Sunset Shimmer Has a Problem

by CouchCrusader

Rating: everyone
Tags: Romance
Length: 12878

Sunset Shimmer returns to Equestria, and she doesn't like the welcoming committee.

Sunset Shimmer once wanted to return to Equestria, but only at the head of a brainwashed teenager army. Thirty moons after the Element of Magic foiled her ploy, she finds herself back there nevertheless, confronting a Canterlot much different from the one she left behind.

What's different there, you ask? For starters, Pinkie Pie finds her.

Sunset Shimmer has a problem, and she just can't seem to get rid of her.

Other stories in the Crackfic Circleship Collab:

Over the Rainbow by Golden Vision (Screwball x Rainbow Dash)
Finding Inner Shine by RTStephens (Hoity Toity x Shining Armor)
A Wish For Greener Grass by Burraku_Pansa (Flash Sentry x Big Macintosh)
This Too Shall Pass by JohnPerry (Big Macintosh x Spitfire)
A Lovely Apology by PresentPerfect (Spitfire x Filthy Rich)

Shouts out to Burraku_Pansa for proofreading this for me.
Vectors provided by MoongazePonies and HeatwaveMakesArt.

Published 1970-01-01 00:00:00 UTC
Last updated 2013-12-23 02:47:16 UTC

Thirty Moons Later

- Prologue -

Thirty Moons Later

Her thumb slid across the lock screen in the darkness, prompting a click from her phone as it transformed into a portal to the surface of the sun. She held it away until it wouldn’t blind her. The text message she’d kept there since last evening contained enough capital letters and exclamation points to supply a developing nation with grammar texts for a year. Of course it had to come from her. She mashed the power button on the side of her phone and tossed it on the passenger seat.

Sunset Shimmer kept the top down, even if that meant letting the cold spring air chafe her nose and toss her red and yellow curls to and fro. She rolled along the two lane road, white stripes falling into the pool of illumination from her headlights before dropping into darkness again, while silent stores and open lots passed her on either side.

Knowing the turns and roads here made this final mile longer than the two hundred that had come before it. A left on Stirrup Street, a right onto Goldengait Avenue, a left on the embarrassingly misspelled Mane Street, its signs left uncorrected for years in the city budget shortfall. She broke free of downtown and its traffic lights—freakishly useless at this hour —downshifted into second, and hammered on the gas.

She put it in neutral a hundred yards out from her destination and slouched in her seat. Her car coasted beneath the star-dotted sky. The eastern horizon glowed red and orange as a crenellated brick building rose up to her left, its windows dull and golden in slumber. In a few hours, they would shine from within, welcoming its flock of bleary-eyed teenagers to another dance of tests, extracurricular pursuits, and hormones. For now, though, hers would be the only car in the parking lot.

Or so she thought. She pulled in and idled past others that she should have expected there. A mud-flecked pickup truck, a wood-paneled station wagon with a forest’s worth of bumper stickers, a luxury coupe, a streamlined sport bike.

A muscle car with a yellow bolt of lightning on a shield of blue across its hood.

Sunset pulled to a stop in front of that last one. She contemplated it for a moment, fingers drumming on her steering wheel. Of course he’d be here, too. She shifted into reverse, swiping her turn signal for no one, and backed into a space facing the other cars in the lot.

She creaked as she got out of her car. She didn’t know she’d kept this outfit until she found it in the corner of her closet the previous night. A leather jacket with a studded collar, worn over a purple V-neck with a stylized sun on its front, paired with a high orange skirt with a purple and yellow stripe. Her boots stamped solidly on the sidewalk.

It only felt right for this occasion, all things considered.

“She’s here!”

That voice—like two balloons rubbing on each other in that high-pitched way of theirs—called her attention away from the silent face of Canterlot High School to the statue of the rearing horse in front of it, along with the six people gathered around it in a semi-circle. One of them, with that cotton-candy industrial accident hair of hers bouncing up and down, had one hand waving in the air while the other stayed cupped on her cheek.

“You got my message!” yelled Pinkie Pie. The others there turned to look, four girls and one guy. Celestia—they hadn’t changed at all.

“Yeah, yeah.” Sunset waved the party pixie off and evaded every attempt to hug her. The air grew quiet.

“Well, don’t just stand there,” said Applejack, stepping aside with a grin. “You can join us, you know.”

“I dunno, AJ,” Rainbow hissed in her friend’s ear. She shot a glance at Sunset, but the only thing in her eyes was play. “Going to a big university changes people. Right, Smarty Pants?”

Sunset’s hands flew from her sides. “I’m here, aren’t I?”

“I was worried you’d forgotten about your old friends.” Fluttershy put her hands behind her back and rocked on her toes. “We haven’t heard from you in a while.”

“Over two years,” said Rarity, raising a hand to her forehead. “Oh, life in the capital must be exciting.”

“It’s…” Sunset grabbed one arm and shrugged. “It’s been busy.”

Her eyes wandered to the last member of their little group. He wore his blue hair the way he’d had it, back when. He’d kept his racing jacket with the red and white stripes, and he still held onto those garageband sneakers from the Hayless place.

“You’re just in time, then.” Flash Sentry smiled and extended his hand. Sunset took it. She didn’t protest when his fingers weaved through hers. His were warm and callused, like an old glove that kept its heat better than a new one costing five times as much. She remembered holding them at Panic at the Stable! concerts, park festivals, late spring afternoons at Sugarcube Corner.

Sunset blinked. “In time for what?” she asked.

As if to answer, the front face of the square pedestal holding up the horse statue rippled and shimmered, growing brighter. Power hummed in Sunset’s teeth, and in her heart. She let go of Flash’s hand as the wind picked up—it seemed to come from the statue itself.

Flash only smiled and put a hand on Sunset’s shoulder. He pointed at the pedestal with the other as the stone dissolved into a gate of white light.

“Her,” he said.

One purple argyle boot stepped out from the pedestal, then another. A girl with hot pink and purple streaks in her blue hair emerged beneath the gloaming sky, wearing a same purple pleated skirt and blue, short-sleeved top that screamed “dorky” before it had been made.

“Twilight Sparkle.” The name came to Sunset’s lips as if she’d only said it yesterday.

The girl who emerged from the portal started. Her eyes bolted open as she recognized who had spoken to her—and her frame hunched by the smallest of margins. “Oh. Hello,” she stammered, glancing between Sunset and her hands. “Nice to see you here.”’

Sunset’s mouth opened. Her flattened brow, her canted hips, her superior snarl—they were weary of disuse. She held a fist to her mouth and coughed, willing those horrible postures aside. She returned a moment later, hands wringing. “Same,” she said back.

“And heeeeere’s Spike!”

The portal flashed again, just as a green-and-purple dog with large green eyes leaped onto the sidewalk in front of it. His legs were longer, his belly leaner—but his eyes widened as he realized something was off. One look at his fur-covered body, and his brow dropped. “Twilight, I thought you said I wasn’t gonna end up like this again.”

“Spike!” Rarity and Fluttershy descended on him like flying birds of adoration while Twilight went around the group with embraces of her own. She held onto Flash a little longer than the others, long enough to stir something black inside of Sunset’s gut, but it vanished when it came to be her turn.

“What…” Sunset’s hands wrapped around Twilight’s back. “What are you doing here?”

“It’s been thirty moons,” said Twilight, winking. “I just wanted to check up on my friends over here and see how they’re getting along.”

“We’ve been great!” Pinkie Pie zipped in between the two of them and held them tete-a-tete as she launched into her signature style of rapid exposition. “All of us became friends again, and Sunset here got into the best university in the country!”

“As a student of Princess Celestia’s should.” Twilight’s laughter was easy, which was to say far out of reach from what Sunset could hope to muster in the moment.

“Yeah! You’ll spend tonight with Rarity, then the next one with AJ, and then you’ll be with me. That way you don’t have to stay in a gross high school library this time.” Pinkie began to shake Twilight by the shoulders. “These next three days are gonna be sooo much fun!”

“I dunno. They had some comfy atlases in there.” From the way Twilight’s eyes rolled around in her head, she was probably going to have to catch up with her balance first. When she did, however, she looked right at Sunset. “You know…”

Sunset’s gut clenched up. What did she know?

