Twilight lay in her bed, feeling she might never get a good night's sleep ever again.
Above her a vision hovered, partly a drowsiness-spawned dream and partly Equestrian magic. "Admit it," the bat winged creature sneered, its eyes glowing an unnatural blue-green. "It's all your fault. YOU killed Sunset, by denying her your friendship. By rejecting her completely and utterly, when you thought she was Anon-A-Miss. When you refused to return her calls or reply to even one text message...you ghosted her, and now she's dead. A tragic suicide, thanks to you and her other 'friends.'"
Twilight murmured, "I didn't mean to. I didn't mean to! I didn't want her to die!"
"And you know what else?" the monster said. "After you killed your best chance of ever finding a girlfriend...you'll be alone forever. Even CATS won't love you."
"Noooo!" Twilight moaned. "Not even cats? Wait, what about Spike?"
"Spike won't love you either. He knows what you did."
Twilight tossed and turned, getting tangled in her bedsheets. Outside her bedroom door, Spike whined and whimpered. "Let me in, Twilight. Sounds like you're having a nightmare. Wake up!"
But lost in her dark dream, Twilight didn't hear. Instead, Twilight listened to the eldritch vision that seemed to float above her bed, and nodded.
~~ *** ~~
"You should do it tonight," the voice whispered to Twilight. "While everyone is asleep. While the body is still good and fresh."
"I don't even know where she is," Twilight whispered, as she dreamily climbed out of bed.
"Just use Hoofle Maps, and search for 'morgue.'"
Twilight tiptoed out of her bedroom, past her sleeping dog. She pulled on a jacket from the coat closet, donned a pair of shoes, went out to load the car with supplies from her backyard laboratory, and drove.
~~ *** ~~
At the building's front entrance, Twilight improvised an electronic lock picking device. In minutes, she was inside. She padded softly down the halls, looking for a sign.
MORGUE
"This is it!" she cheered.
"Hush!" the voice whispered inside Twilight's head. "You don't want to get caught!"
Twilight winced. "Sorry. You're right, of course."
"I'm ALWAYS right. Now let's go inside."
Inside the cold storage room, Twilight didn't even think to look for a light switch. Somehow, everywhere she turned her face to look, her view seemed softly lit by blue light. It wasn't enough to make a conspicuous glare, but enough for one increasingly magic-wreathed teenage girl to see by.
Twilight scanned the drawers. "I just see numbers, not names. No, I can FEEL something. THIS drawer is calling to me."
"No time to waste," the voice whispered. "Open it."
Twilight pulled on the drawer until Sunset's dead, naked body lay in front of her. "Wow," Twilight said. "She looks so...dead."
"So fix that!"
Twilight connected metal clamps to Sunset's earlobes, and squeezed a small plastic box.
With a soft 'zorch!" and arcing of mysterious energies, Sunset's body jerked.
"Again!" demanded the voice in Twilight's ears.
Twilight squeezed again, watching Sunset's limbs wriggle.
"Again! Third time's the charm!"
Twilight squeezed, and Sunset barely moved at all.
"Don't give up yet!" the voice whispered. "Remember that story from when you were a child. When Snow White lay in a glass coffin, and nopon--I mean, NO ONE could rouse her. Or so it SEEMED."
Twilight narrowed her eyes at the dead body, puckered her lips, and leaned forward.
A moment later, arms closed around Twilight's back and shoulders.
"AAAAAA!" Twilight screamed, suddenly fully awake. "I just had the WEIRDEST DREAM, and..." she blinked in the cold darkness. "WHO'S GRABBING ME? WHO IS THAT? LET ME GO OR I'LL SCREAM! I'LL SCREAM SO LOUD!"
Sunset's voice asked, "Twilight? What kind of date IS this? And I had a really weird dream too. I dreamed everyone thought I was posting embarrassing secrets on the internet about all my friends, and no one liked me anymore, not even you. I was so upset, I took one of Fluttershy's venomous snakes and a rope of Applejack's and..."
