Super Awkward

by AugieDog

2 - During

"Not that I mind!" Twilight was saying for the fourth or fifth time, the bun on the back of her head as tight as a clenched fist. "Reunions are about the people, after all, not the places they happen." She looked over her shoulder, and something close to a smile squirmed across her face. "It's just, you know, a parking garage has noxious fumes, frustrated commuters, and the squeal of automobile tires. While the reception room has a buffet, multiple high-ranking government officials, and a string quartet."

Even with the other four walking down the wide hallway in front of her, Sunset wanted to pull Doc back and put some more space between herself and Twilight. Not that she was afraid of the woman, still the shortest and slightest of their whole group. But the memories—

Doc patted her hand where it rested on his arm, and Sunset realized she was digging her fingers into him with such force, her knuckles were white.

Shuddering, she pushed out a breath, relaxed her shoulders with a snap she could almost hear, and told herself she wasn't going to dwell on the parts of the past she didn't want to dwell on. These girls had saved her life both literally and figuratively more times than she cared to count, and just because things had ended kind of badly—

She wasn't dwelling on it, wasn't dwelling on it, wasn't dwelling on it. And she especially wasn't dwelling on the way that Twilight registered every bit as blank to her mental senses as Rarity did.

Not that she was trying to probe her ex-girlfriend's thoughts. But Twilight's jagged hole in the mindscape stood out starkly when compared to the smooth emptiness that marked Rarity's shielding. And besides, experimentation that made Sunset blush a little to recall had demonstrated years ago that Twi's telekinesis was a completely physical phenomenon, not affecting Sunset's powers in any—

Rarity's crystalline laugh shattered Sunset's thoughts. "Your planning has always been impeccable, Twilight. I've sorely missed those skills since you moved over to the city's science commission."

"What?" Again, Sunset hadn't meant to say anything, but after so many years of quiet country living, being back in the city seemed to be stirring up the leap-in-with-both-feet traits that had marked her tenure in high school. And since she'd already leaped... "You quit the Sentinels, Twilight?"

Twilight gave another over-the-shoulder almost smile. "You're not the only one who can move on, Sunset."

"Huh." Applejack cocked her head down at Rarity, Dash, and Pinkie walking beside her. Well, Rarity was walking: Sunset couldn't help grinning at Pinkie doing some sort of swaying skip that shot her upward in a seemingly random direction with each step, Dash flashing around her, jumping up to bump shoulders with her no matter which way she happened to hop. "So it's just been you three superheroing the last year or three?" Applejack asked.

Dash blew another raspberry. "Like we need anybody else!"

And even though Rarity's glare was aimed squarely at Dash, Sunset could still feel the sharp, cold edge of it.

"I mean," Dash said quickly, "it'd be great if you came back, AJ! Really great! And the rest of you, too!" She snapped her fingers. "Hey! Is Fluttershy here yet?" The air around her wavered; Sunset heard a door slam somewhere up ahead, then Dash was solid again, her shoulders slumping. "There's no one in there but a whole buncha stuffed shirts, some waiters, and a string quartet." A flicker, and Dash was walking backwards in front of Twilight. "You invited Shy, right? And she said she was coming?"

Pulling some sort of device from her pocket, Twilight sighed. "I invited her, yes." She tapped the device, squinted at it through her glasses, and shook her head. "I never heard back from her, though. I haven't actually gotten a single report of her setting foot off that animal sanctuary of hers since she left Canterlot City five years ago."

"Yeah." Pinkie was puffing little cascades of confetti from the ends of her fingers, then snatching them as they fell. "I send her pictures I've drawn sometimes, and she sends me little letters talking about how busy and happy she is being her animal friends' husband." She shrugged. "Which seems a little weird, but as long as she's having a good time."

Sunset had to laugh. "Animal husbandry doesn't mean what you think it means, Pinkie."

"I dunno." Pinkie shook her head. "She always liked animals an awful lot..."

"Okay!" Twilight spun, the familiar exasperation in her voice twinging Sunset in a few places that hadn't twinged in a long time. She pressed herself closer to Doc, his soothing touch both against her side and against her mental senses more than enough to keep those twinges nice and quiet.

Twilight waved the hand not holding her cell phone—or whatever it was—at the big door filling the end of the hallway behind her. "We've got the mayor, the city council, two state senators, and the lieutenant governor in there along with a maybe a hundred local civic and business leaders and members of the press. We all just be our usual smiling selves, and everything should go perfectly." She narrowed her eyes at Pinkie. "As long as no one says anything about animal husbands, I mean."

