Two Truths and a Lie

by rosebug

Rating: teen
Tags: Sunset Shimmer, Main 7 (EqG), Twilight Sparkle (EqG), Dark, Thriller, Dazzlings, Mystery, Starlight Glimmer, Equestria Girls
Length: 48692

Starlight takes the place of her human counterpart in the Equestria Girls universe to investigate her mysterious disappearance.

For every living being in Equestria there is another of them in another world. Visually, they could pass for identical twins (if they were in the same universe, of course) and both versions often have a lot in common, but the worlds operate differently. Everypony and every human could be living vastly different lives.

Starlight Glimmer learns about all of this firsthand when a mysterious letter comes through the mirror asking for her help signed by the other Starlight Glimmer. The only way to figure out how to help her is to take her place in the human world and keep an eye on everybody who would want to harm her.

Can she figure out what happened to the other Starlight before it becomes her fate as well?

Can the redeemed Starlight fix her counterpart's mistakes before she goes down a dark path?

And why does Sunset Shimmer act so strange whenever Starlight asks her about the human Sunset Shimmer? Or Equestria in general?

*Written for National Pony Writing Month*

Published 2017-11-05 16:40:05 UTC
Last updated 2017-12-28 03:50:45 UTC

Chapter One

At first glance, there was nothing all that different between Equestria and this new world. The grass felt exactly the same, the sky was the same color, and even the weather was the same. Starlight had already been through the portal once before, so the experience of going from pony anatomy to human anatomy wasn't a surprise. Still, she reasoned that no matter how many times she came through the portal, seeing her new body, the hands, fingers, and only two legs would never cease to surprise her.

“Starlight Glimmer?”

Starlight's balled up fists rubbed her eyes, trying to get acclimated to the bright sunlight after coming from the inside of Twilight's castle library, where Princess Twilight often kept her shades closed to keep the distractions out. She looked up in the direction of the voice to see Sunset Shimmer and her friends sitting right next to the portal on a picnic blanket.

Thank goodness! Starlight thought ecstatically. Just the ponies... er people I was hoping to see.

“Hi girls!”

Starlight took a few tentative steps on two legs towards the girls. Going from pony form to human form was a bit difficult, so she wobbled slightly with every step until Rarity came forward to help her.

“Not that it isn't lovely to see you, darling, but what are you doing here?” Rarity asked as she pulled Starlight into a hug and led her towards their little makeshift picnic area; letting Starlight lean on her until they reached the blanket.

Starlight reached into her messenger bag and pulled out the note that had come through the portal.

“Princess Twilight said that this note came through the portal earlier for me. It's from the Starlight Glimmer in this world, it sounds serious and I was hoping that maybe you girls knew something about it.”

Sunset raised an eyebrow, but reached for the note that protruded out of Starlight's balled up fists. She read it through and turned it upside down and flipped it over countless times as if she expected the letter to spontaneously add several pages that completely detailed exactly when it was written, who wrote it, and how it made its way through the portal.

Unfortunately, it was still just a single piece of paper with only three sentences on it. None of which remotely explained what was going on or why Starlight needed to come through the portal.

“I don't think any of us have ever seen the Starlight Glimmer of this world before!” Rarity piped up.

“Actually, I think...” Fluttershy started.

“No, I definitely have never seen this world's Starlight Glimmer around here,” Applejack interrupted, agreeing with Rarity.

“Maybe one of you guys saw somepony... er somebody, drop this letter off at the portal? I mean it may not have come directly from her, maybe she has a friend or an acquaintance who dropped it off for her?”

The seven girls all shook their head.

“The portal is kinda sorta a secret. Emphasis on sorta,” Pinkie Pie said. “I mean, like, everybody here at Canterlot High knows that there is a portal to another world where there's a pony princess and sure, there are definitely people outside of school who know that magic exists, but I mean, only a few select people at CHS know that there's a portal right here. They just think it's a seemingly normal statue of a horse!” She dropped her voice down to an ominous whisper, “but they'll never know the truth...”

“So then it must be someone from Canterlot High then, right? I mean maybe she doesn't go here, but what if somebody who goes here who told her about the portal? She could have dropped it off or asked that person to drop it off or something?” Starlight asked.

“Well, actually I found this...” Fluttershy started.

“Not exactly,” Sunset Shimmer interrupted as she handed the note back to Starlight, who looked clearly deflated after Sunset shot down her suggestion.

“Around here, we’re kinda known as the Guardians of the Portal,” Rainbow Dash said.

“Since when? Literally nobody has ever called us that,” Applejack argued.

Rainbow Dash ignored her and continued, “most people here don't even know where the portal actually is, but they know that we are Princess Twilight's friends so we obviously know where the portal is; people around here know that. So, ergo, we're the Guardians of the Portal.”

“Maybe it happened when you guys weren't in front of the portal?”

“Didn't you say that it happened today?” Twilight asked.

“I mean, yea, as far as I know. Today was the first day that Princess Twilight said anything about it to me, so I think so?”

“I suppose it's possible,” Twilight admitted.

“It could have happened while we were in class,” Sunset agreed. “If it was somebody from CHS they would have had to skip class to do it because we were out here all morning before school started. Of course, it was somebody else in town or somebody from Crystal Prep, it's possible that they were able to do it while we were in class, but I can't imagine anybody from CHS or Crystal Prep has ever talked about their experiences with Equestrian magic. They would sound insane.”

“Maybe the portal is more well known around here than we thought?” Rarity suggested.

“Don't you think there would be a lot more random trips to Equestria? At least just to see if it could be done?” Sunset asked before turning to the new addition to their group this afternoon. “Starlight, have you or Princess Twilight or anypony else in Equestria ever seen anything or anyone strange come through the portal outside of this letter?”

Starlight shook her head.

“I'm not sure we should count out anyone at Canterlot High just yet; It wouldn't be unusual for somebody to skip class. It's probably far more likely than somebody who came all this way just for the portal. Trust me, I've made that trip. It's hard to do it quickly and without somebody at least taking some semblance of notice of a stranger by the portal,” Twilight pointed out.

“I understand that there's probably a lot of possible variations, but could you girls possibly let me know if you find anything else? Anything at all?”

“Of course,” Sunset Shimmer assured her. “Anything we can do to help. That's what friends do, after all. Right girls?”

The other six girls all agreed loudly and pulled Starlight into a group hug. She inwardly thanked the stars that the girls here were almost exactly the same as the ones she left behind in Equestria – the best friends ever and the only girls she would ever entrust with a problem of this magnitude.

“Excuse me, are you Starlight Glimmer?”

Yes, finally! Someone who knows me! This is a good start to this world. Less than ten minutes and I might already have a lead!

Starlight untangled herself from her friends and came face-to-face with a woman that she could only believe was this world's version of Princess Celestia. Thank goodness for another familiar and trustworthy face.

“Why yes I am! Pri...”

“Principal Celestia!” Sunset Shimmer cut in. “How do you know our good friend Starlight Glimmer?”

Celestia ignored the girls comments and kept her focus on Starlight.

“Are you okay? Are you safe?”

