Mirror the Shimmer

Chapters

Sunset Shimmer: Changeling Hunter
Sunset Shimmer: Life Ruiner
Sunset Shimmer: Mistress of Fate
Third Fragment Complete

Sunset Shimmer: Changeling Hunter

My name's Sunset Shimmer. You will just call me Shimmer. Got it?

What's that? You want an intro? Fuck you. This is my story and I'll tell it how I want to. And that story starts when I was just fourteen years old... but the version you're getting begins right here.

I always hated the town I grew up in. Too small, too plain, too Earth Tribe, and with the big city practically in sight just on the horizon, mocking me. My family thought it would be a good place to raise a child; shows how much they knew. As soon as my ticket out of this dump arrived, I got on the first plane to Manehattan and swore I'd never look back. I never would have come back to this place at all if Suri Polomare hadn't bitched at me about wanting to see my hometown.

It was after dark, and me and Suri were cruising my old streets with the roof down, blasting Sapphire Shores and honking at cute guys. We were both drunk, her more than me, and she wouldn't stop leaning over the side and gawking at just about everything. "Oh my gawd," she kept screaming into my ear, and I was sure she was doing the inflection just to annoy me. "You actually used to live here?"

"Yeah," I grunted back, avoiding eye contact. Truth was, I was getting bored. It had been funny at first seeing Suri never-left-Manehattan-in-her-life Polomare drunkenly freaking out over how small everything was, but it looked like it wasn't going to sink in anytime soon that these blocky streets were all there was to see. The closest thing this neighborhood had to a bar was a lovey-dovey sugar cafe, and we'd used up most of our sacks of flour on the local landmarks. Maybe she thought that seeing where I was raised would help her get inside my head? Fat chance; I wasn't like her starry-eyed socialite circle, and she should have known it.

It was obvious to everyone (except possibly Suri herself) that she and I were only friends because we were using each other. Our paths would never have crossed otherwise; she'd slept her way through beauty school and made clothing lines without having had an original idea in her life, and I studied physics by day and killed monsters by night. She needed a means of travel, and I needed a foot through certain doors. That, and she could mix a killer cocktail. I knew someday she'd find out for sure what my hobby was, or maybe she'd just get bored of me and we'd stab each other in the back. For now, we made it work.

We both felt nervous taps on our shoulders. "Um, girls?" Coco Pommel mumbled from the back seat. "Our itinerary says we're supposed to get up early tomorrow, so maybe we should-"

"Shut the fuck up, Coco!" I yelled, swerving around to knock her back onto her seat. Suri cackled while I seethed. Why we'd had to bring Coco along was another of Suri's mysteries, seeing how she'd done nothing but whine the whole time. Now we'd have to stay out here another half hour just to spite her; didn't she ever learn?

Even over our music, a distant strain of something caught my ear. Not knowing why at first, I followed it. The streets got more familiar as we went on, and my stomach tightened as I realized where we were going. Suri beat me to it. "Oh my gawd," she yelled, pulling on my arm. "Is that your high school?"

Canterlot High. The place I'd left this town specifically to get away from. I'd been there for only six months, the most infuriating six months of my life. The place was run by a constantly tired woman and her raging alcoholic sister; I can't believe I'd used to look up to them when I was younger. On top of that, everyone was all school spirit this and magical lessons that, and you couldn't even eat lunch without a bunch of weirdos doing a choreographed song and dance right through the cafeteria. If it had been up to me, I'd have shaken the place up and instilled some proper order in it. Thankfully, those days were long gone.

Suri hung half out of the car. "Hey, I think there's a party up there?" she called.

She wasn't wrong. I screeched to a halt in front of the school, next to a line of other cars out front. Lights were flashing from somewhere inside, and ekes of music were spinning out of it. I wracked my brain for a reason for this; maybe it was prom night? It was around the right time of year.

For some reason, I was on edge. Something, right on the edge of sensation, was gnawing at me, the kind of sixth sense I'd trained myself not to ignore. The building looked different than I remembered, but I couldn't put my finger on why. That wasn't it, though. "I'm on vacation," I muttered to myself, trying to stomp it down as my fingers strangled the wheel. More mysteries was exactly what I didn't need. Between this and my companions' combined nagging, I was suddenly wishing that I'd had more to drink that night.

"Hey." Suri poked me, and I saw that she was holding up a football-sized bag of rye flour. Her grin got the message across. "One bag left."

Another glance at the school told me that this was exactly what I needed right now. "Oh fuck yes," I agreed, then reached into the backseat past trembling Coco and grabbed Mark Antony.

No one knew that it was called Mark Antony, obviously, or that it had a name at all. I was content to let Suri think my sledgehammer was just a fashion statement. If you're wondering why I didn't try for something more discrete, first off, go die, and second, you've obviously never tried to kill a changeling up close. Knives and swords just bounce off them. Guns are too loud, raise too many unnecessary questions, and always carry one fewer bullets than you need. If you want to get in a fight and live, you need something that can crush skulls. I'd say try it, but you'd probably fuck it up.

Suri and I piled out of the car and ran across the grounds. I let Mark Antony trail on the ground, ripping up grass. "Where do you want it?" Suri asked, juggling the bag from hand to hand.

"Right in front," I answered before she dropped it. We scurried past the statue of the Equestrian and got in position, bag and hammer at the ready. I focused my sights on the front doors. "This is for the friendship lectures, you bitch," I growled.

Her aim was bad. Mine wasn't. Suri tossed the bag like a football and I hit it like a baseball, cracking it open with a sound like a small bomb. A cloud of flour dusted us, but most of it flew past Suri and exploded a second time against the front of the school. The glass door cracked and broke. Thick, brownish dust caked itself over everything, safely protected by an arch so it wouldn't be washed away in the next rain. We laughed and I spat on the ground, brushing grains out of my eyes. "Dumb school," I muttered. It was a shame that was all we'd brought; if I'd known it was prom night, I would have prepared something way more spectacular.

Behind me, the roar of my engine and the chorus of Serves Her Right abruptly shut off. "What happened?" Coco called, still not getting it. "Is everything all right?"

"Shut the fuck..." My standard retort died on my lips. Now that our music was gone, the strains floating through the broken door were reaching me much more clearly. It sounded sappy, some kind of slow dance number, but there was something familiar about it that I couldn't quite place. I tried twice more to respond and then stumbled forward, as if in a daze. It called to me.

Suri was still cackling like a banshee, but she grabbed at my arm as I lurched past. "Hey, where are you going?" she said. "We should get out of here." I shrugged her off. The nagging feeling in my gut had gotten worse, and I had exactly one policy for dealing with things I didn't like.

The inside of the school was different than I remembered. For one thing, aside from the damage we'd just caused, it was clean; the pictures and displays were all neatly organized and untarnished, and the school's crest had been repainted without the massive slash down the moon's side. Maybe vice-principal Luna had finally gotten her act together and sobered up, but that would have taken some kind of miracle. At the door, Suri yelped; she'd cut her skirt trying to squeeze her fat ass after me through the broken frame. I ignored her and followed the singing, letting muscle memory carry me to the gym.

Someone was already at the door when we arrived, a purple girl with fake blond hair and a dress pulled out of someone's back room. She was peering through the door with a look of intense longing; basically, the kind of girl you want to dump a bucket of pig's blood on. Suri was less sophisticated in her teasing. "Aw, is the music too loud for you?" she jeered as we came up to her, probably the best her booze-addled mind could come up with.

"Something like that," the girl answered without looking at us. "I don't like parties."

"Really?" I grinned wickedly and hefted Mark Antony. "Me too."

Something in my voice made her flinch, and when she looked at me, magic happened. I'd meant to scare her, but the look of terror and confusion on her face was unlike anything I'd seen before, like a stunned bunny staring down a train. She shook once and then bolted down the hallway, pushing past Suri without even noticing her. I saw a glint as she turned; was she crying? Unfortunately, Suri had to do all the laughing for me. I could now hear the singing clearly.

"Every single sunrise you were there, and you are every moonrise that we share..."

