Diary (Rewritten)
Diary
Sunset panted. She had already fired off all six shots, there was no way that Weiss was going to give her time to reload, and the aura of the Schnee heiress was still in the green.
A white glyph, shining brilliantly in the darkness of the amphitheatre, appeared beneath Weiss’ feet as she skated gracefully across the ground towards Sunset. Sunset tried to parry with Sol Invictus, but she was too slow, or Weiss was too quick, and she carved off a slice of Sunset’s aura like it was ham as she flew past the fiery faunus. Sunset staggered. She turned as fast as she could to face Weiss as the latter rushed her again. This time, she – just about – managed to parry. Weiss attacked, her rapier flickering in the dim light. Sunset retreated, taking the blows upon the wooden stock of her rifle. She counterattacked, trying to use her heavier weapon to bludgeon Weiss’ slender blade aside, but Weiss was too quick and too nimble.
A glyph of cobalt blue appeared beneath the feet of Weiss Schnee.
Sunset went on the attack, swinging the butt of her weapon at Weiss’ head. Weiss leapt back. Sunset stepped forward... right onto the cobalt blue glyph which launched her upwards into the air.
The ceiling rushed towards Sunset. Her limbs flailed wildly in the air. A flash of light in the corner of her eye caught her attention. Weiss was flying too, leaping from glyph to glyph of gleaming white. She pointed at Sunset with her sword as four shots of some kind of dust burst from the cylinder built into the hilt, flying like missiles to slam into Sunset’s limbs, conjuring more glyphs which held Sunset in place like shackles, suspending her in the air as though she had been nailed to a cross.
For a moment, Weiss hovered above her, blade poised.
Then she descended like a thunderbolt.
Sunset felt the blow strike her in the midriff before she was hurled downwards like an angel cast from heaven to land with a thump upon the ground.
“And that’s the match,” Professor Goodwitch declared calmly. “Miss Shimmer is unable to continue; Miss Schnee is the victor.”
“Yeah!” Cardin cheered. “Show her who's boss!”
Sunset growled wordlessly as she picked herself up off the floor.
“Miss Schnee,” Professor Goodwitch continued, “you continue to make good use of your semblance. However, I would advise against feigning weakness to lure your opponent into a trap in the future; that kind of feigned error can become a real one in the hands of a skilled opponent.”
Weiss bowed her head. “I’ll bear that in mind, professor.”
“Miss Shimmer, by contrast, you should have made more use of your semblance,” Professor Goodwitch. “Against a swifter opponent, you would have been well advised to try and keep your distance and fight from range.”
Like she would have given me the chance, Sunset thought. Her back and backside were both smarting from the impact. “Thanks for the advice, Professor,” she grunted.
As Sunset, wincing a little, made her way off the stage, she heard Cardin say, “Not so tough now, are you?”
She bared her teeth. Just because your team leader can beat me doesn’t mean I’m not better than you. But it wasn’t just her aura that was smarting as she made her way back to the bench where her team was waiting for her.
Sunset was halfway through her second week at Beacon, and over the course of the week and a half that she’d been here, she had learned a few things about her team and about the other teams that made up the freshman class.
The first thing she’d learned was that she did not like Weiss Schnee and Team WWSR one bit. And it wasn’t just because it was the team that her ex was on, either; in fact, that had absolutely nothing to do with it, not one bit. The sight of Flash hanging around with little Miss Schnee, rich and privileged and ever so beautiful, left her absolutely cold. It filled Sunset with resentment not at all.
Nor did it have anything to do with the fact that Weiss had just beaten her in sparring class. Okay, that certainly didn’t make it any better, but she hadn’t liked Weiss long before today.
No, Sunset’s problem with WWSR started and finished with the fact that they were awful.
Flash’s awfulness needed no more introduction from Sunset, except to note that his continuous attempts to play the nice guy who would never do anything so awful as dump his girlfriend because of her race only caused Sunset to resent him more and more every time she witnessed his phoney act. Weiss… Sunset resented Weiss simply for being Weiss Schnee. She was absolutely convinced that Russell had been looking at Ruby more than he should have been, and Cardin… Cardin. Cardin, Cardin, Cardin.
