Sunset Shimmer reminded herself that she was a friendship expert, which meant she had a high probability of making a single friend. Did she love that it had to be Timber Spruce? No comment. But at least she liked to think she wasn’t alone, even if she felt it. Twilight had the task of befriending Flash Sentry, who currently stood in between them.
In and of itself, befriending Flash would normally be as simple as taking the next breath. Even back when Sunset was as despicable and flagrantly evil as they came, Flash gave her a chance. And then after everything she’d done, knowing that darkness in her better than anyone, he told her that she’d deserved a second. It was why she’d defend the kid in everything—except maybe when they were playing one v. one in Street Kombat III.
In that case, he would perish under her pixelated boot.
But even those hang out sessions she’d admittedly kept separate from Twilight. Okay, maybe that also had to do with wanting to spend some one on one time with Twilight even before they were together, but it also also had to do with the awkwardness that came with Twilight being a parallel of the person who never really gave Flash closure.
Sunset heaved a sigh. She knew, as one of the two friendship experts here, she should take charge. Get it over with, Shimmer. You’ve got this. Friendship is magic and whatever. “Twilight’s right. Better to face this head on.”
As if to spite Sunset specifically, the referee’s whistle beckoned the players back toward the field. Timber cast a glance through the slats of the bleachers, likely noticing Rainbow Dash’s stressed dance-in-place, and left to rejoin the game, walking backwards. “Sounds like a plan, Sergeant Major Sparkle.” And then grinned to Sunset. “Catch you after the game, new best friend?”
He didn’t wait for her answer. Couldn’t, really. Emerging from beneath the bleachers, they could see him getting chewed out by Dash for not rallying the troops during halftime like she always did. From across the way, they caught her asking, “Dude! No peptalk? What kind of Rainbow Dash are you?”
One hand on a nearby support beam, Twilight turned to Flash. “Well, looks like Timber might be occupied for a while, but you and I can get a headstart on this new friendship, if you’d like.”
Flash brightened, nodding. “Uh, yeah, okay. That sounds great!” He managed to make Sunset’s river teal eyes as wide-eyed and unassuming as the baby fawn’s that Sunset once saw on a diplomatic trip with Princess Celestia to Thicket, the kingdom of the deer. He rubbed the back of his head as they returned to the stands. “How do we… do that?”
Back in their seats for the final half, Twilight twiddled her thumbs in her lap. “Oh! Um. I suppose it’s easiest to begin with an ice breaker, and from what I’ve studied about conversationalism, a common topic of conversation is your current shared situation, such as a party or the weather.” Sunset thought it was foul play to be this adorkable while they were on pause, but she also knew that there wasn’t a switch Twilight could turn off. She’d have to save up her kisses for later. (She hoped they’d come in handy…) “Do you like sports, Flash?”
Flash flinched, eyes flickering from Twilight to the field. “Uh, well, music is kind of more my thing. And baking. Sometimes knitting. Um. I’m not really a sports guy.” He winced, pushing his mouth to the side. “I guess you can sort of tell, huh?”
Twilight brightened as if she’d been given a pop quiz. “Oh, that’s perfect! I know nothing about sports, either! We already have something in common!”
Arms stretching behind her head, Sunset rested her feet on the railing in front of her. “Well, that, and you’re both big gay dorks.” Saying it out loud brought the connection together in her mind, and she frowned. “Wait, does that mean I have a type?”
“Did you hear that, Flash?” Twilight pumped her fists up and down as genuine enthusiasm oozed from her voice. “We’re the same type!”
He smiled awkwardly, confirming Sunset did indeed have a type. Huh. You learn something new everyday.
Down on the grass, Rainbow Dash lost the remainder of her mind to the tune of Lightning Struck blasting over the loudspeakers. She danced from foot to foot and likely not just to keep warm in the gathering snow. “We’re tied?! How can we be tied?!”
Pinkie Pie leaned over the railing of the bleachers—so far, in fact, that Sunset would be worried she’d flip right over if she wasn’t Pinkie. “We have the same score as the other team, so that makes us equal! Yay, we’re all winners!”
Rarity hummed, tapping her chin. “Actually, dear, I think that would result in sudden death today. I believe draws this late in the season require a resolution, especially with the early snow this year. They do tend to like their winners in sports games.”
Rainbow Dash threw up her hands, maybe in lieu of just throwing up. “Somebody score a goal! You’re killing me over here! Wait, no, not the other team—not the other team! I shouldn’t have to say that!”
Applejack clapped her on the shoulder, if for no other reason than to let her know she was right despite what reality seemed to think.
Hollow Shades High trampled across the snow-woven field. Black jerseys flaunting jagged green stripes dominated over Canterlot blue and gold. Their star forward wrestled the ball away from Timber, even when he’d gotten the hang of dribbling between his feet or passing off to his teammates (mostly just passing). In nearly every sense of the word, Canterlot High’s goalie carried the team tonight by defending against the Hollow Shades Bats and their lightning fast shots, but even Fleetfoot couldn’t stop everything.
The forward shot the ball—a direct hit with the net in the upper right corner with a decisive swish.
Rainbow Dash reacted as if she’d been kicked in the stomach, puttering out her breath. An eruption of cheers from the other set of stands seemed to shoot shrapnel directly into Dash’s heart, and a chant began that took Sunset a moment to parse as, LIGHT-NING DUST! LIGHT-NING DUST! LIGHT-NING DUST!
Lightning Dust pounded her fists in the snow-spinning air. “Yeah, baby! Who’s number one?”
Scootaloo, the Wondercolt team’s water-girl, grimaced up at Coach Hothoof, who pounded his large hands together. “Hey, good hustle out there, Dasher, good hustle!”
The actual Rainbow Dash buried her face into her hands. Anyone who didn’t know who that was must’ve thought Fluttershy had money on this game.
