Sunset Shimmer's trip through the portal takes her to Tokyo's Shujin Academy. Things go off the rails.
When Sunset Shimmer's nascent revolution falls apart and she flees Equestria via portal, she finds herself in 21st century Tokyo, where an aspiring dictator puts her where he puts all his problematic teenagers: Shujin Academy.
But Sunset still can't abide tyrants, and she's about to find out she's not alone.
Content Warnings: I'm trying to keep the themes and level of description of them consistent with Persona 5. That means violence, mentions of sex and sexual abuse (but no description thereof), talk of suicide/self harm, and supernatural mental illness.
When Sunset Shimmer found out Celestia was a tyrant, she nearly broke. Young and brash, she was a hair's breadth from storming in to the throne room and unleashing all her magic in a surprise attack, enraged at the betrayal of all she'd believed.
So close, in fact, that in another universe - one we know well - that's what she did. And, doing so, she was defeated, and fled through the mirror to Canterlot High, in a world perplexingly similar to her own, for all it was also perplexingly different.
But this Sunset Shimmer pulled herself back, and thought again. She took a deep breath, and barely held her anger in check. She couldn't defeat Celestia. At least, not alone, not now. She needed allies. Probably a whole lot of them. And so she hid her true self, to keep her resources as Celestia's student. Years passed. She became a little less young, a little less brash. But she kept her conviction close in her heart: I will be the bane of tyrants.
She studied politics and revolution in the lands where an immortal Princess didn't rule supreme - among the griffons and dragons, and what hints she could glean from ancient pony history. Slowly, painstakingly, she built relationships and gathered like-minded ponies (and a few others) to her cause. In doing so, without really noticing, she grew up. Indeed she became, in many ways, like that other Sunset Shimmer, after meeting and being inspired by Princess Twilight Sparkle. But still she held fast to her rebellious spirit. And it spread, slowly but surely, among the ponies of Canterlot until, late in the fall of her final year at the School for Gifted Unicorns, she had several dozen ponies in her corner.
But a small change in a few small ponies is rarely enough to turn the tide of centuries, so it ended much as it always did: the guard closing in, no way out of the castle, Celestia herself likely not far behind. And the mirror, the last and only option.
Her patience bought her at least this much: she understood it a bit better, and she had a bit more time. She how knew to reach her magic out to it, to subtly tune the power that bridged universes. She focused on her rebellion, desperately hoping that, somewhere, the magic would latch on to someone who could help, or at least who felt the same way. If nothing else, it'd make it harder for Celestia to find her before she was ready.
So, a few years late, and a few years wiser, this Sunset Shimmer also jumped into the mirror.
A young man with slightly-too-long brown hair stood in a police observation room, talking to a taller, older man with a shaved head.
"And why did you bring her to me?"
The contempt in the older man, Masayoshi Shido's, voice was better fitting of the dictator he aspired to be than the forgettable mid-level politician he was. But then, young Goro Akechi knew well that presumption was the least of the manifestations of Shido's distorted ego. He nearly let his frustration show, but resisted answering in kind.
"The cameras never saw her enter the station. I checked back a week. And no one reported seeing her before I did. Don't you think it's suspicious? Just as I leave the metaverse, a mysterious girl appears?"
Shido slowed his pacing, turned, and focused on Akechi. He'd learned this was a good sign.
"So you think she might not be...human?"
Akechi shrugged and looked through into the examination room, trying not to let Shido see how much he'd been wondering just that. She certainly looked human, and the physical agreed. But between her ridiculous name, her distinctly Western skin tone and eyes, and her flamboyant hair, she didn't seem much like a Tokyo teenager either. And she'd had nothing on her but her clothes - nothing. Not even a wallet. Not even a subway pass, even though he'd found her on the deserted platform.
"We know things live in there," he said finally. "And we know I can come in and out. So far I've only found shadows, but it's a big place. And where else could she have come from? Even if she's a human, she could be like me."
Shido stopped entirely, his eyes narrow.
"That could ruin everything."
"Or be valuable. Yes." He lowered his head, feigning deference. If he suggested, then Shido would deny, but...
Shido nodded.
"You were right. You're our expert. What would your play be?"
Akechi indulged in a secret smirk before raising his head again.
"Keep her close. Somewhere you have influence, but not obvious influence. Make it seem like you're helping. If she's nothing special, well, you helped a poor girl, maybe she'll open for you at a rally. If she's more, and she knows you helped..." Akechi shrugged. "She says she's a bit younger than I am. She should be a second-year I think."
Shido nodded again. "Shujin. They don't have dorms, but Kosei houses exchange students for them sometimes, and I have an in there, the artist."
Of course, this was what Akechi wanted, but it wouldn't do to overplay.
"Excellent idea, sir."
"I'll arrange it. It's last minute, but Kobayakawa will not deny me. You will consult with me on this as it develops. And of course, if nothing comes of it, she seems like Kamoshida's type."
Akechi barely managed to hide his disgust for that one, but he'd had plenty of practice.
By chance or providence, Sunset's time at Shujin Academy began nearly immediately. She'd been in the world for roughly two days, and it was the first day of the school year. She knew this was a spring month, and not much else.
For all she'd become a weaker, disturbingly furless, ape-minotaur, she felt strangely at home, and mostly not in good ways. Her single-minded but hidden devotion to revolution had made her a recluse, so the long stares she got from her fellow students on her way from the train station to the school were sadly familiar.
Though it was maybe just as well. She'd stayed up all night in her new dorm room, trying to find her footing in this world, but she'd barely scratched the surface. She'd started with the ancient encyclopedia on the minimally stocked bookshelves. Then Hifumi, the (thankfully very nice) girl she shared a suite with, had come out, confused, and told her about the computer. So she'd moved to that.
Still, between the time wasted with the encyclopedia, struggling with the mouse and keyboard, and then with the staggering scale of the Internet, she felt barely improved by the time the sun was coming up and she needed to get ready for school. She was glad she had gone with "total amnesia" when she'd been taken in, because her Equestrian knowledge seemed so useless here it was basically the truth. She supposed she should be happy that the portal left her able to speak the language, though it also worried her. Not only did losing her magic leave her feeling horribly weak and vulnerable, it meant she couldn't figure out what spell was doing the translating, making it much more likely it'd cause an obscure misunderstanding.
That being out of her control, she tried to remind herself to take pride in what she had accomplished. Just figuring out how to get to school in the first place was an unexpected challenge - the Tokyo region alone had more train lines and stations than all of Equestria, and they overlapped in dizzying ways. She wasn't sure she'd have been able to manage it if Hifumi hadn't checked in with her before going to bed and made sure she understood the situation. But she was here, with time to spare, even. She had all of the books and supplies called for in the student handbook, which she'd read. She had a lunch. She seemed likely to survive at least until the end of the day.
She had to keep reminding herself to adjust for being turned into a magic-deprived biped on a vastly different world, making these actually difficult things to do. The opposite perspective, that suddenly she was less competent than a foal, didn't seem like it'd improve her mental state.
And if the stares of her new classmates were anything to go by, it'd need all the help it could get. She still wasn't confident she could read humans very well, so she hoped she was just wrong. Unfortunately as the narrower streets leading to Shujin's entrance forced them closer together, she started to overhear their conversations.
"Two weird transfer students in 2-D in one year? Ugh, we have the worst luck."
"At least she's not a criminal like he is."
"Yeah but look at her hair! And is that a spray-tan? Who does that? Besides, I hear she can't remember anything. She could be a criminal too!"
"If she can't remember anything, how's she going to pass her classes?"
Sunset shook her head to clear the sleepy cobwebs, which seemed to shock the gossiping girls behind her into silence. Deciding she couldn't do anything about it except prove them wrong, she reported to the faculty office. Akechi had warned her that her admission was a special favor and very late, so she'd have to go there to meet her homeroom teacher and get a brief introduction. When she arrived, she found another student waiting at the door. She couldn't tell if he was nervous about going in, but he certainly stood out, and she wondered if he was the second transfer student the girls had been talking about.
He was pale-skinned and dark-haired, like almost all the humans she'd met. (Her brief Internet research let her know that this was partially because she was in Japan, though no humans seemed to be naturally colorful the way she was used to.) He was tall compared to most of the other students, though she was about his height. His hair was fluffy if short, and he wore glasses. As she approached, she noticed the lenses were extremely thin; either his lenses were very weak, or he wore them for fashion.
"Hi," she said awkwardly, since he was blocking the door. "I'm new, I need to go in for a meeting."
He shrugged. He spoke quietly but precisely.
"Same, but it's locked."
Not knowing what else to do, she searched her memory for the pleasantries she'd looked up, then extended her hand.
"Sunset Shimmer." At her name he raised his eyebrows, which she thought meant surprise, but extended his own hand and shook.
"Akira Kurusu." She supposed no one she'd met had names that seemed to translate into words like hers did. Maybe that was the source of the eyebrow raise? She wished again she could examine the spell - she wasn't sure if these body language prompts were provided, or she was misunderstanding things.
Before she could come up with anything more to say, the office door opened and a man emerged. He was imposingly tall even to Sunset's eyes, and wore a simple athletic shirt that showed off his powerful physique. His dark hair was longer than most of the men Sunset had met thus far, falling over his ears and out in an unruly tangle, and his features were sharp. She once again tried not to trust her gut reads, but she didn't like the look of him. It didn't help when he gave her a smile that somehow made her shudder, and then gave Akira a look she couldn't interpret but certainly didn't like.
"Sorry to hold you up," he said, and she read it as sincere, for whatever that meant. "Your teacher is Ms. Kawakami, go on in." He walked on without looking back.
They shared a look and a shrug, a gesture Sunset felt more comfortable with since her own body had done it reflexively. Then Akira gestured, and his pause made her think she'd read it correctly as giving her the chance to go in first. She took it.