It had started to seem as if Cardin Winchester had the opportunity to do something petty, he would take it... provided Weiss wasn’t around. When she was, he stayed on something approaching his best behaviour, or as much as a lout like him could manage, but when she wasn’t, then there was no act so low he wouldn’t stoop to, no prank too petty for him to pull.
Cardin apparently hadn’t liked the ‘special treatment’ that Team SAPR received in getting to move to a completely different part of the locker room than everyone else. A lot of people hadn’t liked it, in fairness, but only Cardin had reacted to it by presenting Ruby with a dummy and calling her cape a ‘baby blanket,’ a nickname which had spread to Russell and to Sky Lark of Team BLBL. The worst part was that he wasn’t doing things that Sunset could actually catch him at, so there was no way that she could report him to Professor Goodwitch, but she knew who it was who had sprayed ‘Filthy Faunus’ on her locker door; she knew who it was who had grabbed her tail from behind and given it such a hard tug that she fell on her backside, even if they’d run off before she could see who it was; and she knew who had thrown Jaune into that dumpster, even if he said that he hadn’t seen who did it.
Sunset knew exactly who the problem was, and it was making her seethe as she sat down next to Ruby.
“What was that?” Ruby hissed.
“What was what?” Sunset replied sharply.
“You were holding back!” Ruby insisted. “Why didn’t you teleport?”
“Because I don’t want to advertise all the things that I can do with my semblance,” Sunset replied in a hushed voice.
“Ooh, you’re holding back so that everyone will underestimate you!”
No, I just think it’s best if people don’t ask too many questions about how astonishingly versatile my ‘semblance’ is. I’m not the Great Weiss Schnee with her marvellous inherited semblance that can do just about anything, after all. Faunus like me are supposed to be limited in our abilities.
Of the three members of her team, Ruby was the one that Sunset got along with the most, if only because there was nothing about her to object to. Yes, there was the fact that she was a prodigy, admitted to Beacon two years early on the strength of her skills, but it was hard to bear her the kind of malice that Sunset bore towards, for example, Pyrrha or Weiss, because she was just so… Sunset couldn’t exactly explain it. Or at least she was having trouble finding the right words for it. But it was impossible for Sunset to feel as though she was looking at a rival when she looked at Ruby, mainly because Ruby clearly wasn’t looking at a rival when she looked at Sunset. In those guileless eyes of silver, there was no concern, no weighing up, nothing, in fact, but affection.
Sunset hadn’t come to Beacon to find friends, she hadn’t come here to be loved by her peers… but she had come here to be adored. That was the entire point of this whole exercise: if she couldn’t ascend, then at least she would be exalted in the hearts of men. The affection of one little girl in a red cape was not the fulfilment of her ambitions, but it was a lot better than nothing.
That wasn’t to say that Ruby had no problems – in many of her academic subjects, she was doing as bad or worse than Jaune, struggling to keep her head above water to the extent that Sunset was giving serious consideration to writing her essays for her in order to keep up the team’s grade average – but even those problems didn’t inspire any great resentment in Sunset’s heart. It was like… the thought of doing something to hurt Ruby, it… it made Sunset’s stomach start to feel a bit uneasy for some reason, as though she’d eaten something that hadn’t gone down right.
“For our next match, will Jaune Arc and Sky Lark please make their way up onto the stage?” Professor Goodwitch asked.
Sunset cringed. She wasn’t sure whether she wanted to watch this. What would be the point? She knew what was going to happen anyway.
Which brought Sunset on to the second thing that she had learned in the first few days at Beacon: Jaune Arc sucked at almost everything, and it was making Sunset absolutely furious.