Sunset grimaced, watching Dash more than the game. “I don’t know if she can take much more of this. Timber needs to start winning fast.” The song over the loudspeakers paused to allow for a kickoff at centerfield to reset the players. From her properly decent seat, Sunset could see the exhaustion setting into Timber in his laboured steps back to position. But he shouldn’t be tired yet. He’s got Rainbow Dash’s stamina, he should be able to go as hard as she usually does.
It took the empath an embarrassing amount of time to realize exactly what was going wrong. Sunset hadn’t paid it much mind before then, but as she caught Timber’s pink eyes looking back to Rainbow Dash, who by this point was grieving on Applejack’s shoulder, she got it: he knew exactly how much responsibility weighed on his shoulders, and he thought he was blowing it.
It also probably doesn’t help that his boyfriend isn’t exactly his boyfriend right now, she thought and swore to high Mount Olympus.
The referee set the ball centerfield between Lightning Dust and Timber, and even with his team in position around him, the fear in his pink eyes made Lightning smirk. She said something to him Sunset couldn’t hear, but Timber winced. Watching him grimace twisted unpleasantly in her stomach.
“That’s it.” Sunset stood up and cupped her hands around her mouth. “Come on, Rainbow Dash! You can do this!”
Even if the real Rainbow Dash stared up at her like she didn’t understand what Sunset expected her to do about it, Flash caught on. He stood up next to her by the railing and started chanting, “Let’s go, Wondercolts! Let’s go!”
Twilight followed suit, smiling to him as her voice joined in. The rest of their friends joined after that, and the home crowd picked it up fast. Soon, half a hundred voices barked back into the night and Sunset shot Timber two thumbs up.
Out on the field, he grinned.
The ref blew his whistle. The song changed over the speakers: a guitar led the charge. Timber shot the ball away from Lightning Dust behind him, to the midfielder, Soarin. Every tiny win like that had Sunset and their friends cheering, but the game was far from over yet.
And Lightning Dust didn’t give up her lead so easily. It took nearly the rest of the second half to tie it up again, and by then, sweat rolled off every player. Every move was hard fought. Every inch a battleground. Fleetfoot and the Hollow Shades goalie launched themselves for save after save, and it was starting to look like neither would give.
At some point, Applejack had fetched Rainbow a paper bag to hyperventilate in, puffing it in and out like an indecisive balloon.
“Come on, come on...” Flash muttered under his breath as they leaned on the rail. All of them had long forgotten their seats, now collecting snow anyway, but they’d also forgotten the cold. His eyes flared for a moment, and he looked to Twilight. “Huh. How’s this for an icebreaker?”
“I guess cheering for Timber is another thing we have in common,” Twilight mused, and a smile grew on her face.
“Yeah! That’s really cool, by the way,” Flash spoke up, “that you can still cheer for him and be his friend after your breakup. Took me a while to get to that point.”
Sunset wrestled an arm around his neck, but it was more of an aggressive hug than a strangle-hold. “Hey, I was also a raging she-demon at the time, so no one blames you.”
Twilight smiled at the two of them, and there was almost a pride in her expression. “Of course Sunset was the first friend I’ve ever made besides my dog Spike, but Timber was the first friend I made myself, all on my own. He made it easy.”
Flash’s smile melted. “Yeah. He’ll do that.”
“Wow, is soccer always so good friendship-building? Hm. A shared experience to bring people together in support of a common goal... It’s kind of fun, actually. I think I understand sports now!” Twilight whooped. “Woo! Go, Wondercolts! Way to score those touchdowns!”
Flash smiled goodnaturedly to Sunset, and she would’ve laughed with him, but Sunset felt like supporting her girlfriend. The air was alive with support in the stands now. “What she said! Keep up the touchdowns, Rainbow!”
To Flash’s credit, he went along with it, too, swinging his arms. “Touch those downs!”
And touch those downs they did.
Soarin wrestled the ball away from Lightning Dust by passing it to Timber at the penalty line. All the rest of his teammates were guarded. The goal waited ahead. Winding back, Timber took a tumble backwards Sunset thought was an accident until she realized he was effectively pile-driving his entire weight into the ball as he booted it as hard as he could.
Barely scratching past the goalie’s gloved fingers, the ball connected with the net.
An uproarious cheer detonated in the Canterlot High stands, Sunset’s voice possibly the loudest among them as her fists shot up into the air. Flash and Twilight high-fived. Rainbow Dash jumped up and down, saying, “I knew you could do it!”
Back tinged green with grass-stains, Timber ran a victory lap by the stands for high fives.
After the soccer game, Sunset had to drag Timber away from a team lifting him up on their shoulders for “carrying the season,” even if Rainbow Dash did all the real work. Although Dash herself cheered for him the loudest, so Sunset didn’t feel like she could get too mad. He didn’t seem to know how to react to being treated like the school hero, hoisted up, patted on the back, and splashed with the sports drink from the team’s cooler.
“Uh, thanks everybody,” he said, but even his trademark enthusiasm sounded a little dimmed when he noticed Flash on the outskirts of the group.
She couldn’t blame the guy. You haven’t lost anyone, Sunset reminded herself. She fought down the feeling. Twilight’s right. We put our night on pause when Timber interrupted. This is just more of the same. We can’t exactly do anything like this anyway.
If that was the case, she reminded herself of what waited on the other side of that pause, and it was enough to light a fire under her.
But that fire would have to wait. Timber couldn’t possibly get out of the afterparty with the team or the celebration Coach Hothoof promised waited for “Rainbow” at home. Especially after Timber was approached by a figure from the crowd. “Nice playing out there. I’m a recruiter from Nightfall Reach Military Academy and I must say, you’d make a great soldier…”
After that point, Coach Hothoof squeezed his little girl in a crushing hug and there was no escape. Especially not when Rainbow Dash offered to buy Timber all the drinks and pizza he could handle (totally not squealing and running around the field yelling that she was going to college).
Sunset went back to her apartment alone for the first time in a few days that night. She almost missed him. Almost, of course, being the key word, but still. And she would have enjoyed a relaxing night alone had Scruffers not come through looking for Sunset.
