It's The End Of The World As We Know It

by Samey90

11. Rules of Engagement

“Indigo?” Are you okay?” Sunny Flare asked. Indigo turned to her, blinking as she saw the screen of her wrist device, with a large headline saying, Rise of The Machines: Self-Driving Car Goes Loose, Injuring Six.

“Yeah…” Indigo yawned. “Haven’t slept well.”

Sunny smirked, wiggling her eyebrows. “Is it because of some muscular gentleman?”

“Not really,” Indigo muttered. “More like his brother. We played computer games, then my parents got pissed at me for not picking up their calls and then again, for waking everyone up with my motorcycle at 2 AM. But at least I won with that little motherfu–” Indigo paused, seeing Principal Cinch walking down the corridor nearby.

“What did you play?” Sunny asked.

Indigo rubbed her eyes. “Corpse-something. I got an achievement for ripping out ten hearts in a row. And another one for eating them. And one called ‘Heart Transplant’ for punching a guy’s heart out while holding another heart.”

Sunny Flare nodded slowly. “How old is Bulk’s brother?”

“Thirteen, I guess?” Indigo scratched her head. “I need some energy drink or something…”

“Ah.” Sunny shook her head. “Your intellectual level, then.”

“Gimme a break,” Indigo muttered.

“Never. I had to take the bus because of you today.” Sunny Flare shuddered. “Can you imagine that?”

“I’m tempted to stop driving you to school now.” Indigo yawned again and rubbed her eyes. “Unless you enjoy dying in a crash because your driver is falling asleep.”

“I’d keep you awake,” Sunny Flare said.

“By making me want to punch you?” Indigo asked. “Besides, buses are good for environment. And look, you’re not late.” She looked around. “A propos: where’s Sour Sweet?”

Sunny Flare shrugged.

---

A loud cry threw Sour Sweet awake. She rubbed her temples and rolled out of her bed, landing on the floor. Looking up, she saw a pair of yellow feet standing by her.

“Sweeten Sour…” she muttered. “Am I hearing things or is there a crying kid at home?”

Sweeten Sour looked down at her older sister and smiled. “The twins realised that we’re out of cereal. Sweet Dreams is being dramatic while Sour Grapes just eats sandwiches. Nothing ever bothers that guy.”

“Tell Sweet Dreams that if she wakes me up again, I’ll tell mom and dad to leave her in the orphanage.” Sour Sweet gritted her teeth. “Where are they?”

“Dad’s having a night shift in the nuthouse and he’s not back yet,” Sweeten Sour replied, grabbing her cheerleading outfit and packing it in a bag. “Mom and Sour Patch are trying to calm Sweet Dreams down.”

Sour Sweet sat on her bed, resting her head against her hands. Having to keep up with the chaos in her head wasn’t easy with four siblings.

“You okay there, sister?” Sweeten Sour asked, leaning towards Sour Sweet. “C’mon, we’re gonna be late to school and I have to practice cheerleading before the match, you know–”

“Shut up,” Sour Sweet muttered. “I know there’s a match. I’ll play in it and if you keep practicing cheerleading in our room, I’m gonna take this stick of your and shove it–” She was interrupted by her brother Sour Patch, who walked into the room.

“Hey, we could be naked!” Sweeten Sour exclaimed, covering herself despite being dressed in pajamas. “Also, sister, it’s called a twirling baton.”

“Sweet Dreams doesn’t want to get dressed to go to the kindergarten,” Sour Patch said. “Sour Sweet, could you help? She seems to listen to you more…”

“Well, maybe that’s because I take care of the twins most,” Sour Sweet muttered. “Because our parents are too busy for that.”

“Don’t mind her, she’s exceptionally sour today,” Sweeten Sour smirked at Sour Patch.

“Should I shoot you with my bow again?” Sour Sweet growled, getting up and grabbing a sleeping gown. “Even though I swore it’d never happen…”

“You never did,” Sweeten Sour replied. “You thought you shot me during…” She shuddered and looked at Sour Patch.