He couldn’t fight; he got his ass handed to him every time he stepped into the arena against absolutely any opponent in Professor Goodwitch’s combat class, as she had no doubt that he was about to prove in a moment as he shuffled onto the stage to face Sky Lark, who was himself no great warrior in the making, in case anybody was wondering. Sunset was not the best fighter in the freshman class – as she had just proved, unfortunately – but she fancied herself to be starting a comfortable mid-tier, a decent place to work up from. But none of the lower-tier mediocrities that Sunset could have vanquished with ease had any difficulty whatsoever in ripping Jaune Arc to shreds.
As Sky Lark demonstrated once they both got up onto the stage and Professor Goodwitch ordered them both to begin. Once again, Jaune rushed forwards, holding his shield all wrong – according to Pyrrha, who was almost cringing at it herself – swinging his sword around like a madman, and while he charged, Sky had reversed his halberd, Feather’s Edge, and shot him twice with the gun in the shaft. Jaune staggered backwards, his sword almost dropping from his grasp, and Sky counterattacked ferociously. He wasn’t great with that halberd, but he was better than Jaune was with his sword and shield, as he first hooked the shield out of Jaune’s hand and then used the greater reach of his weapon to defeat Jaune at his leisure.
The fact that Jaune was an absolutely wretched fighter who could barely hold his sword without chipping away at his own aura might have been forgiven if he’d displayed a brilliant grasp of the academics but no. Jaune was pig ignorant in Modern History and Grimm Studies, his reading comprehension in Legends of Remnant could charitably described as service level, and even the classes that he displayed competence in, like Plant Science and Fieldcraft, were marred by the fact that he spent half the lessons asleep.
Yes, asleep. The fact that Jaune was useless at so many core aspects of the Beacon curriculum might, in itself, have been forgivable if he was applying himself but simply running up against the limits of his ability. Sunset might have not actually forgiven him for this, given how her future was riding on the success of the team, but someone might have found it in their hearts to forgive him regardless. But no, the guy was as lazy as a toad to boot. He went to bed late, having been out every night doing who knew what, he slept through so many classes that Team SAPR had to hide at the back of the lecture hall half the time so that the professors didn’t notice, and he didn’t even do the reading, let alone the essays. Sunset was writing Jaune’s essays for him and hoping that she’d dumbed it down enough – to a B or B minus standard – that it wasn’t immediately obvious what she was doing.
It didn’t help that, in Sunset’s opinion, Ruby and Pyrrha mothered him relentlessly. They offered encouragement when he needed criticism; they smoothed away the hard edges of his failure and inadequacy. He might have been their baby brother instead of their teammate.
Or perhaps they both just had a crush on him.
“Why do you two both coddle him so much?” Sunset demanded on the evening of the first Monday since Initiation, when Jaune was absent from the room. “He’s dead weight, and he’ll drag us all down if we let him.”
“He’s trying his best!” Ruby protested.
“Then his best sucks!” Sunset replied. “I don’t get why he’s even here.”
“Because he wants to be!” Ruby yelled. “Because I bet that this has been his dream as long as he knew what it meant to have a dream. So what if he isn’t a great warrior right now, that’s what we’re here to learn, isn’t it?
“Can he learn?” Sunset demanded. “Pyrrha, back me up on this: he has too far to go, and there isn’t enough time.”
Pyrrha sat on her bed, hands folded in her lap, her head bowed slightly, not looking at either Ruby or Sunset. “I… I’d like to believe that, so long as we’re prepared to put our hearts and souls into working towards our final goals, there are no limits to the destiny that we can achieve.”
“That’s not how destiny works.”
“That’s the destiny that I believe in,” Pyrrha replied firmly. “And I believe in Jaune. I felt his aura when I activated it; he has so much potential, more than anyone I’ve ever met.”
I remember when I had more potential than anyone Celestia had ever met. For all the good it did me, and I was prepared to work hard. And what is his deal, anyway? Just because I couldn’t find anything about the guy… his father must know someone, have pulled some strings, something. No way that Jaune Arc got in under ordinary circumstances. Unfortunately, she’d been too busy trying to cover for his laziness to look any further into him or the mysterious Raven Branwen.
