• Published 24th Jun 2017
  • 1,804 Views, 61 Comments

Synchrony - Fangren



It's Saturday, and everyone in Canterlot City has things to do. But trouble waits for nobody, and a few chance encounters are all it takes to send things spiraling out of control.

  • ...
1
 61
 1,804

Chapter 6 - Searching

Starlight Glimmer was, for the first time in a good while, looking forward to the day. Sure, she was flat broke in an unfamiliar city and her 'riding partner' was being just as stubbornly foul-tempered as always, but none of that really mattered. Not when she had a mystery to solve. And a real, tangible, surmountable one, too – not just 'why does nobody agree with me' or 'how has nobody thought of these things before'.

Oh no. This mystery wasn't like that. Sure, it didn't feel like it'd be easy to solve, but that didn't mean she wouldn't try. Come hell or high water, Starlight was determined to uncover the truth of her 'riding partner' Sunset Shimmer before they left Canterlot.

She sighed happily as she walked down the sidewalk through the worst neighborhood of the city. A passerby looked perturbed by her cheer but she didn't care; she had something to do that wasn't just the same old depressing same old. Granted, she'd still have to do the same old things first – she wasn't going to get far without money and the lay of the land – but that was another thing she didn't mind. She was a great multitasker.

As she walked, she made notes of the city around her on the pocket-sized notepad she carried. The occasional fast food joint or corner store selling cheap food; rarer establishments liked used book or antique stores that struck her interest; even dumpsters and public trash cans she could dig through for returnables; any place that looked useful to her she jotted down. Even – or perhaps especially – a sleazy-looking pawn shop she figured would buy just about anything with no questions asked.

She'd be visiting that establishment a lot, she suspected.

All in all, it was slow going. Granted, that was entirely by choice – she could have breezed through the city on her motorcycle if she so chose, but that wasn't her style. Too loud and flashy when she wanted to stay in the background; too fast when she wanted to take both time and notes. No, she'd leave the roaring around town for Sunset. Starlight was content just leaving her bike locked and covered in the back of their motel and going it by foot.

A crosswalk light turned green as she approached it, and she smiled at her luck. She readjusted the bag she always carried on her shoulder, tied tight and durable to dissuade thieves, and carried on through the intersection. A light breeze tussled her hair, and all she could think about was how promising the day was.

She sorely wished that Sunset Shimmer was not having nearly as good a time.

As it happened, Sunset Shimmer was enjoying herself. Or at least, she was enjoying herself as well as she could in the city that she'd grown up in, the city which she'd turned her back on all those years ago. There was a certain sense of familiarity in the scenery around her and the wind whipping across her as she sped through the city streets; it almost felt as though she'd finally come home.

But she quickly dissuaded herself of that notion. She didn't have a home, she never had. Not at the orphanage, not on the streets, not even on the open road. Even the schools, where she'd been so eager to prove herself and grow better in some intangible way during her early years had only brought her frustration and disappointment in the end. But she didn't need a home.

What she needed was power. Power enough to do what she wanted, power enough to never be afraid. Power enough to stand up to the world and prove, once and for all, that she and she alone deserved to stand at the top of it. Power was what she craved, and power was what she lacked. She prided herself on her intelligence, her cunning, her strength, her skill, her agility, her charisma. But as great as she knew she was, it had never been enough. She wasn't yet as great as she could be. And that is what had brought her back to Canterlot.

Well, that and logistics. But the logistics weren't important. The logistics hadn't made her want to come back to the one place where someone might remember who she had once been.

That honor belonged to a series of peculiar rumors that had been floating around since last fall. Tales of supernatural occurrences, of unexplained explosions and lights. Tales of magic, and girls who wielded it. Sunset had been content to dismiss the claims as the hoaxes they obviously were; at best an elaborate prank or some kind of publicity stunt for a movie or something. She had fully expected the truth to come out in due time, by force or by volition.

But it didn't. Nobody credible came forward to take credit, and no hypotheses about the initial incidents were ever proven. They weren't ever even more than a blip on the media coming out of the city. The rumor mill churned and spun its wheels, fueled by a third incident in the spring and another just at the start of summer, but still was unable to produce anything meaningful.