The faculty office was full of desks, a few cluttered, most empty. Presumably the teachers were already on the way to class. Only one woman remained, making it easy to assume she was Ms. Kawakami, their teacher. Both Sunset and Akira had significant height on her, and she looked generally small and unassuming. Sunset couldn't get a read on her expression, but if she had to guess she'd have gone with "slight disappointment." She moved aside, letting Akira follow her in, then Ms. Kawakami spoke, opening with a short sigh.
"Welcome to Shujin Academy. I'm Ms. Kawakami and I'll be your homeroom teacher. I think you saw Mr. Kamoshida on his way out, he's the volleyball coach. Normally I'd introduce you to all the teachers, but with the circumstances of your transfers, there's not time. Your student handbook has a map, and you'll mostly be in our room until clubs start anyway. You can ask me if you need help finding something, or ask the front desk."
She paused and looked them both over.
"Akira Kurusu and, uh, Sunset Shimmer, right?"
They both nodded. Sunset noticed Ms. Kawakami seemed to struggle a little with her name, though only a little. It sounded like she was having trouble with some of the consonant blends, and Sunset worried that it was a quirk of the translation magic causing trouble. Still, if she was reading Ms. Kawakami's body language right (sigh), it seemed like her teacher was embarrassed about her difficulty, rather than suspicious of Sunset. It'd have to do.
Ms. Kawakami turned to Akira first.
"I don't want to lecture you, but be careful. I'll do my best for you but I hope you know the school's taking a big risk. Please be on your best behavior." She seemed to be about to say something else, but seemed to reconsider and said instead, "at least your grades are good. Keep that up, keep your head down, and you'll do fine." Akira nodded, and Ms. Kawakami turned to face Sunset.
"I hear you have your own challenges. And I'm worried being obviously foreign will be hard on you, especially if you can't even tell people where you're from. But we'll do what we can. You might have a lot of trouble with the course work if you don't have the same background as everyone else. The library is open until nine in the evening on school days, so feel free to use it. We have tutors available if you need them, just let me know. Your scholarship covers it." She glanced back at Akira. "And you might consider working together. I don't know how it happened and I'm sorry, but I've already heard students gossiping about you, though your circumstances are supposed to be confidential. The rumors about you might make it hard to make friends, especially since most of the others have already been together a year. You might be able to help each other out. Think about it."
Sunset had already been thinking about this, and adjusted her opinion of Ms. Kawakami upward. She'd read her as frazzled and put-upon, but maybe it had been her conversation with this Mr. Kamoshida? She seemed to have learned about them and to want them to succeed, even if her warning to Akira had been odd.
Before she could consult with him on her suggestion, though, the bell rang, and she rushed them to their classroom, 2-D, to make their introductions and begin the day. They ended up seated near each other, Akira in front of her. In front of him was a girl who seemed to stand out nearly as much as Sunset herself. Her skin was pinker than most of the class, though nowhere near a pink pony's coat, and her hair was the color of sun-bleached straw.
The classes were uneven. They started with social studies, leaving her completely lost. Luckily math, Japanese, and English were all more her speed, though whatever magic was providing the translation meant she couldn't distinguish the two languages, so she had to rely on context clues to figure out which one was being spoken to her. Fortunately it meant she was equally adept at both, and seemed to cause her to respond appropriately. Still, she hoped to figure it out before it really made a mess of things.
She took copious notes in any case, and planned to go over them that night with the aid of the computer. With any luck, she could look up key terms and make sense of them. She also planned to catch up with Akira on the way out - maybe he'd agree to help her per Ms. Kawakami's request, though she worried that if his own grades were good, he might not get much out of the deal, given how far behind she seemed to be.
He hurried out after class, while Sunset managed to get her bag entangled with her chair in a fashion she was sure was shameful. She hurried out, hoping to catch him on the way to the station. She saw him ahead, but just as she was getting ready to run after him, she heard a light voice calling her name. Interestingly, this speaker didn't seem to have any difficulty with it, unlike Ms. Kawakami. She turned and saw the straw-haired girl from class moving up behind her.
"Hey," she said, "got a minute?"
Sunset thought about saying no, but decided she already had an in with Akira. If she didn't catch him today, she'd always be able to use Ms. Kawakami's suggestion to approach him later. This new girl might be hurt if snubbed.
"Sure," she said, slowing down. The other girl fell into stride next to her.
"That's a pretty name," she said. "I've never met anyone with one like it. Are you American? Were your parents hippies?"
"I'm afraid I don't remember," Sunset said.
"You don't remember your parents, or where you grew up?"
"I don't remember anything," she briefly thought about being more truthful, but decided she could reconsider later. She'd found no mention of portals, or even magic at all, in her research, so it seemed likely no one would believe the truth. And that was an easy apology to give if she changed her mind. So she went with her story, and the one Akechi gave her.
"I remember waking up in Shibuya Station two nights ago around midnight. Luckily one of the employees found me while locking up. There was a big scramble, but a nice politician named Shido used some connections for me, so here I am." The girl was gaping, and Sunset realized they'd gotten a little out of order. "Sorry, what's your name?"
That seemed to focus the other girl.
"Oh, sorry! Ann Takamaki. But you should just call me Ann!" She extended her hand, and Sunset shook it. "What should I call you? Like, is Shimmer your family name, or what?"
"I've just got the one name," Sunset replied. "You could just call me Sunset if you want it shorter. Why did you think I might be American?"
Ann arched an eyebrow at her.
"Well, your name's a couple English words, for one, and you pronounce it like a native. Though your Japanese is great too. Maybe you're mixed, like me?"
Sunset wasn't sure what to do with any of that, and wasn't sure whether to curse the mirror's translation spell or be impressed. She knew it was language agnostic from class, but she had no idea why it didn't just translate her name. She almost let her frustration show, but realized it might give something away, and that she had an ongoing excuse that would cover a mostly honest reply.
"Honestly, I didn't even realize it was in another language." She let her shoulders sag, which certainly felt like it released some of her frustration.
"Wow," Ann said softly. "You know, I'd heard the rumors that you couldn't remember anything, but that's like, anything. I'm sorry, it must be really hard."
"The rumors kept up, huh?"
Ann gave her a look she couldn't really interpret.
"Don't worry about it. Our school's good, and there are some good people here. Stick with them. If you let the rumors get to you, it'll never stop."
Sunset had a sneaking suspicion, based on Ann's unusual appearance and apparent familiarity with the issue.
"I guess you get them too, huh?"
Ann giggled, surprising Sunset.
"That obvious, huh?"
"I just had a feeling. Besides, we kind of stand out," Sunset flipped her hair.
"Yeah," Ann said. "But hey, we'll stick together, right? The Fabulous Hair Pair! That's quite a dye job you have."
"Oh, you think it's dyed?"
"It's got to be, no one has hair like that naturally. I've never seen either of those as natural shades, let alone both! Oh, but if you don't remember where you got it done, it'll be hard once it starts growing out. That's a really smooth separation, it's got to take some skill." Ann looked at her and frowned. "But your roots look perfect too..."
Sunset was about to say she didn't think it was dyed, just to curtail the concern. But then she realized that would be even weirder, and also that she wasn't sure how the portal's magic worked - maybe it would grow out another color. So she hedged her bets.
"Well, if it starts to go wrong, maybe you can help me find a place to fix it?"
"Sure!" The excited tone in Ann's voice made Sunset feel like she'd made the right choice. Still, she felt herself sagging a bit. All this dealing with aliens was exhausting, especially since she couldn't let them know they were aliens. She thought she'd have to start trusting her instincts more, just to avoid falling apart from sweating every minor interaction! Besides, it was becoming rapidly obvious she wasn't going to fit in all that well no matter what. Maybe playing into it would work to her advantage. At least it'd be less stressful.
They'd reached the corner of the school's side street, and Sunset was surprised to find Akira standing there. He looked at her, met her eyes, but seemed to see Ann and turn away.
Sunset turned to Ann. "Mind if I invite him to join us? Ms. Kawakami suggested we might want to work together. She was worried we might have trouble finding other friends. Though I hope she's wrong about that."
Ann nodded. "Sure. He seems to have his own rumor problems."
"Hey, Kusuru," Sunset called out, and Akira turned back and paused to let them catch up. "Were you waiting for me?"
He nodded. "But it's not urgent, if you're busy."
"We were just chatting," Ann said. "You're welcome to join. We were talking about rumors. Seems like we've all got our share."
Akira raised an eyebrow at this. "Really? What're yours?"
Before Ann could answer, a loud noise startled Sunset, and she started. The other two turned to the road, where a car had pulled over. Mr. Kamoshida leaned over the passenger seat and spoke out of the lowered window.
"Hey Takamaki, you said you had a gig, right? Want a ride? It'll save you some time."
"Oh, no thanks," she said, "we're going over some homework. Besides, it's in Shibuya. You'd never get through traffic in time, the train's my best bet."
Mr. Kamoshida stared at them for a moment, and Sunset's stomach lurched. Then he nodded and drove on. Ann let out a long breath.
"That," she said, "is one of the stupid rumors."
Sunset wasn't sure what that meant.
"Huh?"
"Kamoshida," she spat his name out without the honorific, like a curse. Sunset thought she heard a voice from Akira's pocket, but Ann went on before she could ask him about it. "They say we're dating."
"But...he's a teacher, right? Is that allowed?"
Akira and Ann both stared at her for a moment.
"She really doesn't remember anything," Ann said to Akira, then shook her head. "Of course not. But that doesn't always stop people, and he has a lot of pull at school, so it's believable. And scandalous."
She lowered her voice, and Sunset and Akira leaned closer to hear.
"I keep telling him I'm busy like that to hold him off, but..."
"So, what," Akira said, "he creeps on you, and then the students blame you? That's fucked up."
Sunset, tired and unsure of her reads as she was, had totally missed that, but suddenly her distaste for Kamoshida made horrible sense.
"Oh no," she said. "Ann..."
"It's okay," Ann sounded nearly ready to tear up. "What can you do? Let's just move on."
Akira just shook his head, but Sunset wasn't ready to give up.
"Are you sure that's what you want? You were listening to me, helping me. I'll listen to you, if you want to talk."