Pinkie shrugged again. Twilight took a deep breath, turned, flared her fingers, and the purple glow of her telekinesis pushed the doors open.

"And so," the mayor's amplified voice was saying as if on cue—which it probably was, knowing Twilight; she'd doubtless worked out every instant of this presentation down to the millisecond, "let me present, together again for the first time in five years, the past and present members of the Canterlot City Sentinels!"

The pressure of ninety-seven individual minds crashed against Sunset, and while that was the merest fraction of the minds she could feel bubbling away in the city surrounding her, having even this small a batch all essentially turn and start regarding her, well, only Doc gently stroking her hand kept her from bolting back down the hall toward the parking garage.

Applause burst through the doorway, and following the others in, Sunset had to strain to see the actual physical people rather than the shapes of their mental energy. Whether there were in fact ninety-seven of them standing there amid the little round tables that dotted the floor and the longer tables lining the walls, she couldn't be sure—both Rarity and Twilight were blocking her senses, after all, so she found herself hoping that others had somehow developed the ability, too—but the force of their attention battered away at her as unrelenting as a storm surge.

As promised, the mayor was introducing them all by name, the applause seeming to get louder and louder. Sunset mostly concentrated on trying not to trip over her boots as she moved with the girls and Doc to the slightly raised platform at the front of the room. Rarity, Dash, and Pinkie were all waving in their various ways—Rarity with one hand barely moving, Dash with one arm high and wide, Pinkie flailing both arms in every direction—and Applejack even began touching her hat brim and nodding. Twilight had her eyes fixed on the mayor and her microphone, and nowhere in the room or the building or the whole complex did Sunset detect that gentle little quiver she remembered coming from Fluttershy.

The combination of lights and people wanted to blister the inside of Sunset's eyes, but she forced herself to smile, even managed a wave or two. Still, the resolution grew with each step that she was never again going to set foot into any place more crowded than the general store back home. Never.

The floor shook at that exact moment and the walls as well. Gasps darted up from the crowd, the applause stumbling to a halt, mutters buzzing to take its place. And when a roar went off like something out of a late-night giant monster movie, the only other sound Sunset could hear for a long moment was the kettledrumming of her heart against her ribs.

"Rainbow?" Rarity said into the sudden silence. "If you'd be so kind?"

"On it!" Dash shouted. She blurred, then resolidified, a huge grin on her face. "Guys! You've gotta see! It's, like, a thirty-story-tall mutant T-Rex out there!"

Rarity's grin was just as big as Dash's, but it had something much more predatory in it. "Of course it is." Her hand flashed, and a skin-tight layer of white, flexible crystal encased her in the same way that Dash and Pinkie's suits encased them. Taking the microphone from the gaping mayor, Rarity said, "Honored guests, I shall be wrapping this room in an unbreakable shield as we leave, a shield that will keep you safe until we return. It will, however, dissolve on it own if I'm not back within thirty minutes, and then, well, then I suppose we'll all have larger problems with which we'll have to deal."

She returned the microphone to the mayor, turned with her hands on her hips, and said, "Sentinels? Shall we?"

Dash and Pinkie literally exploded for the door, Applejack not far behind with Twilight running along in her wake.

Rarity raised an eyebrow at Sunset.

Sunset looked up at Doc. "Stay here," she said.

He nodded. "Anything you need to do, Sunset."

Whirling for the door, she felt something sweep her up, a hard, glittering surface that slipped under her boot heels and propelled her out into the hall. "A moment," Rarity's voice murmured in her ear, and Sunset looked back to see that Rarity had one hand pointed downward generating the strip of magic they were standing on, the other hand pointing back at the door to pour forth an iridescent substance that spread like ice over, up, and even somehow through the wall.

"There." Rarity snapped her fingers with a tinkling sound. "Doc will be fine. That's the safest place in the city right now."

"Thanks." Facing forward, Sunset bent her knees. "So let's go check out the unsafest place."

Rarity giggled behind her, the shield stretching and undulating again; it propelled them forward even though Sunset found it quite easy to balance on. "I like this new trick of yours!" she called, keeping her attention on the hall rushing past them.

"Thank you!" Rarity called back. They shot across the city hall lobby, then, through the big front doors, and sailed out into the afternoon just above the plaza in front of the civic center complex, traffic at a complete standstill along Main Street...probably, Sunset thought, because of all the drivers abandoning their cars and running west.

