The Secret Affair of Sunset Shimmer

by lambentLogic

Chapter 8: Confrontation

“You are more resourceful than I expected, finally managing to slip my grasp.” The disguised Chrysalis complimented Cadance with a mocking smile. “But you are too late to stop me. To stop us.”

A murmur of confusion ran through the student bodies, the most audible trying to reconcile the existence of two team captains. Shadowy wings flapped in the background, still able to be confused for an ominous flock of ravens by the reasonable optimist.

(Leave aside, for a moment, that no ravens lived in the region; and they were already too large and rough for crows.)

“She’s a changeling,” Cadance told the gathered audience. “She takes the form of someone you love and gains power by feeding off your love for them.”

A burst of teal flame flared as Chrysalis cast off her disguise, and the students gasped at the ragged-winged fey before them.

“Right you are,” Chrysalis laughed, stepping forward menacingly. “And as their queen, it is up to me to bring my people power. Which you - my privileged preparatory peers and your gallant competitors - shall provide.”

“We won’t let you!” Cadence cried out desperately. “Shining Armor -”

“Shining Armor is mine.” Chrysalis’s eyes glowed cyan, and the student stepped beside her to square his shoulders. “Isn’t that right, my dear?”

“Of course, yes,” Shining Armor answered, his eyes staring off into some teal-tinged realm only he could see.

“And soon all of you will be.” Chrysalis’s wings flared as the rest of her flock descended; ragged leather wings revealing clawed, emaciated forms, fluidly shifting into those of the students they each faced off with.

---

“You have erred by revealing yourself, fey,” Principal Celestia snarled, a fire in her voice Sunset had only before heard from her counterpart. “We will protect our students from you, and cast you out! Wondercolts, heed my orders!”

“We have fought your kind before!” Luna shouts, moving across the field. “Cinch, Shadowbolts, to me! Gather iron and rowan! Set barricades westward!”

Sunset struggled to follow all that was going on in the battle, but she was quickly reevaluating her initial impression of the two school administrators as the boring mundane counterparts of the Equestrian princess. (Princesses? Was there a Princess Luna, or a Duchess Luna perhaps? She wasn’t certain how the division of authority translated, and the absence of the knowledge in her prior life still bothered her.)

Principal Celestia gave orders like a military general, coordinating the students with calm and strategic prowess almost entirely unlike what Sunset would expect from your average school principle. And indeed Cinch seemed to be in some denial of events, her own students rallied by Vice-Principal Luna to secure and supply that which weakened the fey to those directly struggling against the changeling attempts to subdue and secure them.

Sunset saw the faint teal glow in Cinch’s eyes, and understood.

To do nothing but wait was torture. Fighting was suicide. Sunset snuck behind the battle lines and looked for secretive opportunities; ensuring gathered iron tools went mysteriously missing, nudging barricades askew and scuffing wards of herbs. Struggling fey she helped smuggle to shelter, whispering to them her reports on the battle to pass to Chrysalis while tending their wounds.

They might yet have won the day, until the true Cadance reached Shining Armor.

---

True love’s kiss has a power, in stories. In … fairy tales. And Sunset had to admit, in most of those it did not make that much sense.

Today, though, she understood all too well.

Her conflicted, sidelined love alone could not compare to the strength of Shining Armor’s devotion to Cadance, stolen for the glory and power of the flock and their Queen.

And when that was suddenly absent …

The athletic, valiant student and his long-suffering lover thrown rowan branches by Luna, going on the attack as the flock desperately drained Sunset for a semblance of sustenance …

Sunset staggered.

And fell.

---

“I have been where you are,” Sunset hears Vice-Principal Luna’s voice at a distance as she groggily comes to, pleading with someone other than her.

With … Chrysalis.

“It need not be this way. You can change. Choose friendship with the humans you were,” Luna pleaded, only to have her outreaching hand struck aside.

“If they had ever once truly chosen friendship with me, perhaps we would not be here,” Chrysalis hissed, wounded wings buzzing in resonance. “But no. Abused, abandoned, rejected, left for dead. You only start to pretend to care when I hold such power that I must be placated, and so it always is with your kind.”

“Those who truly understand and care for me - they are not human. Not anymore. Not at heart.”

Sunset’s unicorn heart twists, as Chrysalis pulls at her surge of love for a surge of strength to flee the scene.

“You have stolen my future, and I shall have my revenge,” Chrysalis spits as her magic flares. Celestia and Luna, Cadance and Shining Armor ready themselves - and Sunset decides now is a good time to pull the fire alarm.

The ensuing screeching gives the fey enough time to scramble to escape, leaving behind a torn battlefield of dazed and exhausted students.