That normally wouldn’t be a problem, but for one thing, Sunset didn’t look like Sunset, and for another, the cat quite literally came phasing through the window from the fire escape and hopped down as if nothing extraordinary happened.
Sunset gawked at the cat swerving his tail back and forth in front of her. She picked him up to stare at his little kitty eyes. “What? You can walk through walls? Since when could you do that?!”
“Mrreow,” Scruffers answered and in the next moment refused to be held, so he phased through her hands, plopping back onto the floor.
Sunset decided then that Equestrian magic and that rift in the sky had officially gone too far.
So the next day, the first thing Sunset did was pick Timber Spruce up from Dash’s one-story bungalow on her motorcycle. She tossed him a helmet, which she usually saved for Twilight.
He bounded back as he caught it, smirking. “Whoa. This really isn’t a look I’m used to seeing from Twilight.”
That was a fair point. Last night she’d grabbed her leather jacket from her place and her clothes were a bit loose on Twilight, but not comically so. The look still worked. Almost too well, really; it only stung more to see Twilight wearing her jacket the way she sometimes did over her shoulders when Sunset gave it to her on their dates.
All the more reason to hurry this up, Sunset thought.
She shrugged to Timber. “Rarity made a good point yesterday. It’s easier to tell who's who if we differentiate somehow. Now get on.” Holding out the beanie he’d left at her apartment, she offered a smile along with it. “We’ve got some bonding to do.”
If Timber thought he got the hero’s welcome as Sunset, being Rainbow Dash after scoring the winning goal for the last game of the season may as well have made their walk through the halls a parade route. As it was, as they walked in, Applejack steadied a ladder for Pinkie, so that she could hang a banner over the trophy case by the front entrance reading, Congratulations, Wondercolts!
When Scootaloo saw him walk in, she applauded. “Woohoo! Go, Rainbow Dash!”
The other students in the freshman and sophomore hall clapped along, offering their congrats. Sunset smirked and nudged Timber’s side, and he shrugged as if to say, Well, if you insist.
He waved like the queen, telling passersby, “Thanks! Go Wondercolts! Hey, thanks for coming out! I couldn’t have done it without my fans!” He winked Sunset’s way as he signed a glossy photo of Rainbow Dash that Scootaloo apparently just had in her backpack.
Doing her best not to roll her eyes, Sunset already felt much better about their chances. He had Twilight’s stamp of approval, clearly, and she’d learned her lesson from Wallflower: play nice. She could do nice. And it seemed like it was working: he had crowds of new friends all around now!
The only other crowd, they would come to find, was outside of Counsellor Solstice’s office. A sign-up sheet for hour-long slots in the day had already begun a small collection of names, and a number of students waited around for their chance to add to it. Sunset frowned at how many names she could see on that list. Mostly because she hadn’t expected more than one. Are there really that many students so traumatized by Equestrian magic that they need counselling?
Then again, the students waiting for their turn weren’t exactly a shock to the system. Bulk Biceps cried at the idea of someone else crying, and during every conflict Sunset could think of, Roseluck, Lily, and Daisy fainted in triplicate. Every single time. Sunset would have thought it would’ve gotten less shocking by now. Still, even if all the students here were especially sensitive, Sunset frowned. That was a lot of sensitivity…
Timber pouted his lip out mostly just in surprise, sending a look to Sunset. “Dang. Guess I’m not the only Mr. Popular around here.”
Solstice came out of his office protecting his coffee mug like a lifeline, and when he saw the number of students, his hooded eyes flared wide and round. He first assessed how much coffee he had left. Then, his grip tightened on the handle. “Are... all of you here for me?”
A number of them nodded, but Bulk Biceps looked so nervous he might break something in half (any emotion made him look ready to break things; or maybe that was just conditioning to know that he could, at any moment, break the vast majority of things in his vicinity). Instead he shifted from foot to foot. “What happens if you run out of appointments?! I need to talk about my magic feelings! They’re as strong as my muscles!”
“Run out?” Solstice stammered, as if that hadn’t occurred to him. “I don’t think—”
Roseluck and her friends, Daisy and Lily, were looking faint already. “What’s wrong with the sky?! What do we do about the crack?”
“Is a demon going to come out of it?!” Lily asked, a hand already raised just in case she needed to faint onto her friends. “That happens a lot at our school!”
Daisy moaned. “We never had demons at my old school…”
Solstice flinched back to the point that his coffee narrowly avoided a spill, plopping back into his mug. He attempted to steady his hand with the other. “A demon?”
“That’s just what we call it here,” said Wallflower Blush, signing her name onto the list beside him. Sunset felt a bit bad that she hadn’t noticed Wallflower until then, but in her own defence, Wallflower had an almost catlike ability to slink past crowds unnoticed, and in this case the girl managed to get to the sign-up sheet in all the commotion. Impressive, really.
Wallflower finished signing her name, and her eyebrows tightened over her eyes. “Devil, demon, horrible winged-monster. There’s not exactly a technical term for this stuff. It’s what happens whenever magic turns someone into a dark reflection of themselves, but... you don’t really need to transform into a demon for that.”
Sunset’s heart plunged into icy rapids. She thought Wallflower knew she could talk to her friends if she needed help coming to terms with what happened vis-a-vis the Memory Stone. More accurately and importantly, Sunset thought Wallflower already had.
Not long after restoring Sunset’s memory, the two of them went for ice cream together at Sweet Snacks Diner. By that point, it was already starting to become Sunset’s go-to spot for reconciliation with people who used to hate her (pushing aside the fact that most people didn’t need a regular place for that). She thought they’d had a good talk. She thought Wallflower was on her way to getting over it. I told her how her past is not today, right? Should I have sung a song about it?