A quick look east and upward showed Sunset why, the creature giving another roar. Towering over the buildings of downtown, green and scaly, ridges standing out along its head and back, it was very much a thirty-story-tall mutant T-Rex. At least the thing wasn't spewing atomic fire like they always did in the monster movies.

As Sunset watched, though, an all-too-familiar burst of purple telekinetic energy sparkled from somewhere on the next block, and a golden-brown missile went streaking upward: Applejack with her fists clenched in front of her and her "Yee-haw!" echoing from every nearby surface.

Behind Sunset, Rarity sighed. "As much as I'd enjoy standing here admiring the view, I suppose we'd best assist. Can you tell me if the creature's sapient?"

Sweeping her powers over the area, Sunset felt Applejack and Pinkie and Dash hammering away at the giant dinosaur in their own ways, but the jagged hole where the monster stood... "That's weird," Sunset said. "It's blank, but not the way an animal would be, and not the way you are, either. More the way Twilight is."

"Twilight?" The flowing shield stream beneath Sunset gave a little jolt and settled to the flagstones, Rarity stepping around to face her with a wrinkled brow. "Since when are Twilight's powers effective against yours?"

Sunset shrugged. "We've all changed the past five years."

Rarity shook her head. "We all changed in the year or so after we had to absorb our geodes to defeat Grogar, but Twilight told me after you left the Sentinels and just before she herself did that she hadn't developed any resistance to you." She shrugged. "Of course, she could have been speaking metaphorically; I don't believe she's dated at all since you left."

The monster gave another roar, but the activity Sunset could sense in that direction from Dash, Pinkie, and Applejack reassured her that they were on top of things. "Well," she said, swallowing a little wave of guilt, "however it's happening, there's only three things in this town I can't bamboozle right now: you, Twilight, and that monster."

"Ummm," the warmest, softest, sultriest voice Sunset could even begin to imagine said off to her left, and the feeling that rolled over her had nothing to do with the mind at all, her body stirring as if Doc was standing there wearing nothing but a smile and a bow tie.

Fortunately, one of the first things she'd done after leaving Canterlot City was to formulate defenses that would spring up automatically whenever hormones tried to short-circuit her brain. Energy rushed through her, lowering her body temperature, filtering her blood, screening particles and pheromones from the air that entered her lungs, and her rush of arousal flicked off as suddenly as it had appeared. Rarity had already wheeled toward the voice, but as Sunset moved to do the same, she couldn't help but notice that Rarity's jaw had dropped, her eyes bugging out almost as if she were channeling Pinkie Pie.

Completing her turn, Sunset found her jaw and eyes doing the same. Because Fluttershy was standing there.

Granted, Fluttershy had always been the girliest girl in their group—Sunset was sure even Rarity would've agreed with that statement. But now, the vision that appeared before Sunset on the stones of the civic center plaza made her want to reevaluate everything she'd ever thought about femininity: a face heart-stoppingly gorgeous but also conveying a best friend's sweetness; a bosom that blossomed like the most intoxicating of hothouse flowers; a waist perfect and waspish; hips curving out from there in delicate but mouth-watering ways; the hem of her long green skirt showing ankles and bare feet so shapely, Sunset suddenly found that several fetishes made complete sense to her.

The sheer force of attraction hammered at the outside of Sunset's defenses, and it took a fair amount of effort not to let those defenses puff away so she could lose herself in contemplation of Fluttershy's extraordinary beauty. Which was odd. When Sunset had been dating Twilight, she hadn't actually felt much physical attraction to her. It had been a mental thing between them, a compatibility thing, a mutual understanding and a desire for someone to cling to in the storms that flooded over them those last years in high school. She hadn't known real, body-wobbling lust till that first night out in the wilderness alone with Doc.

Right now, though—

"Okay," a voice growled, and with a blink, Sunset saw for the first time the giant, black, shaggy-furred wolf creature standing beside Fluttershy. "You two are gonna maintain, right?" Its lips pulled back to reveal incisors about as big as Sunset's thumbs, but the way its yellow eyes seemed to twinkle, Sunset became convinced that it was smiling. "I mean, Rarity with your shields and Sunset with your brain mojo or whatever, you oughtta be able to hold it together."

Things clicked in Sunset's head—the creature's underlying mental profile; the level of snark behind its words; the fur that wasn't black but a really really dark purple—and she opened her mouth just as Rarity gasped, "Spike? Is...is that you?"

His tongue lolled out. "Turns out spending a few years in Equestria as a dragon can change a guy a little." He settled back to sit, and Sunset had to stare, his head coming up to Fluttershy's shoulder. "But I guess we all know a little about changes, don't we?"

