Doubleblind

by MaxKodan

Chapter 1

Chrysalis was tired.

She was tired of the life she’d chosen. Of the school, and the students, and the staff. She was tired of working these angles, of fending off the people who were too willing to help her fit in. She wanted a challenge, not a red carpet. If she were honest she was starting to hate it all.

But she wasn’t honest. She was Chrysalis. She’d keep changing, evolving, growing, getting better than everyone else, and certainly better than herself. She wouldn’t be done until the day she took her last, dying breath. And it was time for a change.

She pulled herself up onto the statue in front of the school and set her backpack down between the stupid horse’s legs. It clinked, but she ignored it. She stared at the building, at its towering mass, its formidable doors...it was so pleasant during the day that no one noticed how ominous it was at night. Idiots. All of them. Too stupid to even let her play with them the way she wanted to. She couldn’t hurt them if they were all skipping along behind her.

The backpack clinked again as it opened, and she set the first bottle down on the plinth beside her. The glass hit the concrete with such a satisfying clack that she put the next one down even harder. Bottles three and four were given a bit more care, lest she get overzealous and accidentally break one.

It happened when she was halfway through the knot on her bandana. She felt a chill that started in her heel and rippled up through her spine. She looked down between her legs. The statue was wobbling. She yanked her legs up and wrapped her arms around them, holding herself tight just in time to stop the girl that was spat out into the world from getting an accidental boot to the head.

That fact hadn’t quite settled in Chrysalis’s mind before the girl staggered and toppled over, catching herself hard on her hands. It looked pretty painful. That concrete was no joke. Since she hadn’t been spotted, she just watched the new girl get to her knees and pat herself down. Then she tried to stand up, but that ended with her on all fours and her backside so far in the air that Chrysalis almost looked away for propriety’s sake.

Almost.

While the girl ogled her own hands, which she had apparently only just noticed, the moonlight glinted off of something sitting at Chrysalis’s side.

She hissed a curse and stuffed the bottles back into her bag. Then she leapt off the statue and strode over to the red-haired stranger, who was too distracted staring at her own fingers to notice her.

“Uh,” she said, not exactly sure how to put her question into words.

“Ah!” the girl replied, leaping to her feet and immediately losing her balance. Chrysalis lunged forward and managed to catch one of the flailing arms long enough to get her steady.

“Geez, calm down. You almost knocked my teeth out.” Not true, but, well, she was Chrysalis.

“I...woah.” She was clinging to Chrysalis’s arm and moving her jaw like she’d taken a right hook. As she focused on that, though, her body tilted backwards and Chrysalis had to tug to keep her upright. “Ah! Sorry.” She took a half step back, and the way she was bending her knees had to be uncomfortable.

“Right,” Chrysalis said, tentatively letting the girl go. She was still in standby. “You party a bit too hard? You look like you’ve been having either the best or the worst night.”

“No, no.” She was holding her arms wide apart and using them to keep her balance. “I just, uh…”

The silence dragged on for a few seconds while she tried to think up a cover story. Chrysalis raised her eyebrows. “Okay, let’s start with something you do know. My name is Chrysalis. What’s yours?”

“Sunset. Sunset Shimmer.”

Chrysalis still hated this school. Hated it with a burning passion. But the game had changed. There was a new piece to move. Maybe Chrysalis couldn’t win because she was spending too much time on the board. After all, victory belonged to the player, not the queen.

“Well, Sunset Shimmer, I have some questions for you.” Not the least of which being ‘how did you just walk out of a statue.’ “But you look like you’ve had a long day, so how about I just walk you home. Where do you live?”

Sunset just stood there, looking nervous. She didn’t look much like a bum. But maybe she’d been thrown out on the streets. From her home. In the statue. Look, the activity of the day was apparently to go completely insane: Chrysalis was just playing along.

“Alright,” she said. “Well, come back to my place. It isn’t much, but I’ve got a couch for you.”

The look on Sunset’s face was somewhere between relief and acute nausea.

She let Sunset go, carefully, holding her hands up like she were backing away from a hissing cat. Sunset shook for a moment, but gave a weak thumbs-up when she found herself steady. That gave Chrysalis enough time to grab her backpack and sling it over her shoulder. It clinked.

