//------------------------------// // Chapter 3: Director’s Cut // Story: Behind the Scenes of SunChips // by Godslittleprincess //------------------------------// Flash sighed in relief when he saw that the anomaly had stopped expanding. He felt terrible that Moon Dancer was likely trapped inside along with anyone else who was at the SWORD base, but he had to trust that he and Twilight made the right call. “You want to know what happened that made me less by-the-book?” Flash began, addressing Twilight. “The Blip happened. I lost my brother and my aunt to the Blip, leaving me to take care of my grandmother. My brother’s best friend also lost his wife. She blipped out right in his arms on their wedding day, and he just had a hard time recovering. With my brother also gone, someone else needed to step in and give the guy emotional support.” “I’m guessing you were the emotional support,” Twilight speculated. Flash nodded. “I guess on some level, I also understand how Sunset feels, and I want to help too.” “But unlike me and Sunset, you got who you lost back,” Twilight pointed out sadly. “What happened to our loved ones, there’s no coming back from that.” “I may not be able to completely understand how the two of you feel, but that doesn’t mean that I don’t care,” Flash comforted. “You don’t have to carry all that pain on your own. I’m right here if you need the emotional support.” Twilight couldn’t help but smile at that. “Thank you.” “What happened with the Blip’s got me thinking that maybe we’ve been too hard on people like Sunset and the Avengers,” Flash continued. “Cinch sees the last five years as proof that they’re ineffective at best and straight up dangerous at worst, but that same evidence has led me to a different conclusion. When I look at Sunset and the Avengers and think of the last five years, I see people who willingly put their lives on the line twice to save us from Tirek, and they did all that despite the fact we tried to put them on a leash.” “Spoken like a man who once held the leash,” Twilight joked. “Well, my last assignment before the Blip involved putting Ant-Man on house arrest, so you’re not wrong,” Flash replied with a shrug, causing Twilight to giggle inadvertently. Flash smiled back before suddenly yawning. “Wow, long day, huh?” Flash remarked. “You know what? Pull over and switch seats with me,” Twilight ordered. “You’ve been driving for a while. Get some rest.” Despite Flash’s initial protests about how not tired he was, Twilight finally convinced Flash to let her drive. They were just about to pass over the ridge when the sun began to rise and Flash’s phone began to vibrate. Flash pulled his phone from his pocket and read the notification. “Moon Dancer got past Cinch’s last firewall,” Flash announced. “This email’s got a ton of attachments though, and they’re all huge. I might need access to a laptop to look at some of these.” “Anything you can look at from just your phone?” Twilight asked. “Yeah,” Flash affirmed opening one of the files. “Apparently, Cinch is working on something called Project Hacker using Micro Chips’s body. She wasn’t just holding him for safekeeping; she was trying to bring him back online.” “And nothing worked until Sunset took Micro Chips’s body and ran off with it,” Twilight concluded. “I’ve got to warn Sunset about this.” The two of them pulled up past the ridge to a row of tents where people in military camouflage were running around. A large semitruck was parked by the tents, carrying what Flash and Twilight assumed was the modified bomb shelter on wheels. After the two of them parked and got out of the car, a man in camo with pale orange skin and wavy, lime green hair greeted them. “Captain Sparkle,” the man greeted. “Major Gaffer,” Twilight greeted back before introducing Flash. “This is Agent Sentry with the FBI. Thank you for your help. My mother and brother would have appreciated it.” “And they’d both be proud,” Major Gaffer replied. The three of them moved to the semitruck where Gaffer had several airmen unload what was in it. To Twilight’s excitement and Flash’s awe, out rolled a heavily armored space rover. “I hope this matches your specs,” Gaffer stated. “She’s perfect,” Twilight praised. “Let’s get you suited up, Captain.” Meanwhile, inside the Hex, Moon Dancer had run into Micro Chips, who subsequently woke her from Sunset’s mind control. The two of them had stolen an armored jeep turned funnel cake truck and were now driving away from the SWORD base turned circus. “Let me get this straight,” Micro Chips said to Moon Dancer. “A villain named Tirek was trying to steal this stone on my head, so I asked Sunset to kill me, and she did?” “Yup,” Moon Dancer affirmed, “but then the bad guy used the Time Stone to reverse time and took the stone anyway, which also killed you.” “In other words, I came back only for Sunset to watch me die again.” “That more or less sums it up. What I can’t figure out is why you can’t leave the Hex without falling apart.” Flash nodded in admiration as Twilight walked out in her space suit. Then, to her surprise, he pulled out his phone and took a candid picture of her. “Moon Dancer’s going to want to see pictures once we get her out of there,” Flash explained. “You look amazing by the way.” “Thank you, Flash, and thanks for