"We're sorry, Twilight, but you can't keep going to school here. Not with a mind like that."
"W-What are you saying?" Twilight Sparkle asked nervously, the knot in her stomach tightening as every second she sat in the dean's office ticked by, "Am I not smart enough?"
"Oh, it's not that," Cherry Blossom, the dean of students at Rainbow Falls Academy, assured Twilight, "In fact, you're very smart. Probably one of the smartest students we've ever had here."
"So what's the problem?" Twilight demanded.
"If you haven't noticed," Cherry said quietly, leaning in closer to Twilight, "And I'm going to be honest here, we're not exactly an academy for the gifted. Miss Firefly is more focused on having athletes instead of students here. You've gotten straight A's in every class, a feat that hasn't been achieved since Sunset Shimmer... anyway, it's becoming very obvious to me that you aren't being properly educated at Rainbow Falls Academy.
"Which is why I've referred you to another school," Miss Blossom finished, sitting back in her chair and folding her hands, "Don't worry, it isn't very far away. In fact, it's actually very close."
"But... another school?" Twilight repeated, stunned, "I couldn't just leave Rainbow Falls. My big brother..."
"Shining Armor is an athlete, Twilight," Miss Blossom said, "He's more intelligent then most, but he is nowhere near your level. Rainbow Falls has offered you everything it can. Now it's time for you to advance in your studies elsewhere."
"So what, you're... you're basically kicking me out?"
"Of course not!" Miss Blossom answered.
"Then why should I have to leave the academy?" Twilight pressed, her face turning pink as she got more and more worked up.
"Take a look at this," Miss Blossom said, picking up a folder from a stack on her desk and pushing it across toward Twilight. Twilight gently took the folder, and was struck with curiosity when she saw the hastily-scrawled words written in black marker on the cover.
CANTERLOT HIGH
Twilight's brief encounter with the pink girl in the city was forgotten by now, but the name Canterlot High was still fresh in her mind.
"Isn't Canterlot High just an ordinary High School?" Twilight asked, opening the folder to find a few written documents and photos, all held together with a single paperclip.
"What do you think the Academy is?" Miss Blossom replied sarcastically before she pointed at the first document in the folder. A few lines of text had been highlighted with a pink highlighter, "Look, I found a few courses offered at Canterlot High that I think you'll be interested in."
"'Advanced Calculus'," Twilight read the highlighted section aloud, "'AP History of Ancient Civilizations. Honors Chemistry.'"
"Canterlot High is just an ordinary High School," Miss Blossom agreed, "But they have classes that surpass our own. Take a look through that folder and come see me tomorrow. I think you'll be challenged in classes that are more suited to your level. I think you'll be happier there."
"Okay...?" Twilight hesitated, and then stood up, "Thank you, Miss Blossom."
"Twilight!" Miss Blossom called after her, just as Twilight opened the door and took a step out. Puzzled, Twilight turned back around, "My cousin Cheerilee works at Canterlot High. I recommended you to her, and she's thrilled at the idea of having a student like you. Please, at least consider attending Canterlot High."
"I will," Twilight promised, closing the door to Miss Blossom's office and clenching the folder tightly in her hand as she left.
~~~~~~
Home at last, Twilight thought to herself as she strolled into her empty house. Spike was waiting at the door when she walked in, and she absently scratched him behind the ears as she entered. Her parents weren't home yet, and Shining Armor was at football practice. After practice, he was in charge of coaching the younger kids from lower grades in soccer. Twilight's parents never came home until she and her brother were home, so she had a few hours of alone time to study and read.
Walking straight to her room, Twilight dumped her backpack on the floor and yanked her textbooks out. She climbed onto her bed where she sat comfortably with her homework in one hand and a pencil in another. Spike hopped onto her bed where he curled up on her pillow and fell asleep. Twilight giggled at her dog, and then began doing her homework. She was in no rush; after all, she had around three hours.