Sunset, who had worked out how to take a step without kicking herself in the face, joined her as she headed for the street. “What’s in the bag?” she asked, tilting her head back and instantly regretting it.

“Soda,” Chrysalis said without hesitation.

“Huh. I don’t think I’ve ever tried any.”

Chrysalis stopped and stared. “Oh god,” she said, her eyes going wider. “You poor, neglected thing.”

---

It took a couple of weeks for Chrysalis to worm Sunset’s story out of her. She told a wild tale of another world of sentient magical ponies. Had it been anyone else, and had Chrysalis not seen her pass through solid stone, she wouldn’t have believed it. When the name “Princess Celestia” came up and Chrysalis mentioned the principal, they wondered if there were other parallels.

That’s when they found the other Sunset Shimmer. She lived a quiet life, in a city a good distance away. Not the type of person who’d likely end up visiting Canterlot. But Chrysalis decreed that they would spend a day visiting, and they managed to track Sunset’s doppelganger down. Any doubts Chrysalis had about the story evaporated when they saw her through a bus window as it passed the cafe they were lunching at: one chosen because it was between that Sunset’s home address and her school. They went home without confronting her. No need to cause a scene.

For two years, Sunset lived with Chrysalis. She gave her a key to her apartment. Got her set up in the school. Ridiculously lax paperwork in that place, she just repeated the same process she’d used to get herself in. The first year went perfectly. She didn’t need friends, she has Chrysalis. They formed their own little group. But Sunset was accepted with open arms by everyone around. Especially those ones.

Chrysalis worked hard to always keep her on the fringes of the other friend circles. She never let her get too integrated—too personable. But of course, she had to be diffused across the school. Everyone knew her, and with some gentle nudges...well, threats; With some gentle threats she managed to get her new friend voted Princess of the Fall Formal.

Sunset was ecstatic. Poor girl looked like she’d never been given any sort of real validation. By the end of that school year, they were basically dating. Not officially, they didn’t go around calling each other sweetie or whatever schlock people used to annoy others with their own happiness. They just existed together.

That whole year was a gas. They were inseparable, though Sunset would always wander just a little to connect with everyone else. She never forgot wearing that crown, winning the day, winning the year. She wanted to make sure she kept that.

The second year was different. Sunset flourished in a way Chrysalis could only have dreamed of. She’d gotten her taste of power through that title. Princess. Chrysalis knew about the real princess, back in that strange world. She knew how much Sunset wanted to be that, what it meant to her. She used the lust, steering Sunset with a little suggestion here, an offhand comment there.

“Rainbow Dash and Applejack are so close! They work so well together that I’ve heard rumblings about maybe voting for one of them. Or both of them!”

“Fluttershy is kinda saccharine, isn’t she? I mean, I know she’s sweet, and kinda cute and all, but who would even vote for her? It’s like she cares more about her animals than anyone else. Unreal.”

“So like, parties are cool, but Pinkie Pie’s are so laaaaaaame. But people buy into it or whatever. I bet that’s why she’s doing so many recently: to get people to like her.”

“Rarity’s making her own dress this year, and she’s going to go all out. I hear even on a budget, since she’s skipping the designers and retailers and just making her own it’s going to be shooting way outside her normal range, or the range of anyone at the school. We’re talking Crystal Prep levels here. What a tryhard.”

Crown number two wasn’t a gift: it was an accomplishment. Sunset drove a wedge between all those too-nice lovey dovey hippies. Chrysalis watched friendships torn apart, dreams shattered, and wills broken with more pride than she thought she could possess. Sunset, the visitor from another world, had grown into someone that she could leave this school to.

And she did leave, of course. She wasn’t the type to stay in one place too long, and while this extended distraction had been an amazing learning experience, it was about time to mosey along to ruin someone else’s life. There wasn’t much fanfare. A kiss, which was surprising but not unwelcome.

She promised she’d come back, but both of them knew one incontestable fact.

She was Chrysalis.

---

Comments

[forbloodysummer]

This is full of some very interesting ideas!