Like a siren's song, it pulled me forward. I took the purple girl's place and cupped a hand around the window, peering in. If this was a prom, it was much less formal than mine had been. Dimly, I could make out balloons and streamers and a cake the size of me covered in candles. The dance floor was lit up; in the middle of it, another purple girl was dancing with a tall guy. They looked vaguely familiar. Suri poked me. "Shims, are you okay?" she slurred. "You're looking spaced out."

"You are every wonder in the skies, and every single star is in your eyes..."

I had to know. I'm kind of stupid like that. I kicked open the door.

You know that scene in the movies where the villain enters a room and everything goes dead silent? After years of trying, I finally, finally got that reaction. A flock of heads turned towards me and froze. The musicians simultaneously fumbled their instruments, producing a screech that faded to nothing. Stunned students backed away from the door while the dancers stayed still, clinging to each other. For a moment or two, it was just me, and the singer. "You're the Twilight of my..." she sang, then stopped as she felt the life being sucked out of the room. Her eyes opened, and they locked on mine.

That was when I knew what had drawn me here. I knew why her voice had called to me, pulling me across the school and maybe even further. Because that singer? She was me.

Silence fell completely. With practiced ease, I swallowed all emotions and let coldness fill me, taking in my surroundings but keeping all my focus on the fake me on the stage. My fingers played up Mark Antony's handle. "Suri, take Coco and go," I ordered.

She finally broke out of her trance. "Shims, what the fu-"

"I said go!" I snapped. I heard footsteps, but didn't care if they were hers. I took one deep breath to cleanse myself. Without intel, I had to assume that this imposter had been here for as long as I'd been gone, and with an entire school of impressionable students giving it their adoration? Tirek's beard, this was going to be a tough one. Gathering myself, I swung my sledgehammer over my head, because I'm a badass bitch first and a hero second, and charged.

Now there was noise; the crowd parted with gasps and yells. They weren't important. The fake Shimmer managed to surprise me. Normally a changeling that had been called out in such an obvious way would change to its true form or at least try to run. Even as the band cleared out behind it, this one just stayed where it was with a look that almost mirrored the purple girl from outside's, just gaping at me like I was something out of its nightmares. Not that changelings dream. As the screams finally started I leaped up onto the stage and then leaped again, raising my hammer over my head and unleashing a yell that I'd been building up all evening.

Something flashed between us. Propelled by something that had to be more than muscles, the purple girl from the dance floor flew past me and threw herself between me and my target. "No!" she cried as Mark Antony's head swung down.

Despite what you probably think, you can't stop a weapon mid-swing. Anyone who says they can wasn't going for the kill in the first place. Even so, I was just barely able to redirect myself so that it whistled past her face and smashed into the stage next to her foot. There was a crash like thunder, then an audible sound of dust settling. I glared at her as I straightened up. "Get out of my way."

"No." Even before the words left her mouth, other girls from the crowd were joining her. A rainbow-haired blue girl was first, then orange, white, pink, the tall guy she'd been dancing with, and then a frail yellow one who wrapped her arms around the fake Shimmer, forming a living wall between me and the creature who'd been killing them. It was sickening.

I took a defensive stance, raising my hammer slowly. It was tempting to just brain the ringleader with the handle and make my move, but I held back. "Get away from her," I spat. "She's not what you think she is!"

It was the purple girl's voice that spoke, but it came from behind me. "Yes she is."

I made the oldest mistake in the book and looked back. The blue girl broke formation and went for me; I dropped down and whacked her in the stomach. As she doubled over the orange one yelled something and threw a kick at me, and even though I was able to block it, the force of it knocked me flat on my ass. I braced for another blow; luckily, the pink and white girls were holding back the ones who'd attacked me. It was only once my fighting instincts had calmed that I finally put together what I'd seen in that brief glance: the girls in front of me and behind me had the same face.

Taking a risk, I looked back again. Sure enough, it was the purple girl from the hallway, standing in the middle of the floor and shaking hard. She reached up and pulled off what I finally saw was a wig, revealing the same striped, violet hair as the one in front of me. I looked back and forth between them; they were even wearing matching pins.

I didn't panic. Sunset Shimmer does not panic. I just wished, in that moment, that I'd known in advance that I would be spending my night wandering blindly into a changeling hive. Then maybe I could have come in sober, and with better weapons, and maybe not try to smash the one who was probably their queen right in front of a hundred or so bugs. Then maybe, I told myself, I would be able to enjoy it more when I inevitably fought my way out of this.

Surprisingly, it was the quiet yellow one who came to my rescue. She whispered rapidly to the others and maneuvered my double forward, keeping it in her embrace. "Give her your hand," she murmured into its ear. When it didn't obey, she grabbed its wrist and held it out towards me. "You think she's a changeling, don't you?" she said to me. "It's okay. Test her."

For a moment I just stared. "Fluttershy, are you nuts?" the rainbow-haired girl spat, straining against the pink hands that held her. "She just tried to murder her!"

"Dash, trust me," Fluttershy said. She gestured encouragingly. "It's okay. We won't hurt you."

Her charm was nauseating. I still didn't move for a second, and when I did, it was cautiously. Still sure that I was going to be swarmed at any moment, I stood up and reached down to my boot in one motion, pulling out the knife I kept tucked into it. Now more people screamed and started to run out of the room; were they only just now getting the idea? I'd forgotten how fucking stupid high schoolers are. "This is silver," I warned, holding the blade up. "Do you know what happens to a changeling when it touches silver?"

The fake me paled, but it still didn't try to run. I took a step forward and held the knife out, just grazing its skin. I hovered it over the tip of one finger, then another, watching its eyes for any reaction, then lost patience and slashed the blade across its palm. By that point I'd prepared myself for a few options: probably the green slime of a changeling, but maybe the blue mist of a pixie or other Fae, or even the clear sap of a bio-construct. But all that came out of her was pure, red, human blood.

For maybe the first time in my life, I was thrown. My knife fell from my fingers and I backed away, staring. My eyes flicked up to her face - shaken, scared, and now welling tears from pain, but undeniably mine - and then back to her blood, pure and true. "What... what the fuck?" I stammered.

The pink girl gasped loudly. "Oh! Swear jar! Swear jar!"

I considered the possibility that this was a dream. It wasn't out of the question. I knew I didn't have a twin sister, but barring something even stranger like time travel or alternate dimensions, that was all I had. "You're a fake," I snarled at her, staving off the inevitable. "You're a fucking fake!"

Amidst more cries of "Swear jar!" the imposter completely broke down. She wailed and pushed Fluttershy away, running for one of the far doors. A well-placed hand from the purple ringleader kept me from going after her. "It's okay, everyone!" she yelled at the rest of the room. "Everyone's okay. It was just a misunderstanding." While her other friends ran after the fake Shimmer, she gave quick looks to her double, then to a door outside, and then to me. "Let's talk," she said.

It was around then that I finally got a good look at her pin. It read "Birthday Girl".

Sunset Shimmer: Life Ruiner

Princess said her story usually took an hour to tell. I cut it down to twenty minutes.

The two Twilights and I were sitting at a wooden table outside, them arm in arm on one side, me lounging against Mark Antony on the other. Next to each other they were mirror images, but I'd learned to recognize them not by that but by their posture; one sat straight and always smiled, even if she didn't mean it, and the other hunched down to avoid my gaze and never smiled at all. The tall one asked me to call her Princess for short, which I thought was pretentious until I found out she actually was one. Her sparkliness may not have been my style, but she was an adventurer too and I could respect that.

"You're... taking this surprisingly well," Princess said as she finished up. "Are you sure you don't have any questions?"

"Nah." I finished the mug of punch that I'd spiked and threw it over my shoulder, a little disappointed when it bounced off the grass instead of shattering. The party was starting to liven up again, though with no sign of the fake or her friends. "I don't know if I believe you yet, but it's simple stuff. Multiverse theory, mirror portals, destiny shifts, all that junk. I've read Star Swirl's theorems too."

"You have?" Princess gasped in delight. I caught her double looking up at me in surprise too. Oh, the things I'd do to that face.