“The portal’s open,” said Twilight, gesturing. “You’ve been away from Equestria for a long time, haven’t you?”

“Don’t even ask.” She saw the way Twilight’s face fell. “I burned too many bridges getting here. I can’t go back.”

“But wouldn’t you want to let Princess Celestia know you’re all right?”

Sunset did her wincing on the inside. On the outside, she was cold reasoning and logic. “She kicked me out of her tutelage. Refused me her highest teachings. She wouldn’t care about what happened to someone as ambitious and self-centered as I was.”

“On the contrary!” Was she smiling? Ugh. She really was a princess. “When I brought you up with her, she expressed nothing but concern and compassion for you. If there’s one thing I’ve learned about her, it’s that she never, ever gives up on a pony.”

Sunset prepared to ward her off with the fatal technicality that, at present, she was anything but hooved in limb and horned of head. She stopped herself, however, the moment she felt a hand on her shoulder.

“Don’t you miss your home?” asked Applejack.

“Or the ponies you knew?” asked Rarity, adding hers, too.

“You can’t change where you’re from,” said Rainbow Dash.

“Or what you’ve done,” said Fluttershy.

Sunset looked down at her boots, bringing her toes together.

“But who knows?” Pinkie ran a hand through Sunset’s hair. “Maybe you can make things right again over there.”

If Pinkie were anyone else, she would be missing a hand. She turned to Flash, who gave her a little nod.

“You won’t be gone forever,” he told her. “Gimme your keys. I can take care of your car while you’re away.”

Sunset frowned. “You can drive stick now?”

Flash’s eyes darted to the side as he rubbed the back of his head. “Oh. Uh…”

“What’s ‘driving stick?’” asked Twilight, cocking her head.

“It’s the one true way to drive an automobile,” Applejack told her with a tip of her hat. “Lemme take care of yours, Sunset. I promise Twilight won’t lay a finger on it until she’s had enough wreckin’ my truck.”

Sunset’s brain raced with a million answers to Applejack’s offer. The wise course lay in repeating none of them out loud. “You all honestly think I’m going back there?” she asked, folding her arms across her chest. “Why don’t all of you go instead? Don’t think I don’t know about all those times in high school you wanted to be a pony, Fluttershy.”

“She still does,” said Rainbow Dash after she finished laughing.

Fluttershy reddened and poked her fingers together.

“Let’s not threaten the destabilization of the space-time fabric of both our dimensions by exchanging more than one pony at a time,” said Twilight. “Can you imagine what’d happen if we brought our two Pinkie Pies together?”

“Some sorta human-pony paradox?” Flash ventured.

“A ponidox!” said Pinkie, leaping into the air. She came down and slapped Flash in the back of the head—gently. “Geez, get it right.”

Rarity chuckled. “You should go,” she said, getting the discussion back on track. “This world will be right here waiting for you.”

“You could be a pony.” Fluttershy’s hands pressed together as her eyes grew large. No, that was just her hovering an inch in front of her nose.

Rainbow Dash and Applejack dragged her out of the way with frowns on their faces.

Sunset turned toward the portal. Someone grabbed her left hand. There was Twilight, smiling at her while she gestured Sunset on with her free hand.

This was stupid. This was hasty.

This wouldn’t get her anywhere at all.

“Hey! Girlwhogetsshovedthroughamagicalmysteryportalsayswhat!”

Sunset looked over her shoulder at Pinkie Pie. “What?”

A pink shoe lodged into the small of her back and sent her flying forward into the light.

The First Day

- 1 -

The First Day

It wouldn’t be enough to describe the walk between worlds as a whirling tunnel of purples, oranges, greens, and reds. It wouldn’t be enough to mention the winds and the fury originating from everywhere and nowhere at once, nor the multiple gravities competing for a chunk of her body as she fell past their invisible sources.

Travelling between worlds always included that final flash at the end of the line—a perilous moment between light and darkness when you detached from consciousness, as a rising blob escapes from the floor of a lava lamp.

***

Sunset Shimmer found herself in a place without sound, with only a hard surface beneath her stomach and the light scent of soap in the air. She groaned, pushed herself off of whatever floor she’d landed on, and inhaled.

Her muscles tensed differently, flexed differently. When her hands should have splayed for leverage, she felt nothing from them—no cold, no strain, no numbness. She felt shorter. Her spine seemed happy to remain horizontal, though she had yet to rise to her feet. She lifted her head instead, working her jaw as if it had rusted over with disuse. She noted how their contours extended past the plane of her face.

The base of her spine flicked to one side, as if to shrug off the whole thing. For what was the big deal if she had a tail now, or hooves, or fine yellow hair covering most all of her quadruped frame?

It had been thirty moons since she had returned to the body of her birth, but she awoke a unicorn as if she had only gone to bed as one. She turned in place, hooves clopping on the floor, to look at the mirror that stood behind her.

“I should just go back there right now,” she growled, calling the image of that pink-haired menace so she could burn it in her mind’s eye. “Kick me through a dimensional portal without so much as asking, will she? It’s not like skipping down to Sugarcube Corner for a malt, you know!”

“Hello? Is somepony up here?”

Sometimes, a pony’s heart will kick her ribs so hard that all she can do, aside from checking for donkey genes in her ancestry, is curl up on the floor and hope no one sees her moment of weakness. As Sunset succumbed to this fate, her mind screamed at her, demanding why in the multiverse she heard that voice on this side of the portal.

Like two balloons rubbing together—except the pop they made would destroy the whole of existence.

Sunset had landed in a circular storage room of some sort, except its only contents at the time was the filigreed mirror leading back to her home dimension and one floored unicorn too stunned to make the crawl back. Two small, empty windows opened out to the blooming blue of a morning sky, while the clop of hooves echoed up from the spiral stair recessed into the wall.

Almost too late, she remembered herself. Her horn glowed with a turquoise aura—one to match the intense hue of her eyes—and the potent veil of a look-the-other-way spell cascaded over her just as a cloud of dark pink hair bounced into view.

It couldn’t be.

“Ooooh.” The pink earth mare in the stairway spotted the mirror. Her hooves made the most ridiculous sproinging sounds as she pronked her way over. Three balloons decorated her haunches, two of them blue and flanking the yellow one in the middle. Her big, blue eyes blinked and blinked as she looked the mirror up and down, chirping random bits of babble to herself before she plopped down in front of it.

She began making faces.

“Blehhhh! Hiiiiiiing! Grawrrr! This is the song that never ends! It just goes on and on, my friends! Some ponies started singing it not knowing what it was, and they’ll just keep on singing it forever just because this is the song tha—”

The pink pony whirled around with her big blue eyes contracted to the size of pencil erasers. Sunset leaped to her hooves, her spell dismissed and her nostrils steaming. If all of Equestria suffered pretty little heart attacks after hearing her yell that one word, so much the better, for it got that incredibly inconvenient pony to shut up.

For a moment, at least.

“Oh, there you are!” the other pony said, giggling. “Could you point me to the little filly’s room?”

Sunset’s jaw pedaled through the air a few times before it remembered it wasn’t a bicycle. Shaking her head, she took one more glance around the room. “Yeah,” she stuttered, racing her mind to the door in question before the words reached her tongue. “Go back down the stairs. It’s the second door on the right in the hallway.”

“Thanks!” said the other pony, waving. She trotted back to the stairway and began to descend, humming a tuneless ditty to herself as she went.

Sunset slumped onto her haunches and sighed. What were the odds that the first pony she’d run into—

“Wait!”

Sunset bolted for the mirror. The pink pony beat her to it. She came out of nowhere. In full mockery of Neighton’s Third Law of Motion, the equal and opposite reaction to Sunset bouncing off the pink pony never took place. Though this meant the world back there was spared a demise by doubled pink, it also meant more time spent with this thing.

“I just realized something,” said the other pony, bearing down on Sunset as she tried to scrabble back for room.

“What?”

“You’re pretty.”

The pink pony’s eyes closed in contentment, and she hopped off toward the staircase with a large smile bridging her ears.

