Innocent Until Proven Cozy

by Casketbase77

Deliberation

It was hot in the car.

Maybe ‘hot’ wasn’t the right word, but it was certainly humid and Sunset Shimmer was stir crazy enough to be sweating up a storm with or without any compounding factors. For the dozenth time she reached for her metal water bottle on the dashboard only to remember for the dozenth time she’d drained it dry half an hour ago. Sunset desperately wanted to crack the window. If not to cool off, then to inhale something other than the same staleness she had been breathing for so long. But doing that first required starting the car’s engine, which would blow her cover. Miserable, bored, and yet somehow still anxious she slumped further down in her seat than she was already and blew out two lungfuls of wet, sour air. Sunset was a go-getter, not a watcher. This stakeout had been a stupid idea.

Slouching like this was already making Sunset’s neck hurt. She sat up again, staring bleakly through her windshield at the playground across the lot. Cozy Glow was still there. The schoolgirl had gone from squatting next to the sandbox to kneeling in it while still staring intensely through a magnifying glass at something in the sand that Sunset wasn’t privy to. Sunset pulled her nearly dead cell phone from the biker jacket she'd thrown on the floor ages ago and checked the time. 5:16 PM. Cozy’s barely noticeable shuffle had been the first time she changed positions in forty Celestia-forsaken minutes.

Sunset wanted to scream in frustration, but instead she just snorted and popped open the passenger side glove box. Inside was her journal, a two-way written correspondence device that magically mirrored any edits made to its sister copy back in Equestria. She flipped it open to the most recently marked pages as if they were going to be any different from the countless other times she’d read them.

Dear Sunset Shimmer:

I’m relieved to hear things have stabilized with Vignette and agree that if anyone can keep her on the right path, it’s Rarity. Like you said, it takes a diva to tame a diva. In the meantime, I have some of my best ponies researching how to prevent another Equestrian magic leak into the human world, since this has officially become a trend.

As much as I want to promise swift progress, we’re currently recovering from a scare on this end thanks to an upstart pegasus named Cozy Glow. Things play out in Equestria the same way they do where you are, it seems: another day, another troubled, ambitious no-name who thinks their ill-gotten artifact is a free pass to world domination. I won’t bore you with the details, but this one was an uncharacteristically close call.

Spike tells me I’m beginning to ramble, so that will be all for now. I’ll close by saying I can tell you’re trying very hard to make sure everyone stays safe. You're a good person, Sunset. You don't get told that often enough.

Your friend and confidante,

Twilight Sparkle.

Sunset skipped her own amicable but terse reply letter, filled with tons of empty platitudes and one urgent request for details about Cozy Glow’s appearance and actions. It was a garbage piece of hectic writing that she didn’t like looking at. Instead she went straight to Twilight’s response.

Dear Sunset Shimmer:

No, you aren’t overstepping your bounds at all. I glossed over mentioning Cozy not because I was being secretive, but because I didn’t expect her to interest you so much.

I've enclosed a yearbook picture of Cozy Glow taken during her brief enrollment at the School of Friendship. I don’t know if the colors will come through on your side but in case they don’t, her mane is two-toned electric blue and her coat is salmon. I can’t say for certain the color of her eyes, as while the irises are orange in the photo I distinctly remember them being a deep, pronounced red when I apprehended her. Curiously, not in the ‘magically induced’ way.

If I may be completely honest, the urgent tone of your last letter did cause me some concern. Cozy is rather young, but did you possibly know her before you left Equestria? If you’re feeling guilt over not being able to warn me, please don’t. Nopony was permanently injured as a result -

Sunset pulled the photo of the little pegasus out of its nesting place in the journal’s folds and tossed the book on top of her jacket. Twilight was only slightly off; No, in her Equestrian days Sunset hadn’t known anypony named Cozy Glow. But she knew one here in the human world. Or rather, knew of one because that was the name of an incoming freshman at Canterlot High. Deep-focusing as best she could, Sunset held up the photo and tried to compare its equine features to the human parallels on the schoolgirl still in the sandbox. The coat and skin colors matched. The mane and hair colors matched. The names of course matched. Cozy (the human one that is) was still bent over her magnifying glass so her face wasn’t visible, but if it was odds were good that the freckles on both lined up exactly. Eyes too. A deep, pronounced red, Twilight had written. Sunset shuddered despite the soggy heat.

There was only one discrepancy that kept Sunset from marching right over and giving the supposedly scheming tyke a big intimidation speech, and that was human Cozy’s hairstyle. The pony in the picture had a mane sporting layers and layers of curls like some Shirley Temple knockoff, but the human’s flat-ironed locks were pulled back and bound in a tight bun. Sunset sighed and let the arm holding the photo drop into her lap. She’d seen this type of inconsistency between pony and human counterparts only once, and fittingly enough it was with Twilight Sparkle. Not only did Sunset’s Equestrian pen pal style herself independently from her bipedal counterpart, but (and this was important) her personality was different too. Okay, not drastically different, but enough to make pen pal Twilight a one-time demon fighter and the other a one-time demon wannabe. And if those two could be such significant departures from each other…

Sunset’s poor dehydrated head was pounding. She shut her throbbing eyes and pressed her forehead against the steering wheel, avoiding honking the horn by mere centimeters. “Stupid idea,” she reiterated, out loud this time. “Stupid, stupid idea.” Sunset should have been studying. Or helping Pinkie Pie plan the Fall Formal. Or literally anything else other than sitting in her sticky car creeping on a probably blameless girl three years her junior at the local park. But Sunset had a self-imposed sense of responsibility for her fellow students. That was why when she was leaving school just in time to see the doppelgänger of Equestria’s most infamous filly get up from a picnic table and start walking, a gut feeling told her to not let Cozy out of sight.

