Sugarcoat awoke to the sound of gunfire. Creaking an eye open, she groped for her cellphone, tapping off the alarm, Tchaikovsky today, and rolled over. There wasn’t anything important happening this morning, so she could sleep in. There was, however, that date with Sunny in a few hours, but that wasn’t for a while, and Sunny herself would probably be late as well, likely fidgeting with a gadget until the last possible second and then some. Sugarcoat smiled beneath the covers, closed her eyes and started back to sleep. Getting up, or even moving, felt impossible, and the only thing she felt ready to do was curl up all catlike beneath the sunrise’s cheerful pastel rays.
But she couldn’t sleep. Not properly and no matter how hard she tried; eyes screwed shut, curtains drawn dark, sheets kicked to the carpet, and fan lazily twirling, something was keeping her up. A few minutes later, well into the day now, she realized what it was. Specifically, it wasn’t the famous Russian cannon that completed her favourite song.
It only sounded like gunfire from a distance but, up close, when she let the memory sharpen and refine, she balked at what she remembered. What she heard. What she saw. Days, months, years; all filled with terrifying, chaotic pain and bizarre, awful confusion. Sugarcoat liked order. She preferred routine; the precise, the pleasing, the perfect. Her nightmare was none of the above.
She was wandering, for years on end, through a swirling black sandstorm, each footstep jabbing at her soul like white-hot nails, each breath like raw fire at her spirit.
Sometimes, through the screaming haze of razor ash, she would spot a face. Somebody she knew, usually, but always somebody… wrong. Twilight Sparkle had aged years, and looked as if she hadn’t slept for any of them. Indigo Zap had fangs. And Sunny Flare was dead.
The creaking mayhem of cracking glass and crunching steel and crushing bone, all played at once to a horrid baseline of short circuits and sizzling tech. It was the same sound, played on a broken record spun and rewinded ad nauseum. Rubber burned, flesh rotted and Sugarcoat couldn’t sleep and Sunny Flare was dead.
She reached for the glass of water kept on her bedtable, beside a pair of framed photographs; one of her and her parents, one of her and her girlfriend. The water tasted like blood. Until that second, Sugarcoat had no idea what blood tasted like, not that deep arterial fear tainted lifeblood that stains both lips and souls. But she understood exactly how it felt. Her throat cracked with thirst once she was finished, and only then did her arm finally return to her control. With shaking fingers, she let go of the glass. It exploded to the floor in a brilliant nova of gory reds and bombshell yellows and nuclear oranges. It made the same sound as her sandstorm dream. Sugarcoat gasped, catching sight of her reflection in the mirror-like shards strewn across her room.
She was hurt, badly. Rust-old blood and years-long scars nicked her face. Her cheeks were gaunt and her eyes sunken. Her lips were chapped and one of her pigtails was missing. She hadn’t done her hair yet, not that morning, and the way her reflection stared back, it was like somebody had died. Like Sunny Flare was dead.
Sugarcoat blinked.
The sun went behind a cloud and the world was bathed in a sickly grey gloom, and the shards of glass stopped telling the past. Breathing heavily, she stumbled out of bed, tripped gingerly over the mess on the floor, limped over to her wardrobe, and shrugged on a dressing gown. After that, she walked downstairs and made herself a cup of tea with eight lumps of sugar, and as the day progressed, the horrors of the night faded to the back of her mind, kicked aside by ballet stretches and university pamphlets and engineering side projects. That wind turbine did need building, after all.
Her phone rang while she was tinkering with a propeller. It wasn’t who she had hoped it was.
It was Trenderhoof.
Sugarcoat finished tightening the bolt first, and received an earful for her tardiness.
“Sugarcoat! Where are you? The movie started ten minutes ago and Sunny’s freaking out over here!” The hipster complained.
“Good afternoon, Trenderhoof. Why are you, specifically, telling me this?”
“Because you’re never late. Get off your ass and find her, please!” He yelled.