“That one time when you got cra–” Sour Patch backpedalled, seeing the look Sour Sweet gave him. “Sick. I meant sick.”

Sour Sweet sighed and walked out of the bedroom belonging to her and Sweeten Sour. The first thing she saw in the kitchen was her brother Sour Grapes, sitting on his chair and watching Sweet Dreams lying on the floor and crying with as much disdain as it was possible in a five-year-old.

“Let me guess,” Sour Sweet said, looking at her mother. “She’s throwing a tantrum again?” She lowered her voice to a whisper. “That’s because you’re a fat slob with with overgrown ego who can’t raise a child properly…”

“What did you say?” Sour Sweet’s mother asked.

“Nothing.” Sour Sweet knelt down by her youngest sister. “Hey, kiddo. You okay there?” she whispered. “Dunno how about you, but we’re gonna get your brother to the kindergarten. You’d better go too. Or else you’ll have to stay with mommy and she has some bright ideas. Like that one time when I was your age and she started to put me in beauty pageants.”

Sweet Dreams looked at her sister unsurely.

“So yeah, put on your shoes and go to kindergarten.” Sour Sweet smiled and helped Sweet Dreams up. The girl put on her shoes and focused on tying them, furrowing her eyebrows and sticking her tongue out.

“Very well,” Sour Sweet said when Sweet Dreams was done. “Now, go with mom and Sour Grapes to the car, okay? I have another baby to talk to.”

She stood up and walked back to her room. There, she got dressed, grabbed her bag, and left the flat, ignoring Sweeten Sour and Sour Patch, who were eating breakfast. Paying no attention to the rumbling in her stomach, she went two floors down and knocked on the door of another flat.

“Oh, it’s you,” Lemon Zest’s father said when he saw her. “Lemon is slightly better, I’d say. She doesn’t sit in the closet anymore.”

Sour Sweet nodded. Despite his words, she could clearly see his nervous moves when he gestured her inside. She walked into Lemon Zest’s room, avoiding looking at him.

The room was dark again, but this time Sour Sweet could see Lemon Zest lying on her bed, her face buried in a pillow. Sour Sweet sat next to her and patted her back.

“Hey, Zesty,” she said. “I just convinced my little sister to go to the kindergarten, so I guess it should be easier with you, right?”

Lemon Zest didn’t reply, although a louder inhale meant that she acknowledged Sour Sweet’s presence.

“Listen, Lemon, you can’t sit here forever.” Sour Sweet sighed. “This sucks, I know. Guess you feel like me when I got my first meds and my mood was a total, absolute zero. Like, nothing at all, really.”

“Don’t worry about me,” Lemon Zest whispered, still hiding her face. “I’ll get out… next week, I guess.”

“Next week?” Sour Sweet rolled her eyes. “Listen, I’m sacrificing for you here. I gave up my breakfast and every minute I don’t spend with my dumb siblings, I sit with you here. Next week? And I’m–” She paused and took a deep breath. “Lemon, you could at least look at me when I’m talking…”

Lemon shuddered and turned her tear-stained face towards Sour Sweet. “You’d better not come here, Sour. I… I feel better when you’re here, but you seem worse every time you come. I mean… I’ll manage. You’d better take care of yourself.”

“What?” Sour Sweet’s hands trembled. “What do you mean by that?” She grabbed the front of Lemon’s pajamas and raised her to her eye level. “Listen, all I want is your happiness, but you’re definitely not helping! Why are you sending me off? After everything I’m doing for you! You…” She raised her hand. Lemon Zest cowered on her bed, trying to free herself from Sour’s grasp, but at the same time Sour Sweet released her, recoiling and staring at her hands.

“I… I shouldn’t have come here…” Sour Sweet muttered. “I’m… not feeling well…” She turned around and ran across the room.

“Sour Sweet, wait!” Lemon Zest exclaimed, but Sour Sweet already stormed out of her flat. She rushed down the stairs and stopped by her car, panting. It took her a while before she found her keys and another one before she managed to open the door and sit inside.

