The aftermath of the incident is this: six girls sitting around a cafeteria table, each lost in thought. One stares out a window, at a plinth upon which a stone horse stands, her hand on a book that’s just barely stopped vibrating every few minutes. Another bites her lip, worried eyes peeking out from behind pink hair at the slightest semblance of sound from the others at the table. A third attempts to act normal — or at least as normal as she can seem — plowing through an overly-sugary lunch that is most certainly not offered in the lunch line, though even she doesn’t attempt to start a conversation.
The latter three all act much the same, their eyes cast towards the same, singular location within the cafeteria: a cafeteria table as unusual and silent as their own, seated by three younger girls who sit with their eyes glued to their meals, their backs hunched and uncomfortable.
“Just go.”
Fluttershy startles, as do the others around her, at the harsh words. They turn to Sunset, as she stands and shoves her book into her satchel, her expression only half-warm.
“I… Darling, whatever do you-” Rarity attempts to ask, before she is interrupted.
Sunset sighs a little, and somehow, though the motion softens her bearing, it neither opens nor closes the expressiveness of her face — Fluttershy can clearly see the emotions drifting in the backs of eyes, but she cannot put names to them.
“I mean, I know you guys want to talk to your sisters. I know you’re upset about how the school is treating them now that everyone knows they were Anon-a-Miss. So go. Talk to them,” Sunset’s voice is resigned and cold and weary, and Fluttershy feels guilt churn in her stomach at the tone. Somehow, that tone is more painful to hear than any lashing out would have been — to hear someone she’s always seen as strong or powerful seem so defeated now.
Sunset shakes her head a little, shifting on her feet, and Fluttershy chances a glance at the rest of the table. Pinkie — sitting across from Fluttershy — glances warily between Sunset and the other three, her hair the tiniest bit deflated, the curls just the tiniest bit more loose. Next to her, Rainbow Dash scowls at the table, her head ducked and her hands clutching — pinching, even — at the skin near her elbows, as if to try and wake herself up from a bad dream. Rarity’s face is folded into a look of concern, worrying her lower lip between her teeth as her hands drum against each other in agitation. Applejack’s expression, sitting across from Sunset, is hesitant, and her eyes flicker from Sunset to her sister’s table at the edge of the cafeteria.
Fluttershy looks back at Sunset, expecting to see the same undefinable stream of emotions in her eyes, and is instead shocked to see a singular, overriding emotion having taken its place.
Guilt.
She glances up, intent on, at the very least, asking if Sunset is okay, but before Fluttershy can process the realisation, Sunset turns back away, pulling her satchel on.
“I’ve got to return a book. Are we meeting in the parking lot to figure out rides to Sweet Apple Acres?” Sunset asks, her nonchalant tone such a juxtaposition that it throws Fluttershy off, leaving Applejack to murmur out an affirmative.
“She looked like she felt… guilty. But she sounded normal. How is she so good at hiding the emotions in her voice?” she wonders, the thought prompting another, more troubling thought, “And how many times has she done this before?”
She looks back up, and Sunset is already leaving, the cafeteria quieting whenever she walks by.
It takes half an hour — a solid half of their lunchtime, passed in yet more uneasy silence — before Rarity stands up and walks over to the Crusaders' table,
The library is quiet at lunchtime.
Or maybe it's just quiet where she sits, the students around her either glancing at her apologetically or suspiciously.
Either way, Sunset tries her best to enjoy it, even though it scrapes at her nerves like nails against chalkboard.
It feels strange, somehow, to be so uncomfortable without sound. As a foal, as a student in Equestria, she had thrived in the quiet, in the bookshelves of the Canterlot Archives, in the sizzling of knowledge just beyond her hooftips. The quiet had been necessary to concentrate, then, and each minuscule sound — the leaflike flap of a page turning, the echoes of a gasp as an attempted spell just barely burns out on her horn — amplified by the lack of background noise, had sent a stream of fire flowing through her veins.
But that had been when she'd been a student of Celestia's, and it only tracks that when she'd thrown away her tutelage under Princess Celestia, she'd ended up throwing all of the rest as well.
