After the initial bout of crying at the bottom of the crater had subsided, Sunset had led Misty out of the hole, retrieved her leather jacket and draped it around the girl’s shoulders along with her arm.
As the two of them rejoined the rest of class 2-A, it was time for some explanations.
“Dude! Dude! What the fuck is that!? Is that a tail!?” Sprout was turning around in place like a dog, trying to catch a glimpse of his rear end. “I’m freaking out, man!”
“Calm down,” Hitch said, although he was tentatively feeling around his head for his new pony ears as well. “It … doesn’t hurt, at least. This isn’t permanent, is it, Ms. Sunset?”
“No, Hitch,” Sunset replied with a smile, noting with some hope in her heart that he was back to calling her Ms. Sunset rather than Ms. Shimmer. “It’s called ‘ponying up.’ It’ll go away in a bit, don’t worry. You just need to let the adrenaline work its way through your system.”
“Did we really just do magic?”
“Yes, you did, Sunny.” Sunset couldn’t help but grin inwardly as she watched an even bigger grin form on Sunny’s face. “And you all did incredibly well at it. A+, everyone.”
“Did you hear that, sis!?” Zipp was shouting at her sister. “We’re magic!”
“Huh?” Pipp turned around. She was fully in the process of taking selfies of her new glow-up.
“More importantly,” Izzy cut in, “are you alright, Misty?”
“Oh yeah, I almost forgot,” Sunny exclaimed, “that blast didn’t hurt you, did it? I really tried to make sure it wouldn’t.”
Feeling the attention of her classmates on her, Misty shrank back into Sunset’s shoulder. “Go on, you should thank your friends for saving you.” Sunset had questions, a lot of questions. But she’d been where Misty was, and those could wait. As she moved her arm to lightly push Misty towards the others, something from the fight finally caught up with her and a sharp pain shot through her lower back.
Sunset stood rigid with tears in her eyes. As the rest of the students gathered around Misty, only Sunny seemed to notice. “Everything okay, Ms. Sunset?”
“Yeah,” Sunset wheezed. “I just … I need a moment to … I just need a moment. Can you field the magic questions until I get back?”
“Sure.”
Sunset kept up a brave front and slowly walked to the edge of the field, sitting down stiffly on the lowest bench of the nearby bleachers. She arched her back until something loudly popped. “Ow, fuck, that hurts!” Slowly, her muscles relaxed as the pain went from piercing to merely throbbing. “Jumping off buildings didn’t hurt this much in my teens. Getting older sucks!”
“You’re telling me,” a voice spoke up from slightly behind to her right.
Shit, here comes the grim reaper, Sunset thought. I might be joining you after all, Pinkie. “Hello, Celestia. Nice night for it, huh? Do you wanna do the honors or should I fall on my sword?”
“What are you talking about, Sunset?”
“Aren’t you gonna fire me?”
Celestia sat down next to her on the bleachers. “Of course not. It’s not like you could have done anything to prevent this, right?”
“Ain’t that the truth? How much did you see?”
“From about where you turned your car into a convertible,” she replied.
Sunset turned to look at her Fiesta, the roof smashed in behind the driver’s seat and several of the back windows blown out. “Now I really need to keep this job. This world needs car insurance that covers acts of magic.”
Celestia was quiet. Sunset could only imagine what her face looked like. She couldn’t bring herself to look at her to confirm the disappointment in her eyes. “So, magic is back, huh?” the principal said quietly at last.
“For them, it is,” Sunset confirmed, watching her students sitting in the grass, talking excitedly and comforting Misty along the way. “I think for me, this was my last hurrah.” She’d felt it the moment her flames had gone out back there. Or rather, it was what she didn’t feel. The last spark of her original Equestrian magic had gone out, her last tether to the world she’d been born into, burned up and replaced by a gaping emptiness that felt all the more poignant after briefly sharing in the Magic of Friendship once more earlier.
“All the more reason to keep you around. They need you now, more than they know.” There was a long sigh from Celestia. “How does it feel, being on the outside looking in?”
Sunset pondered that as she watched the happy faces of the kids who didn’t know how things looked on a bad day. “Terrifying,” she whispered finally. “Seeing them putting themselves into danger like that and being powerless to stop it. Is that what it was like for you all those years ago?”
“More or less,” Celestia admitted quietly. “Of course unlike you, I didn’t have the benefit of even knowing what was going on most of the time.”
Sunset finally found the courage to look over and meet Celestia’s eyes. “I’m not sure if that makes it better or worse. Studying magic was my entire childhood, so I know a thousand different ways in which this could have gone wrong, and I’ve had them all flash in front of my eyes since I sat down.”