“Fuck!” She banged her hands against the steering wheel and rubbed her temples. She looked at herself in the rear mirror and took a deep breath. “You just had to screw up everything! No wonder everybody hates you...” She turned on the engine and drove away, nearly hitting a kid drawing something on the pavement with chalk.

A few minutes later, after forcing the right of way twice and running the red light, Sour Sweet parked by the school. She got out of the car, slammed the door shut and rushed to the building. The bell had already rung and most of the students were walking into the classrooms. Some guy with glasses, however, saw Sour Sweet and joined her.

“Hello,” he said, trying to keep up with her. “I thought that since Lemon Zest can’t be our treasurer, maybe you’d join The LGBT Club and–”

“Fuck off, I don’t feel like being any letter,” Sour Sweet muttered. “I mostly feel like myself.” She opened the door to the class and sneaked inside, hiding between people who didn’t take their seats yet.

“Hello,” she said, taking a seat next to Indigo and Sunny Flare – during physics lessons Sugarcoat was not very talkative, silently judging anyone who was distracting her.

“Bad day?” Sunny Flare asked, looking at Sour Sweet’s ruffled hair and crumpled shirt.

Sour Sweet looked at her. “Oh, it’s you, my dear friend,” she said. “Eat shit.”

“I take that as ‘yes’,” Sunny Flare muttered. “So, you’re pissed and Indigo is sleeping…” She poked Indigo, who raised her head from the desk and looked around before closing her eyes again. “This is gonna be a beautiful day.”

“It’s gonna be more beautiful when you shut up.” Sour Sweet looked at the board and started to write something in her notebook. Sunny Flare focused on the lesson too, staring at Sour Sweet’s notes from time to time.

“Umm… Sour?”

“What?” Sour Sweet glared at Sunny Flare.

“I’m pretty sure the problem here isn’t ‘How long does it take for both trains to crash and will the force of impact be enough to kill everyone in them,’” Sunny replied.

“Aww, hell.” Sour Sweet flipped the page over, showing Sunny the tight rows of calculations. “I already know all the forces working on the human spine at the moment of impact.”

“Did you take your meds?” Sunny’s eyes widened.

“No, of course not.” Sour Sweet smirked. “But I also didn’t eat breakfast, so you can make bets whether I freak out or pass out first.”

“And you keep saying that I’m an alcoholic and anorexic…” Sunny Flare shook her head and turned to Indigo. “You could at least pretend that you’re doing something rather than sleep during the lesson…”

“Asshole,” Indigo muttered.

Sunny Flare raised her eyebrows. “Excuse me?”

“An alcoholic, anorexic asshole.” Indigo chuckled, but quickly covered her mouth. “Sorry. Everything is funny when you slept for, like, two hours at best.”

“Even Sour Sweet being off her meds?” Sunny Flare asked.

Indigo blinked a few times. “Great. And what should I do? Force-feed them to her?”

“Don’t even try,” Sour Sweet muttered. “I’m fine, I’m just having a bad day, okay?”

Indigo turned to Sunny Flare. “See? No use in freaking out.” She looked at the board, right in time to see their physics teacher standing in front of her.

The teacher smiled at her. “So, if Ms. Zap is so talkative, she’ll show us how to solve the next problem…”

---

Indigo slammed her fist against the locker. “An F!” she exclaimed. “And I wasn’t even the one who was talking during the lesson…” She glared daggers at Sunny Flare. “If you woke me up a minute later, I wouldn’t get an F.”

“Yeah.” Sunny shrugged. “You’d get a detention for sleeping in class. So, if you analyse gains and losses…”

“Stop pretending you’re Sugarcoat.” Indigo sighed. “What are gains and losses of me slamming the door of a locker against your head?”

“Eternal peace,” Sour Sweet said. “But then we’d have to wipe her brain off the floor.”