Starlight's brow furrowed. “Uh yea, why wouldn't I be?”

Fluttershy cleared her throat, finally prompting the other girls to take notice of her. She pulled a piece of paper out of her backpack. The paper featured a picture of Starlight Glimmer with a large frown on her face. Above her photo in large bold red letters was one word: Missing.

“What?” Starlight whispered to herself as she reached for the paper. Principal Celestia intercepted her before she could grab it and put both her hands on Starlight's shoulders.

“Starlight Glimmer, why don't you join me in my office? I'll make you some tea and we can chat while we wait for your parents to come.”

“My parents?”

* * *

The last time Starlight Glimmer saw her parents was a few months before Sunburst got his cutie mark.

She was raised in a tiny little unicorn town, usually not shown on any maps, despite it being just outside of Canterlot. It was the town that her parents had grown up in as well and they hated it. Even as a filly, Starlight could tell that they not only resented the fact that they were stuck raising her but that they were stuck living in such a small town where everypony was in everypony else's business. Her parents especially hated it because they had aspirations for something greater in life.

Starlight never had the opportunity to find out what those great aspirations they harbored were; when she was a filly, she had never even thought to ask them about it.

And one morning she realized she would never get the chance when she came downstairs for breakfast and found out that they were gone.

While she was asleep they had packed up their bags and slipped out the door in the middle of the night, leaving her to be raised by her sweet, but somewhat disinterested grandmother.

In a twinge of excitement and fear, Starlight hoped that wasn't the case for her counterpart in this world. She unballed her fists and used her extended fingers to brush away the stray hairs from her face.

She wanted to attempt to seem as human as possible for her parents.

Sure, they weren't really her parents, but in a way, they still sort of were and it was the most parenting she would have had in years so she wanted to impress them and she wanted them to love her.

“Is there anything I can get for you while you wait?”

Starlight opened her mouth to speak, she wanted to tell Celestia that she had the wrong girl. Surely, she would understand, she had to have known about the portal, it was literally right in front of the school. She reasoned that it probably wouldn't be difficult or take that much time to explain to her that this world's Starlight was still missing out there and they need to look for her.

It could have been such an easy fix; if only Starlight had been able to form the words to let her know.

Once I meet my parents, she reasoned. Then, I can tell everyone that this has all been just a big mistake.

* * *

Every time the door opened, Starlight would perk up. Of course, for the past hour, it had just been Principal Celestia and Vice Principal Luna coming in and out of the office to check on her and ask if she needed anything.

From her seat in front of the desk, she watched the sun slowly set over the horizon and Starlight had begun to think that even on this world, once again, her parents had forgotten about her. Perhaps this worlds Starlight wasn't actually missing, maybe she realized that she was living with parents that didn't care enough to want to know where she was.

Just as Starlight was beginning to wonder if Principal Celestia would just let her leave her office and go to the safety of one of her friends' homes, she could see several cars with flashing lights on top rush over to the school with several other cars without lights following behind them with just as much haste.

That got her attention. She crept toward the window to watch as the line of cars stopped along the road next to the empty schoolyard. The rest of the students had dispersed hours ago, even her friends had wished her luck while they went home to their own families for dinner. Now, the yard was filled with people again, most of those people were in uniform, but there were a few plain clothed people that Starlight tried to catch a glimpse of as they followed a few of the officers into the building.

Her face flushed. This was it, the moment she had waited for since the day they left. She ran back to her seat wordlessly and straightened herself out just in time for the door to open. Once again, it was just Principal Celestia, and while Starlight knew there were people right outside the door coming to see her, she still felt a slight twinge of disappointment.

“Starlight Glimmer, there are some people here to see you. Please answer them honestly, dear, they are just trying to help you.”

Starlight nodded wordlessly which led to a small, but relieved smile from Celestia. Celestia nodded to people outside the office that Starlight couldn't quite see from her angle, and then left the room. She could feel a pit in her stomach start to form from the nerves, each millisecond that she waited seemed to go on for eternity until a small group of people filed into the room.

She eagerly gave each person a once over trying to watch out for the body language of her parents, were they relieved that she was safe? Were they disinterested and surprised that she... well that their daughter had been missing at all?

As soon as they had all filed into the room around her seat and she had looked at every single person, her heart dropped. Everybody in the room looked like a perfect stranger to her.

Maybe it's just been a while? Maybe they just look different from what I remember, it has been a few years and this is a different world. She thought, trying to reassure herself.

Two of the strangers in the room ran over and engulfed her in a hug. They looked young, far too young to be her parents, and nowhere near what she remembered them to look like. He was tall, a light yellow in color with a bushy burnt orange mustache and hair and she was gray with curly mint hair.

Whoever they were, Starlight definitely felt loved by them, but she couldn't shake the gnawing disappointment that they weren't her real parents.

“Where have you been, Glimmer? We've been so worried!” The woman asked as she pulled Starlight closer to her.

“Well... I...” she didn't know how to answer that anymore. The whole reason she hadn't said anything about coming through the portal sooner was because she wanted to meet her parents, but these people definitely weren't her parents.

“Starlight Glimmer, we talked about this,” another woman in the room said with a heaving sigh. She had soft two toned pink hair wrapped in a tight bun and thick black glasses perched on her ivory skin. “There are consequences to your actions; you can't just run away from your foster families every time something doesn't go your way and expect everything to just be fine. This is serious! Morning Dew and Rondache were worried sick!”

I guess this world's Golden Aura and Quick Charge weren't interested in taking care of me either.

“You see, there's a perfectly good explanation for everything!” Starlight said before adding in a softer voice, “sort of.”

The woman raised an eyebrow and leaned back against Principal Celestia's desk.

“And what would that be?”

The pit in Starlight's stomach returned, but she powered through it and held out the note that she had received in front of her for everybody to see. Under the bright florescent lighting, the handwriting seemed eerie and worrying, especially now that she knew the other Starlight had been missing for several weeks now.

“Well, you see the Starlight Glimmer that you're looking for and me are two completely different beings. I come from this place called Equestria and everyone there is a pony. I got this letter the other day that came through the portal... the portal is in the base of that statue of a horse right outside this school by the way... which is kind of funny right seeing as it's a statue of a horse.” Starlight pointed to the statue right outside the window. The other people in the room humored her by looking outside unenthusiastically and then looking back at her waiting for her to continue. Starlight cleared her throat. “Anyway, the letter was signed by the Starlight Glimmer of this world and she sounded like she was in trouble so I came through the portal to help her. So, really you found the Starlight Glimmer from Equestria when you really need to find the Starlight Glimmer from Earth. She could be in serious danger! So please, promise me that you won't stop looking for her!”

The officers looked at each other and back at Starlight and groaned.

“Starlight Glimmer, you realize that we keep a record of all your stunts, right?” One of the officers asked.

“What? I don't understand.”

“This isn't even the first time you've used the portal to another world excuse before,” the second officer added.

“Miss Care, you want us to do anything about this or do you think you can take it from here?” the first officer asked the pink haired woman.