"Yeah." I leaned back and, lacking anything else suitably menacing to do, started to pick at my teeth with my knife. "I'm a theoretical physics major at Manehattan U," I told them, inwardly smirking at the envy on their faces. "Star Swirl's our bread and butter over there. He spent a year on mirror portals before writing that inter-dimensional travel isn't possible in this universe, but theorized another dimension where it is." I leaned across the table. "So I do have one question, yeah. If you really are from a mirrored universe like you said, and that fake Shimmer is a perfect reflection of me, then what the fuck is she still doing in high school?"

Princess laughed. "Oh, she doesn't go here any more. She adapted to this world better than I did; she graduated last year, and now she's-"

"Last year?" I raised an eyebrow. "What, is she slow or something?"

"What do you mean?" She was indignant, but I heard doubt in her voice. "You must have graduated recently too. You're turning twenty in December, right?"

"Is that what she told you? Because I turned twenty-fucking-two in March."

Those cute little stunned faces. Adorable. "I know, I'm a tiny little pixie," I said, stretching out. I'd always known that I could pass for younger than I was, and evidently this fake knew it as well. "Don't try to cover for her," I added as Princess opened her mouth. "It doesn't mean you're wrong, it just means she's been lying to you. I know I would have. Even a foreign high school would have been a joke if I could get three years of growth on it." I leaned my head back thoughtfully. "And if I did believe you - and I'm not saying I do - then I have to admit, it would explain a lot."

They waited patiently while I prepared to unleash both barrels of backstory on them. "See, back when you two were running around in kindergarten and, I don't know, magic kindergarten or something, I used to go here," I explained, waving my knife at the school. "I was even Principal Celestia's favorite, for a few weeks. Until she started lecturing me about friendship and humility, like that was supposed to help my studies. She kept saying I had to be nice to others and they'd be nice back, which was hypocritical as fuck, since everyone knew she had to keep her sister practically locked up most days or else she'd get drunk and start breaking things. When I called her out on this she disowned me. It didn't matter. I was done with this place by then."

Obviously, unlike my double, I'd gotten over that memory. Obviously, it didn't affect me any more. Obviously, I never wanted to see that bitch Celestia again. Obviously I wasn't wondering where she was right that second. Obviously.

"And then, just after that, a package arrived at our house out of the blue. In it were a pouch of gold coins and a pouch of jewels. They were tiny, but the gold was pure and the jewels were the size of walnuts, and both of them were worth a fortune. The letter with it said that all of it was from a 'mysterious benefactor' and we could keep all of it, as long as at least half went to furthering my education. It was sketchy as hell, but it checked out legally, and as long as it got me out of this town I didn't ask too many questions. I chose the best schools in Manehattan and we never looked back.

"I traveled the world after that, finishing my classes online. I went to every continent and learned to fight. Found the changelings who ate my brother. Killed them. They killed my parents back. I killed them harder. I've been hunting a queen called Chrysalis ever since. When the trail went cold I went back to Manehattan and took up physics. And I never would have come back here at all if Suri Polomare hadn't begged me to go on vacation after my exams."

I stretched out and leaned closer to them. "So think carefully about what story you're telling me," I growled. "Because I would hate to think that all of that only happened because some pussy version of me gave up that life to slip into mine and play pretend at being a princess."

Princess Twilight had seemed enthused at first, but the last part made her pause. "Sunset, listen," she started, reaching her hand across the table towards me.

My knife slammed into the wood between her fingers. "Shimmer," I forcefully corrected her. "You will call me Shimmer. Nothing else." Only Celestia called me Sunset.

She laughed nervously, pretending not to have jumped. "That makes things easier," she said. "Our Shimmer prefers... um... Sunset." She tried again. "I know she's turned out different from you, but that doesn't have to be a bad thing. When she arrived she wanted to take over two worlds, but she's changed since then, and only for the better." She took on a satisfied, slightly preachy tone. I guessed that she made speeches like this a lot. "The magic of friendship transformed her. Smashing the mirror portal was what finally made her realize the lifestyle she'd chosen was unsustainable; the more she hurt others, the more she was really just hurting herself. Now, it's like she's a whole different person. She's kind and generous and always puts others first, even if it inconveniences her. She's made it her life goal to help anyone and everyone in need and make amends for who she used to be."

A lifetime spent serving others? Me? Just how powerful was this magic doodad of hers? "Sounds like your crown really did a number on her," I said, staying carefully neutral.

"Not really." She beamed. "The Element of Magic can't change who a person is. It just cleared away the fog of bad emotions and unlocked the potential that was hidden inside of her, and in all of us. Maybe you should try talking to her. You might have a lot to learn from each other. After all, even if you've gone in different directions, you're still the same person."

I narrowed my eyes. "Don't insult me by comparing me to her," I said. "There's no part of me that would ever work at a fucking animal shelter."

"Yes there is," Princess argued. "It's just hidden away. Whether you accept it or not, you do have that same spark of kindness in you. It's just up to you to choose to let it shine."

Then, for the first time since the gymnasium, her double spoke. "Yeah, right."

Her voice was quiet, but it demanded attention. Twilight kept her head low as we stared at her, avoiding our gazes. "There's no goodness in Sunset," she grumbled. "She's just scared of you. If you weren't always looming over her, she'd go right back to doing evil. And she's just as bad," she added with a quick glance at me. "We shouldn't even be talking to her."

Some colour left the pony Twilight's cheeks. I leaned over the table towards the human, dangling my knife between us. "You got a problem with me, little girl?" I hissed.

Slowly, she looked up at me. Her gaze was nothing like the other's. In those eyes I saw pure, unvarnished hatred. Maybe I'd been spending too much time around changelings, but I could feel the anger coming off of her in waves, infecting her surroundings. Her breathing was shallow and her hands trembled, but she still found it in herself to stare me down; it really was taking all of her courage to stand up to me. It was flattering, really. I wondered if Princess really understood her own argument. For all her talk, was she able to admit to herself that all this bile and suffering existed within herself as well? I doubted it. "Seriously, what's your deal with me?" I said, breaking the silence. "Come on. I've heard her story, and you've heard mine. If you've been gone for so long, what's with all the looks? What did I do, kill your dog or something?"

She bared her teeth, and I wondered if I'd actually been on the mark. Teardrops glistened in her eyes. "You really want me to tell you?" she snarled. "You want to know how... how much of a f-fucking bitch you are?"

The language shocked Princess and delighted me. "Oh, now you have to tell me," I said.

"You don't have to tell her," Princess whispered.

"She should know!" Twilight shouted. She leveled her gaze at me. "She should know what she did."

"I'm all ears." I grinned and settled back.

It took a while for Twilight to collect herself. When she finally started, her voice had finally reached an even, almost normal tone. "I first met Sunset when I was fourteen," she began. "It was my first week of high school. I was new, and I didn't know anyone. For the first few days I basically hid behind my books and ate lunch in the library, but Principal Celestia gave me an 'assignment' to start talking to people, so eventually I went to the cafeteria." I brushed off a twinge; I should have guessed Celestia would find a replacement so quickly. Figures it would be someone too shy to talk back to her. That bitch. "As soon as I walked in, it felt like everyone was trying to get my attention. Everyone was laughing and talking and trying to ask me questions. I saw Pinkie Pie waving me over to her table, but before I could get to her, Sunset grabbed my arm and dragged me over to her table instead.

"At first, I thought I'd found my first ever best friend. She was a year older than me, or so she said, and studying psychology, just like me. All her other friends were even older and in a whole bunch of other fields. She said everyone else in this school was crazy, and she was glad she'd finally found someone normal. We hit it off right away. We started eating lunch together every day, usually in the library, away from everyone else. We studied together and helped each other with our advanced projects. I taught her math, which was the only thing she ever struggled with, and in return she taught me how to fit in. At least... her version of fitting in. I started dying my hair to hide my stripes. I stopped singing. I never wore anything that sparkled or did anything that would make people look at me. Little by little, she taught me to hide myself from everyone in the world but her."