the support,” Twilight replied, smiling appreciatively at him. “Godspeed.” Flash joined Major Gaffer and the rest of the Air Force over by mission control while Twilight boarded the rover. “Alright, on your order, Captain,” Gaffer spoke into the comms. “Ready to go,” Twilight replied. “Making contact in five, four, three,” Gaffer counted off as Twilight drove the rover into the anomaly, “two, one.” Twilight slammed the rover into the barrier, but instead of passing smoothly through, the barrier seemed to push her back. Twilight pressed harder on the gas pedal, but the rover didn’t seem to get any closer to passing through. In fact, the barrier seemed to push back even harder. Unbeknownst to her, the red energy from barrier was spreading over the front of the rover. “What’s happening?” Gaffer cried as the red energy began to change the front of the rover. “It’s the anomaly. It’s rewriting the rover,” Flash realized before grabbing the microphone and speaking into the comms. “Twilight, get out of there now!” Twilight unbuckled her seatbelt and bolted for the hatch when the red energy began spreading into the cockpit. Twilight leapt from the hatch onto the grassy ground just as the barrier flung the rover off. The rover landed in front of the mission control tent allowing Flash, Gaffer, and everyone else to see that the entire front half of the rover had been rewritten into a pickup truck. Twilight picked herself up, looking from the partially transformed rover to the anomaly. Flash and Gaffer ran to her from the mission control tent to see if she was alright. Before either of them could reach her, however, she looked up and locked eyes with Flash, causing him to stop in his tracks. “Twilight, no,” Flash exclaimed, realizing Twilight’s intentions. “I can get through,” Twilight bluntly noted. “Don’t.” “I can get through.” Before anyone could stop her, Twilight ran to the barrier and pushed herself through. She ended up inside the barrier, stuck between true reality and Sunset’s false reality. She cried out in pain as she felt her mind being taken apart by anomaly. “I can’t leave Shining and Twilight,” a old memory of her mother said. “Maybe I could fly up and meet you halfway,” her younger self had said to her mother. “Only if you learn to glow like your Aunt Luna,” Aunt Luna’s friend Neighsay had told her. Somehow, those memories were giving Twilight the strength to hold herself together and resist the anomaly’s attempts to dissect and rewrite her mind. “I’m never going to be like Aunt Luna,” a college-aged Twilight had said to her brother. “I’m not tough or brave like the two of you are.” “Twily, just because you’re best at being clever doesn’t mean that you’re not brave or tough,” Shining Armor had said to her. “If you ask me, I think you’re braver and tougher than you give yourself credit for.” Twilight cried out as she willed herself forward. Just a few more steps, and she’d reach the other side. “You don’t have to carry all that pain on your own,” a more recent memory replayed in her mind. That last memory gave her the final push she needed to get to the other side. When Twilight emerged from the barrier, she noticed that everything looked different. She could somehow see the electricity moving through the telephone wires and the heat from the sun being absorbed by her surroundings among other forms of energy transfer. Twilight had no way of being aware of it, but her eyes were also glowing blue. She blinked twice, returning her eyes and her vision back to normal. Then, she removed her space suit and ran as fast as she could towards Sunset Shimmer’s house. Meanwhile outside of Westview, Flash stopped staring at where Twilight had disappeared into the anomaly and asked Major Gaffer for a laptop. He checked into his email and began to look through the other files Moon Dancer had sent him. One particular file caught is eye, a video file dated the same day Cinch had said Sunset stole Micro Chips’s body. His investigator’s hunch was telling him to click it, so he did. The video opened with Sunset Shimmer walking up to the SWORD headquarters’ front desk. “I know he’s here, and I want him back,” Sunset said to the receptionist. “I’m sorry, but I can’t help you. Director Cinch has ordered that no one gets access to Micro Chips without her clearance first,” the receptionist replied. “Please,” Sunset begged. “He’s the closest thing I have left to a family, and I just want to give him a proper goodbye and a funeral. After the way he died, that’s the least he deserves.” Flash raised his eyebrows when he heard what Sunset had said. Cinch had said Sunset resurrected Micro Chips. Why would she do that if all she wanted was to bury him? Flash continued to watch the video; the receptionist received a phone call and picked up the phone. “Yes, ma’am,” he said into the phone. “She’s still here. You want me to let her through? Well, alright then.” The receptionist hung up and led Sunset to a pair of double doors. “Cinch wants me to let you through,” he explained to her. “Let me get these doors for you.” “Don’t worry about it. I got it,” Sunset refused before blowing the doors open with her energy. The next scene in the footage showed Sunset entering Cinch’s office. “Sunset Shimmer,” Cinch addressed Sunset, “I’m so pleased to make