Twilight screamed again.
Sunset added, "That wasn't a dream, was it? But how did I get here? And why is it so COLD?"
Twilight shook her head. "Sunset...I think we need to get out of here before we get caught."
"Where IS here?"
"We're in the Canter County morgue. You were dead, Sunset. But...I was in my bedroom trying to sleep, and I thought Midnight Sparkle was floating above my bed with her bat wings and giving me advice, and...one thing led to another."
Sunset laughed nervously. "We're in the county morgue?"
"Yes! I think so. And I don't want to have to explain why I'm in here kissing a dead body that isn't even dead anymore."
With a metallic rattling and a dull thud, Sunset accidentally fell out of her drawer onto the hard floor. "Ouch! Why don't they at least have some CARPET in this place!"
Twilight sighed, reaching down to help Sunset get to her feet.
"Ok, that was a silly question," Sunset admitted. "So how do we get out of here?"
Twilight put her hand on Sunset's arm, and guided her out of the building.
As the two girls walked across the dew-damp lawn, a bright light shone in their eyes. "Halt! Someone reported a break in, and...TWILIGHT?"
The dark skinned girl winced. "Hi, Shiny. Sorry about the fuss."
"Why are you out at this time of night with a naked girl?"
Twilight took a deep breath. "Sunset, meet my brother Shining Armor. He's a Canter County sheriff's deputy. And Shining, this is my new girlfriend, Sunset Shimmer. She died yesterday afternoon...but just a few minutes ago she got better."
~~ *** ~~
At the Canter County Sheriff's Office, Sunset sat on a bench, wrapped in an old gray blanket. Twilight sat beside her, holding her hand.
"I'm sorry," Sunset said. "I didn't even know grave robbing was a crime in this world. I mean, what use is a dead body anyway? Who would want one?"
"Present company excepted?" Twilight added softly.
"Grave robbing is considered VERY disrespectful," Shining scolded, "and it hurts the feelings of the deceased's living relatives and friends. But since it turns out Sunset isn't really dead, we don't have a corpus delicti to charge either of you with."
"So we're free?" Twilight's eyes brightened with hope. "We aren't grave robbers because it turns out there wasn't any grave to rob! Yay!" She waved one arm in the air. "I'm so glad we aren't criminals!"
"Well...I COULD charge you with trespassing, if I'd seen the two of you inside the building. But fortunately, I didn't. So I guess I'll let you off with a warning."
"Yay!" Sunset echoed Twilight.
Shining shook his head. "The trouble my little sister gets up to." He sighed. "When my shift is over, I'll give you a ride home. Both of you."
Sunset called out, "Thank you so much, mister policeman!"
"But now I have REAL work to do." Shining walked away. "Kids these days."
~~ *** ~~
The next morning at CHS, at the time when classes would normally start, Principal Celestia's voice echoed through the halls from the public address system.
"To all students, faculty, and staff: may I have your attention please? This is Principal Celestia.
"Ten minutes from now, I expect to see everyone gather in the main auditorium for a general assembly. I have a very important announcement, which I expect will be a relief for many of you.
"I'll see you there shortly."
The phones of Twilight's best friends at CHS chimed and played little alert tunes, as they received text messages from her.
assembly might be confusing but good news about me and sunset is true
As everyone filed into the auditorium and found seats, students speculated what the meeting could possibly be about. More than a few thought it might involve Sunset Shimmer's very recent death...but Celestia had said the announcement would be 'a relief?' What could that possibly mean?
As students murmured and wondered, Principal Celestia walked out onto the stage. "Welcome, everyone!" She smiled and waved. "I have very good news. The rumors of a fellow CHS student's death have been greatly exaggerated."
"What?" asked a student down below. "There's ANOTHER one? Because Sunset couldn't possibly be..."
Sunset and Twilight walked onstage, hand in hand. "I'm alive!" Sunset said. "I wasn't feeling well at all, but then I got better!"
