//------------------------------// // Chapter 16 // Story: Equal Opportunity Ascension // by Cast-Iron Caryatid //------------------------------// Twilight regretted it the moment she thought of it, but by then it was too late. Having Sunset Shimmer around was like having gained a little sister; she was sarcastic, aggravating and dishonest to a fault—yet between all that, she was fun, knowledgeable and relatable. She was also, above all, The Enemy, but some would say that that only strengthened the comparison. After the situation with the letter—for which Sunset was unapologetic and Spike was just confused—Rarity and Pinkie Pie showed up to prepare for the house-warming party, followed soon after by Applejack and Fluttershy with food for everypony. Twilight was grateful for the crowd, since it gave her a chance to drop back and take a breath—which, as always, brought her to Fluttershy. “Are you alright?” Fluttershy quietly asked as Applejack was soliciting opinions from Sunset Shimmer on various apple-based goods. Twilight sighed. “I don’t even know. I probably shouldn’t be, but after all the waiting, not knowing when or if she would show up and make her move, this is an improvement. “It’s… weird. I know that every other word that comes out of her mouth is a lie, but I also know she knows I know, so it’s almost like she isn’t lying at all; just going along with it enough to have plausible deniability. “And it wouldn’t even matter, except she’s really easy to get along with. She’s gone through a lot of the same things I have—she has a lot of the same experiences and frustrations—but she’s a very different pony. Already, there’s a whole list of things I want to ask her about, except she’s…” “A manipulative, selfish witch who is only after your magic,” Fluttershy finished for her. Twilight blinked. “Err, well, yes, but I don’t know if I would put it quite like that,” she said, looking at Fluttershy as if she’d just croaked like a frog—which, in hindsight, actually wouldn’t be all that unusual for her. Fluttershy flushed at her ‘outburst.’ “I have a brother,” she cryptically explained. “He’s… He makes me so mad, sometimes.” “How do you mean?” Twilight asked, curious, but still confused. Fluttershy looked over to where Sunset was showing off her sun spell again while disposing of a stack of paper plates. “Zephyr Breeze… he’s the kind of pony who never does anything if there’s somepony else who will do it for him when they see him struggling. He’s not malicious or even a bad pony, but I… I have to remind myself that he’s my little brother, sometimes.” Twilight tried to imagine a pony like that and shivered. “I guess I’m really lucky to have the brother I do,” she said, then immediately grimaced in distaste when she remembered Sunset commenting almost the same thing with a very different meaning in her letter to Cadance. Fluttershy noticed Twilight’s grimace, but probably put it down to her picturing Shining Armor acting like Zephyr Breeze, which, now that she thought about it, really wasn’t a great image either. “Still, I’m not sure if the two are really comparable,” Twilight reasoned.  “Sunset is intentionally out to tear others down.” “Oh, yes, they’re complete opposites,” Fluttershey agreed, then dropped her head so that her mane covered half of her face, and sheepishly added, “But the thing about opposites is that they can still be the same type of thing.” “That’s a harsh thing to say about your brother, isn’t it?” Twilight asked. “I mean, no matter how lazy and useless he is…” Fluttershy sat and sighed, working herself up to responding. “With my brother… There comes a time when you have to judge a pony on their actions, not just their feelings. I love my brother… but I don’t trust him. Obviously, you can’t trust Sunset but that doesn’t mean you can’t still try to be friends with her.” “Should I even want to, though?” Twilight asked. “I don’t think that’s something you get to choose.” *** By midafternoon, the downstairs of the old bakery had been all but restored to pristine condition. Between the magical efforts of Twilight and Rarity, even the worst of the damage looked like it had never happened and Applejack knew more than the average pony about polishing wood until it shined. Coincidentally, it was just after Applejack and Pinkie Pie left to arrange for the actual party preparations part of the party preparations that Rainbow Dash showed up, announcing her presence with an appreciative whistle. “Wow,” she said, standing in the doorway. “You girls sure did a number on this place.” “Rainbow!” Rarity greeted