your acquaintance. I’m Director Abacus Cinch.” “The man at the front says I need your clearance to see Micro Chips,” Sunset replied. “Do I have it?” “You do. Come with me.” Cinch led Sunset to a window showing another room. The video changed to a split screen format showing Flash the same scene from a different angle. One screen showed Sunset and Cinch looking into the room housing Micro Chips’s remains while the other showed Sunset’s shocked and horrified reaction while Cinch stood indifferently next to her. “What are you doing to him?” Sunset cried, tears beginning to form in her eyes. “Attempting to reassemble the most amazingly sophisticated, sentient weapon ever made,” Cinch answered her coolly. “‘Attempting to…?’” Sunset repeated before trailing off. “You mean, you’re trying to bring him back?” “Precisely.” “No!” Sunset screamed. “You can’t do that! He said not to bring him back. You can’t bring him back!” “You’re right,” Cinch conceded. “We can’t, but you might be able to.” “Me?” “You and Micro Chips both received your abilities from the same source, correct?” Cinch explained, her face remaining totally frozen throughout the whole conversation. “If anyone can bring Micro Chips back online, it’s you.” “No, I can’t!” Sunset continued to protest. “That’s not what he wanted, and that’s not why I’m here! I only wanted to give him a funeral.” With ice in her eyes, Cinch stared long and hard at Sunset. “Did you actually come here expecting me to allow you to just put billions of dollars’ worth of vibranium into the ground?” Cinch replied condescendingly. “I was under the assumption that my request would give us something that we both wanted, but that does not seem to be the case. I’ll give you five minutes to say your goodbyes. Then, I want you out of my facility once those five minutes are over. Do you understand?” Sunset pressed her hands and her face against the glass with tears streaming from her eyes. Then, with a pained scream, red energy surged from her hands, breaking the window. She jumped through the broken window into the other room and lightly floated downwards. The video changed formats again, exclusively showing the security footage from the room housing Micro Chips’s remains. Sunset walked up to the table where Micro Chips’s head lay and held her hand over the indentation where the Mind Stone used to be. “I can’t feel you,” Sunset uttered, her voice breaking. “I can’t feel you.” The last image Flash saw before the video ended was of Sunset running out of the room crying her eyes out. “Holy Christmas!” Flash exclaimed as the truth crashed into him like an armored car. He turned to Major Gaffer and ordered, “I need you to get me a radio NOW!” Meanwhile, inside the Hex, Moon Dancer was stuck at a traffic light waiting from an absurdly large group of kids to finish crossing the street. Micro Chips had phased through the roof and flown off to his house just moments before, leaving her there. In her boredom, she decided to turn on the radio. “Hello, Moon Dancer? Twilight?” Flash’s voice shouted through the radio. “This is Flash. Come in. Come in. Oh, right, you guys can’t answer back. Listen, I don’t know if you guys can hear me, but there’s something you guys need to know. Sunset never took Micro Chips's body. Cinch lied to us.” Moon Dancer’s eyes widened, and her jaw dropped. “I don’t know what happened to the Micro Chips in SWORD’s possession or where the one inside of Westview came from,” Flash continued, “but they’re not the same Micro Chips.” Moon Dancer waited for Flash to say more, but all that followed Flash’s message was static. “Good gosh! I’ve got to find Twilight, Sunset, and Micro Chips FAST,” Moon Dancer exclaimed. Thankfully, the group of kids had just finished crossing, so she zoomed ahead before anything else could interrupt her and sped towards Sunset and Micro Chips’s house. Earlier, while Flash was watching Cinch’s unedited security footage, Twilight had arrived at Sunset’s house and ran inside just as Sunset had finished taking two Tylenols. “Sunset,” Twilight cried, bursting through the front door. “You again?” Sunset exclaimed, eyes wide. “What are you doing here?” “Listen, Cinch is after Micro Chips. She’s trying to bring him back online,” Twilight tried to explain but could get no further before Sunset angrily lifted her off the ground in a flurry of red energy. “No!” Sunset screamed, marching out of the house with Twilight in her hold. “I don’t want to talk about Cinch or whatever the fudge she wants! And I’ve had it up to here with the drones and the missiles and Rainbow Dash!” “Sunset, stop!” Twilight cried. “We had nothing to do with Rainbow Dash.” “Stop lying to me!” Sunset yelled before slamming Twilight on the ground. Or at least, that’s what she had intended to do. What ended up happening was Twilight absorbing the energy from the slam while making a three-point landing. When Twilight looked up at Sunset, her eyes were glowing blue. “I never once lied to you, and the horseapples you made me say as Midnight don’t count,” Twilight refuted as she stood up and her eyes stopped glowing. “Don’t you dare come any closer,” Sunset threatened, looking as if she was getting ready to summon more red energy. “Are you sure you really want to do that?” Twilight challenged. “If that’s what