"I'm doing ok too," Twilight added. "Just in case anyone was wondering. Also, as you might already have heard yesterday, Sunset isn't really Anon-A-Miss after all! Anon-A-Miss was just a big hoax by people who were jealous of her. And I went on a date with Sunset last night, kind of, and I think now we're girlfriends!"
Sunset squeezed Twilight's hand, and nodded. "I hope we can all get past the whole everyone hating each other and hating me most of all until I wished I was dead thing. Because it turns out, I'm very glad to be alive. And I'm not dead."
"Me either!" Twilight concurred. "Wait, ME being dead wasn't even a thing, right? WAS it a thing? I can't even keep up with the rumors in this place."
Principal Celestia hefted her own microphone. "In view of recent events...even though Sunset is NOT really dead...I do have a few changes to school rules to announce.
"The following items are banned from this school for the rest of the semester.
- Ropes longer than six feet...EVEN if your name is Applejack.
- Venomous snakes of all kinds. And yes, Fluttershy, this rule DOES apply to you too.
- Firearms over .50 caliber. I wanted to ban ALL firearms, but when I had an emergency meeting with the school board yesterday evening, this was the best compromise I could get."
Vice Principal Luna stepped out next to Celestia, who handed over the mic.
"Vice Principal Luna here, wishing you a VERY good morning.
"On a related note...if you EVER find you are having thoughts about harming yourself, you should come to the office to discuss those thoughts with a qualified counselor."
Luna waved to the assembled students. "I know ALL ABOUT dark thoughts and nightmares and suicide! So be sure to bring those thoughts to me. Don't rely on Falsebook or Instatalk to give you bad psychology advice, when you could get that advice from me instead. GOOD advice, I mean." She cleared her throat.
"Remember, there's always someone who cares about you. Please don't make Sunset Shimmer's recent...close call mistake. Thank you."
One student nudged another. "I literally read Sunset Shimmer's obituary in the morning paper. Because Pinkie Pie was so depressed about Sunset's death, I even volunteered to take her place on the event planning committee for the funeral. So how can Sunset be alive, and people saying, 'oops, we thought she was dead but it turns out not really?'"
"You know..." the friend beside him remarked, "this IS the same school where magical demon girls wrecked the front lawn not once, but TWICE in the same year. And with a few magic friendship beams, we were all saved from getting sucked into another universe or being turned into an army of evil flying monkeys or whatever."
"What are you getting at?"
"I'm just saying...this place has a real gift for insane crises followed by last minute happy endings."
"Yeah." The first student shrugged. "Guess you've got a point."
~~ *** ~~
In the halls on the way to classes, in covert whispers and passed notes DURING classes, and more openly during lunch period, Sunset and her friends caught each other up on recent events. Sunset confirmed time and again: she really WAS alive.
As people came to accept Sunset hadn't (probably hadn't?) been turned into a dangerous zombie or vampire, the girls even exchanged hugs.
After school, the Rainbooms (aka 'the Friendship Beam Seven') met in their usual band practice room.
In this somewhat more private venue, Sunset asked probing questions about what had happened the prior afternoon. She cross-checked and double-checked, collecting extra confirmations for good measure. Everyone agreed: Sunset really HAD been found hanging by the neck, and declared dead by paramedics after all attempts to revive her failed.
"You don't remember dying?" Pinkie asked.
Sunset readjusted her leather jacket's collar. "I remember WANTING to be dead. I remember gathering the supplies, and stepping up onto a chair to tie the rope, but...that's the last thing I remember. I don't remember the moment of my death itself."
Fluttershy looked at her sympathetically.
Rarity waved the issue aside with one perfectly manicured hand. "That might be for the best, darling. I don't know if a person could handle remembering their own death."
"Yeah." Rainbow nodded. "Then you'd probably get people asking if you could remember what happened AFTER you died, if you went to heaven or hell or wherever. You might accidentally become the leader of your own cult."
Sunset grimaced. "That sounds terrible."
"But very informative," Applejack remarked. "People could finally get the honest truth, from someone who'd really been there."
"Sorry."