cheerily. “Why, your timing is perfect. We were just going to get started on the upstairs.” Rainbow failed to hide her wince. Apparently the ‘never leave her friends hanging’ bit didn’t apply to helping Sunset Shimmer clean her house, which… was fair. Rainbow Dash’s awkwardness was quickly replaced by confusion, though. “Wait, how does that work?” she asked. “Shouldn’t you have started upstairs? You know; where she’s actually going to live?” “Pish posh,” Rarity said. “We had to have the downstairs ready for the party, of course. We still have plenty of time to make the upstairs livable while the others bring the supplies in and get things set up down here.” “You know…” Sunset interjected. “This seems like an awful lot of trouble to go to for one night. I mean, not to look a gift-party in the fire code, but this is not a large place. How many ponies can we even fit down here? “Oh, not to worry,” Rarity insisted. “It isn’t at all unusual for Pinkie Parties to outgrow the space they’re in. As it is, you can only expect most ponies to show up for a short while to graze and see what’s going on. Now—let us see what we have to work with upstairs.” Rainbow Dash made the same sort of whistle of appreciation that she had upon seeing the downstairs. That was where the similarities ended. “Wow,” she said, taking it all in. “This place is a dump.” “Rainbow!” Twilight and Rarity hissed in stereo. She had a point, though. Looking the room over… It had been swept; that was about all that could be said about it. Broken fixtures and furniture aside, the downstairs had been downright habitable compared to this. The roof wasn’t thatch like a lot of Ponyville was—chimneys and thatch didn’t really work well together, especially on an industrial scale—but it had leaked anyway and the water damage was significant. Rarity had poked her head into the bathroom and immediately looked ill. Twilight followed suit and sympathized; the window was broken, the sink looked like it had housed a bird’s nest until just recently, and the rest of it… Well, the bathroom had been used for its intended purpose, in a way. Even Fluttershy let out a quiet “Oh my,” at the sight, and it was a problem that Twilight expected the animal caretaker had had extensive experience with. “This… This is not acceptable!” Rarity declared, aghast. “Yeeeeah,” Rainbow Dash said, flying a little lower than usual to avoid getting any closer to the moldy ceiling than she had to. “This is going to take more than a couple of hours to fix.” “You didn’t know?” Twilight asked Rarity. “Don’t tell me you bought this place sight-unseen?” “Ah—well—considering there was no actual buying involved, I can truthfully answer no,” Rarity dithered. Twilight couldn’t help but roll her eyes at her friend’s naiveté. This wasn’t a public building like the library; even if the city owned it, they would no doubt be charging the crown a premium for it, especially on short notice. “Wait,” Rainbow Dash said, looking around. “You didn’t actually sleep in all this last night, did you?” Rarity apparently hadn’t thought of that, what color she had draining from her face since, the way Twilight had heard it, Sunset had indeed been essentially handed the keys and pointed in the right direction late yesterday. “Eh,” Sunset said with a shrug as she wiped years of grime off the window. “I’ve lived in worse.” That was, quite possibly, the absolute worst thing that Sunset could have said to Rarity in that moment. Even Twilight found it hard to believe. “Please tell me that you’re joking!” Rarity pleaded. “You were the princess’ student! You are the princess’ student!” And that was very much not the right thing for Rarity to say to Sunset Shimmer. “And between those two things, I—” she said with a sudden ice… and then just as suddenly, it was gone, along with any actual explanation. “…wasn’t,” she finished lamely. Twilight let out a breath that she’d been holding. After a moment of awkward silence, Sunset expanded on her answer very slightly, “The world on the other side of the mirror was not a nice place for a filly with no no money, no identification, no family, no magic and no idea how the world works.” “Yeah, well, nopony made you go through that mirror,” Rainbow Dash casually remarked. As if that was just something you say to somepony. Sunset didn’t respond at first, and Twilight wished that she could at least see Sunset’s face so she could judge her mood, but she was still standing at the window. “It wasn’t the mirror that made me an orphan, Rainbow Dash. “It was Celestia.” There was a flash of teal light and Sunset was gone.