Reformation's Downside

by Moonlit Sky

9. Continuing

We don't usually get anyone knocking on our van's door. The bouncer keeps the fans out, and strategic use of Aria's eternal grumpiness keeps the venue staff out.

When I open the door, I find myself suddenly face-to-face with Sunset Shimmer.

"Adagio." Her voice is small. "It's... been a while."

I don't say anything. If I did, it would most likely be something stupid and unproductive.

"I didn't realize the three of you were going to be at the festival, but I heard your song. It was good."

"That's all you have to say about it? You did that to us, you know."

"I know. And... well, I would probably do it again, if it came down to it." I slide the van's door slightly shut, indicating that she should get on with it. "But, even so... I'd like to try again?"

"What." What is she even saying.

"Not dating," she says hurriedly. "Not even necessarily spending time together regularly. But... meeting up somewhere, at least once? Chatting about life? Seeing if there's anything we can connect over, still, even though we've both changed? I messed things up between the two of us once. Trying to fix it seems like the least I can do."
My old abandoned plan comes back to me. Becoming 'reformed' like Sunset did, becoming her 'friends' until we get the same power that those other five girls somehow got, and thereby regain our old power even without our focuses.

"I... am very tempted to just slam the door in your face right now," I tell her. "I'm also tempted to pursue a half-baked almost-guaranteed failure of a plan for revenge that I came up with a month after the Battle of the Bands." I might as well be honest, since I'm not going to actually do it. Honesty builds trust, after all, and we're going to need all of that we can get for this to go anywhere other than straight into an incinerator. "But okay. One meetup. And keep in mind that, if Aria or Sonata wants me around whenever we plan our meetup for, I absolutely will skip seeing you in order to stay with them. I may or may not send you any texts warning you about it. Understood?"

Sunset nods, looking slightly overwhelmed, but with a smile growing on her face nonetheless.

"Great. Well, then, here's my current number. Text me after the festival is over."

I scribble my backup burner phone's number on a piece of paper, hand it to her in a crumpled mess, and then slam the door in her face.

I have no idea how our meetup is going to go, or even if I'm going to end up going at all. But somehow, nonetheless, I find myself looking forward to it.

Author's Note:

I hope you enjoyed reading!

This is my first time publishing a piece of prose fiction to the broader internet, as opposed to sharing it purely within a small and limited social circle. My editorbrain is insisting that the story is awful; but I'm pretty sure that it would be insisting that even if it were, in fact, good. If anyone has feedback in either of those directions, or any other, I welcome it.

Comments

[NaiadSagaIotaOar]

This is a cool idea for a story! I've wanted to put pre-reformation Sunset in the same room as Adagio for a while, now, but never came up with anything solid enough to make a story out of it. Having them bond over world domination and then suddenly have one of them not want that anymore is a neat angle for getting them together and then breaking them up.

But with all that being said, this felt a little lacking in some areas. I feel like a big part of that was it using summary when I wanted to see scenes. We see a lot of Adagio and Sunset talking about their relationship and how it benefits them, but not so much of that relationship actually... existing. So when I got to moments like this:

You... probably don't think like me more than anyone else I've met, because I've lived for a very long time, but you're the most like me of the people I've actually talked to. And it makes spending time with you relaxing in a way that spending time with the others isn't.

It didn't feel earned. I could believe that Adagio felt that way, but more because that feels in line with how I see her character than the story convincing me she felt that way, if that makes sense.

Another thing that I think contributed to the same issue is that I didn't see much personality in the characters. One of the aspects of Adagio I like the most is that she's very much a larger-than-life, theatric figure; she can be flowery and eloquent in one moment, and viciously scathing in another. But here, she felt very subdued and defanged in a way that made me struggle to see her as the character she's meant to be. Perhaps that's to be expected--I think it's much easier to regulate how she comes across when she's described from another POV than when she's narrating--but when Sunset had much the same problem, it just made their interactions feel wooden and that's... less than ideal, when the intent is to capture romance.

[twience]

Huh... I never thought about that before. What if they did meet before the fall formal? How interesting! Nice story.

<3

[TCC56]

Absolutely loving the concept behind this. It's a great take.

[Moonlit Sky]

9827792
Thanks for the feedback! I definitely had some of that same sense that something was missing, when I was writing and editing this, and your comment seems like a pretty plausible accounting of some of the issues involved.

As far as the summarizing issue goes, I tried to convey some amount of their-relationship-as-I-was-envisioning-it via the second chapter, but now that you bring it up... yeah, that probably was a bit too rushed. Adding a couple extra scenes around that section to build up the way the relationship developed (and to do more to foreshadow its cracks) would probably have helped a lot.

Character-writing-wise... yeah, you're entirely right. Character voice is, in general, a thing I currently struggle with; I actually consider this to be one of my better stories character-voice-wise, if anything—I made some advances in my approach to the topic, over the course of writing this, which let me keep the characters a lot less samey-sounding than they've historically tended to be in my (unpublished) previous stories—but it's still a big weakness of mine, and is one of the areas which I'm trying hardest to get more practice at.

[Undome Tinwe]

Fascinating concept, and I really enjoyed reading the execution of it. It does feel a bit rushed, which I think goes back to Naiad's comment about summarizing, but overall I think this is a fun story and I'm looking forward to seeing more from you in the future, if you choose to keep publishing.

[PresentPerfect]

Great idea, and a good look at Adagio. I daresay you should have strayed further from canon than you did, though. Sunset's behavior in the movie and special don't really line up with this history.