Desperate Recall
Twilight let out a small sigh of relief once she heard back from Fluttershy, the last of the girls to respond to the text informing them of everything that Sunset had told her. While Rainbow Dash wanted to skip class to immediately start searching for the Memory Stone, the rest of the girls were able to cool the speedsters heel. The possibility of losing more memories just because she decided to ask the wrong person about the magical artifact was enough to make even the hot headed girl think twice. That, of course, left Twilight suffering through her next class with the knowledge that Sunset was out there with only Trixie as help.
It wasn’t like Twilight didn’t trust the blue haired magician, but her overall impression of the girl had mostly been that of a showboating ego case than anything else. But then again, with their very memories in question, whose to say that Trixie’s own good deeds hadn’t been erased from everyone's thoughts just like Sunsets? Regardless, it left Twilight even more distracted from her class than before, now wanting nothing more than to be with Sunset and help her.
But what do I feel like that? Twilight asked herself, biting her lip as she stared down blankly at the unfinished history essay, her pencil tapping at the blank lines. Why does it feel like I should be skipping class and doing everything I can to be with Sunset right now? It doesn’t make any sense! With a rough groan of annoyance, the scientist simply put down her pencil and gave up her assignment as a bad job. She’d just have to finish it tomorrow instead of turning it in the day it was given out to the class like she normally did. Hopefully the teacher wouldn’t mind too much about that, even if the essay was due in two weeks.
Pulling out a fresh sheet of paper, she instead wrote down all the people likely to use the magic of Equestria against Sunset. The list was, sadly, both very long and very short. Just about everyone that Twilight could think of would likely do something against Sunset, but nearly every reason they had for wanting to erase the flame-haired woman from peoples memory all dated back to the Fall Formal, right when Sunset said she had turned over a new leaf.
That left the number of people that Twilight knew in the school who might still have some kind of grudge against the girl down to only a few. Even then, the data she had wasn’t perfect either. Trixie had been on that list of the few people who would use the Memory Stone, and now she was helping Sunset in her search. Did that mean everyone else was likely as innocent or was it just Trixie?
Twilight made absolutely no progress on her lists by the time the period had ended, leaving it as nothing more than a crumpled paper in the trash. She shoved her books deep into her backpack before heading out of the class room, ignorant of everything else as she sat down at the girls normal table for lunch, rubbing her temples lightly.
Fluttershy sat down beside her about a minute later, her lips twisted in a small frown. “Are you alright, Twilight?”
Shaking her head, Twilight looked over at her friend. Out of all the girls, Fluttershy was the one that was most like herself. Soft spoken, socially awkward, and only really becoming more out going once her friends came into the equation. It was only because of their naturally passive personalities that they hadn’t become closer. “It’s… this whole thing with Sunset. I just feel weird about it,” she paused, biting her lip. “It’s almost like there’s something that just keeps nagging at me, almost screaming at me to go to Sunset. Have you had anything like that?”
Her frown deepening, Fluttershy shook her head. “I’m sorry, Twilight, but I haven’t. I felt bad when we found out that Sunset was erased from our memories… and that I want to help her as much as possible, but I’ve not felt anything like that.” Fluttershy scooted a little closer, placing her hand on her friends shoulder. “How long have you been feeling like this, Twilight?”
A blush covered her face, looking away from her quiet friend. “Ever since I figured out that Sunset had a point about us not remembering her, it’s been like I’ve been scrambling to do anything to help. And it’s getting worse, Fluttershy. I couldn’t even focus on any of the work I was given in class. Does that sound like me?”
“Not really, Twi… It does sound like you’re taking this a lot harder than the rest of us,” Fluttershy said, squeezing her friends shoulder softly. “I’m not sure what it means. Do you think there’s something with the magic that’s effecting you? Like maybe it’s making you feel things different from the rest of us?”