"I would, too," Akira said. "But not if I'd be butting in."
"But you just met me. Why?"
Sunset and Akira looked at each other. Sunset spoke first.
"Why not? We just met, but I like you. And even if I didn't...that's awful. No one should go through that, especially alone."
"I...I'm not alone...I have..." Ann sobbed, and Sunset paused before putting an arm around her. Ann leaned into her. She turned to Akira.
"I don't know the area at all, where can we can go?"
"I just moved here, too. But I live in a café, and no one's ever there. It's a few stops away, though..."
Ann got herself together remarkably quickly.
"That's alright," she said, "Let's go."
She didn't make it through the train ride so cheerfully, and by the time they made their way through the twisting back streets near Yongen-Jaya station to Leblanc, she was near tears again.
The cafe's bell heralded their entrance, but only the owner was there to hear it, an older-looking man with slicked-back receding hair and, uniquely among humans Sunset had yet met, hair running down his jawline to his chin, where it was styled into a point. When he saw them, he opened his mouth to say something, but then he saw Ann, and seemed to reconsider, pausing a bit before he spoke.
"Rough day?" He inclined his head towards Ann, who nodded. "Sorry to hear. I'm Sojiro Sakura and this is my place, but I'm gonna go out and have a smoke. Help yourselves to coffee."
They slid into a booth - one of only three in the small café - and the man walked past them out the door, where he took up station a few paces away.
"Is that your dad?" Sunset asked Akira.
"Guardian, I guess," he shook his head and smiled a little. "He's never been that nice before. Anyway, we're here for you, Ann."
She sighed and nodded.
"Yeah. Thanks." She paused a long time, and Sunset almost said something, but Akira gave her a tiny shake of his head. Finally Ann seemed to gather herself.
"He's pretty new. He started last year, just like us. My friend Shiho's on the volleyball team, but she never talked about it much. I thought maybe she wasn't that serious about it, you know, lots of people just do clubs for fun. And we didn't get to be close until partway through the year, so it wasn't news then.
"Then I had a shoot cancelled last September, and she had a game that day, so I figured I'd go by and watch. She's so good! I loved watching her, but I caught him staring at me a few times. I'd never run into him before that.
"After the game, I told her how awesome she was, but she just started crying. It turned out she wasn't talking about it to protect me, the idiot. She'd been so excited about him, everyone was. He's got an Olympic gold medal, normally someone like that would be coaching at college. It was a great opportunity.
"And it started out fine, he's a great player. But he isn't a great coach, and he got frustrated with the kids. He started doing 'practice matches' when he was upset, and he'd spike on people hard. They got bruised up, but he liked it.
"Then some of the girls noticed him staring at them, or touching them too much. You know, coaching needs touching sometimes, but they felt like it was off. No one knew what to do. He's a teacher, and an Olympian! So they started working harder and harder. They hoped if they didn't mess up, he wouldn't punish them."
She buried her head in her hands for a long moment.
"I don't think that works on guys like that," Akira said. Ann raised her head and nodded.
"Yeah, it didn't. Shiho thought he got a little less abusive, but he got creepier. He started doing things like coming into the girls' locker room after practice, with some excuse like talking about strategy. And he got touchier during practice.
"By the fall, when I went to that game, they were winning a ton, but that just made it worse. He was the talk of the school, so no one could say anything. Everyone worried someone would end up in the hospital, or he'd try something really serious with one of the girls.
"And ever since he saw me that day, he's been doing it to me, too. He doesn't see me at school, but he does it after and before. He got my phone number somehow and he keeps calling to ask me to 'hang out' with him. I keep making excuses. I was hoping he'd come to his senses over the break. But I didn't think he would, and today clinches it. It's the first day and he's already like that!"
"Why don't the other teachers stop him?" Sunset had never even heard of anything like this in Equestria, and couldn't help clenching her fists. Apparently that was a human rage reaction - it made her feel like she'd stomped her hooves.
"I think they don't know," Ann said. "But even if they did, the board loves him, the principal loves him. I just...I don't know what we can do. But thanks for listening. It's funny, it does feel better to talk." She managed a weak smile.
Sunset couldn't take it anymore. She stood, causing both of the others to jerk backwards.
"He's nothing but a petty tyrant. I don't know what I can do either, but I will help you, Ann. I swear, I will defeat Kamoshida."
A tinny, female voice broke the silence.
"Candidate found."
Ann and Akira started again, and Sunset turned to look at him.
"I heard that voice last time Ann said his name, from your pocket. What was it?"
Akira reached into said pocket.
"No idea, all that's in there is my phone," he pulled it out, and frowned at the screen. "Wait, it's that app!"
He put the phone on the table, and all three leaned over it. The screen showed a black and red interface, with a creepy-looking eyeball logo in the top corner. Three text boxes formed the rest of the UI. The first was labeled "Candidate", and contained the name "Suguru Kamoshida." The second, "Location," and third, "Distortion," were both blank.
"What's that?" Ann leaned closer.
"It's some app that installed itself on my phone," Akira said. "I had a weird feeling in Shibuya, then it was there. I thought I deleted it though." He moved to manipulate the phone, but Sunset stopped him.
"Wait! I know I don't remember things, but...that's not normal, right?"
"It might be malware," Akira said, then went on at her blank look. "Sometimes people sneak damaging programs onto your phone."
Sunset took out her own phone, provided by Akechi.
"Huh," she said, looking at her app list, "isn't that the same picture?"
She pressed the red and black eye icon on her phone. She barely noticed the same three fields popping up, because when she touched it she felt, faint and slightly alien but unmistakable, something she'd missed more than she realized: a tiny jolt of magic. She nearly lost her footing, and sat back down heavily to recover.
"You okay?" Ann asked.
"Fine. Look, it's the same thing. But I just got my phone yesterday."
"Hey," Ann said, "I have it too."
"I'm gonna delete it again," Akira said.
"I'm not!" Sunset desperately wanted to know where that magic had come from, and how she sensed it without her horn. "Isn't it too strange? It knows who Kamoshida is--"
"Candidate found," the tinny female voice echoed from the girls' phones now that they'd opened the app.
"...or at least recognizes the name. We were just saying there was nothing we could do. But maybe somehow this can help! I want to check it out."
Ann nodded. "Yeah. Don't they make, like, sex offender trackers? In America at least. Maybe he's done this before. Even the school couldn't ignore it if he had a legal history, it'd be a scandal!"
Akira nodded. "But we need a location, and a 'distortion', whatever that is. How can we figure out what that means?"
"Why don't we press this 'help' button?" Sunset gestured to the bottom corner of her screen. The other two looked at her like she was, well, an alien.
"What? We want to know what it does, and it has help." She lay her phone on the table and pressed the button, causing a text box to appear.
The metaverse navigator app locates palaces and facilitates entry to the metaverse. To enter a palace, you must discover three pieces of information. The candidate is an individual with strongly distorted desires, powerful enough to manifest independently in the metaverse as a palace. The location is the corporeal location of the palace, likely the place associated most strongly with the distorted desire. The distortion is the form that location takes within the candidate's perceptions and desires. Once you have entered all three pieces of information, the Enter button will become visible, allowing entry to the metaverse. Please note: the Enter button will only function at or in close physical or metaphysical proximity to the location.
"Um," Ann said, "that doesn't look like a sex offender app. What does any of this mean?"
"Distorted desires..." Sunset pondered. "Well, he certainly has those. But what's a 'metaverse'? I uh, don't recognize the word."
"I don't think it's a real word," Akira said. "It sounds like some sci-fi term for another dimension."
"Another...dimension..." Sunset wondered if the jolt of magic she'd felt was a link to Equestria. Could she have caused this app to appear? Would it take her back, right into the hooves of an angry Princess?
Meanwhile, Akira seemed to have been reading the help text on his own screen and mulling it over.
"This location thing...it seems more like a parallel world. It sounds like a variation on a real place."
"Oh!" Ann perked up. "I used to love superhero shows! You mean like, when they go into the world where all the heroes are evil and all the villains are good?"
Akira nodded. "Look at all this stuff about distortions and distorted desires. Maybe like one of those episodes where everything turns into how the heroes imagine it?"
"Only it's not the hero," Sunset said, "it's the villain." Akira nodded.
Ann frowned. "But...this isn't real, right? Some random kids get a smartphone app that accesses another dimension? That doesn't happen."
No one spoke for a long while, and Sunset tried to gather her thoughts. In the end, though, she had an oath, and there was a tyrant.
"I don't know what happens and what doesn't," she said. "But I meant what I said, Ann. I'll bring him down. If there's any chance this app can help, I'm going to find out."
Akira nodded. "I'm in too. What the hell. Why mess with a good thing?"
"What do you mean?"
"It's how I ended up at Shujin, I'll--"
"Location found." The words "Shujin Academy" appeared on the "Location" line of each of their apps.
"Uh, I'll tell you later," Akira finished. "Let's figure this out, it's getting late, and Mr. Sakura's been gone a while. If it's just some prank, no harm done."
"No surprise about the location," Ann said. "It says the 'place most associated with the distorted desires,' after all. But what's up with this last one? The jargon is really messing with me."
Sunset hoped she'd do better, being used to magical terminology herself, but none of this was familiar.
"Maybe it's how he thinks about the school?" Akira said. "This language is all about his mind. So some kind of metaphor or something?"
"So like a harem?" Ann said.
"No match found," the app said.
"How does it know when we're guessing instead of just talking? That's freaky." Ann shook her head at it.
Sunset was less surprised, already knowing the app had a bit of magic to it. "Well, at least we know that's the right kind of guess. What else could it be?"
"It was a good guess I think," Akira said, "let's think of similar things. Ann, sorry to ask you, but you know him best. How does he feel creepy? Do you think it's more a sex thing, or a power thing?"
"Oh, I get you," Ann said. "I keep putting him off, so I'm not really sure. Ugh, I don't want to have to try to seduce him for info or something!"