Twilight was finished with her homework in half an hour.
Now bored, she lie on her bed and stared at her bookshelf. Her textbooks lie discarded on the floor. As Twilight's eyes slowly moved down the wall of books, she tried to find one she hadn't read. She groaned and rolled over when she reached the bottom; she had read every book on every shelf.
Twilight glanced over the side of her bed, only to notice the folder that Miss Blossom had given her earlier that day sitting among the textbooks on the floor. The folder was underneath Twilight's hardcover copy of The Iliad. Only a bit of the black marker writing was visible, so the folder read CANTERL from what Twilight could see.
Sighing, Twilight leaned over the side of her bed and pulled the folder out from under the book. She sat up on her bed and opened the folder, neatly spreading out all the documents and photos in front of her as though they were cards.
She looked at the documents first, quickly skimming through the list of courses available at Canterlot High that Miss Blossom had shown her. She had to admit that some of the courses offered at the public school sounded intriguing, a few of them sounding challenging enough to make Twilight begin to consider switching schools.
The next document was actually a few pages from the Canterlot High yearbook. A quick glance at the pages revealed that they were clubs offered at Canterlot High, each one accompanied by a picture. On the first page was the Drama Club, along with a picture of a group of students standing on a stage. One of them was holding what Twilight hoped was a fake skull. Under that was the Sewing Club, and that one had a picture of four smiling girls holding a remarkably large quilt.
Twilight didn't particularly care for clubs, and she stifled a yawn as she flipped the page. The Gardening Club had a picture of students huddled around a watermelon. To Twilight, the watermelon didn't look like anything too impressive, but they were obviously proud of it. The Book Club, which had a picture of about ten or eleven kids holding books, got Twilight's attention, only for her to groan in frustration when she noticed the cover of their books: they were reading romance novels.
Twilight ignored the next two pages when she read that the first club listed on the third page was the Rock Club (which had a picture of a gray, stoic-faced girl holding a small rock in her hand with a small nametag on it reading "BOULDER"), and flipped straight to the last page, where Twilight actually looked at the club because someone had circled the name of it in black marker.
The Glee Club.
This was the only club on the page. Twilight looked at the picture accompanying it, which was a picture of a group of laughing girls sitting at a table. They were all obviously friends. She noticed a rainbow-haired girl patting a blushing girl (who was holding a bunny for some reason) on the back while a purple-haired girl raised a hand to her mouth to stifle a grin, and wondered if they had just told an embarrassing joke. Twilight's eyes widened when she noticed a pink, puffy-haired girl sitting next to a girl in a cowgirl hat, on the other side of the table from the rainbow-haired one. Twilight recognized the pink girl as the one she had encountered during one of Spike's walks in the city, the girl who had somehow known her name and mentioned Canterlot High.
"Who are these people...?" Twilight murmured to herself, feeling that she was missing something as she put the list of clubs down.
She turned her attention to the final document, only to see that it was a student registration form. A sticky note slapped on the front of the form read "IF YOU DECIDE TO GO. c: -MISS BLOSSOM".
Twilight turned away from the registration form and picked up the photos. They were also bound with a single paper clip, which Twilight slid off and tossed onto her bed. Behind her, Spike lifted a leg and scratched behind his head and then fell back asleep as Twilight held the stack of pictures in her hands. She could feel about five or six photos in the stack, and held the first one up into the light.
The first picture had been taken outside, and it was just the front of Canterlot High. Twilight moved the picture to the back of the stack and found that the next one was a hallway in Canterlot High. There was a group of students standing by a trophy case filled with shiny golden trophies. One of the students stood out to Twilight because she was wearing a purple wizard hat covered in small stars. In her hand, the girl held peanut butter crackers. Twilight moved the photo to the back of the stack and examined the next one, which was a table in the Canterlot High cafeteria. An excited blonde girl with two strange eyes waved at the camera as she ate the muffin she held in her hand. Next to her, there was a girl with wild blue hair wearing a pair of purple shades. She didn't seem to be aware there was a camera present. Next to her, a girl in a pink bowtie (who Twilight recognized as a cellist in the Canterlot High School Band) was poking her arm and trying to get her attention, but the girl with the purple shades didn't notice because she was listening to music with a large pair of headphones.