Sunset scratched the back of her head. As the multiverse had it in for her, she knew she wouldn’t be expunging the sight of those intense blue eyes pressed against hers for a while. Well, until she remembered how to pull off that memory-scrubbing spell.

“Wait!”

Sunset smacked her forehead, only to remember a moment too late how hard hooves were. The stars in her vision pushed out whatever lecture she had for herself for failing to make a break for the portal while she still had the chance. The other pony stood over her now, her chest heaving with exertion.

“What now?” Sunset demanded.

“You’re Sunset Shimmer,” said the other pony.

Sunset rolled her eyes. “I’m the butt of a cosmic joke, that’s what.”

“Like I’m gonna fall for that old gag, Miss Shimmer. My name’s Pinkie Pie.”

“I know who you are.” Gritting her teeth, Sunset concentrated a sheath of turquoise magic around her horn and released it, blinking to a spot a couple yards away from her interrogator. “Your other you just pushed me through that portal there. You should go visit her.”

Fortunately for space-time, Pinkie shook her head. “Nope! I’ve got to help the Cakes up here in Canterlot for the next two days. They just opened a new store a few weeks ago and they’re super bogged down with customers.”

Sunset’s brow furrowed as the dumpy matron of the soda shoppe on Brayton Street and her beanpole husband drifted into her mind’s eye. They had been talking of opening a second location, though that had been two years ago. Who knew if they had actually followed through since?

“And besides—”

The intrusion of a pink hoof bursting Sunset’s recollection brought the unicorn back to reality with all the subtlety of aggravated assault.

“Twilight told me that two Mes in one place would likely cause everything to explode.” Pinkie Pie rocked back and forth on her hooves as if she were only telling someone to expect a small shower later on. “Besides, I’m sure Other Me is more than capable of taking care of her on her own over there.”

Pinkie grinned. “Which means…”

Sunset recognized that gleam in Pinkie’s eye. It was much the same she’d once given off back when she was CHS’s princess regnant. The process of crystallizing nefarious schemes and plans never skipped over that insidious spark—and to see it manifest in this pony put more ice in her veins than the one time she conjured a Neighpalese blizzard in the exam hall.

“C’mon,” she cried, hooking her hoof around Sunset’s neck. “You’ve been away for forever. I’m sure you’ll want to see what’s changed since you left? I’ll even be your tour guide. I bet that’ll give me some ideas for your upcoming ‘welcome-back-to-Equestria-from-your-self-imposed-exile-even-if-it’s-only-going-to-be-for-a-little-while’ party. It’ll be a blast, trust me.”

Sunset had no chance to protest as Pinkie hauled her toward the stairwell. Pinkie stopped halfway down, her eyes crossed, and her back legs squeezed together.

She smiled. “First, though, I really need to go potty.”

***

“And over there’s the park,” Pinkie said, pointing toward an open, grassy terrace with flower bushes in planters and scrolled benches beneath the oak trees. “Ponies often go there to relax after a hard day at school or work. You know, fly a kite, read a book, go parachuting off the edge? One time, this mopey stallion totally forgot to take his chute with him, so I caught up to him and gave it back right there in the air. Hee hee, you should have seen the look on his face. He felt so silly after that.”

“The park,” she says, Sunset thought, keeping her jaw set. As if the Orion Green was the only one in this city. The pony bouncing next to her had whisked her from the public works of Aquarius Plaza to the governmental buildings of Gemini Quarter throughout the day, and the Canterlot native learned nothing new. She stopped volunteering the names of all the shops and buildings once she realized this insult to metabolic limits had no plans to cut her needless tour short. Sunset was no slouch in the fitness department, either, but she had to call a breeze spell to keep the sweat from matting on her coat.

“Hey, are you hungry?”

“Is there a reason you’re hanging off that sign to ask me that?” In truth, Sunset’s stomach had begun its slow condensation into a black hole hours ago, but heck if she was going to encourage this maniac. Even her Pinkie Pie would have asked this one to slow down.

“It was there,” Pinkie said, shrugging. Her dismount, Sunset had to admit, was flawless, sticking the landing on the tips of her back hooves. “How ‘bout we head over to Sugarcube Canterlot? I wanna show you what I brought Mr. and Mrs. Cake today.”

Perhaps it was because Pinkie finally had someplace new to show her. Maybe she was on the brink of stuffing everyone in this backward little kingdom for suffering this saccharine pest to live. Whatever it was, Sunset agreed to follow after her.

The shop had opened on the southern end of the Libra Promenade, the heartline of Canterlot’s retail and social culture. Sunset stopped in her tracks when she saw it for the first time—most of the buildings along this street boasted precise masonry embroidered with flowing curlicues and filigree, and often sported crenellated roofs or tapering, striped spires.

Back in the other world, Sugarcube Corner was just another street corner snack shoppe. It had an awning.

Sugarcube Canterlot was a cake.

Its four tiers towered over the other buildings along the Promenade, their edges rimmed with red blossoms the size of stallions and outrageous arrangements of fruits as big as stagecoaches. Sunset swore she smelled hints of marzipan coming off the building, as well as—

“—Mascarpone Meringue Madness.”

Sunset started at the voice in her ear.

Pinkie seemed not to notice as she kept on going. “Heh, this brings back memories.”

The line going out the front door triple-backed on itself in the street, with ponies shifting on their hooves and craning their necks over the mass of ponity before them. It was almost as if Princess Celestia was in attendance there—even Sunset had to admit that her yearly autograph lines at the front of CHS were shorter than this.

Then again, ponies did take up more space in lines. Maybe it all came out to a wash.

Pinkie led Sunset inside. Right away, Sunset knew she had seen full-service restaurants near the university with less traffic than this place. Cloth-covered tables, all of them occupied, littered the broad, circular floor. The line from outside passed beneath a central chandelier fashioned like a tray of cupcakes to the service counter along the back wall. The laughter and bustle of ponies eating and drinking together pressed on Sunset’s ears like a stadium crowd. A feeling crept through her gut like an arctic slime mold, cold and branching. But before it could spread from her stomach, Pinkie spirited her up one of the staircases hugging the outside walls up to the store’s second story.

They passed through a kitchen half the size of the seating area below, where a brigade of ponies in white aprons and hats prepared batters with huge mixers, chopped baskets of fruits, and slid wooden paddles in and out of wood-fired ovens all along the wall. Sunset barely had time to process this before Pinkie dragged her ever higher. The third level of Sugarcube Canterlot looked to be office space, but though it made less noise than the other levels below, ponies continued to stream up and down the hallway with bulk orders and customer invoices fluttering in their mouths and before their horns.

Only when they reached the top of the store did Pinkie let Sunset drop to the floorboards.

“Whew,” Pinkie wheezed, sliding down to join Sunset. “Busy place, huh?”

Sunset had nothing to say to that. Instead, she gazed around this new place, letting herself take it all in. She saw two plush beds along the far wall with hearts cut out of the footboards, a kitchenette and icebox, and a door leading away into what must have been a bathroom. For a studio apartment in Canterlot, this wasn’t a bad way to live. Sunset wasn’t surprised to see balloons tied to every corner of furniture, or streamers and banners hanging down from the ceiling and over the windows. A record player stood in the corner with a bell more appropriate for the horn on a cargo ship.

“Pinkie Pie?” called a fatherly voice from the stairs. “Was that you coming up just now?”

Sunset’s eyes went wide at the two arrivals in Pinkie’s doorway. Mr. and Mrs. Cake had been regulars in her life as a high schooler, so seeing them here as ponies turned her stomach a little. A stupid reaction, since she knew better than anyone how mirror dimensions followed through with their denizens, but all the same…

“It is,” said Pinkie, bouncing over for a hug. “Oh! Hey, Pound. Hey, Pumpkin.”

“Ah-glahh!” Two little foals, a cream-colored pegasus colt and a, well, pumpkin-coated unicorn filly crawled out from behind Mrs. Cake’s head and onto Pinkie’s neck. The filly all but inhaled Pinkie’s ear, dribbling saliva, while the foal butted the earth mare with his head.

How in the world was she laughing at all of this?

“I brought you a new friend,” she said, turning toward Sunset.

“Keep them away from me.”