you really want, then what’s stopping you from doing it right here, right now.” Sunset’s eyes softened as an unsure look crossed her face. She didn’t move or say anything for one second, two seconds, three seconds. Then, she slowly lowered her hands. “You know what I learned about Cinch these past few days?” Twilight continued. “That woman will hurt and destroy anyone to get what she wants, but you’re not like that, aren’t you? Sunset, listen. I’ve lost the people closest to me, too, and I know how much it hurts and how much I don’t want to face it, but I have to face it because I can’t make it go away. You’re starting to realize that too, aren’t you?” As Sunset listened to Twilight, tears began to well up in her eyes. Twilight slowly took a few steps towards her and continued, “It’s okay. You know, before I came back in here, a friend told me that I didn’t have to carry my pain alone. You don’t have to carry yours alone either, but you can’t keep running from it. Sunset, you have to—” “Just what do you think you’re doing, young lady?” Shutterbug said to Twilight. She had appeared from seemingly nowhere beside Sunset and put an arm around her. “Hasn’t poor Sunset suffered enough?” Shutterbug then turned to Sunset and said, “Come on, dear. Let’s get you over to my place. Then, maybe you can finally have some peace.” As Shutterbug led Sunset away, Twilight called after them, “Sunset, please, you have to take down the anomaly.” “No, I don’t!” Sunset refused. “No, I don’t!” Twilight could only stare incredulously as the two of them continued to walk away from her. However, while Sunset wasn’t looking, Shutterbug turned back towards Twilight and smirked ominously. Twilight’s mouth fell open when Shutterbug’s eyes glowed green. Twilight was about to cry out in warning to Sunset but stopped herself. With how Shutterbug was ingratiating herself towards Sunset, Twilight likely wasn’t going to get a lot of headway in convincing Sunset that her incredibly intrusive neighbor was untrustworthy, so Twilight took the only other option available to her. She waited for them to enter Shutterbug’s house and then snooped around for another way inside. Twilight walked around to the back of the house and found a pair of cellar doors. They didn’t seem locked, so she simply pulled them open. Inside, she found eerie, black tree roots tangled up all over the walls of a stone corridor. Besides the color and the location of their growth, the roots didn’t seem out of the ordinary, but appearances can be deceiving. Twilight blinked her eyes, causing them to glow blue again, and took another look at the roots. Upon closer inspection, she could see some kind of energy flowing through them towards the center of the cellar. If the glowing green eyes from earlier hadn’t already raised Twilight’s suspicions, what she just saw definitely would have convinced her Shutterbug was not to be trusted, which meant Sunset was in danger but didn’t know it. Why Twilight would care about someone who blatantly rejected her help, she will never know. All Twilight knew was that Sunset was in trouble and that she still wanted to help the broken, grieving woman. However, before Twilight could step into the cellar to do just that, a blue and rainbow blur blocked her from entering. “Snoopers gonna snoop,” “Rainbow Dash” quipped before grabbing Twilight and forcibly dragging her into the house through the back door. The next thing Twilight knew, she was being held captive in some upstairs room. “Who are you? And what does Shutterbug want with Sunset?” Twilight demanded. “Yeah, I’m not really supposed to talk to you,” fake Rainbow Dash replied. “I’m just supposed to keep you here until missus gets what she wants.” Twilight growled in frustration before taking a breath and observing her surroundings. The first thing she noticed was the framed pictures on the walls and shelves. The common denominator in all of them was a short, red man with blond hair and green eyes. Some of the pictures had him posing with a girl who looked suspiciously like fake Rainbow Dash but without the rainbow hair dye. A pile of bills addressed to a Short Fuse sat on an end table. On top of the pile of bills was a handwritten note addressed to a Lightning Dust. Twilight quickly skimmed through the note and realized it was a list of housesitting instructions. Twilight turned to Lightning Dust, intending to further question her, but before she could, she heard screams coming from outside. “Mom! Mom! Help us!” the voices of two 10-year-old girls cried out. Twilight looked out the window and saw Shutterbug hovering midair and holding Sunset’s daughters by two energy leashes. Sunset stood across from them with a look of both horror and anger on her face. Then, to Twilight’s utter disbelief, Shutterbug’s eyes glowed green again, and her entire person was consumed in green flames. When the flames dissipated, Shutterbug’s appearance changed. Her skin became an ashy grey, and her hair became green and stringy. “Let go of my daughters, Chrysalis,” Sunset demanded. “Ah, yes, your daughters,” “Shutterbug” laughed before continuing, “and Micro Chips. They’re all you ever wanted, aren’t they? This is Chaos Magic, Sunset. It can only be wielded by a being of spontaneous creation, making you the Scarlet Witch.”