Twilight flipped through the next two photos, which were pictures of a school dance and a library, and stopped on the last picture.
At first, this picture looked like any of the others. It was taken outside Canterlot High, in front of a statue of a horse. The same girls from the Glee Club picture were present, but there was an additional girl standing off to the side of the picture, her hand raised in a shy wave.
Twilight glanced at her, uninterested, and then looked away, only to quickly look back at the picture. Twilight recognized the girl, and her heart began to beat faster as her eyes widened in shock. There was no way... it couldn't have been... but there she was, just as Twilight had remembered her.
Sunset Shimmer?! Twilight thought, gently running her fingers over the figure in the glossy photograph, Is that you?!
~~~~~~
For the longest time, Twilight could only sit there. The photos had fallen from her hand and lie on her bed in a mess, but she didn't notice. Her eyes slowly became glassy and distant as she thought back to her early days at Rainbow Falls Academy, when she had been an introverted, shy girl who only focused on her studies. Twilight hadn't had any friends at the Academy.
Until one day, when she made her first friend, a girl by the name of Sunset Shimmer.
Twilight gathered all of the documents and photos into the folder, not bothering with the paperclips, and pushed the folder off her bed before lying down, resting her head on Spike's sleeping form as she flashed back to her first year at Rainbow Falls Academy.
Twilight was halfway through reading Living with Harmony, a book focused on life in a society that held six particular elements that anyone could use in their daily life in high regard. She wasn't sure what to think of the book, and was idly thumbing her way through it when a voice rang out above her.
"Is that Living with Harmony? I read that one last year!"
Twilight gasped in surprise at being pulled out of the illusion of words that the books entranced her in, and looked up, only to find herself nose-to-nose with a girl with yellow-and-red streaked hair who was sitting on Twilight's desk. Twilight instinctively backed away, creating a comfortable distance from the other girl. The girl didn't notice, instead looking down and reading a selection from the book.
"I can see where Mr. Star Swirl is coming from," the girl said, poking a page of the book, "He definitely has a point, but I find his theories on friendship between others incredibly underdeveloped, and his thesis on the five elements and the mysterious sixth element overstated with a lack of evidence or explanation. He's so busy talking about his theories and speculations about the sixth element that he doesn't go into detail with the other five!"
"Well, I think that his ideas for the perfect society held up on the six pillars of harmony are logical and very plausable," Twilight replied without thinking, "And the sixth element is the most cryptic and rare of all of them, which is why he spends more time discussing it. What I really like about him is that Mr. Star Swirl makes his readers think, for example I think that when he refers to the 'harbingers' of the era of harmony, he's referring to the actual physical embodiments of the elements of harmony!"
The other girl only stared at Twilight for an uncomfortably long period of time, and then her face broke into a smile.
"I never expected to hear something so articulate come out of the mouth of someone at this school!" the girl stuck her hand toward Twilight, "My name is Sunset Shimmer."
"I'm Twilight Sparkle," Twilight introduced herself with a sheepish grin, reaching out and shaking Sunset's hand, "I'm new this year."
"This is my second year here," Sunset revealed, "Trust me, it doesn't get any better. Nobody else here would even consider reading a book like Living with Harmony!"
"So you don't like it here?" Twilight inquired.
"Oh, it's fine," Sunset waved a hand in dismissal, "But if you don't like sports, it can get pretty boring."
"That bad, huh?"
"Maybe you'll turn out to be fun and make this place interesting," Sunset said lazily.
