Sunset and the Seven Girls

by Kinni

Suddenly, Ninjas

“So, what exactly was the problem?” Princess Twilight asked Sunset.

“Long story short, ninjas.” Sunset said.

Twilight gave Sunset a very unimpressed look “That was a little bit too short. Please, go on with the story so I can learn what exactly was happening.”

Sunset smiled and continued with the story.

+0+

Twilight and me went to the car and drove back to the city. We couldn't continue with the date, but there was also no reason to rush too much. After all, if things were really critical, the others could summon us via magic.

That had happened a few times, and one of those times both me and Rarity ended up learning that the magic was at least conscientious enough to dress up those of us who had been caught in... compromising situations.

+0+

Twilight put a hoof to her mouth, as if to stifle a laugh “I imagine that Rarity freaked out a lot before that was established.”

Sunset grinned at her “Yep. And it was soooo adorable.”

“And I really want to ask more about you and Rarity, but I'm not going to be distracted. Please, go on with your story.” Twilight asked.

+0+

Anyway, while we were coming back, Rarity sent an e-mail to our shared account, containing a report of what had happened.

Apparently, during one of her regular inspections of our magical keystones, Rainbow Dash discovered that three of them, which was almost half, had been stolen and replaced with very convincing fakes.

The message went on to say “She was lying, of course. I suppose she was too embarrassed to admit to what really happened. Considering that one of the fake ones she showed me was broken, I imagine that she simply tripped and fell into the trophy case and broke it by accident.”

“That really seems like something Rainbow Dash would do.” Twilight commented.

“So, this was revealed after three of them had already been stolen...” I muttered aloud “Looks like the story-magic based defenses we put on the keystones are working properly.” I told Twilight.

+0+

“Story magic...?” Twilight asked Sunset, her face scrunched up like she had sucked some abnormally bitter lemon.

“Yeah, story magic.” Sunset confirmed, shaking her head in sympathy “I know how you feel. Princess Celestia taught me about how dangerous it is. However, Human-Twilight and me came to the conclusion that it would be okay to use in a limited capacity, since that world still has very little magic.”

Twilight sighed “While I am relieved that the other world is probably not going to be subsumed by Stories, simply thinking about actually using such magic makes me a little sick.”

Sunset nodded in understanding “Anyway, like I was saying...”

+0+

Because the story magic protections would forbid the lack of conflict, they had arranged for the thefts to be found out just before the halfway mark, a conveniently dramatic point.

“I imagine that another one of the keystones will have been stolen by the time we get there.” Twilight said, pensively.

“Leaving us with only three left.” I continued the thought “At which point we would have two options...”

“Either setting traps on the remaining keystones, or using them as tools to track down whoever was responsible.” Twilight finished the idea.

The two of us fell silent for a few minutes, as we considered the positives and negatives of each approach as Twilight was driving us back home (we had already decided that she would be the driver for the return trip).

“Regardless, we'll probably end up left with only one keystone by the time things finish.” Twilight commented.

“Yeah, story magic is inconvenient because of things like that.” I agreed.

+0+

Sunset stopped her story for a moment upon seeing Twilight furiously scribbling words on the scrolls, apparently trying to work out her frustrations. It took over a minute, but she eventually took a deep breath and stopped.

“It's okay. I'm alright now.” Twilight said “I'm not going to get any more worked up over story magic anymore.”

“That's very mature of you, Twilight.” Sunset said with a grin.

Twilight just shook her head and motioned for her friend to continue.

+0+

The rest of the trip back didn't have anything of note. We arrived, placed the car back in its place and went back to the university. As soon as we entered the campus grounds, Pinkie ran right up to us and spoke, clearly out of breath:

“Sunset, Twi! It happened! It-”

“Another keystone was stolen, right?” Twilight understood quickly.

“Oh, how did you know that, Twi?” Pinkie asked “Did you finally figure out how to read minds with magic? Can you say what I'm thinking right now?” Pinkie put her index fingers on her temples “Oh, no?! I can't think of a specific thing to think about!” She exclaimed in horror.

“Sorry, Pinkie. I haven't figured out that spell yet.” Twilight spoke up “I just had a feeling that something like that was going to happen, is all.”

“Oh?” Pinkie tilted her head before leaning towards Twilight “So it's just because of your smart smartiness, then.”

“Twilight was the main designer of our protection spells, so of course she would know that kind of thing.” I said, putting a hand on Twilight's shoulder “But we don't have time to talk about that at the moment, let's go see the others.”

And soon enough, we were all gathered inside one of the empty classrooms, which we tended to use as meeting rooms, and by everyone, I mean the seven of us and Sunset as well, which I found to be a little unusual, so I asked about it.

Applejack was the one to answer “Sunset took a look at things, and she figured whoever did the thefts was using non-magical methods.”