Twilight let out a small breath through her nose before giving a small shrug. Was she right? Was there something different about Twilight that was causing her to feel this way? Maybe it had something to do with how she gained her magic in the first place. It would be all too easy to put the blame at the feet of Midnight Sparkle again. But that was it, wasn’t it? It was too easy… “I wish I knew for sure,” she finally said, closing her eyes.
Fluttershy wrapped her arm around Twilight’s shoulder, bringing the girl into a small hug. It brought a smile to the scientists lips for the first time since the whole mess started, melting away some of her fears and anxiety. It was this that made the her so glad to have friends now, that they were able to soothe her fears and make her feel better by their simple presence.
The rest of the girls joined the pair soon enough, Rainbow Dash even slamming her food down on the table once the everyone else was seated, drawing everyone’s focus. “Alright, so tell me, what the fuck are we going to do to fix this?” The multi-chromatic girl growled.
“Rainbow, language!” Rarity snapped, lips twisting into a harsh frown. “I know you’re upset, but that’s no reason to utter such obscene words!”
“Then figure out something for me to do, Rarity!” Rainbow Dash fired back, anger tinging her cerulean skin into a deep azure. “I’m not going to just sit on my ass to ‘stay safe’ while some two-bit magician is the one helping out our friend!”
The fashionista looked ready to escalate the issue with Dash when she felt a soft hand on her shoulder, Fluttershy giving her a gentle squeeze before looking over to her best friend. “Rainbow, please calm down.”
Huffing in anger, Rainbow crossed her arms with all the subtly of a scolded child and dropped down into her seat, not even looking at the other girls. Twilight just shook her head, a little surprised about the change in attitude that she had seen in the girl in just a single day. When this entire thing had started, Dash didn’t believe a single word that Sunset had said, believing it all to just be another trick by a bully who tried to split up her and her friends over a year ago. The discovery that she had been telling the truth had struck her hardest, making Rainbow willing to do anything in her power to make things right.
“Dashie does have a point, though,” AJ said, looking at the rest of her friends. The farmer’s gaze was hard, showing her own anger at the situation. “We need ta do something other than just sittin’ on our heals like trained farm dogs.”
“But we can’t just go around asking everyone!” Pinkie spoke up, her hair straighter than Twilight had ever seen it, it coming down in in soft rivers about the party girls face. “The meanie pants with the stone would just erase our memories again and we’d be right back where we started! And forgetting one persons birthday is one person too many!”
“Not to mention the trouble it would cause with the school faculty.” Rarity pointed out in a defeated tone. “A few of the teachers I’ve asked only remember Sunset as we did; a bully and a demon. If that’s what they think, I could only guess what Principal Celestia might be thinking of our friend right now.”
Rainbow Dash let out another growl, slamming a clenched fist into the hard plastic of the table. “So then we’re just right back where we started! This is just so stupid! We need to be able to do something, find some way to get around the fact that this asshole can just rip our thoughts from our heads! We need to put the entire school on red alert for this creep!”
Twilight’s head shot up at the words, eyes going wide before slapping herself across the forehead. “Of course! Why didn’t think of this before!?!” The girl near shouted to herself, immediately pulling out her phone, fingers flying across the screen. It would just take a simple algorithm, a little program that Twilight could write in her sleep, but it would fit exactly with what the girls needed.
“You figure something out there, Twi?” Applejack said, the farm girls straightening from her own slumped posture of defeat. The rest of the girls all turned to their friend, watching her frantic work.
Nodding to her friends, the Twilight smirked as she sent the program to her friends phones, watching each of them grab at their devices as they went off. “We’ve been going about this all wrong! We’ve already got proof that who ever is erasing our memories isn’t doing it perfectly. I was still able to tell that something wasn’t right and Rarity and Pinkie Pie both had proof on them that we were friends with Sunset right? Well now all we need is an alert system, something to remind us of what we’re doing.”
“Is that what you sent us, Darling?” Rarity asked, tapping the program sent to her with a single manicured fingernail, the girls around her all doing the same.