Until the dam broke about a week ago, when photos and videos started flooding in featuring a pair of costumed 'superheroines' that had appeared in the city. It quickly reached the level that even the tabloids began to cover it, and as loathe as she was to admit it that's when Sunset began to take the rumors seriously too.

It was ludicrous, the idea of magic. Attractive, certainly, but ludicrous. The world simply didn't work that way. She'd seen the math. But at the same time, what risk was there in investigating it for herself? It was happening in a fairly convenient location, geographically speaking. And she was completely confident that she wouldn't be caught, 'missing person' or not. And the reward, fantastical though it was, would be out of this world.

After all, if two people had gotten hold of some kind of superpowers, then why couldn't a third? All she'd have to do is track them down and find out where they'd gotten the powers from, and replicate whatever it was they'd done. Not exactly the easiest task in the world, true, but Sunset knew she was up to it.

And if it really was all just a hoax like she suspected, well, then at least she'd get the pleasure of busting it herself and gloating about it online. Not the worst consolation prize, she decided.

She stopped at an intersection, but rather than searching the skyline for the superheroes she was tracking Sunset found her gaze drifting to the right. There, to her surprise, was the familiar facade of White Pine Elementary School where she'd spent much of her youth.

“Crap, why'd I have to come to this part of town,” she muttered through clenched teeth, stubbornly glaring up at the traffic light and willing it to turn green. But try as she might to ignore the school, she found her eyes drifting back towards it – they'd gotten a new playground installed, she noted. And as soon as she thought that, something else bubbled up from the depths of her memory.


Bacon-head! Bacon-head! Nerdy little bacon-head!”

The chant came from a trio of jeering boys who had cornered her next to the big climber and pushed her down.

She grit her teeth, growled, and clenched fistfuls of gravel. “Sh-shut up!” she shouted, weakly throwing one hand's worth of pebbles at them. Most missed, but a few bounced harmlessly off their bellies or legs.

They laughed. “Oh yeah?” the leader challenged. “Why don't you go cry about it to your mommy?”

She gave him the most hateful look her nine-year-old body could manage, knowing what was coming next but powerless to stop it.

Oh wait!” the leader said as though suddenly remembering something, mocking grins already on the faces of his buddies. “You don't have one!” All three boys broke out into raucous laughter again.

I...I said SHUT UP!” she screamed, pushing herself back to her feet and throwing her other hand of gravel right into the lead boy's face – open mouth and unprotected eyes included. He yelped in pain, and she took the chance to push her way past him and his stunned buddies. They yelled angry threats after her, but she didn't care. Tears and snot streaming down her face as she ran, Sunset's thought were consumed by hatred – for her tormentors, for the world, and for her own weakness.


A stream of angry honking snapped her back to the present, and a quick glance at the green light above her was all she needed to get her back going again.

The bullying hadn't stopped until she had gotten strong enough to make it stop. By then she'd realized just how cruel the world was, and just how little it wanted to take her side. If she wanted to keep herself from being beaten down, then she needed to be the one doing the beating down. All the people around her that wanted her to just bare it and be a nice little girl, the teachers and the caretakers at the orphanage and all the other weakling students, they were just holding her back.

Beating her down, or holding her back. That's all anybody had ever tried to do for her. No matter how strong she got, that never seemed to change.

Which was why, as nice a consolation prize as being right would be, she wanted those powers so much more.

Starlight Glimmer was, as expected, completely lost. Not lost in the sense that she didn't know where she was or where she'd been, of course; that was basically impossible with her brilliant mind. No, she was lost in the sense that she had no idea how to get to where she wanted to go. She'd managed to document enough of the area around her motel that she was ready to move on to more interesting venues, she just hadn't yet figured out where those venues were.

And after nearly an hour straight of walking, she was ready for a bit of rest. She could keep going, of course, if she wanted to; she just didn't. It didn't make sense to exhaust herself on foot when she never knew when she'd have to run for it.

Plus she'd lucked into finding a few small bills or coins that had been dropped on the ground, and was eager to see what Canterlot's bus system was like. She'd heard good things about it online.

Of course, thinking practically, she wanted to make sure that nothing interesting was in the immediate area first. The last thing she wanted was to waste money on a one-block bus trip, after all. It would also help if she found a local to ask for directions – preferably someone naïve enough to not question why Starlight couldn't just look it up online via the smartphones that people her age were automatically assumed to have. And if she failed to find someone like that, well, she had plenty of invented excuses and fake backstory to fall back on, along with plenty of experience in lying.