“Oh, really? Could you explain to me in detail?” I asked Sunset.

“Well...” She said “I just looked at the crime scenes, and there was evidence of tampering on the lock of the crystal case, and also I took a look at the security camera footage and found certain spots where the image seemed to blink in and out, so I went to examine the cameras.

“There were some traces of adhesive on them, so I came to the conclusion that whoever did this must have taken pictures of what the cameras were supposed to be seeing, and placed those pictures in front of the lenses to do their thing.” She finished.

I was impressed “And then they removed the pictures before going away.” I continued the train of thought “That's some very impressive investigative work. I would like to hear how you learned to do this, but later, for now we have other things to worry about.”

“Like how to prevent them from getting the rest of the keystones.” Fluttershy said “If they managed to get control of the magical source, it would be... bad.”

“Yeah...” Twilight agreed “Sunset and me were talking about it on the way over, and there are two possibilities for things to do.” She said “We could either try to track them down via using a spell through our remaining keystones, or we could set up a trap on them to catch our thieves.”

“Actually, I've been thinking about that.” I said “And how about we do both things at once?”

“You mean... We should split up?” Rainbow Dash asked, understanding quickly.

“That's right.” I agreed “It would be a little bit of a pain to set up the spells in such a way so we can trap and track at the same time, but apart from that, I think doing things like that is only beneficial.”

It took a bit more discussion, which included Twilight objecting to my statement about that being only beneficial, as she pointed out that splitting our focus would make each of the approaches weaker than if we chose just one, to which I conceded.

Still, in the end we decided that even considering that, we would still go with my plan, since the potential positives outweighed the negatives.

We split up into two teams, with team tracking being me, Sunset, Rainbow Dash and Fluttershy. While team trap would be Twilight, Applejack, Pinkie Pie and Rarity.

Twilight and me started working on the spells we would use for our plan, and meanwhile, the others were preparing in the way they could for our missions. Besides Sunset, the others were focusing their magical power, while she seemed to be trying to keep her calm and not freak out.

It wasn't really working.

“Are you feeling all right?” Fluttershy noticed that, and tried to talk to her.

“I'm-” She shook her head, clearly rethinking her words “I don't know. Even though I said I wanted to help, I don't know if I'll be able to do anything.” She stopped again, trying to gather her thoughts “You girls are just so experienced and confident about those things, while I'm just a newcomer. What if I mess something up?”

+0+

“Ah, just to make things clear.” Sunset suddenly piped up “I didn't actually see any of it, since I was busy, so the details about that conversation might be not entirely correct, since they are from second hand, but the gist of it should be fine.”

“Thank you for the clarification.” Twilight said “I'll note this in my... notes.” She giggled a bit.

“Right. Back to the story.”

+0+

Surprisingly enough, Rainbow Dash was the one who helped Sunset with that.

“Hey, Shim.” (That was the nickname they had eventually settled on for human Sunset) “We may have experience on those kinds of things, but that doesn't mean we don't mess up.”

“As you would know very well.” Rarity joked, looking at Rainbow Dash with a small smirk.

“Hey, I'm trying to be cool here!” Dash spoke up, but without any real heat “But really, you did pretty well the first time you had to deal with something unexpected.” She returned to her conversation with Sunset “As long as we have each other's backs, we can make up for any mistakes we commit, so just do what you can and don't worry about being perfect.”

Sunset became speechless upon hearing that. It wasn't really a surprise, though, considering that Rainbow Dash was speaking from experience.

+0+

“Eventually, we finished our work, creating the two needed spells. They were separate but interlinked, since we wouldn't have been able to get it to work otherwise. We used two of the keystones as focuses for the spell, leaving just one without any spells in it.” Sunset said.

“I think I see where this is going...” Twilight spoke.

“Hey, no getting ahead of the story!” Sunset warned her.

“Ah, sorry.” Twilight replied, embarrassed.

“So...” Sunset continued “Since we would have to take the spelled tracker keystone to use it to search, the one we chose for that was the fall formal crown. The real one, not the stolen element of magic. Obviously.”

“Obviously.” Twilight smiled at the shared joke.

+0+

Anyway, it was decided that the operation would start at four in the afternoon, since that would give time for all of us to rest and prepare ourselves mentally for the task.

By which I mean we went to eat some burgers together, of course. (The defense group went to get ice cream, apparently.)

“How long do you think it'll take before we stop receiving weird looks when we're together?” I asked Sunset, who seemed to have calmed down a lot.

She smirked “I think it should take about two months for that to slow down, but we're never going to actually stop getting those looks.”

I shook my head “That sounds disturbingly plausible.”

“Still, it's pretty funny.” Rainbow put in her own two cents.

“Do you have any idea what we're going to be facing here?” Fluttershy asked, her cautiousness (which was the reason why they had put her in the tracking team) shining through.