"No," Sunset said, "don't do that, we don't even know it works! Let's think about it more. Why would he think he could get away with this?"
"Same reason we do," Ann said, "the team's on fire and the school loves him."
"Maybe he thinks it's his right," Akira said. "He deserves it because of his value to the school."
"Like that medieval lord thing with the brides," Ann said.
"Droit du seigneur," Akira said, "I don't think it was a real thing. But he might not know that. What would that make him think of the school as?"
"I still like harem," Ann muttered. "But uh, a palace?"
"No match found."
"A castle?"
"Match found."
They all fell silent and stared at their phones. On each screen, the three text boxes had been replaced with a single grey button bearing the eye logo and labeled "Enter."
A long silence reigned. Sunset didn't know what the others were thinking, but she couldn't help feeling a little thrill, even through her fatigue. When she held her hand close to the phone, she could sense a tingle of magic, like when another unicorn touched her with their field. If they'd been at the school, she'd have pressed it immediately.
"Well," Ann said. "I'm in. If it might help Shiho, I'll press it. Bring on a parallel dimension, or whatever. Even if it's probably a meme."
"I'll do it because it might help you," Akira said.
"Yeah," Sunset said. "And he needs to go down."
The door jingled as the owner came back in.
"Beautiful night for it," he said. Sunset detected none of the foul smell of the Shibuya smoking area on him. "But it's getting dark. Don't you kids need to get home?"
"My dorm curfew isn't until nine-thirty," Sunset said, "in case I need to use the library."
"My parents trust me," Ann said.
"Lucky you. But I need to close up shop, and I bet this guy has some cleaning to do upstairs," he went on.
It was pretty clearly a dismissal, and Ann seemed to be ready to accept it, but Sunset decided she might as well benefit from her social cluelessness.
"I'll help clean up," she said, "it's the least I can do after you offered us coffee."
"But you didn't drink any," he rubbed the back of his neck, but didn't seem to be interested in forcing the issue.
"Don't worry," Ann said, "I'll help too, so you don't need to worry about chaperoning."
"Jeez, that just makes it sound like I should worry. What's wrong with you kids?"
"I just want to help my friend," Sunset said.
"It's your first day, you're friends already?" He turned to Akira. "You work fast, kid. Maybe you're not as hopeless as I thought. Don't try anything though, I'll be here until at least ten cleaning up." He turned to Sunset, "So I expect to see you scampering out to meet your curfew before I go, miss..."
"Sunset Shimmer," she said, extending her hand. "Thanks so much for your hospitality."
He nodded. "Sojiro Sakura, but if you're a friend of his, call me Sojiro. Weird name you've got, but you're alright." He turned to Ann. "And you?"
"Ann Takamaki. We're classmates of Akira, and Sunset's a transfer student too. Us misfits have to stick together!"
"All right, all right, too much youthful energy for this old man. Get on with it, shoo."
Sunset had no idea how to assess human living situations, and Akira's loft was at least larger than her dorm room, but Ann had strong feelings.
"This place is a dump! Sojiro seemed nice, how'd he stick you somewhere like this?"
Akira sighed. "It was last minute. I said I'd tell you, come on, we'll talk while we clean."
They started in. The space was a good size, but cluttered with the classic contents of a storage room - books, boxes, a strange two-wheeled metal thing Sunset didn't recognize - most of it strewn on the floor. It looked pretty doable to organize it and store it and still leave plenty of room to live in, but it would be a lot of work. Still, there were three of them, and they started in as Akira narrated his own story
"It was at the end of last term. I was walking home and I heard a couple arguing. They were right on my path, so I heard most of it. It wasn't odd, he was trying to get her to go home with him. We get that stuff outside bars sometimes. When I got close, he tried to force her into his car. She screamed, they scuffled.
"I couldn't ignore it. I backed her up, and told him to back off. He was ripped. He could have taken me. But I had my phone out to call the police. I thought she'd run."
"That was brave," Ann said. Sunset nodded.
"I guess. But it all went wrong. He was some bigshot. He said I attacked him. She was scared of him and backed him up."
"What? That's bullshit," Sunset said.
He shrugged. "The police knew him too, so I'm the one who got in trouble. He took me to court and I got assault. Now I've got a record and I'm on probation. Shujin was the only place that would have me. My parents have a mutual friend with Sojiro, and he had this room. I was on the train about an hour after he agreed. That was two days ago. His work meant he barely had time to make room for the futon."
Sunset stopped cleaning to give him a hug, and he stiffened a bit, but then leaned into it. Ann joined them. Sunset was surprised at how relieved she was at the contact. Humans seemed much less prone to this than ponies, and she hadn't realized she was touch-starved until she felt the contact. Still, it wouldn't do to turn her new friends off, so she pulled back when Ann did, before she would have as a pony.
"Thanks," he said. "I didn't expect anyone here to be nice to me. Especially since somehow the whole school knows about my record."
"We're all kind of like that, though," Sunset said, and the other two looked at her. She cursed herself for the slip-up, and thought about just telling her own story right then. But she wanted to talk to Hifumi first and maybe do some research about magic here. She'd sort of assumed things like cell phones had to be enchanted, and she just couldn't tell because she didn't have her horn. But now that she'd sensed the magic in the app, she didn't know what to think. Especially since her friends had acted like it was unknown here.
So instead, she glossed it over.
"We're all outsiders," she said. "You two got screwed over by tyrants. Maybe I did too, not like I remember, but none of us fit in well at school. It seems like we're mostly on our own at home, too."
"Yeah," Ann said. "I told Sojiro that my parents trust me, but the truth is they barely spend any time in the country. I have my own apartment. Though we at least have dinner when they're in town."
"My parents haven't called since I left," Akira said. "They told me not to call them. They didn't believe me either."
"So," Ann said, "what you meant, Sunset, is we're all garbage fires no one wants to deal with?"
"No," Sunset said, "I want to deal with you. And it sounds like your friend Shiho does too." She thought about Hifumi helping her the night before, and Sojiro's gruff kindness earlier.
"Yeah," Ann said, and smiled a little. Akira nodded and pushed up his glasses.
"Right," Ann went on, "let's start by dealing with this mess."
"And tomorrow," Sunset said, "let's meet after school. I want to try this app."
They both nodded.
By the time Sunset and Ann left, rushing to catch the train to make Sunset's curfew, Akira's loft was as tidy as it was going to get.
Sunset was exhausted, but she desperately wanted to talk to Hifumi before she went to sleep, so she knocked on her suitemate's door immediately on getting back.
"It's open."
Hifumi was a slender girl with long, straight brown hair and bangs. Normally she wore two hair ties, making a dangling bundle of hair in front of each of her ears. Now, though, it was late enough that she was wearing something like the sleeping outfit Akechi's men had provided for Sunset, and her ties were on her bedside table. She herself was sitting on the bed with some kind of game board.
"Oh, I didn't mean to interrupt," Sunset said.
"You aren't," Hifumi said. "I'm just practicing moves. It's not very useful without an opponent, but I like to think about the game anyway."
"I see," Sunset said, though really she only did in broad terms. "I guess we didn't have much time to talk about our hobbies."
"It's not a hobby for me," Hifumi said, "I'm going to be a professional player."
"Sorry," Sunset said. "I didn't mean to imply--"
"I know you didn't mean anything by it. I just didn't want you to get the wrong idea. I try to keep balance in my life, but this is my passion."
Hifumi reminded Sunset of nothing so much as a pony talking about her cutie mark, though she already knew humans had no such things.
"I wish I knew how to play," Sunset said, "I'd love to help you."
"If you mean it, maybe I'll teach you," Hifumi gave her a small smile. "It's called shogi. But let's see how our schoolwork goes first. Sorry, I'm sure you had another reason for coming."
Sunset nodded. "Do you have a moment to talk? I don't mind if you play at the same time."
"Of course, go ahead."
"I was wondering, uh, how people feel about magic."
Hifumi turned from the game to stare at her.
"Magic? I assume you don't mean stage magic. Or the card game."
Sunset shook her head. "No, I mean a paraphysical or psychic connection to the aether allowing it to reflect a p-creature's nature or will."
Hifumi gave her a long look she couldn't quite interpret. "That's a very...precise definition, for something that doesn't exist. Every culture has stories about magic, but none of them really agree on what it is, other than things we don't understand. Sometimes people use it, sometimes gods or spirits or other supernatural creatures do. A lot of people have some superstitions - do you know the word?"
Sunset could, of course, parse it, because she was the beneficiary of actual magic. But she wasn't sure she understood it right in context. "Little luck magics?"
Hifumi gave her another odd look, but nodded. "That's an unusual way to put it, but it works. The idea that there are rituals you can do that make things more likely to break in your favor. Almost everyone has a few, even if they know they're ridiculous." She blushed. "I often eat katsu curry before an important match. I know it's silly, and shogi doesn't even have luck like a card game. But it makes me feel better."
"And some people believe in God or gods or other supernatural religious entities, and think they intervene in the world to help believers. But these days what we mean by magic is powers people can use that we don't understand, and belief in that is almost unheard of here in Japan. We have a lot of ways to look for it, and no one can find much evidence at all, let alone anything strong and convincing. It's the same with strange creatures like lake monsters. We all have cameras all the time, on our phones, and lots of governments have done studies. If there's magic around, it's subtle. Personally, I think if there is a God, He's decided we're grown up, and left us with a universe we can solve."
Sunset knew she'd be unpacking that for a long time, but still considered for a little while. The snap of the pieces hitting the shogi board was oddly comforting, and each one made her feel like she'd bracketed a thought. If nothing else, it seemed like her friends had the same view of magic Hifumi did - that it was a myth.
"So the phones are, what, machines? You just solved the universe enough to make them work?"
"That's right."
"Then why are they so quiet? And how do they get energy?"
Hifumi finally looked up from her board.
"I don't want to be rude," she said, and Sunset's blood froze, worried she'd somehow given up the game, "I know you really have memory problems, and I'm sympathetic. But it's fascinating too, because it seems like you have some idea of what a machine should be, and it's at least a century out of date."