Sunset folded her arms. “Potential is all very well, but he’s not using it.”
“Neither was I,” Ruby said. She hugged her red cloak tight about her as though it were a blanket. “When I started at Signal, I was a mess. I hadn’t discovered my semblance; I couldn’t fight. But my Uncle Qrow… he believed in me. He told me what I needed to hear: that I had my mom’s blood in my veins, and I could become a great huntress, just like her. And because he took me under his wing, here I am: I got into Beacon early because my uncle believed in me, and now, we have to believe in Jaune and help him to be the best he can be.”
Just because you have a dream doesn’t mean it will come true, Sunset thought bitterly. Although… wasn’t that why she was here, in the end? Wasn’t that why she had crossed worlds, left home and hearth and all she knew behind, given up her very physical form and exchanged it for another, why had she done all that except to defy the unfairness of having held onto a dream in her heart for half her life only to be told one day "sorry, kid, it was all for nothing"? She was here to seize her destiny, keyword there being ‘seize’: she would take by force what fate and Celestia had denied to her, raising her fist in anger at its cruel decree. If she could be drawn to Beacon for such a purpose, then why not Jaune Arc too? Perhaps, in the end, she felt a little prick of conscience or a moment of empathy; either way, she scowled and muttered, “Fine. I’ll let it go for now. But… he’d better start to show some improvement, for all our sakes.”
That improvement was nowhere in evidence today, she thought as she watched Jaune descend the stage after his latest defeat. And honestly, Sunset was already starting to lose patience with this particular millstone around their necks.
“And for our last match of the day... Miss Nikos, Mister Winchester, please make your way up onto the stage.”
Sunset took a little visceral satisfaction from the look of fear on Cardin’s face as he got up. Everyone had that look when they got called up to face Pyrrha. Sunset had learned a few things about Pyrrha Nikos this last week and a half, starting with the fact that she was a complete badass. Every combat class with Professor Goodwitch where her name was called gave proof of that, and this lesson was no different as she tossed Cardin Winchester up into the air like a tennis ball then proceeded to leap up after him, grab him by the neck, and piledrive him head first back into the stage so hard that the floor cracked under the impact. And she did it all under her own power, without the aid of any of the glyphs that Weiss had relied on to defeat Sunset in much the same way but with less noticeable effects on their surroundings. Yes, Professor Goodwitch was able to repair the stage again with a wave of her riding crop, but solar-powered Celestia! Sunset was left staring, open-mouthed and secretly feeling a sense of gratitude that their instructor didn’t seem inclined to pit members of the same team against one another.
As Ruby and Jaune cheered, Sunset was silent. Pyrrha wasn’t just good; she was a battlefield force of nature. How was anyone supposed to stand against that? What possible good was it doing for anyone to have her fight in the combat class sparring matches? She couldn’t possibly be learning anything.
How could I last more than a few seconds against her?
Some people might have dismissed the question, but Sunset could not. Just because they were on the same team didn’t mean that their goals aligned, and Sunset had been betrayed too often by those who were much closer to her than Pyrrha Nikos was. And, frankly, Pyrrha was starting to get on her nerves enough that she would almost have wanted to fight her if it hadn’t been for the unavoidable and seemingly unbridgeable gulf that existed between their abilities.
As she watched, Pyrrha offered a hand to help Cardin up to his feet. The big guy refused, picking himself up without aid. Pyrrha looked mildly troubled by his poor sportsmanship, as though it was strange to her that someone who had just been so thoroughly humiliated wouldn’t particularly feel like accepting pity from the victor. In the losing position, Sunset wouldn’t have wanted pity any more than she would have offered it if she’d been the victor.
“Miss Nikos, superlative work as always,” Professor Goodwitch said. Adding to Sunset’s sense that Pyrrha got less than nothing out of this class was the way that the professor never even had anything to comment on in terms of her performance and ways that it could be improved.