From that moment on, Twilight and Sunset got along remarkably well. Twilight was excited that she had found somebody else at Rainbow Falls Academy who shared her enthusiasm for books and knowledge while Sunset was thrilled to find someone who she could call her academic rival. Sunset could somehow always guess what her friend was thinking about while Twilight could somehow always sense how her friend was feeling.
Maybe that made it even worse for Twilight when Sunset Shimmer was caught stealing money from the school fundraiser.
Twilight was snapped out of her flashback to reality when the front door opened and slammed shut. She quickly hopped off her bed and hurried into the living room where Shining Armor was taking off his shoes and throwing his Rainbow Falls Academy jacket onto the floor.
"What are you doing home?" Twilight asked in surprise as she bent over and retrieved her older brother's jacket from where it lie on the floor, "You're supposed to be at practice."
"It's raining," Shining gave his sister a strange look as he walked into the kitchen, "You didn't notice?"
Twilight glanced out the window to see that the city outside was currently undergoing a heavy rainfall. She blushed, embarrassed that she hadn't noticed, and followed Shining into the kitchen where he was pulling a few cookies from their mother's cookie jar.
"So," Shining began, pouring a glass of milk, "How was your day?"
"Fine," Twilight quickly said, moving past him and rushing toward her room.
"Wait, don't you want to talk about it?" Shining called after her.
"Not really! Everything's fine!" Twilight answered, disappearing into her bedroom and closing the door behind her.
"Um... alright..." A confused Shining Armor said as he took a bite of a cookie.
Back in her private sanctuary with Spike, Twilight picked up the photo again and peered at the girl. It really did look like Sunset Shimmer, but Twilight couldn't help but feel like it wasn't her. Her friend had been greedy, and was caught stealing money from the school fundraiser. Miss Firefly, principal of the Academy, had put a large donation box in the cafeteria and said that if they reached a certain amount of money in two weeks, then the Academy would throw a celebratory schoolwide event. Twilight forgot the specifics of the event, but she remembered the horror she felt when she, a large group of students, and two teachers walked into the cafeteria to find Sunset Shimmer with her hand in the donation box, a bunch of crumpled dollar bills clenched in her fist when she turned and saw that she had been caught.
Sunset had fled from the cafeteria and ran through the town, actually being chased to Canterlot High where her pursuers (the teachers and a few students) lost sight of her somewhere near the horse statue in front of the school. Twilight had been alone at the Academy ever since.
To see Sunset with that group of girls in front of the horse statue had caught Twilight off-guard, but it also touched her suspicions. Something didn't feel right.
~~~~~~
Twilight's fingers flew over the keyboard as she squinted through her glasses at the computer monitor. She didn't normally wear her glasses; only for reading and studying.
A quick Internet search of Canterlot High brought up a few pages of articles, the most recent one being about a "Battle of the Bands" happening that same night. Twilight scrolled through a few links to information about basketball, football and soccer games before she found something interesting. Underneath an article about someone named Rainbow Dash being named Canterlot High's MVP for the soccer team was something about "MYSTERIOUS LIGHTS SEEN IN THE SKY OVER CANTERLOT HIGH".
Twilight clicked on the link and was taken to a webpage. It was a local news site, with an article accompanied by a blurry picture of... rainbow-colored lights shooting into the sky? Twilight squinted at the picture in confusion, wondering what exactly she was looking at, and then turned her attention to the article.
"Canterlot High's Fall Formal was underway when a bright light, accompanied by a loud explosion, was seen shooting into the sky. Authorities arrived at the school to find a large hole in the pavement and the front of the school almost completely destroyed. When questioned, the students in attendance said that they couldn't remember what had happened.
"'The damages done to our school are severe,' said Principal Celestia, 'But a student of ours, Sunset Shimmer, has offered to fix all of it.'"
"'I want to do the right thing,' Shimmer said when interviewed by a reporter, 'If that means fixing the school, then so be it.'"
"Vice Principal Luna has stated that, despite the damages, Canterlot High will remain open in light of this stunning event."