Sunset nearly dropped her bag. Hifumi had caught her red-handed. Between her long, eventful day and sleepless night, it was getting harder and harder to keep her secrets. Her brain raced trying to figure out what she'd do when Hifumi called her out fully.
But instead, she just laughed, and snapped another shogi piece into place.
"I think it must be all this talk of magic. The human mind is a kind of magic, I think, to do such amazing things, even when it goes wrong. But sorry for rubbing it in. I don't really know how cell phones work, though. They're really complicated. They run on electricity, which they store in batteries and get from the electrical grid. That's why you have to plug them in. You could probably look it up on the computer if you're interested. It's complicated, but if you get good at it you can build your own electronics. Some people do it as a hobby."
Sunset had tuned out the second half of what Hifumi said, after it was obvious she wasn't going to call Sunset out. And of course, that made sense - she'd just been describing how the idea that Sunset was a magical alien was completely beyond belief.
But with that relief she also felt an unexpected disappointment. Sunset was, of course, a practiced liar. She'd spent years, after all, plotting revolution against the immortal monarch who personally instructed her. What she was finding now, though, was that it was different lying to someone you hoped to befriend, and even harder to maintain lies of this complexity while also trying to learn how to deal with an alien society. On some level, she'd hoped Hifumi would figure it out, so that she could come clean.
And with that realization came the temptation to just do it anyway. After all, she was pretty sure the app was going to do something supernatural the next day, and if it did, she planned to come clean to Akira and Ann. She didn't have the same kind of bond of adversity with Hifumi; as far as she knew, there was no tyrant at the heart of Hifumi's life. But they would be living together, or at least in close proximity, and Hifumi had already been so kind and helpful. She didn't want to feel like she was keeping secrets. But how should she best raise the topic?
She must have thought too long, because the predictable clank of Hifumi's moves stopped, and Sunset looked up to find the other girl staring at her.
"Too much information?"
Sunset shook her head.
"No, I...want to tell you something, but it's hard to find the words."
Hifumi nodded and blushed slightly. "Okay. Take your time." The clacking resumed.
This response only solidified Sunset's resolve. Finally, she decided to go with a basic technique - give Hifumi an out if she needed it. It wasn't even an unreasonable out. If she couldn't feel the tingle of magic every time she brought up the mysterious phone app, she might have been only a few weeks from doubting herself.
"You're right about the brain," she said, and Hifumi stopped again to look up at her. "And maybe it's just all in my mind. I didn't want to tell you, because I didn't have a good feel for things, and I didn't know if you'd believe me. I'm not sure I can believe myself. But I don't really think I have amnesia."
Hifumi's hands were folded in her lap now, and Sunset seemed to have her full attention. She had a twinge of her old paranoia, and felt compelled to probe a little, hoping that the human-reading ability she'd been growing more confident in over the course of the day would serve her well.
"Sorry, but I just have to ask first, you don't know Akechi, right?"
"You mean, will I tell him what you tell me?" Hifumi cocked her head. "Interesting. No. I don't and I won't. He has some relationship with the school, I think, to get you in here so quickly, but this was just an open room appropriate for a girl." She chuckled. "I think if anything he expected you not to see much of me. I spend a lot of time practicing off-campus."
Sunset's instincts were telling her this was the truth. It was the best she could do. She took a deep breath.
"Okay. Sorry for asking, I just wanted to be sure. You had it right when you noticed the thing about machines." She gathered herself again, and Hifumi waited patiently but intently.
"Akechi didn't tell you, which is one reason I don't trust him, but he found me at midnight in Shibuya station, and couldn't figure out how I got there. The truth is, I come from another world..."
Sunset proceeded to fill Hifumi on on her background as Celestia's student, her original form as a unicorn, her failed revolution, and her flight through the mirror. She summarized heavily, but didn't hold anything back.
Hifumi took her own long silence, but it didn't seem an unkind one. Finally she nodded.
"It's hard to believe," she said. "I don't know that I exactly do believe it. Not because I think you're lying! I know you're telling me your true memories. Just, I have to consider you might have a different kind of messed up memory."
Sunset nodded. She'd left that option intentionally, after all.
"But I want to believe you. I had a cryptid phase in middle school. I may not believe the world is a magical place, but I'd like to believe some worlds are, and that we could visit someday. Of course, you're not a unicorn here. So sadly, it probably doesn't matter if it's true. I don't see how you can get back, and you don't know any more about this world than you would if you had no memory at all. Less, really, since you've got all these false assumptions."
Sunset nodded. "And I don't know why I'd want to go back. I can't fight Celestia, and she's not going anywhere. I'd hoped to tune the portal to people who could help me, but with the friends I made today, it seems more like it found people who need my help. And that's okay! I'd like to go back someday and bring justice to Equestria, but she's ruled there for thousands of years, and this world matters too. If it takes a long time to find my way back, maybe that won't be so bad. Anyway, thanks for taking me seriously."
Hifumi nodded.
"Thank you for trusting me. It's a big thing to share with someone, even if there's not much practical effect. I assume you'd like me to keep it a secret?"
"Please. I might tell a few classmates tomorrow, depending on how things go. But I don't want everyone to know. Especially because of what you said about people trying to find magic. I don't want people studying me, and now that I'm thinking about what happened when I first got here, I think Akechi and his crew might be the types to try."
Hifumi nodded again, then met her eyes and, finally, gave a smile. It was a little thing, and seemed intensely private. But it was no less pleasing for it, maybe more, and Sunset found she couldn't help but return it.
"Can I make my own embarrassing confession?" Hifumi looked down, but her smile remained.
"Of course."
"I know we just recently met, but I don't have any friends. You wouldn't know, of course, but I'm what we call a 'D-list' celebrity. My shogi skills aren't where I want them to be, but they're unusual for a player of my age and especially for a young female player. And some people seem to think I'm attractive, which sadly means a lot here. They call me the 'Venus of Shogi.' I hate the title, but even more, I hate that people get close to me because of it. It makes it hard to trust their motives, and I've been hurt before. So even though I sympathized with your memory loss, I was sort of relieved to have a suitemate with no idea who I am. That you asked me for my thoughts, valued them, and chose to trust me with your secret...it means a lot to me." She giggled, and Sunset found herself blushing. "Especially since I can't imagine I look very pretty to a unicorn. I feel like you know me as me, and like me anyway."
Sunset thought about Hifumi's secret little smile, and wasn't so sure about the beauty angle. But she wasn't anywhere near ready to unpack that one, so she let it lie.
"I'm really lucky you're the one who had an open room. I'd never even have made it to school on time," she said instead. "Would you mind if I gave you a hug?"
"Please do."
Hifumi was shorter than Sunset, like most Japanese women seemed to be, and was already sitting hunched on the bed, so Sunset wrapped her gently in her arms, savoring again the close contact she'd taken for granted as a pony. Hifumi turned into her, resting her head on her shoulder, and sighed.
Eventually, Sunset's fatigue overcame her, and she shifted.
"Sorry," she said, "this is nice, but I didn't sleep at all last night. I need to go to bed."
"Oh, of course," Hifumi's faint blush was back. "Can I ask you a favor first?"
Sunset nodded.
"I want to get to know you better. When you have time at night, will you come by and tell me about your world?"
Sunset hugged tighter, and felt a matching tightness in her chest.
"Of course. Thanks for asking." She chuckled. "Besides, it seems only fair, you've been telling me about yours. Maybe you can teach me shogi while we talk." At that, Hifumi hugged her closer and nodded.
She stayed a little longer, then finally let her fatigue win, bid Hifumi goodnight, and headed back to her own room. Her heart felt light, and the hug still lingered. She fell into sleep nearly as soon as she hit the pillow.
For the first time since arriving, or the first time she remembered, Sunset dreamed.
At first she wasn't sure that was what it was. She felt lucid, remembered falling into bed, even. And something felt so right that it took her a moment to realize it was that she was in her real body, her hooves firm beneath her, her horn tingling with ambient magic.
But, in the way of dreams, she became aware of her surroundings, and her breath caught. Under her hooves was black marble, reflecting the light of countless clear stars. But the light on her coat was strong, nearly as strong as daylight. She looked up and the sun shone brightly in a black sky, and opposite it, suspended among the stars, she recognized the shape of Equestria and its surrounding continent. She glanced to the horizon and saw only grey rock, shining in the sunlight. She looked the other way and saw she stood on a structure, a massive slab of black marble, surrounded by four pillars. From each of the pillars stretched a chain, and they were bound firmly around the barrel of an apparently sleeping pony.
Her face and body shape made Sunset read her as a mare, though she was larger than most stallions, nearly as large as Celestia, though lacking the tyrant's unusually willowy proportions. And, like Celestia, she had both wings and horn. Even sleeping, the power radiating off her made Sunset's horn and coat tingle, but she stepped forward, and the other pony stirred, then rose.
"Hello, Sunset Shimmer," she said quietly, and Sunset stopped.
"You know me?"
"I know every pony, but few remember meeting me. Only in dreams can I aid you now."
"Why are you bound here? Is it that tyrant's fault?"
"We do not have time for exposition, Sunset. Find me again, when I do not need to bridge worlds to speak to you. Now, please approach. I have a gift."
Sunset hesitated.
"Please."
It was so humbly said, so plaintive, that Sunset couldn't believe it hid ill-intent. She stepped forward, her hoofbeats echoing on the dark stone, until she was close enough to touch. The dark pony leaned towards her, pressing her horn lightly between her eyes, and she felt an outline of power around them, like a blindfold, though there was no observable effect.
"My power can no longer stand the light of day," she said, "but I believe you will soon find yourself in a half-light realm. When things look hopeless, call my name, and my aid will find you. Now go. The link fades, and unfriendly eyes seek us."
The dream grew misty around the edges, the once breathtaking view already dimming.
"Wait," Sunset cried out to the vanishing mare, "what is your name?"
"Luna."