“Hmm.” Celestia mused on that for a bit. “They say ignorance is bliss. Maybe I was the lucky one between the two of us.”
Sunset felt a buzz in her pocket and checked her phone. The display was cracked all over, having taken a beating during the fight, but it still worked. There were several missed messages in the group chat.
RD: Did anyone else just feel their geode activate?
Twilight: I did, but then it just flashed and went inert again.
Fluttershy: Same here.
AJ: Felt like the magic was being drawn somewhere else.
Rarity: Is everyone alright? Everyone safe?
Twilight: Nothing else happened here.
RD: Where’s Sunset?
Fluttershy: Sunset?
Rarity: You don’t think anything’s wrong, do you?
RD: I’m heading to CHS!
RD: Dangit, my geode isn’t giving me the speed. I’ll get there as fast as I can.
AJ: Rarity and I are heading there by car, but we’re on the other side of town.
Twilight: I just got on the bus from the campus stop, but it’s gonna take me a while.
Fluttershy: Can anyone swing by the clinic to pick me up?
Rarity: We’ll get you on the way.
Sunset couldn’t help but smile at the frantic text chain, at how her friends were always ready to drop everything and come to her rescue. She quickly shot back a message to put their minds at ease: “I’m okay. Some stuff happened, but everything is fine for now. I’ll explain everything later.” After a brief pause, she added: “Also, I destroyed your magic box. Sorry, Sparky.”
“They’ll want some answers soon,” Celestia pointed out and drew Sunset’s attention to the group of parents and guardians who had gathered some distance from the kids, alternating their questioning glances between them and then Sunset and Celestia.
Sunset’s eyes narrowed and her lips drew into a thin line. “So do I,” she said, focusing on Misty.
Following her line of sight, Celestia sighed and stood up. “Alright, here’s the plan. I’ll run interference for you, then I’ll send the kids home with their parents. You take Misty and make yourself scarce.”
“Thanks, Celestia,” Sunset said. “I owe you one.”
“… Yes. Yes, you do. You can start working off your debt by getting to the bottom of what the fuck is going on at my school.”
Sunset sat down a cup of tea on the coffee table. Then she sat down on the couch next to Misty. The girl hadn’t spoken a single word on the way over. But she hadn’t objected either, and she was still clutching onto Sunset’s jacket draped over her shoulders.
Now what? Sunset thought to herself. Celestia came up with a plan right on the spot to give me an opening, but all I could think of was to bring her to my apartment. Brilliant move, you mastermind. Is this the second or the third time I’ve abducted one of my own students?
“Hey,” Sunset began, “is there anyone I should call?”
Misty shook her head slowly. “The people at the orphanage don’t really care when we get in at night, or if we get in. They probably won’t even realize I’m gone until morning,” she said, staring off into the distance.
Yikes. And I thought some of the others had a rough living situation.
“Woof!” Sparky came waddling over and put his front paws up against Misty’s legs, wagging his tail happily.
With a small smile, Misty picked up the puppy and put him in her lap, giving him some scratches to which he closed his eyes and cooed happily.
She’s taking this much better than I did back in the day, Sunset thought. She sat up straight and caught Misty’s attention. “Misty, we’ve got to talk about what happened back there, but if you need some time …”
“No.” Misty shook her head. “I’d rather get it all out in the open right now.”
“Alright.” Sunset pulled the broken pieces of Twilight’s magic collection device, which she’d quickly scooped up on their way out, out of her pocket and laid them out on the table. “Let’s start with this.”
Misty looked at the broken pieces of the machine that had almost claimed her life apprehensively. “I … don’t actually know what it does … I didn’t … I mean, I … I stole it.”
“I know. This actually belonged to a friend of mine, which is why I also know that you couldn’t have possibly known its purpose or location.”
“I was told to get it, and how to modify it,” Misty admitted.
Someone who actually knows how to make modifications? Now that I think about it, Twilight said it was disassembled, and it looked slightly differently than it used to. “Who told you that?”
Misty wordlessly worked her jaw for a while, and Sunset decided to give her the time she needed, but she was getting that answer. “I think … my mom, maybe?”
Sunset blinked as her train of thought derailed, screeching off in the direction of More-Questionsville after it had just been headed to Revelation Station. “Your mom?” Sunset asked for clarification as she tried to make the word make sense with the word orphanage earlier.
“I can see you’re confused. So am I, if I’m being completely honest. Let me back up a bit, okay?”
“Okay,” Sunset said reassuringly while she was going internally: What the fuck is this? Is she lying to me right now? Gah, I want my geode back right now and just get the truth that way!