And, okay, Sunset knew from experience that the guilt after something like what Wallflower did could be a tough demon to shake. But Wallflower knew she wasn’t alone in that fight, didn’t she? She’d met Juniper Montage, Gloriosa and her would probably really hit it off, Sunset definitely sort of remembered telling her about Vignette Valencia, and if those girls weren’t already Post-Crush fans…
“It’s more common than you think. That just means you have more new friends to depend on,” Sunset spoke up, passing along the same gentle smile to Wallflower that she had when she’d extended her hand in friendship. Bonus points for the fact that she currently resided in Twilight, who likely would have said something similar about trouble magnetism, which was starting to bother Sunset now that she thought about it. If they were themselves, would Twilight put her name up on that list instead of talking things out with her friends? “Us demons have to stick together, right?”
“It’s happened so much you have a name for it?” Solstice pushed his hand back into his hair, making his eyes look that much bigger. “How awful! I’m so sorry you’ve all had to deal with that even once, let alone…” He took a breath, stopping himself before he could send Bulk Biceps into tears. He laid a hand on Wallflower’s shoulder. “It sounds like you’ve all been through a lot. That must be hard to deal with.”
Wallflower nodded, and the rest of the gathered students looked ready to agree.
In the chaos, as the others began to speak over each other, Sunset noticed his eyes rise to find the sun on Principal Celestia’s door across the hall and a small smile formed. He drew in a long breath and out, took a sip of coffee, and greeted the students with an awkward but friendly wave. “Alright then. So who’s my 8:30?”
Wallflower smiled and followed him into his office.
The rest of the walk toward their lockers on the third floor dragged on longer than usual. Partly because Timber had so many new friends high-fiving or complimenting him it was easy to get distracted, but Sunset couldn’t stop her mind from stumbling over its own thoughts.
Inspiration manifestation wasn’t a spell Sunset had any measure of mastery over in Equestria, but it seemed like she had a decent grasp of the concept in the human world since the moment they came across Flash Sentry in the athletics hall; he appeared every bit as distressed and overwhelmed as she felt. Now that was a face she’d seen on herself before.
If Timber remembered he and his boyfriend were on pause, he didn’t let that stop him. “Whoa, hey, are you ok—”
Flash rushed over to them, pushing Timber back as a downpour of shushes overflowed from his lips. His eyes bulged. Casting glances backward, he made Sunset look feral and at no point did contracting rabies cross her mind as something to be worried about—until now. He kept his voice just between them, and his eyes instructed them to do the same. “Sunset, help. You said we’d be changed back before my gym class.”
Timber’s eyes plinked onto Sunset’s.
“I said we’d try, but making friends takes time, okay?” Sunset bent her neck to the side. “Why do you need us back by your gym class?”
As she said that, Twilight emerged from the boys’ locker room in the blue and gold gym uniform every CHS student was required to have. Seeing her, Flash made a high-pitched whine that didn’t sound too different from the yelp Spike made whenever someone stepped on his tail. He mouthed the words, FIX THIS barely whispering, and turned back to Twilight. “O-oh! You changed fast…”
Twilight wrinkled up her nose. “Yeah, I didn’t want anyone to talk to me or notice that I shut my eyes. Plus, it really stinks in there.”
“Ah, eau de teenage boy.” Timber smirked, nodding. Wafting air towards himself, he took a deep breath as if taking in the icy altitude air of the misty mountains back at Camp Everfree. “Don’t you just love the smell of testosterone and puberty in the morning?”
Twilight stuck out her tongue and made a quiet, “Bleh. I guess I’m going to have to love it for first period.”
Flash’s eyes darted to Sunset since Timber’s powers of distraction weren’t doing the job. She shook her head just slightly, hands upturned, like Dude, what do you expect from me here???
She wanted to help, but if he was asking her to magically conjure up a counter spell for their little swap conundrum, Flash would be shit out of luck. If he wanted boyfriend comfort, that was Timber’s territory these days, but even then, she couldn’t work out what exactly was so frightening about Twilight taking his gym glass for him. He wasn’t exactly a varsity athlete. Even if he was scared she’d trip over her own gym shoes, that… not to be mean to Flash, but that sounded more like him than anyone else.
Whatever the issue was, Timber either understood or was going along with Flash’s panic, as he leaned on one of the double doors to the gym, playfully pushing the push bar in and out behind him. “Orrr we could skip class and have some quality bonding time as new best friends!”
Sunset’s eyes flared when he mentioned the words skip and class so close to one another. She slashed her hand back and forth in front of her throat where Twilight couldn’t see, and Flash shook his head, mouthing the word no over and over.
Twilight gasped. “Timber Brambleton Spruce! Cut class? Cut class?!”
Sunset sighed quietly. Flash bowed his head miserably.
She threw her arms out. “You’re homeschooled! You have to know the importance of education, and we can’t just—just— you can’t be serious!”
Timber blinked. “I can’t?”
Sunset had seen Twilight’s lecture face enough to recognize one was coming on, but to everyone’s surprise, possibly including Twilight, she let out a breath instead. “I didn’t mean to explode, it’s just, um. No. No thank you. I promise we can talk more about magic and bonding later, but we should all be getting to class if we don’t want to be tardy.”
Timber stepped aside as to not make a scene about it, sending an apologetic look to his boyfriend who, right now, trembled next to Sunset. She raised an eyebrow at that but couldn’t say anything. Is something really that wrong?
Twilight walked toward the gym, and her hand reached the push bar.
“Wait!” Flash scrambled over and pawed a hand over hers. His cheeks simmered a startling red hot. “Don’t.”
Wide-eyed, Twilight stared at him. “Why not?”
Groaning like he was in serious physical pain, Flash buried his flushed face into his other hand in one large full-body wince. The concern really set in when she noticed his legs shaking in spasms from the knee as if he’d been locked in the walk-in freezer at Sugarcube Corner. He sighed his eyes shut, then dared to peek them open to mutter, “I... I don’t want you to feel what I feel in gym class.”