Sugarcoat rolled her eyes. Her girlfriend was such a drama queen. She slipped off her gloves and smock, tugged on a tattered leather jacket, and started for her bike. “I’m getting there.” She said, “Your whining is irritating. You should really stop doing that if you want to keep dating Suri. So by all means, continue being an effeminate consumerist, just don’t do it near me.”
“Gah. Fine. Didn’t Sunny tell you? We’re on a double date.”
Sugarcoat sighed, “As always, your level of tact continues to astound me. I’m literally considering not driving to the mall now just because I’ll have to tolerate you and Suri for three hours.
“Just once, can you do me-” He started.
“But, I actually like Sunny. So, I’ll be on my way.” She hung up.
She shoved the phone into a pocket of her cargo pants, and revved the bike to life. It was more scratched up than she remembered, with the original green and black paintjob almost sandblasted off. She should probably stop lending it to Indigo, she didn’t even wear a helmet. Her rather confusing choice of decals did help either. What even was “Sombra’s Legion?”
That would stay a question for dreams, Sugarcoat thought as she drove through Canterlot City, weaving through the traffic and around the myriad of potholes that now coated the road. Somebody really should get to those one of these days but, then again, Mayor Mare had other priorities to worry about and the streets were still manageable. If not a bit dusty, she noticed, taking a second to wipe a layer of greyish dirt of her helmet’s visor while stopped at a traffic light.
And there was the mall, rearing up like a second sun to welcome the riding girl to the early afternoon. Bike steered into a free parking space and leather jacket stuffed into a storage compartment along with her old CPA Motorcross helmet, Sugarcoat set out to find the theatre. One thing she noticed, as she walked through the strip mall, was how everything looked a bit less well kept than she remembered it being. But, then again, she rarely ever went shopping on her own, and begin frog-marched around by the rest of the Shadowbolts was always distracting enough. Sunny Flare had her boutiques and tech stores to fawn over, Lemon Zest would drag her to some or other record store the second she let her guard down, and both Sour Sweet and Indigo Zap never refused a trip to any establishment that offered survival gear, sports kit, or cheap beer, or any combination thereof.
Besides, Canterlot City was never a particularly safe city, and a cracked window every so often was to be expected. And there wasn’t anything too odd about a few stores being barred shut at this time of day; many did take Mondays off after all. Of course there wouldn’t be too many people around, it was only 14:12 on a workday, Sugarcoat noted, checking her phone. After examining her hair in a mostly intact storefront and only mildly wincing at the mess it was in, the girl put on her best ‘Oh no, I’m not annoyed at all’ smile and stepped into the theatre’s lobby.
“You’re too late.” Muttered Trenderhoof, dressed in charcoal Legionnaire fatigues and refusing to make eye contact.
“No, I’m merely late. Who are you trying to impress this time, Trenderhoof? Did you find yourself a new army brat to disappoint?” Sugarcoat said, looking around the debris-filled room, her fake smile vanishing as she acknowledged the decrepit scene before her.
“You’re too late.” He repeated, checking his watch.
“I’m not.” She denied.
“I’m going to go in there and find her!”
“If this is a prank…” Her breaths sped up with her heart beat, “this isn’t funny.”
“Tell me what the fuck is going on!” Sugarcoat threatened. She blinked. Since when did she threaten people?
The hipster sighed, brushing a speck of dust of a cracked and duct-taped pair of glasses. “Sunny was dying to see you.”
“I’ll find her.” Sugarcoat eyes widened. She turned and ran.
“But you’re too late.” Triple Sec called out, walking out of the bathroom, wringing his hands on a bloodstained hand towel.
“Who’re you? And what do you know about this?” She yelled over her shoulder, realizing the truth as the world deteriorated around her.
“You didn’t save me.” He said, pointing to an angry crimson line that ran down the side of his head.
“And you sure screwed up trying to help me.” Lemon Zest said spitefully, leaning against the raw concrete of the wall, head eerily still despite the music thumping out of her earphones.
“Yeah, bitch. You left me to fucking starve!” Indigo Zap swore from her perch in the building’s decaying rafters.
“And you brought chaos into my home.” Twilight Sparkle said, walking into the lobby.
