There was one more event left in the Friendship Games. Chrysalis had plans, for how Sunset could sabotage the equipment for it to perfectly set up her flock to pick off its victims in the resulting disorientation.
What it was, what that was, how that would have gone, would prove entirely irrelevant to actual events.
Sunset had moved in to tamper with the equipment, but at the sound of some familiar voices quickly hid and listened, discerning the speakers before the conversation.
Principal Celestia. Vice-principal Luna …
Cadenza.
Ragged, desperate, urgent and …
… not Chrysalis.
Cadance.
Sunset had been … largely content with aggressively not caring what had become of this world’s Cadance. It was a curiosity, but she had a history with the alicorn that she wasn’t particularly eager to have the human remind her of, and - a grudge. How Chrysalis had stepped in using her face was Chrysalis’s business, just like Sunset stepping in wearing the absent Sunset’s face was Sunset’s business.
(If she were going to start poking around into mysteriously missing persons, she’d start with her own counterpart. Had been tempted when she’d realized there were parallels.
But with the way Principal Celestia had reacted to her…
She … was pretty sure the other girl didn’t want to be found any more than she did, if she was even still alive.)
Now, though, she was a captive audience. Listening against her will to Cadance’s harrowing tale of being locked in an unused warehouse by a conniving monster
(beloved. Beautiful. Better than Cadance.)
who seized Cadance’s life for herself
(undeserving provincial pegasus who doesn’t know what to do with greatness if she literally trips and falls into it)
and planned to attack all around her.
(The fools would be better off, stripped of their unearned privileges and empowered in collective magic, working together for a force that could seize the world with enough momentum.)
She had to warn Chrysalis.
(Chrysalis had kidnapped a young woman and kept her chained in isolation for as long as Sunset had known her, exploiting her resources and taunting her with her plans.)
She … sympathized with Cadance. That had to be hell to go through. And it was challenging to make her vindictive streak against the alicorn apply to the human, when they were different people. She’d probably even sympathize with the alicorn, in a similar situation.
Chrysalis had never told her about this. Probably worried it might be a dealbreaker …
… was it?
Sunset was trapped listening, for the moment, which gave her damnable conscience more time to review the situation than she might have liked.
Chrysalis had been a monster. Long-term plots sometimes required long-term sacrifices like that, to pull off. Even Princess Celestia had spies, dungeons, hard decisions made for the sake of the nation. And Chrysalis was Queen. Responsible to her people, not the humans.
Chrysalis had done it gleefully. Well, morale was important. If the crown weighs too heavy all the time it might snap your neck. Better to revel in the plans you’ve committed to than constantly second guess them. A spring in your step as you work towards your goal, optimism and hope and anger, rather than not even being able to lift the tools greatness - and any difficult accomplishment where the world seemed stacked against you - required.
Sunset let her brain form the rationalizations, then did her best to brutally trample them into the dirt and seek to know herself through clear, cruel truth.
Chrysalis was a monster.
Sunset loved her anyway.
She was willing to be a villain to be at Chrysalis’s side.
She had to warn Chrysalis.
“Change of plans, then. The humans are in disarray, demoralized and mistrustful of each other. My flock is stronger than ever, strengthened by your love freely given, Shining Armor’s taken, and the evening’s shadows and west wind.” Chrysalis calculated, pacing. “My power and magic will give me the edge over anything these mundane creatures can muster. I will confront them head-on.”
“You think that’s wise?” Sunset asked, concern for her fey lover mixing with a general worry over the casualties an open battle might inflict. “It’s a lot different from our original plan.”
“I have every confidence in our success,” Chrysalis tells Sunset, brushing her shoulder reassuringly. “I am more capable than I have ever been - no human can stand in my way. You, though, keep hidden. I can handle this, and there is no need to turn the humans against you while none suspect.”
“I will,” Sunset agreed, reluctantly. Her gut was sinking with the unraveling plan, and being asked not to stand beside her love was another stab in it, but she could not fault Chrysalis’s reasoning. Far better not to throw away the goodwill Sunset still had with the humans. She retreated to watch from the shadows as Chrysalis stepped forward, into the public eye.
A puzzled silence fell over both schools as Cadance did, as well.