That got a giggle out of Fluttershy, and Sunset couldn't decide what was more breathtaking: the sound itself, the happy expression that shone like the sun at dawn from Fluttershy's face, or the luscious way her body moved during the giggling process.

Another roar sounded to the west, and Fluttershy became nothing but serious, those incredible lips opening, the most angelic possible voice saying, "I suppose I'd better take care of this whole monster situation before anything else."

"You?" The word got out before Sunset could stop it, and she slapped her hands over her mouth when Fluttershy bathed her in the full force of her attention. Shoving every bit of her power to her mental shields kept her from falling to her knees and begging Fluttershy to forgive her, but it was a near thing.

"It's all right, Sunset." And as much as hearing her name spoken in that voice almost turned Sunset's legs to jelly, Fluttershy's smile buoyed her, held her up, seemed to give her strength. "Like Spike said, we've all changed a little." The embrace of Fluttershy's gaze slid away, and Sunset had to take a staggering step to keep herself from falling over.

Fluttershy was gliding now between Sunset and Rarity, Spike loping alongside, Rarity turning to follow, her whole head encased in something as clear and bulbous as a diving helmet. Her gaping stare, however, told Sunset that her attempts to screen out Fluttershy's new power was working just about as well as Sunset's own...

Stopping a few paces away, Fluttershy looked up, and Sunset could feel the flow of that warm, sweet attention wafting like a spring zephyr toward the area a block or so away where the giant dinosaur monster was still roaring and batting at the clouds of confetti, the multiple blue streaks, and the solid golden-brown spot hammering away at its neck. "Excuse me," Fluttershy said, her voice no louder than before but somehow absolutely and immediately the most riveting thing Sunset had ever heard. "Might I have a word with you, please, monster?"

Everything froze, the monster's red eyes going wide, each individual speck of confetti suspended against the sky, the streaks all snapping together into a single blue figure now standing on the monster's shoulder beside the golden-brown one. The monster's big head looked left, looked right, then focused forward staring down at Fluttershy as one gigantic hand came up to point a single claw back at itself.

"Yes, you." Fluttershy's giggle this time wanted to both stop Sunset's heart and make it race. "Hello. My name's Fluttershy. May I know your name, please?"

The monster swallowed so hard, Sunset could see its neck bulge, but it managed to make a little squeaking sound.

"Georgina?" Fluttershy nodded. "I'm pleased to meet you. Now, if you'll look to your left, you'll see a large eagle."

Sunset craned her head at the same time the monster did, something brown and white swooping back and forth above the buildings there.

"That's Aaron." The whole city seemed to have fallen silent around Fluttershy. "If you'll very carefully follow him—and by that, I mean knocking over as few things as you can and only stepping in places where there aren't any people or cars—he'll lead you to my animal sanctuary outside of the city. And if you'll wait there for me there"—Fluttershy shifted her hips ever so slightly, and every drop of moisture evaporated from Sunset's throat—"you and I will do some very, very pleasant things together when I get back. All right?"

It took Sunset a second to realize that the redness spreading over the monster's face meant that it was blushing. The monster—Georgina, a part of Sunset's brain chimed in—Georgina gave a quick nod, turned, and began tiptoeing away through the high-rises, the eagle staying just ahead of her.

"Next," Fluttershy said, slowly pivoting and making Sunset catch her breath again at the caress of her attention, "Spike seems to think, Rarity and Sunset, that if you each cover me with your strongest physical and mental shields, it should keep me contained enough that we can all talk more or less like normal. I'll ask you, though, please to wrap me up right away before—"

"Fluttershy!" Pinkie's shout echoed through the buildings like a steam whistle. "Do me! Do me! Do me!"

Sunset's gasp mirrored Rarity's, and she brought her flaring hands up just as Rarity did. White beams of energy washed over Fluttershy, but Rarity's beam resolved into something that looked like a glass bell; it crashed down around Fluttershy and drove another mental ice pick into Sunset's forehead. "Rarity!" she got out through clenched teeth. "Your shields! I can't—! They're too—!"

"Let me adjust the...piezoelectric frequency!" From the tightness of the words, Sunset guessed that Rarity was clenching her teeth as well. "There! Can you work with that?"

The bell surrounding Fluttershy still looked as solid as before, but spreading her mental energy over it, Sunset found its consistency now to be more like a fine mesh screen. She pushed through just as a funnel cloud of confetti whirled into the civic center plaza and coalesced into Pinkie Pie running full tilt toward them, her grin wider, Sunset was sure, than the human face should've allowed.