She smiled to herself and stifled a giggle, thinking about how she'd do it. She'd start off by scoping out someone waiting for a bus stop; if she thought they looked easy she'd make her approach. She'd act like she was studying the route information that was posted by each one, and after a little bit she'd ask her mark if that bus would take her where she wanted to go. Probably the library; those were always good places to rest and promised easy internet access so she could get access to better maps of the city.

Her mark would probably just give her a simple answer, but if they asked questions Starlight would deflect them with practiced ease. Then she'd simply thank them for their help, and act on the directions she'd been told. It was a simple and straightforward plan, with minimal risk of anything bad happening.

She simply had to find a target.

And lucky her, she found one on her second trip around the block. It was a purple-skinned girl about her age, probably a tad younger, sitting all alone on the bus stop bench. Her thick glasses, long ponytail, and multiple heavy bags of what looked like electronics outed her as a major geek despite her feminine attire; the clothes themselves screamed upper-middle class at bare minimum. She had an air of general cluelessness about her that made Starlight smile.

She approached casually, looking at the girl only just long enough to confirm that she wasn't paying her any mind. Then Starlight began to enact her genius plan – she spent a few seconds hemming and hawwing over the bus schedule, tapping her chin in as she went over it in her head. Then, once she'd had enough of that, she let out an irritated sigh and turned around.

“Excuse me,” she opened, catching the girl's attention with a friendly smile. “I'm new in town, and I could use some help getting around.” She pointed at the schedule. “Do you know if I can take this bus to the library?”

“The library?” the girl repeated, clearly taken off-guard by the question as she stood up and moved for a closer look at the schedule. She adjusted her glasses and said “Oh no, at least not directly. You'll have to take this bus to 4th street,” she pointed out the relevant stop on the schedule and map, “then catch the 45. That'll take you to the library.”

“Rrriiiight...,” Starlight said slowly, committing the instructions to memory. That step had gone smoothly, so she decided it was time for her to move on to the next step of her brilliant master plan: awkwardly waiting for the bus in silence with a stranger. “Thanks.”

“No problem!” the other girl said cheerily, clasping her hands behind her back before doing the one thing Starlight didn't want her to: Continue the conversation. “It's not every day I meet someone who's trying to find the library.”

“Well...,” Starlight said, dearly wishing the girl would take the hint to leave her alone, “you know what they say, knowledge is power!”

She did not take the hint. “I'm Twilight Sparkle,” she said, holding out her hand. “I'm too busy today to show you around the entire city, but I'll be happy to answer any questions you have while we're on the bus!”

Starlight swore, though fortunately only inside her own head. After far too much deliberation she decided to shake Twilight Sparkle's hand, though no longer than she felt was necessary. “Thanks...,” she said, stalling as she frantically remembered the fake name she'd decided to use in Canterlot. “I'm, uhh, Amethyst Shine.”

“Nice to meet you, Amethyst!” Twilight replied, apparently completely oblivious.

“Yeah, nice to meet you too...” Starlight said without even a tenth of the enthusiasm, much less the ability to maintain eye contact.

It was then that she heard a voice of such impossible familiarity that Starlight felt she had to be mistaken. “Sorry, Twilight, they were out of the chocolate-raspberry kind so I just got you a chocolate and a raspberry. I hope that's okay.” Starlight finally deigned to look at the newcomer, and her jaw dropped from the sheer weight of her shock and disbelief.

Standing before her, holding two packages of some kind of snack cake, was Sunset Shimmer.

'No,' Starlight thought. 'It can't be.'

“It is,” Twilight answered the new girl. “Thank you, Sunset.”

Sunset.

Sunset.

Sunset.

The name rang in Starlight's thoughts like a church bell, drowning out everything else for what felt like an eternity. The first thing to pierce through it was a resounding 'What?', followed by an utterly stupefied 'How?'

That was enough to unplug the rest of Starlight thoughts, and soon they were racing through her mind. 'Sunset is here and she knows this girl and she hasn't said anything and what on Earth am I supposed to do about any of this?!'