“Exactly. With this program, it’ll send out a regular alert to all of our phones every ten minutes that we can respond to with an answer to a simple question: Is Sunset Shimmer our friend? If one of us doesn’t respond or answers it with a no, then it will send an alert to the rest of us while pinpointing their exact location, allowing us to help the girl that was hit and be that much closer to finding the memory thief!” Twilight explained, a grin stretching her face wide.
“Boy howdy, this is amazing! What you girls say about us getting started right now?” Applejack said, gripping her phone tight and smiling at her friends.
“Way ahead of you, AJ! Come on girls, we’ve got ourselves a magical villain to catch!” Rainbow Dash shouted, instantly blitzing out of the cafeteria with her Super speed, leaving her namesake trail behind her. The rest of the girls quickly followed suit, each one heading out to different corners of the school, ready to use up the rest of their free time to help their friend.
Don’t worry, Sunset! Twilight thought. We’re going to help you and get our memories back!
~oOo~
The end of the school day came swiftly for the Rainbooms, and all to their sorrow. While Twilight’s little program had gone off without a hitch, making sure that none of them had been hit again by the Memory Stone, all six of the girls had come up empty. Not only had most of the students hadn’t even seen such a thing, which made sense given the fact that Twilight and her friends were the only ones who were constantly exposed to magic, but the Wondercolt spirit seemed in short supply when it came to doing anything in favor of Sunset.
Now Twilight sat on the blacktop of the high school’s parking lot, knees curled up against her chest while her back rested against the back tire of AJ’s beat up pick up. Fluttershy was next to her, rubbing her shoulder softly, offering what little comfort she could even as she looked over to her friends, lost as to what to do next. Pinkie was hanging off the side of the cargo bed of the truck. Applejack and Rainbow Dash were brooding at the front while Rarity shook her head after staring at her phone, having used the last of her contacts to no avail.
Never before had Twilight ever failed so miserably at something she had set her mind to. Before, even back when she was still at Crystal Prep and had to deal with all the horrible experiences at that school, the young genius had been able to overcome anything with a little hard work and a lot of intelligence. But today, she and her friends had come up with nothing. No clues, no answers, just the knowledge that they had lost their memories. It was a torture unlike anything Twilight had ever gone through.
And that was part of the problem too. For some unknown reason, the very thought of not remembering, of having failed Sunset… it tore at Twilight. A squeezing sensation continued to crush at her heart as guilt weighed down her mind, not leaving her be for a second. The other girls all felt some form of guilt at their inability to help their forgotten friend, but it was on another level for Twilight. It had been that way since the start. A small, defeated groan escaped her, arms squeezing her legs tighter to her body as she closing her eyes, just wishing for it all to be over.
“Wallflower! Wallflower, stop!”
Twilight rose her head at the shout, knowing Sunset’s voice anywhere. She looked on in confusion as her friend chased after a girl with green hair and skin, This Wallflower person looking shocked for a moment.
“You remember me?” The new girl asked, taking a wary step back.
“I remember everything! The Memory Stone, how I acted, all of it!” Sunset said, her voice pleading.
“How?!” Wallflower snarled back. She took another step back, clutching her backpack close to her body like a shield. “I erased the entire afternoon!”
“Wait, so you’re the one that took our memories?!” Rainbow yelled, clenching her fists in anger. Applejack and Rarity were right behind her, each one glaring down at the green haired girl. Twilight just looked on in surprise at their villain. She was shorter than the scientist herself, looked even meeker than Fluttershy, and seemed to be the kind of girl you’d forget the moment you stopped looking at her. This was the girl that was responsible for everything?
Wallflower eyes went wide, snapping over to the Rainbow Dash in surprise. Then the anger in her face returned in force. “You all remember too?! Of course you did! Because Sunset Shimmer just has to be the focus of everything and win all the time, doesn’t she?! You haven’t changed! You’re still the same mean queen of the school you’ve always been!”
“Just what in the sam hill is that girl talking about?!” Applejack asked.
She got no answer as Wallflower shoved her hand into her pack and pulled out a small rounded stone. It would be an unimpressive rock under any other circumstances, a simple thing carved with a rune that was the shape of an eye on its center. For the magic to erase memories being locked away in such a tiny little container.
