Sunset Shimmer walked towards Canterlot High, savoring the novelty of being greeted by smiles. After she helped vanquish the sirens at the Battle of the Bands, she had finally been accepted by the student body. Apparently, delivering a smackdown to a horse demon or three made up for turning into one. She certainly wasn't going to question that logic.
Sunset opened the front doors, walked into the center of the entrance hall, closed her eyes, and took a satisfied breath. No more fear, on her side or anyone else's. It was a nice change of pace.
"Yes. It's nice to be back where we should be after so long."
Sunset's eyes snapped open. She knew that voice, even if she'd never heard it from the outside before. "You aren't here."
"Oh no? And here I thought we were trained to be rational. Don't you remember those days under Celestia's wing?"
"Well," Sunset said slowly, "rationally speaking, if you're here and you're outside me, then this is a dream." That would explain why no one else seemed to be here.
A slow clap sounded from behind Sunset. She spun and saw the face that had haunted her nightmares for weeks, her own face, twisted by rage and greed and stolen magic. "Very good," said the demon. "And here I was afraid that I'd have to spell it out for you."
"Fine," said Sunset. "You're the usual manifestation of my fear and guilt, is that it?"
The demon gave a dark chuckle. "Oh, far from it. I'm no little phantom you conjured up to torment yourself. I'm you, Sunset, just as you are me."
Sunset rolled her eyes. "Yeah, because that isn't what a tormenting phantom would say at all."
The demon shrugged. "Believe what you like."
"Look, what do you want?"
"Why, what we've always wanted!" The demon spread her arms and wings wide. "Power! Control! Respect! And now that we've finally clawed our way back from that unfortunate setback at the Fall Formal—"
"You mean me realizing how stupid I had been and rejecting everything you represent?" Sunset snarled.
The demon buffed her claws on her dress. "As I said, a setback. But now?" She gave a fang-filled grin. "Now we're back where we should be. Now we have everything we deserve: influence, magic, followers—"
"I have friends."
This got a shrug. "Six of one, half a dozen of the other. And just think what we can do with those six." The demon leered. "Oh, but we already have!"
The bottom dropped out of Sunset's stomach. She huddled into her jacket. "I have no idea what you're talking about."
"Don't you?" A clawed hand gripped Sunset under the chin and forced her to make eye contact with the creature. "You can't lie to me. Like I said, I'm you."
Sunset felt the needle points pressing against her, just shy of breaking the skin. "Not anymore." She spat in the demon's face.
The gobbet flashed into vapor the moment it made contact. The fiend didn't even seem to notice; she just put on a knowing grin. "Oh no? Then I suppose it was the new, redeemed Sunset Shimmer who was quietly observing all of the friction between her 'friends.' She must have been the one who dusted off the bully routine to try and cow the sirens. She, not I, noted every hairline crack in what we can laughingly call the psyche of our replacement." Her teasing tone grew harsher with that last word, her hair flaring out for a moment.
Sunset looked away. "Twilight did more to deserve ascension than I ever did."
"Hmm?" The grin returned. "Now who said anything about ascension? I was just talking about how Celestia found some new filly to mother after we outgrew her."
Sunset's gaze snapped back to her counterpart. "I—"
"But while we're on the subject of Twilight earning her wings, did she? Given how she struggled with that counterspell, I have to wonder just how good she really is." The demon released Sunset and shrugged. "Who knows? Maybe Celestia gave her wings out of pity."
"Don't be ridiculous." Sunset rubbed at her jaw. "We both know she wouldn't do that."
The creature held up a claw. "Correction: She didn't do it for us. Her pretty purple pet, so eager to please her?"
Sunset crossed her arms. "I have no reason to resent Twilight. She couldn't have beaten the sirens without me."
The demon smirked. "No, she couldn't have, could she? And now you have proof that you're one of the 'good guys.'" She leaned in and flicked one of Sunset's pony ears.
"Hey!" Sunset clapped her hand over it. After a moment, she felt the other, then took her elongated hair in both hands. "What the..." She shook her head. "Right. Dream."
"Yes," said the demon, "with such symbols of her pure intentions, Sunset Shimmer could never do anything bad. Everyone trusts her now. She certainly wouldn't exploit that trust. She would never drive apart her friends, manipulating them so that they all only trusted her. What possible use could she have for five loyal lieutenants far more competent than Snips or Snails could ever be?"
Sunset heard footsteps from her right. She turned to see a scowling Rarity. "Sunset is the only one of you who appreciates my artistic vision."