Misty collected herself for a bit and began: “I was brought to the orphanage as a baby, lived there my whole life. I’ve never met my parents, but I used to get letters from my mom, or who I assume to be my mom.”
“Letters, you say?”
“Yeah, I used to get one on my birthday every year. Maybe a couple times in between. Just, wondering if I was okay, hoping I was doing well in school, once telling me that this was for the best. As I got older, I got the impression they were more for her sake than mine.”
“Do you know your mother’s name?”
Misty shook her head. “She never signed the letters other than with ‘Mom.’ No return address either. But I got the sense she traveled a lot. The post marks were from all over the world. I asked the orphanage about it, but I was dropped off anonymously, so they don’t even know her name.”
“I see.” Sunset scratched her head. “So, your mom told you about the device in a letter?”
Misty scrunched up her face. “This is where it gets complicated. You see, the letters just kinda stopped out of the blue one day, about three years ago.”
That number keeps cropping up, three years ago, the Maretime Bay incident. It has to be connected. I’m more certain of that now than ever.
“I’d pretty much made my peace with it,” Misty admitted. “Figured she died or maybe finally lost interest in me altogether. But then, a few months ago, a new letter arrived, but it was weird.”
“Weird how?”
“Well, it was typed and unsigned for a start, like every subsequent one. My mom’s old letters were always handwritten. So I was dubious at first, but she said things in them that were in the old letters, too. Things I’ve never told anyone, that only she could have known.”
“And what did the new letters say?”
Misty swallowed hard and went quiet for a moment. “That she missed me, that she made a mistake, that she wanted to see me, but couldn’t at the moment. She said that I’d have to do a few things for her so we could meet.”
“Like what?”
“She wanted me to enroll at CHS. It seemed like a weird request, but I figured there was no harm in trying. So I asked the Headmistress at the orphanage, and she didn’t object, even helped me. That’s why I transferred after the school year had already started.”
“What else did she ask of you?”
Misty shrugged. “Little things at first. It seemed more like a mother just wanting her daughter to have a happy school life. She suggested that I keep a diary with notes on my classmates so I could make friends. When you asked me to be your co-director, she encouraged me to take part in the play. It didn’t seem like I was doing anything wrong, and she assured me that all of it would help us to see each other again.”
“And the device was part of that, too?”
Misty nodded. “Yeah. She told me how to get it, how to fix it, how to use it. But she wouldn’t tell me what it was actually for. When she told me to go to Canterlot U, that’s when I first had serious doubts, but I was in too deep at that point.”
Sunset rubbed her eyes. That’s the most heartbreaking story I’ve ever heard, if it’s true. “Misty, do you still have those letters?”
“She always said to destroy them after I’d read them and memorized the instructions.”
Of course she did!
“But I couldn’t.”
Sunset looked up in surprise.
“I mean, if these really were from my mom, how could I just throw them out? I’ve saved all her letters since I was a little girl.” Misty lifted her head and indicated her backpack at the foot of the sofa with her chin. “They’re all in there. The purple folder.”
Sunset stood up and pulled said folder out of the backpack, looking to Misty for permission and getting a nod in response. Sitting back down, she leafed through the letters which had all been neatly tucked into clear film pockets. They were just as described, the old ones written in a neat hand, the thoughts of a mother grappling with her own decision. Sunset wasn’t about to pass judgment on a woman she knew nothing about for giving up her child, thinking it would lead her to a better life.
But the newer ones were a stark contrast. Misty was right. There were some phrases and information that was congruent with the older ones, but they were far more clinical, and to Sunset, who was no stranger to preying on the emotional vulnerabilities of others in her youth, it reeked of manipulation. The instructions for the break-in at Canterlot U were self-evident. It even included a diagram of the campus with all the locations of the security cameras marked, as if drawn by someone who was intimately familiar with the place. The instructions for rebuilding the magic collection device were precise, but gave no hint as to their purpose. Twilight would need to take a look at those.
“Misty, is it alright if I made some photos of those?”
The girl nodded silently.
Sunset pulled out her phone and carefully made some snapshots of all the typed letters as well as a small selection of the older ones. When she was done, she closed the folder and handed it back to Misty. “You can have these back. I’d advise you not to show them to anyone else, especially the last few.” Sorry, Shining Armor. I caught your thief, but I’m pulling rank. Magical Investigations is my jurisdiction, and I need to protect my source. Also, I’m not about to let a young girl ruin her future just for wanting to see her mom. She’s the victim here, not the culprit. “Could you let me know if you receive another letter?”
