You Still Gotta Pay Taxes, Tho
“I swear,” Rainbow Dash said, gripping her sandwich, “if you two start making out I’m gonna puke.”
Sunset choked on her dry cafeteria pizza, while Rarity jolted up straight, as if she had been hit by lightning. “What?!” she sputtered, cheeks ablaze. “What are you talking about?”
“You’ve been staring at Sunset for, like, twenty minutes now!” Rainbow said. “You’ve just been looking into her eyes, all lovey-dovey like. It’s freakin’ gross.”
“The two of us are not in love,” Sunset said, slamming her palm on the table and rattling the plastic trays.
“Very true,” Rarity said. She turned to Sunset and offered a tiny smile. “Not that you aren’t a lovely girl, darling, but I’ve seen your wardrobe—trust me when I say that you aren’t my type.”
“Uh. Thanks?” Sunset said. She raised a brow. “But Rainbow does bring up a good point. These past few days, I’ve been noticing you staring at me a lot. What’s going on? Do I have a pimple or something I haven’t noticed?”
“No, no… well, yes, but that’s not the reason I’ve been staring.” Smile disappearing, Rarity folded her hands and gave Sunset a narrow-eyed glance. “Do you remember a few weeks ago, during the Friendship Games, when all those horrid plant monsters attacked us? And you shared some rather harsh words with Twilight?”
“Ugh, don’t remind me,” Sunset said, resting her head in her hands. “I still feel terrible about that.”
“I’m sorry to dredge up painful memories,” Rarity said, touching Sunset’s arm. “It’s just that there was something you said to her that I can’t quite get out of my mind. I believe it was that Twilight, ah… put our ‘lives in danger?’”
“Oh, yeah!” Rainbow said, mouth full. “I was wondering about that too! What the heck did you mean?”
“What did I mean?” Sunset repeated. “I meant that we had all just been attacked by giant man-eating plants. We could have died!”
“Died?” Rainbow asked. “What, like a bird or something?”
“A bird…? Like a human!” Sunset said. “We could have been crushed, or eaten, or chopped up into little tiny bits! Our lives were in danger!”
Rarity and Rainbow exchanged a glance. “Sunset, dear,” Rarity said. “You do realize that humans can’t die, right?”
“…Excuse me?”
“Humans can’t die,” Rainbow said, smiling. “Once we’re born we live forever. You’re joking, right? There’s no way you don’t know this.”
“No, I didn’t.” Sunset scowled. “What do you mean, you don’t die? That’s impossible! All living things die. That’s the way the world works!”
“Maybe in Equestria, yeah. But not here.” Rainbow smirked. “Seriously, how do you not know this? Haven’t you ever heard Principal Celestia talk about ‘how tough it is being three-thousand years old?’”
“I thought she was exaggerating! She is exaggerating!” Sunset said. “This is the most ridiculous thing I’ve ever heard!”
“To be fair, you are sounding quite ridiculous to us right now,” Rarity said. “It’s a simple fact of life! Humans cannot die. Animals can, however!” Rarity turned to Rainbow. “In fact, didn’t you have a dog that passed away once, Rainbow?”
“Who, Bootsy?” Rainbow asked. She shook her head. “Nah, my mom just took him to a farm upstate. Mom won’t let me visit, but she tells me he’s pretty happy there.”
Sunset tugged at her hair. “I don’t believe this. I can’t believe this. Wha, what about when I turned into a raging she-demon, or when the Dazzlings invaded the school? All of you guys were terrified! If you can’t die, why were you so scared?”
“Because you guys were trying to turn us all into zombies!” Rainbow said. “And zombies are freakin’ lame!”
“What about when Twilight was corrupted by dark magic?!” Sunset asked. “She destroyed the Wondercolts statue without even breaking a sweat! Everyone was screaming and panicking! You’re telling me you weren’t scared of dying? Not even a little bit?”
“We were scared of falling through the portals,” Rarity said. “No offense, darling, but from what you’ve told us of Equestria, it sounds a bit too wishy-washy for my tastes.”
Sunset stared at her two friends, searching their faces for even the slightest hint of a grin, or of a smirk—but Rarity and Rainbow were all but stonefaced, looking back at Sunset with soft, worry-filled eyes.
“This… this is stupid,” Sunset said. She grabbing her lunch tray, she slid out of her seat and planted her feet on the floor with a sharp click. “This is an awful prank, you guys. Seriously.”
“We’re not pranking you!” Rarity said. “We’re telling the—“
“I was really worried about you guys, y’know? I thought I was gonna lose my only friends. But now that you’re just using that to make fun of me…” Sunset growled and gripped her tray. “I don’t know what to think.”
She stormed away, leaving Rarity and Rainbow to sit in silence.
Sunset kept her head down as she headed for the school’s exit. It had been a few hours since lunch, but the minutes had passed in a thick haze. She couldn’t stop thinking about all the ponies she had known who had died, all the funerals she had gone to in Equestria. Would she ever attend another one? Did anyone on Earth even know what a funeral was?
The more she thought about it, the clearer it seemed. In History, she remembered the birthdate of most every important cultural figure… but she couldn’t recall ever learning about their death dates. In Biology, they had gone over the miracle of birth dozens of times—each time accompanied by a new but always completely disgusting video—but never the processes of death. On the news there were never any murders, no suicides, no casualties in war.
The thought felt like an icy rock lodged in her stomach. What was this world?
