Warm rays of light shone through the gaps of the window blinds as Sunset Shimmer opened her eyes slowly. She stretched her arms out and let out a big yawn as she sat up off the couch. It was then that she realized she had actually spent the night in some random guy’s house and she began to worry something could’ve happened while she slept. Thankfully, it seemed nothing had changed, or at least if anything had happened, he had put everything back the way it had been.
“Relax. Nothing happened.”
Sunset looked up to the doorway to the kitchen, where Jostle Joyride was standing, holding two mugs.
“Your Stand would’ve kept an eye on you, I’m sure.” He walked over and handed her one mug. “Here. Hot cocoa. Should get you right out of your sleepy self.”
“I’m more of a tea person, but thanks.” Sunset accepted it and blew at its surface to try and cool it. “So, when do I get to meet the others helping you?”
“In due time.” Jojo looked at a clock on his wall. It read eight-thirty. “I’ve a shower in the back, you can have one if you like. After that, we’re heading out for a quick brunch at a nice place.”
“Nice place, huh?” Sunset was next tossed a towel and she began to drag herself towards the bathroom.
She looked back a few times to make sure Jojo wasn’t the kind to peek on her, seeing as she still didn’t know much about him. She still couldn’t believe she spent the night in a stranger’s house. It was quite unbecoming of her, but then again, so was all this Stand business.
Just in case, as she began to take her clothes off, she placed them over the door’s handle, covering the keyhole under it. She’d watched her fair share of cartoons to know that people could sometimes look through them.
The bathroom itself was old and dirty, with some of the tiles having fallen off the walls and the shower head was incredibly rusty, almost as though it would just disintegrate when she turned on the water. Fortunately, it didn’t and she had to endure herself through a cold and miserable shower to clean herself up.
When she was done, she dried herself off and put her usual attire back on before heading back outside. She found Jojo lounging on the sofa she had slept on, combing back his hair as he looked at it through a handheld mirror.
“Ah it seems you are done.” He kicked himself off the couch and tossed his comb and mirror aside. “Ready for brunch, Sushi girl? You’ll next say, ‘I guess I am.’”
Sunset shrugged. “I guess I am… Ah. You did it again.”
“That I did. Come. You’ll like the food. Everyone does.”
Sunset sat on the back of White Buffalo as they traveled down the streets of Canterlot City. She remembered that his Stand was also invisible to the regular person, but then what would it look like if someone saw them riding down the street? Would they be riding on nothing? Sunset thought that would look weirder than actually seeing the strange motorcycle, but then again, she didn’t make the rules for this.
Jojo stopped outside a small cafe, where there was a glass front looking out to the street. The place was called Ned’s Nickbakery, which was a very strange name, but at this point, she didn’t think anything else would surprise her again. Jojo pushed the door open, which ended with a little jing from a bell at the top of the door. The only patrons in the cafe at the moment were three other girls seated around a round table with interesting looking sandwiches in front of them. Sunset immediately recognized all three of them. They were also students from CHS, and they were Pinkie Pie, Fluttershy and Applejack, three of what she deemed the ‘popular group’ in school.
Pinkie put a straw into her nose and inhaled part of her orange juice, then looked up at the approaching Sunset and Jostle. “Jojo, you’re back! And Sunset? Sunset Shimmer? You’re here too!”
“Y-You know me?” Sunset was taken a little aback. She’d never talked to them before. She was sure she was still a nobody in school.
“I know everyone in school and you’re from school, so I know you!” Pinkie giggled and hopped off her seat to shake Sunset’s hand vigorously. “So that means you have a Stand too and you’re gonna help us find out who’s taking over Canterlot, right?”
“Umm, yeah. That’s right…” Sunset managed a nervous smile. It was a little awkward fighting alongside other students from school.
“Sushi here just discovered her Stand last night with a little help from me.” Jojo pointed a thumb at himself and stuck out a knee into the air.
“Sushi?” Applejack looked at him weird. “Why’ja callin’ her that? She ain’t no sushi.”
“Oh, you don’t know?” Jojo looked between them. “Sunset Shimmer. Su. Shi. Sushi.”
“That’s what my old friends used to call me…” Sunset admitted to save them some time. “I uh, don’t really have friends anymore.”
“Oooohh…” Everyone else nodded in understanding.
“Well, it’s nice to meet you, Sunset. Or Sushi… Whichever you prefer, I guess.” Fluttershy waved at her. “I’m Fluttershy.”
“Applejack,” the girl tilted her hat to Sunset in greeting. “Nice to meet ya, partner. Be good ta have another Stand user on the team.”
“Yeah and don’t forget me, Pinkie Pie!” The third girl steered Sunset to a seat at the table. “You should have some of this pancake sandwich. It’s great!”
Applejack leaned back and sipped the edge of her apple cider. “And come on, time’s a wastin’, we should be discussin’ our next action here.”
“So uh, everyone’s already done this before?” Sunset looked at the rest of her new companions.
“More or less.” Jojo sat down and adjusted his cap. “Each of them has been freed of mind control and they’ve decided to help me save the city before everyone is turned as well.”