After doing several laps around that mental circuit her thoughts raced off to her mouth, and before she could stop herself she'd blurted out “Sunset?!” She realized her mistake instantly and snapped her hands over her mouth lest she say anything else that was potentially incriminating, but she could tell the damage had already been done.

Twilight and the other Sunset shared a confused look. “Uh...do I...know you?” the doppelganger asked.

Then, all at once, Starlight noticed all the little details she'd missed in her shock – the different outfit and completely different style from what Sunset preferred; the long hair; the way she carried herself; the absence of a scar over her left eye; the fact that she seemed genuinely confused; the fact that she hadn't so much as glared at Starlight yet...

Starlight swore inside again. 'This isn't her!'

“N-no!” Starlight forced herself to say, lowering her hands and laughing awkwardly. “Of course not, we've never met before in our lives!

'Abort! Abort! Abort!'

“I just...thought you were someone else!” Which was the truth, and Starlight was thankful for its refuge. “Sorry,” she added quickly, putting her hands behind her back and taking a slinking step backwards. “IjustrememberedIhavesomewhereelsetobe, bye!”

She turned and bolted away at top speed, all other goals forgotten in the name of escaping whatever blunder she'd just made.

'Twins!' Starlight rapidly concluded as she ran, uncaring of the pedestrians she was barging through. 'Identical twins. That has to be it, why else would they look the same?' Her mind briefly stumbled over their shared name, but Starlight quickly overcame it. 'It's unusual, but not entirely unheard of in some larger families. That other Sunset must be Sunset Radiance, or Sunset Horizon, or something like that! Though it is pretty strange that they'd both go by the family name instead of their second name...'

In the presence of something new to puzzle out and the absence of any sign that she was currently being pursued, Starlight's instincts allowed her body to slow down to a brisk walking pace. 'And come to think of it, I could've sworn that Sunset Shimmer was an orphan. Maybe they were separated at birth?'

Then a new idea bubbled up into her thoughts, one that made Starlight smile as other details began to click together. 'Or maybe I was taking her talk about not having any family too literally? Maybe she really just...ran away from them, like I did? That would explain why she didn't wanna come back here.' Her smile widened at her next thought. 'Oh, I can just imagine her getting overshadowed by her twin sister when they were growing up, it totally explains why she's so touchy about being the best.'

And then came another thought that wiped away her smile. 'She is not gonna be happy if she finds out I ran into her twin sister...' Starlight cast a nervous glance behind her to double-check that she wasn't being followed.

To her horror, she was – and by the other Sunset, no less. A startled cry accompanied her fight-or-flight response kicking back into full flight, and once more she took off at top speed down the sidewalk.

She didn't think as she barreled through whole groups of people walking together; she didn't have the time. All Starlight could do was look for an escape route, which was no easy task on a busy and unfamiliar street – she ended up taking a risk on a random alley between some pizza place and one of the book stores she'd found earlier. She didn't have the foggiest idea what it would lead to, but she didn't care.

She actually smiled when she saw it led to a dead end. 'Perfect,' she thought as she calculated the speed and distance she'd need and forced her body to adjust. And exactly when she needed to she launched herself at the wall at the end of the alley, and gripped it with her foot in just the right way to get herself moving upward. With a jump she easily managed to grab the top of the wall and scrambled the rest of the way up in seconds, flinging herself over the lip and onto the flat roof beyond.

With the sound of hurried footsteps entering the alley just moments later Starlight willed herself to be silent, inwardly thanking all that time she'd spent with that group of freerunners.

“What?! Where'd she go?!” she heard the other Sunset exclaim, and it was enough to make her smile.

Laying flat on her back while she caught her breath, Starlight pumped a fist in triumph. Then came a heavier set of footsteps, and for a moment Starlight tensed up in preparation to flee again.

She didn't have to. “What...happened?” came the voice of Twilight Sparkle, who sounded like she'd never run before in her life.

“I don't know!” the other Sunset said, and Starlight could only imagine how frantic she looked. “I swear she came down here, but then it's like she just...disappeared!

“Disappeared? Do you think...” Though she heard Twilight start to reply, despite her best straining efforts Starlight couldn't make out what she said next. And for a few seconds she thought that would be it.

