//------------------------------// // Chapter 23: Cold War // Story: Equestria Girls: A New Generation // by Naughty_Ranko //------------------------------// “Alright, that’s all for today,” Sunset told her history class as the bell rang. “Remember to turn in your mid-term papers before you leave.” Seeing that he was sitting in the front row and hustling to pack his stuff together, Hitch was the first to approach her desk. He slammed the folder down and turned without even meeting Sunset’s eyes. “Hitch, can we talk for a moment?” she asked. “Unless this is about school, there’s nothing to talk about, Ms. Shimmer,” he replied without even breaking his stride, and the way he’d emphasized the Ms. Shimmer, rather than the casual Ms. Sunset most of the class had adopted since the school year began, spoke volumes. Another paper joined the first, just as haphazardly thrown down. “That wasn’t cool what you did, Ms. Sunset.” “Et tu, Sprout?” she asked, looking up at him. “Hitch is my friend. Bros before … uhm … you know …” She raised an eyebrow. “You don’t wanna finish that sentence.” “No, I don’t,” he conceded almost immediately. “But you get the point. I thought you were cool, Ms. Sunset.” He left. Pipp walked up. While she didn’t slam the paper down, she held up a phone with a dead, cold stare. It was the older kind, the kind that didn’t have a touchscreen or modern smartphone capabilities. In essence, it was the kind of phone a parent got their child when they wanted them to have a phone for emergencies only. “This is your fault,” she hissed, pointing at the hated object. Sunset couldn’t even muster the energy to respond to that as Pipp stormed out. The only bright spot was Izzy who, totally oblivious to the tense atmosphere, handed her mid-term essay in with a smile and cheerfully said goodbye. Sunny and Zipp, who had lingered behind a little, walked up. “Don’t mind my sister,” Zipp began, “she’ll get over it as soon as mom gives her real phone back.” “More importantly,” Sunny said, “Hitch seems really mad.” “Yeah,” Sunset said as she watched the girls’ essays join the pile, “I admit, I hadn’t quite foreseen that reaction.” “He loves his grandmother, you know. But he’s never been good at accepting help from others.” Sunny fidgeted a bit and shook her head. “I feel awful. I thought I was helping him by opening up to you. Maybe I should tell him.” “Yeah, I kinda feel the same,” Zipp agreed. “I really wish you wouldn’t,” Sunset said and couldn’t help showing a rather awkward face. They both looked at each other and then back at Sunset. “You want me to … lie to my oldest friend?” Sunny’s voice petered out towards the end there. “Of course I don’t want you to lie,” Sunset replied, “but he really needs his friends right now. If he wants to be mad at someone for meddling in his life too much, let him be mad at me.” “A lie of omission is still a lie, you know,” Zipp pointed out before she left. When she thought they were alone, Sunny said: “Uhm, so about further magic lessons…” “Sunny,” Sunset said with a sigh, “there’s not a lot left I can teach you without, you know, actually being able to do magic. Maybe we suspend the lessons for now.” “Oh, … okay.” It broke Sunset’s heart to hear the disappointment in Sunny’s voice, but this was probably for the best anyway. I only agreed in the first place during a moment of weakness to get something out of the deal, and look where that got me. After Sunny had left, Sunset looked around the room and furrowed her brows. “Misty, you’re still here?” The girl with the blue and teal locks jumped slightly and hurriedly closed her notebook. “Uh, yes. I was just double-checking my notes from class.” Packing away the last of her things, she stood up from her desk and stepped forward. “That, uh, was a weird atmosphere in class today, huh?” “Tell me about it,” Sunset said with a forced smile. “I, uh, I just wanted to say that I think you’re a good teacher, Ms. Sunset. Transferring in the middle of the year is kinda scary, and you made it a little less scary.” Sunset’s smile turned genuine. “Thanks, Misty.” Then she raised an eyebrow. “I hope this isn’t your way of asking for an extension on that mid-term paper.” “Oh, no. I got it right here.” She pulled a beat-up looking folder with her essay out and placed it on the pile as Sunset noticed something. “Misty! What happened to your hand?” She asked as she looked at the red and swollen knuckles of her left hand. “Oh, this?” Misty lifted her hand and moved her fingers slightly to show it was okay. But the wince was telling. “It’s nothing. I accidentally slammed a door on my hand the other day.” “Are you sure? Maybe Nurse Redheart should have a look at that.” Without thinking, Sunset reached out and lightly touched Misty’s hand. She sat bolt upright as her vision suddenly went white and then looked at the hand she’d just put forward being slammed by the metal frame of a glass door. Pain shot through her brain as the vision left as quickly as it had come. “… doesn’t even hurt anymore, so it’s fine, really.” Resisting the urge to shake herself, Sunset realized that Misty had stopped talking, even though Sunset had barely heard any of it, and was probably expecting an answer. “Yeah, those sliding doors can be dangerous, am I right?” Misty gave her an odd look. “I … don’t think I mentioned what kind of door it was.” Shit, shit, SHIT!!! "Didn’t you? I guess I just assumed.” Sunset tried to play it off in what she hoped sounded like a casual voice. “Those are the kind that always get me.” “Right. Anyway, like I said, nothing to worry about.” Sunset waited with a smile until Misty had left and then shot up to lock the classroom door. After making sure there were no more footsteps from the hall outside, she pulled her geode crystal from her neck, breaking the filigree chain in the process, and stared at it angrily. “What the fuck do you want from me!? Why now?” As expected, the stone didn’t have much to say in its defense, and anyhow Sunset was more venting her frustrations at the concept of magic itself rather than the object in particular. “I gave you everything! My youth! My home! My relationship with my mentor! ONE OF MY FRIENDS!!! Now you wanna mess with my students, too? WHAT MORE DO YOU WANT FROM ME!?” She threw the stone across the room, where it impacted