The more she talked, the flatter her voice became, until it started to sound like she was just reading lines. I guessed that this was a story that she rarely spoke aloud but told to herself time and time again, forcing herself to relive every moment every time she closed her eyes, searching for the exact moment when her life fell apart. This, I could tell, was going to be good.

"Sunset ended up spending a lot of time at my house. Never the other way around; she said she lived in a foster home after she lost her whole family in a changeling attack. I never found out if that was true. Study sessions turned into study sleepovers. She told me secrets about the boys she liked. I said I didn't have any, but she knew. She liked to take pictures of us. I had my favorites of the two of us all over my room. Sometimes she asked to borrow my computer or my phone, but I never thought it meant anything. She was always there for me, and I didn't know how I would have survived high school without her. I honestly thought we'd be together forever.

"The whole school year passed like this. For her sixteenth birthday, or what she said was her birthday, all she wanted was to spend the day with me. When we got to my fifteenth birthday, I said that all I wanted was the same thing. But she said she'd prepared something even better for me. A blind date." My ears pricked up. "She said she was tired of me being alone all the time, and she'd found a guy who she knew would love me, and she knew I'd like him too. It was my first date ever, and I'd never been that excited, or that scared. I thanked her about a million times. She spent all day helping me pick an outfit and coaching me about what to say and do. Then she dropped me off at a big, fancy restaurant, gave me a rose so he'd recognize me, wished me luck, and drove away. That was the last nice thing she ever said to me.

"I waited inside for exactly twenty minutes. I know because I counted every second. I kept telling myself that it was going to be the best night ever. Then..." Finally, some emotion cracked into her voice. Princess tightened her arm around hers, and she kept going. "Then I heard the door open. I held my breath. I looked up. And in walked my big brother."

I snorted. My hand fluttered in front of my face as I held in giggles, waving her on. "Yeah," she said, looking down. "I thought it was funny too." She shuddered. "Until he started shouting."

She had to take a moment to collect herself again. This time she wasn't as successful. "See, all the while she'd been getting close to me, she'd been using her time to get close to my brother as well. Every time she came to my house, and every time she borrowed my stuff, she'd been digging up things to use against us both. After a few weeks she'd started talking to him online, under the name ShineLover. She said she was a secret admirer of his, and wanted to get to know him better. Thanks to me, she knew all about him, what he liked, what he wanted, exactly who to pretend to be to get him to respond. And then... and then it got worse.

"I only found out about a lot of it later, when I found some old backups from his computer. But pretty soon, their talks started to get... pretty heated. And then more than heated. There were pictures." She was starting to look a little sick. "Sunset was smart. She never showed my face, and she always washed the colours out, so you could only tell it was me if you knew. And sometimes it wasn't me at all, just some model from the internet with pieces of me pasted on top. Sometimes even I couldn't tell which was which. She had shots of me in my underwear, up my skirt, even..." She couldn't say it. "And Shining... my brother... he'd taken pictures too. Even worse pictures. I never managed to read the whole conversation that went with them before I destroyed it, but the one phrase that always stuck in my mind was... 'Ride me like a unicorn.'"

Princess put her arm around Twilight while giving me a warning stare, in case I thought about laughing again. Neither of us paid her any heed. "This went on for months," Twilight continued. "Every day she was pretending to be my friend, she was going home and having cyber sex with my brother, pretending to be secretly me the whole time. Then one day, she said she finally wanted to meet him in person. She gave him a time and a place, and said he'd recognize her by the red rose she was holding. He turned up, hoping to see the face of the girl he'd fallen in love with... and instead he found little old me, his underage sister, holding a red rose and wearing a big, dumb, hopeful smile on my face."

There were definitely tears in her eyes now. "He'd broken up with Cadance for me!" she yelled, like this would mean anything to me. "Cadance! My old babysitter! The most amazing, caring, wonderful person ever, and I... I didn't even know they were dating, and she... she just..." She clenched her teeth and squeezed her eyes shut. Princess held her tightly, whispering to her. I waited until they were done. "He screamed at me in front of everyone," Twilight continued in sharp bursts. "He said he hated me. I tried to tell him I didn't know what he was talking about. He didn't believe me. He ran outside. I followed him. I called his name. He stopped. He looked back. And the car... the car didn't see him in time."

She took a moment to just weep. "Sunset didn't plan that part," she said in a small voice. "It was no one's fault. The driver didn't do anything wrong. When they wouldn't let me ride in the ambulance, he drove me to the hospital. I spent all night in the waiting room until I fell asleep. When I woke up, my parents were there, and Shining was gone. They said he'd been moved to a bigger hospital in the city. I asked how bad it was. They said they didn't know.

"A few days went by. I didn't go to school; I could barely even eat. I tried to call Sunset a dozen times, but she never answered. When I finally turned on my computer again, there was a parental block on it. That's how I learned that my parents knew. I tried to tell them I was innocent, and they said they believed me, but they didn't. My mom started watching me like a hawk, talking really carefully around me, always treating me like she thought I was going to murder someone. And every time I asked about Shining, they always said that they just hadn't heard anything.

"When I went back to school, Sunset was waiting. She cornered me in front of the school with all her older friends and just started shouting. I don't know if she didn't know Shining was in a hospital, or if she just didn't care. She yelled about how she'd done everything for me, and she couldn't believe I'd been a sicko this whole time, and so on. Her friends started throwing things. I tried to run, but they were everywhere. I didn't go to any classes that day. I couldn't even face Principal Celestia. I just spent the whole day hiding.

"After that, the messages started coming. People called my phone a dozen times a day to mock me, and my email blew up with everything from transcripts of their conversations to death threats. I never found out where she'd put my information, but because she never sent me anything herself, I couldn't pin anything on her. I gave up my phone and the internet, but every day someone would throw something at me in the hall, or I'd find a picture taped to my locker, or something even worse. Everyone knew. Everyone thought I was a freak."

"Except they didn't," Princess added, to her double as much as to me. "It was just a small group of Sunset's old friends. No one else believed the rumours, and when that group graduated, they died out completely. By the time I arrived, no one even remembered who I was."

"But I didn't know that," Twilight continued. "It felt like everyone I knew had turned their backs on me. But Sunset was the worst. Almost overnight, she'd turned into a complete monster, not just to me, but to everyone. She could push people around just by being in the same room as them. She started tearing more friendships apart. She started dating Flash, the guy I thought I was going to see on that date, just to spite me. I tried to avoid her over the summer, but as soon as I got back things were worse than ever. I changed schools a month later. I've been running from her ever since.

"My parents never told me what happened to Shining. Every month, they would have worse and worse excuses for why they didn't know anything, and eventually I learned to stop asking. I didn't speak to anyone at my new school for six months. I've still never entered the cafeteria. My whole family thinks I'm some kind of sex freak, I got kicked out of the only school that felt like home, and the guy I was destined to fall in love with never got a chance to talk to me. She turned me into a complete wreck for years. And why? Why?" She leveled her glare at me again. "All because you couldn't stand that I was Celestia's favorite and not you."

I bristled, coming back to the present. "Hey, don't lay your fucked-up life down on me," I snapped. "I didn't do anything to you."

"No, but you would have," she snapped back. "Your destiny's the same as hers. If she hadn't taken your place, you'd have been the one to try to hurt me for no reason. The only difference between you and her is no one ever taught you a lesson."

Princess was starting to look decidedly uncomfortable. "Twilight, don't do this now," she said quietly. "I know you're still mad at Sunset, and that's okay, but this version of her hasn't done anything wrong."

"If I'm like you, then she's like her!" Twilight yelled, throwing her off. She fumed at me. "You think you're something special, but you're not," she spat. "You want to know who you really are? You're just like her. She's shallow, she's slutty, she's a bully, she hurts everyone she touches for no reason, she dooms worlds just to make herself feel better, she left my brother crippled or dead and she doesn't even care, and she just keeps hanging around, never apologizing, never making anything better, ruining everyone's lives because she's too stuck-up to understand that everyone hates her!"

My lip curled. So did my fingers. But it was a short, tiny gasp that held me back.

