The following morning felt like the first time in ages that Sunset was happy to actually wakeup and get out of bed. She had exhausted herself the night before trying to get a grip on her new magic and had been able to get a handle on invisibility as well as learning that she once again had telekinesis that took on several forms and some kind of pyromancy. The invisibility took a lot of focus and could be draining and extremely difficult to do while moving and the telekinesis seemed to work best with water or small objects. The same thing for the pyromancy as it seemed to work better when using it with water creating steam, though she had also managed to create several small fires with.
Today she planned on doing something a little more risky as she intended to explore her fishy form a little more in-depth. At first she didn’t want anything to do with it as it reminded her too much of the sirens, yet she didn’t feel any urges to cause trouble or go all evil once again so she decided it was something that needed to be done. It had something to do with her regaining magic and she truly needed to understand all of it if she intended to gain complete control of it. She just wasn’t sure what to do with it when she did.
After a quick breakfast of a single banana and a can of diet cola from the basket, Sunset set off for the beach. It looked as if it was going to be a beautiful day and she was going to enjoy it as much as she could since she was now free. Free of all the hassle and heartache that came with staying in Canterlot where all of her friends turned their backs on her.
“Fuck them!” Sunset hissed as she took a running start and dived into the water, changing ten seconds later to her other form. She was still shocked that she could breath underwater like she could, but she was a little shocked that she could see clearly as well. It was most likely just because it was sunny even this early and the light filtering trough the clear water lit up the underwater world.
Awe would be an understatement for what Sunset was feeling as she explored around Mako, seeing all of the different colored fish and reefs and the plants, the plants were so weird yet awesome! It was a whole new paradise and as far as she knew nobody else could enjoy this since humans seemed to not believe in magic or breathing underwater without some kind of equipment.
“Excuse me, are you new here?” A small, almost squeaky sounding voice asked from behind Sunset. Slowly she turned around to see the weirdest sight that she had ever witnessed in her life. Some kind of crab wearing a plastic shell of a toy car was riding a long, snake like creature. It took a few moments for Sunset to actually remember that she had seen these types of creatures before. She was sure they were a hermit crab and some kind of eel, but they couldn’t talk.
“Are you okay, dearie?” The eel asked making Sunset’s jaw drop. The fish things were talking to her. The fish things were talking to her!!!
“You can talk?” Sunset asked hesitantly, her eyes widened in shock.
“Of course we can talk, humans just can’t understand us.” The crab said, “My name is Bernie and this here is Zita. You must be a new mermaid.”
“Mermaid?” Sunset asked before remembering that movie that she thought was a silly story about the mermaid that Fluttershy watched during one of their sleepovers before the battle of the bands took place. Sunset had fallen asleep within minutes of it starting and despite Rainbow waking her up several times, Sunset didn’t really pay much attention to it.
“I should introduce you to the girls, they’ve been mermaids for about a year now.” Bernie said excitedly, before his features creased in worry. “That will have to wait though, I’m warning everyone that a great white has been spotted in the area so you need to be extra careful. If you see the girls on land, please tell them to be careful if they come here.”
“Sure, whatever you say.” Sunset said, feeling almost as if she was cracking up. She was talking to a fish! Technically a crab and eel, but it was the same thing!
“Gotta go, we have a lot more work to do warning everyone.” Bernie said waving goodbye as Zita swam off with the crab riding on her head.
“Yeah, bye.” Sunset replied with a halfhearted wave. What the hell was going on, she was taking to a fish! Shaking the shocking revelation from her head, she swam on exploring the area and found that she could actually swim much faster than anyone on the swim team back at CHS.
Seeing several old looking wooden posts sticking down into the water, Sunset warily moved around them before sticking her head above water gasping for air as her body seemed to switch from water to oxygen, or whatever happened. It wasn’t painful, but she could feel the shift as oxygen filled her lungs. She was under an old looking dock and could see a trailer park a few minutes walk from there with a path leading from it to the dock.
Hearing a sniffle, Sunset turned and saw Rikki sitting at the end, her legs pulled up to her chest as she hugged them. It sounded as if she was crying which Sunset tried to ignore, but after what the girl did for Sunset yesterday she just couldn’t. Swimming around she quietly dragged herself on shore and hoped that her magic would work doing this. She made a claw like shape with her fingers, feeling her body heat up a little. It was easy to gauge how much heat she needed as the water evaporated from her.
After changing back, Sunset stood at the end of the dock connected to land looking out at the girl at the other end. She wasn’t really too sure what to do as this wasn’t something she was good at. How was she supposed to comfort a stranger anyways? Cursing herself for her hesitation, she started the short walk down the dock intent on doing what she could to repay the favor of letting Sunset keep the tent and food that was left in the basket. Even if the bread was starting to go stale.
“Hey.” Sunset said, sitting down next to Rikki. It was a little closer than she meant, but she didn’t want to insult the girl by scooting away. “You okay?”
“Go away.” Rikki said, anger in her voice. The girl didn’t turn to look at Sunset, but it was easy to tell she was trying to hold back her tears from the strained tone of voice.
“I could do that, or you could tell me what’s wrong. I’m told an impartial ear can sometimes help what’s troubling you.” Sunset said, giving what she hoped was a kind, reassuring smile as the girl looked up at her. Her eyes were red and puffy
“I messed up, okay? I lost my friends because of a stupid mistake.” Rikki growled, pulling her legs closer to her chest. “I didn’t know what else to do, I didn’t have much of a choice.”
“I lost all of my friends lately too.” Sunset sighed, looking out over the water. She couldn’t help feeling for the other girl despite not having any intentions of making friends. She did want to help her, to pay her back.