Then the other Sunset replied. “I don't know, maybe? I mean, I didn't feel any magic being used, but what else could it be?”

“What?” Starlight mouthed to herself in sheer disbelief over what she just heard. She gave her head a shake and cleared out a speck of wax, then craned her head in as close as she felt safe to hear more.

“...however she escaped, Amethyst Shine is pretty suspicious. We need to keep an eye out for her from now on,” she heard the other Sunset say, and Starlight had to slap her hands over her mouth to keep her cover.

“Do you think we should tell the others about her? If nothing else, they should be able to approach her without scaring her off. I don't think she'll want to talk to us if we see her again.”

Her hands still covering her mouth, Starlight's eyes widened. 'Not good!'

In her panic, she nearly didn't register the other Sunset's reply. “But not right now, I'd prefer it if we didn't miss the bus again.”

A beat, followed by a joint exclamation, followed by the sound of two teenage girls racing out of the alleyway.

It was minutes before Starlight had calmed down enough to remove her hands and sit up. “What the heck did I just get myself into?!” she asked, still clutching her heart. “Did I seriously hear them assume I used magic to escape?! What are they, in some kind of cult or something?!”

A realization struck her hard enough that she bolted to her feet, her eyes somehow finding the room to widen even more. “They said they were gonna tell their friends to keep an eye out for me,” she said, her voice barely more than a stunned whisper. Her eye twitched. “Sunset's twin sister is part of some crazy cult that believes in magic, and now they're after me.” Another twitch, and she let out a pathetic little laugh. “It hasn't even been a day yet.”

She fell back into a sitting position, too shocked to care. “I think I'm starting to understand why Sunset didn't wanna come back here. I gotta lay low.”

Sunset was about ready to take a break. Between the traffic, the irritatingly familiar sights and the memories that came with them, and the general uneventfulness of her search she was getting tired of being on the road and had shifted her focus to looking for a good spot to pull over and rest.

There was also the fact that running her bike wasn't free. If she kept wandering the city for the rest of the day she'd have to buy gas again, and her wallet wasn't exactly overflowing right now – not after the refill yesterday and paying for the motel room. And she hadn't even taken into account food yet, either...

She found a cheap burger joint and pulled into the parking lot it shared with three other businesses, but no sooner did she turn off her engine than her plans were forced to change. It was heralded by a chorus of gasps and car brakes that was just enough to turn Sunset's head; but rather than the crash she expected she caught a glimpse of something bluish fly past over the street.

It being much larger than any bird was brow-raising enough; the distinct rainbow it left in its wake may as well have been a glowing signboard reading 'FOLLOW ME' in big, blinking lights.

Sunset quickly turned her bike back on, letting it idle as she pulled a day-old tabloid clipping from the pocket of her jacket. She unfolded it to see the black-and-white pictures of her two targets, and an unearthly smile formed on her lips as she confirmed that she'd just seen one of them.

Without hesitation she stuffed the clipping back into her pocket, turned her bike around, and roared back onto the street.


Even on her motorcycle it was hard for Sunset to keep up with the superhero girl, who she decided must have some level of super-speed in addition to the flying. She did take consolation in the fact that the rainbow trail made her easier to track, though, as well as the fact that other people were on her trail as well. She had noticed the various groups of nerdy-looking paparazzi roaming the city when she'd still been searching, but now that she was actively chasing as well she could better see what they had been doing.

From what she could tell, the packs had spread out enough to see hero-girl no matter where she flew. And they were communicating with each other, so that when one pack was on the trail they'd tell the other groups so that they could converge.

And once she realized that, Sunset was baffled by the level of coordination they had. It was effective, yes, but she would have expected them to be more cutthroat and competitive in their bids to break such a fantastical story. She wasn't complaining, since it made her life easier – follow the photogs to find the hero-girl – but it made her suspicious.

She could figure it out later, she decided. No time to waste puzzling over other people's motives when she should be paying attention to the road and the skies.

But even with her full focus on tracking the girl down, Sunset was having trouble keeping up. Sometimes she would spot the rainbow trail and speed off to follow it, only to spot the roving paparazzi headed in the direction she'd come from after only a few turns. Other times the trail would go cold entirely, even the packs of nerds looking lost as to where their target was. Sunset took solace in the fact that while they seemed to devolve into frustration during those brief cold period, she welcomed the challenge.

