Friday, AM: The Way We Laughed as One
Sunset Shimmer looked around. She was surrounded by the ruins of a castle; faded, decaying walls consumed by nature. Castle Everfree. What struck her as odd, though, was that she wasn’t a pony. She stood on two legs and wore the clothes she had when she first entered Cavalcanti's mirror. And yet, she wasn’t fully human either. Sunset could still feel her pony ears on her head, and her skin was the same maize yellow she had as a unicorn. She was both species and neither at once.
It was only when Sunset emerged from the depths of the ruins and found herself standing on a terrace overlooking a vast landscape that she realized she wasn’t in Castle Everfree at all. The castle she stood in was on the side of a mountain.
“How pathetic,” intoned a dark, distorted voice laced with venom. Sunset whirled around and found herself face to face with what could only be described as a monster. A monster called Raspberry Beryl.
The dark, twisted pony stood as tall as Celestia, perhaps taller. Her colors were comprised of darker reds and blacks, as opposed to the raspberry and cornflower blue that she wore normally. A pair of leathery, bat-like wings were flared up, and the monster grinned at Sunset with a mouthful of sharp fangs. Her terrifying red eyes were ablaze with the telltale green and purple smoke of dark magic, but worst of all was her horn. The thing was curved and filed to deadly sharpness, stained red with the blood of numerous victims.
“You…” Despite the terror threatening to consume her, Sunset managed to summon forth a bit of righteous anger as she realized this was the very same creature tormenting Twily’s dreams. “You leave my sister the hell alone!”
The monstrous Raspberry just laughed. “Or what?”
Sunset didn’t waste time with idle threats, instead choosing to follow through with a real one as she focused magical energy into her hands. Despite her altered form, it was easier than when she’d done it in the human world. Recalling everything Celestia had taught her about combating dark magic, Sunset hit the demon with a full blast of purifying arcane energy.
Raspberry was not impressed. “You used to be so much more. What happened?”
Sunset wasn’t giving the monster the satisfaction of an answer. She just started channeling more magic through her hands. She was going to need a lot more power if she was going to do any damage.
“Oh, that’s right: you found friends. You found a family,” Raspberry sneered. “But where has that gotten you? The old Sunset Shimmer wouldn’t have wasted her time helping them. You were ruthless! So, what happened?”
“I was a different person!” Sunset shouted as she launched another, stronger attack at the demon. This time, it exploded in a cloud of smoke and for a moment Sunset thought it was over.
“No…”
But then the smoke cleared and in Raspberry’s place, Sunset saw five other figures lying motionless on the ground. Sunset ran toward them and found the bodies of Pinkie Pie, Applejack, Rainbow Dash, Fluttershy, and Rarity strewn around her.
“You just knew the importance of power.”
Trembling, Sunset looked down at her hands and saw red skin and claws. “N-no…” Sunset turned and tried to run, but found the way blocked by a mirror. A terrible red demon looked back at her through the looking glass with flaming hair and familiar cyan eyes. Sunset took a step back and realized she was looking at Sombra’s mirror. Sunset saw the effigies of the alicorns - of her beloved mentor - bound in chains, but Sombra wasn’t the one holding them. She was.
Her demonic reflection grinned. “Why deny who you are?”
“BECAUSE I’M NOT THAT PERSON!” Sunset struck the mirror with all of her might, shattering it and the demon within. Blinding sunlight shone forth from the mirror’s frame, and without a second thought, Sunset ran through.
Hoping to have finally escaped her tormenter, Sunset took in her new surroundings. She was back in the human world, standing on a paved road in the middle of nowhere. Sunset saw specks of red at her feet, and looked up to find a bloody trail leading down the expanse of pavement. She followed it to its source, her heart beating more and more quickly.
“If you’d really forsake your true potential for them…”
The corpse of a human lay on the asphalt before her. Blood and bits of bone were everywhere, their limbs splayed out in ways not meant to be. The person was so thoroughly mangled that it was impossible to even tell whether they had been a man or a woman. Sunset’s stomach churned and she could feel the bile working its way up her throat, but she forced herself to keep it down.
“...then you’d better prepare to pay the price of weakness!”
Then Sunset saw there was still hair on the corpse’s head: dark purple with streaks of magenta.
“OH GOD NO!!!” Sunset fell to her knees. She gasped for air as she shivered and cried, “No no no oh God oh please no please…”
With what she had feared most now lying in front of her, Sunset was unable to register anything else. She didn’t notice when the smokey blackness rose from below to claim the corpse in front of her. She didn’t care when that blackness then became the demonic form of Raspberry Beryl. Only when the monster charged forward did Sunset finally look up, but by then it was too late.