Twilight bit her lip, leaning back in her computer chair. Something was very wrong here, but she just couldn't put her finger on what it was. She grabbed the mouse and printed out the webpage, and then carried the printed article to a bulletin board on her wall where she pushed a thumbtack into the top of it and hung it on the bottom of the board. Twilight considered something for a moment and then took the picture of the outside of Canterlot High and hung that in the middle of her bulletin board.
~~~~~~
"Twilight? You in here?" Shining asked, opening her bedroom door, "I was thinking you could take a break and we could watch a movie or something...?"
Twilight, hardly glancing away from the bulletin board that was now covered in graphs and articles about Canterlot High, uttered a quiet "Huh? What did you say?"
Shining held up a DVD case to Ghostbusters, "Movie?"
"Not right now," Twilight said distantly, connecting an article to the picture of Canterlot High with a piece of red string, "I'm working on something. Maybe later."
"Oh... alright," Shining mumbled, walking down the hall, "Might as well call Cadence... see if she wants to do something..."
Twilight turned her focus back to the bulletin board. A large web of red string was starting to form, all of it connected to Canterlot High. She turned away from the board and quickly sat down in front of the computer. She had Googled Sunset Shimmer and found a YouTube account with a picture of her former best friend as the profile picture. The page had loaded in the time she was looking at the bulletin board, and her eyes flickered back and forth as she read the titles of the three videos that Sunset had uploaded. The one on the far right, the first one posted, was titled Rarity: The Spring Fling Princess?!. The most recent one posted was something about a band called the Rainbooms, but Twilight was stunned by the one between both of them.
Do You Want Twilight Sparkle As Your Fall Formal Princess?
Twilight had never heard of anything called the Fall Formal, but she was more concerned with the date it was posted. It had been posted an entire year after Sunset had disappeared. Twilight's right hand moved the mouse over the video and clicked it twice, three times, and then four. In spite of herself, her left hand gripped her leg tightly with anticipation as the video loaded.
We're sorry, the blank video screen said, But this video has been deleted by the uploader.
Twilight slumped back in her computer chair, the roaring silence in her ears and her own heavy breathing the only things she was aware of as her mind raced and tried to come up with an explanation for what was going on at Canterlot High.
~~~~~~
"No doubt about it, Spike," Twilight said, rubbing her chin in thought as she looked around her bulletin board one last time before leaving, "There's definitely something strange going on at that school."
Spike barked in reply as Twilight traced all of the pieces of red string with her eyes, searching for a connection she had missed.
Two weeks had passed since the Battle of the Bands incident (the details of which were still being kept secret by the students and staff), and Twilight had been accepted into Canterlot High by someone named Miss Cheerilee, who Twilight remembered being mentioned by Miss Blossom back on that fateful day at the Academy. Today was her first day at the strange school.
"Twilight!" came her mother Velvet's voice from the kitchen, "Hurry it up! You're going to be late for your first day at Canterlot High!"
"Mom, Canterlot High is closer to home then the Academy is," Twilight heard Shining tell their mother, "If anything, Twily's going to be early."
"I was just on my way out!" Twilight called back to her mother as she pulled off her labcoat and glasses. There really was nothing like a little mid-morning research to start the day.
Twilight scratched Spike behind the ears, picked up her backpack, and walked out of her room, down the hall, and into the kitchen where she was immediately grabbed by her mother.
"Ooh, it's like your first day all over again!" Velvet gushed, squeezing Twilight in a gleeful hug, "My little girl is so smart!"
"T-thanks Mom," Twilight managed, struggling to breathe with the strength of the hug before her mother let go, "I'm going to be fine. Really!"
"Y'know," Shining said thoughtfully, taking a bite from a blueberry muffin, "The Canterlot Wondercolts have beaten Rainbow Falls in the championship every year. I just might transfer with ya, kid!"
"It'd be great having you at my new school, Shining Armor," Twilight smiled, giving her brother a hug.