"Fluttershy!" Pinkie squealed, then her eyes expanded like balloons, her legs went rigid, and the heels of her boots gouged parallel tracks into the flagstones as she skidded to a halt just in front of the shield. Reaching out a gloved finger, she tapped the surface, gave a puff through her nose, and turned away, her arms folded and her face pouting. "Well, that sure spoils the mood!"

Three more shouts tangled in Sunset's ears: "Dag nabbit!" "Whoa!" "Will you guys just chill?" And Dash came running up the sidewalk and into the plaza so slowly, she wasn't even blurred. A shopping cart rattled along in front of her, Applejack sitting in it, one hand on her hat and the other wrapped around Twilight, Dash going on: "Gimme a break! I hardly hit thirty miles per hour the whole way! If you'd let me really open up, we woulda been here by now!"

"We are here, you idjit!" Applejack leaped from the cart with both arms cradling Twilight and slammed into the stonework with a crash that embedded her boots in rubble and shook the whole area. "And why do I always end up carrying ev'rybody ev'rywhere?"

"Hey!" Dash stopped short, the cart clattering on without her. "I was carrying you! Just like I've done since grade school!"

Setting Twilight down gently, Applejack wrenched herself from the ankle-deep holes, took a step toward Dash, and loomed over her. "You maybe wanna think before you say anything else, sugar cube?"

"Ha!" Dash put her fists on her hips and glared up at Applejack. "Why would I wanna start doing that?"

Sunset leaped forward, her hands already raised because of the power she was casting over Fluttershy. "Hey, hey, hey! C'mon, guys!" She gestured with her chin toward the departing monster. "We've literally got bigger things to worry about right now!"

"You bet we do!" someone yelled, the voice tight and angry and making Sunset's whole body wince: Twilight, her tone as hurt and cutting as Sunset remembered from the last time they'd been together. "Like the way you've all once again managed to mess everything up!"

Applejack and Dash looked over, their faces completely blank, while Pinkie blinked from where she'd been scratching Spike between the ears. "We what now?" Pinkie asked.

Bracing herself, Sunset turned toward Twilight, fury darkening the shorter woman to a much deeper purple than usual. "Two-and-a-half years!" Twilight shouted. "That's how long I've been planning my revenge! And in less than ten minutes, you ruin it!"

Spike raised a paw. "Technically, as my friend Mud Briar would say, it was Fluttershy who ruined your plan. She detected the build-up of rage and jealousy from you over a year ago and asked me to come over from Equestria so I could help her stop whatever you were trying to do."

Twilight had paled to a sort of mauve. "Spike?" Then she was rushing forward, wrapping her arms around his thick neck, nothing but joy in her face. "Spike! It's so wonderful to see you!" Gasping, she pulled back. "But no! You can't! We decided! In Equestria, you'll live for thousands of years as a dragon, but here as a dog, you'll barely have another decade!"

"Twi..." Spike put his paws on her shoulders and gave her nose a lick. "It's not gonna hurt me to come back for a visit every once in a while. And besides!" He pushed away from her and struck a pose on all fours, his head held high and his chest puffed out. "Look at this physique! I mean, it's great being a dragon, but I was born a dog, and I—"

"Umm, hello?" Sunset almost felt bad about interrupting their touching reunion, but... "Is it just me, or is anyone else wondering about this revenge thing Twilight mentioned?"

"Yes." Rarity had come around the side of Fluttershy's bell and was standing next to Spike with her arms folded and her half-lidded gaze fixed on Twilight. "I find myself rather interested in it, especially if it had anything to do with a certain large, mutant dinosaur named"—Rarity cocked her head at Fluttershy—"Georgeanne, was it?"

"Georgina," Fluttershy said.

Rarity flashed her a smile. "Thank you, darling." The smile vanished, though, when she turned back to Twilight. "Well?" she asked.

Twilight's guilty look was something Sunset remembered very well. "I...didn't know her name was Georgina..."

Somehow, Rarity grew even frostier. "You mean you enrolled her in some nefarious scheme without even securing a proper introduction?"

For an instant, Twilight's face wrinkling, her eyes narrowing, and her lips tightening, Sunset was sure she was about to start shouting again. But Spike nudged her shoulder with his nose, and everything about her drooped. "I raised her from a zygote I put together," Twilight muttered, her glasses pointed at the ground. "I...it never even occurred to me that she might have a name..."

