Ghosts of Cozy's Past

by LNMAnonymous

Future of a Pony

“OOF!” Cozy felt like she’d just fallen out of bed. She rubbed her aching chin and blearily looked up at- Twilight Sparkle?

“Gah!” She quickly got to her feet and scrambled back. “Couldn’t you have at least tried to catch me?”

“I’m sorry! I thought you would still be flying!” said Twilight, looking genuinely contrite. Idiot. “We’re trying to help you!”

Cozy paused. We? There wasn’t anyone else clearly standing there. “Who’s this ‘we’? I only see you! And if you’re trying to help me, you could start by not dropping me on my face onto a platform of stone! Ugh!”

Twilight frowned. “The other pony who’s here is… a bit special. We didn’t want to risk making you think this was a dream or something when you first came out of the stone, so she’s just around the corner.” Twilight vaguely waved a hoof at a nearby hedge, never taking her eyes off Cozy. “You know that you’re just a pegasus, now, right? As long as I’ve got my eyes on you, you can’t escape.”

Cozy growled. “I know that, Professor! I’m not a fool like these two!” She jabbed a hoof at Tirek and Chrysalis. “I don’t plan on wasting both of our time and getting trapped in stone again over foolhardy revenge schemes we both know wouldn’t work. Go ahead and ‘redeem’ me or whatever it is you do, let’s get this over with.”

Twilight shook her head. “I won’t be redeeming you, Cozy. She will.” She reached out a hoof towards the same hedge, and made a beckoning motion. Out from behind it came…

No.

No, no, no! Why couldn’t they just leave her alone! Now she had to deal with this annoyance, trying to keep the truth from another Sunset? Ugh!

Cozy made one of the hardest smiles of her life. “Golly, it’s nice to meet you! I don’t know what you’ve heard about me, but-”

“Save it,” the other Sunset cut in. “I know what you’ve done, and I know where you came from. More importantly, I know who you are.”

What? How! She’d hidden her tracks thoroughly, she was sure of it! No way did this namby-pamby mockery somehow track her down! No, she didn’t know the truth, she just thought she did, that was it.

She dropped her smile and rolled her eyes. “Yeah, I’m a monster, we all know that.”

Sunset shook her head. “No, that’s not what I mean. You’re not a monster.”
She touched that strange rock hanging around her neck, and from her horn came a burst of light, coalescing into a moving image that hung in the sky. In it was the image of herself, back when she was a human- no. An image of the copy, as a human, putting a crown on her head, and transforming into a red-skinned demon.

“And neither was I.”

Cozy looked at her with disdain. “Congrats, some monkey got a cool dye job. What’s that supposed to show?”

Sunset frowned. “Sunset, I know you know that was me.”

DAMNIT!

DAMNIT, DAMNIT! They knew the truth! They could send her back! They’d leave her trapped there forever! And she wouldn’t even be able to get out of this damnable body!

She managed a weak smile. “Yes, well, I’m sure you’ve come to peace with your terrible past. It sure seems like it was such an unforgivable offense. Making friends with everybody at school with everyone must have been such a horrible ordeal.”

The other Sunset laughed. She laughed, how dare she! “Well, I did enslave them and attempt to use them to conquer Equestria, so it took a while for them to warm up to me. Honestly, if I hadn’t saved the world I don’t know if they’d have ever trusted me. But they do now, and…” Sunset gave a disgusting sentimental smile, the sort of thing Cozy could never get quite right. “I’m happy now.”

Suddenly, Sunset fixed her with a hard stare. “Are you happy?”

Cozy looked back and forth between Sunset and Twilight, whose head had been swinging between the two like a spectator at a tennis match. “Twilight, how are you letting her do this! You saw what she did, why are you letting her lie like this?”

Twilight started. “Oh! Um, Cozy, I’m sorry to tell you, but she’s telling the truth. She really did that, and she’s my friend now. But, um, honestly, right now I’m mostly here to keep the situation safe. She’s the one who’s here to talk with you.”

Sunset stepped forwards. “Cozy, are you happy? I know that when I was in your shoes- or, at least as close to them as I ever got- I was miserable. I only did what I did because I didn’t realize there was a better way to be happy, to feel safe and powerful and connected- friends.”

Cozy laughed, a genuine laugh this time. “Friends? I know about friends. I know friends are power, that’s why I sought so many of them! Of course I’m not happy, I was turned into stone and had all my power and friends stripped from me!” She waved a hoof wildly at the statue. “And there they are! You dare talk to me about FRIENDS?”

Sunset took a step back, and Twilight interjected. “Cozy, they aren’t your friends. Friends wouldn’t goad each other into doing such things, friends would work on protecting each other and helping each other get better. I saw how you three interacted during the battle, you could never truly trust each other.”

“Trust? Hah! Of course we couldn’t trust each other! So what? We were still friends! We were still a team, working together to DESTROY YOU!” Cozy shook with anger. She hadn’t meant to yell that out loud, really she hadn’t.

Sunset stepped forwards again. “Being a team doesn’t mean you’re friends. You were a team with Sombra-”

Cozy turned on her in rage. “Sombra? Which one? The one who tortured everybody he knew, who ruled over everything in his domain with an iron grip? Or the wannabe king who got vaporized after spending five minutes with me? Sombra was never on a team with me!”