Sunset got in her car and started tailing, which ultimately resulted in her being parked here for an hour, growing more and more desperate for Cozy Glow to do something incriminating enough to make Sunset feel justified in confronting her. At this point it would be a relief for Cozy to just leave so Sunset could start up the engine and drive away with some feeling of deniability. Sunset wasn’t even questioning how she’d made it this far without being noticed, given hers was the only car in the lot, Cozy was the only occupant on the playground, and both of them had arrived at the same time. Well, however it had happened, it had. And Sunset was stuck here, pulled one way by her desire to bail, another by her need to act, and trapped where she sat by the inability to commit to either. Something outside of her control needed to hurry up and occur or she was going to go absolutely breezies-in-the-brain insane cooped up in this sedan turned sauna.

Around ten minutes later, Sunset got what she needed. Cozy Glow straightened up suddenly, dropped her magnifying glass, and peered into the nearby treeline. It took Sunset a few seconds to come out of the spaced out stupor she’d settled into, but when she did, it was clear what’d gotten Cozy’s attention: two other girls had just come into view, one talking excitedly and gesturing to a skateboard tucked under her arm while the other did her best to keep pace while recording the first with her phone’s camera. Sunset recognized them as Scootaloo and Sweetie Belle, two thirds of a trio of sophomores known around Canterlot High as class clowns. Neither seemed to have noticed Cozy yet, who had brushed the sand from her skirt, stood up, and taken a few steps toward them.

Sunset leaned forward, her heart rate up. She didn’t need to review Twilight’s lengthy recounting of Cozy Glow ingratiating herself with the Elements of Harmony to remember the inciting incident had been schmoozing over the younger sisters.

Though it pained her to dwell on this aspect of herself, Sunset was all too familiar with the art of emotionally conning people. Posture that’s casually dominant, smile that’s disarmingly bright, and a punchy opening remark that lands thematically somewhere between the two. That was the approach Sunset understood and the one that always worked. So naturally she was floored when Cozy Glow suddenly dropped back down to the sand and began bawling her eyes out. Scootaloo and Sweetie Belle immediately took notice and after sharing some worried looks, they started moving in the distressed peer's direction. Their vlog session seemed more abandoned than Sunset was by whatever resolve she'd been gathering just now.

Was this right? Was Cozy openly crying in front of her peers the behavior of a domineering chessmaster? Sunset could count on one hand the number of times she herself had cried in front of others, all of which had all been shows of submission and weakness. Sunset felt achingly out of her depth here and wished Twilight Sparkle was present to advise her. To say whether interfering would be the right decision. But Equestria was literally a world away and no one this side of reality could make the call for Sunset right now. To step in or not. To assume the worst about this pseudo-stranger, or believe in the best.

Sweetie Belle had bent down and said something encouraging that made Cozy wipe her tears, force a brave smile, and look up.

Cozy Glow’s irises were red.

Sunset kicked the driver’s side door open, the blast of the outside breeze snatching her breath away. She planted both heels on the asphalt and got to standing position. Tingling from the sudden drop in air pressure and also due to her own nerves, Sunset Shimmer began to stagger across the parking lot towards the three figures on the playground.

Comments

[redandready45]

This could actually make a good topic for an EG Special: meeting the human counterpart of another villain.

[ferret]

But Cozy's irises are pink...

[Casketbase77]

9783932
If you think about it, pink is just a very light shade of red.

Only if you think about it, though.

[SilverDiamond]

9748579
Tirek would be a ganster/bandit/vandal? Who'd be Chrysalis?

[Casketbase77]

9899987
She’d have to be both skeevy and domineering, like a self-employed phone scammer or fraudulent lawyer.

Or maybe a marriage counselor who’s secretly more interested in breaking up and isolating people than she is bringing them back together.

[Str8aura]

Sunset skipped her own amicable but terse reply letter, filled with tons of empty platitudes and one urgent request for details about Cozy Glow’s appearance and actions. It was a garbage piece of hectic writing that she didn’t like looking at. Instead she went straight to Twilight’s response.

Venting?

[Casketbase77]

10067536

Just tryna make the protagonist sympathetic and relatable. Also, I didn’t want to bog the pacing down. Anyone who clicks on this story is here for EqG Cozy Glow, so the goal is to get to her in a timely manner.

[Orphan]

9900699
Or a telescammer targeting the newlywed

[iji]

Twilight looking down on someone for being a "no-name" is awfully arrogant of her. Seems more like something the villain of an episode might say to one of the mane 6 rather than something an allegedly good pony should be saying.