There has to be something I can say or do to show them I'm not lying. What if I showed them the portal? Would that help? Oh I wish I could just use magic to prove my point, but it works differently here. Ugh, I have to do something! These strangers don't believe me!

“I can take it from here,” Miss Care responded with a curt nod, immediately shutting down any possible plans Starlight had been formulating in her mind. “Thank you for escorting myself and her guardians here. Have a wonderful evening!”

The two officers walked out of the room and the pit in Starlight's stomach seemed to grow. Not only did they not believe her, but now they had given up the search on Starlight Glimmer. If it ever came up that something happened to Starlight Glimmer, she knew that she would never forgive herself because her being here meant that it was her fault that they called off the search.

“Do you two mind leaving Starlight and I alone for a few minutes? I would like to have a talk with her about everything that's been happening in a safe space.”

“Of course!” Morning Dew replied as she led her husband out the door. “We'll just be right outside if you need us, Glimmer!”

Miss Care closed Principal Celestia's office door behind them and sat down on her desk. She rubbed her forehead in frustration while Starlight fidgeted in her seat uncomfortably.

“You promised me that you wouldn't cause any more problems, Starlight. I know that things have been rough for you lately, but running away and making up some bullshit story about that statue being a portal to a horse world? Really?”

“It's the truth!” Starlight argued.

“No, it's not. It wasn't true when you used that excuse to explain the last few times you disappeared for a few days and it's not true now! Every time you say that you lose more credibility with me and the police, you realize that right? And your foster parents, for goodness sakes, you got so lucky with these people, they were so desperately worried sick about you that I got several phone calls a day from them asking about you. These people really care about you, don't you understand that? And where are you? Just running around causing trouble once again? What did you do this time? I hope you realize that I can't always clean up your messes for you. You were incredibly lucky last time that Ms. Abacus Cinch decided against pressing charges because if she did, there wouldn't be much that myself or anybody else could do to help you.”

Starlight sat awestruck in her seat, unsure of how to process this new information.

Abacus who? What is this other Starlight doing? And who is she doing this stuff to? Lying to people about where she's been, running away and causing trouble, and just how long has she known about the portal?

“Don't you have anything to say for yourself?”

She shook her head so quickly that she swore she could hear her brain rattling around.

“I love you, Starlight, I really do. You've been a part of my caseload since you were a kid and I just want the best for you. So help me help you. What's going on? Why did you run?”

“I don't know.”

Miss Care sighed. “You say that every time, but there has to be a reason. A happy person doesn't just run away from home without a word.”

“I really don't know, I'm sorry. Like I said I'm a...”

Miss Care groaned. “Starlight, you aren't a pony from Equestria. Please, don't try to convince me otherwise. Just promise me that you'll try harder to be present in your family, that you'll work hard in school, and that you won't cause any more trouble. Can you do that for me?”

“Yes, I can. I promise.”

“I'm going to send you home with Morning Dew and Rondache tonight. You have my number on your phone if you need anything. Please Starlight, if there's anything bothering you, please just call me before you do something drastic. The two of them have been patient with you so far, but even the most patient people have their breaking point.”

“I know,” Starlight whispered.

“So please talk to me before you do something you'll regret. I had to pull a lot of strings to even find this family for you after some of the stunts you've pulled in the past. If you ruin this chance, I don't know how many others you'll have. Please tell me you understand that.”

“I understand,” Starlight responded.

She wasn't sure if the other version of her understood that though. Starlight had to admit that she was never exactly the best pony, even with Princess Twilight's help, she was just starting to become better, but this Starlight didn't seem to have the same good influences she had in Equestria.

“So please, stop suggesting that there's a place called Equestria where ponies run free or whatever. Starlight, it's not helping your case. Just keep your head down, do your best, and finish school. You're a smart girl, one of the most gifted I've ever seen and you know your way around technology better than most people. Just don't let the small things get to you. Okay?”

Starlight hesitated. She didn't want the human Starlight to get into any trouble, she knew that this Starlight probably wasn't lucky enough to have friends that could teach her how to better herself, but she hoped that by setting a good example maybe if or, more likely, when the Earth Starlight Glimmer was found she would be inspired to be better too.

“Okay,” Starlight agreed quietly. Miss Care forced a small smile and Starlight wondered how often the other Starlight made false promises to Miss Care over the years. She didn't blame her, if she was in Miss Care's shoes, she probably wouldn't believe her either.

“Okay. Have a good night Starlight, please think about this conversation. Please stop wasting everybody's time.”

Miss Care opened the door to Principal Celestia's office and nodded to the couple right outside the door before walking out of the office. Starlight looked up at the couple and slowly got out of her seat.

“I'm sorry about that,” Starlight said.

“Miss Care said you were a difficult case, Glimmer, but we definitely weren't expecting you to run away within a week of moving in.”

“Right, about that... I wasn't joking. I'm really not your Starlight Glimmer, I really don't think you should give up on the search for her; she's out there somewhere and she could be in danger! Please just let me prove it to you!”

A flash of frustration flew across both Morning Dew and Rondache's faces.

“How about we circle back to this tomorrow, Glimmer? It's been a long day,” Rondache said.

His wife put her arm around Starlight and pulled her closely.

“I'm sure the 'other Starlight Glimmer' will be okay for one more night, dear,” she said with a wink.

“It'll only take a second, I promise. The proof is right outside, I can show you while we are on the way out!”

Her guardians looked at each other with a resigned sigh and nodded in agreement as Morning Dew led her out of the school.

With the sun down, the cool evening air had come over the town. Starlight shivered slightly, but she was determined to show them that she wasn't lying; other Starlight was depending on her. She wriggled out of Morning Dew's grasp and made a beeline to the statue and knelt down in front of it.

“Starlight Glimmer, what's going on?” Morning Dew asked.

“Just give me a second! I promise, it'll all make sense!”

She put her hands on the base of the statue at the exact same place that she had just come out of several hours prior, but instead of her fingers going through the portal where she could show off a brief image of her hooves to her guardians, she was touching cold stone. Starlight's eyes widened in fear, Twilight had rigged the portal to keep it open all the time so that either she could go through the portal to see her friends here or they could come to her. It was almost never used anymore, but Twilight's rig still stood, or at least it had when she had left earlier, but it must have been tampered with. She clawed at the statue's base in vain as if the portal would just pop back to life at a moments notice.

“Glimmer, what are you doing?” Rondache asked.

“It was here just a second ago, I swear!”

“What was?”

“It was a... oh never mind,” Starlight said with a resigned sigh. “It doesn't matter.”

“Come along, dear, it's getting late. Maybe you can show us tomorrow?” Morning Dew suggested as she helped the teenager up off the ground.

Starlight looked back at the statue and bit her lip. The portal being closed threw a wrench in her plan; now she had no way to prove that she wasn't this world's Starlight Glimmer. So far they didn't seem willing to hear her out and without the portal she had no backup plan to make people believe her.

“Right, tomorrow...” she whispered as Morning Dew and Rondache led her to the car.

Author's Note

I've been working on this for National Pony Writing Month so while I've looked it over a few times to make some clarifications and minor edits I may have missed some things. Please let me know if you find anything!

