Chapter 1
It’s surprising how often life changing moments don’t actually end up changing anyone’s lives.
In the heat of the moment, it can be easy to resolve to change your life. To be, somehow, better, or at least different, from how you were before. The idea is inspiring, that one single event can independently switch a person’s outlook from bad to good, wrong to right. That anyone is just one, positive experience away from being a paragon of virtue and enlightenment.
The truth is never quite so rosy. People do not, in general, change in one, defining moment. People change in small steps. Bit by bit, they get better, if they really want to. It takes time. It takes work.
The Shadowbolts, in one such defining moment, had decided that they wanted to be better. Facing down Midnight Sparkle as she started to tear reality apart, they had two options. They could run and try to save themselves. Their principal had told them to run, no one would blame them for trying to get to safety. Or, they could put themselves at significant, personal risk, to save the students from their competing school, Canterlot High.
They chose to stay and help. They decided that they wanted to be more like the students at Canterlot High, and less like Principal Cinch.
It was a noble thought to be sure, but easier said than done. A lifetime of living a certain way was not undone in an instant. It took time, and a lot of conscious, deliberate effort.
In particular, if you had been told for your entire education that all that mattered was individual accomplishment, the idea of suddenly embracing friendship can be difficult to fully accept. It was not that the students of Crystal Prep were completely antisocial. There were sports and academic teams, clubs, and if you put a bunch of high school students into the same building for four years, they would end up socializing and sharing some mutual interests. There was no real avoiding it.
But the relationships that grew at Crystal Prep were more like acquaintances than real, actual friendships. Students who had something to gain from one another clustered together in little cliques of coldly calculated, mutual benefit. And even when students who genuinely wanted to be friendly found one another, the brutal academic regiment of Crystal Prep Academy really made it difficult to find the time to socialize just for pleasure.
So, when the Shadowbolts decided that they wanted to make closer friendships, they were faced with a rather difficult question: how?
After many scheduling conflicts, miscommunications and, yes, outright arguments, an agreement was reached: their first group activity as…"friends" for lack of a better word...would be a study session. That had the justification of being educational and supporting their individual accomplishments, with a social element. It was a tiptoe into the waters of friendship, but it was a start. And, as a bonus, they had Crystal Prep’s top student there to share whatever occult study techniques gave her such a substantial edge in the area of academics.
At least...that was how it worked in theory.
"And the interval between two points is defined as the square root of the sum of the squares of the separation between the points along three spatial dimensions." Twilight opened her eyes, proud of her explanation, and of the elegantly concise diagram she had drawn on the whiteboard hanging on the bedroom wall, only to see the rest of the study group staring back at her, slack jawed.
“Uh…” Indigo Zap said. “Was any of that English?”
“Oh, don’t be that way, Indy,” Sour Sweet said, her voice dripping with sarcasm. “I think that was PERFECTLY CLEAR!"
“I...think what they mean to say, dearie,” Sunny Flare chimed in, trying to work in a little tact, “is that maybe you could try...making it a little more accessible?”
“You’re really bad at explaining things,” Sugarcoat rattled off, causing Sunny Flare to smack her palm against her face. “You really shouldn’t become a teacher.”
There was a collective chorus of groans and Twilight leaned back, instinctively pushed her glasses up the ridge of her nose, and started to fiddle with her hair. “I...I’m sorry girls, I guess...I guess I don’t really know how to explain this stuff as well as I thought.”
“Or AT ALL!” Sour Sweet yelled, before gritting her teeth and forcing out, “But...I’m sure you’re trying...your...best…”
“Ease up on her,” Indigo Zap said. “It’s not her fault you can’t follow her.”
“You weren’t understanding her either!” Sour Sweet snapped.
“Well, no, but I’m totally gonna. You’re just gonna complain that you don’t get it and fail the next test.”
“Who are YOU saying is gonna fail?!” Sour Sweet said, standing up and rolling up the sleeves of her purple school uniform. “That’s it, you and me, Indigo!”
“Bring it on!” Indigo Zap said, standing up. “Any time, and place! I’m gonna kick your but! I’m gonna-”
“Girls! Girls!” Twilight jumped in, positioning herself between Indigo Zap and Sour Sweet before she could think better of it. Getting in between two people who wanted to fight always seemed like a good idea, for some reason, until after you had actually done it. “I’m sorry, just calm down, and...I’ll try to explain it again. More...accessibly.”