She no longer loves the quiet, the way she used to. She can no longer see excitement in it. It curls too tightly around her, smothering and callous to her discomfort. Bookshelves close in on her, tall and reaching for heights she's never going to see, filled with knowledge she wasn't ever meant to know.
She chuckles a little, at the thought. Regrets — all she has to show for all the time and work she'd put into her life in Equestria. And her time in the human world is, miraculously, worse.
She'd had a second chance at a new life here. In this new world, she could have rebuilt herself to be kinder, better than before, and instead she'd invested in growing crueler and ever more power-hungry. And it was that, that hunger, that desire for vengeance and power and everything that Twilight Sparkle had, that had brought her to the ground. That had brought her here.
Sitting alone, in a too-quiet library, because she is too cruel and cowardly and resentful to forgive the friends she can't blame for distrusting her.
She's learned so much about friendship, in the last few months, learned so much about kindness and laughter and honesty and loyalty and charity. But she's never learned about forgiveness.
And if she is certain of anything, anymore, it is that it is not the fault of her teachers, who had forgiven her without forgetting her past. It is her own.
Speaking just for myself, I think it's quite good, and that you should continue it,
But, of course, that's up to you.
Intriguing prologue.
Tell me more.🤔
I so wanna see more, that is if you're up to it.
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10615224
i'm glad you've liked it so far! i'm considering going further with this, but whether i do really depends on whether i have time and inspiration enough to be consistent with the style and themes of this fic.
thank you for reading! :)
10615348 I really have!
That's good to hear, but I can understand that side of it, too.
You're very welcome, and good luck with it!
10615348
You're very welcome.
Good. Sunset forgiveness takes time, these people are small. You can do better than them.
I think Sunset should dump them, they threw her away and elf her to suffer greatly, and it's there fault everyone thought she was guilty.
Yet in the aftermath they want to comfort their siblings while they had let Sunset suffer.
That just shows they were never her friends, she do better finding someone else.
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They're also teenagers who were tormented by Sunset for a long time, only to see someone spreading their secrets and causing the school to be divided just like it was under her reign, with much of the evidence pointing to Sunset. Is what they did was right? No, of course not. But it is understandable, given the circumstances.
Sunset herself knows how much her actions hurt the others in school, especially her friends. What she did as a bully was bad, and they aren't obligated to forgive, and most certainly not to forget, though at least doing the former would make their friendships with her a little bit more healthy. Whether Sunset will decide that she's better off without the Human 5 as her friends is less a question of whether something is logical and more a question of Sunset's mental state at the time of such a decision. At the moment, even though Sunset knows she personally was not responsible for Anon-a-Miss, she still feels guilty about the things she's done in the past and how they have influenced the outcome of this situation, and that emotion is mixing with her resentment of the Human 5's recent actions to end up in a kind of self-isolating, self-loathing ball of feelings, which is very much. Not a good or healthy state of mind to be making decisions in.
And as for Rarity, Rainbow, and Applejack focusing on the Crusaders... well, there might be more to that than there seems to be.
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And i call Bull crap on that.
If that true why did they bother to befriend her treat her like she was forgiven, was it all a trap a set up then?
Where they really just flaunting her around like a trophy or worst a pet, they leashed.
Look behold he vile she demon former bully not anymore but is our little pet, she do what ever we say as we own her.
Ethier way they lied to her, lied to themselves and they lied to Twilight.
Sunset tried to redeem herself, and tried to change her ways the battle of the bands should done that.
