“Allow me to explain everything,” Adagio said. “No judgments from you Sunset Shimmer, or I don't think I'll be able to continue the story to your liking.”

Before the Earth Starlight Glimmer was taken in by Morning Dew and Rondache, she lived with another set of foster parents who basically just supplied Starlight with a roof over her head and the bare necessities she needed to survive. He was a well-off Scientist that did some undisclosed work for the government that Starlight always told us that she would hack into, but never did because she was never interested or motivated enough to try it. His wife was the definition of trophy wife, it was even her name and she had no interest in actually doing anything aside from getting her hair and makeup done or going shopping.

So, since her foster parents, who, may I add, fostered her for most of her teenage years and she always claimed that even though they were incredibly disinterested, they weren't the worst foster parents she had, she was allowed a little more free rein than most people we knew.

And please note, Sunset Shimmer, that this was the school we enrolled in right after we left Canterlot High School. High School is so easy for us to survive in you know, there is always pettiness and negativity to feed off of without the use of our magic and Starlight's pettiness drew us straight to her. The four of us became fast friends. She shared our penchant for disaster and negativity and we relished in helping her get back at the people who wronged her. Honestly, it was a win-win for all of us.

Anyway, there was one girl listed in her notebook that no matter how hard she tried, she had never been able to get back at her. The girl was always able to turn it around and put herself in a good light, she was un-scareable, and nothing any of us tried seemed to work and every failed attempt just made Starlight Glimmer more and more angry. We could just tell she was adding every little misstep to her revenge journal.

She had tried all her obvious things, hacking into her social media accounts to find hidden information to use against her, but the girl was practically a saint so there was nothing and she didn't have a website that Starlight could ruin and any rumor or negative thought we tried to implant in other people's heads just dissipated. So, you could see why it was so frustrating for Starlight that none of us had been able to do anything to Sunshine Smiles.

It was starting to eat away at her too. It was her turn to prank us, but months went by and nothing happened. It was like she lost her will to do all the fun things in life. So, the three of us decided that we needed to nudge her along and take things in a new direction. Starlight's foster parents had told her that she had to take part in a sport so she joined us on the tennis team, it was an easy sport for all of us, at least the way we played it – which according to our coach, wasn't exactly very good.

It just so happened that Sunshine Smiles was also on the tennis team, as the captain of the team, much to Starlight's chagrin.

On a random Wednesday, right after school we entered the locker room for tennis practice. It was absolutely deserted and as always it reeked of a mix of deodorant and bleach. Each of the teams got their own aisle with a special locker that was bigger than the students that didn't play sports would get to store their sporty clothes in.

The four of us rounded the corner towards the tennis team’s row of lockers, when Aria stopped short, and put her arm out in front of the rest of us to stop us from going any further.

“Whoa,” Sonata whispered as she covered her mouth with her hand.

Starlight peered around them and nearly cried out. Papers lay scattered over the floor and on the benches. A viscous red liquid covered some of the lockers. There was a tape outline of a body on the floor, with a big splattering of more of that red stuff near the head. Yellow police tape was strung around the outline which said CRIME SCENE: DO NOT CROSS.

“Psst,” I said as I yanked them into the shower room. The floor was shiny and wet, and someone had left a big bottle of old shampoo on a built-in shelf in one of the stalls. I peeked around the doorway and gestured for the other girls to do the same. A few girls on various teams passed the tennis lockers, and did a triple take when they saw the police tape. One of the other athletes took a picture of it with her phone as her friends peered over her shoulder talking in hushed voices.

When Sunshine Smiles appeared at the far end of the hall, Sonata squeezed Starlight’s hand. “Let the games begin.”

Starlight opened her mouth to say something, but Aria put her finger to her lips.

“Shhhhh.”

Sunshine Smiles had bright two-toned blonde hair and sparkling green eyes. Every little thing about her just seemed to scream that she was a happy and upbeat person. Which was part of the reason Starlight Glimmer didn't really like her. Sunshine carried a green bag over her shoulder that matched her eyes perfectly and when she turned the corner and noticed the crime scene, she stopped and her bag fell to the ground, hitting the floor with a soft thud. She didn't pick it back up.

She took a few tentative steps toward it, staring at the locker surrounded by police tape. A helpless look washed over her face.

“Miss?” A woman in a police uniform burst into the room, making everyone, including Starlight and the Dazzlings jump. “Can you tell me whose locker this is?”