Chapter Two

Morning Dew and Rondache's home was not as opulent as her room in Princess Twilight's castle, but it had a comfortable lived in feeling that Starlight really appreciated.

After bringing her home the night before, they had sat down to a quiet dinner of pizza. Never in her life was Starlight Glimmer more relieved to have a meal that she could eat without drawing attention to her clumsiness in her new body, the relief was only intensified by the silence that occurred during the meal. She was too embarrassed about having to be picked up by perfect strangers, looking crazy in front of said strangers, and then having the portal close up when she needed it most. Despite the welcome silence, the meal passed by slowly as she struggled not to make eye contact with either of them and focus on the plate in front of her.

The relief she felt when dinner was over and they just escorted her up to her room was unparalleled and as soon as her head hit the pillow of her bed, she fell fast asleep.

After all, tying to save somebody and bounce back from several hours of embarrassment can really exhaust a girl.

* * *

When she opened her eyes, all she could see was the morning sun trickling in through the window blinds and onto the brand new comforter that she slept under. She sat up in bed and rubbed her eyes taking her time to enjoy the morning, get used to the sudden brightness, and her new surroundings. For the first time since she was shown to her room, she had the opportunity to look around. She had to admit, the room was really nicely put together. Soft pink walls with delicate art covered the walls with gold and white furniture that Starlight surmised must have been some sort of set which impressed her. Matching furniture like that wasn't something that was done in Equestria unless you were incredibly wealthy since every stitch of furniture was hoofmade by little family owned stores. In this room though, Starlight had to admit that the “matchiness” of the decor definitely added a more put together element to the room.

Despite this, it didn't take a genius to realize that it wasn't really decorated with Starlight Glimmer in mind.

Starlight slipped out of bed and walked around the room, laying her hand lightly on all of the furniture as she walked, hoping to find a letter or something laying on top of them that Starlight left behind for her. Although admittedly, she was also just in awe of the fact that these two perfect strangers had no qualms with taking her in and giving her a nice room with beautiful furniture. That was another thing that wasn't quite common in Equestria as there was always some family member or family friend that was able to take a filly or colt into their home. She had to admit, she was slightly jealous that the Starlight Glimmer of this world didn't fully appreciate everything that Rondache and Morning Dew did for her.

In the corner of her eye, she caught a glimpse of something that didn't quite match up with the rest of the room. Next to her bed, piled into a little corner were a few little ragged black backpacks. There was no doubt in her mind that they were her counterparts luggage.

Finally! There has to be something important in one of those bags!

She sat down and grabbed the bag at the top of the pile, slowly rifling through it trying to find hints that might have been left behind for her; at this point though, Starlight would have just settled for information about what this other Starlight was even like to begin with. The information that she had received so far through the police officers and Miss Care had done nothing, but worry her.

The first bag was just full of clothes, all fairly similar in style to the ones that the portal dressed her in once she came through. Annoying, since she was hoping for something more, but understandable, in this world they seemed to value clothes and having more than one set of clothes that were just for casual wear.

She threw that bag over her shoulder nonchalantly and immediately grabbed the next bag which was filled filled with books. That one must have just been her counterpart's school bag since most of the books in there looked like they could be textbooks. She threw that bag over her shoulder as well, with a little more force than the last one which led to a loud and forceful crash when it hit the ground behind her.

The last bag was smaller and thinner, but she grabbed it anyway, inside were a few thin plastic objects. She had seen them the last time she was in this world, apparently they were computers and tablets. Her friends used them all the time, so of course, it would make sense that Starlight Glimmer had one too. She closed up that bag and pushed it back into the corner with as much force as she could muster in her frustrated state.

None of these bags are helpful! If you're gonna send me a letter begging for me to come through the portal and offer my help, you should at least have the common decency to give me an idea of what I should be looking for!

The only thing rummaging through those bags had told her, was that Starlight Glimmer was a light packer. Which, unfortunately, was true for her as well.

She once had a whole house in her town, the biggest in the village, all to herself. Once she moved to Ponyville to start her studies under Princess Twilight's tutelage, she only brought what she carried in her saddlebags and she never felt like she was missing anything. Now, she hoped that if her counterpart ever had to go through the mirror to save her for any reason, she wouldn't be hard pressed to find out who the Equestrian Starlight Glimmer was or what she was like.

Now she was wondering if she even had a good kite in her room. What would the Earth Starlight Glimmer think of her if there wasn't anything that showed off the things she truly enjoyed?

She looked in the mirror above the dresser and brushed her hair to get ready for the school day. Apparently, while Miss Care was talking to her, Morning Dew and Rondache spoke to Principal Celestia about getting her enrolled in Canterlot High School since she already seemed to have friends there and she was comfortable enough around Principal Celestia that she wouldn't try anything. While, neither of her guardians had said anything out loud, Starlight was beginning to realize that before she ran away, Starlight Glimmer hadn't exactly gotten along with anybody at her last school.

She blinked and realized she had begun to zone out while staring at the mirror.

Mirror.

Crap. The portal was closed.

She had been so focused on getting used to this world and trying to figure out what Starlight Glimmer was up to that she had forgotten that her only way home was gone. Hopefully, she would be able to borrow Sunset Shimmer's book to send Princess Twilight a message at some point. Twilight would know what to do, she always knew what to do.

It wasn't that this world wasn't amazing to experience, but she couldn't stay here forever. There were friends and ponies back in Equestria who would miss her. Ponies that were waiting for her, just like there were people here who needed their Starlight Glimmer back; it wasn't fair for anyone involved to have to deal with a cheap imitation of their Starlight.

For now, she would have to play along though; it seemed like an impossible task to convince the people here that she had actually come through a portal from another world.

Damn it, Starlight Glimmer! Did you really have to use the portal excuse over and over again? You're just making figuring out what happened to you more difficult than it needs to be

“Starlight Glimmer, dear?” Morning Dew opened the door, surprised to see a fully awake and dressed teenage girl rummaging through her bags. Her eyes widened. “Wow, you must have slept really well. I think this is the first time that I didn't have to try to wake you up for school. I suppose our talk to Principal Celestia yesterday about switching you to Canterlot High School was a good idea”

“Yea, thanks. I really appreciate it.”

Morning Dew beamed. “I suppose we should have realized that Crystal Prep just wasn't the right fit for you, you already seem to have friends at Canterlot High School and after that whole debacle at Crystal Prep we should have just pulled you out right then and there, but it was just so difficult to get you into that school, that...”

“Debacle? What debacle?” Starlight Glimmer interrupted.

If I can get Morning Dew to offer up even a smidgen of information, I might have a reason to check out Crystal Prep for more information about Starlight. It would be so much easier to just go there than to search through everything Starlight Glimmer has ever touched.

Morning Dew's smile faded. “You're right dear, we shouldn't discuss it. It's in the past and it's time to look towards the future. A much brighter future hopefully.”

That's not what I meant, Morning Dew.

Starlight wanted to pester her further about it, and it took all her might not to say anything or give her a hard time for trying to cover up the past.