“Yoo-hoo! Sunset!”
Sunset glanced up, and her nose wrinkled. Through the entrance’s glass doors she could see Rarity standing outside of the school, just in front of the Wondercolts statue, waving. Students littered the courtyard, chatting and doing work.
Sunset took a deep breath before pushing open the doors to the outside. “What do you want?” she asked, plodding down the stairs.
Rarity didn’t answer. Instead, a long grin stretched across her face, she merely pointed at the school’s roof. Sunset rolled her eyes and followed her finger.
Sunset’s knees nearly gave out from under her.
Rainbow Dash stood at the edge of the roof, about four stories up, looking down at the crowd with her arms crossed. “Hey Sunset!” she called. “What’s up? I mean, like, aside from me!”
“Rainbow!” Sunset sputtered, sprinting forward. “What in Equestria are you doing?!”
Octavia, who stood only a few feet away, screamed, “Oh my gosh! She’s gonna jump!”
The entire crowd of students gasped as one—then erupted into a cheer as they rushed to get a good view. Boys whooped and girls hollered as Rainbow posed from her perch, dangling her legs over the edge and pretending she was tipping over.
“Stop this!” Sunset cried. “This isn’t the way! You’re a magical musician wizard! You have so much to live for!”
Standing next to Sunset, Flash Sentry yelled, “Do a flip!”
“A flip? I’m gonna do a freakin’ corkscrew!” Rainbow yelled back. With that, she leapt off the roof, and all went silent.
All except for Sunset, who screamed as Rainbow twirled through the air, completely oblivious to the impressive 1260° corkscrew she performed on the way down. Everyone in attendance jumped at the ear-splitting smack her body made upon hitting the ground stomach-first. The concrete cracked under her carcass.
Sunset broke away from the roaring crowd and raced to Rainbow’s limp body. Sunset’s breaths came in shaking gasps as she rolled Rainbow over to her back. The young athlete’s eyes were closed, and her jaw was slack.
“Rainbow?” Sunset stammered, vision blurring. “Are… are you…?”
No answer came.
Sunset let out a piercing wail and buried her face into Rainbow’s still chest. How could this have happened? Was it her fault? Oh gods above, it was, wasn’t it? This was all because of that time Sunset took Rainbow’s pencil and never returned it. Her kleptomania had driven Rainbow to suicide! She gripped Rainbow’s shirt and wept.
Sunset would never forgive herself—not until the day she died. Which was evidently a thing that existed.
“Oh, my. Rainbow, darling, are you alright?”
“Yeah, I’m fine!” Rainbow Dash said. She glared at Sunset. “At least, I would be, if Little Miss Weepy over here would stop sniffing my boobs.”
“Rainbow Dash!” Sunset yelped, throwing her hands into the air. “You’re alive!”
“Well, yeah.” Rainbow laughed. “Humans can’t die, remember?”
“We just wanted to prove to you that we weren’t playing a prank!” Rarity explained. “I’m sorry if we scared you. I’m afraid that the act of—suicide, I believe it’s called?—isn’t quite as dramatic to us as it may be to you.”
“It’s okay,” Sunset said, wiping her tears from her cheeks. “I’m just glad you’re safe. But don’t ever scare me like that, ever again!”
“Scare you? Sunset, don’t you get it? There’s no point in being scared of, like, anything!” Rainbow sat up and smiled. “Humans can’t die. Do you know how awesome that is? You have all the time in the universe to do whatever you want to do with your life. You never have to be scared to take risks, because you can just try again whenever! You never have to worry about getting sick, or getting hurt, like animals do.”
“We have the entire world in front of us,” Rarity said, rubbing Sunset’s back. “The world is truly our oyster, and we can take as many chances to find its pearls as we’d like.”
Sunset sniffled. “Yeah, I… I guess that’s true. You’re right!”
“Of course we are. I don’t know about Rarity, but I’m always right!” Rainbow stood up and dusted off her jacket. “C'mon. We’re gonna kick the world’s butt!”
“Yeah!” Sunset cheered, pumping her fist. With her friends following close behind, she ran away from the school.
“I’m gonna live forever!” Sunset cried as she stepped into the path of an oncoming bus.
“Say, thanks again taking us to this pet cemetery, Fluttershy!” Rainbow said, hoisting the muddy shovel onto her shoulder. “I was seriously getting worried about where we were gonna bury Sunset. She was starting to stink up my closet.”
Fluttershy finished adjusting the tombstone—which read ‘Rest in Peace Sunset Shimmer’ on the top and ‘Was pretty good at guitar’ on the bottom—and nodded to Rainbow. “Of course. Anything for a friend.”
Applejack held her hat to her heart. “It really is too bad. Who would have guessed that being half-pony made her animal enough to get killed?”
Rarity, Rainbow, Fluttershy, Pinkie, and Twilight all murmured their agreement. Twilight in particular pushed up her glasses and said, “We never even got to make sweet lesbian love, like in all of my Neighponese animes.”
“Same,” Pinkie said, sighing.
Standing over Sunset’s grave, the group took a moment of silence.
“So!” Pinkie chirped. “Who wants to break into Sunset’s apartment and take all her stuff?”
The others all cheered. “I call her hairbrush!” Twilight said.
The six of them turned away from the grave and walked out of the pet cemetery as one.
“Hey, look!” Rainbow said, just before they passed through the gate. She pointed at a tombstone. “Someone else had a dog named Bootsy, too!”