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i can see where you're coming from, but i feel like that perspective fails to take into account the severity of sunset's actions before and during eqg. sunset's actions were, frankly, horrible. she treated so many of the people in school worse than dirt, among them several members of the human 5, and when in demon form, tried to kill them. this automatically would have given them the grounds to go "nope i'm not interacting with sunset shimmer ever again." the fact that they even were willing to help her after what she did is a testament to their bravery and kindness, or at least to the impact that princess twi left on them.
however, being very kind and brave and loyal to twilight by agreeing to help sunset =/= being perfect friends/perfect teachers/perfectly emotionally mature, and befriending sunset and working to get to know her =/= forgetting everything she did/no longer resenting how she had treated them. heck, you could even make and support the argument that even they didn't know that they were still holding onto resentment — again, expecting flawless emotional maturity from a bunch of teenagers is unrealistic, so its very possible that they were resentful and afraid of sunset without realising that they were feeling that way.
and yes, while rainbow rocks did grow the bonds between sunset and the five, you could still see that the others were somewhat suspicious and unsure of sunset (awesome as i wanna be, anyone?). the problem was that the five never actually sat down and hashed this out with sunset, didn't talk to her and apologise for their mistakes, or tell her about their suspicion (again possibly because they didn't realise they were feeling that about sunset, or because they dismissed the feeling as a side effect of the sirens' attack)
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well I don't like how the first movie BS'd sunset being forgiven i do have to point out there is still the issue that if the mane 5 were not willing to take on the task with genuine effort they should have told twilight to her face. it was bad enough in rainbow rocks for the BS no offense thing but your taking sunsets actions to an extreme well mitigating the actual extreme of the CMC. i have pointed this out and well continue to point out that the CMC broke the law and it was essentially ignored by both there families and the school system in general. juvenile hall is a thing and they should have gone there.
there is also the issue of broken trust and the rather toxic attitude the mane 5 had towards sunset during the occasion but we literally had an instant of applejack attempting to tell sunset she was unwelcome in a public place of business neither she nor her family owned. the feeling sunset should dump her friends may be extreme but it is far from as unfounded as you seem to be pushing.
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I can understand your anger and see your point believe me i do, the situation was handled with a 'whelp our bad' and sunset essentially going 'ok'. this is both unrealistic and insulting to the audience as that trust would take a lot longer to repair and may infact be irreparable.
that being said sunsets no angel either in this matter and has done a lot to instill a problematic atmosphere in the school that well likely take years for people to forget, you may forget the minor bullies but you never quite forgive the really bad ones. does this excuse the mane 5's actions? hell no but it does make it understandable within the context of them being teenagers.
your both taking one degree too far and not considering one degree far enough and i just wanted to weigh in and make a point here.
Wow, this is only the first chapter and It’s already different from other anon-a-miss stories.
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First off, I appreciate you being very respectful and actually putting thought into your comment (don’t see many of those).
Second, Sunset being easily forgiven was one of the reasons why I didn’t like the first movie.
Third, would you deny a request from a princess, even though she’s from another world?
And fourth, I love how you considered The Cutie Mark Crusaders action from a law point of view, but didn’t sunset also break a few laws as well?
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you are correct that sunset broke laws, the more pressing issue with those is proof, they had the CMC admitting what they did.
in sunsets case what she did to the main 5 was only based around twilights suspicions as accurate as they where it would be impossible to prove she hacked anything.
if you mean at the school? hell yes what she did was illegal but the issue is if there from a world without magic then it's likely much like our own society today, they don't consider the supernatural as viable evidence in a courtroom.
as for denying the request, yes that's true from a teenagers perspective I'd say but I'd also say in most cases better to disappoint someone by refusing then by failing.
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We could use that as an excuse for some of the characters, but what about the readers and fans? They know all the things that sunset has done but as soon as the cmc come up with anon-a-miss, you have people in the comments saying that their punishment was too light or that they should go to jail. I don’t know if it’s just sunset fans being biased or if there’s something that I’m missing.
Honestly, I wouldn’t know if I would wanna refuse or fail someone, especially if that person is a princess, so I can’t speak much on that.
Now this tells me that Sunset still struggled to forgive, even though she wanted to
Little late, but i think Sunset can't forgive them as they revealed a horrible truth.
No matter what she does she never be forgiven, thus why she was betrayed.
At least she may be thinking that deep inside.
As this just revealed how easily they turned their backs on her and how easily they forgive their siblings why with her she was treated as garbage.
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Yes and sunset wasn't automatically forgiven considering how many she demon comments she got.