Sunny Flare rolled her eyes. “I’m so happy you appreciate that I care about you!” she yelled. “Especially you, Sour. Indigo is beyond saving, but I thought you’d at least be wise enough to take your meds and not be a pain in the ass.”

Sour Sweet growled, grabbing the front of Sunny’s shirt and pushing her against the wall. “Do you think it’s easy?” she hissed through gritted teeth. “Do you think I want to be like that?”

“Sour, enough.” Indigo pulled Sour Sweet away from Sunny Flare. Suddenly, Sour Sweet stopped resisting and the two nearly collapsed on the floor.

“I’m sorry,” Sour Sweet said. “I’m just a bit pissed at my mother and stuff.”

“Ira furor brevis est.” Sugarcoat walked to them, smiling at Indigo and Sour Sweet; while there was still an hour till her Latin lesson, she was already preparing herself. “What? Estne volumen in toga, an solum tibi libet me videre?”

“Non shittum, Sherlockus,” Indigo muttered. “I haven’t slept, Sour hasn’t eaten, and Sunny has never learned not to be a bitch. How are you?”

“I spent a lovely evening with Sandalwood, talking about the first training of Canterlot High’s soccer team,” Sugarcoat replied. “Of course, I gave my notes to Mr. Sombra today. For some reason, they use 3-5-2 system now and Spitfire, their best striker, has finished school last year.” Sugarcoat shrugged. “They replaced her with some sophomore girl called Scootaloo or some other hippie name.”

“You went on a date to spy them?” Indigo rolled her eyes. “I’m not even that surprised.”

“You could do that too,” Sugarcoat said. “Like, I think Bulk knows their goalkeeper better. She has a crush on Flash or something.”

“I can already tell you she’s desperate, then.” Indigo shook her head. “And so are you. Bulk and I have more interesting things to do.”

Sunny Flare smirked. “She played computer games with Bulk and his brother for the whole night!”

“And I learned a lot about tearing hearts out, remember.” Indigo yawned. “What’s the next lesson? I need to lie down somewhere in the back and catch some z’s…”

“Maths,” Sour Sweet replied. “You can sleep well and never wake up if the teacher sees you…”

“Sounds good,” Indigo muttered.

“By ‘never’ I really mean it,” Sour Sweet said. “You’ve never gotten on Ms. Bell-Scurvy’s bad side, have you?”

“No, I was always good at maths.” Indigo shrugged. “I guess I can chill out a bit. We’re seniors, after all...”

---

While Hilda Bell-Scurvy wasn’t as bad as Sour Sweet considered her to be, she wasn’t lenient for seniors either. As a result, before the lesson ended, Indigo managed to forget her own name and nearly get a concussion from banging her head against the desk, but she eventually realised that the sense of her life was to become a human integral symbol.

“Are you alive?” Sugarcoat asked when Indigo walked out of the classroom.

“She looks like steam is gonna come out of her ears,” Sunny Flare said. “Indigo?”

Indigo looked around. “Yes?” she whispered.

“Are you gonna sleep it off during the lunch break?”

Indigo shook her head. “Dunno. I guess I’m gonna call in sick and go home.”

“Yeah, that’d be the best,” Sunny said. “You look like me after trying the parsley smoothie diet.”

“We’d rather not know the details, thank you,” Indigo muttered. “Guess I’m gonna catch the bus or something.”

“We’ll tell Dean Cadance that you’re sick.” Sugarcoat said. “Do you want some specific disease or should I settle on rotaviral enteritis?”

Indigo waved her hand. “Whatever.” She yawned and walked down the corridor, together with the students going to the cafeteria. However, she left them by the door and walked outside, shielding her eyes from the sunlight.

She noticed a couple of school janitors patrolling the car park. Tip-toeing by the school wall, Indigo went towards the pavement. However, before she could leave the school grounds and hide in the park surrounding Crystal Prep, she walked straight into a pair of younger students standing in the bushes. The girl immediately ran away, but the boy stayed in place, looking at Indigo like a deer caught in the headlights of an incoming truck.