We all looked up. Around twenty feet away was me, Sunset me, standing there with one hand over her mouth. Maybe there was more of me in her than I'd given her credit for, because even I couldn't tell how long she'd been standing there. She was shaking as violently as Twilight had been in the gymnasium, her face as pale as if she'd been stabbed. She waited just a second longer, staring at us and Twilight in particular. And then she ran.

"Sunset!" Princess cried, bolting up. She took one long stride away, hesitated, then turned back and slapped her human self across the face before running after the fake. At her cry her other friends - I'd already forgotten most of their names - emerged from the school and took after her as well. However, the rainbow one - the only one, in my opinion, who stood any chance of catching her - stormed up to my table instead, another one trailing after.

"You could at least apologize," she snapped.

"For what?" I asked casually, lounging to the side.

She stomped. "For trying to murder her!"

I rolled my eyes. "So? I thought she was a changeling. Fuck off, dyke."

That jab was hypocritical - I mean, I'd do her - but she didn't have to know that, and it had the desired effect. Rainbow turned red and snarled a completely incomprehensible response until her apple friend grabbed her arm and dragged her off, leaving me and the human Twilight Sparkle alone.

We sat quietly as the sound of footsteps faded away, her in a sullen teenage pout, me holding a number of things in. I couldn't say I was hurt at all; my hobby was saving lives, so it's not like I gave a fuck about what any of these weirdos thought of me. So while I got around to trying to crowbar the concept of the mirror portal into my worldview, I just sat calmly, contently, and suppressing the occasional bursts of laughter.

This was fucking hilarious.

Even if she'd fucked up in the end, I had to take my hat off to my fake for what she'd accomplished with these girls. There was large-scale pranking, and then there was this. Months-long buildup to an incest date? With someone who wasn't even her species? Now that was dedication. The hospitalization was a nice touch, even if I guessed she hadn't seen that coming. Between the money, the entertainment value, and the ultimate outcome of her work here, it seemed like I had a lot to be thankful to her for. There was just one thing that I didn't understand... and that was the why.

Twilight Sparkle was Celestia's pet and a whiny, overly sensitive little cunt. I got that. I'm sure the Twilight Sparkle from her home dimension was one too. If the human version had turned out like that one, who acted like she'd walked out of some cartoon for little girls, then I'd probably want to smash her face into a locker too. But to spend a whole year plotting that kind of revenge? These two were annoying, but they weren't a threat. More to the point, it wouldn't accomplish anything. Hurting them would be like kicking a puppy. Sure, it makes a load of funny noises, but all it gets you in the long run is a bunch of glares and the next thing you know you're not allowed within twenty yards of that pet store any more. The point is that as happy as I was with the results, Twilight was right about it being petty. And yet, if Princess had been telling the truth, if my fake hadn't intervened then I would have gone down exactly the same road.

This frightened me on a level that I didn't want to admit I had. Was I really that insecure? Is this who I would have turned into if I'd stayed at Canterlot High? First a power-hungry megalomaniac obsessed with popularity and petty revenge, then a tired, trembling coward who needed to feed on the love of others to survive? Both sounded like a nightmare. But was the potential for both of those hidden somewhere inside of me, just waiting for fate or magic to draw them both out?

Nah. I'm Sunset fucking Shimmer. No one tells me who I am but me.

I eyed Twilight carefully. I'd been playing my cards close to my chest this evening; there was one last thing that I'd finally figured out, and right here was my opportunity to lay it out to full effect. "Hey, Twilight?" I said, making her look away. "About your brother."

"What?" she grunted.

"His full name's Shining Armour, isn't it?"

"What?" She looked back up at me, jaw dropping. "How do you know that?"

"Because it's a small world. Tall guy, blue hair, shield crest, looks kind of like you?"

Shock and excitement pinged off of her like sparks. "He's alive?" she yelled, all grievances forgotten. Then she tried again in a more cautious tone. "He's... okay?"

"Sure. I mean, he walks with a cane, but he's fine." I rolled myself forward and leaned across the table welcomingly. "He goes to Manehattan U now, like me. I met him after I moved back to the city. He's majoring in criminal psychology and he's got an internship at the local police academy, which makes him a handy contact for my line of work. It's a desk job, but they're calling him the best young recruit they've had in years. He's not just okay, he's doing fantastic."

It was like a weight the size of me had been lifted off of her. I could see exactly three years of stress fold up and leave her face, her sweet, kissable lips wide open in an involuntary smile. I grinned to match, leaned in close, and made sure that she was staring right into my eyes when I delivered her life's punchline. "And he's now my boyfriend."

Destroyed. What it had taken a year for my fake to accomplish, I had done in just a few sentences. Her face fractured. Her eyes shrank. Her breath became nothing. I leaned closer and whispered in her ear. "And you know what else?" I purred. "Every time he fucks me... he pretends I'm you."

I drew back, smiling. She was perfectly still, but I could feel it in her, that orgasmic eruption of pain and fury, twisting her up, sickening her, a sensual poison in her blood. Oh, sweet Sunset, that is how it is done. "Happy birthday, Twilight," I said.

With her friends gone, there was no one to stop her when she lunged at me.

Sunset Shimmer: Mistress of Fate

It was close to midnight when I finally staggered back into the hotel suite, scratched, bruised, and covered in mud. I carefully laid Mark Antony against the corner and shook out my hair, splattering the walls and carpet with dirt. Across the room, Shining Armour was sitting on the white sofa with his feet up, reading a detective novel. "I see you've met my sister," he said, barely looking up.

"Yeah, and made a complete ass of myself!" I yelled back. I stripped off my jacket and threw it at him. "You could have told me her name, or what she looked like, or something. 'Total perv' is not an adequate description!"

He calmly removed my jacket from his face and put it to the side. "I didn't want you to meet her," he said, sighing. "I told you, I'm done with that part of my life. Someone I loved turned out to be a creep. I'm over it. I don't need you digging up the past again."

Would I tell him? No, not yet. Timing is everything. Besides, with no evidence on me, I didn't want him thinking I'd been taken in by changelings. "Well, forgive me for wanting to know what makes my boyfriend tick," I replied sarcastically, pulling off my tattered shirt as well. This, too, landed squarely on Shining Armour's face. "You didn't have to come with me, you know."

The shirt joined the jacket. "And leave you on your own with Suri for a week?" he said. "You know, you didn't have to come out this way either. You're too nice for your own good." He smirked at me, but paused as he finally got a good look at me. "Aw, don't tell me Twilight did all that to you."

Looking at him now, I was starting to get envious that my fake had found a way to get to him first. A spinal injury and gummed-up knee had slowed him down, but hadn't stopped him from bulking up magnificently in the years after. His mouthwatering muscles were clearly visible through his shirt, and he'd worked his busted legs twice as hard to match. A silver horse-headed cane rested against the arm of the sofa, but I'd exaggerated to Twilight how much he needed it; like my size, it helped to hide his potential, and he could smash heads with it almost as well as I could. His hair had grown out and he'd started wearing leather jackets around the same time I stopped, although he'd turned down my suggestion of getting a tattoo to complete the look. But although these were details I liked to linger on, what caught my attention in that moment was his face, hard and serious with just a glint of kindness in it, like a sense of humour trying to get out. I wondered if this side of him had been more visible before his falling out with Twilight. The next time I saw Sunset, I'd have to ask her if she'd kept any of the pictures of him from when he was younger. For that and other reasons.

After a few moments of hungry contemplation, I finally turned my attention away from his body and back to mine. I hadn't taken too good a look at myself yet, but I was pretty sure that I wasn't bleeding. "Oh, no," I said, answering his question. "She went down easily. Some of her friends can pack one heck of a punch, though." I grimaced at the memory. It hadn't actually been much of a fight, since half of us had just been trying to keep the other half from clawing my face off, but after a few minutes things sort of escalated. And then rapidly de-escalated. Granted, I don't think that anyone had actually meant to knock me down that embankment, but the kicks to the shin had definitely been intentional after I'd dragged three of them down after me. And then there were the briars. You didn't get briars like that back in the city.