'She can fly, you idiots,' she thought to herself as she waited at a stoplight, watching one of the packs argue over where they should go next. 'Of course she's gonna be hard to follow!'

It was at the end of one such cold period that she got her next lead – an angry shout from a couple blocks ahead, followed by the squeal of tires and honking of horns that implied a barely-avoided accident. Sunset quickly spotted the familiar rainbow trail over a row of buildings on her right and sped off in pursuit, no longer bothering to follow the rules of the road.

And as she drew closer she saw another figure, this one dressed in purples with a long and billowing cape, leap into the intersection she was approaching. But by the time Sunset recognized her from the picture in her pocket, the other superhero had somehow disappeared – spinning in mid-air one moment, gone the next. It shocked Sunset enough that she nearly lost control of her bike; had incoming traffic not been stopped at a red light, she would've been in trouble.

“AAGH! Darn it, not again!” she heard the rainbow-trail-girl shout from the rooftop of the bagel shop that purple-cape had leaped from. “GET BACK HERE AND FACE ME!” she added before taking off like a shot.

Sunset's smile, dark and excited, was hidden by the gleam from her helmet as she sped up and took off through the busy street. She quickly passed the gaggle of rubberneckers and photographers that had picked up the chase as well.


Surprisingly, Sunset had little trouble keeping the flying one in sight after that. For whatever reason the girl had decided to stick mostly to flying above the streets, and the area she'd flown into was a more run-down and thus less-traveled part of the city. Without traffic to slow her down, Sunset was able to keep a good pace behind the rainbow flier. Even a sudden left turn hadn't been enough to shake her.

Though when she unexpectedly dove into an alleyway seemingly at random, Sunset was forced to pause and think for a moment. 'Where exactly is this girl going, anyway? If she has some hideout in there, that'll be a problem. The last thing I want is to leave my bike out in the open...'

Fortunately for her, the memory of hero-girl's earlier cry came back to her and she smirked. 'So she's chasing that other one, huh? Interesting...' An unspoken decision made, Sunset sped off again to get around the block before she lost track of her target.


She had underestimated the difficulty of tailing something that was flying through the alleys from the confines of her bike. Sure, every now and then she got a glimpse of that strange rainbow trail the hero-girl left in her wake, but Sunset had to struggle just to get even those. The only thing that saved her temper was the fact that her target seemed to be searching each block systematically; so long as Sunset could figure out which block she'd look through next, she figured she was fine.

Her diligence paid off when she turned a corner expecting to see a rainbow cutting across the road, only to see the girl flying off into the sky. And from the looks of it, she was flying away from someone else – another teenage girl by the looks of it, with pale blue skin and bright white hair. For a moment Sunset considered stopping to question the girl about what she'd seen and what she knew, but just as quickly she decided against it. After all, who knew what that girl's relationship to her target was? And she might not get anything useful without intimidation, and Sunset wanted to keep her profile on the low side right now.

That didn't stop Sunset from sparing her a glance as she passed by to memorize her face in case the trail went cold. And as she did, for a split second time seemed to slow to a crawl around her. What little air she could feel between her helmet and gloves and jacket felt strange, and she swore the hairs on the back of her neck stood up. But just as soon as she noticed the moment had passed, and she was speeding off after hero-girl again.

'Strange...,' Sunset thought as she struggled to keep one eye on the road and the other on the fading rainbow trail. 'I'm definitely gonna have to look into that girl too.'


It took Sunset a little longer than she liked to find the rainbow-girl again, but she did manage to track her to a prominent office building nearby. For a scant few moments she let her hopes rise that she'd finally found the super-powered girl's hideout; she had stopped on top of it after all. But even from as far away as Sunset was she could still tell the heroine was simply sitting on a ledge, and once she realized that it occurred to her that this was probably just some kind of break.

'Would you hurry up and go back to your hideout already?' Sunset thought, her mind stewing in anger as she idled in a parking space. 'The sooner I find it, the sooner I can case it for clues on how to get my own powers.'

The rainbow superhero made her move not long after, but not for the reasons Sunset had expected – a piercing siren rang through the air, and the do-gooder took off shortly after hearing it. Sunset did not.