His eyes met hers in earnest now. “If you haven’t already noticed, it’s going to be really obvious if you have to run laps or climb the rope.” Flash drunk in air, but it came in staggering. Sunset was worried he might choke. His cheeks smoldered the colour of construction paper cards on Hearts and Hooves Day. “I don’t want you to know I eat when I’m stressed.”
Perplexed, Twilight’s eyes flickered on him as what he said clicked into place. “You…?”
Timber looked ready to throw the pause out the window and Sunset wouldn’t have blamed him. “Flash—”
Twilight glanced down at Flash’s body, which only made him cringe and rush to explain, “I know, I know it’s getting bad. I’m trying to cut back! It’s just, after I broke up with Sunset, things were rough for a while. I didn’t know how to deal! I started in with the comfort foods, and it didn’t bother me as much at first, but then we had all these huge magic disasters on the regular and you all started rushing into danger and it all sort of just caught up with me! It really doesn’t help that I like baking so much. So I started wearing hoodies to hide how chubby I’m getting, and that kind of worked for a while but now you’re me and I can’t hide anything.”
“But... you don’t have anything to hide.” Twilight told Flash in his own voice, “There’s nothing wrong with your body, Flash. I know I haven’t been you for very long at all, but I really don’t think you should be so hard on yourself.”
Timber smiled, albeit gently, and held out a hand. “That’s what I’ve been saying. Total hottie!”
“Aww, dude.” Sunset’s eyebrows held so tightly to her eyes she could feel a headache forming between them. A carousel of memories whirled. Fun-house circus lights coloured all the times she didn’t think twice about Flash turning down milkshakes with the girls at Sugarcube Corner, leaving her the last slice of pizza during game night, or keeping his shirt on at the beach.
She felt sick thinking of all the times she didn’t notice one of her best friends hiding from her—hiding because of her and her stupid magic stressing him out even more. She was supposed to be good at reading people. What kind of friend missed all that? “You’ve been that stressed this whole time, and you never talked to me? I would’ve told you you’re fine.”
Flash’s expression remained pained as if he’d stepped into an animal trap and couldn’t escape. “No, guys, it’s seriously bad. I’ve got love handles, my pants don’t fit right. Arrgh, you can see it!” He covered his eyes.
As the resident pony in a human’s body, Sunset didn’t want to say it out loud, but she didn’t totally understand what the problem was.
Well, she did, humans made a problem out of everything, but at the same time, all ponies had some softness to them in Equestria. Then she came to the human dimension, and everyone looked malnourished to her—Sunset originally assumed there was a famine there before she caught on that no, human bodies were just weird like that.
So even if she had noticed Flash filling out before now (and if she squinted, okay, yeah, now that he’d pointed it out she could see a bit of a pudge around the middle that wasn’t there when they were dating), she wouldn’t have thought anything bad of it. But she knew her standards were a touch different, so she didn’t want to make a comparison Flash would find embarrassing. I’m pretty sure I lose one whole Flash Sentry just by going through the portal from Equestria.
So like she usually did when she wasn’t sure what humans were supposed to think about things, she studied her friends. Timber kept mostly quiet, but there was a kind, patient smile free from judgement. She got the sense they’d had this conversation before.
Meanwhile, Twilight didn’t look nearly as horrified as Flash seemed to think she should be. At worst, she looked concerned, but from the way her eyes were trained on him, Sunset could tell a few pounds wasn’t what had her worried.
“Gym class is always the worst with the uniform since I… I really don’t want to have to ask for a size up.” Flash sunk into himself, as if hoping to disappear, or failing that, make himself as small as possible. “I didn’t want you to know. I didn’t want anyone to know, but especially not you.”
Twilight dipped her chin slightly to hold his gaze since he was insistent on shrinking away. “...You mean because I look like her?”
He winced and his river green eyes filled to bursting. A slight nod came first, and then he shook his head at himself. “Sorry,” he sighed, “I don’t want to make things weird. You don’t deserve that! But well, yeah, if I’m being honest, I guess it’s always been weird, and I don’t know how to get around that. I know you’re not the Princess. And I’m over her, or as over her as I can be.”
“But I remind you of her?” Twilight finished and smiled through a shrug when he looked ready to apologize again. “It’s not like I don’t see the resemblance. That’s probably been hard for you. I don’t exactly know how to deal with it, either. I’ve kind of just dodged the issue whenever it comes up.”
“No, that’s fair, though! It’s not your baggage to deal with,” he said and pressed a hand to his chest. “It’s mine. She left without looking back. That’s not something I should hold against you. Or her, that much, but especially not you! Maybe I should start to get to know you for you instead of a Princess of Equestria.”
“Well, that’s going to be easy,” Twilight told him, and the giggle hidden in her voice was so slight it was almost imaginary. “There’s no comparison. She’s saved the world countless times against mind-boggling odds and earned a crown twice-over! Apart from helping out my friends with magic, my biggest claim to fame is being Crystal Prep’s top mathlete three years running. Or, well, was.” A haunted look possessed her. “Oh gosh, all my academic records have probably broken by now! Wow, that’s… humbling, I suppose...”
Flash’s smile quirked to the left. “Hey, that’s still pretty impressive if you ask me.”
“Not like her, it’s not.” The air left her in one fell swoop, shrugging. But she then returned his smile and upped the ante with a wink. “That’s the point.”
He chuckled, rubbing his hand through the curls at the back of his head. “I guess so. That’s… honestly maybe a good thing, though. It clearly messed me up when she left without saying goodbye. She has her own life to live in the other dimension, so it’s not her fault, but...”
“Yeah. I don’t blame her either, or try not to anyway, but you’re right, sometimes it feels like she left everyone behind to fulfill her grand magical destiny back home, and then all you had left was... me. I know I have people who care about me now, but I’m no magical pony princess. I’m not eloquent. I’m not graceful. I stumble over myself just trying to get to class. I can’t imagine how someone like me could ever become someone like her,” Twilight said, holding herself. “It hasn’t been easy standing in my own shadow.”