Pinkie giggled. “Suit yourself.” She returned the foals to their mother and presented Sunset with a hoof. “Her name’s Sunset Shimmer.”

“Oh, how delightful,” Mrs. Cake said, forming dimples on her pudgy cheeks when she smiled. To her surprise, Sunset felt something relax within her as heat suffused her face.

“Is she from around here?” asked Mr. Cake.

“I grew up here,” Sunset snorted. Her ears folded as she listened to her tone there, but from the way Mr. Cake smiled at her, she decided she hadn’t spoken too far out of line.

Mrs. Cake lit up. “That’s wonderful, dear. We’re sure you’re a very busy pony, so we wouldn’t want to impose on you. But, it’d be nice to befriend a local so we can know how to run this place better.” She wiped her brow as she turned to her husband. “It’s much more hectic here than Ponyville, that’s for sure. Are you hungry, Sunset?”

Sunset was never a pony to let others speak for her—not even her stomach throwing its loudest tantrums. “A little,” she allowed.

“You should try one of these, then!”

Sunset struggled to keep her features neutral while Pinkie fished something out of the curls of her tail. Really, her tail. She came up with a blue box the size of a textbook and set it down on a nearby table. Sunset followed her over—something about that box had disabled every survival instinct in her brain.

Inside the box were twenty-four spheres of chocolate the rough size and texture of ping-pong balls. While Sunset took a closer look, Pinkie began bouncing up and down in place.

“You know what truffles are, right?” she began. “They take a second to bite into and forever to lick it all off the back of your teeth after that. You’d think that’s a lot of chocolate. But I didn’t think they took it far enough. So I took some truffles, injected them with melted chocolate, and then I injected the melted chocolate with another truffle, and basically kept going until I couldn’t stuff them anymore. Then I tried one and it was like a bomb went off in my mouth. What do you think I should call them? I’ve got it narrowed down to ‘bombolate’ or ‘chocolomb.’ Hmm, maybe I could call it a ‘chocobombolate’ instead. Yeesh, these choices.”

Sunset didn’t catch her head tilting further and further toward the floor until Pinkie looked like she was hopping on the wall. No, wait. That was the wall. While Pinkie continued to bat her two names back and forth like a cat and a ball of yarn, Sunset floated one of the chocolates out of their box and held it in front of her. It felt as heavy as a chunk of lead, but her stomach didn’t see what could go wrong if she went ahead and tried it—

“Nononono notlikethat!”

Pinkie’s warning came too late. The moment the edge of Sunset’s teeth bore down on the little treat, it launched her into the air like an uppercut to the roof of her mouth, boxing glove and all. Firecrackers were safer to eat than this thing, but that line of thought ended when her head hit the floor. Only a dim part of her registered how fortunate she was to stay awake the whole time, though things went warm and hazy for a bit after that.

“Whoa whoa whoa.” Pinkie’s voice floated out to her as if through water, and Sunset felt a hoof slip beneath her back and lift her off the floor. Her head flopped over Pinkie’s withers while another hoof searched through her mane. For some reason, the brushing motion made her head feel even woozier. She had a good chunk of Pinkie’s mane across her nostrils, and it smelled of bubble gum and cake frosting.

Kind of nice, actually… It felt good to rest her head a bit, too.

“No brains. That’s a good sign.” Pinkie helped Sunset off the floor and steadied her on all fours. Blue eyes maneuvered in front of hers, like skies untroubled by rainclouds, or—

Sunset blinked. Where had that line of thought come from?

“You told me to try one,” she protested, still feeling the hit in her memories.

“Yeah, but not all at once, silly filly.” Pinkie laughed again, as Pinkie did. “I guess I should ask how you’re feeling right now, though.”

“How I feel?” Sunset waited for it to come to her—more out of habit than out of desire, by now, but she knew how she tended to snap at people who caught her off guard. But she kept waiting, waiting, even if it was only a second or so longer than she expected, and nothing along that line came to mind.

Instead, she realized she still had the taste of chocolate in her tongue, while a pleasant warmth lined her stomach and settled there. Her belly no longer grumbled for attention.

“Pretty full, actually,” she admitted. Once she took a step back from it all, she stumbled over a chuckle buried beneath the mental calamity. It was easier to let out than she thought.

Pinkie Pie pumped her hoof and leaped into the air. “Whoo hoo! All righty, then. Let’s head on out of here so I can show you more of the city. What do you say?”

Oh no, were the first words to cross Sunset’s mind. But then she looked at Pinkie, still smiling as brightly as she had back up in the mirror room. What got this pony down, for Pete’s sake?

And why did she have to be the one giving the tours around here?

“I’ve got a better idea,” Sunset told her, grinning. “Why not let me take you someplace this time? I lived here, after all.”

***

How many years had passed since Sunset had set hoof in this part of town? Not that it could have been that long ago at all, but her heart performed a small somersault as she took in the cathedral facade of Princess Celestia’s School for Gifted Unicorns. Ponies of stone stood rampant upon the tall corners of the institution, above stained glass windows chronicling the deeds of Equestrians of days long gone.

Sunset led Pinkie through its halls as the late afternoon light pooled against the walls. Those few students still there long after the final bell passed them by with plenty a curious glance at the earth mare who walked among them, but she remained unchallenged as Sunset took her upstairs.

They reached a hallway in the top central section of the main campus building, stopping before a pair of varnished cherrywood doors with brass handles. The unlocking spell returned to her at once, but this was no illegitimate entry.

Not exactly, at any rate.

She walked in after Pinkie, pausing to take in the old scent of polished marble and venerable wood. They stood within a rotunda the size of a concert hall, with an opulent crystal chandelier hanging from the domed, frescoed ceiling. Thick glass windows with solid brass muntins formed the western wall of the room, and they poured rich orange light over the enormous, eight-pointed sun inlaid within the center of the floor. A broad, white balcony waited beyond the windows, affording a view over the lawns of the Leo Quadrangle, and the schools and universities that formed its borders.

“Few ponies ever set hoof in here,” said Sunset, sauntering toward the windows. “Not even the highest administrators and instructors at the School possess the spell to enter. Only two ponies are ever granted access to the High Solarium. Princess Celestia is the first. The second: her pupil.”

Sunset looked over her shoulder and grinned. Pinkie was as still as she had ever been, only looking up at the ceiling with her mouth opened wide in wonder.

“I would have thought she’d change the spell once she cast me out and took a new student on.” Sunset paused at the high glass door leading out onto the balcony and pushed it open.

“It’s so big,” Pinkie exclaimed, scampering after Sunset. “But there’s nothing in here. No poofy cushions, no books, not even a snack table.”

Sunset snickered. “That’s the point. It’s big because I learned big spells in here. The last thing you want there is a bunch of furniture flying around and demolishing your face.”

“What if you wanted to practice force fields?”

The question stopped Sunset halfway out to the balcony. Behind her, she heard the whoosh of heavy wooden desks spinning through the air, the basso bumping of said desks ricocheting off a barrier, the intertwining tingle of two ponies’ magic—and laughter. She heard the melodious chuckling of a princess, and the squeaking giggle of a younger filly.

Sunset looked over her shoulder. The room quieted behind her, leaving her with only Pinkie Pie before the door, blinking and smiling.

“What made you say force fields?” she asked.

“Twilight’s really good at them,” Pinkie said, nodding. “Why wouldn’t it be the same with you?”

Sunset tensed at the comparison. The laughter of the past echoed in her memory once more, timeless melody and nascent giggles mingling in the light, but without the specters of the ponies they belonged to, she could not say the latter laugh was all hers.

On that day, thirty moons ago, Twilight had transformed her. Princess Twilight had transformed her, deflecting the arrow of her life from its course toward a field of targets ever dancing just beyond its trajectory. To think that same pony had once passed through this sanctum, taking it as her own as she took the Princess as her own, just as Sunset had done once before…

She said nothing, only forging outside to take a seat close to the balcony’s edge. A breeze bearing the scents of hazel and juniper played through her mane and tail, while the sun’s late rays arced over the mountains to the west, soaking into her coat and dazzling her eyes.

“Are you going to see her?”