“What happened?” Rikki asked softly, looking up at Sunset as she wiped the tears from her eyes.
“I admit I used to be a bully, but I really tried to change my ways and be a good person. I thought I was making progress when I made some really good friends and I thought I earned most everyone’s trust. Then somebody started posting secrets of my friends first of all then branching out to the entire school. It was an anonymous account, but used my colors and even a silhouette of me. Everyone blamed me and my friends turned their backs on me. I was blamed for it and expelled from my school and didn’t really have a lot of money to do much else than come here.”
“I know how that feels, not having a lot of money. My dad and me never had much money and had to move more than once when work dried up and we couldn’t afford to stay there any longer.” Rikki sighed, “I didn’t even have enough money to buy juice half the time when we met up at the Juicy Bar.”
“Made excuses about having things to do or told them you weren’t really in the mood for juice too?” Sunset asked, getting a shocked nod from the other girl as confirmation of her suspicions. “Me to, I hated admitting to not having money to do things. They told me that they didn’t care about me not having money, they only cared about being friends.”
“I want to think Emma and Cleo thought that way, but their families are pretty well off. Heck, Emma’s parents are practically loaded.” Rikki said, looking up into the sky. “I heard some girls making fun of people living in the trailer park when we first became friends. Emma just laughed at them, agreeing with them.”
“Are you sure that she agreed with them, or was she laughing at them for being stupid?” Sunset asked, cocking her head in question.
“She agreed with them!” Rikki snapped angrily, though the anger slowly drained from her face as a thoughtful look replaced it. “I think anyways, it’s how things always go. Nobody wants to be my friends because I’m the freak that lives in a trailer. Everywhere we moved it was the same.”
“What caused the fight with your friends in the first place?” Sunset asked, wondering what did happen with the other girls. If Rikki was this upset about them, they must have been somewhat close. Hell Rikki seemed to really care for them.
“It happened a few weeks ago, work was slow for my dad so he took a job that I guess was more dangerous than usual. He hurt his back and broke his leg and since he wasn’t getting much work besides that we couldn’t really make the rent. We got a notice that if we didn’t pay up soon, we would be evicted.” Rikki explained, “Last week, my boyfriend Zane came to me about a ship that sunk a few miles off shore and they were offering a reward of $10,000 dollars to anyone who could find a crate that had some kind of thing that belonged in a museum.”
“How did your friends get involved if this is what happened with them?” Sunset asked, not exactly sure how that could even have caused trouble with the friends.
“My friends don’t really like my boyfriend, he can be a bit of a pain. He used to be a bully of sorts too, but it’s all a front to protect himself because of his dad. Everybody wants to be close to him because of his dad’s money and his dad isn’t really father of the year material.” Explained Rikki as she looked at her watch. “If they knew he wanted to get the crate because of a reward they would never have helped him. So I told them it was for the museum and that the thing deserved to be protected by them and not rotting at the bottom of the ocean. They helped me dive and look for it, but when Zane let it slip about the reward they turned on him saying they should have known. Emma told me to come on and let him find it himself.”
“You didn’t go, did you?” Sunset asked, already knowing the answer. She also knew that Rikki had messed up, but if they other two was as close of friends as Rikki thought them to have been, they would have realized something was wrong.
“How could I, if I didn’t find it we would be evicted. It isn’t much, but it’s our home.” Rikki sniffed, “I admitted it was my idea and they left me there. I kept looking and I found it, but when we were raising it the rope broke and the crate fell and hit me in the head. If Zane didn’t realize something was wrong and dive in after me, I might have died.”
“Oh shit.” Sunset hissed out softly, seeing how much that affected the girl. She was shaken up about almost dying as she was about her friends being angry with her.
“Zane is the only one who knew, he was about to call somebody for help, but I woke up in time to stop him. I had to get stitches, but it wasn’t that bad. If Zane didn’t come get me though, it could have ended up being a lot worse.” Rikki explained, looking at her watch again. “Look, I have to go, I need to make some lunch for my dad and me.”
“It was nice meeting you, I really hope that things work out with your friends.” Sunset said, smiling at the girl as they got up. “Maybe we can meet up again sometime.”
“That would be nice.” Rikki said with a nervous smile before turning and hurrying off. Sunset however was mentally beating herself up as she didn’t have any plans on meeting up with Rikki often or becoming friends with her. She had enough of friends to last a lifetime. A little walk through town though would be nice though while she was here.
Rainbow Dash collapsed on the park bench, breathing heavily as she rested from her morning jog. She had to admit it was kind of nice not having to hold back and waiting for Sunset as the girl had joined her in her jogs. Even if it was kind of nice, she would give anything to have her friend back even if she had to hold back at least 20% more than usual.
It was hard to believe that they had messed up so badly blaming Sunset Shimmer when they should have been there for their friend. They should have known that it wasn’t Sunset after seeing the girl breakdown in the middle of CHS, and yet anger had clouded their vision.
Anger, something she couldn’t help feeling for her surrogate little sister. She loved Scootaloo, always would, but she refused to talk to the girl right now. She refused to talk to any of the three girls that were involved in framing Sunset Shimmer. She was afraid that if she was around any of them for a prolonged period of time that she would hit them. Something she would never do seeing how much younger they were, but she was just so angry with them.
She loved them though, that hadn’t changed. It would take a little more time, but she would eventually hang out with them more sometime. She couldn’t right now though even if she wanted. Scootaloo was grounded all summer having to do volunteer work until her mother told her otherwise. The funny thing was that it was at the library which was a place Scootaloo normally avoided like the plague seeing how much the younger girl hated the place. It was kind of a suiting punishment, though nothing they could do would take back the pain they had caused.