“I wanted to teach you a lesson by erasing all of your friends good memories of you… make it so that they saw how you acted when they had nothing to tie you to them,” Wallflower stated, glaring down at her artifact before leveling that same harsh gaze towards Sunset. “But that didn’t work. So what if I removed ALL their memories of you and each other?”
“You can’t!” Sunset shouted, sparing the smallest of glances to Twilight and the others. She held a look of terror that Twilight had only ever seen before on a horror movie, a wide eyed terror that would leave most screaming and running for their lives. “You’d be taking years worth of their memories! You’d take away the very thing that makes them who they are!”
Wallflower’s face turned cold and lifeless after that, the green haired girl raising the Memory Stone up high. “And then you’ll know exactly how it feels. Being powerless to do anything while someone else decides what’s going to happen in this school! Then you’ll know what it’s like to be me, Sunset.”
It was with that abeam of light shot out of the Memory Stone and all Twilight could do was watch it. It had all escalated so fast with the girl she knew next to nothing about. And now more magic was coming to rob her of even more memories, removing the few friends in this world that she had finally found after so long. For a crazed second, she thought to throw herself into the beams way, making sure she was the only one to lose her memories. The chance never came as Sunset leaped into the stone’s path, taking in the entire blast.
Falling to the ground with a green aura coating her body, Sunset Shimmer glared up at Wallflower, her voice determined as she spoke. “I ruined their friendship once before. I’d rather lose my own memories then to ever let that happen again!”
It was a simple statement, but it was one that Twilight felt right down to her heart. Even if she hadn’t been convinced before with her own lacking memories or the proof they had found, this proved beyond a shadow of a doubt that Sunset was their friend.
And then the magic started.
Twilight stood in abject horror as she watched the magic rip out the memories Sunset had of the Rainbooms one by one. Each removed collection of thoughts, symbolized as a strip of film with her friends faces dotted along its length, brought that girls name in a scream to Sunset’s lips. She tried at points to grab at the magic, only for them to slip through her hands like sand. All too soon, there was only one girl left that hadn’t been erased.
Sunset Shimmer turned to Twilight, tears trailing down her face. That same look from before, the one with emotion that the young genius couldn’t understand, filled up Sunset’s eyes. A small sob broke past the girls lips, uttering her last words before her memories were fully stripped away from her. “Twilight… I love you…”
Her eyes went dead after that, fogging over as Sunset toppled down onto the ground, remaining still. In her state of shock, Twilight stared dumbfounded at the prone girl. Sunset said she loved her and in a way that left no doubt that she had meant them. The very words made the genius tremble, her heart aching. Was this why she had been so obsessed with helping her former friend? Was her body remembering their previous romance, yearning for something she couldn’t recall? What even was going on anymore?
Wallflower Blush looked down from her position at the edge of the parking lot, her own face twisted in uncertainty and shock. It wasn’t something Twilight expected from a girl who had been so cold mere moments ago. Not that the growing anger in her belly was going to be quelled by her sudden remorse. Taking a step forward, Twilight was about to call on her friends, to ready the righteous rainbow to strike down Wallflower and somehow set things right like they always had before.
And that’s when the screaming started.
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And suddenly I got chills up my spine
I agree. It would've been a better part of Sunset's learning curve for Wallflower to be someone she hurt in the past and didn't really make amends to.
Alright, just began reading and caught up on this. I have similar feelings about forgotten friendship, and so far I'm liking what you've done.
Yeeeaahh... I'm not a fan of Wallflower. She was the cause of her own problems, shifted the blame to Sunset, and Sunset was supposed to feel bad and apologize for it? She was just petty, and to this day I fail to understand why so many people ship them together *shudder*
10275411
So Wallflower did get bullied by the old Sunset but then after five years Sunset didn’t remember her?
10275557
Well, apparently everybody had a reason to hate Sunset. Sunset apparently couldn't remember ALL her misdeeds.