Her breath was cut off as the creature’s twisted horn penetrated her chest. The pain was excruciating, but Sunset couldn’t scream. Not even as her blood seeped out onto the demon pony’s horn. Not even when the horn pushed deeper and pierced her racing heart…
Gasping for breath, Sunset’s eyes shot open, and the unicorn sat up in a cold sweat. Shaking, Sunset brought a hoof up to her chest, and felt her rapidly beating heart. More importantly, her chest was whole. For some time Sunset just sat in her bed with teary eyes, breathing heavily in the cold, wet darkness of the guest bedroom. If that’s what Twily goes through every night, it’s no wonder she tried to….
Sunset couldn’t finish that thought, and it was all she could do to race to the bathroom across the hall before she vomited. I can’t afford to waste any more time, thought Sunset as she rinsed out her mouth. Indeed, it was getting dangerously close to Sunday, and the morning after that the rest of her family would be home from Italy. If she didn’t figure this out before then, there was no telling what would happen.
Fortunately, there was still one more pony Sunset could go to for information on her enemy. During her conversation with Fluttershy the other day, the butter pegasus had told her that the pony who probably knew Raspberry Beryl the best was Rarity, as the fashionista used to regularly buy counterfeit gems from the dark unicorn. If anyone can give me the full truth about Raspberry, its Rarity.
It seemed only fitting: Rarity was arguably Sunset’s closest friend back in the human world, and she was the only one of her friends’ counterparts she hadn’t spoken to yet. However, one look in the bathroom mirror made Sunset realize she shouldn’t just rush off to meet her just yet. If this Rarity was anything like her friend back home, she would never let Sunset get a word in if she didn’t look her best. So Sunset stepped into the shower and cleaned herself off before fixing her mane and applying a bit of makeup.
As she descended the stairs, Sunset was very, very, very glad that her temporary living situation was on top of a business that did a brisk breakfast service. With Mrs. Cake happy and healthy again, Sugarcube Corner was back open for business. As sort of a belated thank you, the Cakes allowed Sunset to have anything she wanted free of charge, which had she been anything remotely as bad as she formerly acted would have resulted in her exploiting the Cakes out of both business and home. But instead, Sunset was grateful for their generosity and didn’t take more than a large slice of cheese danish. The coffee, however, was nothing more than a miracle elixir as it helped wake her up almost instantaneously. She probably looked like hell, given the nightmare that still lingered in her head.
“Hey, you okay, Sunny?” asked Pinkie, somehow balancing several empty pans with just her tail even though it clearly had the consistency of cotton candy. “You look like you had a rough night.”
“That’s putting it mildly,” replied the unicorn, partially trying to get drunk on caffeine and partially shocked that Pinkie was speaking in a controlled manner without using any crazy, cutesy words.
“Was there something wrong with the bed? Maybe your pillows weren’t fluffed up enough?”
“No, it’s…well, I had a lot on my mind.”
Pinkie looked more concerned, so much that she placed the empty trays on top of one of the display cases before taking a seat. “Huh, like, Princess Luna didn’t come into your dream to help?”
Sunset looked up from her plate of crumbs to give Pinkie a skeptical look. “What are you talking about?”
Pinkie shrugged. “Maybe you don’t have a princess in your world who looks out for ponies in their dreams when they’re troubled. That’s what Princess Luna does.”
“She goes around in people’s dreams?” Sunset vaguely recalled having seen some cartoon a year or two ago where the plot had the main character – who for whatever reason was an anthropomorphic sponge – go into a bunch of other character’s dreams and utterly destroy them by being an absolute idiot. She then imagined Princess Luna wearing the same clothes as the sponge and bouncing from one pony’s dreams to another, and couldn’t help but snicker a little.
“Yeah, I know, sounds silly in a way,” continued Pinkie, unaware of SpongeLuna PrincessPants in Sunset’s head. “But ever since she came back, part of her duties as princess of the night is to ensure everypony sleeps well. It’s a job she appreciates considerably more than she did before her banishment.”
Sunset frowned. “All the same, if that’s what she does, then why didn’t she help me last night? I could have used the backup.”
“I dunno, maybe you weren’t thinking pony thoughts or something?”