“All of you, calm down!” Sugarcoat said, ignoring her own command, “I didn’t do any of that!”
They all approached, walking and climbing and limping and crawling closer to the girl. A girl reaching for a knife. A knife that wasn’t there. A sword she never used. A flare gun she never owned. A spear she never stole. A rifle she never shot. But they remembered all of that, and they kept walking closer.
Sugarcoat blinked, hoping this was just a dream. That all was not a dream. As she took a step back, she felt the wall’s cold concrete against her back. They were close now. Indigo’s teeth were filed to a point. Lemon didn’t have eyes. Trenderhoof looked beaten. Twilight looked almost reluctant to move. She stared back uneasily towards the exit.
Turning her head slightly, Sugarcoat spotted a handle, still a glossy gold against the morbid drudgery. Mustering everything she could, she wrenched it open and jumped inside just as a blade pierced into the wall where she had been a second before.
The dead and the damned screamed in anger, in utter anguish, as Sugarcoat ran into the darkened theatre. The projector was broken. The light flickered a harsh bone white as a half-blurred cityscape appeared on screen, the sound of flapping film echoing around the hushed room. Indigo Zap rushed after her, screaming profanities, lunging for Sugarcoat, the glint of a blade flashing in the darkness. Sugarcoat ducked the assault, shifting behind her angered assailant. She lashed out with a closed fist, landing a punch to the temple of the madwoman. It cracked her skull, the cacophony of crashing cars ringing the room as a truck rolled by on screen. Indigo Zap collapsed to the ground to move nevermore.
She sprinted away from the downed raider. She panted with exertion, the seconds becoming hours as the screaming rose in pitch. The deafening sounds of betrayal,hate, and pain echoed from her temple. Sugarcoat tripped over all something. She looked over at what had caused her spill, it was a device, a familiar machine. Where had she seen it before? At a science fair? No, the fair had never happened, because the world had ended.
Sunny Flare was dead.
She picked herself up and put on her glasses. It was then that it started to set in, Sunny Flare was dead. There right in front of her.
But she wasn’t alone. Suri Polomare held the corpse in her arms, and ran her tongue over the charred, deadened flesh.
“Get off her! NOW!” Sugarcoat ordered.
“Or what? She never loved you, Sugarcoat. Get over it. Sunny Flare is dead. And even if she wasn’t, you didn’t have a future with her.” Suri smirked, standing up from her seat and tossing the body to the side.
“You lie. You always lie. You lie, cheat, and steal and I have nothing but contempt for you. You took her from me!” Sugarcoat said, reaching for the box on the ground.
“And you’re a stubborn, ignorant girl who can’t accept the truth even when it's literally in front of your face. Your point, dearie?”
“Don’t say that. Don’t you dare fucking say that! Only she can say that.”
“Not anymore.” She smirked, “and you can’t stop me. I’m dead too. You know this. You accept this, but that’s not all. Nothing stops Death.” Suri said.
“You’re wrong. Get away from her. Let her die in peace.” Tears welled up in Sugarcoat’s eyes, “Get away from her NOW!”
Suri didn’t move, a narcissistic smirk plastered across her face. “Or what? You’re just so close, but you haven’t moved for three years.”
“I’ve moved all over the country, I’ve looked for her. Here I find her, dead and gone, in YOUR arms. I’m tempted to kill you right now.” Sugarcoat said, wrapping her fingers around the sharp corners of the brown-noise device.
“Take your best shot, but you can’t move if you do that.” Suri said.
“I can move. What are you talking about?” She sniffled.
“Moving on, Sugarcoat, obviously. For a smart girl, you can be so slow sometimes, dearie.”
“Stop saying that!” Sugarcoat took a defiant step forward.
“Start listening then, dearie. Not only is Sunny Flare dead, but she never loved you in the first place. She used you.”
“YOU’RE WRONG!” Tears flowed freely from her eyes.
“Us thieves are so much alike, you know. I guess that’s why we are together, even after her little arm-thingies blew both of us to Tartarus. You saw my car, right? Who do you think was sitting next to me? Whose luggage did you think you stole. Whose project are you holding? Why don’t you get it?”