Sunset didn’t need to ask who Pinkie was talking about, not when “her” avatar burned before the two of them. When was that pony going to learn when others were having moments to themselves? Sunset sat herself down on the balcony while Pinkie took a place next to her. That was fine.

Pinkie leaned her head on Sunset’s shoulder, which… was that not fine? Sunset cycled through her options in her head, surprising herself when the one that appealed to her most told her to play along. A few hours ago, she would have been happy to lens the light of the sun to reduce that pony to vapors.

Why hadn’t she thought of that when she had the chance to act?

“I wasn’t.” Sunset kept her eyes on the western horizon. “You pushed me here when I didn’t want to go, remember? Well, not that you’d remember that, exactly, but I told you how that happened.”

“Why wouldn’t you want to be here?” Pinkie waved her hoof out over the Quadrangle, the city beyond, and the valley far below, where the meandering ribbon of Canterlot River shimmered in the light. “You’re a better pony than you were before. I’m sure the Princess would love to see how far you’ve come.”

Sunset looked at Pinkie with furrowed brows. “How can you say that? You hardly even know me. I’m only here because you wouldn’t let me leave.”

“Pffffffft.” Pinkie’s eyes crossed as she broke into another one of her giggle fits. “Please. A scholar of the highest arcane arts, mentored by the wisest pony to ever live, versus a silly little mare from a rock farm who works in a kitchen three days a week. Am I really the one who’s keeping you in Equestria?”

Between the sun and Pinkie’s pearly-white smile, Sunset chose to gaze at the former. Her heartbeat kicked up in her chest. No. This was a different sound. This was the sound of golden shoes coming to rest on the white stone, and the focused, measured pull of breath. Her coat stood up as the air around her hummed and carried filaments of arcane flame.

A bright sheen rang through the air as the final edge of the sun retreated beneath the mountains. A babe, tucked into bed.

Sunset whirled to her left, eyes wide and with breath caught in her throat. The only presence there was the wind.

Wind and memory.

Memory and silence.

“Every month,” said Sunset, returning her gaze to the horizon, “I came out here with the Princess to watch her lower the sun and raise the moon.” A small smile crept across her face as she let herself fall into her story. “I was eight years old the first time we came out here. I knew more magic than most of the upperclassmares at the school. This part of Canterlot belonged to us and us only.

“If you think I ever asked myself why she chose me, you’d be wrong. I’d never been more sure of my life’s calling than on those evenings I spent with her. My cutie mark says it all. I poured myself into my studies until I surpassed every expectation she had of me.”

Sunset blinked. Then she frowned, snorting. These were memories she had locked away, buried, abandoned. No one had ever been welcome to know them. Now—now she had taken an utter stranger into her most inviolable sanctum for a grand tour.

She felt Pinkie rest her head back onto her shoulder, followed with a little nudge. “She must be proud of you,” Pinkie said.

“Was,” Sunset corrected her. “She’s not my teacher anymore.” What the heck. She had boarded this train knowing the tracks would dump her into this pit. “I was the best student she ever had.”

“What happened?”

“Hm?”

“What happened when you weren’t her student anymore?”

She may as well have slapped Sunset in the face with one of the Princess’ shoes. The unicorn’s eyes widened before she could stop them, and her hoof rose in kind. Only after Pinkie backed away, eyes just as wide, did Sunset catch herself. She was above petty assault, but there it was, waiting in the air.

She lowered her hoof with a sigh. Open doors deserved visitors, and Sunset had thrown hers wide the moment she stepped out of Sugarcube Corner. This was on her. “I lost the support of the only pony to ever believe in me,” she said, her voice stony. “What do you think happened after that?”

Pinkie chewed her lip as she digested Sunset’s words. Her eyes pointed at Sunset’s chest, but the unicorn sensed they were focused on something far, far behind her. “You left Equestria, pursuing what you thought was your destiny in another world, where you spent several years gaining power and followers until you could—”

“Good grief,” said Sunset, planting her hoof over Pinkie’s mouth. “You’ve never heard of rhetorical questions, have you?”

Sunset’s brain caught up with her two moments too late. Deliberately, she transferred her hoof from Pinkie’s muzzle to her own forehead and closed her eyes.

“Don’t feel bad,” Pinkie said, patting Sunset’s other hoof with hers. “And I do know what a rhetorical question is. Ponies make funny faces when I answer them.”

“No!” Perhaps it would be easier to play along with the local universe every time Pinkie flipped it over with some act of hers, because Sunset burst out laughing. “That’s not what that means at all.”

Pinkie only grinned at her.

Something came unstuck inside of Sunset, compounding her laughter as it fed back in on itself, and for a split-second she felt lighter inside. An answer to her own question lined up in her head, and when she came down from her absurd little outburst, she found herself able to speak without clenching up.

“When I started out as the Princess’s student, I had discovered more magic on my own than most upperclassmares had read about.” As an illustration, she conjured a ring of turquoise fire in the air before her horn and began molding it into different shapes and loops before putting it away. “I was just so adept at spellcasting that I didn’t really notice how foals my age stayed away from me while the older ones taunted me.

“Then I grew older. That’s when I noticed what the other ponies had done to me for years. No table in the cafeteria was reserved for the Princess’ student at lunchtime; everypony just moved to different tables. Books I put holds on in the archives went missing from the collection. I’d receive notes from the Princess to meet her in the Aquarius District or in some alley in Virgo Plaza, only they weren’t from her.”

Pinkie had come to rest her head on Sunset’s shoulder again as the top of the sky began to cool into purples and deep blues, the first stars twinkling into view. “I could get past all of that,” Sunset said. “They couldn’t touch me there.

“So, instead of attacking my weaknesses, they denied my strengths. I’d hear them in the hallways as I passed, saying how I was bound to mess up on my next exam, that my grasp of magic was only by luck, that the Princess would get herself another student soon.” Years after the fact, Sunset could remember the glares she attracted where she walked. “I worked and worked, and proved myself worthy of their respect time and time again—but all they wanted to see me do was fail.”

How she remained calm, saying all of this, she didn’t know. The wind picked up again, and without the sun to warm it, it nipped at Sunset’s coat as if to say she was no longer welcome there. She resented it only because that meant getting up, and the curly pink mane spilling over her back kept that part of her more cozy than she wanted to admit.

Any victory against the elements would be a hollow one, though. Sunset nudged Pinkie off of her and got to her hooves, teasing out the creaks and pops in her legs and topline. “I shouldn’t say any more,” she said. “Thanks for listening, I guess.”

“Anytime,” Pinkie said. She held her hooves out to the sides—an invitation Sunset didn’t want to accept just yet. She was being petty, of course. But she had given a lot of herself that night to some pony with no business knowing about it, and she wasn’t ready to give away the rest by miles.

“I don’t do hugs,” she said, even as she recalled the warmth of Pinkie’s mane and the comfortable weight of her head on her shoulder.

Pinkie only rolled her eyes with a grin. “Did you still want to see Princess Celestia tomorrow?”

Sunset paused. The sooner she got away from this place, the better—this pony asked questions with more punching power than a diving dragon. “No.”

“Aw, pouty-pants.” Pinkie stuck her tongue out, but her eyes took care of the smiling for her. Ridiculous. “Why not? You’ve got a place to stay here in Canterlot, right?”

“No again.” Sunset wanted to kick herself. She wasn’t being honest here. Twilight Sparkle’s words from earlier echoed in her mind. If there’s one thing I’ve learned about her, it’s that she never, ever gives up on a pony. Maybe she refused to advance Sunset’s education as far as she deserved to learn, but she’d made it clear as Crystal Empire snowmelt that she’d only ever had one pony who made her feel happy.

Pinkie’s jaw dropped. “You don’t? How ‘bout you stay with me in Sugarcube Canterlot tonight? I feel super bad that you weren’t able to see the Princess today, so you’ll get a chance to do that tomorrow.”

“Don’t worry about it.” Digging deeper and deeper.

Pinkie dug right after her, almost as if her cutie mark should have represented a talent in relentless pursuit. “C’mon,” she said, latching onto Sunset’s hoof. “I bet you haven’t slept over at anypony’s house in forever.”