Fluttershy sighed, and while the hair on the back of Sunset's neck prickled, she found that she could look at the other woman without wanting to throw herself at her feet. "Oh, Twilight. No wonder the whole natural world was so upset by what you were doing."

Dash waved an arm. "And for what? 'Cause Sunset dumped you?"

With Twilight still staring at the ground, only six glares smacked into Dash, but Sunset was glad—and a little surprised—to see that that seemed to be enough. "Sorry," Dash said, rubbing the spot where her uniform covered the back of her neck. "I dunno if you've noticed, but I sometimes talk before I think..."

"Reckon?" Applejack more growled than said.

Rarity was shaking her head, but she took a breath, stepped closer to Twilight, and touched her shoulder. "Really, darling, if you were having such a hard time, why didn't you say something?"

"To whom?" When Twilight's head came up, her shimmering eyes made Sunset want to look away. "Spike and Fluttershy were already gone, and the four of you were pairing up! So when Sunset broke my heart, I didn't...couldn't—"

"I broke your heart?" All the things Sunset had wanted to say to this woman for five years bubbled up inside her. "Whaddaya think happened to me when I found out my supposed girlfriend didn't actually love me?"

"What?" all seven of them said at once, and Twilight went on. "How can you say that? How can you say—?"

"Because I saw it!" Sunset jabbed a finger against the side of her head and almost wished it would shatter her skull. "After we absorbed our geodes, our powers got stronger and went crazy, remember? I didn't try to spy on you, Twi, but I couldn't control it! And when I saw what you really thought of me—"

"I loved you!" Twilight lurched toward her, her face as crumpled as an empty lunch bag. "I still love you! You're beautiful and brilliant and everything I ever—"

"Everything you ever wanted to study!" The words tore at Sunset's throat, the nights she'd wept them into Doc's chest not nearly preparing her for actually hurling them, raw and bloody, at Twilight Sparkle herself. "I wasn't a person to you! I was a possession, a subject, the only magical unicorn in a world of science and technology! I was a plush toy you cuddled with at night and an exotic object you played with during the day!"

Twilight had frozen in place. "That," she whispered, "that's not...not true..."

When Sunset jabbed the finger to her temple this time, it made her think of a gun barrel. "I saw it, Twilight. I felt it. I knew it as surely at that moment as you knew it and still know it now." She swallowed. "I opened myself up to you, and you examined my insides with a microscope while taking notes." Turning away, she forced herself to keep speaking. "I ran away that night, ran out into a city filled with people thinking phony things about me: heroine, alien, savior, fetish. I could only detect one spot of calm in the whole awful mix."

Again, thinking of him loosened her various clenches. "Doc had graduated from Canterlot High just before I first showed up, had gotten his engineering degree right here in town, had opened his fix-it shop barely noticing everything we were getting up to: demon me and the Sirens and the interdimensional rifts and Grogar. So all he saw when I stumbled into his shop was a person who needed help, and all I saw was the person who could give me the help I needed."

She took a breath, let the air mix with the peace that always came with thoughts of Doc, and blew it all back out. "So I'm sorry I hurt you, Twilight. And I'm sorry my haywire powers let me burst into your head like that." She turned to look at the others in turn. "And I'm sorry the only way I could come up with to keep my own identity intact was to publicly declare who I was and who you all were. But I was drowning in our collective thoughts and memories, so I grabbed hold of the first rock I flailed up against."

The city's weird silence—the monster gone but the cars still abandoned—surrounded them, and Sunset looked at these people, so similar and so changed from the friends she'd known. She wanted to tell them how much they'd meant to her, how much they still meant to her, how much she wished some things had turned out differently, but... "I'm sorry," she said again. It was really the most important thing anyway.

Another moment of silence, then Pinkie gave a loud sigh. "Fine." She slid sideways from her spot in front of Fluttershy's enclosure. "Fluttershy can do you first, I guess."

Comments

[Lurks-no-More]

That is, unfortunately, a very Sci-Twi attitude Sunset's raging out against.

[AugieDog]

9824702

The theme of the contest:

Is Sunset ending a relationship, and I liked this as a reason for Sunset and Twilight to fall apart.

Mike

[PresentPerfect]

Fluttershy's gonna fuck that monster

I so love what you did with Spike. :D

[AugieDog]

9837533

Such has become:

Fluttershy's lot in life. ()

As for Spike, I know I'm stealing the basic idea from someone else on the site here, but I don't remember who--SS&E, maybe? I'm expanding on it a bit here, though.

Mike