“Why don't you come downstairs for breakfast?” Morning Dew asked, changing the subject before Starlight could work up the nerve to ask her guardian for more information.

As if on cue, her stomach rumbled and while she really wasn't interested in trying to make small talk with her foster parents, especially not if they weren't going to tell her things she wanted to know, she was incredibly hungry. So, she sighed and nodded. “Sure, I guess.”

She grabbed the backpack full of textbooks and followed Morning Dew downstairs to the dining room they had eaten in the night before. The table was filled with food and plates, it was a smaller table, but every available space was still filled up with food nonetheless.

“Wow! You really made all this for me?”

“And us too, kiddo. It's not all yours,” Rondache said with a playful smile as he loaded up his plate with eggs and bacon.

“But I always say that a great breakfast is a great way to start the day, especially at a new school. Personally, I think Canterlot High will be the best place for you yet!” Morning Dew beamed.

“I think so too,” Starlight replied as she mimicked Rondache's actions of using the fork to get the food onto her plate. It was a much easier task than Twilight had made it out to be when she was telling Starlight all about her experiences in this world. She picked up a piece of bacon and took a bite.

Twilight didn't say anything about this either! I would have remembered if she had told me that this world had better food than what we can get in Equestria!

“This is really good!”

“Morning Dew does make the best bacon, I've ever had.”

“Bacon. Wow! I don't think I've ever had that before,” Starlight exclaimed, as she grabbed another few pieces of bacon and put them on her plate.

“What? No bacon in Equestria?” Rondache asked jokingly.

“No, not at all!”

“Why don't you take some with you on the way to school, it would make a great snack for the trip?”

“Oh thanks, that's a great idea!” Starlight said as she got up and grabbed as many pieces of bacon as she could in one hand and with her other hand, she picked up her ratty black backpack.

“Don't forget your phone!” Rondache called out to Starlight without looking up from the newspaper he was reading. “You left it on the coffee table before you ran away. Morning Dew and I would prefer it if you kept the phone on you at all times so you don't escape through that portal to another world again.”

“Ha ha, very funny,” Starlight replied nonchalantly. “I'll take it with me.”

“If you are going to stay after school, we would really like it if you could call to let us know. Then, after school if you're staying for extra curriculars, we would really appreciate it if you shoot us a text every hour or so to let us know where you are,” Morning Dew said. “We really don't want to have to call Miss Care again.”

She reached down to pick up the phone and looked at it carefully. The last time she had been here she had been introduced to cell phones through Sunset Shimmer and now she was thankful for that. She still really didn't know how they worked or what she was really supposed to do with it, but she knew it was really important and everyone she knew had one to talk to their friends.

“I know. I won't give you a reason to, I promise.”

Her guardians facial features softened immediately and Starlight felt a slightly warm feeling in her. They may not have been her real parents, but the two of them cared more about her than anypony that had ever tried to raise her in Equestria and she's barely known them for 12 hours.

* * *

As soon as she arrived at Canterlot High School, she saw Sunset Shimmer standing next to the portal, relief washed over her as she walked up to her. After a parade of strangers faces last night, it was so great to see a friendly face.

A friendly face that knew for a fact that she was from Equestria.

Starlight didn't think there was anything better than that at this point, than having a friend who knew exactly what she was going through.

And more to the point, right now it was a friend who could answer one of the most important questions of the day. She ran over to Sunset and stuck her cell phone in Sunset's face.

“Hi Sunset! I need help; I don't know what this is! Morning Dew and Rondache said that they wanted me to use it to text them, but I have no idea what that means or how you use this cell phone. You know how to use it, right? I mean, I'm pretty sure the last time I was here I saw you using something similar at the mall. Right?”

Starlight took a deep breath, the first breath she had taken since before she started talking while Sunset just looked at her in bewilderment and slowly moved Starlight's cell phone down and away from her face.

“What's all over your phone? Why does it feel so greasy?”

Starlight looked down at it, parts of it were covered in little globs of grease left over from breakfast this morning and blushed, taking it back from her friend and wiped it off on her jeans.

“Sorry about that. I was trying to figure it out while I was eating breakfast. Have you ever had bacon before? I can't believe we don't have that in Equestria; it would taste so amazing on hay burgers!”

“First of all, bacon isn't in Equestria because it's made from pigs, but yes, it's delicious,” she said as she took back the newly cleaned phone.

“Wait... what?” Starlight practically screamed.

“Second of all,” Sunset interrupted. “Yes, I definitely know how to use a cell phone, but do I need to unlock it before I can use it?”

Starlight's brow furrowed as she took the phone back from Sunset and looked at it from every possible angle, even going so far as to lift it up to look beneath it and knocking on the back of the case.

“I don't see a lock on it.”

Sunset slowly reached over and grabbed her phone with two fingers and placed the phone in plain view of the new Equestrian transplant. Starlight looked on enthusiastically as she clicked on the phone's home button, it instantly sprung to life, no unlock code needed, and went straight to the designated “home page” on Starlight's phone.

“Wow!” Starlight announced. “I thought Princess Twilight said there was no magic in this world!”

“This world has its charms, that's for sure, it's definitely not magic like in Equestria, but it's pretty impressive nonetheless.”

“So... now, what is a text and how do I send one?”

Sunset sat her down next to the portal and spent a few minutes explaining how it worked with the rest of their friends joining them one by one before the day started and to help explain exactly what both her foster parents expected she would be using her phone for and the other apps and useful tricks that Starlight could also use on her phone.

“Ok so that's texting, but now what's Facespace?” Starlight asked with her finger was hovering over the app as if she were afraid that pressing it would cause undue destruction.

“Only one of the greatest apps ever!” Pinkie yelled. “I use it to talk to my big sister Maud while she's away at school getting her college degree!”

“So then is it like a text message, but with voices?” Starlight asked. “Like a phone call! I saw Sunset try to make phone calls the last time I was here. I didn't know you use Facespace for that.”

“Er... no not exactly,” Applejack said.

“It's a place to post pictures, talk to friends, and show off your life. Think of it as a digital diary,” Sunset explained.

“Oh, ok! I'm sorry girls, Equestria doesn't have this kind of technology. It's all foreign to me. I'm just starting to figure out the whole texting thing and this Facespace thing has this little red blurb in the corner with numbers and none of the other things have that...”

“That's called a notification, darling. You should probably check those.”

Sunset Shimmer perked up. “Yes! Check your Facespace notifications, we know absolutely nothing about this world's Starlight Glimmer, this probably has everything we'll ever need to know! I can't believe we didn't think about trying this sooner!”

An app on this phone can tell me everything I need to know about a person here? There really is magic in this world. It's strange magic, but magic nonetheless.

Starlight nodded eagerly at the thought and pressed on the Facespace button, but the excitement on her face quickly contorted into a look of confusion.

“Yea... I don't actually know how any of this works.”

Sunset scooted over next to her with the rest of their friends piling around them trying to catch a glace at Starlight's phone.

“Ok so all the notifications you seem to have are all messages.”

Starlight's eyes lit up. “Messages? From friends? I'm so proud of Starlight Glimmer here if that's the case! I felt like I had to twist ponies ankles to be my friend in Equestria.”