“How did you break the mind control on them?” Sunset asked. “Is that a Stand power you have?”
“Well no,” Jojo dragged a finger on the brim of his cap. “All I did was hit them on the head really hard with my fist, but with you here, Sunset, I think we can go for a less… violent approach.”
“Well, if Jojo trusts you, then Ah guess Ah will too. He ain’t been wrong yet.” Applejack shoved a plate of some kind of sandwich cut into the shape of a leopard towards Sunset. “Go on, ya gotta eat, don’tcha?”
Pinkie bit into her own sandwich, while Fluttershy stared at hers. She took out a pair of chopsticks and began to peel the top layer of bread off the sandwich and eat it. Then she pulled off the following layer of lettuce and ate that too. With the chopsticks.
She caught Sunset looking and blushed. “Oh, I don’t like getting my hands dirty. It’s easier this way.”
“And somethin’ ya might needa know about me, Ah eat my sandwiches toasted.” Applejack prodded at her sandwich. “If it ain’t toasted, it’s ghosted.”
“Well… good to know?” Sunset rubbed at her elbow. It was weird. Till yesterday, she’d barely talked to anyone. Today, she was sitting here with four other humans eating weirdly made sandwiches. “So what’s our first course of action? Do we at least roughly know who’s behind all this?”
Applejack shook her head. “Afraid we don’t really. We don’t remember our time bein’ mind controlled. But Ah do know we were in school when it happened.”
“The attacker might be from school. It could be anyone too!” Pinkie added. “Maybe even Old Man Drinkster!”
“And the enemy knows we’ve been fighting back against their mind control now.” Jojo put a fist on the table. “They might send more agents after us, like you, Applejack.”
Applejack tore off a portion of her toasted sandwich. “We’ll be ready for ‘em. Ah’ve a piece of mah mind to give them too.”
“I’m sure we’ll get the chance soon. I’m good at guessing things!” Pinkie grinned. “Maybe it’ll be Rarity! She and Rainbow are still out there somewhere.”
Sunset remembered those names. Rarity and Rainbow Dash were also part of their little group. She should’ve guessed they would all be Stand users.
“So,” She asked after a pause. “Do we have a plan for dealing with enemy Stand users? Like a plan of attack.”
“Oh, that’s easy,” Jojo smiled. “We fight them one-on-one while the others stand back and watch. Works like a charm.”
“Oh. What happens when that one is defeated?”
“The next one steps up. Easy. You’ll see.”
“Um… right.”
Pinkie stood up after finishing the rest of her drink through her nose. “Enough talk, let’s go find our next mind controlled agent! I’m sure they’ll be close!” She turned to walk out the entrance, but there was someone standing there. “Oops, sorry!”
But then all of them turned to look at the person and froze. Pinkie had bumped into someone that was black from head to toe, and no, they weren’t being racist or anything. Their whole body was made out of some kind of darkness, but there were features on it that could still be seen and this one was a dark Pinkie Pie.
“Hey, it’s me!” She pointed at it, just for it to shove her aside. The push sent her flipping over a table and overturning it as both rolled away into a corner.
“This can only be the work of an enemy Stand.” Jojo stood and flashed a pose with a hand in front of his face.
“You’re all such a drag. Why don’t you just let me end your existence. There is no happiness in life,” the Pinkie clone drawled. Her voice was almost the same as Pinkie’s but slightly distorted and lower than hers.
The shadow Pinkie suddenly leapt at the real Pinkie, intent on performing a flying kick. Pinkie Pie rolled out of the way as the clone’s foot broke a hole in the wooden floor.
“Oh, you’ve done it now,” Pinkie said, then she struck out one leg and held out both arms like she was waiting to give someone a hug. “Come on out, Golden Ticket!”
A purple man in a blue suit and a top hat appeared in front of her and threw a punch at the shadow. It had a moustache in the shape of a boomerang along with a monocle over its left eye, and as the shadow recoiled from its blow, it gave it another two punches, launching it out the window. It landed on the pavement outside and melted away.
“That was easy enough!” Pinkie cheered.
“Wait, it’s not over yet.” Jojo tapped her on the shoulder and they all turned around.
From the back entrance to the cafe, a shadow of her Stand, Golden Ticket, floated towards them, forming its hands into fists.
“Not if I have anything to say about that!”
Pinkie’s Stand placed both hands on the doorway, and to Sunset’s surprise, it peeled the doorway off the wall and it now looked as though there was never a door there to begin with. Then Golden Ticket threw the door to the back of the room, where it stuck to the wall and opened, revealing a new entrance from an alleyway.
Pinkie smiled and dusted her hands, when another doorway suddenly appeared at the original location, this one slightly shadowy.
“Oh, looks like it can do what I do too!” Pinkie pointed as the shadow door swung open, revealing the shadow Golden Ticket once again. “You know what this means. Fist fight!”
Her Stand and the shadow Stand floated at each other and began punching. Hands were crashing all over the cafe and the walls were getting filled with little fist-shaped dent marks. It wasn’t good in this small space. They had to take this fight outside.