Reluctantly, Indigo Zap and Sour Sweet sat back down on the floor, grumbling to themselves. Twilight took her place in the small circle again and sighed. Honestly, she was not sure she could explain it any better than she already had. No matter how elegantly she was able to order the concept in her mind, when it came time to communicate it to someone else she just started rambling. She knew the term to explain this, ‘Illusion of Transparency’. She knew what she knew, and because she knew it, she expected that everyone else knew it too. It was difficult for her to imagine that other people did not understand what she understood, and that bias leaked into her explanations. Quite simply, she did not know how to teach to people who did not think the same way she did.
Perhaps sensing her frustration, Sunny Flare spoke up. “Dearie, why don’t we take a little break? You’re starting to look a little…”
“Frazzled?” Lemon Zest said, taking off her headphones for the first time in half an hour. It was uncanny the way she managed to follow a conversation with rock music blaring in her ears.
“I was going to say, ‘crazy’, but ‘frazzled’ works too,” Sunny Flare said.
“Yeah, SciTwi,” Indigo Zap said, “We’ve covered, like, three chapters. I think we’ve earned a break.”
“I got why the girls at CHS gave me that nickname, but why are you calling me that?”
“If we’re going to stop studying,” Lemon Zest said, visibly annoyed, “I’m going back to listening to my music.”
Lemon Zest started pulling up her headphones again, but Indigo Zap grabbed them. “Hold on,” she said, “we’re not just supposed to be studying, right? There’s a whole...learn the magic of friendship...thing in there, right?”
“I have no idea what to do here if we’re not studying,” Sugarcoat said, bluntly.
An almost audible ‘ding’ went off in Twilight’s head and she snatched a book off a nearby bookshelf. “Fortunately, girls, I have just the resource. I picked it up at the Crystal Prep library earlier today. I thought we could use it as a guide to-’”
Lemon Zest snatched away the brown book and read the title out loud. “Slumber 101: All You've Ever Wanted to Know About Slumber Parties (But Were Afraid to Ask).” Twilight blushed at the reading of the title.
“That’s a really stupid title,” Sugarcoat said.
“Simply horrid.”
“I’ve heard of death metal bands with better names.”
“Not cool, at all.”
“Oh no, I think it’s SO GREAT.”
“...”
“...”
“...”
“...so, what does it say?”
Lemon Zest flipped through the pages of the book, as Twilight wished she could sink into the floorboards and disappear. This wasn’t going at all the way she had hoped.
“It says here ‘Truth or Dare’ is traditional.”
“Isn’t that kind of a clichéd choice?” Sugarcoat asked.
“Well, I don’t think Twilight has a fireplace here to make s’mores, and I don’t think we should give Indigo Zap any excuse to hit someone with a pillow. So, Truth or Dare it is.”
Sunny Flare raised an eyebrow. “What sort of nerd gets a book on how to hold a sleepover, anyways?”
***One universe over, in a very large, crystal castle.
A purple alicorn sat in her room, diligently writing out a letter by candlelight. Mid-sentence, her nose twitched and she let out a loud, “AH-CHOO!”, sending papers scattering all over the floor.
***In our current, less pony-inhabited universe.
“Alright then,” Indigo Zap said, straightening out her uniform and flicking her lightning bolt earrings. “Sugarcoat. Truth or-”
“Truth,” Sugarcoat said, automatically.
“Ehhhh!” Indigo Zap said, imitating a buzzer. “Wrong!”
“That would be just a bit too easy for you, dearie.”
“So, you’re getting a dare.”
“I don’t think that’s how the game works,” Sugarcoat said.
“Your dare,” Indigo Zap went on, ignoring Sugarcoat’s protests, “is to confess to whoever it is you have a crush on.”
Twilight had always thought that the term ‘audible silence’ was a piece of poetic exaggeration, until she heard it in that room. Sugarcoat looked from Indigo Zap, to Twilight, back to Indigo, and held out a hand.
In a room decorated with images of balloons, stars, and more hearts than was entirely reasonable, Pinkie Pie stared at the wall. Loose pieces of paper were tacked up, connected by an intricate set of interlocking pink, blue, and green threads. Color-coded thumb tacks held up blurry photographs, which Pinkie Pie stared at with an intensity that even Twilight would envy, chewing the top of her pencil and craning her neck so far it was practically upside-down.
