The lunchroom was abuzz of activity upon the return of Twilight Sparkle, a spark of hope having returned to most of the students. Though they were sure to give their hero the space she needed, there was undoubtedly some electricity in the air surrounding her.
All eyes were on her and her next move as she sat and discussed what came next with the girls.
“Ah’m real sorry you had to come back just to see all of this,” Applejack explained gloomily, “Ah was hopin’ the next time ya got to visit it would just be for fun, not dealing with more high school drama problems. Least this one ain’t involvin’ any kind of dark magic.”
“It’s okay girls, really,” Twilight said with a reassuring smile. “I’m glad you’ve informed me of what’s been going on. Though it’s hard to believe that Sunset really has gone back to her old ways. Something about it just doesn’t feel right…”
“We didn’t want to believe it at first either, darling,” Rarity sighed forlornly, a hand dramatically resting atop her breast. “But after the evidence from the sleepover, it was undeniable! She’s even admitted it to the whole school at this point! What else are we supposed to do?”
“I still don’t fully understand what happened,” Twilight said, turning to the girls, “could you tell me exactly what happened from the beginning?”
“Well, we were all having a sleepover one day, where we learned that AJ used to have the nickname ‘Piggly Wiggly’ as a kid!” Pinkie began.
“It’s a plum embarrassin’ nickname, but ah trusted my friends with that secret.” AJ sighed. “But by the next mornin’, it had been posted to that site.”
“Who else knew about the name though? Isn’t it possible someone else posted about it?” Twilight asked, looking around.
“The only ones who knew about it was my kin.” Applejack said, placing an arm on the table. “Apple Bloom was the one who blurted it out over the phone, which led to me havin’ to explain it to everyone.”
“Keep in mind it really was just us at the sleepover too.” Rarity added. “No one else should have been able to hear it, yet it got posted onto that website anyway.”
“And that was enough for you guys to believe it was her?” Twilight asked.
“That wasn’t enough on its own,” Fluttershy added this time, “it was the second sleepover that convinced us.”
“It was at my house, and we were putting on clothes from my closet of shame,” Rarity explained, grimacing at the memory, “At this point Anon-a-Miss wasn’t a household name, but that changed when Sunset uploaded those photos of us in my outfits from her phone. We double-checked and verified all of the photos we took, and we know for absolute certain that they could have only come from Sunset’s phone.”
“She wasn’t in any of the photos either,” Dash growled, her arms crossed, “she only humiliated us with her posts, never herself. If that isn’t telling, I don’t know what is.”
“And there was no one else in the house at all?” Twilight asked, trying to get more information. “No one could have tampered with her phone while you were asleep?”
“It was just us, my parents, and Sweetie Belle, Twilight,” Rarity explained, “Who else could it be?”
“And why do y'all keep talking like Sunset might still be innocent?” Applejack asked, confused, “She plum admitted to being Anon-a-Miss in front of everyone! Case closed!”
“That’s just it, Applejack, something feels off about that,” Twilight said with a shake of her head, “If she was trying to keep it a secret, why just go and tell everyone that it was her all along? Why make it so obvious that it was her to begin with?”
“Like we’d know!” Dash grunted. “Why does anyone become a bully? To feel like they’re better than others! And I feel like I should understand that better than anyone!” She pointed a thumb at herself. “If I hadn’t seen just how Gilda was hurting people, I might’ve become one myself! I know I’m awesome, and I know I’m better than a lot of people, but hurting people over it isn’t cool! And that’s what Sunset did back then, and it’s what she’s doing now!”
“And I understand that, but… Hear me out on this. What if Sunset is faking it?” She looked around at the girls as she thought about how to word this. She didn’t want to give away that she was on Sunset’s side, but she had to at least try and give Sunset another chance in their eyes. “What if Sunset admitted to being Anon-a-Miss to get the person who is Anon-a-Miss to stop posting?”
“I don’t follow…” Fluttershy said, very confused.
“You all told me that the site pretty much stopped updating once Sunset announced that she was Anon-a-Miss… What if that was her goal? If she wanted the school to stop fighting with itself, what better way to do that then to unite them against her?”