The name echoed in her ears as she awoke. A sliver of moon hung in her window, and she stared at it until sleep took her again.
Sunset's deep and easy sleep turned out to be good, because her day got weird faster than she'd expected.
As soon as she got out of the shower and dressed, she checked the time on her phone. She had some to spare, but the screen had a notification from a program she'd never used before, with a little word balloon icon. She consulted the manual and saw it was the text message icon, so she opened it up, finding a message from "Unknown Sender." The name was accompanied by some kind of cartoon, a picture of a black oval, featureless save for two pointed ears and a grinning, toothy mouth.
You need my help, the message read.
Sunset fumbled with the keypad, and with her confusion about how to reply to this.
Who are you? And why?
The reply appeared nearly instantly, and Sunset wondered how anyone could type that quickly.
Call me Alibaba. Your phone is compromised. I stopped it from reporting. But you need to remove the evil program. Follow my directions exactly.
Sunset pondered, starting a half-dozen messages and abandoning them. She had so many questions, but already had a suspicion she wasn't going to get answers. Just trusting someone who communicated like this seemed questionable at best. Still, she had her own concerns about Akechi, and her friends had told her about spyware. A device he provided, that she didn't understand, but that she knew could listen to her...when she thought about it that way, she felt like maybe she should just throw the phone away.
But it had the mystery app, and didn't want to lose it.
She finally went with, How do I know I can trust you?
Ehehehe, you don't! Paranoia's good if someone's bugging your phone! But do you trust me more than the person who gave you the phone?
Before Sunset could reply, more messages flashed out rapid-fire.
I know what you talked about in the cafe. I've heard of a metaverse. I want you to find out about it.
So I'm going to share a secret to earn your trust. I have ears in Leblanc. Don't talk there if you don't want me to know, but if you do, I'll hear it, even if no one else is around. If you tell me what you find about the metaverse, I'll help you keep your secrets.
At first, Sunset didn't think this was much of an offering. On the other hand, Leblanc seemed like a good place to meet, so they likely would have kept using it without that information. And there was the Akechi issue. He'd helped her, sure, but it was a lot of resources to dedicate to helping one girl, in a world that looked increasingly unlikely to spare resources like that. If Akechi suspected the truth, or otherwise thought she was more than she seemed, that would explain his willingness to help. And it would make spying on her via her phone a likely move. Realistically, her position here was terrible, and she was going to have to make some risky choices.
So she committed. All right, deal. But I don't know anything about cell phones.
Some kind of strange face picture appeared, that looked like it had one eye closed and a grinning mouth.
Don't worry, I got you a picture guide! Press the letter icon, that's your email. Press the message with my name on it, it'll show you what you need to do.
The process was convoluted, and Sunset had to do it in stages, following several instructions before going back to look at more of the pictures, but thanks to rising early, she managed to get through the whole thing before she had to leave for school. As soon as she'd done the last step, another message from Alibaba popped up.
Good job! I'll be in touch. Remember, if you need me first - Leblanc.
Sunset typed back a thanks, wondering why they couldn't just talk this way, but the message didn't go through. Her phone claimed, despite all recent evidence, that Alibaba didn't exist.
Sunset muddled through her classes again. She'd had no time to follow up on her notes from earlier, so she just accumulated more things that seemed like common knowledge among her classmates that she'd have to look up before her proper notes would start to make sense. The math class that followed remained blessedly comprehensible in comparison. Still, by lunchtime she felt like she was drowning, and was wondering if she could just ignore school, claiming amnesia, and focus on her friends.
Ann and Akira met her at lunch, to the scandalized glances of some passing students, though Sunset wasn't even sure why - they were all scandalous, so surely hanging out together shouldn't be a surprise.
"You okay, Sunset? You were writing up a storm in history," Ann asked.
"Don't even start. I know nothing. I need to make notes about what I have to look up before I can understand my actual notes."
"Oh, yeah, wow, you're basically starting second year high school just knowing how to read and write, huh? Ouch."
"I'll get through somehow. Look, I have something more important to talk about."
She filled them in on her experience in the morning, and showed them Alibaba's messages. Ann gave a big grin.
"Ooh, a real super hacker! And they're helping you out! That's so cool!"
"Are you sure I can trust them?"
"I'm not," Akira said. "But do you really have much choice?"
"That was what I thought. They did seem like they could hear us in Leblanc, and I don't trust Akechi. The more I learn about how much help he and this Shido gave me, for nothing, the stranger it seems. Plus, the instructions did something, and Alibaba could tell when I'd done them."
"Can I see them?" Akira leaned over her shoulder. "I'm not an expert, but I can tell if they look plausible."
She shrugged and handed him the phone, and he scrolled through.
"That's advanced. I didn't know you could do most of this stuff. It removed something, and didn't add anything, though, so it's plausible."
"It feels kind of creepy, knowing someone was listening to us, even though Sojiro was outside," Ann said. "I wonder if he knows?"
"I'm not going to mention it," Akira said. "He's scary when we're alone."
"If we told him and he didn't know, Alibaba might think we'd betrayed them," Sunset said. "I don't think I want that."
"Yeah," Ann said. "But like, can they hear Akira's room? Are they watching him sleep?"
"Maybe we should ask," Sunset said.
"I'll think about it," Akira said. "I hope I don't say anything embarrassing in my sleep."
"Yeah, and I guess we'll just keep them up to date and see how the deal goes," Sunset said. "But let's talk after school. Where can we meet up and get some privacy?"
"We could go to the bottom of the stairwell," Ann said. "The basement's locked, but there's a landing outside the door. No one really goes down there after school."
They all agreed, and Sunset returned to class. At least her post-lunch schedule was mostly languages.
As a secret hideout, the stairwell did have some unfortunate features. For one thing, there wasn't a door, leaving them in view of anyone who might look down from higher in the stairwell. Even more importantly, with everyone gone after the end of classes, sound echoed, leaving a constant fear of eavesdropping.
Of course, they knew for sure that Leblanc wasn't secure, and everywhere else in the school was locked or occupied, so Sunset wasn't sure what their other options were. Doubly so if they wanted to try out the mystery app, which clamed to require proximity. So she spent an awkward few minutes feeling horribly exposed, huddled against the wall under the lowest part of the stairs to maximize her cover, before Ann and then shortly after Akira arrived. Then all three of them huddled, speaking in whispers, ears pricked for the sound of the door opening.
"Okay, this isn't as good as I thought," Ann admitted. Sunset just shrugged.
"I couldn't think of anything better, at least not close to school," she said. "But it's going to be hard to talk much here. Should we just see what the app does? Then we can go to my dorm or something and talk more."
Akira already had his phone out, and nodded. Ann waited a bit, then nodded too. Akira pressed a finger to the screen.
Sunset felt the difference even before she saw it. A powerful spike of magic washed over her from Akira's phone, making her feel like she could almost float or glow. Before any such thing could happen, though, it faded to a pleasant background hum, a feeling of ambient potential she'd forgotten she was missing. As it did so, the school faded and vanished as another world snapped in above it - one that was much more familiar to Sunset than the industrial architecture of Shujin. It was a dungeon, complete with irregular masonry walls, uneven stone floors, torchlight, and barred cells. In the distance she heard rushing water.
"Wow," Ann's voice was still a whisper. "I didn't expect it to work..."
Sunset felt a pang of guilt for not telling her new friends about the magic she'd sensed from the app, but she replaced it with resolve. Once they were done here, she promised herself she'd tell them the whole story.
And, now that she thought of it, the background buzz of magic meant that should probably be soon. Without her horn she wasn't sure she could manipulate it, and from the lack of reaction on the part of the others, she assumed they couldn't feel it at all. But if anything lived here, presumably it would have no such disadvantage. She pulled out her own phone and opened the app. Akira and Ann looked over her shoulder.
Kamoshida's Palace, flashed red at the top of the screen. Below was a stopwatch counting up labeled Subjective Duration, along with a second timer, External Duration, that seemed to be counting up significantly more slowly. A single large button labeled Return was greyed out, much as the Enter button had been the night before. Sunset pressed it, but an error box appeared: Distortion too strong. Try again at the edge of the distortion, or in weakly distorted location.
"We can't get out?" A hint of fear crept into Ann's voice.
"We can't get out from here," Sunset corrected. Her mind raced trying to interpret the unfamiliar terms, but her background in magic at least gave her clues. "If the location was Shujin, maybe the edge of the distortion is around where the school grounds would end?"
"Huh," Akira said, "that's a good guess. You got a lot from that cryptic error."
Sunset felt a flash of guilt.
"I wanted to tell you--" she cut herself off as a metallic clanking echoed off the stone walls.
"W-what's that?" Whispered Ann.
Sunset was already looking desperately for cover, but none seemed forthcoming. She grabbed Ann and tried to scrunch them both behind a pillar that didn't really seem big enough, while Akira pressed against the wall, optimistically hoping for cover from a support beam.
"Keep up the patrol," a harsh but familiar voice rang out. "We can't be too careful with these new delinquents around."
Sunset and Ann shared a wide-eyed look - it was unmistakably Kamoshida's voice.
The metallic sounds drew closer, now unmistakably accompanied by footsteps. The strange short hairs on Sunset's forearms stood on end and she could swear she felt a tingle where her horn should be - the ambient magic was increasing.
Ann pressed tight against her, motionless. She tried to breathe silently. The footsteps were close now - clearly coming their way.
Sunset caught Akira's eyes, and he turned his head down the hallway. It sloped down, which seemed like a bad sign, but there was an open passage visible to the right at the end, and no one in sight. She gave him a nod and Ann a nudge, tensing herself to run. Akira held up three fingers, seeing both girls watching him, then lowered them one by one.
When the last fell, they all broke and ran. Kamoshida's voice echoed behind them, but Sunset ignored it and went flat-out, hoping her unfamiliar limbs wouldn't let her down at speed.