“You know…” Pinkie Pie said, though the only one around to hear her was her stuffed alligator, “the more I’m thinking about it...the more it seems like catching that roadrunner is just impossible.”
Her deep concentration was interrupted by her phone buzzing, vibrating and playing a short blast of music, “Oh-whoa-oh, oh-whoa-oh, you didn’t know that you fell, oh-whoa-oh, oh-whoa-oh, now that you’re under our-”
Sure, The Sirens were evil, brainwashing creatures banished from another universe who tried to take over the world, but the music was still CATCHY.
“Hello!” Pinkie Pie said as she picked up the phone. “How fast do you think-?”
“I think you’re cute.” There was no hesitation from the other side of the line. No emotional build up or indication that the confessor had had to psych herself up to say those words. It felt more like she was reciting a particularly uninteresting fact, like what she had for dinner that night, or a date from a history book. And then, the line went dead.
“Uh…” Pinkie Pie said, blinking. “Who is this?”
Sugarcoat dropped the phone onto the floor, in a way that reminded Twilight very much of the term, ‘dropping the mic’, though she had never really fully understood it. There was a little smirk on her face as she crossed her arms. “Dare completed.”
Five sets of blinking eyes stared at Sugarcoat. Then, four sets of them turned to Indigo Zap.
“You gave Sugarcoat a dare about TELLING THE TRUTH?!” Sour Sweet yelled, her eye twitching.
“You really should have known better, dearie,” Sunny Flare said.
“Hey, it’s not my fault!” Indigo Zap said, extending an arm in Sugarcoat’s direction. “I thought she was just brutally and needlessly honest about other people’s shortcomings. I didn’t think that extended to having no shame.”
“So…” Lemon Zest said, sliding over next to Sugarcoat. “Pinkie Pie?”
“I think she’s cute,” Sugarcoat said. If she was embarrassed at all by the admission, she didn’t show it. “All that energy is attractive.”
“Energy?” Sunny Flare asked. Sugarcoat nodded. “You’re attracted to her...energy?”
“Yes.”
“You.”
“Yup.”
“Attracted to her...energy.”
“That’s what I said.”
“You.”
“Me.”
“Attracted to her?”
“Her.”
“Because of her...energy…”
“That’s right.”
Sunny Flare sighed. “Doesn’t that seem...a little odd? To you?”
Sugarcoat crossed her arms. “How do you mean?”
“Well, dearie, it’s just that you’re not...exactly...well…”
“Expressive?” Lemon Zest said.
“I was going to say, ‘good at showing any emotion at all, ever’, but sure, let’s go with ‘expressive’.”
Sugarcoat rolled her eyes. “I don’t know what you want from me. She’s cute. I like her. Not sure how much clearer I can explain it.”
“Fair enough,” Sunny Flare said, defeated. “I think it’s your turn, Sugarcoat?”
“Alright,” she said, turning to Indigo Zap. “Truth or-”
“Dare!” Indigo Zap yelled out, pumping her fist.
“Uh…” Twilight said, picking up the book and examining the page on Truth or Dare. “I don’t think you’re supposed to be able to ask the same person who asked you. Otherwise the game could just become two people throwing dares back and forth at one another.”
“Yeah, like that’d ever happen,” Lemon Zest said.
“Besides, she didn’t let me take ‘truth’,” Sugarcoat said. “I think we stopped playing officially by the rules pretty early in.”
“But it’s Indigo, dearie,” Sunny Flare said, flipping her hand in a somewhat bored gesture. “She’ll take any dare. You could say, ‘Indigo, I dare you to jump out the window’, and-”
“Dare accepted!” Indigo Zap said, shoving her goggles down, running towards the window and jumping, headfirst through the opening. The girls gasped and cringed as a loud, ‘THUD’ was heard from outside, and they rushed over to the window to see. Indigo Zap was lying on the bushes, one floor down, covered in loose leaves and somewhat disheveled, but otherwise alright, and with a big grin on her face. “Dare complete!”
“That was really stupid,” Sugarcoat said, and the other Shadowbolts nodded along. Well, most of them.
“That was AWESOME!” Lemon Zest yelled down, and pulled out her phone. “Hold on, let me get a quick picture.”
“Did you...know that window was open?” Twilight asked. “Or that there were bushes there to break your fall?”