This time, Sunset couldn’t say anything. She’d never been to a sleepover in her life. Besides, with a pony like Pinkie, a sleepover probably meant nothing more than obnoxious partying through the night. “Thanks for the invitation,” she said when the words returned to her, “but I’ll pass.”

“Oh, don’t be like that,” said Pinkie, dragging her back through the Solarium. “You’ve been through a lot today, so you just need a good night’s rest. You’ll wonder who you even were when you wake up tomorrow morning, believe me.”

***

Sunset Shimmer stared at the holiday lights meandering along the ceiling like something out of Baby’s First Milky Way, a poor mare’s starlit sky where square rafters and stray balloons blotted out the simulated heavens. The fluffy covers over her barrel kept her on the warm side of comfortable for the springtime, and the little mattress beneath her had run out of cool spots for her hooves a while ago.

She had no questions about who she was. That part was clear enough. The only pony who puzzled her was over there in the other bed, snoring lightly in the senseless chasm between intruder, hostess, and confidant.

How such a pony could have convinced her to stay… Sunset closed her eyes and turned on her side.

The Day After That

2 -

The Day After That

Before she opened her eyes, she could pretend.

She could pretend it was her lumpy zombie pillow she pulled over her head to block the sunlight pouring through the window. She could pretend she would swing her legs over the side of her floor mattress, set bare feet on a musty carpet strewn with wrinkled clothes, empty cereal bowls, and discarded textbooks. She could pretend to shuffle to her bathroom, scratching her back through flannel pajamas and wait outside the shower until the water ventured north of freezing.

She could pretend to start another wonderful day in her wonderful studio apartment, just before she hauled off to her wonderful university with all of the wonderful friends she had.

Life there was the best thing that had ever happened to her.

The pillow Sunset jammed over her ears this morning, however, must have enjoyed a previous life as the softest cloud in the world, at least before someone tricked it into a pillowcase. Instead of slipping out of threadbare blankets from the “upcycling boutique” (for “thrift stores” were beneath an undergraduate’s dignity), she emerged from beneath a fluffy, strawberry-scented comforter and set hooves onto floorboards that clacked, but did not creak.

The bathroom she stumbled into glowed, yellows and pinks dancing along the walls in alternating stripes. Only when she stepped into the claw-footed bathtub against the wall and melted beneath the steaming stream from the showerhead the moment she turned the tap—when she scrubbed herself all over, lathering her pasterns with soap smelling of cotton candy, when she breathed in the steam and let the water wash through her crest and tail—only after all these things did she stop seeing the point in pretending.

She stepped out of her shower as a pony.

Of all the times that had to sink in, it had to have been now? Not after she had tumbled through the mirror, or while that mare had dragged her all up and down the city? Not when she had returned to the Solarium for the first time in years?

Never mind that this was how the world saw her for most of her life—was she going to have an episode over the thing staring out at her from the mirror?

For instance, pony eyes were big. More than that—huge, so incapable of hiding secrets that they could teach books to read. Her eyes were as round as her face, or most anything on her body, really. She had forgotten how smooth pony bodies were—how hips, hooves, bellies, and horns filled out even on the fittest of them. She opened her mouth and saw teeth she’d possessed in the other world, though these were flatter and held less edge.

Her stature, too—she weighed enough to pin a collegiate wrestler to the mat, yet she wouldn’t have the height to reach her bathroom sink back home. Sure, the other world lacked the magic and strength imbued within each pony here, but it had sufficed to project a strong image to put herself on top before. This world didn’t care about the car she drove, not when a pony could walk the kingdom in seven days. Nor would it care about her cell phone, not when she could blurt her life’s story to a complete stranger in person instead.

The worst part about it all was that they’d listen.

They’d listen.

Sunset hated that.

Smoothing her mane—taking care to tease out the little curlicue at the base of her horn—she bypassed a bedside table without looking at the muffin there, or the folded card next to it all festooned within with crayon balloons. She trotted down the stairs without a word to the many ponies mixing, baking, packaging, serving, or eating various danishes, croissants, or tarts for the morning service, nor did she spare a thought for the ponies lined up outside in the mid-morning sun.

The filigreed lampposts of Libra Promenade rushed past her, as did every pony smart enough to step out of her way. She was too busy keeping her heart from beating itself out of her chest, and the sooner she got away from all of this, the better.

She was done with Canterlot, done with Equestria, done with ponies and their perfect little lives. She was done with Celestia, for all the Princess had failed to teach her.

And most of all, Sunset was done with that pink nuisance. Her counterpart was up for a very long chat once Sunset returned to the land of the ten-fingered.

All she had to do was get back to the castle.

A gust of wind blasted her in the side, bringing her to a halt on the wooden platform perched at the western end of the Promenade. A line of alabaster cable cars with stars painted on their doors circulated around the platform’s perimeter, while the cloud-laced air of Canterlot Valley yawned below them.

Had she but taken a few steps further, Sunset would have found herself bound for a very different place. Sunset selected an empty car and shut the door behind her. Cable traffic around this time of day was moderate, but nopony tried to join her for her ascent to Andromeda Terrace.

The car chugged once against the edge of the platform before it rose into the air. As Sunset draped her hooves over the sides of the car, Canterlot’s orange and purple spires receded away, relegated to viewing distances normally reserved for pegasi. With the wind in her mane and no one around, she closed her eyes, took her first deep breath of the day, and reclined in her seat.

Running away, are we?

Sunset cracked an eye open. Of course I’m not, she objected, snorting at the intruding thought. The mirror room, high in its Constellation Keep tower, floated before her mind. I’m heading home.

You’re running away, her thoughts insisted.

I was never supposed to be here, she said. That’s not running. Her gaze lifted toward the cable car’s canopy.

Like you don’t have unfinished business here.

As in getting on with my life? I’m through with everything on this end.

You know what I mean.

Sunset pressed the side of her hoof against her mouth. Sure thing. Let me drop everything I have going on back home. Nothing can go wrong with this plan.

’Cause you just can’t wait to get back to the university, can’t you? Celestia only knows how much you love the place.

“Of course I do,” Sunset muttered, folding her forelegs against her chest. She leaned her head back and looked at the sky. “Can’t get enough of it.”

Another gust of wind jostled her car. When it pulled into Andromeda Terrace a few minutes later, bumping rubber against the sides of the platform, Sunset was still sitting upright.

The door opened with a chunk, and a few steps brought her out to the plaza before the castle. Sunset’s eyes trailed down from the tops of its twisting towers, down Middle and Petty Keeps, until she found herself surveying the swarm of loud-shirted tourists gathered before the gilded gates leading into the castle lawn. Ponies of higher ranking, such as diplomats, bureaucrats, and other VIPs, queued outside a smaller, silver gate well removed from the hustle and bustle.

Sunset smirked, gathering turquoise energy around her horn. She had her own way to enter the castle.

“Is that Sunset Shimmer?”

The air snapped before Sunset’s eyes. The rebound tore a gasp from her lungs, leaving her wobbly in the knees.

Another voice spoke up—where the first voice had been somewhat meek, this one was as husky as it was melodic. “Wha—oh, geez, Louise.”

“Leave her, girls,” said a third, straight from the bushes of Faustralia. “She’s only gonna have a go at you.”

Three unicorn mares emerged from around the crowd of tourists while Sunset’s teeth ground together. She wasn’t sure what was worse: that she recognized who they were after all these years, or that she had allowed them to interrupt her casting. Senior faculty members had broken upon her defenses, and this was where she faltered?

The first of them wasted no time running up to her. She wore her red and purple mane even longer now, which framed both sides of her lithe, gray body. “How could you not want to say hello to an old colleague, Lemon Hearts?”

“Moondancer’s right,” said Minuette. Aside from ditching her braces, she had kept her walking blue-striped toothpaste commercial look, and her smile was as obnoxious to look at as the sun. “It wouldn’t be fair letting anypony miss out on all the amazing things I’ve done since graduation.”

“If by amazing you mean transporting half the Gobay in sand into our flat, that only cost us half the deposit.” The last, named for her sweet disposition and vivid coat color, turned her glare on Minuette. ”And you ate all my hay chips last night.”

“Gotta stop makin’ ‘em so delicious,” Minuette shot back, nudging Lemon in the ribs.