So far so good, but the metallic clanking behind her was disturbingly familiar from her experience with Celestia's Royal Guard, and the growing magic made her concerned that Kamoshida was somehow using it. She just hoped that the passage ahead of them would offer a way out. She turned the corner...and nearly ran into Akira, who'd hesitated.
It was a dead end, an open cell, larger than the others, but still without other exit. Lacking anything else to do, Sunset let her momentum carry her to the back wall, letting Ann stumble into the room with her. She turned to watch the door, but without much hope of what she'd see. Along the wall, Akira raised his fists. Sunset tried to mimic the pose, though she was painfully aware that her already nonexistent close combat skills couldn't possibly be enhanced by her new body.
With a metallic clank, their foe entered. It was a massive figure clad in plate armor, though Sunset felt the magic seeping off of it, and her focused attention caught the wisps of dark mist drifting out from the armor's joints. The power made her itch, particularly around her eyes, which felt strangely familiar.
Akira launched himself at the figure, clearly hoping to take advantage of the element of surprise, but the size differential alone was ludicrous. He seemed to be trying some kind of hold, rather than an outright attack with his fists. Sunset, of course, had no understanding of wrestling, but it at least seemed more sensible than slamming a fleshy appendage into metal armor.
Either way, he didn't get far. The enemy was briefly caught off guard, but wrapped a massive armored hand around Akira before he even managed to find a grip. Casually, the figure deflected him and slammed him face-first towards the ground. He caught himself with his arms, but there was a sickening crack and he groaned. He rolled over to face upward and raised one arm in defense, but the other hung limp, and he seemed unable to rise.
It was so fast Sunset had barely begun to consider intervening before Akira was on the ground, and the shock of the sudden, casual violence left her reeling. She shrunk back instinctively, pressing against Ann. The armored figure moved aside, and Kamoshida entered, bringing with him a wave of magic than nearly sent Sunset, already staggered, to the ground herself.
"What the hell," Ann whispered.
The figure before her, she decided, was not the Mr. Kamoshida she knew. For one thing, his eyes were a rich gold, a color she'd never seen on a human, certainly not on dark-eyed Mr. Kamoshida. For another, this Kamoshida wore an ornate crown, a luxurious fur cape...and nothing else. It was appropriate attire for a pony, but, she realized, nothing like she'd seen anyone wearing in this world, and judging by Ann's wide eyes and Akira's averted ones, not something anyone should wear.
But she quickly lost that thread, drowned in the itchy feeling of the high magic, and in her growing fear. She still wasn't an expert at human expressions, but nothing about the smirk this Kamoshida wore could possibly be good.
"Useless," he tilted his head at Akira. "If that's the best you can do, it doesn't even deserve to be called assault. Not that you'll get a chance to try again, of course. I suppose I could be merciful, as thanks for bringing me these wonderful new slaves...but I won't. You!" He gestured to the soldier closest to Akira. "Take out the trash."
He stepped aside, allowing two more soldiers to enter. Sunset dimly registered Ann's eyes locked on them in horror, and some unfamiliar objects in their hands that might have been restraints, but her attention focused rapidly on the one looming over Akira. From some unseen space, they pulled forth a massive sword, and raised it high.
"No," Sunset thought, numb save for the skin around her eyes, which now felt scorched. "It can't be like this. This is my fault! I should have told them..."
As she was about to descend into self-hating despair, she heard another voice, soft, quiet, but familiar.
"When things look hopeless, call my name, and my aid will find you."
"Luna..." she whispered.
In the near silence of the unfolding horror, Sunset's whisper nearly echoed. Everyone stopped and turned to her.
The skin around her eyes felt like it was melting. She reached up, desperate, and felt...cloth? No, harder. Somehow she wore...a mask? It felt so wrong, she knew she had to be rid of it. She curled her fingers around the edges, nails digging into her flesh. More pain bloomed, but she knew, knew she had to remove it. She pulled. It felt like it took skin and flesh alike with it. She pulled harder.
"Luna!" She yelled in defiance and pain, and power answered. She felt it in her bones, washing over her still-unfamiliar body in a familiar way. She even felt a horn, bursting forth from her forehead where she'd just pulled off the mask, though she had no idea if it was really there or not.
Then the power burst forth, and unlike unicorn Sunset, she couldn't shape it. It lifted her off her feet, her hair rising to the ceiling in an unseen wind. A massive compression wave slammed out from her, throwing friend and foe alike to the floor or wall - the result of a large object appearing beneath her. She settled, and found herself sitting on the pony from her dream, dark as night, mane flowing with stars.
Only...it wasn't that pony, not really. Even as she touched it, Sunset understood that it was her, or part of her. Almost like the horn she now lacked, this pony-seeming was a way to manipulate magic. And she knew at least some of what she could do with it.
"Luna," she said softly, "take care of them."
The spectral pony reared. Sunset knew she should be thrown, but felt completely secure, riding with ease. Luna's hooves fell, impacting the chest of the fallen armored figure that, until recently, had been threatening Akira. Instantly, it vanished into smoke. Sunset gestured, an instinctive action, and Luna turned to face the other two, who were struggling to rise and form up in front of Kamoshida. Luna lowered her head, and a beam of light sprang forth from her horn. It struck each figure in turn, and they too evaporated.
Kamoshida, though, rose, and threw off his cloak. He looked, if anything, even more muscular than the coach, and still he was sneering.
"So one of you has some spine. Fine. I don't mind a girl with spirit. But I'm the King here. You can never defeat me alone."
Sunset looked aside. Apparently without noticing, Akira and Ann both now wore masks. His had a striking, jagged outline, and was white, with black edging around the eyes. Hers was pure red, with stylized catlike ears atop it.
"I'm not alone," Sunset said. "Ann, Akira - take off your masks! If a name comes to you, call out to it!"
Kamoshida's grin faded.
"I've seen enough anime," he said, "I won't give you the time!"
He launched himself at Akira, but as easily as moving her own body, Sunset caused Luna to leap forward, interspersing herself between them. Kamoshida's fist landed on her side, a heavy blow, and she gasped for breath, but she found staying on Luna easy, and checked back with her mount's flank, knocking him off balance.
"Arsene!" Akira's pained voice sounded from beside her, and a figure in a dapper red suit and tall hat appeared behind him, hovering on black wings. A burst of darkness launched forth from it, arcing over Luna to drive Kamoshida back.
"I'm done with you, you pervert!" Ann jumped up, hands around her mask. To Sunset's shock, blood flowed around it, though Ann stood unbowed. "No more! No more for Shiho, no more for me, no more for anyone! Carmen!"
A roaring inferno burst forth around her, and both Sunset and Akira jumped back. Through the flames she could see a figure in a dress, standing confidently. Then Ann strode forth from the flames and pointed at Kamoshida. Fire raced down her arm to her finger, leaving her apparently unharmed, and there was no trace of the blood on her face. Then it lanced out, and Kamoshida fled headlong from it, barely making it out of the room ahead of the inferno.
"Yeah, you better run!" Ann strode towards the door. "I'll never forgive you! Never!"
Before she reached the door, though, Carmen and the flames faded, and Ann sagged. As she did, Sunset realized just how much of her own reserves she'd burned, as her adrenaline started fading. Perhaps because of her training in magic, or just her own increased sensitivity, she didn't immediately sag, but she let Luna vanish, and felt her own fatigue creep up as she did so. She felt as drained as if she'd just finished an advanced magic lesson. She felt Akira sway next to her, and reached out to support him.
"How...how did you know to do that," he managed.
"I promise I'll tell you," Sunset said, "but I don't think that King is the kind to give up forever, and I don't think we want to have to do that again. Let's get out of here first."
Akira nodded, and she felt Ann sag against her from the other side.
"I hear that," she said.
They didn't make very good time. Akira's left arm still pained him, and Ann was breathing heavily.
All of their clothes had also transformed to fit the scene. Sunset now sported what she considered a quite dashing blue long coat with golden buttons over a white undershirt and brown trousers, complete with an odd triangular hat, and her own mask was an unadorned one in midnight blue. A long leather case hung from her belt - Akira called it a scabbard, but sadly it didn't come with a sword. Akira had a black outfit featuring an even longer coat and striking red gloves. And Ann had a suit of skintight red leather, matching her mask. Sunset thought this last didn't fit the castle decor, but Ann herself seemed pleased with it, though she blushed at the tight fit.
Sunset found this development worrying. Some magics, she knew, became harder to escape the more embroiled you became in their world. Still, it wouldn't do any good to worry the others with that thought - they'd make it to the entrance then take what came.
There were at least two silver linings - first, that they were able to follow passages that generally sloped up, and second, that putting King Kamoshida to flight seemed to have driven off his soldiers as well. The dungeon halls were eerily silent. They talked in hushed voices as they walked, both out of respect for the silence, and a desire for stealth, but it stopped them from saying much. They wondered at their new outfits and the situation, and swore to discuss it fully once they escaped.
Finally they reached what seemed to be the end of the dungeon. Ahead the passage opened into a circular chamber containing a large spiral staircase; Sunset assumed it was the bottom of a tower. To the, right, though, was a heavy wooden door, and something about it gave Sunset pause.
"Hold on," she held out a hand, stopping Ann and Akira, who were moving towards the stairs.
She stood still for a moment, listening, in case she'd heard something, but the silence held, broken only by an occasional plink of water dripping. Then she realized it wasn't what she was hearing, but what she was feeling - the background tickle of magic was slightly weaker near the door. Could that mean it was an exit?
She was pretty confident she could bring Luna back if she needed to, but still, she held the name and feeling in her mind, ready in case some monster waited for her on the other side of the door. She pushed it open.
Inside was a guard room with a table in the middle, and chairs gathered around it. Only...it wasn't quite that. Everything in the room, even the walls, was slightly translucent, and below she could barely make out one of Shujin's library meeting rooms. As she watched the wooden furniture and stone walls faded, until they were only barely visible "behind" Shujin's industrial equivalents. After a moment, the fade reversed.
"What the heck?" Ann shied away from the door, but Sunset walked in. She felt the magic fade as she did.