Indigo Zap looked around her, and gave a sheepish smile. “I know now.”
“Maybe we should move on from Truth or Dare before someone ends up in the hospital,” Twilight said.
“Aww…” Lemon Zest sighed. “I didn’t even get one…”
“With this group, that’s probably a blessing,” Sunny Flare said. “What else is in that little book of yours, Twilight?”
Twilight picked up the book and flipped through the pages. “It says something in here about makeovers…”
The Shadowbolts exchanged eye contact and said, in unison, “Next!”
Twilight rolled her eyes. “Fine, fine...let’s see...scary stories…”
“I think it needs to be later for that, it’s barely dark out,” Sunny Flare said.
“Well, Lemon Zest already pointed out the problems with s’mores and pillow fights, so-”
“All I heard was ‘pillow fight’!” Indigo Zap squealed, grabbing a purple pillow and smacking it into Sour Sweet’s face.
There was a moment of silence and stillness as everyone stared at Sour Sweet. “Oh…” she said, her eye twitching again. “That seems...like...SOO much fun…” she grabbed another pillow, stood up and lifted it above her head. “Maybe you should let ME GIVE IT A TRY!”
“GAAAH!” the others screamed and scrambled out of the room as Sour Sweet followed them.
“There were six girls in that room,” Sunny Flare said as they ran into the bathroom, shoving the door shut behind them. “And you had to hit the one with anger management issues?!”
“That was a really bad decision,” Sugarcoat said. A loud banging came from the other side of the door.
“Open up in there! I’m not mad! I just want to talk to you...AND THEN RIP YOU TO SHREDS!”
“Quick!” Lemon Zest said to Twilight, “you have Sunset Shimmer’s phone number, don’t you? Call her, and ask her how to calm down a girl who’s gone nuts.”
“What makes you think she’d know how to do that?” Twilight asked, only to be met by four pairs of eyes that practically screamed, ‘seriously?’ “Oh...hey! I was not...I mean I didn’t...you guys...okay, I’ll call her.”
Sunset Shimmer sat in her bed, a cup of coffee sitting on her nightstand, writing in the journal adorned with her cutie mark on the cover. “Dear Princess Twilight,” she started, then stopped suddenly as her phone vibrated. “Hey SciTwi,” Sunset Shimmer said, expecting a rebuff at the nickname. She mostly used it just to get a rise out of this world’s Twilight. “How’s the study night going?”
“Sunset!” Twilight blurted out. “We need to know how we can talk down a crazy, homicidal friend of ours who wants to kill us!” There was a loud pounding on the other side of the phone. “And fast!”
Sunset blinked. “What makes you think I’d know how to do that?” There was a pause, and Sunset could almost hear the awkward stares between the girls, and an uncomfortable, apologetic smile from Twilight. Sunset smacked her palm into her face. “Oh...right.”
“See? She didn’t get it either.”
“Less gloating, more talking! She’s gonna knock down the door!”
“Am I on speaker? You know what, nevermind,” Sunset said, sure there was a story behind this she would have to hear later. “First step: gather up all the shared, Equestrian magic from your friends that was left here the last time an Element of Harmony was brought to this world.”
“Uhm…” Twilight said. “I...don’t think we have...any of that.”
“Twilight miiight still have magic, but the rest of us are just normal high school students,” Lemon Zest said.
“Okay. Let’s...hope that part’s optional,” Sunset said. “Step two: tell her that you’ve been where she is, you understand and empathize with her, and that you can help her, if you just let her.”
“Uhm…” Twilight said. Sunset could picture her biting her lip on the other side of the phone line. “But...I haven’t been where she is. And I’m pretty sure if someone hit me in the head with a pillow, I wouldn’t charge after them like this. So I can’t really say that I empathize.”
Sunset sighed. This was really all much easier in the heat of the moment, when she had borderline goddess powers. Apparently, it was somehow easier to talk down a nearly demonic entity fueled on Equestrian magic and intent on ripping the universe apart just to understand it better than a ticked off teenager. “Well, then...make something up. Pretend that you understand her.”
“You mean lie?” Twilight asked.
Sunset sighed. “Yes, SciTwi. Lie.”
“I don’t really do lying,” Sugarcoat jumped in.
“Then keep quiet and let the others do it,” Sunset said, annoyance working its way into her voice.