The idea that she was becoming so human that her own brain no longer fully thought like a pony, thus preventing an almighty alicorn from getting into her mind only made her more concerned for what she was becoming. I was neither a pony or a human in that dream. However, the door to Sugarcube Corner slammed open, ending that train of thought.
“Sunset! There you are!” squealed Rarity.
“Uh…hi, Rares?” replied Sunset, caught off guard such that she accidently used the more casual name she had for human Rarity. However, the fashionable unicorn didn’t seem to notice.
“If you’re not too busy, I need you to come back with me to my house right away!”
“Yeah, sure, but-“
“Fantastic!” Like greased lightning, the alabaster unicorn took the maize unicorn by the foreleg and raced off in an almost-cartoon like dust cloud straight for Rarity’s Casa de Fabulosity.
Pinkie, on the other hand, was left with a hoof on her chin in wonder. “I wish I knew how to do that.”
“Thank you for staying at the Traveler’s Retreat!” warmly said Raspberry, “We hope to see you again soon!” With a smile and wave, the unicorn saw the business pony take his bag and head out the door to catch his train. Once he was gone, Raspberry took the small pile of bits off the counter and deposited them into the cash drawer. “First payment of the day~!” she half-sang, half-stated to Heliodor. Perched on his custom-made crystal bird stand, looking more like a piece of décor than anything, he cooed approval before pointing with a wing towards the set of keys freshly returned to the management. “Yes, yes, I’ll mark them,” she replied, reaching down to grab a cleaning tag. She’d attach it to the keyring before placing the tagged set onto a small pegboard just to the side of the main board indicating the available rooms. Later, the cleaning duo Spic and Span would collect the keys and prepare them for more guests.
While she was fiddling with the tags, the bell attached to the door chimed brightly, followed by a single ding of the service bell. “Just a second!” said Razz, finally getting the tag on the keyring. Getting back up from the ground, she automatically said the phrase that defined the job of desk clerk: “Hello, how may I--” She stopped when she realized just who it was that had come in.
Twilight just smiled sheepishly. “Hello to you too, Raspberry. And you as well, Heliodor.”
The phoenix chirped a thanks, doing a little bow, while Raspberry just sighed. “You keep showing up so often, Sparkle, one might start thinking you’re intent on conquering my domain.”
The alicorn just laughed. “Oh, don’t be silly! The Retreat is your castle, just as Golden Oaks Library is mine. Though I will admit I am slightly jealous of how you got your own little cleaning staff in your deal.”
“Not really, since I’m staff myself I have my own fair share of responsibilities. Plus, being a ‘princess’ - even if it’s just in title - hasn’t won me any points with Light Fixture or Spic and Span. Especially because of how Ascot and Cashmere have basically adopted me as a daughter.”
“What do you mean ‘basically’ adopted? You call them your parents, don’t you?”
“I’m in my mid-twenties, so they didn’t fill the paperwork, but that’s just formalities. Familial bonds don’t need a sheet of legalese to exist.”
Twilight nodded, her thoughts turning to her own relationship with Spike. “I couldn’t agree more. Legal or not, it’s always nice to have someone there for you.”
Raspberry closed her eyes and muttered. “Especially when it feels like you have a target on your back.”
Twilight tilted her head and shot her friend a concerned look. “On that note, what’s the word on your latest stalker?”
Raspberry opened her eyes and her frown deepened. “I’m guessing you mean Sunset? Sorry to disappoint, but ever since the talk you and Celestia had with me yesterday evening, I haven’t even seen the mare,” Raspberry paused. “At least, not in person.”
“I don’t follow….”
Raspberry reared up suddenly, looking around for some reason. Landing back on her hooves, she quickly pulled out a little sign that read Back in Five Minutes. “Come on, I guess you’d better see this,” she said, moving and motioning towards where Twilight guessed her room was. The princess followed, wondering what was in store, though Heliodor stayed put as if he was some kind of guard. Then again, he could utilize fire with devastating effect so in a sense he was well equipped for the job.
Upon passing through the door, Twilight noted that Razz’s room – formerly just a spare guest room – was somewhat undersized for what normally passed as the private quarters of royalty. But it was more spacious than either the normal rented rooms Razz had formerly occupied or the safehouse in the Everfree Ruins. The bathroom looked bigger, too.