Sunshine's eyes widened as she looked at the officers badge and then down at the gun in the officer's holster. She glanced at the cop’s badge, then at her gun. “Um, that’s my locker.”

Sonata let out a tiny laugh. Adagio shot her a look.

The cop tapped the locker door with the antenna of her walkie-talkie. “Would you mind opening it for me? I need to search it.”

“W-Why?”

“I have a warrant to search this locker.” The cop unfolded a piece of paper and flashed it in Sunshine’s face faster than Sunshine had a chance to process the situation.

Sonata and Aria covered her mouth with her hand and I was desperately trying to keep in the laughter as we all watched this go down. Our eyes went back and forth between our target and Starlight who was watching with an enraptured smile.

“Don't you love this?” I asked, nudging her in the ribs.

She just smiled. That was all the approval we needed.

More girls from school gathered in the locker room, nudging and staring. The first girl had already posted pictures on all her social media accounts and everybody else in the school had started to flock to the crime scene so they could see what was happening with their own eyes. The cop paced the aisle. Sunshine Smiles opened and closed her mouth a few times without speaking. Tears welled in her eyes. “Am I in trouble? I didn’t do anything!”

“I’ll be the judge of that,” the cop said.

Sonata nudged Aria in the ribs. “Where did you find her? She's amazing!”

“I put an ad up online.” Aria beamed. “She’s a theater major at the nearby college. She was hundreds of times better than the other people who applied.”

The cop nodded at Sunshine again, this time more forcefully. Sunshine’s hands shook as she worked the combination. By now Sonata and I were were doubled over in silent laughs while Aria was desperately trying to stave off the laughter by wedging her tongue between her teeth.

When the locker opened, the cop plunged her hand inside and pulled out a kitchen knife. More red stuff smeared the pointed tip.

Sunhine Smiles sank down to the cold tile floor next to her locker. “I-I don’t know how that got there! I promise!”

“I need to search the top part of the locker, too, and then you and I are going to take a little trip down to the station,” the cop said.

“But this is a mistake! I don't know how that got there or what any of this is! I swear!”

The cop pressed the latch to open the top compartment of Sunshine Smile’s locker. I grabbed Starlight's hand. “Get ready.”

As the door opened, something shot out of the space. Sunshine Smiles screamed and covered her eyes and then after several seconds of absolute silence she opened her yes to see a shiny Mylar balloon float lazily into the aisle and bob to the ceiling. It was in the shape of a banana with bug eyes and a deranged smile. “That’s bananas!” a robotic voice rang out from the balloon as it bounced off the ceiling. “That’s bananas! That’s bananas!” A note dangled from the end of the string that said GOTCHA!

Starlight couldn’t help but explode with laughter just as all the other girls in the locker room that had begun to crowd around Sunshine Smiles and the cordoned off area laughed as well and snapped even more pictures for social media.

Sunshine wiped her eyes, a tiny wrinkle forming between her eyebrows. She looked over her shoulder for the cop, but the drama student cop had already run off, bloody knife and all. Sunshine Smiles ripped the GOTCHA! note off the string, crumpled it up, and tossed it to the floor. “That’s bananas!” the balloon bleated again and again in a robotic voice.

The girls and I emerged from our hiding place in the showers, high-heeled boots clicking on the tile. Sunshine Smiles turned and faced us, her face pale and that smile finally wiped off her face. It felt so good and so filling.

“You better not tell on us,” I told her in a chillingly even voice as I wagged my finger back and forth. “Or else we’ll get you worse.”

I didn't give her a chance to respond before turning out of the room with the other three girls following behind, all shooting her the same don’t-mess-with-us looks, too.

As soon as we got out in the hallway, we leaned against the wall and laughed so hard that tears ran down our faces.

“Her face!” Aria said between breaths.

“Priceless!” Sonata cried.

I poked Starlight’s side. “C’mon. You can admit it now. You loved it, right?”

We all stared at Starlight to see if she approved of our little prank. Up until that point we had never branched out from pranking each other, that was the first time we had ever outright pranked somebody else that we all knew as part of our little club. Starlight had done things on her own and we had possibly done some bad things on our own as well, but it was the first time we ever used those pranking powers for good. Or... Starlight's good at least.

I waved her hand in front of Starlight's face to get her attention after we ran into the hallway. She was laughing, but she hadn't said anything yet.

“Well?” I asked. “A-plus or F-minus?”