Applejack snorted from the other side of the entrance. "She's the only girl who ain't got a forked tongue around here."
Rainbow Dash ran in from the direction of the gym, shouting, "She's the only one who can keep up with me!"
"She's the only one who really respects me," Fluttershy muttered from right next to Sunset.
Sunset looked around as they all glared at one another, each sparing her the occasional warm glance. And, deep inside, something actually kind of liked—
"Wait a second." Sunset looked around and found a weirdly subdued Pinkie Pie where the demon should've been. "Aren't you going to say something?"
Pinkie shrugged. "You barely know me, much less what makes me tick. Heck, you distance yourself from me for the sake of your own sanity."
Darkness crawled across Pinkie's sclera from the outside in as she gave a smile full of fangs. "Really, that says all that needs to be said about our so-called friendships." She spread tattered wings and, a blink later, became Sunset's demonic self. "We're only putting up with them out of self-preservation. Every indignity they subject us to, every secret they share with us, every weakness they display, we're keeping them all up here." She tapped her temple. "But no one else knows."
"Especially not me," said yet another voice.
A chill of dread swept through Sunset's body. She looked behind her and saw a smirking Twilight Sparkle.
"You're in total control of the information I get from this world." Twilight held up a journal with a painfully familiar stylized sun on the cover. "As far as I know, everything is perfectly fine, and you can keep it that way until it's too late."
"Too late?" Sunset echoed.
"Now that this world has some magic in it," said the other Sunset, "it may be worth conquering. And since we can so easily take control over the vast majority of that magic..." Her counterpart could hear the smug grin. "Well, I'm sure you can figure out the rest."
The pony-eared Sunset scowled. Her fists clenched. "That's not going to happen."
"Oh? Who could possibly stop us?"
"There is no us!" Sunset whirled to face herself, her fists glowed with her green magic. "I am going to stop you, here and now!"
Her demonic self barked out a laugh. "You think you can?"
"I know it!" Sunset thrust her hands forward and screamed as the arcane patterns for a horn blast filled her mind. The power streamed from her palms, filling her vision with blinding light as it slammed into the demon.
As her eyes cleared and the echoes of the blast faded, Sunset became aware of the sound of wheezing. After a few blinks, she could make out a broken form, barely alive.
A broken human form, with pony ears and long hair.
"What!?" The harsh subharmonics were in her own voice once again. She looked at her hands and saw red claws. "What!?"
The wheezing stopped, and only then did Sunset realize it had been laughter. "If you... would stop... yourself..." her doppleganger gasped, "you know... what you... must... do..." She went still, a cruel smile locked on her face.
"No." Tears streamed from Sunset's cheeks, only to boil off her cheeks. "No." Her hair flared out like a five-alarm blaze. "NO!"
The world was consumed in hellfire.
Within a sepulchral chamber, a great clangor disturbed the long silence as light leaked out to brush against crazed surfaces that did not welcome such intrusions.
A shadowed appendage flopped blindly about until it found the source of the disturbance, which it ensnared in its many tendrils and dragged towards the scrutiny of a baleful eye. This dread orb gazed long and deep into the secrets at the heart of the nuisance, and an orifice to its side emitted a long moan, as of an ancient thing that had seen ten thousand years and ten million mortal follies.
A pillar of flesh, its hue not found on any earthly spectrum, stretched out and brushed against a sigil that made the clamoring beacon quail and darken. Up and up the grasping tendrils carried it, until they brought it to rest against a cartilaginous, oblong ridge. Finally, the awakened one released an utterance that could perhaps be understood by the minds of men if they were daring or foolish enough to try:
"Hello?"
"Pinkie, I had a demon dream again."
Like an unspeakable obelisk raised by a hundred straining slaves, Pinkie Pie dragged herself into a half-erect position. Dark thoughts slunk through her mind like the beasts of some fetid swamp. Her voice was as the death croak of sanity itself. "It's two in the morning, Sunset."
"I know. I'm sorry. It's just that I thought I was past this. I can't be afraid to go to sleep for another month."
The cry of every mortal confronted with her own cosmic meaninglessness escaped Pinkie's lips: "Why me?"
"Well... my subconscious actually had a good point about me avoiding you and, well, might as well take steps to correct that, am I right?"
Inspiration sparked feebly in Pinkie's mind, an idea that, like her, was torn from the clutches of dream. "Go sing on the roof of the school or something."
There was no immediate response, and during that respite, Pinkie dared to hope that she might return to that strange realm lurking within the minds of men. Her eyelids sagged under the burden of awareness.