"Why're you going to Canterlot High?" Her father Night Light asked with a raised eyebrow, "Any school I thought you'd go to would have to end with 'for the gifted'."
"Very funny," Twilight said sarcastically, hugging her father as well before opening the front door and stepping outside for her first day at Canterlot High.
~~~~~~
Twilight's day had gone surprisingly normal, if not hectic. Some girl named Golden Harvest had been assigned as Twilight's "guide", which meant that she had to show her around the school. Harvest had shown her one hallway and then ditched Twilight to talk with a group of her friends. Twilight had decided to look around for herself, only for the walleyed girl from one of the photos Twilight had seen to walk up to her. The girl introduced herself as Derpy, and offered to show Twilight around. Twilight had gratefully accepted Derpy's offer, only to soon find out that Derpy didn't know her way around the school either.
After a brief incident in which Twilight and Derpy got lost in a maze of unused classrooms and empty band rooms behind the auditorium, Derpy managed to escort Twilight to the cafeteria where lunch was in session. Twilight had missed three classes by then.
Derpy blushed, mumbled an honest apology for getting them lost, and then left Twilight to sit with her friends, two of whom Twilight had also seen in the photos. Twilight got into the lunch line, and bought a salad and an apple for her lunch. After she paid and took her tray, Twilight was left to find a place to sit. She still didn't know anybody at the school, and wasn't sure if it was a good idea to introduce herself to a random group. However, after she wandered around the cafeteria in search of an empty table, she realized that she would have to introduce herself.
Twilight wandered around the cafeteria again, this time in search of a table of people who looked smart; who looked like they would be in her classes. If she thought in terms of cliques, it would be the nerd table. To her dismay, every table seemed to be mixed. Nerdy-looking kids were sitting with athletic kids and drama stars. Environmentalists sat with talkative, wild people. Country kids sat with fashionistas. It was completely different from what Twilight had experienced at Rainbow Falls.
She was about to give up on finding a table when she heard a loud gasp to her left. Somebody whispered "Twilight?!" in surprise, and Twilight turned. In front of her, all sitting at a table, were the girls from the Glee Club photos, and sitting in the middle of them all was Sunset Shimmer, blinking in astonishment as she stared at her.
"TWILIGHT!" the pink girl leapt up from her chair and wrapped her arms around Twilight in a crushing hug. Twilight stumbled, nearly dropping her tray, while the rainbow-haired girl pulled at the back of the pink girl's shirt and said "Calm down, Pinkie!".
"What are you doing here?" a girl holding a bunny asked in a quiet voice, "Is it the Sirens again?"
"Sirens?" Twilight repeated in disbelief, "What are you talking about-?"
"Ah can't believe you're back!" A girl in a cowgirl hat said.
"Yes! And darling, I must say that I absolutely adore your new clothes," a girl with stylish purple hair squealed.
"What?" Twilight looked down at her light blue turtleneck and black pants, "What do you mean? Who are you?"
A silence fell over the group. Finally, the girl with the rainbow hair (Rainbow Dash? Twilight thought, remembering the articles about Canterlot High's MVP) spoke hesitantly.
"You don't... know us?"
"That's it!" Sunset stood up and snapped her fingers as the answer came to her, "That's not Twilight!"
"It's not?" Pinkie asked, confused.
"Of course I'm Twilight!" Twilight said irritably, "And I want to know what you're doing here, Sunset Shimmer!"
"It's not the Twilight we know," Sunset continued, her eyes flashing with realization and a smile widening on her face, "She didn't come from beyond the portal! She came from here! She's the Twilight from here!"
Sunset stood up and walked over to Twilight, putting her hands on Twilight's shoulders and looking into her eyes. At that moment, Twilight knew that this wasn't the Sunset she knew, and a bit of what they were saying was starting to make sense.
"Sit down, Twilight Sparkle," Sunset said, offering an empty chair to the confused girl, "We have a lot to talk about."
