Rumble is twelve. For almost five years he has lived in Ponyville with his brother Thunderlane. They have a new life with new ponies, a new family, far from their first home – but Rumble has never seemed to fit in amongst his peers in Ponyville or Cloudsdale. The end of his last year at the Ponyville Primary School is approaching, and with it what Rumble hopes will be a new lease on life: a distant secondary school where he might start afresh and finally find his place.

But life isn’t as simple as that, and Rumble knows it. As Rumble approaches his goal, storm clouds gather and the path he has chosen for himself seems unclear. Foals he hardly knows begin to finally reveal their true colours, and Rumble must decide what he really values in life, and whether he can put his trust in the ponies that once left him in the dust.

When Celestia decides to visit Luna at midnight, at first they are civil. They smile at old in-jokes, tease each other. But soon things turn from the trivial, bringing to light the the roiling emotions of the past of the sisters who will not die, and cannot forget.