“I'm sure that's not true,” Fluttershy assured her.

“Back in Equestria, I manipulated an entire town into giving up their special talents so they wouldn't think that they were special and that they would never try to leave me or any of their other new friends behind. I don't think I have ever met another pony or person who has ever gone that far to make friends.”

“I stand corrected,” Fluttershy mumbled.

Sunset pulled Starlight's phone closer to her and read through the messages, every second her expressive face seemed to show more and more confusion before she finally put the phone down on the ground.

“What's wrong?” Twilight asked.

“This doesn't make any sense. All of the messages Starlight Glimmer had were from accounts that aren't active anymore, so you can see the message, but you can't go to that profile to find out who they are or anything about them at all, really. It's strange. Who has a ton of messages from different deleted accounts?”

“All of them are deleted accounts? Every single one of them?” Twilight asked. “I mean, I barely use Facespace, but I don't think I've ever heard of somebody having an inbox full of messages from a bunch of different deleted accounts. Maybe the app just updated and it's got some issues”

The rest of the girls immediately pulled out their phones and to check their accounts, within seconds the six other girls just shook their heads and put their phones back in their bags.

“Well, it was just a theory,” Twilight said with a shrug.

“Hey, that one has a picture!” Pinkie Pie yelled, pointing at one of the unopened messages whose preview only said Gabby Gums sent a photo “What do you think it's a picture of?”

“Only one way to find out,” Starlight Glimmer said as she clicked on the message.

The girls all braced themselves, they weren't sure what to expect, but based on how strange everything had been so far; the mysterious letter, the disappearance, and now an inbox full of strange messages, they felt like they needed to be ready for anything.

They had defeated wild magic and sirens already though, what was one other little mystery to deal with before the school day started?

“Hey, it's just a picture of Starlight Glimmer!” Pinkie exclaimed. “Phew, am I right, girls?”

Pinkie Pie was right. The picture that they had been so worried about, was just a photo of Starlight Glimmer sitting on her bed writing in her composition notebook. The Starlight in the picture didn't notice the photo being taken, she seemed far more interested in the notebook in front of her. The girls all began to noticeably relax, all of them except for Starlight.

“That's my... er... her bedroom,” Starlight pointed out. “The picture was taken from outside her window. The only way to get a picture like that is to climb the tree outside her window, there's no way you would be able to get that angle from inside the bedroom, her bed is right up against the window.”

“Well that's not creepy at all,” Rainbow Dash muttered.

“We need to tell somebody about this; that's illegal!” Twilight announced, clutching her backpack close to her. “What if that person is the reason that Starlight Glimmer is missing!”

“Twilight, we have no proof,” Sunset Shimmer reminded her.

“That message is proof! It should be proof enough.”

“It's from an account that doesn't exist anymore, they could just think that it was a prank from a friend.”

“A girl is missing! Somebody has to find her!”

“She isn't missing anymore,” Starlight replied sadly. “At least, not according to the police around here. Apparently, the other Starlight Glimmer has a pension for lying about being abducted or running away. And if any of you girls go to the police, they will probably just assume that I put you up to it or something. They told me that they had an entire file full of claims she had made over the years.”

“Oh come on, we've gone up against magic. We can figure out where one girl went. Especially now that we've found our secret weapon,” Rainbow Dash announced.

“A secret weapon?” Applejack asked, unconvinced. “And what would that be?”

“We have Starlight Glimmer's cell phone and access to all her social media accounts. We can still read the messages from the deleted profiles, and there are probably plenty of people that she's interacted with is going to have a deleted profile, now are they?”

Rainbow Dash grabbed the cell phone and scrolled through her messages. The rest of the girls were gathered around also trying to see if they could find anything that stood out to them, Twilight even took out a notebook and started to jot down notes. All the while, Starlight Glimmer sat off to the side staring at the statue sullenly.

“Starlight Glimmer, is everything okay?”

“Wow, there are like a lot of other pictures of Starlight writing in that notebook in some of these messages. Whoever sent them must really like to climb trees,” Pinkie announced. “You should check them out, Starlight! Some of them also have really cute messages before the picture was sent!”

“That. That right there is what's wrong with me, right now! There was somebody out there that was taking pictures of her through her window. Whoever did that is probably the reason that she's missing and I can't do anything about it because nobody believes me.”

“It's okay, we believe you and that's all that really matters. Trust me,” Sunset assured her.

“Wait a minute this picture is taken from even further up, it kind of looks like whoever is sending Starlight these photos is trying to take a picture of whatever is in her notebook.”

“I dunno, Twi. It kind of just looks like she's just working on some homework or somethin',” Applejack said.

“No way she's working on homework. There's something on the page...” Twilight tried to make the picture bigger, but it just made it blurrier which just served to frustrate her even more. “I can't see what's in the notebook, but a lot of the messages that are sent with the pictures say things like 'I know' and 'You can't hide it from me' which yes, sounds threatening enough as it is, but what if they are talking about what's in her notebooks?”

The Earth girls didn't look convinced, but all it took was that one suggestion and Starlight took off her backpack and started rummaging through it with fervor, taking out every book that was in her bag, flipping through the pages to see if it matched up with the book in the picture even slightly, and when it didn't she just tossed them over her shoulder in frustration then moved on to the next book.

“Starlight?” Rarity asked curiously. “Is everything okay?”

“We need to find that book.”

“Okay, come on, you can't even see the stuff in the pictures, you've probably already gone through the notebook and threw it away without realizing it. It's probably just homework.”

“What if it isn't? I feel like I would know if I saw it.”

“Why do you think that?” Twilight asked.

“I just... I don't know, but I feel like it's more important than just homework and I think it's back at Morning Dew and Rondache's place. I bet if we dig through her room we can find it. Do you trust me?”

“I guess?” Rainbow Dash responded. “It just feels like a stretch.”

“Whoever took these pictures obviously wanted to make her feel uncomfortable and as if they know something she knows. She's gotta be writing down that information somewhere and I don't think it has anything to do with math or world leaders. So, I'm going back home to search Starlight Glimmer's room, who's with me?”

The girls continued to just stand there staring at her in surprise.

“The... the bell is about to ring. We can't just skip class, what if there's a pop quiz? What if they call our parents to let us know that we weren't in class! The consequences are endless!”

“Can't we do it after class?” Fluttershy asked. “The notebook probably isn't going anywhere.”

“No, it's not, but Starlight could be in danger right now. I don't want to waste a second just sitting around in class learning about things I don't care about!”

“I'll go with you,” Sunset said with very little enthusiasm. “We'll make it quick and I promise, we'll meet up with you girls by lunch.”

The rest of their friends didn't look thrilled with that suggestion, but when the bell rang and all of the students of Canterlot High School started to file into the building, they left Starlight and Sunset alone by the statue without an argument and went to class.

“Ready to figure out where that notebook is?” Starlight asked as soon as the courtyard emptied out.

“Lead the way.”