"The app said something about 'weakly distorted locations,' right?" Akira said. "Maybe this is one?"
Sunset pulled out her phone. Indeed, the app looked the same, except that the previously grey Return button was now green. She pressed it, and let out an involuntary heavy breath as the magic drained away. Her outfit faded to her Shujin uniform, and the dungeon decor fell away for the solid and familiar meeting room.
"Whew," Ann said. "I'm beat."
Sunset nodded. "I still have something I have to tell you, though. I feel like we have a lot to talk about. Where can we go?"
"Leblanc," Akira said.
"But that hacker said they could hear us there," Ann said. To Sunset's surprise, Akira nodded.
"Wait," she thought it over. "Alibaba also said they knew what the metaverse was. We're still clueless, only now we know it's dangerous. So...maybe we want them to hear?" Akira nodded again. "And telling them about what we found was in the deal, after all. If we want to talk in private we can go somewhere else after."
"Smart," Ann said. "It's still kinda creepy, but let's do it."
They made their way to Leblanc lost in their own thoughts, eyelids sagging. Even used as she was to harnessing magic, Sunset felt the toll on her body and mind. She hoped that if they kept doing this, they'd all get better at it in a hurry.
They arrived right in time for dinner, though even so the café was deserted. Ann ordered curry and coffee for all of them, and insisted on paying.
"It's from modeling," she said. "Even though I'm not at the top, at least I get a bit of spending money."
Sojiro served them and excused himself again to "smoke," though Sunset was pretty sure he was doing no such thing.
"Hello Alibaba," Akira started. "We're talking here because we're hoping you can help us. We went to the Metaverse today and nearly died, but it was a heck of a trip. If you know anything about it you can share, please help. And feel free to listen in on the rest of what we say, maybe you'll understand something we don't. Speaking of which," he turned to Sunset, who felt herself blushing.
"I almost told you right at the start," she started. "It's not that I didn't trust you, only I wasn't sure how you'd react, because everything here is so strange. But I didn't forget my past. I came here from another world."
Ann started, and even Akira's face twitched a little.
"You mean...the metaverse?" Ann said.
"No, but my world seems to have some things in common with it. For one thing, there's magic there. Whatever was happening in the metaverse shares some logic with it, as much as magic has logic, anyway. That helped me figure out how to help you use the power there. And I could feel it too, prickling on my skin, even though I don't have my horn here."
"You have a horn in your world?" Ann looked confused. "But wait...your hair isn't a dye-job at all, is it? Does everyone in your world have such cool hair?"
Sunset blushed harder.
"In my world, I'm...not human. I'm a unicorn. I'd never even heard of a human before I came here. But yeah, this is my natural coloration, and we seem to come in a lot more colors than you do."
"So, wait, that horse you rode on in the metaverse..."
"Yeah, that's the kind of body shape I have, though I don't have wings."
"So what happened? Why are you human now?"
Sunset slumped.
"I have no idea. As for how I got here..." She filled them both in on her abbreviated tale, which still took some time. "I hope it's okay that I didn't tell you right away," she finished. "I wanted to get a feel for people before I told them, and then I was getting a feel for the world, and it seemed like it'd be unbelievable."
"Yeah, before today," Ann said. "Now...I believe you." She reached over and squeezed Sunset's hand, an unfamiliar but oddly comforting gesture. Akira just nodded.
"So, do you have any other ideas?"
"Well," Sunset said, "magic doesn't exactly make sense. That's what makes it magical. And just because I can sense the magic in the metaverse doesn't mean it's the same. It certainly isn't, actively shaping magic like that requires a specialized organ in my world, like a unicorn's horn. Instead it felt like we were invoking something about ourselves that in turn let us shape the magic in limited ways, which I've never heard of.
"But one thing that's usually true of magic is that it follows feelings, not rules. Maybe your feelings, maybe someone else's, maybe even its own, or feelings from something we can't even understand. But strong emotions can influence it, like friendship, or anger, or hate.
"So that's why I sort of understood that app jargon, like what it was looking for. It feels like the metaverse, or maybe just that part of it, is somehow connected to Kamoshida. That's why we had to look him up in the app, and why his thoughts about the school seem to influence it."
"And that's why he's king there, the creep!" Ann said.
"I don't think that was him," Akira said. "Did you see his eyes?"
"Yeah and he was incredibly magical, way more than any of us, even when we were channeling," Sunset said. "I think Akira's right. I think it was a fake, or a reflection, or something."
"So...what's the point, then?" Ann said. "Why is there an app to let us go there if none of it's real and it's dangerous? Or is it even dangerous? Could that weird guard really have killed Akira?"
Sunset shook her head.
"I don't know. Magic can certainly hurt or kill in my world, but if that's a parasitic world it works by its own rules, and we just don't know them. But we're still tired here, after exerting ourselves there, so it's not purely an illusion. How's your arm, Akira?"
Akira rolled up his sleeve, revealing a nasty bruise. "Not great," he admitted, "but I think it was broken there, and it just feels like a bruise now."
"I got hit pretty hard," Sunset said, "and I'm not really feeling that at all. So it seems like it was worse there than here, but that might not apply to death. And there are lots of ways to be not-dead that you still really wouldn't want."
They sat in silence for a moment, considering that, then Ann sat up a bit.
"Wait...not dead, but still bad...like...a mental shutdown?"
"I guess maybe?" Sunset said, but Akira had also perked up. "Why do you ask?"
"Oh right," Ann said, "you just got here. Look," she pulled something up on her phone and handed it to Sunset.
It was an article from the day before school started, April 10th. She'd been with Akechi's helpers that day, though he'd not been there himself. She was getting situated in her dorm, getting her uniform, and so forth. Apparently a train had gone off the rails when the driver suffered an unexplained mental shutdown going into a station, causing extensive injuries and several deaths, including the driver. She thought it over more.
"Sympathetic magic can be powerful, in my experience," she finally said. "If the metaverse contains reflections of real people, and those reflections are injured or killed..."
"Like a voodoo doll," Ann said.
"It's all just speculation," Sunset reminded them.
"Maybe Alibaba can help," Akira said. "But if it's a coincidence..." he shrugged rather than finishing, but Sunset could tell he didn't think it was likely.
"So, wait, if I'd burned that King Kamoshida up..." Ann said.
"The real Kamoshida might have burned," Sunset said. "Or maybe had a shutdown. But we don't know."
They sat in silence for a long time.
"I want to stop him," Ann said. "He's going to go too far. Maybe he already did with some other girl. But I don't know if I want to...kill him..." She paused and thought. "I might, if he did anything to Shiho. But it's a lot, you know?"
Akira nodded, and Sunset returned the hand-squeeze.
"If the metaverse is the source of the shutdowns, though," Akira said, "then maybe we aren't the only ones with this app."
"Should we go to the police? Or that politician of yours, Sunset?" Ann asked.
"I've had enough of the police," Akira said.
"I don't trust him," Sunset said. "Besides, we know nothing about how we got this app, or why. And...I think there's more going on here. Luna, the construct I used there...I saw her in a dream last night. That's how I knew to call out to her."
"I had a strange dream, too..." Akira said. "But I don't really remember it. There was a prison, and something about rehabilitation?"
"I slept like a baby," Ann shrugged. "But I'm glad you don't want to, anyway. It feels like this is on us. But...what can we even do?"
"We just don't know enough," Akira agreed.
"Maybe Alibaba will come through," Sunset said. As if on cue, her phone pinged, and the familiar image popped up.
I think I can get something for you. But it'll take time. Will message this time tomorrow.
She showed the message to the others.
"I want to go back," Ann said. "Or, I want to be able to, anyway. I don't know how bad things with Kamoshida will get, but if they get too bad..."
Sunset nodded. "It might be your only hope. If it comes to that, I want to help."
Akira waited a bit, then nodded.
"Besides," Sunset said, eager to lighten the mood, "Alibaba might turn up something better. Sympathetic magic can be very flexible. We might be able to use this King Kamoshida to get through to the real one, or to make him back off, in some non-lethal way. Friendship and harmony can have a magic all their own. I don't want to just experiment with it unless we don't have any other choice, so we should wait on Alibaba first."
"Right," Ann said. "But I don't want to just do nothing."
"My outfit had a sheath, right?" Sunset looked at Akira, who nodded. "Maybe we should get weapons, then. Using our powers is exhausting, it wouldn't hurt to have a backup. And we might be able to use them together, too. Can we buy swords?"
"Not legally," Akira said. "Unless you have a special permit. Maybe Ann could get one, but I doubt you or I could. And they're really expensive anyway."
"What about fakes?" Ann said. "If the metaverse is about how people think, would it matter if the sword was real?"
"Maybe not," Sunset said. "Worth a try, anyway. Where could we get something like that?"
"Shibuya, maybe? They've got a lot of shops," Ann said. "Want to go after school tomorrow?"
They agreed, and just as they did, Mr. Sakura returned.
"It's almost nine," he said, "don't you have a curfew, Sunset Shimmer?"
"Wow, thanks!" Sunset had totally missed how long they'd been talking. "I'll see you two tomorrow, then."
"Wait," Ann said, "let's exchange numbers so we can text."
They did, then Sunset hurried to her train.
Her fatigue fought with her desire to tell Hifumi about her incredible day, and even as she reached the door to their suite common room, she hadn't decided how much to tell the other girl before turning in. But for better or worse, the decision was out of her hands - Hifumi wasn't in.
She'd left a note, though.
Dear Sunset, I was hoping to hear more about you tonight, but I just got good news! There's a shogi tournament this weekend I was on the waitlist for, and someone bowed out, so I get to play after all! I'm excited, but I need to be ready, so I'll be practicing in the evenings for the rest of the week. I'll catch up with you next week. Hifumi
Sunset considered staying up and doing some studying, but after less than an hour her eyes were glazing over and she could barely stay awake. Her long experience of magical fatigue meant she knew better than to fight when it got to that point. She sent a quick text to Akira and Ann letting them know they shouldn't either, then turned in for the night.