A short-lived snicker interrupted the rebuttal that Sunset was about to jump into. Flash leaned his head to the side. “Sorry, it’s just—I know what you’re doing. You’ve had her up on this pedestal for so long it’s hard to take her off, right?”
“Oh.” The corner of Twilight’s mouth lifted. “You do get it.”
“I think so, yeah,” Flash said nodding. “For what it counts, I know I still have a lot to learn about who you really are, but whoever you are, I promise I don’t expect you to be some amazing demigod princess. Not to mention I’d be pretty hypocritical if I judged people for being kind of klutzy.”
“Or clumsy,” Sunset added, smirking. “Bumbling is a pretty good word, too.”
“Oh don’t forget blundering!” Timber chimed in. “It’s super cute when you blunder.” It only just occurred to Sunset to wonder if Timber had the same type as her, even though they’d both only ever dated the same two people. So yes, she thought, he absolutely does.
Flash raised a hand, grinning quite happily, as if exhibiting evidence for the court.
Twilight giggled in kind. “Well, it would be really nice to have a friend who babbles as much as I do.”
“Yeah! By all means, babble away! If you stammer, all the better! I’m an expert stammerer.” Flash waved his hands as if to wipe the slate clean. “No unrealistic expectations going forward. Does… that sound good?”
“I’d really, really like that,” she told him and took the opportunity to aim an eyebrow his way. “Just as long as that applies to you and your body, too.”
Flash blushed anew. “Oh. I, uh—”
The late bell for first period rang, and, squawking, Twilight jumped to open the gym door, but she hesitated. She looked back toward Flash. “Oh gosh, would you be okay with me taking your gym class? I promise I won’t think any of you any differently either way....”
Taking a breath, Flash’s hands found the pockets of his jeans. “If we’re really going to get to know each other, that’s a pretty good way to do it, I guess.” He half-heartedly swung an arm. “Touch those downs.”
Twilight smiled at him, flashing a thumbs up before disappearing into the gymnasium.
Timber bumped a shoulder into Flash’s. “Hey. Proud a’ you.”
Sunset nodded, offering a fist bump, which Flash reciprocated in kind.
“Also, okay, I know we’re paused right now, but I’m sorry, you have to know now that you’ve got a cute butt—you saw it, I saw it, we all saw it.” Timber jabbed an accusatory finger in Flash’s face. “You can’t deny the facts, Sentry!”
He shoved Timber’s finger away and laughed, but Timber seemed to take the tinge of pink on his cheeks as a declaration of defeat: he did in fact have a cute butt.
A small, if shaky smile rose on Flash's face. "Well, it feels pretty good to get all of that out in the open. You know,” he said leaning toward the two of them, “I'd totally recommend it. Emotional openness. Making friends. Having conversations about things. It’s good stuff.”
“Tcht. Read you loud and clear.” Timber clapped a hand on Sunset’s shoulder. “Our turn, new best friend.”
After Twilight’s Physics and Law classes, Sunset could’ve used a mental break. Instead, she met up with Timber by the yearbook office. If she were in anyone else’s body at the moment, she wouldn’t have thought twice about cutting class to hash things out with Timber and get this all over with, but Sunset wasn’t in the business of giving her girlfriend panic attacks.
Twilight had told her once, cuddled up to her in the aftermath of one, that it wasn’t on her or their friends to cure her anxiety, and as much as Sunset wanted to be her hero, she promised she wouldn’t try to “fix” Twilight. What she could do, though, was to understand what led to it. That in all likelihood included finding out Sunset ditched class and ruined her perfect attendance record.
So she told Timber to meet her at lunch instead, and instead of the privacy she’d expected (since she was one of only two students who had keys), she found Juniper Montage locked in a staring contest with a computer monitor. Juniper replayed the same five seconds of footage over and over again and idly gnawed on her finger. She leaned in, squinting at a particularly lovable pixel.
Sunset waved her hand so as not to appear threatening. “Hey Juniper?”
The threat was received, evidently. Juniper jumped, whirling the computer chair around. “Oh. Sorry, I didn’t see you there, and I’m not used to anyone besides Wallflower sneaking up on me. Do friends always do that?”
“Yes,” Timber Spruce reported, and the fact that he was currently Rainbow Dash gave him too much authority. “Friends are excellent startlers. Be very afraid.”
Sunset shoved him aside so that the grown-ups could talk. She wanted to (politely) tell Juniper to vacate the editing bay so they could have the room to themselves, but she thought Wallflower would have a thing or two to say about dismissively shooing people away, so Sunset did her best to be cordial first. “How’s the retrospective coming along?”
“Ha, better than I ever expected!” For a girl who didn’t go to this school, Juniper’s enthusiasm over what was essentially supposed to be a video yearbook would’ve weirded Sunset out. If it was anybody but Juniper. She spun herself back around with a dramatic flair. “I never thought it’d be so rewarding to be behind the camera in the director’s seat, but uh, don’t tell my Uncle Canter I said that.”
Coming up behind Juniper as she clicked around the editing program, a smirk slid into place on Sunset’s face. “Your secret’s safe with me.”
Juniper bit her teeth into her untrounceable smile. “There’s so much more emotional depth to this story than I ever would have dreamed! I went in expecting a lighthearted, silly slice-of-life, but oh-ho-ho, there’s so much more to it than that! Battles between good and evil! Emotional heart-to-hearts and stakes so sky high they take place literally floating in the sky! Interviewing students on their perspectives was interesting enough, but I didn’t think I could possibly have any real footage until people started showing me what they’d taken on their phones over the years.”
Juniper grinned in the blue light of the monitor, dragging the cursor back to a certain point in the editing timeline. When she pressed play, it brought Sunset back to the worst day of her life from someone else’s perspective.
The frame shook in the trembling hand of its operator. Students scrambled back inside the safety of the school and shut the double doors to the front of the school, but that only drew the attention of the dark-eyed demon and her crackling, flaming hellfire. She floated far above the courtyard, but her cruel sneer could be seen through the top of the glass.