Sunset couldn’t be sure if Pyrrha nodded or bowed her head in shame. “Thank you, Professor.”
“Mister Winchester,” Professor Goodwitch continued, “your movements continue to be sloppy and imprecise. You would have given Miss Nikos a much harder time of it had you not left yourself open and off-balance at so many points during the bout.”
Cardin’s face twitched with irritation, but he said nothing.
“And that’s all that we have time for today,” Professor Goodwitch declared. “I’ll see you all next time.”
As Pyrrha made her way off the stage, she was mobbed by admirers congratulating her on her stellar performance. It was always like that when she was around. She really was a genuine, bona-fide celebrity. Wherever she went, there was always at least one person who wanted a picture of her, or a selfie with her, or an autograph from her, or just to pester her for a little bit. A lot of people didn’t like the fact that Team SAPR had gotten ‘special treatment’ in regards to the locker rooms, but even the people who complained most loudly about Sunset and Ruby being set apart, or at Jaune being the only guy allowed to change with them, they all conceded that of course it was right and proper that the great Pyrrha Nikos should get a whole locker room all to herself, a privilege fitting the Invincible Girl, Champion of Mistral.
Pyrrha took it all in stride, reminding Sunset a little of Celestia at times as she dealt, politely but distantly, with the various hangers on that she seemed to pick up like barnacles accruing to the bottom of a ship. But she clearly didn’t like it, that was clear to Sunset from the way that she held herself, from looking into her eyes, from every nonverbal cue that Pyrrha was sending off, and it was driving Sunset up the wall even worse than Jaune’s general uselessness because what in Celestia’s name did Pyrrha Nikos have to be upset about?
Honestly, it was enraging. It was the main reason why Sunset showered and changed as quickly as she could before holing herself up in the library rather than going back to the dorm-room. It felt to her as though if she saw Pyrrha right now, then she was going to scream at the ungrateful little wretch.
Seriously, what did she have to be upset about? She was talented, famous, and beautiful; everybody knew her name, and everybody wanted a piece of her. She was the object of rumour, whisper, and desire, widely-accepted as the most talented student to grace Beacon Academy in years, if not since its foundation. Greatness was predicted for her from every quarter, nobody could wait to see what she would become, and all they wanted was some memento to prove that they had known her in her youth before she became even more famous than she was going to be later. And yet, she had the gall, she had the utter self-centredness to mope about it? To show disquiet, to not love every single moment of it? Why in Tartarus not? Didn’t she realise what Sunset would give to have everything that Pyrrha had?
I did have everything that she had once, and it was stolen away from me, Sunset thought. I’d give my right arm to get it all back again: the fame, the glory, the adulation, and the idolisation. All the things that I want and must struggle to my utmost limits to regain are the things that she has and treats as burdens to be borne with clear reluctance. Little brat. How can she not appreciate all the good things that she has?
It was bad enough that Pyrrha had the nerve to be in possession of all that Sunset desired, bad enough that she was more talented than Sunset, bad enough that the destiny that Sunset was so desperate for had pretty much dropped into her lap like a ripe plum, but she didn’t even like it! It was maddening, and it was especially maddening because there was nothing that Sunset could do except stew in the unfairness of it all and marinate in her resentment at the rank ingratitude that Pyrrha displayed every single moment of her life.
She couldn’t take what Pyrrha had and make it hers; it didn’t work like that. Worse, Sunset would have to work with her and help her gain even more acclaim that she wouldn’t treat with the respect and gravity that it deserved, while Sunset fed off the scraps from her table like a dog. It was unfair. It was monstrously unfair. It was an injustice that cried out to the heavens for redress.
Why should I, who long for the limelight to shine once more upon me, dwell in this detestable ignominy while she stands always in the light of the sun and casts disdainful looks towards it?
Why should she have what I want, when she isn’t even using it properly?