10275569
Well, I still don’t see how doing all of that is suppose to make her un-invisible since she hated being invisible for a very long time
Can't wait for the next one that I think will be the last. Btw I'm not sure if anyone will even care but forgotten friendship is my least favorite special due to what Sumset went through just being forgotten which broke my heart since a year prior before the special came out I started to have feeling for her even if she ain't real since we have so much in common. And everytime I see a scene I dislike or see the scene where Sunset sacrifices her memories I cry whenever I see it since seeing her memories going out of here is terrifying but also sad at the same time and I hope I didn't upset anyone over this.
Can't wait for the next chapter!
Ouch.
I know there's a lot of sympathy for Wallflower out there, but she gets none of it from me for one very simple reason: she attacked someone's mind. One of the few things that I hold as inviolate is a person's mind and memories, because they are what define a person as that person. And she goes around mind-raping people for petty reasons, including projecting her failures at socializing which she herself helped create by removing people's memories of "awkward social interactions."
OPE
*Intense waiting*
10275556
10276334
You know, it's funny. These are all perfectly valid reasons to dislike Wallflower as a character that, in theory, I completely agree with and I certainly don't like her as a character. And yet, I also don't really dislike her as a character and for one simple reason:
I don't really think of her as a character.
Now, don't misunderstand me, this is all just how I see her and how she feels to me and I am not for a moment trying to make assumptions about the people behind her - writers, directors, etc... - but she always came across to me as so ridiculously... cynical in her construction that I honestly can't think of her as any kind of character, good or bad. She just feels like she was built from the ground up solely to get a certain reaction from the audience rather than as a person in her own right. As a result, she feels less like a real person who would be sympathetic and an antagonist and more like the author jumping up and down screaming, well:
derpicdn.net/img/view/2015/6/29/925886.jpg
"Be sad for her! Aren't you sad for her?! Don't you just want to comfort her?! Of course you do, she's so sad and you want her to stop being sad. So pity her! Pity her so much! You're not pitying her hard enough! PITY HERRRRRR!"
And even if I ignore that since, again, that's entirely just the feeling I get and not something I actually assume the creators are doing, she still just feels like, at best, an attempt to manufacture another Fluttershy. Only without in any way understanding what made Fluttershy work so well and just assuming "making her MORE 'Fluttershy' will make her even better.
Except the thing about Fluttershy is that, yes, she's shy, awkward and nervous, but it's not just that that makes her work so well. It's the fact that there's a lot more to her than just that and that those very aspects interfere with. There's a reason that one of the iconic images of her, at least in the Equestria Girls continuity, is her standing out in front of the school, desperately trying to get people to listen to her about her shelter but too bashful to actually raise her voice and get anyone's attention. It shows that, while she is very easy to feel sorry for, there's a lot more to her than just that.
Wallflower, on the other hand, just came across as the writers deciding "this will be the character the audience will feel sorry for" and never going beyond that in terms of giving her a character. So she just feels like a hollow attempt to reproduce a success by focusing on the surface aspects of it and not what actually made it work.
And, to be honest, in that, I feel she's emblematic of the story overall. It is very painful and hard to watch, but it's often so ham-fisted in its emotional manipulation that it doesn't feel like a reasonable situation where you would feel sad, but rather like the author forcefully and deliberately jamming sadness into your eyes while yelling at you about how sad they're making you. To quote SFDebris (possibly quoting someone else, not sure), it makes you cry, but it puts a gun to your head to make you do it. So, even though it does succeed in its goals and there is definitely a lot to like in it, the whole feels like a lot less than the sum of its parts, so I still can't really say I like or appreciate it as a work on its own.
Anyway, massive tangent and diatribe over, sorry about that. Just those comments kind of brought that whole thing into clarity in my mind and I felt like getting it down. I do apologize.