“I dunno, Twilight,” Pinkie said, appearing next to her in thought. “That theory is pretty crazy, and I would know. I’m pretty loco in the coco myself!”
“Nor does it explain how our secrets got leaked originally,” Rarity offered next.
“Look, ah know you wanna believe that Sunset changed, we all did,” Applejack said, placing a hand on Twilight’s shoulder, “we’re not the kind of people to go throwin’ these accusations around lightly. We thought Sunset was our friend, that after all the years of tormentin’ us that we could put that all behind us and start something new! And she was the one who threw that all away.”
“Plus there’s kind of the whole, she’s admitted it was her, thing,” Dash said with a twirl of her hand, “kind of hard to overlook that.”
“I just… I want to cover all possibilities, including the possibility that Sunset is innocent,” Twilight said with a dejected sigh, “I know Sunset bullied you girls for a long time, but I’d also like to think that none of you would purposefully set her up as well. Which, would likely mean Sunset did do it.” She put her arm on the table, resting her head against her hand in troubled thought. “Unless it was Apple Bloom or Sweetie Belle that did it.”
“Don’t be preposterous darling,” Rarity tittered. “Sweetie Belle is an innocent angel and would never do such a thing! Plus she didn’t know about AJ’s nickname, so it couldn’t be her!”
“And Apple Bloom knows better than to go around spreading family secrets like that,” Applejack said with a shake of her head, “Nor did she have any way of accessing Sunset’s phone. So it couldn’t have been either of them.”
“Right, of course…” Twilight groaned.
Interrogating the girls had given her a better understanding of the situation, but hadn’t exactly gotten her any closer to answers. She hoped Sunset was doing better with her half of the interrogations…
Sunset’s hand slammed down against the locker, causing Micro Chips to jump in place, pressing his back against the hard metal as the redhead loomed over him.
“So, Micro Chips,” Sunset said cooly, giving him her best evil smirk. “Got a thing for spreading secrets, do ya?”
“I-I, I don’t know what you’re talking about!” He defended himself terribly, the guilt clear in his voice.
“Oh, of COURSE not! You NEVER uploaded to Anon-a-Miss!” Sunset chuckled, holding up her phone. On the screen was a clear shot of one of Micro Chips’s best friends caught graffiting the side of a building. “And your best friend just happened to be caught doing something illegal, and from an angle that looks a lot like you wanting to remember the occasion!”
Sunset didn’t actually know this for a fact, but she was very good at making educated guesses. She knew Chips’s friend had gone tagging before, and she knew she had seen Chips with him before. So really it was just a matter of putting two and two together.
“OKAY! OKAY! I DID IT! I’M SORRY!” Micro Chips confessed, cowering against the lockers.
“Good! That’s what I was hoping to hear,” Sunset said with a smile. “But I was curious, why backstab your friend like that, hm? That’s pretty cold coming from you.”
“H-He owed me money!” Chips cried out, “We’d been fighting about it and he refused to accept my feelings on the matter! So I thought I would get back at him by posting to Anon-a-Miss! I was angry and stupid and I didn’t mean to! Please don’t tell him I did that! I still want him as my friend!”
“Oh, poor Micro Chips,” Sunset said sweetly, lifting her hand up and patting him on the cheek with a smile, “Don’t worry, I’m not going to tell anyone.”
“R-Really?” Chips asked, confused and scared.
“Mmmhmm. I’ll just keep it as ammunition for when I need it.” Sunset chuckled darkly, pulling back. “You’re free to go now.”
Micro Chips didn’t need to be told twice, quickly scooping up his things and rushing away. Sunset watched him leave before turning and squeezing the bridge of her nose with a sigh.
That was the twelfth student she had interrogated that she knew had posted to the site, but each and every one of them couldn’t have been Anon-a-Miss. Not only were they too skittish or scared about the repercussions, but they only ever admitted to the things they had posted and swore it wouldn’t happen again.
Sunset believed them. Anon-a-Miss had been craftier than that, not to mention they’d had access to things before the school masses started posting secrets to the page. If any of the students she had interrogated were the culprits, then there would be more evidence, more signs, more hesitation in their responses.