“Chill out,” Indigo muttered. “What’s going on there?” She pointed at the car park.

“Someone was trying to get on the school grounds, but they didn’t have uniforms and were spotted,” the boy replied.

“Thanks,” Indigo said. She walked towards the hole in the fence, hidden behind the bushes.

As soon as she pushed herself through it, she heard some noise behind her.

“Hey, it’s her!” someone whispered. Before Indigo could turn back, she felt as if the back of her head exploded. She staggered, but recovered quickly, turning to face whatever threat was there.

She barely had time to notice two girls facing her when one of them punched her in the eye. Indigo stepped back, tripping and falling. Immediately, she rolled on the grass to avoid the boots of a girl trying to jump on her. World was spinning around Indigo, but she grabbed the attacker’s leg before she could attack again, and bit her.

“Aargh!” the girl screamed, trying to kick Indigo. “Starlight, don’t stand like that, come and he–” Her words drowned in a slapping sound. She staggered, nearly collapsing. Kicking Indigo once more for a good measure, she ran down the lawn and disappeared behind the corner of a nearby building.

Her companion, a green-skinned girl with long, violet hair, didn’t have such luck; Indigo reached her with her leg, tripping her. Before she could get up, she got tackled and pinned to the ground by Indigo’s saviour.

“Hi, Indigo,” Sour Sweet said. She was panting heavily, jamming her knee in the green girl’s stomach, her hands wrapped around her neck. “Are you okay?”

Indigo rubbed her head and blinked. She felt pulsating pain in her face and realised that for the next week her black eye would cause people to give Bulk strange looks. “Used to be better,” she said. “Why did you follow me?”

“I’ve heard something about terrorists trying to crash our lunch break,” Sour Sweet replied. “So I asked myself, ‘who’d be a big enough idiot to get caught by terrorists?’ and immediately thought of you.”

“Thanks.” Indigo shook her head and looked at Sour Sweet. “By the way, stop strangling that girl, unless you have a shovel in your car.”

“Who said I don’t?” Sour Sweet smirked at the girl, but loosened up her grip on her, causing her to gasp for air and cough.

“Your name is Starlight, right?” Indigo asked, leaning over her. “What the hell was that?”

Starlight said nothing, her wide eyes focused on Indigo and Sour Sweet.

“Oh, please.” Indigo rolled her eyes. “Just look at Sour here. You may know that she’s slightly, umm… unstable. Aren’t you, Sour?”

“When I was six, I shot my sister with a bow because she was annoying.” Sour Sweet smirked at Starlight. “Didn’t I?”

“I often hear you saying that,” Indigo said. “The thing is, I could, theoretically, give you and Sour Sweet some alone time in a remote part of school grounds, with no cameras.”

“Like that shower girl?” Sour Sweet asked. “Sometimes I worry about her.” She turned to Starlight. “My compassion doesn’t apply to you, though.”

“That’s why I won’t do that.” Indigo smiled at Starlight. “We’d be no better than you and your friend. Instead, we’re gonna go to Dean Cadance. She’ll take a look at me, she’ll talk to the janitors, and she’ll call Principal Celestia. How do you think, what will they talk about?”

“A certain student getting suspended or even expelled, that’s what.” Sour Sweet stood up, yanking Starlight upwards. “As my mother says, one dumb stunt and instead of checking out colleges, you’ll be checking out beds in crappy motel rooms for the rest of your life.”

“Yeah, and you didn’t even beat me,” Indigo said. “No use taking the blame for that coward who left you with us, huh? Who was that?”

“Cloudy Kicks,” Starlight whispered, shuddering. “I was trying to stop her…”

“Ah, of course.” Indigo nodded. “Must still be pissed because of Norman’s balls. Okay, Starlight, now you’ll go with us and tell Dean Cadance the same thing…”

Author's Note:

Hanging out with Cloudy Kicks may not be the best idea when you already attract various creepy types.