Starlight stopped laughing and looked me square in the eyes before mustering a devious smile. “A-plus. It was awesome.”

The girls smiled with relief. “I knew it.”

“Of course, Sunshine Smiles did end up telling on us. She told her older sister Moonlight Raven who told their parents who told the cops. Apparently what we did was technically a form of harassment so Starlight Glimmer got in trouble with her foster family who threatened to send her back to Miss Care if she didn't knock it off.”

Starlight Glimmer and Sunset Shimmer looked at the Dazzlings, mouth agape. The milkshakes that they had been drinking while listening to the story were now fully gone and were casualties of listening to a thrilling, yet worrying tale.

“I can see by your shocked expressions that you aren't exactly going to be thrilled to hear that we did similar pranks a few other times to other people in school. It didn't go over well with Starlight's foster parents who eventually got so frustrated with our constant run ins with the police they sent her back to Miss Care who made sure that when she got another foster family, they had to transfer her to another school because apparently we were 'bad influences' or something.”

“That's an understatement,” Sunset muttered.

“I don't see how any of those pranks would have anything to do with Starlight Glimmer disappearing. None of the people we pranked would be able to do anything like that to Starlight, and even if they did, they wouldn't be able to make her disappear for over two weeks,” Aria reminded them.

“She has a point, Sunset,” Starlight Glimmer piped up. “Assuming that the four of you were just finding high school adversaries in Starlight's revenge journal to prank, there's no way that any of them would be able to do either as a prank or as something serious.”

“So, you trust these three? They are sirens that were banished from Equestria by Starswirl the Bearded himself!” Sunset reminded her.

“And I don't know if you have forgotten, but you and I were the type of ponies who would have been banished by Starswirl the Bearded if he had been around when we were technically described as villains. I know for a fact because I met him, Princess Twilight and the others recently found him and the other old pillars of Equestria and helped them fix an old mistake.”

The other four Equestrian transplants looked at her curiously. Starlight's brow furrowed while the sirens just looked shocked.

“Starswirl the Bearded went missing over a thousand years ago,” Sunset stated.

“Wow, has it really been that long?” Sonata whispered. “I guess time really flies when you're stuck in another dimension in a body like this.”

“I'm actually shocked that he's back, he was a hero of mine,” Sunset said.

“Eh,” Starlight shrugged. “He's not that great. He's actually kind of a jerk.”

“Color me surprised.” Adagio rolled her eyes.

“I can't believe it took you like three days to even mention this to me!”

“Well we have been kinda busy, don't you think?”

“Good point.”

“Anyway, the point of all that was that I think we can trust them, at least with this. Starlight Glimmer was their friend, they wouldn't withhold pertinent information about their friend just because they are afraid of what you and I would think. Right, girls?”

The three Dazzlings murmured their agreements as if they weren't sure if they should be agreeing with this version of Starlight Glimmer.

Sunset leaned in close to the Dazzlings, face full of frustration and said, “If you three are holding out on something, I swear on my life I will find out what it is and you will regret it. Do you hear me?”

“Yea, yea we hear you,” Aria said.

“I think the 'prank' that probably was the nail on the camel's back was probably the only time we pulled a prank on somebody who was considered an adult in this world,” Sonata said. Her friends shot her a look.

“You pulled a prank on an adult? And you didn't say anything until just now?” Sunset asked raising an eyebrow so high that Starlight thought it would fly off her face.

“I didn't think it was important,” Sonata said.

“It was probably more important than that story about Sunshine Smiles finding that balloon in her locker!”

“But that one was funny! And it was a precursor for all of the other pranks that weren't against each other. Plus, it was funny.”

“You said the funny thing already,” Starlight pointed out.

“Did I? Oops. My bad.”

“So what's that story? Is it more pertinent than the Sunshine Smiles story?” Sunset asked.

“Probably?” Sonata shrugged.

“Well, you wanna tell us what it is?” Starlight asked.

“Sure, but just like the last one, be warned, it doesn't exactly paint us in a good light.”

Sunset groaned. “Nothing the three of you do ever paints you in a good light.”

“I'll tell this story,” Adagio said, butting in. “Sonata will trail off about anything, and this one was a bit convoluted.”