Author's Note

Thanks for reading and let me know if I missed anything!
I'm aiming to hit 50,000 words for National Pony Writing month so I've only looked it over once or twice to make sure I wasn't missing anything obvious so let me know if I did.

Chapter Three

“Thanks for coming with me. I have to admit, having somebody here who already knows what it's like to transition through the mirror... it's kind of helpful,” Starlight admitted.

Starlight Glimmer and Sunset Shimmer had waited until they were sure there was nobody from Canterlot High School around in the courtyard before backing away from the schoolyard and running out of sight as soon as they felt the pavement on their feet.

They didn't stop running until they had hit a back road a few blocks away from the school where not many cars drove by, aside from a few dogs barking in the distance, they were in a quiet area where Sunset deemed them unlikely to get caught by passerby's that were on their way to work.

“Do you know the way back home?” Sunset asked, ignoring Starlight's initial comment.

“Oh, no, I don't. I mean I thought I could just go through the portal again, but it seems like it's closed.”

“No, I mean to your foster parents' home; do you know how to get back there? Sorry, I guess I kind of forgot that for you, Equestria is home.”

“Yup.”

The girls walked in silence for a few minutes before Starlight looked over at Sunset and asked, Do you ever miss it?”

“Miss what?”

“Equestria, of course! I mean there has to be something you miss about Equestria, right? I mean, this world is cool and all, but there's no magic, at least not in the ways that I'm used to and what's with these bodies? They're so weird.” She spread out her fingers and wiggled them. “It feels so wrong.”

Sunset shrugged. “You get used to it.”

“What about the magic? I mean, you used to be Princess Celestia's prized pupil. That had to have been a difficult adjustment when you first came through the portal.”

“Can we... do you mind if we don't talk about Equestria?”

“Oh, my mistake,” Starlight admitted quietly. “I just thought after all this time, you probably would have appreciated having somepony to discuss your old home with.”

“Trust me, Equestria is not my home anymore.”

Starlight didn't respond, she just looked down at the ground warily, kicking small pieces of pavement as she walked.

I didn't think I was prying, I mean, if I had lived in a strange world for a long time, I think I would relish the fact that there's someone from home visiting; like, sharing experiences and all that crap.

Starlight quietly led the way back to Rondache and Morning Dew's home and once the two girls arrived on the back porch of her foster home.

Sunset looked around warily while Starlight dug through her bag to find the key that they had given her.

“Are you sure your parents won't know that we're skipping school? Starlight, I really just don't want to get you in any more trouble than you're already in.”

“It's fine, trust me,” Starlight assured her. “It doesn't seem like either of them are home and if they come home while we're still here, we'll just make up some excuse and then go back to school. I think we'll be okay, though, I'm pretty sure they work during the day. Besides, Starlight already got herself in plenty of trouble, a little more wouldn't kill her... or me, I guess.”

“Right,” Sunset responded, unconvinced.

Starlight inserted the key that Morning Dew and Rondache had given her and leaned in towards the lock as she turned the key. She leaned down to put her ear closer to the lock and smiled wryly when she heard the lock clicked back into the door, before slowly pulling open the door. The girls stepped inside quickly and pushed the door closed so that if there were any of Starlight's neighbors who were home, they wouldn't be able to see her.

The house was silent except for the girls footsteps as they walked through the bottom floor.

“Wow, this place is really nice. You're really lucky,” Sunset said, still in awe of the richly decorated home she had just stepped into. “My place is practically a hole in the wall compared to this.”

“Thanks, I think? It wasn't quite what I expected when I came here, but I really appreciate it. I mean, I totally get the hole in a wall thing... not that I think you actually do live somewhere like that, but I practically did in Equestria when I was growing up.” She abruptly closed her mouth and smiled in embarrassment. “I'm sorry, I'll stop talking now, but I will definitely appreciate this place more once we find that stupid notebook.”

Sunset Shimmer didn't look convinced. “Right, the notebook. Where do you think it is? I mean, it could be anywhere in this house. Aren't you worried that it is kinda gonna be like looking for a needle in a haystack?”

“No, it definitely couldn't be anywhere. I know that it is somewhere in Starlight's bedroom, I'm sure of it. She didn't seem to really care for Morning Dew and Rondache so it's the only place in the entire house that she seemed to have any of her things. Follow me.”

Starlight made her way up the stairs with Sunset following slowly behind her as she carefully looked around her with every step she took as if she were worried that at any moment, a neighbor or Starlight's parents would burst into the house and run straight to their location and punish them somehow. When Starlight finally pushed open the bedroom door, Sunset let out the sigh of relief that she hadn't realized that she had been holding all this time. They closed the door behind them and stood in front of it as they surveyed the room.

It looked the same as it has when Starlight had left it this morning, but for some reason as she stood in the doorway, it felt like it was much bigger than it was this morning. She gulped.

Maybe this was a bad idea. It's going to take forever to go through every nook and cranny of this room and who knows if it's even in here? This could just be a fool's errand.

“Where do we start?”

“Um... you take the dresser, I'll take the area around the bed. She had a few bags next to her bed, so maybe it's possible that I missed something while I was rushing this morning? We'll just make our way around the room and meet in the middle. Sound good?”

Sunset nodded and made her way over to the dresser. She opened up each of the four drawers on the dresser, but to her surprise, each and every single drawer that she opened in that dresser was empty. She knocked on them anyway, just in case they had false bottoms or Starlight Glimmer had come up with some other way to hide the book that maybe the girls hadn't thought of that morning.

That idea proved to be fruitless when Sunset realized that she still couldn't find anything, no matter what methods she attempted. She was surprised that even the area around the dresser was spotless. In fact, most of the room looked as if it had never been touched before today.

At the same time, Starlight was tentatively checking every nook and cranny around the bed, even though she was sure she had checked it when she woke up this morning. Yet, she still held on to the sliver of hope that maybe she was just so tired this morning, after her exciting adventure through the portal yesterday. Perhaps, she just missed the book.

Unfortunately, after several minutes of searching and tearing apart the room until they met in the middle, both girls came up empty-handed.

“How can we be so sure that it's even here? What if she took it with her to... I don't know, wherever she went?” Sunset asked. “I mean, those pictures seemed like they were really trying to figure out what was in that book, so maybe she thought it was safer to take it with her when she ran away?”

Starlight's fists balled up, she tried to calm herself down, but she was just too frustrated.

“No! This is insane! It has to be here! I didn't come all the way from Equestria to be screwed from every direction the moment I landed in front of Canterlot High School!”

“Woah, okay, Starlight. Relax. It's not a big deal. The girls are probably checking up on Starlight's facespace account and there are no girls I trust more than them to do this. I bet the book isn't even that important, let's just go back to school.”

“No, it is important! I can feel it! And this is absolutely insane, first the portal closes right after I come through, then I find out this Starlight Glimmer is a jerk who lies and runs away all the time, then I find out bacon is made from pigs...”

“Wait, you're still on that bacon thing? Seriously, Starlight it's really not that big a deal.” Sunset interjected.

“Then I find out someone is taking pictures of the other Starlight while she's in her bedroom and now her stupid freaking book is gone! I haven't even been in this world for a day and a half and this is just terrible!”