the window with a thunk before clattering to the floor. Meanwhile, Sunset buried her head in her shaking hands and sank to the floor, giving in to a full-blown anxiety attack, the kind of which she thought she’d put behind her with Twilight’s help. It was impossible to tell how long she’d sat there curled up into a ball until the combination of sobbing and hyperventilating had finally run its course. Every time it began to subside, a new wave of dread crashed over her, threatening to never end the cycle. But she’d been here before, and so Sunset endured. Intellectually, she knew it would subside. Emotionally, every wave of dread crashing over her felt like it would last forever. She knew there was little else she could do. When she could finally breathe normally again, Sunset wiped her face with her sleeve. “Fuck, that came out of nowhere.” Forcing herself back on her feet, she crossed the room slowly and picked up the geode crystal, only to pause when a glint of light hit it from the window. She looked closer and could see a hairline fracture that had formed in the ruby-like stone. Whether it had been the result of her throw or it had already been there, she could only guess. Sighing, she shoved it into her pocket, out of sight and out of mind for now. “Christmas break can’t come soon enough.” Sunset made her way out of the room and down the halls like a zombie until she arrived at the teachers lounge. Ignoring Harshwhinny and Cheerilee who were both present, she laid down on the couch with her back to the room, buried her head under a pillow and quietly moaned. There was no sound, but Sunset could feel a silent conversation that was going on behind her back with looks alone between the two veteran teachers. Apparently having lost the mental game of rochambeau, or perhaps an actual one for all Sunset knew, Harshwhinny sighed and said: “I’m getting tired of telling you that it’s not good to keep it in, kid. What is it this time?” Don’t tell her about the magic fuckery that’s going on, Sunset. That way madness lies. “All my students hate me,” she mumbled into the fabric instead, not lifting the cushion off her head. At this point, she’d come to expect the snorted half-laugh that was Harshwhinny’s initial reaction. “Big whoop. If I had I nickel for every student who hates my guts … well, the school’s not that big, so I’d still have to teach to pay my rent. But I’d have a handful of nickels.” “In my experience, it’s rare that every student of a class hates you,” Cheerilee chimed in. “Surely not all of them.” Sunset pondered that for a moment. “No, only about half of them actively hate me. The other half probably just thinks I’m a big, fat, meddling liar and/or hypocrite.” “What did you do?” Cheerilee asked. “I tried to help.” Ms. Harshwhinny actually chuckled at that one. “As always, that was your first mistake.” Another moan from below the cushion. After a moment, Sunset could hear footsteps, followed by the sofa shifting ever so slightly and the pillow being gently lifted off of her head. Blinking, she looked up to see Harshwhinny sitting on the armrest and looking down on her. To her surprise, there was none of the sardonic smirk with which she usually dispensed her advice. “Sunset, please sit up and look at me. I need to ask you a serious question.” Sunset obliged and sat up. “I don’t want to know what you did, and frankly it doesn’t matter,” Gladys said calmly. “All I wanna know is this: Do you think you did the right thing?” Sunset licked her lips, finding them dry. That very question had haunted her sleep over the weekend. She was sure she was doing the right thing at the time. “Yeah, I do,” she answered as she realized that nothing had changed in that regard other than the fact that she felt awful about it and wished she’d gone about it another way. “Then hold your head high,” Gladys said sympathetically. “It’s not our job to be friends with the kids. It’s our job to prepare them for the future. Sometimes that means we have to be the bad guys. They realize that too, eventually. At least the good ones do.” “When?” “Your kids are sophomores now, right?” Cheerilee mused. “Thirteen years, eight if you’re lucky.” Sunset turned to look and ask where she’d pulled that number from, but Harshwhinny preempted her question. “She’s right, you know. Some will come around before graduation, but for most of them it comes later, after the real world has smacked them around a bit. The benefits of lasting in this job for a few years, that’s when you start getting invited to high school reunions.” “Oh, let me guess,” Sunset said dryly, “you’re about to tell me how those will be magical nights where my chest will swell with pride at seeing my former students achieve greatness.” “Oh, fuck no,” Gladys replied immediately, “you’ll be fucking miserable, especially during the first ones. It’ll be super awkward, the food’s gonna be terrible and the drinks will be bad, because they’ll all be in their twenties and not have enough money to make anything other than what they used to think of as a student party. You’ll be forced to listen to music you thought should have died even when it came out, and you’ll see all those young faces pissing away their potential while you wonder where you went wrong to end up as a high school teacher.” “Mmmmm.” The sofa cushion went over her head again. “But,” Gladys went on, once again pulling the pillow off, “at some point during the night, you’ll find yourself at the bar, sharing a drink with that one little shit who used to annoy you, who you could never get through to, maybe you even used to do a little happy dance when their parents called in to say they’re sick. But they’ll look at you and say two words: Thank you. And that’ll make you go: Maybe this year isn’t going to be the year I bring an axe to school when classes start up again, after all.” “Inspiring as always, Gladys,” Sunset remarked dryly, “any advice in the short term?” Ms. Harshwhinny shrugged. “If you can tough it out a few more weeks, at least there’ll be the faculty Christmas party to look forward to.” She punched Sunset lightly in the shoulder as she stood up to leave. “Just be careful of Cranky’s eggnog.” Sunset turned to Cheerilee who added with an absolutely straight face: “Seriously. That stuff will get you shit-faced in no time.”