“Here,” pointed out the mulberry pony, a hoof in the direction of her desk. On it were a few books - some that Twilight recognized as having only possibly come from Sombra’s secret sanctum within the Crystal Empire - and various papers on which were an assortment of various notes, enchantment symbols, and other things Twilight didn’t even know how to quantify. Raspberry saw the wordless observation of the alicorn and smiled a little. “For whatever reason, Sombra kept very detailed notes about that mirror even years after he’d abandoned it in Castle Everfree. There’s no section about how to repair it, but the various enchantments it works on are both explained in some of his notes and easy enough for me to work with.”
Uncharacteristically, Twilight didn’t hear much of Raspberry’s words, her attention diverted to a particular sketch partially hidden under the various other papers. Uncovering it, she couldn’t help but let out a gasp at what she saw: It was a pencil sketch of a human about the same age as Twilight had appeared to be when she had visited the human world. But even without the colors, the various shading on the two stripes in her hair, plus the whole hairstyle made it clear that it was Twilight. Or, rather, the “Twily” counterpart who Sunset spoke so fondly of. Rather disconcertingly, the human Twilight seemed to be crying, half her face buried into the shoulder of another human. The princess didn’t need to see the other human’s details to know that shoulder was Sunset Shimmer’s.
“This…that’s…how did you?” sputtered the alicorn.
“That’s what I was hoping you could tell me, honestly,” replied Razz. “I can only guess that’s the human version of you and Sunset, so from what I can tell, she’s telling the truth.”
Twilight regarded Raspberry with a suspicious glare. “You didn’t do anything to Sunset, did you? The only way you could have even known what humans look like is if you read her memories, which is clearly written in Equestriani law as a-“
Raspberry met Twilight’s glare with one of her own. “I thought you wanted my help, not to put me on trial again.”
“Sorry,” Twilight said, ears folding down as she reigned herself in. “But that still begs the question of how you came up with this image.”
“Well, that’s the thing: I saw that memory of Sunset’s through that mirror.” Seeing Twilight’s skeptical expression, Razz took the liberty of going into a recap of events. “I don’t know if Platinum's Mirror does this kind of thing, but with Sombra’s Mirror, it seems to reflect parts of what’s in the head of the pony who last used it. Or something, I don’t know.”
“What do you mean you don’t know?”
Raspberry just shook her head. “It’s only one memory, and although it appears to be a pretty important one to Sunset, I’m not entirely sure that’s all the mirror is capable of.””
“You mean…it could potentially show more of a pony’s memories? But only the important ones, maybe? And how far back?”
“I really don’t know,” Raspberry gave a weary sigh indicating she’d spent quite a lot of time trying to answer those very questions. “Maybe if I get the mirror back to full power we can get some answers, but I don’t like digging through other ponies’ most private moments. From what I could tell when that memory popped into my head, there was more the mirror was trying to project, but simply couldn’t. Though, on the bright side, I did make it so the mirror only works for me…at least, in all capacity it does work. I don’t know if it still works as a portal, however. Even Sombra seems to question how he actually managed to connect worlds.”
Twilight rubbed the bridge of her snout. “So we need Sunset on this, since she knows about the mirror’s outlet in the human world.”
“Indeed. To be honest, it’s sort of relieving that there’s things about dark magic I can still learn, even if it’s from the writings of that jackass Sombra.”
Twilight nodded, before her eyes went wide from remembering something else they had talked about. “Hey, if you’ve got time later, I dug up some counterspells that supposedly work against dark magic, but they’re kind of sketchy, so it would be helpful if you wanted to spar.”
“Sure, I have some magic tricks I need to practice anyway,” answered Raspberry, who then cracked a grin. “Should be fun.”
Sunset didn’t believe she could be in a situation any more humiliating than she already was at that moment.
“Hmm, yes, this needs to be pinned a little higher….” mused Rarity, fully in her element.
Furthermore, even the Rarity she knew wouldn’t do this to her. Sunset stood on a small stand in the middle of Carousel Boutique while measuring tape, scissors and an assortment of other tools levitated around her. Rarity studied Sunset and the dress she had been forced into through red-rimmed glasses.
“…and to close up this part, I knew I shouldn’t have made the hole so big…”
Sunset made it a point to sigh as loudly as possible. Being made to act as a stand-in model for Rarity, just so the fashionista could have the closest possible form to work on finishing Raspberry Beryl’s dress, was an entirely new low.
“And done!” triumphantly declared the artist of the dress, stepping back to admire her work. It was still very much a work in progress, that much was true, but having a virtual duplicate of Raspberry worked wonders in terms of judging those small parts that defined an article of clothing as being a masterpiece or an embarrassing reject. “I just need to make those adjustments and it will be ready for her highness!”