Instead she swore, her blood running cold as she continued to idle on the side of the street. She recognized the siren and what it meant, for while she'd never been desperate or stupid enough to try robbing a bank herself she'd been unlucky enough to be nearby when one happened before. More importantly she knew that the alarm would inevitably bring a swarm of cops, and the last thing she wanted was to be around law enforcement at the scene of the crime.

'But I don't wanna lose track of her, either,' she argued as she put her bike in gear. 'And I wanna see what she can do in a fight...'

She stewed over it for a little while longer until her patience finally wore out and her temper flared. “You know what? Screw it,” she said to herself. “I'm not afraid of being around some cops. Not after I've made it this far, and not when I have so much to gain from checking it out. I'm Sunset freaking Shimmer, I can do anything!”

Now pumped-up with confidence, Sunset revved her bike and tore back onto the road.


A couple minutes later Sunset arrived at the bank the alarm was coming, and grimaced at what she saw – a crowd. Most of them looked to be simple passersby attracted by the commotion rather than the roaming hordes of hero-chasers, but that made little difference. She couldn't see through them either way, and that was a problem she'd have to solve quickly.

And solve it quickly she did. She turned her bike around and doubled-back a little ways until she found a secluded alleyway that was wide enough to park her bike in. Taking the tarp she always kept in the trunk out she covered it as best she could so it wouldn't attract any unwanted attention, and once she convinced herself it was safe she made her way back towards the robbery-in-progress. But rather than join the crowd, she opted to scale a shorter building and get a bird's-eye view from its roof.

She got into position just in time to see the rainbow-colored heroine fly out from behind a car at a pair of masked men who were already trying to fight the purple hero with the cape. A gunshot, a few kicks, and a flying clothesline later, and the purple hero shoved the other one aside so she could tie up the bad guys with some kind of magic rope.

“Hmph,” Sunset snorted, crouched down at the edge of the roof. “That's it? Don't tell me I missed everything...”

Shortly after deciding that she must have, Sunset's blood ran cold as a new sound rang through the air – that of police sirens on the approach. She began to move away from the scene, but a strange shape moving through the crowd of gawkers gave her pause. She allowed herself a glance back at it and realized it was someone walking a number of dogs that bordered on absurd. Stubborn curiosity alone caused her to linger long enough to see the man and his pack approach the two heroines to collect a dog that had gotten loose, and then leave when the police finally turned up.

Sunset watched him leave for just a little too long, long enough that he seemed to notice her watching. Though she ducked back down the moment he turned his head she didn't think she had been quick enough, but by the time she looked back he had already moved on. Movement from the crime scene then caught her attention and Sunset looked back to see the caped heroine leaping away. With the rainbow-colored girl staying put and police swarming the area, Sunset took that as her cue to leave.

As quickly as she could she crawled back along the roof to the alleyway, dropping down once she'd confirmed that the coast was clear. A bit more stealth and caution got her back to her bike. The sight of it being just the way she'd left it settled her nerves a bit, and it was with confidence that she stowed the tarp and maneuvered her way back to a road. She left the bike for another brief moment, just long enough to stick her head out and see what was around; seeing nothing, Sunset scurried back to her baby and drove back into the open.

A minute later, once she was free and clear and lost in the crowd of city traffic, she allowed herself to smile. “Easy,” she said to herself as she came to a stop, her voice unheard amongst the idling engines.

Her smile soon faded, though. “Though now I gotta find one of those stupid superheroes again,” she muttered. She thought back to the caped one's departure from the scene, remembering which direction she had gone and comparing it to her mental map of Canterlot. “Guess that's my next lead,” she said starting to plan out the route she'd have to take to get back on the trail.

Then her stomach rumbled in protest of a skipped breakfast, and she groaned. “Or, maybe I can go scrounge up some lunch money. Great.” A new goal in mind, Sunset adjusted her route and sped off at the first opportunity.

Author's Note:

I hope you all enjoyed this little look into the perspectives of the human world's Starlight and Sunset! Interpreting their characters through the lens of Equestria Girls has been a fun experience, and believe me when I say this is only the beginning.

Next chapter marks the end of the first part of the story, and will follow Fluttershy and Mr. Discord through their morning. You've already seen bits and pieces of them in other chapters, but now you'll get to see the full picture of what they've been going through.