Presently, Timber Spruce leaned forward over Juniper’s shoulder. “Whoa, what is that?”
Juniper grinned, leaning back in her seat. “The beginning of our story. It all starts with her.”
In the footage, the sounds of panicked students contended with the demonic form descending down on them with bat-like wings.
“I’ve had to jump through so many hoops tonight just to get my hands on this crown, and it really should’ve been mine all along,” the demon Sunset snarled, muted by the glass. The bestial rage on her face collapsed back into a smirk. “But let’s let bygones be bygones. I am your princess now and you will be loyal—” The cameraperson noticed a sickly glow form around the upper interior of the front facade. As soon as the she-demon closed her fist, the brick and concrete above crumpled like paper. “—to me!”
Screaming, the students scattered away from where the entrance the demon made for herself. Flash Sentry, Lyra Heartstrings, Microchips, the Crusaders—the horrified faces rushing past were all people Sunset would later call friends. At the time, her demonic self loomed down on swift wings to the point that she could now be seen in full view even as the camera person staggered back.
Juniper pressed pause on the playback. “And this is just the start. Once we know that Sunset Shimmer’s okay with the demon angle, with a careful selection of video, we can tell the real story of Canterlot High! From nightmarish attacks to redemption to a school united against the forces of evil! Terror in the face of interdimensional danger!”
Sunset’s eyebrows fell like a drawbridge. The air was punched out of her lungs, and she wondered if this was how Twilight felt when her asthma acted up. “Is that… really what it’s been like for the other students?”
Juniper let a few other clips play. A shot of the stage from the Battle of the Bands from the crowd, Midnight Sparkle breaking open the fabric of space-time and obliterating the Wondercolt statue, Gloriosa as Gaia Everfree growing trees and vines from the ground to blot out the camera—Timber winced at that.
Juniper caught on and stopped the footage. “If it’s too much, absolutely let me know. I’ll make the cut. The point is to be true to the students’ real high school experience, not open old wounds. Wallflower thinks it’s healthy. And, well, I’m starting to agree. She doesn’t want to hide from who she became, and if we do this right, maybe it can be cathartic for everyone.”
Sunset did her best to twist her grimace up into a smile. “Yeah… maybe give us a minute to think it over? Alone?”
Juniper stood up, hands up in a say no more position. “Gotcha. I’ll leave you to make any edits you need to! Take your time. I should check on how Wallflower’s doing after her shrink appointment thingie, anyway.”
She left the two of them with the image of Gaia Everfree on screen between them. The door clicked shut. Sunset kept an eye on Timber, who folded his arms over the back of the computer chair. She’d never seen Rainbow Dash this contemplative. Or this able to stay in one place, really. “Been a while since I’ve seen her like that….”
Well, this is as good a place to start as any. Sunset’s arms settled over her chest. “It must’ve been hard to see your sister like that. I reached out to Gloriosa after camp was over, but I guess I never thought to check in on you. I have to imagine the existence of magic and its ability to corrupt the people you care about most was kind of a lot to take in.”
“Nah.” Timber shrugged, pushing off the back of the chair. “Well, okay, was it terrifying? Hundred percent. Did it leave behind mental and emotional scars? Oh you know it! And sure, it kept me and my sister up for a few nights afterwards, buuut—” He made sure to grin, probably noticing the brooding look on Sunset’s face. “—a lot of good came from it, too. You girls saved the camp. Still can’t thank you enough for that, by the way. And, honestly, the heart-eyes I had for Twilight at the time sort of made the whole Magical Pony Girls are Real and a Threat to Everyone thing go down a little easier.” He popped a shrug. “Pretty girls do that.”
Sunset laughed, leaning back against the island where they stowed the camera equipment for the yearbook committee. “I can attest to that.”
Although she didn’t say anything further, because she could attest too much to that. There was no way on this earth or any other that Sunset would have spoiled their well-deserved fun at the time. Still, watching Twilight slow dance with Timber at the crystal cave ball stung more than she expected it to—and she couldn’t even place why until Flash told her he was so happy to be getting over Twilight but... how weird it still felt to see those two together. It took hearing her oldest friend pining after the girl (or, as she found out not much later, the guy) for Sunset to finally recognize a terribly late fact: she had it bad.
If nothing else, it led to her and Flash stuffing their faces with regret together and bonding over their shared devastation. Good times.
Sunset pushed the thought aside. She won the girl in the end anyway. It was the mature thing to move on like adults, wasn’t it? She could be mature. She smirked, thinking it over. “You never did get to ask much about magic, did you?”
Timber shook his head. “At first, it was all Twilight and I could talk about but then, well, we kind of moved onto other topics. Geology, art history, inter-spatial physics and the existentialism of existing in a multiverse. Got to know each other better, you know? I… didn’t really know you well enough yet to demand a guide on Everything You Ever Wanted to Know about Equestrian Magic.”
“Huh. That’d be pretty useful.” She pointed a finger his way. “Mind if I steal that? It kind of seems like the least I could do is give people a pamphlet when I reshape their entire worldview with demons and magic fights.”
They both laughed, and Sunset wanted to pump her fist. It actually started to feel like they might be getting somewhere with this. She clapped her hands. “Alright, shoot. Ask me anything.”
Taking a seat in the swivel chair, Timber used it to turn dramatically as he asked, “Anything?”
Leaning back on the counter, Sunset smirked and gestured towards herself as if to say bring it on.
Timber held his chin, and it made him look like Rainbow Dash trying to figure out how to get out of her math test. Not solve the equations, just a distraction. He brightened in a way the actual Rainbow rarely did when solving for that particular variable. “So the universe you come from, the one with ponies and dragons, that’s parallel to this one, right? So everyone has a double over there?”
“As far as I can tell, yeah. There’s another Twilight, another Flash Sentry, another Celestia—”
His eyes enlarged. “So there’s another me? And another Gloriosa and Camp Everfree?” The idea of more than one Timber Spruce existing terrified and exhausted Sunset already, but she knew it logically had to be true.