Sunset held up a hoof in an infuriating placation. “Exactly. A friend isn’t just someone you work with towards a common goal, it’s someone who is truly on your team, in every way that counts.”

Cozy fumed silently.

Sunset saw that Cozy wasn’t responding, and continued. “I have friends back at Canterlot High, true friends. And I hate to say it, but I know that you don’t. And- I know you want them, more than anything. I didn’t know it at the time, but that’s what I was looking for when I ran away from home. People who truly cared about me.”

Cozy began to giggle. “Cared about you? Truly cared about you? Hah! Like that would happen! Friends don’t do that. Friends don’t truly care. They just pretend to.”

Sunset lit up her horn again, sending another illusion into the sky, this one a series of images. An image of clones of her professors stepping in front of a strange beam of light directed at her. An image of herself and the clones all sitting around and laughing. An image of a hand, reaching up to pull her out of a dirty crater.

“They cared about me.”

Cozy stared at the images. “Yeah? Well, then they’re dumb.”

Sunset shook her head, the image nearly shaking apart. “No, Cozy, they’re my friends. And I know the ones here can be your friends too.”

Cozy laughed again. “Really? After everything I’ve done to them, they’d just forgive me? Like that?”

Twilight stepped forwards and opened her mouth to speak, but before she could, Sunset’s illusion fell out of the sky in front of her, a strange being stepping out of it like it was a hole in reality.

“Not like that, silly. Like this!” And with a snap of his talon, the traitor Discord summoned a periscope. He looked at it and said “Go on, show her!”

The periscope lifted up one end like a snake to look at Discord, then Cozy, and began slithering off like a snake. Only the front end moved, though, the back end stayed put, the whole contraption just growing in length. and soon the front end had climbed up the castle to Twilight’s room. Discord reached out, handing the back end to Cozy.

Cozy fought herself for a second before taking it. He’d figure out some way of making her look anyway. She put it to her eye, and-

“Letters? Really? She’s going to have me do friendship reports? I’ve already been to Friendship School and I got straight As. I can do friendship reports. Watch. Hey Twilight! Today I learned you shouldn’t try and spread tribal tensions, conquer Equestria, and become an Alicorn. Instead you should try talking to your friends. Maybe you can convince them to give up everything they’ve ever wanted instead!”

Discord shook his head. “It’s not about the friendship reports, Cozy, it’s about the connection. You’re right that they wouldn’t forgive you immediately, any more than they did me. They’ll want to keep a close eye on you to ensure you don’t go back to the fun ways. But they will be your friends, as much as possible. There’s a reason little Princess Harmony over here talks with the Spirit of Chaos, and it’s not because we like to work together on paperwork. Besides, it’s better than being stone again. I should know.”

Twilight stepped forwards. “He’s telling the truth, Cozy. We’d put a magic inhibitor on your horn, and we’d probably keep you in the castle for a little bit, but we really would try to be your friends- and if we couldn’t, we’d help you make new ones. But we already know we get along well with one Sunset, no reason it can’t be two.”

Cozy tilted her head. “Horn?”

“That’s right,” Sunset said. “We think the body change might be having adverse effects on you, and we want to put it back. Sunset Shimmer is probably a lot less hated here than Cozy Glow anyway. You’d be able to make a fresh start.”

That… That wasn’t something she’d expected them to offer. Were they being serious? She couldn’t come up with any reason why they’d restore her body otherwise- a unicorn was a lot more dangerous than a pegasus kid everyone knew.

She hesitantly took a step, looking at the three of them. She closed her eyes, and took a deep breath.

This was a bad idea. They’d be as incompetent idiots as Tirek and Chrysalis were, and they’d probably betray her like Grogar. They’d never be her friends, and under their watch she’d never be able to escape.

It was a bad idea.

…

“Okay. Let’s do it.”

Author's Note:

This is not what I believe Cozy's identity to be in canon, nor is it my headcanon- it's just a fun idea I had. Still, there are some interesting similarities between them. Both of them attempted to take over a school in an effort to become the only one with magic in the world to use that power to take over Equestria. Both of them also wanted to become alicorns, and began by growing popular then using their place of social power to spread distrust among people/ponies. It's not exactly a world of similarities, but it was close enough that I figured hey, why not?

Comments

[Mystic Sunrise]

Well, that's definitely original for Cozy for sure. Not the first time I've seen where she's come from the human world. First time she's been the human Sunset though.

[LNMAnonymous]

11705865
Yeah, it’s definitely not my headcanon. Honestly I just sort of liked the idea for a one-off story. There’s a bunch of reasons it doesn’t really work in canon, but meh, it’s fanfiction, why not have fun?

[Saiyan Cartoon Champion]

An interesting idea, though a bit of an abrupt ending. Though I guess we could just infer that it works out well from here.

[Rewan Demontay]

Neat idea for dually explaining the missing human Sunset and original for Cozy. It's got a fuzzy feeling of interesting plausibility. Well done.

[Crimson Eclipse77]

That's an interesting idea. Kinda funny both Sunset's end goals were about the same

[Wild Stallion]

11710777
True but if she or the trio had been legitimately dangerous, I can't imagine the elements letting them run lose.

Just look at what it did to Tirek, Luna, and Discord.