10277141
You're not that far off I think. From a certain point of view, it can be seen as a culmination of a trend that began with Starlight Glimmer. As one of my favorite youtubers, Lily Orchard noted, post-Rainbow Rocks MLP (and by extension EqG) shifted from the classic villains to sort of "reformation bait" ones: "villains" who had some sort of tragical backstory to excuse their "villainnes", to try and get the viewers to feel sorry for them, and to attempt to reproduce the success of Sunset's redemption arc.
10277155
I didn't want to say it, but yeah. And the irony is that, in my opinion, a large part of why Sunset's arc worked so well was specifically because they didn't try to come up with some "tragic" backstory or freudian excuse to try and diminish how bad she, her goals and her methods were. Instead, both the story and the character accepted that she had no one to blame but herself, so she had to take responsibility for her actions and the consequences of them and actively work to change.
Whereas that period of villains trying the whole "oh, no, see, they were secretly sympathetic the whole time" thing just undercuts the whole thing since, even if that worked (which it very seldom does), that still wouldn't be a redemption. There's no change or development there, just switching out a character's portrayal in an instant. And that's just nowhere near as satisfying.
Redemption is a powerful thing, both as a real life concept and as a storytelling element, but for it to work, I think the single most important thing is that you have to actually address the villainous aspects of a character rather than just dismissing or excusing them. And that's something the show has often seemed weirdly reluctant to do.
10277394
Indeed. And taking Sunset as an example once again, something all the other "redeemed" villains have failed to do, particularly Starlight, is to properly make up to the people they wronged in the past. RR was all about Sunset's penance for her previous actions, enduring the scorn and distrust of the school and having to prove she had changed. All the others though just get a slap in the wrist, get told they don't have to be sad anymore, and presto-chango they're good and friends now!
10275380
10275556
I'll flat out admit, it's not a pairing I could understand myself. Friends? Sure. A couple? It's not something I could see being done. It's one reason I tried to give Wallflower a bit more reason for doing this. It's not just her being invisible, though that's part of it. I like to think that the thought process in Wallflower's head is that Sunset is just trying another way to control the school, using her new 'friendship's to get her way instead of manipulating everyone. I feel like she would justify in her mind that she's doing the right thing to prove to everyone that Sunset was still the demon she was before... only for that to backfire in her face as we see in this story.
10276334
To be fair, Sunset ALSO attacked everyone's minds. While it wasn't the removal of memory and character growth like it is here, it was still mental tampering. I think Sunny in that case gets away with it a bit more considering we know what the Elements of Harmony can do in cleansing a character.
10277141
First off, congrats on being my longest comment on a story by FAR. Wasn't expecting to read this when I saw it and felt a little afraid even to try and respond to something so massive. But yeah, I agree with you and Mos at this point. Wallflower as an idea isn't much the problem, it's more the use of her. It's the same reason that I mention in the next chapter my distaste for Timber Spruce. He's not a BAD character, so to speak, but it's clear that his entire purpose was to basically tell the Sci-Set shippers 'You see? Your pairing won't be a thing, now stop it'. I'll be entirely honest, I've always felt like the idea for Forgotten Friendship actually came from Anon-a-miss, but even the show runners knew how freaking BAD a comic that was and wanted to do their own versions. Too bad the special is almost just as flawed.
Well the wallflower twist was lame, I thought it made up for it with trixie as a red herring. Not that it ever fools you into thinking it wasn’t wallflower, but, for the longest time I could of seen Trixie having some part in the menmory erasing. At least then unlike the dazzlings later on she’s not just thrown to the side once her herring moment exspeiered
Eh, she's harmless. I mean, the other one had good reason to be distrusting of others - being heckled in the middle of a performance, having her mobile home smashed because she had unknowingly influenced two young colts into seeking one out, being blamed with the ursa's rampage despite it not being her fault, being run out of pretty much every town for something she didn't even do - but this one? Just a tad full of herself.
Could the other Trixie be blamed for enslaving Ponyville, though? She was corrupted by an amulet she didn't fully understand, so she wasn't exactly "all there" - but she did seek out the amulet in the first place, regardless of her understanding...
*Subtlety.
What are you healing? Or did you mean "heels"?