Sunset looked with a frown at the book that sat on the table in front of her. No school textbook this, but the magical journal that she had brought with her from Equestria. It was sitting in front of her because… because, honestly, she had no one else to talk to about this stuff.
No one to talk to but a magic book that a faraway princess would never read.
Sunset didn’t really want Princess Celestia to read it. She didn’t want the princess to come back to Sunset and tell her "I told you so" or "You can come home" or "You should embrace the magic of friendship" or anything else. Sunset just wanted to pour out her thoughts and her resentments before they grew too much for her to hold in. She felt as though she needed to do that before she exploded.
Sunset wanted to bare her soul; she didn’t want her old teacher to examine it.
Or… did she? If she just wanted to keep a journal, then she could keep a journal. Did she want to hear from Celestia again, even in the face of all these years of evidence that Princess Celestia had stopped caring a long time ago?
Did Sunset want to be forgiven?
Did she want to be told that, after everything that had passed between them, her teacher still believed in her?
Sunset didn’t know what she wanted or didn’t want any more. All that she wanted was the destiny that she had been denied.
And to be heard.
Sunset opened the book to the first blank page and began to write. She wrote about Jaune and how annoying it was that Sunset had to do the work of two people because of him. She wrote about Ruby and how she was the only person in this world that Sunset couldn’t think of a bad word to say about and how she, Sunset, had no idea why that should be the case. She wrote about how she had to lead this team, even though she didn’t like them all that much and wasn’t really a team leader kind of person but more of a loner, as though Princess Celestia hadn’t known that well enough already. She wrote about Flash and everything that he had done to her and about WWSR and how awful they all were and how much Sunset hated the whole pack of them.
Most of all, Sunset wrote about Pyrrha: wonderful Pyrrha, talented Pyrrha, destined for greatness Pyrrha, Pyrrha who had everything that Sunset had so longed for… and didn’t even seem to care that she had it.
Sunset poured out her frustrations upon the page, she set down all the thoughts that whirled about her brain… and then, she stopped. She stared at the magical diary for a moment. Nothing happened. No word came from Celestia. No reply for good or ill.
Nothing happened except that Sunset felt a little emptied out of all her troubles, and in the emptying, she felt… actually a little bit better. She actually felt as though she could go to the dorm room and not explode at Pyrrha for the way she was behaving.
Sunset put the journal back in her bag and started to rise from her seat.
The book started to vibrate and glow a soft but vibrant pink colour, which could only mean one thing: someone was replying.
Sunset swallowed. She felt a chill forming in the pit of her stomach, anticipation filling her with dread. Celestia was replying to her. The princess had something to say.
Good or bad, Sunset couldn’t say. She could only fear.
I guess there’s only one way to find out for certain.
Sunset reached gingerly for the book in her bag. She hesitated, and cursed herself for hesitation.
Come on, you can fight monsters but you can’t do this?
The worst the monster could do is kill me. Celestia could disapprove.
She probably does.
Maybe, but you won’t know until you open the stupid book, will you?
Sunset scowled as she screwed her courage to the sticking point, pulled out the book, and opened it.
Um…I don’t mean to be rude, and I’m sure that it took a lot of effort for you to write that, and I don’t mean to make light of it, but…who are you?
Sunset stared at the writing in front of her and blinked. Had… had Celestia forgotten her? Had she forgotten all about Sunset Shimmer, her prize student, her little sunbeam?
I know we kind of left things in a bad way, but I thought she’d at least remember me, even if it wasn’t fondly?
All the time they’d spent together, all the memories they had shared… was nothing worthy of remembrance?
You’ve forgotten me. Sunset wrote in the diary. She was unsure whether to add a question mark at the end or not. It seemed fairly clear that Celestia had, indeed, forgotten. You don’t remember me at all.
Should I? Sorry, I only got this book recently. What’s your name?
She gave the book away, Sunset thought. She gave our book away. The book so that we could keep in touch, and she just… what, did she throw it out? Did you hate me that much? Were you glad to be rid of me in the end?