Sunset opened her mouth to answer, but a thought struck her before she could. “Oh, uh, well, yeah, there’s probably another you and Gloriosa in Equestria somewhere. I haven’t met them, but then, I’ve also been here for a few years now, so I haven’t really had the chance to run into them around Canterlot. But as for camp… probably not?” She saw his crestfallen expression and felt the urge to build a camp there herself. “It’s not anything the other you did. The Everfree Forest is a dangerous, lawless place in Equestria—and by lawless I mean the laws of nature. It doesn’t follow the same rules as everywhere else. Not exactly a vacation spot where most ponies want to pitch a tent.”
“Whoa. No Camp Everfree?” He let the words pass over his tongue, feeling out the taste, and set his hands on his knees. “That Timber’s gotta be, like, a totally different guy.”
Sunset chuckled. “You’d think so, but the multiverse has a funny way of working out like that. Princess Twilight grew up in Canterlot Castle as Princess Celestia’s pupil, and trust me when I say that’s the lap of luxury, but through it all, she turned out to be just as big of a dork as our Twilight.”
Timber laughed in stunned delight. “Talk about nature vs. nurture! Wow. So, wait, I thought you were Princess Celestia’s student? Were you in the same class or something?”
“That… would have taught us about friendship much earlier, but no.” The idea of becoming the Princess’s pupils at the same time lit a ball of warmth in Sunset’s stomach. Growing up together. Learning about friendship early. Not turning into a bratty megalomaniac who destroyed everything she touched for a crown. Then again, Sunset was never good at sharing, so she probably would have shoved filly Twilight’s face in the sandbox at best. “Princess Celestia takes on remarkable foals as her protege for very specific reasons. Twilight and I were both supposed to stop a war.”
“A war?” He jerked his head back. “In fluffy, sing-songy ponyland? With who?”
“Princess Luna. Well, Nightmare Moon which is basically like Gaia Everfree, but instead of protecting a camp, she was prophesied to bring about everlasting night and rule in tyranny.” Sunset waved a hand. “Solar-lunar war. It was a whole thing. I obviously didn’t end up defeating her or taking my place by Celestia’s side like I thought I was destined for, but Twilight figured out how to bring Luna back instead. Worked out way better than any of us ever dreamed. But that’s Princess Twilight for you. She finds a way...”
She winced internally at the tone of her voice. What? Did she think she could have done any better? It worked out for the best without me. And I’m glad it did! Princess Celestia seems so much happier now that she has her sister back—she has a sense of humour now. Who knew she could have one of those?
To her surprise, Timber took all of that in better than she expected. But he did look a little concerned. “Are you okay? That’s… really impressive, but I feel like stopping a war is a lot of pressure to put on a kid. It’s like the responsibility of maintaining a camp with your sister to the power of one hundred.”
Sunset fought the tensing in her shoulders. “It’s what the Princess needed me to do. So I did what I could to do it.” All the times well-meaning teachers, members of the royal staff, or even guardsponies told her it was too much for her got irritating after a while. She used to be able to shut them up by naturally out-performing her upperclassponies. That was an undeniable fact: Sunset Shimmer was a natural born mage.
It eventually got to the point where defeating Nightmare Moon was an unmitigated certainty in her mind, and she just wanted to skip ahead to the part where she and Princess Celestia got to spend their days ruling together. In hindsight, Sunset loathed the arrogance that led her down that path and only got worse as time went on. She decided to avoid the subject, shrugging. “The point is that I didn’t do it, and now I’m here in the human dimension causing magical disasters for me and my friends to save people from. Life’s funny like that, I guess.”
Timber nodded. “I kind of know how you feel. Not the child of a prophesied war part, but well, having this life path set out for you and realizing that might not be your thing after all.” He took a breath, rubbing the back of his head. “I don’t know. Gloriosa and I have always had Camp Everfree to take care of, like our parents did, and I wouldn’t trade that for anything. Over the years Gloriosa always tried to convince me she could do it herself, and I knew that was baloney, so I always helped her out. But now, she’s an adult, the camp’s got financial backers… I’m starting to believe her when she says she’s got this. So where does that leave me?”
Sunset gave the most Twilight response she could think of: “College?”
But neither of them jumped on the idea.
It wasn’t like Sunset hadn’t given any thought to the future. Senior year wouldn’t last forever. She shrugged. “Yeah, I don’t really know what I want to do, either. Nothing really measures up to Destined to Defeat a Great Evil and Rule a Kingdom in a yearbook, but something more lowkey is probably good for me, anyway. You saw the clipshow. Turns out me and power don’t go very well together…”
It was at that point in time that Timber Spruce asked a question that caught Sunset totally off-guard. “Well, what does the other Sunset do?”
Sunset stared at him, working out what he said. “You mean the human Sunset Shimmer?” He nodded. “No clue. I’ve kind of stopped looking for her.”
Timber scoffed and stood up from his spinning seat. “You know there’s another you right here in our very own dimension, and you haven’t been curious to find out what she’s like? She’s the fully human you! If anyone can tell you what more ‘lowkey’ human things you should be getting up to, it’s her!”
Sunset’s eyebrows lifted. He’s… actually not wrong. Sweet Celestia, maybe if I knew what I was meant to do here, I could stop feeling so jealous over Princess Twilight’s coronation. A rejuvenating thrill flew through her. She could actually find out her place in this world! Sunset laughed and grabbed him by the shoulders. “Timber, that’s perfect!”
“What are friends for?” He smirked, far too proud of himself, but this time she allowed it. “And hey, we haven’t exactly switched everyone back yet. I think we’re making some real progress, but looks like we still have some bonding to do if Twilight’s theory’s right. But knowing her? It totally is.” He lent her a smile and extended his hand. “So?”
The winter storm darkened the day outside, but some light broke through the clouds, falling on their hands as Sunset grabbed Timber’s in hers. “You know what? I’m in,” she said. “Let’s find the human Sunset.”