The latter only rolled her eyes and turned to Sunset with the briefest of nods.

“How nice to see you three again,” said Sunset, standing her ground. “Like old times, isn’t it?”

“I’d rather not go back to those old times if you’re going to ignore us again.” No venom seeped into Moondancer’s words—she had always been soft at heart. “Have you been well?”

“Did you blow anything else up after you left?” Minuette butted in.

Sunset didn’t miss a beat. “Most of my other school,” she said. “I also turned my fellow students into an army of teenagers and was about to take over Equestria.”

Minuette’s jaw had dropped lower and lower with every word. “Intense,” was the only reply she could offer.

“Rubbish,” said Lemon, snorting. “Always with the tall tales with you.”

Moondancer pulled at her own mane. “Is that really necessary?” she asked Lemon.

“It isn’t,” Sunset cut in, remembering her defenses this time. Enough was enough, and she wasn’t spending another second more than she had to here. “I was just passing through Canterlot, nothing more. Good to see you all again.”

“Sunset, just wait—”

No. No more waiting.

Gone were her three former classmates and the bustling gaggle of tourists behind them. Gone was the sunlight beating on her hair and the rush of the wind. She traded all of that for a circular room with two small windows, high up in a castle tower where no one would think to look for her.

It was over. In a moment, she would go home and put this chapter of her life behind her forever.

She just couldn’t stay here, not even if she wanted to.

Which I don’t, she reiterated. She flicked that troublesome thought away and closed her eyes, and collected herself.

When she turned around, the mirror wasn’t there.

***

Sunset knew the castle. She knew her teleportation skills, scroll-assisted or not, and she suffered no one to hold their pitiful candles to it.

This was the room. She ran her hooves over the wall, picking at the seams in the dark stone, only to smack it with a grunt. Her eyes scoured the rest of the room in case someone had only moved it aside for sweeping, but the place remained as barren as it had been yesterday morning.

Somehow, in the past twenty-four hours, someone had come and taken the mirror away.

Who did it? A bouncing, pink poltergeist came to mind right away—Sunset could almost hear that incessant giggling in her ears.

Her posture straightened. She tipped an ear toward the stairwell—was that a single pronk she heard? The specter of a snort? She was ninety-nine percent certain she would remain unmolested by company up here, but it wouldn’t do to tempt fate with that pony.

Sunset sat against the wall with a sigh, fighting for composure. Realistically, that pony had no chance of having her ducks lined up in anything but mayhem, much less rows capable of mirror abduction. They’d spent all of last night asleep in the same room—even for her, that pony wasn’t about to sneak into the castle in some ridiculous catsuit with a sidekick she paid in ice cream or whatever.

Lesser minds would have taken that bait. Greater wheels were turning here, wheels of a princessly persuasion. If you really wanted to see me again, Sunset thought, gritting her teeth, you would have made an actual effort by now.

Too bad princesses were never known for being direct.

Sunset considered the floor beneath her hooves. She had walked past several guards while leaving the castle yesterday—none of them had paused to interrogate her. Princess Celestia’s interest in barring her former student from the castle had vanished. Sunset could have dragged a marching band screaming and pleading for mercy through Constellation Keep, and no one would think to order her out.

She closed her eyes.

She opened them from outside the gates to the castle lawn, the throng of tourists supremely uninterested in the turquoise flash signalling her arrival behind them. Uninterested, that is, until she told them one thing.

“Be sure to ask about the mirrors,” she barked. “The castle has quite the collection. If you see Princess Celestia, ask her which one she finds the most interesting.”

None of them noticed the shadows falling across Sunset’s eyes as they turned back to each other all abuzz with speculation.

Andromeda Terrace played host to much more than just Her Generousness’s bedchambers, and a swift visit to the local Royal Bank of Canterlot branch would fund Sunset’s upcoming diversions. The teller had blinked no eyes at pulling up a royal stipend account unused for sixty moons, nor did she express curiosity about the mare requesting the withdrawal.

Sunset wouldn’t play into royal hooves so easily. If what Twilight had said was remotely possible? Celestia would come to her.

A little way down the lane from the castle grounds, a street mall curved along the southwestern edge of the terrace. Bistros, bookstores, and boutiques passed Sunset by as she walked beneath their awnings. Cinnamon and cardamom floated into the air from a candle shop, its proprietor hard at work cutting and twisting petals from her latest creation.

Sunset caught herself lingering after a minute. The mirror, she reminded herself. She wasn’t giving up on finding it by any means, but she needed someplace to sit down and collect her thoughts. Hunger had started to gnaw at her stomach, too, and she reconsidered the muffin she had left on the bedside table.

She glimpsed a two-story restaurant with a balcony across the street. The place was Louisiâne in decor, its railings draped with skeins of green, gold, and purple beading while whiffs of paprika and peppers wafted out the front door. The gnawing in Sunset’s stomach transmuted into a roaring.

A decent bowl of dirty rice near the university just didn’t exist. Sunset could go upstairs,find a table for herself, and be out the door looking for the mirror in an hour. Done.

A bell jingled on the doorway as Sunset stepped into an intimate, wood-paneled dining room, a brass chandelier turning in the middle of the ceiling. She made her way toward the hostess’ podium, only for the collared mare there to look up and smile.

Sunset tried to pull back, but momentum would not be denied. Ponies only smiled like that when they found something they were looking for, and Sunset prepared for the worst.

“Are you here to meet your party?” the hostess asked her. “Your friends are sitting right in the corner there.”

“I don’t have—” Sunset began, only to lose herself as she followed the hostess’ hoof.

Someone designed the universe, that much was certain. Whoever it was sitting behind that veil must have fallen out of their chair of galaxies laughing, for there was no way petty misfortune came close to describing the horror leaping out of her seat at the far corner booth.

“Sunny! You’re just in time! Come join us!”

Us, in this particular slice of pony misery, referred to the three unicorn mares sitting at the table with Pinkie Pie. The one with the sour yellow coat whispered into Pinkie’s ear, who in turn laughed and gave Lemon a hearty slap on the back.

All Sunset had to do was walk away. Find another restaurant, leave it all behind her—never mind how many eyes she had glued to her since Pinkie had to make a scene of herself. Sunset dropped her gaze to the floor and stamped.

“I was just telling the girls about my plans to go to the Candy Confectional tomorrow,” Pinkie told her as the unicorn slid into the booth. “Since it’s happening in Ponyville this year, Sugarcube Corner’s gonna get slammed. You should come and lend a hoof with me. You’ll eat a ton of scrumptious treats and get to meet my other friends there, too, though Twilight told me you already know them...”

Amid her ceaseless babbling, Pinkie paid no heed to Sunset’s efforts to drill a hole in the table with her horn.

“Pinkie.” Lemon Hearts tipped the earth mare’s jaw shut with a hoof and turned her face to face. ”She’s the friend you invited out to lunch?”

“Surprise!” Pinkie whipped her foreleg around Sunset’s shoulders. “We’ve really come to understand each other since yesterday.”

Minuette sputtered into her cola. “Haha, really?” she asked, drawing her hoof across her mouth. “You’ve done in one day what we couldn’t do in years.”

“We’re not friends,” Sunset retorted, throwing off Pinkie’s foreleg.

Lemon Hearts lowered her head with the air of a mare who’d seen it all before. “Pinkie, did you have to inflict this thunderjumper on the company? She doesn’t do friends, period. Trust those who’ve known her for a while.”

Sunset bit her tongue. She did have friends, she wanted to say. As if she’d be believed—her circle just happened to live elsewhere, since other worlds fell under that particular scope.

Pinkie chuckled. “Then why would she show me the High Solarium, where Princess Celestia taught her the latest findings of arcane theory and secret spells lost to the ages?”

The table went silent, except for blinking.

“The High What now?” asked Minuette.

“You heard me,” Pinkie said. “Top floor of the main school building, right in the middle of the central hall.”

Much to Sunset’s surprise, she decided to let Pinkie keep talking. The unicorn had to hide a smile as the others traded confused looks. When Moondancer spoke up, Sunset almost let slip a snicker.

“Pinkie Pie,” Moondancer said, cringing beneath that insuperable smile. “You’re talking about a janitorial closet.”