He rolled his eyes. "How many?"

"Six."

"Six? What did you do, run over her dog?" His voice became reproachful. "Please tell me you didn't do that."

In place of an answer, my ripped skirt landed on his face. "Thanks for caring about me, asshole," I spat at him.

He removed my skirt. "It's your own fault for picking fights," he said, very deliberately not looking at me in my underwear. "Bitch," he added as an afterthought.

I knew he was trying to rile me up, but I wasn't in the mood. I was tired, I was sore, I was filthy, my favorite skirt was ruined, my whole view of life and the universe had been fundamentally altered, and somehow, through means I still didn't fully understand, I was down twenty dollars on the Swear Jar. And, wouldn't you know it, I'd somehow found the only boyfriend in Manehattan who would throw a fit if I got high in the hotel room. Maybe that was for the best. After this evening, it would take something way stiffer than a drink to save this night. "I'm going for a shower," I announced, marching off. "And stop worrying. I didn't do anything. Your sister's just as much of a pussy as you are."

I heard the pages of his book crinkle beneath his fingers. "I would have thought you two would get on great," he muttered. "After all, you're as much of a whore as she is."

I paused in the bathroom doorway, hiding a smirk. "Yeah, and you'd know, wouldn't you?"

His book crashed into the wall next to my head; I was only half-sure that he'd missed on purpose. "Shut up, you sadist!" he yelled at me.

I turned and shouted back. "Make me, pervert!"

"Twisted bitch!"

"Pansy asshole!"

We stayed there for a second, glaring daggers at each other. I cocked my head to the side, gesturing to the shower. "Coming?" I said. Then I disappeared through the door.

The bathroom wasn't your average cramped hotel affair; it was spacious and well-lit, with a shower and a bath. My boots left tracks on the fluffy white mats as I kicked them off. Bra, thong and socks hit the floor. I turned on the water and stepped in without waiting for it to warm up, shivering in the frigid cold stream. I wanted to be as awake as possible for the next hour.

The shower was a modern, fancy one, with a broad head that sprayed water directly down like a waterfall. As the water started to warm, I lowered myself and started to scrub myself from the feet up, getting the less sexy parts of me out of the way first. I finally did start bleeding when I pulled some thorns out of my legs, but the water washed it away. I barely felt it. Even though I hadn't played a sport since the ninth grade, my body was built like an athlete's: tall, toned, and tough as nails. My clothes had been specifically chosen to make me look like the average frail college girl, but my arms and legs were like iron bars.

I felt a smug satisfaction as I looked myself over. Given my fake's apparent lifestyle, I seriously doubted Sunset's body could hold a candle to mine. I was a fiery goddess, battle-hardened to perfection and comparable to a summer's day (that is, hot as fuck), while she probably was the weak little waif that we both looked like. The further I pushed myself from her, the happier I was at her existence. I'd missed having family I could push around. It was almost like Dawn was alive again.

By the time I'd scrubbed the day's exertions from my pits, I was starting to wonder if Shining Armour was coming after all. I was considering slowing down and actually enjoying myself when the door creaked open. I slowly twirled in place, facing the wall. Shining moved with all the grace and subtlety he was capable of, which is more than you'd think, but not enough to fool me. His slow gait, subtly uneven without his cane, stopped outside the door. His shirt hit the floor. I ignored him and lathered up my front, pretending to wash, and resisted the temptation to watch him undress through the frosted glass. I didn't even look when the shower door opened and he stepped inside with me.

Without a word, my Shining came up behind me and put his hands on my shoulders. A year ago I would have tingled at his touch, pulled him closer, rubbed my cheek against his fingers, even moaned at him, impatient for him to touch me more. Now, I reigned myself in and simply relaxed my shoulders, letting him do the work. He started to massage me, clumsily but effectively, then reached up and rubbed one finger in a small circle over the back of my neck. In response, I rolled my left shoulder and leaned back against his chest. If I failed to do this, it meant I was a changeling. We had lots of little codes like this. It hadn't been a conscious decision that most of them worked best when our clothes were off, but neither of us were complaining.

His powerful arms started to close around me, drawing us closer together under the water. "Wash my back," I ordered, brushing him off. He took my soapy washcloth and obliged without question. It's a simple thing, but if you've never had anyone do this for you, you don't know what you're missing. His hand moved up and down, scrubbing away the dirt of the day, while the other found a steady grip on my hip. Then he drew closer again as he moved over my sides, my arms, and circling around my front, lingering over my boobs just a little longer than was necessary. I made a mental note to get back at him for that.

A spurt of coolness fell across my head as Shining Armour started shampooing my hair. I hadn't even asked him to do that. The water around our ankles browned, then cleared, and my head felt worlds lighter. His tough fingers covered my head in bubbles. Taking advantage of his distraction, I lifted a hand and teased one finger around a nipple, edging myself closer.

When my hair was done to his satisfaction, Shining reached down and spun me around, pressing me against his chest. I squirmed against him as I feigned catching my balance, loving the feel of my boobs being squished against his rock-hard muscles, then blinked up at him innocently. His face inches from mine, he brushed a few clinging strands of hair away from my cheek, then reached for the washcloth again.

Up close, it was clear that Shining hadn't given a thought to washing himself. This was fine; I liked the way he smelled. With a look of concentration, he pressed the washcloth against my cheek. He cleaned me like I was a toy that had gotten dirty, carefully and slowly, like he was afraid he was going to break me. I kept my eyes open and let him cradle me, staring up at him like a doll. In his grip, I felt like one.

Not that it lasted. As soon as he was done, I let a faint smirk appear on my face. I put one hand on his chest and moved it down. He tried not to give anything away, but I felt his heart rate rising as I slid down his body, adoring the magazine-worthy muscles that I passed over on my way to my knees. Before I was even halfway there, I felt him stiffening against my stomach. I let his cock trail between my boobs before coming head-to-head with it: gloriously huge, flawlessly cut, trimmed just to my specifications. I found a comfortable position and narrowed my eyes up at him, wordlessly berating him for daring to let himself become aroused in my presence. Not that that meant anything. There was no telling what punishment I might have had to inflict if that display hadn't turned him on.

Reaching out, I wrapped my thumb and forefinger around the middle of his length. Even such a small thing made him breathe in sharply. I felt blood rushing between my fingers. Grinning, I tightened the circle and slid my hand up and down him, slick with steaming water, getting rougher as he grew. While this one part of him grew harder, the rest of him turned to jelly; he backed up against the shower wall, hands flat against the glass, eyes straining closed as I jacked him off. It made me laugh inside. All this strength, all this bravery, all this hatred, yet all it took was the slightest, gentlest touch-

I leaned forward and lightly kissed his cock, just barely grazing the tip with my lips-

"Oh, Shimmer," he moaned, leaning his head back-

-and I had him eating out of my hand. Or, if I was in the mood, out of somewhere else.

Now fully grinning, I leaned in again and took the head of his cock fully into my mouth. He moaned again, squirming against the wall. In an instant he went from fully erect to diamond-hard. He tasted like water and sweat and meat and a few things unique to him, which only grew stronger as I started to suck. My tongue moved in circles over him, caressing every bump, every vein, tasting every part of him as I slid myself further onto him. My hands found their way to his hips, and my eyes pointed upwards. The pained look on his face was unbelievably arousing; knowing that this beast of a man was so completely, painfully in love with what I was doing lit me up inside. It was hard to smirk with a mouth so abundantly full, but I did my best.

Increasingly aroused, I started moving my head back and forth, sucking all the while. His laboured breathing became louder. I moved one hand to the base of his cock and started to jack him off there, while my tongue stuck out from between my lips, tasting him just that little bit further. Sometimes I grazed his skin with my teeth, just in case he needed reminding who was in charge. He didn't. I could feel his pulse pounding inside my mouth, and the taste of milky precum hit the back of my throat. I withdrew and licked all the way up his shaft in one long stroke, fluttering inside at how long it took to get from one end to the other. He was perfect. In a frenzy that wasn't completely controlled, I took him back into my mouth and sucked on him harder, driving him deeper into my throat, squeezing and kneading him, needing more of his hotness inside me. His massive, sexy cock was mine, and I had to have it.