“Considering their apparent knowledge of modern security measures, it's quite probably someone from our own world that has been empowered by some extra dimensional entity.” I replied “I believe it should be no more than one person, because it is very difficult to do such a thing multiple times. However, the empowered person may have normal underlings, potentially outfitted with magical weapons.

“The main enemy may be empowered, but they probably wouldn't have too much actual magical knowledge, so even though their abilities may be strong, they shouldn't be very versatile. Finding the weak points and striking them should lead us to victory.” I finished my analysis.

The other three nodded.

+0+

After we finished, I put on the necklace with the crown and started tracking. The four of us got into a car (Rainbow Dash on the driver's seat, of course) and I gave directions to head towards the stolen keystones.

Soon enough, it became clear that the target was in the city itself, not outside of it. We drove through the streets, eventually reaching downtown, which was a place with very few houses and a lot of factories and warehouses.

The place was very complicated and confusing, a veritable labyrinth of criss-crossing streets that resulted in several occasions were we had to turn back and take another path. It was pretty annoying.

However, eventually we managed to reach our target. It was a secluded warehouse that didn't seem to have been used in a while. Just to try and get the element of surprise, we actually drove past the warehouse and stopped after a curve, before leaving the car and walking to the warehouse in a group.

I took the point position, having shield spells prepared in case of any eventualities. Rainbow Dash was behind me, ready to use her speed spells to rush to wherever she was most necessary. Third was Fluttershy, quietly whispering a stealth spell. And in the rearguard was Sunset, who couldn't use the wand from before since we weren't on campus grounds, but had received a similar one that could feed of my magic. She was in charge of keeping watch for any surprises and giving covering fire if necessary.

Still, getting inside the place turned out to be surprisingly simple and uneventful, with me unlocking a side door with a small spell after figuring out the lack of any kind of alarm system, magical or otherwise. However, the calmness wouldn't last long.

As soon as I got past the side room we started with, I reached a large and empty loading area, and was immediately seen.

“Ah! Intruders!” The person who shouted was standing on top of a raised platform, and was much different than what I had expected.

She was a girl who looked to be only fourteen or fifteen, and who had blue eyes and hair. She was wearing a very strange combination of a pink dress and a brown overcoat.

Seeing that I was already exposed, I immediately activated an aura shield spell, stepping forward and looking around for any possible ambushes. The other three were just behind me.

There was no ambush, as it seemed like that girl was the only person inside, and I couldn't detect any extra defenses. However, before we could shift from defense to attack, the girl acted.

“Summon!” She shouted, holding both hands forward, showing that they had strange magic circles tattooed on their palms “Ninja Squad!”

I felt the distinctive smell of summoning magic, as six magic circles appeared on the warehouse, four on the walls, one on the ground only a few feet away from us, and even one on the ceiling. And they weren't small either.

I was shocked by the amount of sheer power the summoner had put on display, and hadn't actually processed her words, so I was shocked again when the wave of magic passed, and the space of the circles was filled with dozens of stereotypical ninja, black garb and all.

After a moment, they advanced in our direction, some doing wall jumps, some swinging on weird whips and some doing completely unnecessary cartwheels.

+0+

Once again, Princess Twilight had been left with a twitching eye.

“Magic to summon ninja? Seriously?” She asked.

Sunset shook her head “Please, don't make me have this discussion again, I already had it with my Twilight.” She blinked “In fact, why don't I hand you a transcript of that conversation, that would answer any questions you could have, right?” Sunset smiled wanly.

Without a word, Twilight passed a scroll and quill to Sunset, causing the unicorn to sigh in relief.

The rest of the story would have to wait.

Author's Note:

That took a while, but the next chapter should wrap this little plot up for now.

I hope you're liking it.

Comments

[Crystal Static]

Yay, more of this!

[DavisSentoV5]

Yep, things just got officially weird.

[Snowdrifter]

Nah, summoning a lot of ninjas means individual ninjas are weak. Conservation of Ninjutsu, and all that. One really good Ninja per portal would have been better.

Good thing this villain doesn't read TV Tropes.

[TwinAttorney864]

Wait, is this based of off the story 'For the Love of Sunset'?

[Pete100]

10846727
Oh ok.

[Pete100]

Apparently, during one of her regular inspections of our magical keystones, Rainbow Dash discovered that three of them, which was almost half, had been stolen and replaced with very convincing fakes.

Keystones?

“So, this was revealed after three of them had already been stolen...” I muttered aloud “Looks like the story-magic based defenses we put on the keystones are working properly.” I told Twilight.

Story-magic?

Sunset shook her head “Please, don't make me have this discussion again, I already had it with my Twilight.” She blinked “In fact, why don't I hand you a transcript of that conversation, that would answer any questions you could have, right?” Sunset smiled wanly.

What kind of questions did twilight need answers to?

[AngelaCA]

Yes more please!