Sunset nodded with the rest of the unicorns as if to agree. Princess Celestia enjoyed spending time with her students, but she’d never have the time to teach her protegee in pony if she got stuck in the halls. With so many magical traces leaking into the halls at the School, nopony was going to investigate a glamour nestled behind the Princess’ potent look-the-other-way spell.

Instead of blustering or acting shocked, Pinkie burst into laughter. “Are you serious?” she asked, turning to Sunset and nudging her in the shoulder. “Wow! You sure got me good. I wish I knew how to make broom closets look like Canterlot ballrooms. Back in Ponyville, Twilight just keeps a mop beneath the stairs.”

Before Sunset could puzzle through what fresh inanity Pinkie had just unleashed upon the table, Minuette broke through it first. “That’s all it is,” she said, smiling. “You can’t even stuff a freshmare into it. What, did you honestly believe there’d be some huge space up there with a sun set into the floor and a balcony overlooking the quad?”

“That’s it!” Pinkie leveled her hoof between Minuette’s eyes. “That’s exactly what it looked like in there.” The cheery smile the earth mare gave Sunset belonged to a pony happily admitting her gullibility. “‘High Solarium.’ Got me good there.”

Either Minuette wasn’t blinking, or else she blinked at the same times Sunset was. “I was kidding, Pinks,” said the former.

“Look.” Lemon made no secret of what she thought of all this by rubbing her temples. “What’s behind that door isn’t important.”

Pinkie sat back down in her seat, folding her hooves beneath her chin. “Why wouldn’t it be?” she asked, flapping an ear.

Something shifted in the air, as though a window had been opened into the wintertime, bringing a sudden clarity over the ponies at the table. Pinkie Pie leaned in toward the center. The clatter of utensils on plates and the ambient chatter of other parties did not go away, but rather faded back as she spoke again.

“Sometimes, ponies need places of their own.” To say Pinkie had lowered her voice would not be accurate, technically—but the effect was the same. “Just ask my friend Fluttershy,” she continued. “She spends a lot of time alone in her cottage. I’ll go over there every now and then, and when I do, she’s always smiling and singing a song or two to the wild animals she takes care of. It’s the same thing for Twilight a lot of the time, too, only she sings to her books instead.”

Moondancer fiddled with her mane. “Oh, dear. She still does that?”

Lemon Hearts snorted as she leaned back in her seat. “So now you’re going to lecture us on how we’ve misunderstood out dear Sunny this whole time, and that she’s always been a good pony who only needed her own place somewhere.”

“Actually,” Pinkie said, grinning, “Twilight told me that Sunset used to be a really big butt.”

Even Moondancer got plenty of laughs out of that one. Sunset kept herself from lighting a tiny part of Pinkie’s mane on fire to see how long it’d take her to notice—Sunset didn’t need assault charges tacked on her list of things to deal with.

“But even if she was a butt back then,” Pinke went on, “she only wanted to be the best pony she could be. That broom closet let her be that pony. Know what I mean? When I was up there last night, listening to her, you could…”

Pinkie lowered her head and nibbled on her hoof, a gesture that tugged at the back of Sunset’s mind. She knew, somewhere deep down, that she was bearing witness to some astronomical convergence, though she didn’t know how to articulate what that was. A kind of gravity, centered somewhere in that nebulous mane of Pinkie’s, pulled the other ponies in even more.

The earth mare looked up, her cheeks dimpled and her eyes softening as she turned to Sunset again. “You could tell how happy she was up there. No other place in Equestria did for her what that closet did. And it means the world to me—more than that, even if we had cinnamon buns growing on bushes and peanut butter cup showers falling on plains of cupcakes every Tuesday morning…”

Pinkie returned to the land of the cognitive a moment later, her eyes still askew in reverie and her mouth a little ajar. “Heh heh heh…” She took a moment to recompose herself. “It means so much to me when ponies welcome me into places that important.”

If Sunset’s rump hadn’t been in a seat, she would have backpedalled out of the restaurant and possibly off the terrace. Showing Pinkie the Solarium wasn’t some ploy to become friends with her. That mare had been nothing but a terrible tour guide, lacking every destination even the meanest country bumpkin would know about the capital.

Sunset did not want to be friends with this mare. She was going to find the mirror before it closed, she would go home, and she would put this aborted part of her in the past, where it belonged, for good.

Her throat clenched up.

“So say I showed you my bedroom,” Minuette said, waggling her eyebrows. When her remark passed without scrutiny, she snorted and said, “Total mess, action figures, comic books, and sand from the farthest reaches of the planet all over the place, but it makes me happy. How’d you like that?”

Pinkie narrowed her eyes and tapped her lips. “That’s totally different,” she said. “I mean, I’m sure you’re comfortable there, and you’re proud of it, too.”

“Yeah?” Minuette said.

“But does it make you happy? If it was the last place in Equestria left to you, would it be where you could live out your dreams?”

Time sucked Sunset out of her seat and planted her in the hooves of a filly in the center of the Solarium. Off to the side, her teacher, alabaster perfect, stacked cherrywood bureaus against the wall in the warm light of the afternoon. The calm smile on her face never wavered.

“I think it’s time we moved on with your studies,” Princess Celestia said, showing Sunset the foot-wide hole she’d blasted through the last one. “I have no doubt you’re bound for great things, my faithful student.”

The words caught in Sunset’s throat before she could answer. Then she made the mistake of blinking—time whisked the Princess back into the dark crevasses of memory along with the Solarium, and Sunset opened her eyes in the body of a full-grown mare once more.

“You’re hearing this, right?” Minuette asked, poking Lemon Hearts with a chuckle. “Pinks, you’re brilliant, but this is a whole new level even for you.”

Pinkie fiddled with the tip of her mane. “I’ve had a lot of time to think about these things.” She straightened up in her seat, eyes alight—”Oooh, look! Our food’s here.”

A smiling stallion in a ruffled shirt approached the table with a constellation of dishes held before his horn. “How y’all doin’ today?” he inquired, sweeping the table with his eyes. “Hungry?”

Sunset didn’t get the chance to answer before the waiter called out the entrees he slid across the table—gumbos, jambalayas, stuffed peppers and casseroles, some rich, smoky fettucine in Pinkie’s case. Just the smell of it all swirling in her nose—paprika, thyme, brown sugar—Sunset remembered what she was even doing here in the first place, and she remembered she never got to order anything.

“And a bowl’a dirty rice for you, mademoiselle,” the waiter said, setting it down just beneath her nose. “Bon appetit!”

Sunset could only stare as the steam rose in her eyes. The dark brown color infused in every grain, the bits of brightbean, carrot, and onion dispersed throughout, the kick of black pepper swirling with parsley and notes of caramel…

“I think you broke her, Pinkie,” Lemon Hearts whispered across the table.

“No kidding,” Minuette said. “It’s like nopony was ever nice to her before.”

Blinking, Sunset took up her spoon, her eyes fixed beneath her. Moments passed. That was as far as she got before her grip spell fizzled, her spoon clattering on the table.

***

She was not about to rid herself of the sympathetic stares she had collected walking out of the restaurant that afternoon. The place was sure to tout how its cuisine could literally reduce a lady to tears, but the truth of it all soared above every witness there.

That said, that bowl of rice had been the best she’d had in years.

Precious little had come of her meeting with Pinkie there after that. Sunset had lost the will to ask Pinkie about the mirror. She hadn’t torn off looking for it, either. While Moondancer had leaned over, dabbing a napkin beneath Sunset’s eyes, it was Pinkie who had asked her, once more, if she was coming to Ponyville.

The sleeper car bounced gently along the tracks. Sunset turned on her side, looking out the window by her bunk as the lights of Canterlot receded up and out of the frame. She pulled down the shade, adjusted her pillow, and listened a while to the light snoring issuing from the bunk beneath her.

That one moment returned to her—the moment Pinkie had been lost for words. Sunset had witnessed the closing of Tannhorser gate in the stars, had walked the worlds for a new lease on life, only for it all to slip so suddenly away at the end.

Moments like that stayed with a pony.

Sunset had one more day to find the portal.

When she fell asleep, she felt like she had a hundred.