Repercussions

by shallow15

That Night I

Night fell over the city. For six friends, it had been an exhausting day, full of hard questions and very few answers.

Applejack sat on her bed, idly strumming her bass, lost in thought. The whole situation made her angry. Sunset made mistakes in the past, but her efforts to change that counted a lot more to the farm girl.

Her expression softened as she started remembering the times she had spent with Sunset. Just after the Fall Formal, Sunset had been plagued by nightmares about her demon self. Pinkie had set up a week long series of sleepovers, where each girl spent the night with Sunset. The company seemed to help Sunset with the nightmares, as well as give each of them a chance to get to know her.

Applejack found Sunset's stories about Equestria fascinating. She'd never admit it out loud (and definitely not in front of Rainbow Dash), but she still loved fairy tales, and hearing about Equestria's princesses, monsters, dragons, and other magical creatures made her feel like a kid again. Sunset also proved to be pretty good at video games, and unlike Rainbow, Sunset look losing gracefully. During that sleepover, the two girls had cemented a true friendship, even to the point of Applejack telling Sunset something she hadn't admitted to anyone before.

But memories weren't solving the current problem. She put her bass back on the stand and got out her phone. She sent a text to her friends.

Hey, anybody free to talk?

After a few moments, her phone rang. She swiped the screen to answer it.

“Hey, Fluttershy,” she said.

“Hi, Applejack. Is everything okay?”

“I dunno, sugarcube,” Applejack leaned back against the headboard. “I keep thinkin' there's somethin' more I should be doin' to help Sunset.”

“I know the feeling,” Fluttershy replied. “The other girls seem to finding out all these things, and aside from taking care of Ray and finding the scrapbook, I haven't really done anything.”

“There's gotta be somethin' else we can do besides just being the moral support!”

“But what? We still don't know who attacked Sunset, and Rarity, Rainbow, and Twilight are the only ones who've even seen her.”

“'Tain't fair!” Applejack snapped. “Sunset doesn't deserve this. She's changed, and everybody knows it. And it just galls me that there's still people at school who still won't see her as anything but the bad guy! She worked so damn hard for this and it seems like no sooner does she get back up than somebody comes along to knock her down again!

“What if this time, she can't get back up? I don't wanna lose her. I don't wanna lose any of you again.” Applejack's voice hitched and she wiped her eyes. “I'm scared, Fluttershy. I'm scared we're all in over our heads, and without Sunset, I don't rightly know if we can win this one.”

“We're not going to lose,” Fluttershy's voice was calm, but determined. “I'm just as scared as you are, Applejack, but I know that as long as we stick together, we'll find a way to beat whoever this is, and bring Sunset back. Don't lose hope.”

Applejack smiled. “Thanks, Fluttershy. I just needed to get that off my chest.”

“No problem. Are you still going with me to the hospital tomorrow?”

“Yep. Meet you at the statue out front after school?”

“Sounds good. See you tomorrow!”

“Night, sugarcube.”

“Good night, Applejack.”

---

Twilight poured through the copies of the emails. Even though they were sure the woman from the mall either attended or worked at CHS, she still felt obligated to finish the job she promised to do. She had managed to eliminate over half of the emails as duplicates of another message in the stack. As for the ones which all seemed to be written by the same person, she had tracked them to the same source: a computer which had been connected to several of the same wi-fi networks, but the majority of the connections had been at Canterlot High, further confirming the girls' theory.

She yawned and looked at the clock. It was almost ten. She'd been at this for most of the night. Spike looked up from where he was napping on the bed and followed her gaze to the clock.

“C'mon, Twilight, time to call it a day,” he said.

She leaned back in her chair and sighed. “Yeah, you're probably right, Spike. I think I've done just about all I can with these emails. Let me just get this all cleaned up and we'll turn in.”

She gathered up the papers scattered across her desk, organizing them according to source. When she had most of them in neat stacks, one fell off the edge of her desk. Twilight sighed and leaned over to grab it. When she leaned back up, she glanced down at it, and blinked.

“What?” Twilight looked closer at the email. Unlike the others, there were no headers with this one. The address in the “From” field was a series of letters and numbers and came from a free website based email service. But it was the message itself which held Twilight's attention, because it was completely different from all the others. Four words:

I forgive you, Sunset.

“When did she get this one?” Twilight asked. She looked at the date on the email. “This is way before I came to CHS. In fact … “ Twilight trailed off and grabbed her phone.

“Rainbow? It's Twilight. When was the Battle of the Bands? Uh-huh. What about the Fall Formal? Okay. I'm not sure. I need to check a couple of things. I'll talk to everyone tomorrow if I find anything out. Thanks, Rainbow. Good night!”

Twilight hung up and turned back to her computer. Spike jumped off the bed, walked over and put his paws on her foot.

“Twilight? I thought you were going to bed?”

Twilight shook her head. “Sorry, Spike, but this one's just so weird, I can't help but think it's tied to all of this somehow. I need to figure out where it came from!”

Spike sighed and curled up at Twilight's feet. “I'll be here if you need me.”

Author's Note:

The first of hopefully three updates today to get back on track. The last couple of days were taken up with family and a certain animated motion picture that came out.

Comments

[Monty Python]

Can't blame you, the movie was epic. Do you think you might add the Humane version of Tempest Shadow?

[shallow15]

8474638
I have some ideas in that direction, but probably not in this story.

[Csquared08]

Sunset made mistakes in the past, but her efforts to change that counted a lot more to the farm girl.

The second part of this sentence got a little funky.

Sunset look losing gracefully.

Oooooh, what a