Sequence One: Come With Me If You Want To Live
The problem with becoming a better person, Sunset Shimmer mused, is how much it hurts to know yourself like that. Having been recently clocked upside the head with a two-by-four of empathy courtesy of the Magic of Friendship, she felt especially qualified to make that judgement. Still, all the self-awareness or remorse in the world couldn't endear her to the school she had so thoroughly wronged without a way to prove her change of heart, so Sunset Shimmer helped with the effort to clean up the remains of her demonic rampage and slipped out when she had done all she could in order to take a walk and get her thoughts in order.
And that was how Sunset Shimmer found herself in a secluded park just before dawn, morosely skipping stones on a pond and trying not to think too much about anything. After a long time spent not accomplishing anything other than feeling sorry for herself and chasing her thoughts in circles, she stood up with a huff and started on her way home to head off any angry fellow students looking to take out their anger on her things instead of her. Not that they would find anything to wreck; she had no house or apartment or anything like that, just a back alley she had staked out a while back and filled with whatever spare money or supplies she could buy, beg, or steal, though she had stopped begging once she started feeling too proud for such an embarrassing way to get things. But still, it was entirely possible someone could find out about her alley from one of the hobos-er, homeless people she had forced to move out of the dingy little place and steal her stockpile. Clean water for bathing was hard to get with her nonexistent income. However, before she could take even five steps, the sound of a fight reached her ears. I wanted to start helping people, didn't I? With that thought, Sunset Shimmer raced to the source of the noise.
What she found was a pair of people ganging up on a third, who seemed to be giving as good as she got. Still, two against one was hardly fair. So Sunset Shimmer circled around behind one of the attackers and tackled them. Acting on her admittedly limited experience as a bully with physically fighting someone (her words were usually enough to leave a target too demoralized to fight, but there had been instances, and she still had a certain instinct for physical confrontation from her time as a pony), she then slammed her quarry's head into the ground until the whimpering stopped and blood started pooling on the now helpless troublemaker's forehead. That was when her potential new friend, who had defeated the other assailant in the meantime, turned to address her.
The stranger, judging by what little light was available, was a woman of about Sunset Shimmer's height and perhaps half again as old. She reminded Sunset Shimmer of Rainbow Dash, what with having the same build and hardly even sweating after what was enough excitement to leave Sunset Shimmer more than a little damp with perspiration herself. The stranger also seemed to share Rainbow Dash's approach to personal grooming, which was to say not caring about it at all beyond picking the foliage out of her hair, to go by the various signs of wear and tear on her body, particularly the large number of scars of various sizes on her face, neck, hands, and arms; perhaps there were more elsewhere on her body, but the shirt and pants concealed the hypothetical marks. There was no more time to examine the stranger, though, as she had begun speaking.
"Hey," she called out, rasping a little. "Thanks for the help, but I gotta ask, what's your angle? You're a kid, not really Good Samaritan material, know what I mean?"
Sunset Shimmer stood up and tried to stare a hole in the ground as she spoke. "I...just realized that about myself recently, actually. Some, eh, bad things just happened at my school because of me, and now I need to make up for it. If I don't try to make things better than when I found them, what's the point of me feeling bad about it, you know? So when I saw these two-" She gestured to the bodies lying on the ground. "ganging up on you, I decided to help. I need to start somewhere to make something better of myself, right?"
The stranger smiled slightly with a faraway sort of gaze. "I wish there were more people like you, kid. You got a name?"
"Sunset Shimmer," came the mumbled reply.
"Right. Well, Sunny, when you decide to start living for real-don't give me that look, I can see the hopeless in you-come here." She handed Sunset Shimmer an index card with an address written on it. "Ask for Crane, and I'll start showing you how I help the world out, and let me tell you, it's more satisfying than wandering around a park in the middle of the night looking for someone getting beat up to help. Come by when you're ready and I eep this between us, okay? I got enemies, and they won't care if you're a kid. Catch you later!"
As the presumed Crane ran off to wherever she was headed, Sunset Shimmer stared at the note card in her hand. The offer had been much too vague to tell what she would be getting into. From what she said, Crane seemed to be a good person, but that hardly meant anything. She said something about "enemies that wouldn't care if I was a kid". What could that mean? I don't want to die...but, then again, I can't live with myself if I don't look at this offer. I need an opportunity like this. I'll just have to hope it's not some weird scam or something. Who knows, maybe they'll let me stay there. It would be nice to have a roof over my head that's sturdier than a newspaper. She looked at the address again. I know where this street is. I'll get some sleep and go see Crane in the morning.