Misty nodded and hugged the folder with the letters to herself. “Ms. Sunset?” She looked up with tears in her eyes and asked in a quiet voice: “Is my mom a bad person? And does that make me a bad person for listening to her?”
“Oh, sweetie.” Sunset moved over and gave Misty a hug as the girl once more began to cry into her shoulder. “I don’t know what’s going on with your mom, but I promise I’ll help you find out. And whatever her deal is, that doesn’t make you a bad person.”
After Misty had fully cried herself out, Sunset had given her the bed to catch a few hours of sleep while Sunset herself had spent a few restless hours on the couch.
When Saturday morning dawned through the window, she fully gave up on sleep and decided she might as well attend to a certain funeral. After checking that Misty was still asleep, she made her way downstairs in the building.
“So long, old friend. We’ve been through some tough times together,” she said solemnly as she placed her tear- and snot-stained leather jacket into the garbage bin reverently. “Say hi to Al’s vest for me when you get to biker heaven.”
She observed a moment of silence for the fallen garment before turning towards the stairs to head back up to her apartment. However, the sight of a white envelope sticking out of her mailbox caught her eye.
Curious, she picked it up. It was slightly heavy, and a set of keys tumbled out into her open palm when she opened it up. She unfolded the attached note and began to read.
Sunshine,
I couldn’t help but notice that your car took a bit of a beating last night. I was gonna give this to you for your birthday, but it looks like you could use it now.
Love,
Al
Excitement bubbling up inside of her, she sprinted around the corner, and a goofy grin spread on her face when she saw it parked there on the street.
Taking the stairs two at a time, she went back up to her apartment and threw open the door, slightly startling Misty who had just gotten up and dressed.
“Hey,” Sunset asked with a twinkle in her eye, “you wanna go for a ride?”
“Woo-hoo!” Misty whooped in joy as Sunset took the corner at speed and revved the old engine, the wind whistling past them.
Damn, this feels good, Sunset thought, fiery hair streaming out behind her from underneath her helmet. I missed this, and it looks like she’s enjoying it, too. The large grin was possibly the biggest she’d seen on the girl as she sat in the sidecar of the old EMW motorcycle, hanging on to the rim with her backpack in her lap.
“Aw, we’re here already,” Misty said somewhat wistfully as Sunset slowed and rolled up to an old building with the words Canterlot City Municipal Orphanage chiseled into the stone entryway. “You can pull up here.”
Sunset slowed further and parked her bike where Misty had indicated.
“That was so much fun!”
“Right?” Sunset said with a grin as she took off her helmet and shook out her hair. “It’s the best!”
“Misty!” A stern voice called from the entrance. “Where have you been, you silly girl?”
“Oops, busted,” Misty muttered as she took off her own helmet and handed it off to Sunset. “Sorry, Miss Opaline,” she called out contritely as she got out of the sidecar.
Opaline? Sunset stowed the helmets away and walked up to the entrance. The woman who had called out had her hands clasped behind her back and was wearing a magenta blazer. Her white hair was done up in two braids that pulled back across the top of her head like a crown and fell across her shoulders in large swirls.
“You know the rules. If you’re late for breakfast, you don’t get any,” she was telling Misty. “This is the sort of flightiness that doesn’t improve your chances of getting adopted, you know.” That seemed to be a bit of a cruel remark to make to Sunset, but it didn’t seem like Misty was bothered by it.
“That’s alright. Ms. Sunset bought me some breakfast at Sugarcube Corner before we came here.”
“Ms. Sunset, is it? And that would be you, I presume?” The woman gave Sunset some side eye as she walked up.
“Ah, yes. Sunset Shimmer,” she introduced herself, holding out her hand. “I’m a teacher at CHS.”
“Charmed, I’m sure,” the woman replied, not making any move to shake Sunset’s hand. “Headmistress Opaline Arcana. I run this establishment.”
“Uhm,” Sunset began, letting her hand fall by her side, “please don’t hold this against Misty. There was a little … incident at school last night. Under the circumstances, I thought it best if Misty stayed with me for the night. I take full responsibility.”
Opaline mustered Sunset up and down coldly. “Very well, I’ll overlook it this time and forego the usual punishment. Come along, Misty.”
Misty gave Sunset an apologetic smile. “I know. She’s a lot, but she’s not that bad once you get to know her. Thanks, Ms. Sunset, for everything. See you in school,” she said and turned to follow the headmistress.
Sunset gave a nod and a smile, but once Misty’s back was turned, she couldn’t help but frown a little, a sense of foreboding creeping up on her.