She wrote with more force than necessary. I’m Sunset Shimmer; who are you, and how did you get this book?
The reply was swift in coming. I was given it by Princess Celestia, as part of a large collection of books. I’m the Princess of Friendship, Twilight Sparkle.
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...Twilight should not have used her title. Not only does she have a destiny that Sunset felt was hers, but she got that destiny through something Sunset views as a weakness.
If Sunset was mad before then now she's really pissed.
Flee means run away. I think you probably meant feat.
9161242
Yes, I did.
Well this is going to have ramifications. Wonder if Sunset will use this to poisen Twilight against Celestia or if she will be to angry at this person who got everything she wanted to even think of that. also I hope some one has the bright idea to simply start training Jaune harder to make up for how crummy he is.
oh... ho, ho, ho
I sense a very grumpy Sunset in the near future
Next up on SAPR: the library goes up in flames. Sunset considers regretting her actions but decides against it, and resolves to make better use of her human resources.
.... damn. poor Sunset that's got to hurt.
9161156
Sunset is mad about everything.
Sunset writes: "I'm trapped in another world where I'm discriminated against for my species and my only companions are an incompetent buffoon, an impossible goody-goody, and an indestructible war-goddess who has everything I want in life! Woe is me!
Twilight: "New book who dis?"
Enjoyable chapter, you fleshed out the locker gag scene to be an establishing moment between teams SAPR and WSTW, and we got to see a moment of just how much utility (and limit) Sunset's magic has here.
Curious how Sunset's relationship with Twilight forms here.
9227056
Sunset is livid
if not since it’s foundation
1. Its.
The answer to that question, Sunset, is "Mommy issues."
I'm kind of impressed that she's not even trying to get his hopes up about winning.
When we get to the point where Sunset's considering the merits of just writing a journal, I'm confused why she wasn't just getting a regular blank book. Like an actual journal, that doesn't transmit her personal thoughts to anyone.
9538271
Where? With what money? It isn't as if she's gainfully employed. Shall she a notebook? Perhaps serve a turn or two in the cafeteria?
Really, she wanted to vent yes, she had the journal, but she's also conflicted as hell about Celestia. It's clear that she still has feelings for her at this point. She wants her to express pity so she can spit on it. She wants her to express pride, so she can show she doesn't need it. She wants a great many things, but really what she wants most, I think, would be the words, honestly given and justified "I am sorry, I was wrong, please come back and forgive me" as impossible as they would ever be.
I like where this is going...
When you put it like that, you make her sound like an ingrate Mary Sue.
10041266
I can see why it seems that way, but it wasn't my intent; I love Twilight, she's tied with Sunset as my favourite; the point is that she's gotten it right while Pyrrha and Sunset are both fumbling around trying to find a way forward.
De Nile - is it still a river on Remnant?
I struggle to remember that Sunset has a tail more than remember her ears, though in honesty I do forget both of them and just imagine her as she appears in EQG more often than not. It's not usually relevant, but I recall on my last read through wanting to spot how often the topic of her tail came up. I'm not sure if I followed up on that to the fullest extent, but I feel like it was mentioned at least occasionally. For that, good on you, and I should actually go hunt those bits down again. (As a Blaze the Cat fan, when the new Sonic Comics launched, there was a panel where Blaze was given an expressly animated tail in one panel. It's the kind of detail I love to see, hence it gets a whole paragraph... I may have even written one before this I'm forgetting...)
Also, when Sunset talks about betrayal and being betrayed again, that made me sit back and think regarding how that changes over the story. Actually, I'm not sure it goes away, but gets changed in how it's expressed during Sunset's perspective sections.
Now that last part would have been a kick in the balls for anyone. Seriously Celestia?
one thing I noticed on this rewrite is that Ruby is more herself! especially fighting
thank you!
This episode is essentially 5000 words worth of the finest Sunset's salt. I find it amusing she refuses to say she likes Ruby, and instead says she can not find anything negative about her.
And Twilight showed up! I honestly was not expecting her.