“Why should I? Why should I believe you, Suri?”
“Because I’m right and you know it. But, if want proof, go check your phone. What was the last message you received, before the world went to shit? Read it to me.”
Sugarcoat checked her phone. “Its from Sunny. ‘Best of luck.’ it says.”
“The whole thing, Sugarcoat. Not just what you want to read.”
“I can’t remember what it says. None of this is real, including this version of you and Sunny. Because the real Sunny Flare is not dead!”
Suri rolled her eyes. “Idiot. You do remember it because you never forget stuff like that. That’s why you survived in the first place. You were so shocked that you dropped your phone right off the balcony in your Detrot hotel room and then it, along with every other piece of technology in the world, exploded. If you didn’t read the text properly, you’d have just stuck the phone back in your pocket and died along with the rest of us when the thing blew your arteries open.”
Sugarcoat looked back down at her phone. It buzzed and chimed with the sound of a new message. She didn’t remember the chime being the sound of the apocalypse. The phone was flicked open, the password was entered, and the message was read:
Sunny Flare, 14:13
Hey, Sugar. Sorry to do this all by text, but the reception’s super awful on the road and I really didn’t want to cut out halfway through breaking up with you. Which is what I’m doing. Yeah, sorry. This isn’t working.
Please don’t take this away wrong. You’re an amazing person. You absolutely, definitely are. You’re brave and honest and you give amazing advice. You’re beautiful even without designer brands and makeup. You gave me the most amazing gifts a girl could ask for.
But I’m not an amazing person. I lied to you, and I want to stop doing that. I took all that love you gave me and okay this is really hard to say but I cheated on you. I’m really sorry for doing that but I don’t want to be with you even if you’d still accept me. Which you’d probably do since you’re you and you’re still awesome even if I’m a lying cheat.
Suri Polomare and I are going to Las Pegasus together. Like, Together together. This wasn’t my choice, not completely. Suri got tired of not being my favourite and made me choose. I don’t want to go into all the reasons why now and this is getting extremely long as is but let’s just say that I never felt like I deserved you. You’re too good for me, in a way that she isn’t. So yeah. I guess this is goodbye then.
We’ll still see each-other in school I guess. For the one semester we have left, anyway, but after that it's up to you. If you want to quit the Team, I won’t stop you. If you want me to go and never talk to you again, I understand. I’ll leave immediately then. I guess that while us Shadowbolts might Play to Win, we don’t really Win Together. It was a stupid motto anyway. Man, we were stupid at 14. I guess one of us still is.
Best of luck
Sent from Sunny Flare’s Wristomatic 2000, patent pending.
“You see?” Suri asked, arms crossed and Sunny’s corpse hanging off one of them. “Do you finally get it?”
“Suri Polomare? I don’t know if you can hear me, if the real you can hear me right now, FUCK YOU.”
Suri giggled, “I’m not the one you should be mad at, Sugarcoat. After all, you always said that I’m a liar, a cheat, a thief. Be mad at your girlfriend. Oh sorry, I mean your ex-girlfriend. After all, she stabbed you in the back. I just gave her the knife.”
Sunny Flare was dead. But that doesn’t matter in dreams. So she stood up and brushed three years of rotting in a desert off her face. And there she was, standing at 5’6” with a goofy smile on her face and some kind of scientific machine Sugarcoat still didn’t quite understand on her arms and, even though she didn’t have any designer clothes or good makeup on, Sugarcoat still thought she was beautiful.
“I am sorry.” Said Sunny, “But this really is goodbye. It isn’t all bad though. You’re still everything I said you were. And maybe you’re even better now, considering you lived and I didn’t and because you’re still alive and all that, you can change. So just get over it, alright, for both of us?”
Sugarcoat didn’t know what to say. She didn’t know if she could even talk anymore. She didn’t say anything. She didn’t need to. Sunny picked the phone out of her hand and tossed it aside. It exploded into a ball of dawn smoke, pastel pinks and mint greens and solar blues, with the sound of a fist banging on a sheet of metal.