So, seeming as the two of you have already found and looked through Starlight Glimmer's little revenge diary, you probably already have an idea about the things that Starlight Glimmer did that got her expelled. She hacked the school website, she plastered Abacus Cinch's home with flyers and added the word “Bully” to pictures of her face and sent them from everywhere and she even left a ton of anonymous tips about the things that she did to some student at the Friendship Games or something. I guess she bullied some nerdy girl, Starlight didn't really go into detail about it, just that justice had to be done.

So Starlight got her justice. Abacus Cinch lost her job, but unfortunately, Starlight wasn't exactly subtle with her methods of justice so it didn't take much for Abacus Cinch to realize who was behind all of this and Starlight got expelled from Crystal Prep. She didn't really care about that, honestly the girl is smarter than most schools give her credit for and Crystal Prep was just a disaster of a choice for her because, despite their big culture about their emphasis on learning that only matters if you are learning in the exact ways they want you to learn, so Starlight kind of fell through the cracks there anyway at least up until her expulsion.

We thought she would have been thrilled to be out of that school, especially since she hated it and was really better off without those rich snobby kids, but she was still angry. She said that Abacus Cinch expelling her before she was fired wasn't enough, she needed more and she needed our help to do exactly what she wanted to do and of course we aren't going to turn her down because we're sirens and we feed off negativity and Starlight Glimmer had a lot of negativity and this was especially true when she was carrying out her justice.

So, we met up with Starlight at the location that she designated that evening. She was carrying a small backpack that she swore up and down would be important later then the four of us walked over to Abacus Cinch's home and waited just outside her property in the bushes and just watched and waited until she left for the night and then Starlight motioned for us to follow her.

The four of us made our way to Abacus Cinch's porch when Starlight pulled out four keys from her pocket.

“These are the keys to this house. I made a copy of them a while back when I found them in her office while she was yelling at me for something or other,” Starlight explained as she handed each of us one of the keys. “Today we are each going to go into her home and take one thing of minor importance. Don't take anything super valuable, no televisions or electronics or anything like that. Take a slipper for example. Something easy to misplace and not super expensive because she will probably end up replacing them.”

“So why are we doing this? It just seems like a waste of time if she's just going to replace everything,” I said.

Starlight Glimmer just smirked. “You'll see.”

We each took something small that night, a shoe, a light bulb in her living room, the key to her P.O. Box, other stuff similar to that and put them in Starlight's backpack and promptly forgot about them until Starlight met up with us here at Diner Joe's with the same backpack and a bag full of boxes.

“What's with the boxes?” Aria asked. She took one out of the bag, there were six small boxes in the bag, all of them were colored white and at the bottom of the bag was a huge roll of black velvet ribbon. “And the ribbon?”

Starlight dumped the contents of her backpack onto the table. Everything in her bag was the same stuff that we had taken just a few weeks ago. She pushed some of the objects towards us and then passed us a box.

“Just put one thing in each box and tie it up with a ribbon. Trust me. It'll be great.”

So we did.

We each ate our food and put things in boxes and Sonata tied up the perfect ribbon for each of the boxes and stuffed those boxes back in Starlight's backpack.

“Let's go,” Starlight said as she hopped up from her seat in the booth, full of energy.

“Go where?” I asked.

“Don't worry about it,” Starlight said with an effortless grin as she sashayed out of the diner leaving the rest of us to scurry behind her to catch up.

Where turned out to be back to Abacus Cinch's house, the bushes that surrounded her home practically became our hangout for the next few weeks. That first night, Starlight took one of the boxes out of her backpack and ran it over to her front door as quickly as possible without being seen in front of the windows and she placed it gently on her doormat, rang the doorbell and ran away as quickly as her legs would take her.

Abacus Cinch came to the door looking exhausted and wearing a plush bathrobe and what appeared to be brand new slippers. She definitely didn't look pleased to have to answer the door this late at night, but she definitely seemed more unpleasant when she realized that nobody was there. She looked around for a second as if she expected that somebody would jump out of nowhere and say hi before she finally looked down to see a little white box with black ribbon. She hurriedly opened it, scouring the area to see if she could find anything or anybody that seemed out of place. The four of us just ducked down further into the bushes and watched through the branches and leaves as she opened the box to find her missing slipper that we had taken over a week ago.

We repeated the process the next day with the light bulb, and the following day with the mail key. Every single time we did this, we would watch as she became more and more frustrated until she bought some middle of the line security system. We thought that was it for our game until Starlight figured out how to hack into it and make it seem like it was still running even when it wasn't. So we kept up our little game and she knew Starlight had something to do with it, but she wasn't on the tapes and she always had an airtight alibi somehow so Abacus Cinch had no way to prove it.