“It’s that just a lie by ommis-”
“She’s breaking through!” Indigo Zap yelled. There was a loud, ‘crack’ and screams from over the phone line.
“I’M GONNA BREAK YOU, PUT YOU BACK TOGETHER, AND THROW YOU THROUGH THAT WEIRD PORTAL THING INTO THAT PLACE WITH ALL THE HORSES!”
“I think they’re ponies-OH GOD RUN FOR YOUR LIVES!”
The line went dead. Sunset stared at the screen of her phone and sighed. Sour Sweet would calm down eventually, she couldn’t really stay angry for a long period of time, any more than she could stay pleasant.
...probably.
“So she really stayed mad?” Sunset asked. She and Twilight were sitting together at the Sweet Shoppe. Twilight had just gotten a cup of coffee, which it looked like she desperately needed after the night she had. Her hair was, depending on who you asked, either ‘frazzled’ or ‘crazy’, there were bags underneath her eyes, and her uniform was wrinkled and torn in a few places. Nothing Rarity could not fix, Sunset told herself, but decided not to mention it yet. Based on the way Twilight looked, a few tears in her uniform were the least of her problems.
“We climbed out the window-well, most of us climbed. Indigo Zap jumped. Again. We split up, and spent the rest of the night trying to outrun Sour Sweet. I think she passed out from exhaustion sometime around midnight. She actually chased me up a tree. Can you believe that?”
“Honestly? I can,” Sunset said, sipping her own coffee.
“I don’t think I can imagine a worse study session,” Twilight said. “We didn’t cover half the material we’d planned to, we got chased around, outside all night. Last I checked, Lemon Zest and Indigo Zap were arguing about whose fault this all was, and I’m pretty sure Sunny Flare is going to tell Principal Cinch about all of this. I don’t even know why, just...out of spite, or something. It makes me think…” Twilight sighed. “Maybe I shouldn’t have gone back to Crystal Prep. Maybe I should have, I don’t know...transferred to CHS or something.”
Sunset took a deep breath. She had sensed this was coming since Twilight texted her at five in the morning, saying she wanted to talk. “Well, we’d all be happy to have you, of course. Pinkie Pie would throw you a ‘Welcome-To-Canterlot-High’ party. But is that really what you want?”
Twilight groaned, and grasped her temples. “I don’t know...I thought I had friends back in Crystal Prep, and maybe we could get closer. But ever since The Friendship Games...maybe I only stayed because my brother’s an alumni? Or I’m afraid of change?”
Sunset sighed. “Did I ever tell you about the first sleepover I had with the girls?” Twilight shook her head. “It was an unmitigated disaster. Rainbow Dash kept talking about the time I turned into a demon...which, was, like three days before. Rarity kept trying to come up with something nice to say about me, but really couldn’t think of anything, so she settled on, ‘that’s a very nice jacket, darling.’ Fluttershy avoided me the whole night, Pinkie Pie almost blew up the house with what she called a ‘party bomb’, and I’m pretty sure Applejack was just waiting for me to start a fight the whole night. It. Was. Terrible.” Sunset tapped the table on each of those last three words for emphasis. “I started to wonder why I didn’t just go back to Equestria with Twilight...er...the other Twilight. And the next time I went out with them, wasn’t a lot better. But it DID get better. A little bit at a time. And now, those are just funny stories.”
Twilight snorted a little in laughter. “You think that’ll happen with us?”
Sunset shrugged. “I can’t say for sure. But I think so, yeah. People don’t change in a moment. They change in a lot of little moments. Until eventually you’re surrounded by a bunch of maniacs who you can’t imagine living without anymore.” Sunset took Twilight’s hand. “It’s not going to be easy. But it’ll probably be worth it.”
Twilight smiled at that. “I hope so. I don’t know if the others will want to hang out again, though. After the chaos of last night, I can’t imagine…”
She was interrupted by her phone buzzing. Twilight put up a finger in a ‘one moment’ gesture, and checked her messages. A group chat had been started, made up of all of the Shadowbolts.
Great study session last night, Twi! You guys up for my place tomorrow?-IZ
You have a firepit, right? We can try the s’mores thing.-LZ
Sounds like fun.-SC
I may be a little late, drama club’s meeting tomorrow.-SF
Whoever carried me home last night, you are so sweet. Also, I will kill you.-SS
Twilight’s lips curled into a tiny, joyous smile. “Nevermind. I think we’ll be good.”