The staff had noticed the fight that was going on and were pointing and taking photos of the holes that were forming in the walls. Even though ordinary people couldn’t see Stands, they could still see the damage from the battle. In a grapple, Golden Ticket threw itself and its shadow doppelganger out the main entrance, where the shadow quickly melted away in the light. If they didn’t know it couldn’t go into sunlight before, they did now.
“This isn’t the Stand. The Stand itself is doing this. But from where?” Pinkie slid a finger across her chin as she looked at her surroundings.
“It must be close,” Jojo said. “If the Stand user was able to copy your Stand, they must have been able to see it to do so.”
“Does anyone see anyone out there that looks like a Stand user?”
“I don’t see anyone out of the ordinary,” Fluttershy said.
A few cars drove by the street and on the opposite side, there was a couple, one with brown hair and the other with green and they looked normal enough, sitting on a bench and reading a book together. A violet haired girl stood beside them, a hand placed on her chin and the other on her right thigh, with one leg slightly raised so that its toes were touching the ground, but other than that, Sunset couldn’t tell who could be the enemy Stand user, though that girl did look a lot like Rarity. She was dressed in a blue dress with a long leg slit, and what looked like plates lining her waist and shoulders.
“Wait, is that Rarity there?” Applejack pointed across the street. “It is!”
The girl on the other side lowered her gold framed sunglasses and gave them a wink. Now Sunset recognized her, she was another one of these popular girls, one whom a lot of boys were after because of her looks.
“It looks like you found me,” she said from the other side of the street. Even though she seemed to be talking at a normal volume, Sunset found she could hear her as though she was on their side. “Now the question is, darlings, can you defeat me?”
The two people on the bench looked at her, then across to them before getting up and walking away, keeping an eye on Rarity at the same time. Sunset didn’t blame them. All this was still a little weird even to her.
“This isn’t over yet, Rarity!” Pinkie began doing cartwheels from left to right. “You’ll have to face me!”
“And I intend to.” Rarity pushed her sunglasses back up, then stretched both hands forward with her palms facing out as she slid one leg behind the other. “Devil Trigger.”
From her right side, a Stand emerged over her shoulder, sporting a red sharp face with two horns above its yellow eyes. Stiff white hair erupted from the back of its head, arms and legs, and its body was clad in what Sunset would describe as a blue swimsuit with some solid plating on the chest and legs.
Its mouth opened and fired a blue beam at Pinkie, but the girl’s Stand reappeared and deflected the beam into a lamppost with its monocle. The lamppost stayed still for a second before it swung down and crashed into the side of the next building.
And then Devil Trigger was suddenly on this side of the street and it grabbed Golden Ticket around the left arm. Flipping around, it slammed Pinkie’s Stand into the ground, cracking it and then kicking it in the face repeatedly.
Pinkie fell back a few steps and clutched at her head as blood began to flow down from it, but when Sunset rushed closer to help her, she held out a hand and shook her head. It wasn’t over just yet.
As Devil Trigger’s foot came back for another kick, Golden Ticket brought up an arm and blocked the foot, then reached up and caught Devil Trigger in a chokehold, before spinning around and getting back on its feet. With a swing, Golden Ticket smashed Devil Trigger into the wall, then threw it across the street where it vanished into an alley. Rarity was thrown back into the wall she was standing against, then got up and scurried away into the same alley.
“She’s getting away. After her!” Pinkie roared and began cartwheeling and vaulting across the street.
She was the first to cross to the other side as the rest began attempting to cross the road, with much less success as Fluttershy almost got run over by a truck on the way.
Reaching the alley, she spotted Rarity rushing into a building on the side and shutting the door behind her. Raising a hand, Golden Ticket did the same and the door slid over to the portion of wall she was standing at, allowing her to get into the building instantly.
The inside was a large open space, with metal beams around the room, holding a ceiling up. It looked to be an abandoned warehouse of sorts, its floor dusty and its lights defunctional.
“Come out, Rarity!” Pinkie called. “We can end your mind control. You just need to come to me!”
She was about to continue walking, when something grabbed her from below. Pinkie tried to move her legs, but both of them were being held down. When she looked down, she spotted shadowy figures of herself and her Stand, hugging her legs tightly.
“You’re not going anywhere. It’s time to make you all sad and dead!” Pinkie’s shadow clone said with a sneer.
There was a harsh laughter from the other end of the building as Rarity floated down from above, her Stand holding on to her waist as they drifted towards the ground.
“You are a fool, Pinkie. You should’ve stayed outside where I would be weaker, but here you are, in the dark with me and Devil Trigger.” Rarity placed a hand on her chest, then another on the back of her left hip, while sticking her left leg forward in line with her right foot. “Now, let us see how long you will last against my Stand’s power.”
More shadowy people began climbing out of the ground, too many for Pinkie to count and they all looked as evil as evil could get. This was going to be one tough fight. Pinkie didn’t know if she could do this herself, but she was going to give it her all.