"Do you think that will help?"
Rage began to build in Pinkie's breast, as slow and inexorable as the heat death of the universe. "Sure, why not?"
"Thank you so much. I—"
"Hush. Pinkie fhtagn." With that, Pinkie ended the call, returned her phone to her nightstand, and flopped bonelessly back into bed.
The next afternoon, the Rainbooms were at their usual lunch table when Sunset said, "Pinkie, I wanted to thank you for your advice."
"You're welcome!" Pinkie paused. "Wait, what advice?"
"The singing on the roof of the school thing, to deal with my recurring nightmares." Sunset blinked as she realized what she just said.
The other girls seemed similarly surprised. "She told ya t' do what now?" Applejack asked.
Rainbow Dash shrugged. "Eh. Sounds like Pinkie to me."
Pinkie nodded. "It totally does!"
"In my defense," said Sunset, "it sounded like a really good idea at two o' clock this morning."
"I don't remember telling you to do that," said Pinkie, "but I do remember a dream where my grandpa was visiting, except he had an octopus for a head and I was helping him either plot the downfall of human civilization or bake a quiche." She shrugged "You know, either or. And there was definitely a point when he spoke in your voice. That was probably when you called!"
Silence stretched on for a bit after that. Rarity raised a finger. "Is... Is that a normal dream for you?"
Pinkie nodded. "Ever since Granny Pie got me the collected works of Heart Pounding Terror for my thirteenth birthday." She beamed. "Sometimes it's really fun to be horrified by humanity's insignificance in a vast, uncaring universe!"
The silence stretched for rather longer, until Sunset said, "If you say so, Pinkie."
"I do!"
"What was your nightmare about, Sunset?" said Fluttershy.
Sunset looked down and nudged at the remains of her salad with a fork. "Me arguing with demon me. Again." She looked back up and smiled. "But on the roof, I realized that just because I reflexively analyze everything to see how I can best take advantage of it, that doesn't make me a bad person."
Silence returned to the table for a bit until Applejack cleared her throat. "Wanna run that by us again, sugarcube?"
"Look, getting rainbowed in the face made me see how much of a jerk I was being, but it didn't change who I fundamentally am. Just the idea is..." Sunset shuddered. "Yeah, no. That's not harmony magic by any stretch of the imagination.
"Anyway, I'm still the same person as the girl who terrorized the school; I just have a conscience now. I can't help but think about how I can use things: people, places, opportunities. It's just how I see the world. But now I also think about how I can be of use to others. Like you guys." She looked around at four blank stares and a grin. "This isn't making sense to any of you, is it?"
"Nope."
"Not as such."
"Uh-uh."
"Well... no."
Pinkie just shook her head, the smile never leaving her face.
Sunset sighed. "Okay, it's... it's like how Rarity could take over the world."
Rarity nearly choked on an inopportune forkful of salad. Once she recovered, she cried, "Excuse me?"
Sunset held up her hands. "I mean that as a compliment! You have the social acumen, intelligence, and work ethic to run a successful fashion boutique and attend high school at the same time! Take it from me, you could bring the world to its knees in a matter of months, especially with us backing you up."
Rarity scoffed. "Why, the very idea—"
"I dunno, Rare." Applejack smirked. "I could get behind this idea, so long as there weren't no global dress code."
Dash jabbed Applejack with an elbow. "Come on, AJ, this is Rarity we're talking about. Of course there's gonna be a global dress code."
"I, for one, welcome our new fabulous overlord!" Pinkie saluted Rarity, her expression a model of grim severity.
Rarity shook her head. "You are all simply dreadful," she said, despite the trembling at the edges of her lips. "Fluttershy, you are clearly the only person here I can truly call a friend."
"Actually..." Fluttershy gave a pleased little grin. "I wouldn't mind being the head of the Fashion Police."
The entire table burst into laughter at that, Rarity included.
"So, yeah," Sunset said when they recovered. "It's like that. Just because I still think like an evil mastermind doesn't mean I have to act like one."
"You can be a good mastermind!" Pinkie cheered.
Sunset nodded. "Exactly. Thanks again, Pinkie. It was really cathartic."
"You're Welcome Hug!" Pinkie zipped around the table and nearly brought Sunset to the floor with the announced embrace.
Sunset shut her eyes and soaked in the friendship. She could almost hear the death knell of her darker self.
"Um, Sunset?" said Pinkie. "Why are there scorch marks on the back of your blouse?"
"Like I said, really cathartic."