Sunset winced, still not comfortable with classifying her dark recolor as a royal for various reasons. “So, can I take this off now?”
“Yes, yes, just give me a second.” Rarity’s horn lit up, giving both it and the dress a medium blue hued aura, before somehow the dress was removed from Sunset’s body without any change in Sunset’s pose. Shimmer just raised an eyebrow momentarily in response while Rarity put the dress back onto one of her ponnequins that looked suspiciously similar to carousel ponies in the human world. “Now that we’ve taken care of that matter, we can move onto the centerpiece of the conversation!”
“Come again?”
Rarity laughed. “Oh, come now, certainly you know that Twilight told me enough about that human world, and I’m well aware of fashion being important there. For instance: is it true that humans always wear clothes?”
Oh, thank Celestia this is going to be easy, thought Sunset, relieved that this line of questioning didn’t look like it would end up like…whatever last night had turned into. “Yeah, nudity is a pretty big social no-no. Humans usually wear shirts and pants, and then under those they have underwear and socks. Except if you’re a girl, then if you have any kind of….” The idea of trying to express what breasts were on humans left Sunset trying to figure out just how to word such a concept. On human females, their busts were on their upper chest between their arms, a location that on the same general place on a pony body would look hideously out of place.
“I see your point, darling,” quickly interjected Rarity, having suspected Sunset got caught up on trying to explain something rather embarrassing about the human physique. “But surely there’s different styles or even different types of garments, no?”
“Yeah, of course. Let me try and show you.” Sunset lit up her own magic and concentrated on trying to generate imagery of human clothing. Please don’t turn me into a human again, she repeated over and over in her mind. Fortunately, she didn’t lose track of what her magic was doing, and in the air between the unicorns there appeared various pieces of human clothes. Curiously, even though Sunset’s wardrobe had gotten larger ever since moving into the house on Golden Oaks, all the clothes in the air were clearly the ones both Tavi and Twilight had been wearing the day she’d first met them. Why?
“Is…is that a sweater with a hood on it?” asked Rarity, ogling the magical copy of Twilight’s gray hoodie, “and a double-ended pouch for storing things?”
“Well uh…” began Sunny, before realizing that the real point of the “pouch” was for humans to stick their hands in to keep warm, something that in practice would render ponies immobile at best. “Yes.”
“How novel! I take it the hood is to be put over the wearer’s head, to keep it warm?”
“That’s generally the idea of a hooded sweatshirt, isn’t it?”
Rarity nodded, the gears of fabulosity turning in her head. “I may need to introduce this in my fall line, such a great idea yet nopony ever came up with it. I can only wonder why.”
“Don’t we all?” Sunset, however, did figure it out. Humans don’t have necks half as long as their legs, so a pony hoodie would be awkward to say the least: the hood alone would almost be like a cape! Hell, the cloak I wore was weird enough in hindsight. She didn’t say it out loud, though, lest she be subjected to being a dressmaking dummy again.
“I must say that these look awfully uncomfortable, though,” criticized Rarity, her attention now on what looked like Tavi’s jeans. “Are humans really this thin in their legs?”
“Normally humans don’t have legs like ponies.” And I sure as hell am not going to ask Tavi how thick her legs are. That’s all kinds of wrong.
“Hmmm, well, not all things that can be worn are things that should be worn. This would be one of them. Anyway, I do thank you for showing me the, um, ‘hoodie’, that should be interesting once I put my own touch on it.”
“I don’t doubt it. Especially since you fix-“ No sooner had the words stopped then did Sunset’s forehoof find its way shoved into her own mouth. Unfortunately, Rarity had heard enough.
“Oh? I fixed it once? That does remind me that, according to Twilight, there is a human who is quite like me. I would be interested to know how she and I compare to one another.”
Sunset sighed. Me and my big mouth.
Not noticing Sunset’s hesitation, Rarity headed into her kitchen. “I have some leftover coffee cake, want to chat over that and coffee?”
“Never could turn down free cake,” admitted Sunset, following behind.
A few minutes later, the unicorns were sitting down at the table, sipping from a well-made batch of black coffee and nibbling at slices of day-old coffee cake. Rarity started by asking about her human counterpart’s dressmaking career, and Sunset had to explain that all of their counterparts were still in high school. They sat there talking for some time afterward. It was as they were discussing the human world’s magic (or lack thereof) that the unicorns heard the sound of the front door opening.