She was at least cutting names from the potential suspects list, but she’d already been having a feeling they weren’t the culprits to begin with. She was short of ideas and was just eliminating possibilities to ensure they weren’t Anon-a-Miss.
Scrolling through the site again, she started to think that perhaps she was going about it the wrong way. The people that had posted after the initial secrets got out weren’t likely to be Anon-a-Miss themselves, and anyone who’d had their secrets revealed likely weren’t going to be Anon-a-Miss either.
It was always possible they had revealed a secret about themselves to throw her off their tracks, but she’d cross that bridge once she’d crossed off the other possibilities.
At the very least, the site still hadn’t updated again since the video of her confronting Twilight, so the plan was still working. She was at least a small step closer to figuring out who had caused this whole mess and fixing everything, but she was still missing the largest clues.
She just hoped that Twilight had been more successful than her.
“Nothing concrete?” Sunset asked.
“Nothing that jumped out, no,” Twilight sighed, sitting down at Sunset’s computer desk. She tapped a pencil against the desk in thought, “I know that none of the girls are Anon-a-Miss, and spending time with them only reinforced that.”
“I kind of figured that was the case myself, but it’s nice to have confirmation it wasn’t any of them,” Sunset sighed herself, shaking her head. She was currently laying on her couch, kicking her foot off the side repeatedly in thought. “Which leaves us with our next option of just… Figuring out who hasn’t been targeted by Anon-a-Miss at this point.”
“I do think you’re onto something with that.” Twilight said with a nod, turning back to Sunset’s computer and scrolling through the page. “A lot got posted onto Anon-a-Miss in such a short period of time, and it really does cover almost every student in CHS. If we can just narrow down who hasn’t been targeted, we might be able to figure out who Anon-a-Miss is. I just wish I had more time to get to know everyone...”
“Certainly would be handy to have Pinkie on our side right now. She’d make that part a lot easier.” Sunset groaned, sitting up properly on the couch. “But I have a fairly decent memory of student names at CHS, plus I’ve got last year’s yearbook. On top of that, most of the secrets have the students directly tagged anyway. It shouldn’t be too hard to make a list.”
Twilight was quiet at that, not even scrolling through the site anymore. She turned around, looking over at Sunset.
“...I tried, Sunset, I really did.” Twilight sighed regretfully. “I proposed the idea that you were innocent and even explained my logic, but… They were just convinced it was you. Nothing I said could change that…”
“I really wasn’t expecting it to go any other way, no offense, Twilight.” Sunset chuckled a little, smiling softly at Twilight. “I kind of dug my own grave here, so I wasn’t exactly expecting to win them over with a letter of recommendation.” Sunset leaned forward and smiled. “Thank you for trying though. It means a lot to me.”
“I still feel awful for failing to convince them.” Twilight sighed, rubbing her face. “I should’ve been able to do so much more for you, Sunset…”
“Let’s not focus on that right now, Twilight.” Sunset said, standing up from the couch and walking over to the computer. “Let’s just focus on finding out who Anon-a-Miss is for now, okay?”
“Okay.” Twilight nodded, turning back to the computer. “We do have all night. I told the girls I had something to attend to in Equestria and would be back in the morning, so we shouldn’t be interrupted.”
Sunset couldn’t help but smile, looking down at Twilight and feeling a small bit of warmth in her chest.
“Thank you, Twilight… I know I keep saying that, but I genuinely don’t know how I’m going to repay you for all of this kindness.”
“Hey, what else are friends for, Sunset?” Twilight said with a big, genuine smile. “There’s nowhere else I’d rather be than right here helping you.”
Sunset felt her heart beat again and she brought a hand up to her chest. She had to swallow a little at that. She was just moved in a way she hadn’t been before. Her tongue was tied, and she felt hot. It was just…
“A-Alright, let’s get started then,” Sunset said, turning to focus on the screen. “I’ll make sure the tags are correct with who is who. You write the names down.”
“Got it.” Twilight said with a chipper nod as they began to go down the list.
Sunset didn’t know what she was feeling, but it made her insides feel warm and gooey, and they were definitely a distraction from what they were supposed to be doing. She did her best to shove them down and focus on the topic at hand at least.
Proving her innocence with her best friend.