My efforts went appropriately rewarded. Shining's hips started to move, slowly fucking my face as I sucked him off, and his hands balled up into fists. I could feel something building in him, and I could hear his breaths getting deeper and deeper. He was close, so close, and he opened his mouth as if to say something-

I pinched down, hard, at the base of his cock, and drew my mouth off of him in one swift motion. Without a word, I stood up, brushed back my hair, and didn't even look at his dumbfounded face before walking out. I snatched two towels off the counter, one for my body, one for my hair, and slammed the door behind me.

He hated when I did this. I was really going to get it now.

When Shining emerged from the bathroom a few minutes later, I was reclined seductively on the bed, both towels wrapped around me. Judging by the look of him, Shining had used the opportunity to do some actual cleaning up himself, though his raging erection hadn't subsided in the least. He hadn't bothered with a towel; he just stood there, naked, wet and dripping, glaring at me. I ran a hand over my luscious hips. "What's wrong, sweetie?" I chimed, innocent as could be. "Something bothering you?"

I barely even saw him fly across the room at me. Despite his leg, he could move fast when he wanted to. His weight pinned me on my back, his strong hands reaching. I fought back playfully, and then fought back hard, but he was stronger than me. I lashed out and he caught my wrists, one after the other, leaving me trapped and squirming underneath him. "Aw, what's the matter?" I cooed, even as my face spat venom. "Is the little boy sad because I stopped before he was finished?"

"I'm fucking older than you!" he shouted back. He tried to rip my towel away, but had to hold on tighter as I bucked and kicked beneath him. I felt his weight pushing him into me and burned inside. Even on the cool sheets, it felt hotter than it had been in the shower. He knew, and I knew, that there was nothing but this sheet of fabric separating his aching cock from my dripping cunt.

"Does the big boy want to fuck me?" I mocked, thrusting my chest out. "Is that it? Does the big boy want to put his tiny little cock in me?"

"Fuck you!" He painfully ripped the towel from my head. My blazing hair spread out across the sheets.

"That's right, that's what I said, dumbass," I said. "What, are you slow today? Or are you just retarded like your little sister?"

Quick as lightning, his hand wrapped around my throat. "Don't talk about my sister!" he shouted, lifting up my head and chokeslamming me back onto the bed. While I was struggling to breathe, he lifted himself up slightly, threw my other towel off of me, forced my leg to the side, and plunged his thick cock straight into me. In that moment, my mind went white.

And to think, when I first met him, he used to be such a nice boy.

It was a few frenzied thrusts before his hand loosened enough that I could speak, or even breathe. I didn't waste the opportunity. "Oh, fucking... fuck," I moaned, clinging to his shoulders. Not exactly eloquent, but it got the message across. He was fucking huge, filling me and stretching me, massaging the aching I'd had for him since the moment we'd started this stupid holiday. I spread my legs and bucked my hips beneath him, not that it made a difference under his weight. He wasn't even looking at me, just grunting in my ear, devoting all his focus to slamming into me as hard and as fast as he could. The only thing that could make this any more perfect would be seeing corny little Twilight Sparkle's face, watching her beloved brother fuck me like an animal. Thinking about her expression at the school almost got me off right then. Sure, Shining would never go for it, but she was just so fucking cute...

Like all things too good to be true, this didn't last. Shining had been so close in the bathroom that he barely lasted a minute now, blowing his load inside of me with a loud groan and collapsing heavily on top of me. I drummed my fingers on his back while I caught my breath. "Is that all you've got, asshole?" I panted.

"Shut up," he groaned. Already some life was returning to his voice; lucky for me, Shining Armour never was the type to simply roll over and go to sleep. He lifted himself up, his fury momentarily dimmed but not subsided. He'd taken to it so well. The first time I saw him he'd been so mopey, so polite, so reluctant to touch others. I'd fucked that out of him.

I used to date bad boys. Boy, was that ever a fucking mistake. All I'd been looking for was someone who could keep up with me, both physically and mentally, but none of those pricks had it in them. Their priorities were all wrong, always thinking about themselves, never me. That, and once you stripped away the top layer, anyone who went out of their way to show off how cool they were always turned out to be an insecure creep with mommy issues who wasn't nearly as good in bed as they thought they were. Shining Armour never had that problem - especially that last part.

The man of my wet dreams slid off the bed and stood up, his cock still dripping cum. Before I could get up after him he grabbed me and flipped me onto my front, putting a hand over my ass to hold me down. I heard him fumbling at something under the bed, the "special" bag that we always brought with us on these occasions. I didn't fight, just slithered my rump so he could cup it better beneath his palm. My pussy twitched impatiently. This was how it always was; during round one, like all boys, all he wanted was to dump his load quickly and get it over with. Round two was where the real fun happened.

When he moved over me again I flexed quickly, like I was trying to get away. In a well-practiced, fluid motion, he snapped a set of handcuffs around my left wrist and attached me to the fancy headboard. Not lame fuzzy handcuffs, either, but real ones, ones that hurt when you pulled on them. He twisted my other arm behind my back and forced my head down, pressing me into the sheets. "Asshole," I grunted at him.

"Say please first," he mocked. He twisted my arm further and ran two fingers across my enflamed cunt, still slick and twitching from our last round of fucking. Involuntarily, my hips twitched upwards. "Yeah, you like that, don't you?" he said, pressing deep into me and spreading me with his hand. My ass trembled as his fingers drove it higher into the air, presenting myself.

"Fuck y-you," I crackled out, which was the closest thing to a fuck yes! that he was going to get. My shaking legs could barely hold me up. I thrashed under his grip, shaking the bars of the headboard, but couldn't get loose to throw myself backwards onto him. In response, his meaty hand smacked down onto my ass, leaving a stinging mark and almost knocking me to the side. I don't know if he saw, but this sent a clear trickle down my leg. "Ah," I whimpered, biting at the sheets.

"And you call me a pervert," Shining laughed. He positioned his stiffened cock right under my pussy, rubbing me, mocking me. "Say you want it," he whispered, leaning over me. "Tell me what you want me to do."

I didn't break that easily. "F-fuck," I croaked out, taking all my willpower not to hump madly at his cock right then and there.

"Fuck you?" he offered, teasing. "You want me to fuck you?"

"Fuck... me..." I turned it around at the last second. "Stop pussying out and just fuck me, you retard!"

He smacked the back of my head, driving me into the sheets again, and twisted my wrist so hard that it brought tears to my eyes. But I got what I wanted. His cock slipped back inside me and started pounding me, like a good toy should.

Face-down, I couldn't breathe. I lost all sense of time and space. I bucked my hips like a horny slut, letting wetness drip down my legs. Shining fucked me hard, holding on to me tight, driving me deeper. He let out an animalistic snarl. I smiled, hidden from him. Let him think he'd won. Let him think he was dominating me. I knew the truth. He belonged to me.

Before he'd met me, Shining Armour was a wet towel. He was a pushover, riding on three broken hearts at once and letting his fucked leg hold him back. But I'd turned him around. I'd taught him to hold on to his hate. I'd taught him vengeance was the best motivator. I'd given him fury, fire, a reason to keep on living, and even though no one in his family was dead, he'd taken to the concept even better than I had. With little effort he'd bulked up into a bone-crushing fighter, but his physical perfection was only half the reason he got me so hot now. What really turned me on was the knowledge that all this strength, and all this animal passion, was directed purely at me. This wasn't some bad boy with a heart of gold; I'd taken the sweetest, purest, most innocent guy in all the world and transformed him into my own personal fuck beast.

Except now, I knew that it went deeper than that. Before I ever knew he existed, Sunset had got there first. If Twilight was right, then without her Shining would probably be married to Cadence or whoever, living some nauseating life of sugar and magic and a hundred other boring things. But she'd broken his heart three times in one fell swoop, ripping his life out from under him and setting the stage for me to fill the void - not to mention getting the world's best masturbation fodder out of it in the process. The thought made me chuckle as I pictured Shining slamming into her, just as he was slamming into me. Me and Sunset, tag-teaming him across time and dimensions, rewriting history just so I could get the fuck I wanted from the world's most perfect dick. I really was amazing.