We had been keeping it up for weeks before Starlight Glimmer just randomly and out of the blue decided that we had done enough and it wasn't fun anymore and we just went back to pranking each other, no questions asked.

The following week we pranked her hard with our creepy pictures prank, it was a hilarious prank because I think she thought that somebody had figured out her connection with Abacus Cinch and her notebook and got nervous.

“The four of you are just... you are absolutely terrible people,” Sunset said. She was still in shock from these pranking stories. “Why are your pranks so mean and in-depth? Isn't that a little overkill?”

“Never,” Aria replied with a toothy smile.

Starlight paid no attention to the other four girls at the table while Sunset tried not to argue with the sirens about their awful pranks with the former Starlight Glimmer. Instead, something had caught her eye.

Or rather, somebody.

“Girls, do you see that guy in the mirror?” Starlight asked in a voice hardly above a whisper.

Sunset Shimmer and the Dazzlings stopped their bickering and looked in the same direction Starlight was looking in. There was a pillar surrounded by mirrors near the bar at Diner Joe's right by where they sat. At the right angle, somebody could easily stare into the mirror and watch a group of people sitting and chatting in another booth.

While listening to Adagio's tale, Starlight had turned away for what she had expected would be a brief second, but instead she caught sight of a slightly older man watching the five of them chatting in the booth. At first she thought he had just casually turned and watched, but he continued to keep eye contact with her through the mirror.

It sent shivers down her back and no matter how hard she tried, she couldn't look away.

She felt frozen in place.

“I see him too,” Sonata whispered. “Is he not supposed to be real? Did we hit our heads or something?”

“No,” the other girls whispered harshly. Their eyes still locked with the man in the mirror who, despite knowing he had an audience in these five girls, didn't look away.

“What do we do?” Sunset asked.

“We confront him, that's what we do,” Adagio replied. Sunset looked uncomfortable. “We're in a public place, nothing's gonna happen. Stop worrying you little golden child. Everything is fine.”

Starlight and Sunset broke away from their gaze at the interloper and looked at each other. Everything did not feel fine, not after the crazy last few days that they had experienced.

“I think we should just go home,” Starlight replied. “Morning Dew and Rondache are probably waiting for me and I haven't texted them recently, I don't want them to worry.”

“Oh don't be such a baby,” Aria groaned. “The other Starlight Glimmer never cared.”

“The other Starlight Glimmer is missing,” Starlight shot back. “I don't want the same thing to happen to me.”

She pushed the Dazzlings out of the booth, dusted herself off, and started to make her way out of the diner. Sunset immediately tried to trail behind her, but the man that had been staring at them via the mirror got up and out of his booth before Sunset could catch up to her, effectively blocking the girls from sticking together.

Starlight tried to remain calm.

This is all just a coincidence I'm sure! As soon as we get outside he will go the other way and Sunset Shimmer and I can walk back to my place together. I'm sure Morning Dew and Rondache won't mind if she just stays the night tonight especially if I still seem freaked out by the time we get home.

She stepped outside into the cool fall air and started walking in the direction of her home, refusing to turn around and look back just in case she wouldn't like what she saw.

“Starlight! It's okay, it's just me!”

She let a breath of relief out when she heard Sunset speak and turned around.

Yes. She silently thanked her luck. It was just Sunset Shimmer.

She embraced her friend tighter than she had ever embraced anybody before.

“Hey, it's okay,” Sunset assured her. “That guy probably didn't mean to stare at us for so long. We probably just looked interesting. He's not here. I promise.”

Starlight wanted to say that she would hold Sunset to that promise because, despite seeing nobody else around on the street, she didn't feel safe now.

She didn't get a chance to.

Just as quickly as Sunset was able to catch up with her, Sunset's eyes went blank and their hug went from a source of mutual strength to Sunset going limp and leaning on Starlight for support. She was ready to scream out, to beg somebody anywhere nearby for help, but when she opened her mouth nothing came out and slowly, but surely her vision became more blurry and her head felt hot and heavy.

That unsafe feeling felt more palpable now, but all she could do was give in to the lightheadedness and allow herself to slowly fall to the ground with Sunset Shimmer as close to her as possible.

Author's Note

This is written for National Pony Writing Month so if there are any errors that I missed (which is likely) just let me know!