’s power. She needed to prove her true-self stronger through the act of slaughter. The Deep’s will would be fulfilled. She would scrub all life from this world in a purifying wave of destruction and death.
But she would need to be meticulous. She had been hasty when she went after the first bearer of the Sky’s power. That had proven to be a mistake. There was still enough of her false-self within the dark corners of her being. Too much of the lie that the Sky had forced on her. No, she would build her power, find her opportunities, and turn the arrogance of this world’s inhabitants against them.
She began to reform her body, slowly pulling her shape out of the weft and weave of the Deep’s space.
She would drown the last echos of her false-self with the power of the Deep. It would not interfere again.
*Later that afternoon, in Canterlot Heights*
“Yes…yes…yes, of course… Let me know if there’s anything else you need from me… Of course… Please, tell Minuette that we’re sorry to see her go.”
Celestia sighed as she pressed the ‘end call’ icon on her phone and slumped down onto the couch. How could all of this have happened? The strangeness that had been going on in her school was one thing: magical extra-dimensional students, demons, sirens… it was all too much. All she ever wanted form life was to help guide and educate. Not play host to a weekly episode of “Sheer Audacity’s Believe it or not.”
Now, something new had shown up. And not just shown up and caused some chaos and property damage. No, it’d attacked, and murdered, five of her precious students. And some of the parents were pulling their children out of the school, claiming that it wasn’t safe. She couldn’t blame them, but it still hurt all the same.
Leaning forward, she began to sob into her hands.
She felt so powerless. She was supposed to protect her charges. Make sure that they had a safe place to learn, grow, and become the adults they had the potential to be. Even when Sunset had reverted to her old ways again, she’d put a final stop to it.
But this was so far beyond anything she knew how to handle.
A set of strong, warm arms wrapped around her and gently pulled her into a soft hug. Turning slightly, Celestia allowed herself to be held as the owner of the arms rocked her back and forth.
“Shhh, shhh, shhh. It is okay mi ángela. It is okay.” A deep, warm baritone Castilian voice said as he gently rocked her.
Celestia snuggled deeper into his chest, allowing herself, for just a moment, stop being “principle Celestia”, and let her emotions free.
After a few minutes of gently crying into him, Celestia reluctantly removed herself from his embrace and took his hands into her own.
“Better?” He said, his normally handsome and swarthy face marred by a look of deep concern as he rubbed the back of her hands with his thumbs.
“A little.” She said. “Thank you Sombra.”
“Of course mi ángela.” He said. “I did not wish to intrude, but do all these calls have something to do with the strangeness that has been happening at your school?”
“Yes.” Celestia said, trying her best to keep her voice even. “Honestly, I’m more scared for my students than anything else. Argh, I just feel so helpless. Problem students? Bullying? Slipping grades? Obstinate PTA members? Creationist quacks demanding their pseudo-science nonsense be taught alongside proper biology? That I can handle, no problem. But this… magic stuff? I don’t know where to even begin. Can I even do anything? I hate it. I hate not knowing what to do. I hate feeling helpless…”
Sombra gently squeezed her hands and put his forehead against hers.
“You put too much on yourself ángela.” he said, “You are but one person, and no matter how talented and brilliant you are, there are things that not even you would know how to handle. Your students know that you are there for them. Perhaps that is the best thing you can do. Be the light that gives them hope. Even if you cannot solve the problem yourself, you can help give them the strength to overcome.”
Celestia turned her face up to Sombra’s, violet eyes meeting green. She leaned in, pecking his lips with her own as she ran her fingers through his black, blue streaked hair.
“Heh, ever the philosopher, mi cariño. What did I do to deserve you?” She said with a plaintive smile.
“You were your shining self, ángela. If anything, I am the one who should be asking what I did to deserve you.” He said, before standing and helping her to her feet. “I do not think that there is much else you can do tonight. Why do we not think about this after we have eaten?”
“I think that’d be fine. Would you mind…” Celestia trailed off.
Sombra continued. “Of course. Sopa de ajo y lechazo con papas?”
“Yes, please.”
Sombra simply smiled, nodded and made his way towards the kitchen. As soon as he was out of sight, Celestia made her way to the large picture window and stared out at the snowy late afternoon landscape, her mind barely registering the strange, oppressive fog that had settled over the neighborhood, and sighed deeply, her breath clouding up the glass.
When did her life get so complicated? Right, when that bad apple Sunset Shimmer suddenly popped into her life and her school. Taking a deep and cleansing breath, her normally radiant face became dark. The girl really was a menace, wasn’t she? Even after it looked like she’d turned over a new leaf, she’d reverted to her old ways again. Celestia had hoped that her former trouble student had turned herself around, but after everything that had happened, she wasn’t willing to let things get as bad as they did the last time. So, for the sake of the students she’d been forced to remove Sunset from Canterlot High.
What stung the most was just how much progress Sunset had been making. The girl had so much potential. But, she’d turned a blind eye for too long to her problematic behavior. Well, not this time. Sunset had her chance, and she blew it.
Letting out a deep sigh as she began to walk towards the kitchen, the enchanting aroma of roasting lamb, rosemary, potatoes and garlic drifted towards her and tickled her nose. It’d be some time before the food would be done, but until then, she’d enjoy the savory smell of her husband’s culinary magic. Walking past him, she opened the wine cabinet and pulled out a bottle of Aglianico wine.
“I was thinking,” she began as she set the bottle on the table and retrieved a pair of wine-glasses from the cabinet, “I’d like to hold a memorial for the students that died. It seems wrong just to ignore what happened and not give their friends a chance to say goodbye.”
“It would be a good gesture.” Sombra said as he turned to face Celestia, wiping his hands on a kitchen towel as he made his way over to the table. Taking one of the offered glasses, he waited patiently as Celestia popped out the cork and poured him a modest amount of the fragrant liquid. “If you need any help, I will give it.”
“Thank you, Sombra.” Celestia said as she swirled the wine in the glass before taking a sip, shivering lightly as a low moan from outside drift through the air. “Right now, I think we need all we can get.”