Shining Armour got tired of holding me. He threw my arm away and leaned over me again. There was a click; my other wrist was cuffed to the bed. I knew he was only supposed to have one of those; was he breaking regulations just for me? Oh, now that was naughty. I tried to swing my head at him, but had to hold on tight or risk being crushed against the headboard by the force of his thrusting. All I could do was shake my ass, earning another smack when this threw his angle off. I gasped in ecstasy, disguising it as fury. The best things in life really are worth waiting for.

Again, my thoughts turned to his sister. I was more than a little disappointed in my fake that she hadn't spent her year of deception trying to fuck her as well; then again, if she had, I don't know how I would have handled the envy. My tongue slipped out as I thought about eating out her cunt while her brother fucked me, feeling her squirming in pleasure and agony beneath me. An impossible dream? Maybe. But I'd always liked to dream big. And while I couldn't actually prove that while her brother was on top of me he was secretly hate-fucking her, I relished any possible opportunity to find out for sure.

"Fuck me!" I screamed, rattling the bed with my arms, pretending to give in to the pleasure. "Fucking ride me, Shining! Ride me like a fucking unicorn!"

Both his fists smashed into the middle of my back. I dropped hard, the breath knocked out of me. "Shut the fuck up!" he yelled, gripping me hard enough to leave marks. "Shut the fuck up, you whore!" But I felt the truth. His cock got even harder inside me, and the strength behind each thrust increased. I grinned wickedly. Was he really just turned on by fury? Or after a year of jerking it to her pictures, was my sweet little Shining Armour actually hot for his sister?

As I contemplated, his thrusts slowed. "I almost forgot," he growled. "You asked for it in your asshole, didn't you?"

He pulled out. "What the fuck-" I started, straining to look back, but got my answer when something else ran between my pussy lips, getting slick with my juices. I hadn't even noticed he'd got that out of the bag. A glob of spit landed on my backside. With no other lubrication but saliva and cunt juice, a thin string of anal beads started to work their way up my asshole. I squirmed, barking furiously, but not outright objecting. I was definitely glad that I'd remembered to wash thoroughly around there while I was showering.

The string was thin enough that it went in easily, but more than thick enough that I felt it. The pressure was like a second, smaller, heavily ridged cock rammed somewhere it shouldn't be. The feeling of being filled up didn't quite make up for the discomfort, but I didn't really feel the change until Shining stuck his real cock back in my cunt where it belonged. "Oh, yeah," I moaned, now really giving in to it. By a trick of the muscles, having something up my ass made everything else feel more intense as I gripped and clenched around it. I could feel the beads pressing against his cock through my inner wall, squeezing me even tighter, and I know he felt it even more. My tightness drove him on as we both made louder and louder noises of pleasure, losing ourselves to his perfection. All he had to do was keep going like this...

And then he ruined it. He fucking ruined it. Right as I was throwing myself against him, screaming for his cock, he leaned over me, grabbed my boob, gently kissed my cheek, and breathed into my ear. "I love you, Shimmer," he whispered.

I screamed in outrage, ramming myself backwards. I thrashed and shook like a wild animal, so hard that he had to hold on to me. All I'd wanted from him was to be an absolute beast in the sack, but no, apparently that was too difficult a concept for him. No matter how much I teased him, or how much I belittled him, or how much I told him right to his face that I wanted him to fuck me until I was bleeding, there was always some secret, hidden part of him that I couldn't get to, some inner purity that I couldn't scratch. He was literally fucking incorruptible. Just my luck that out of all the guys who could have fit the bill, of all the monsters and animals that I could have created and tamed, the one who I ended up falling in love with was the only person in all the world who I knew for certain would never hurt me.

...You didn't hear me use that word.

I swear, if you tell anyone I said that, I will break your kneecaps.

His pace didn't change; Shining was still riding me hard and fast, pumping my pussy for all it was worth, but it was different, and I knew it was different. And, to my eternal embarrassment, it was still fucking hot. We shook the bed as we slammed against each other, banging against the wall. He slapped my ass again, but gently this time, to show that he didn't really mean it, and jiggled it for good measure. Sure, what he called a "light" slap was still enough to leave most girls sobbing, but still.

And yet there was something else there, something soft; like his words had done what a thousand fucks couldn't do and cracked a hole in the stone around my heart, letting something else bleed through. Something warm, something bright, something that I could actually feel without having to hide it behind a hundred layers of rough, angry armour. For the first time in what felt like forever, I relaxed my shoulders. I let his pleasure fill me, building me up to something more than just an animal - my cries became more high-pitched - and I was so close, I was so fucking close...

There was a knock at the door.

Shining slowed, reluctantly. He kept going for a few thrusts, unwilling to pull out of me right away, but when the knocks became more insistent he withdrew. I held in a scream of frustration as he exited me. "I'll see who it is," he said, rubbing my hair. "It might be important."

I let out a long groan, eyeballing his equally disappointed erection. "What could be more important than me?" I asked, pleading.

A stupid grin came to his face. "Well, it might be that pizza I ordered."

If I wasn't chained down, I would have smacked him. "You ordered pizza?"

"Of course. Weren't you complaining all the way here that you were hungry for wings?"

Fuck, he was right. And with Suri being vegetarian, he knew that I'd rather have gone without while we were out than put up with her passive-aggressive whining. Fuck him for being so thoughtful. "Fine," I groaned. I shuffled, not abandoning my position even as he pulled my beads out with a pop. "How did I end up with such a goofball?" I muttered, but with a faint smile.

"I don't know. How did I end up with such a bitch?" He grinned and smacked my ass again, playfully, then leaned down and kissed my lips.

"Mm." I kissed him back, and fuck you, I meant it.

All the while, the idiot at the door was still knocking. Shining wrapped a towel around himself and threw one over me, but as soon as his back was turned I bucked it off and stayed where I was, luscious ass in the air, so that the moron at the door would know exactly what he was depriving my Shining of by wasting his time.

I couldn't see anything from my position, but I recognized the voice as the door opened. Some loser from the front desk. No one important. "Mister, um..." He immediately stammered to a halt. Yeah, that's right, asshole, enjoy the view. This was what my Shining Armour got to enjoy. Have fun jacking yourself to sleep tonight, jackass. "Mister Shining Armour?" he finally forced out.

"Yeah?" Shining said. I heard him lean powerfully against the doorframe. He sounded annoyed, either that the guy in the hall was staring at my ass, or keeping him from my ass, or maybe he was just upset that it wasn't his pizza.

"And... and there's a miss... Sunset Shimmer staying here as well? Your... girlfriend?"

"Yeah. What's she done?"

No cause for alarm. I wasn't totally happy about my Shining jumping to conclusions, which weren't entirely unfounded, but unless the police themselves were hammering down my door I knew they didn't have anything on me. I was a ghost in the fucking night.

The poor asshole was wringing his hands. "Well... she's..." He coughed. "Look, I'm sorry we took so long to reach you. For some reason there were a lot of conflicting reports, and some confusion about who we were supposed to contact, and some kind of mix-up about something out of a movie, and-"

"Just spit it out, already. What. Did she. Do?"

He gulped, loudly. "She's... she's in the hospital. She poisoned herself."

Third Fragment Complete

That's the story of how I found myself driving to an unfamiliar hospital, at midnight, wearing nothing but a towel.

I navigated by road signs and instinct, letting my half-remembered inner map of the town carry me. I'd kicked Shining out in the parking lot; someday he'd learn that when I said I'd take care of something, I meant by myself.

Okay, he wouldn't. But I could dream.

My lips curled into a grin as I got closer and closer. No doubt the two Twilights would be waiting for me when I arrived, and likely some other surprises as well. They didn't matter. I could deal with them in my own time. All that mattered was my fake, and the juicy little secret that she held.

I was going to tell Shining Armour the truth. Really, I was.

Just not until I'd had my fun.