“Rarity, I’m hoooooommmmmee!” came a distinctly familiar voice with a slight squeak, followed by a jarring door slam. Sweetie Belle entered the kitchen, adding, “I’m also hungry, we got anyth-“ She stopped when she saw Sunset, her eyes as wide as dinner plates.
“Oh, um, yes, this is Sunset Shimmer,” hastily introduced Rarity, a strained smile crossing her features.
It didn’t seem to placate the unicorn filly, if that had been the intent. “Sis, you do know what happened the last time a unicorn with that manestyle was in your house, right?”
“I’m guessing you mean Raspberry Beryl, yes?” asked Sunset, though given no other pony in town had the shared hairdo as Sunset and Razz, it was more of a rhetorical question than anything.
Sweetie gave Sunset a suspicious glare that would have offended her if it wasn’t so cute. “Yeah…you’re not up to anything, are you?”
“Sweetie Belle!” reprimanded Rarity. “That is not how you talk to guests!”
“But Rar-“
“To your room, we’ll have a talk about your behavior once I’m finished talking to Sunset here.”
With a pout, Sweetie turned and stomped up the stairs, another slammed door soon left in her wake.
“I do apologize for that,” said Rarity, “my sister usually isn’t that accusational. I just don’t know what’s gotten into her.”
“Don’t worry about it,” Sunset said, a grin slowly creeping across her face. It was hard to stay mad at the filly when she had given Sunset exactly the kind of information she was looking for. Or at least gotten me started on the right path. “So, what exactly did she mean by that anyway? Did Raspberry cause you guys trouble?”
Rarity’s eyes suddenly drifted away from Sunset’s and fell on what remained of her coffee cake. “That’s one way of putting it I suppose.”
Sunset leaned forward. “Oh? Do tell…”
Rarity chewed her lip. “Don’t get me wrong, Razz means well, but she doesn’t exactly have a ‘clean history’ if you catch my meaning.”
Sunset took a sip of her coffee. “Go on….”
“Sunset, this is starting to sound like an inquisition,” Rarity said with a frown.
“Look, I’ve already asked everypony else around here about this, but no one will tell me anything. All I want are some answers, is that really so bad?”
With a resigned sigh, Rarity conceded. “Very well. If you must know, Razz and I first met when she sold me forgeries of precious gems made of dark crystals. It was her only source of income at the time, and in her defense they were really good. Unfortunately, it almost didn’t end so well for poor Spike.”
Sunset nodded. “Yeah, I think I read about that. She almost killed him!”
“Not intentionally!” Rarity countered.
“But still, if she could cause that much damage by accident, imagine what she could do on purpose!”
“Well, maybe instead of focusing so much on what she could do, maybe you should focus on what she has done?” Rarity said, giving Sunset a firm look. “Yes, she’s made some bad decisions in her life - the least of which was her forgeries - but she’s also done a lot of good. Over the course of the past year, she’s really turned her life around. For the first time in her life, she’s made friends and found a family. What’s more, she’s done so much to protect them - to protect us.”
Whatever Sunset was about to say in response died in her throat. All of a sudden, Sunset wondered whether she and the dark unicorn had more in common than just their looks.
“Maybe instead of thinking of Razz as your enemy, you should try being her friend,” Rarity continued. “I get the feeling you’ll have better luck with your problem if you work together.”
Sunset levitated her cup of coffee to her lips, but stopped and set it back down. All of a sudden, she didn’t crave the taste of bitterness anymore. “Yeah… I’ll think about it.”
As expected, Sunset left Carousel Boutique with more info on Raspberry. Suffice to say, Sunset was not expecting to leave completely reevaluating her mission. Despite how much Sunset wanted to reject it, Rarity brought up a very good point. She could accomplish far more by cooperating with Raspberry than she could working against her. And then there was what Rarity told her about Raspberry’s past. It’s the same story as mine, just with a different protagonist.
And yet, Sunset Shimmer was unable to shake the nightmare from her mind. Everytime she tried to think of a way she could approach Raspberry, all she could see was a laughing, pony-shaped demon. No. I can’t think like that. I have to trust Princess Twilight. I have to-
Sunset didn’t finish that thought as she was struck motionless by what she saw next. There, in a distant field outside of Ponyville, were the forms of Twilight Sparkle and Raspberry Beryl - and the latter was evidently raining dark magic on Twilight’s pitiful defenses.
Horrified, Sunset immediately galloped in their direction. She could only hope it wasn’t already too late.