With her mind made up, Sunset Shimmer headed home, her whole being positively buzzing with anticipation. She was all too glad to (potentially) be on the way to turning her life into something better.
Author's Note
For those curious, Crane is an analogue to an Assassin's Creed character, so this is indeed a crossover. As always, feedback and suggestions are welcome and encouraged. Thank you for your time.
Sequence One: Meet the Team
When she awoke, Sunset Shimmer immediately headed to the address Crane had given her; she was still dressed and had just had her weekly sponge bath two days ago, after all. A coffee shop on the way there happened to be her usual source of breakfast, and she took the opportunity for food as it presented itself. Making any significant change to her eating schedule was almost unthinkable at this point, even if eating on the go was unusual for her.
The address Sunset Shimmer had been given proved to be that of an unassuming brownstone in one of the older neighborhoods in the city, just respectable enough for the middle class to want to inhabit and just affordable enough for them to live there comfortably. Knocking on the door produced a voice from inside demanding a password.
"I was told to ask for Crane," she said.
After a few moments, the voice grumbled, "All right. She said someone new would be coming soon. Be sure to behave yourself."
The door swung all the way open and closed behind her as she entered. Strange, the doorkeeper was nowhere to be seen. It probably wasn't a ghost operating the door, just an intercom and a remote control for the door instead, but the impression the whole event gave was suitably ominous for crossing a threshold that might later prove to be more than literal.
Sunset Shimmer was greeted by a great indistinct hum of activity coming from somewhere she couldn't see and Crane, who was watching a man pore over several books. "Hey, Sunny. So you decided to come after all. Now, I'd love to bring you in right away and get you settled in, but I need to make sure you're a good fit, you actually want in on what we do, you know what I'm talkin' about. So Speedy here-" Crane pointed with her thumb to the man she had been watching. "He's gonna bring you along on a couple of his jobs, show you what we do and why we do it. You both up for it?"
After receiving an enthusiastic affirmative from Speedy and a not as enthusiastic one from Sunset Shimmer, Crane smiled and exclaimed, "Great! Don't throw her in too deep, Speedy. Oh, and you'll want pants for this, Sunny. We tend to do a lot of running and climbing."
As Speedy led her to a large pile of clothes to sweaty-smelling to be called clean with any honesty, he said, "Let me walk you through what we'll be doing for the next few days. First, there's a new gang coming into town that we'll be dealing with."
"Dealing with how?" Sunset Shimmer asked as pointedly as she could while occupied by rummaging through a large pile of haphazardly strewn pants. A habit of successful blackmail made one well aware of when euphemisms were used.
"We'll try to persuade them to listen to us, go after people who're no good, leave the decent folks alone. If not, we'll scare them out of the city. After that, there's someone on the local council who doesn't care for the people's welfare as much as the office demands. Sponsors laws to get homeless people barred from finding jobs or places to stay, stick security cameras in public spaces they don't belong, pack the local courts with less than incorruptible judges, maybe some other things I haven't heard of. Elections are coming up soon, so we'll be working on a grassroots campaign to get a new councilor in."
Speedy took a breath before continuing. "And that's what I've got on my- well, ours now -plate. I'm warning you now, it could get a bit violent. Are you up for that? I need to know if you can handle yourself now. Can't have unnecessary surprises coming up."
Sunset Shimmer, by now finished changing into the only pair of pants even close to her size (the available pants were mostly for men or for women taller than her), took a moment to think the question over. "I can take care of myself in a fight. I won't be happy about it at all, but I can do it if I need to."
Speedy nodded to himself. "That'll be fine. There shouldn't be much of a need anyway. And you'll have time to learn once you're officially in. Come on, let's get started."
As they walked out of the building, Sunny got the feeling that her life had just begun to shift firmly onto a new track, one whose path she couldn't see.
Author's Note
My apologies for the delay between this chapter and the last. I was hoping to bring this chapter up to at least a thousand words, but I found that the current word count was the most I could get without making the chapter worse. In general, I will not be following a strict schedule, as I find it difficult to stick to one. Hopefully, the quality will not suffer for it.