“Hey, it's okay. We'll figure it out. I promise.”

She tried to put her hand on Starlight's shoulder, but she shrugged her off.

“No! I refuse to go back to CHS empty-handed, Sunset! That isn't fair! I get in trouble all the time, but you don't and you left school to come with me. I can't let you get in trouble and have nothing to show for it!”

Starlight was so frustrated that she pushed the mattress on the bed as hard as she could, which, surprisingly, was pretty hard and the mattress started to slide off the bed.

“Starlight! Starlight, seriously, it isn't that big a deal, it's just a book. It was just a theory you had anyway. You have to...” Sunset stopped mid sentence and stared past Starlight with a slack-jawed expression.

“I have to what?” She asked, whipping around to face her friend who had stopped short without any explanation.

Sunset knelt down and reached her hand in between the mattress and box spring and slowly pulled out a tiny bright pink notebook. Starlight's eyes widened and her shoulders relaxed, for the first time in what felt like forever, she finally allowed herself to crack a smile.

“Oh thank goodness,” Starlight said while laughing with relief.

“I guess that worked. I think this is the notebook that we've been looking for,” Sunset said quietly.

“I'm sorry about that. Sometimes I just get so frustrated that...”

“No, you don't have to explain it. I understand. I used to be the same way. At least, in this case, it worked in our favor. Now we have the notebook.”

Starlight scrambled to get up off the mattress and over to Sunset Shimmer.

“Are you ready to see what it says?” Sunset asked.

“Absolutely.”

The girls opened the book and looked at the first page with rabid excitement. Since first seeing the pictures with the book in it, Starlight assumed this had to be her counterpart's diary.

She hoped that the book had all the information she needed to know about the other Starlight Glimmer and her life. There had to be some sort of paper trail left behind that would help her figure out where her counterpart had gone. If she really was the one who had sent the letter through the portal in the first place, Starlight thought it was only fair that she be given some sort of help for coming all this way. After all, the whole reason she had skipped school on her first day was to find this missing piece of information that she thought she so desperately needed.

Unfortunately, as soon as she and Sunset opened the book, she realized that if the book was a diary, then it was written in some sort of language that she didn't understand at all.

So far in her experiences on this world she noticed that the language of modern Equestrian was very similar in characters, sound, and style to the Earth language that she had encountered so far; which was helpful in so far that it made everything she encountered easy to understand.

Well everything except this.

Starlight's hornwriting was awful and she would be the first one to admit it and this Starlight's writing was no exception. Of course in this case, not only were the words illegible, but none of them even made any sense. Perhaps she was writing in some sort of code or language that only Earth Starlight Glimmer could understand?

“I don't understand,” Starlight finally said with an annoyed huff as she slammed the book shut. “Do you understand it?”

Sunset shook her head. “This is just a mess of numbers and letters that don't make sense.”

“Is it another language?”

“I don't think so, but let's head back to school and during lunch we can show the other girls what we found. Maybe they'll be able to help us figure it out; there's something that we're missing. The more eyes that we can get on this, the more we'll understand!”

Sunset didn't look as hopeful as she sounded. Starlight didn't pick up on the hesitation in her face. She eagerly stuffed the book into her message bag.

We'll figure this out, I know we will! She assured herself.

* * *

“I don't understand this at all,” Twilight announced, as she threw the notebook down on the cafeteria table in front of her.

She had spent the past few minutes of lunch attempting to read through it while the other girls looked on expectantly, hoping that she had more luck figuring out than they all had before then. The book had been passed around the table one by one with each of the girls spending a few minutes staring at the book with puzzled expressions before giving up. Twilight at least seemed to have spent the most time focused on what it could possibly be.

“See what I mean? It makes no sense whatsoever!” Starlight exclaimed.

“It's definitely not in English... or any discernible Earth language I've ever come across,” Sunset replied. “What about you girls? What do you think?”

“All I've gathered from staring at it for so long is that it is probably a cipher of sort” Twilight suggested. “I mean, it has to be, otherwise it's just kind of a jumble of incoherent letters and numbers.”

“A what now?” Applelack asked.

“A cipher,” Twilight repeated. “It's kind of like a code. For example, somebody like Starlight would write something down, use a cipher of some sort and then encode the message so only the people who know how to break the cipher can figure out the message.”

“So since you know that it's a cipher, now, are you able to figure out what it says?” Starlight asked.

“Er... no. There are a ton of different ciphers out there and each and every single person would probably have their own way to break the code. I mean, I could give it my best shot, but without actually knowing anything about Starlight Glimmer, I would just be making a shot in the dark.”

“What if you and I went to the library? There has to be some books about ciphers there, right? Maybe we can narrow down at least which one she used?”

Twilight perked up. “That's a great idea, Sunset Shimmer! There has got to be a ton of books about Cryptography in the library!” She shot up out of her seat and pulled Sunset Shimmer along with her as she ran out of the cafeteria.

Once Twilight and Sunset left the cafeteria, the table had grown quieter, the table had moved from one larger and overall conversation to side conversations between two or three of the girls before Fluttershy cleared her throat.

“I'm glad you and Sunset hit it off so well,” Fluttershy said quietly. “And we're especially glad you two made it back to school without any major problems.”

“And with the book in tow,” Applejack added. “We didn't think you girls would find anything and it would all be for nothing. Sunset had texted us a few times while you guys were heading over to your home saying she was worried this was a wild goose chase. We were all wondering if maybe this would be a mistake..”

“What do you mean? Why would it be a mistake?”

“Well, it's just that you had no idea that anything was even at your home,” Rarity explained.

“Of course we did! Or I did, at least! I knew that something had to be there; Starlight Glimmer had to leave me something to lead me to her. She did try to get me through the portal, after all.”

“Of course, and we're all thrilled that it was a successful mission and neither of you got in trouble for skipping school. We were just worried about it being just the two of you out there.”

Starlight's smile faltered. “Why is that?”

“Well, we had heard about you from Sunset Shimmer before we even met you. Apparently Princess Twilight wrote about you a lot whenever she was sending Sunset an Equestratext!” Pinkie announced.

“Really?” Starlight's face lit up at the thought of her mentor praising her to people in another world; it was really telling at how far she had come in just a short period of time. She didn't want to say it out loud, but she was a little bit proud of herself for making strides toward moving past her insecurities. The other girls nodded, but their faces lacked the enthusiasm that Starlight felt bubbling within her.

“That's so wonderful to hear!” She added. “I heard so much about all of you as well! I mean, I admit that I was a little hesitant when Princess Twilight first told me about all of you. Who wouldn't be though, I mean it just felt kind of strange that there was a group of girls just like her and her friends in another world on the other side of the mirror and I had to admit that I was a teeny tiny bit jealous at first when she mentioned that there was a girl here that she was kinda sorta mentoring, but not really? Of course, once Sunset Shimmer actually came through the mirror and we met and we got past that initial awkwardness it was great, ya know?”

The girls looked at each other hesitantly before Rarity put on a sweet and comforting smile and put her hands on Starlight's shoulder.

“Of course, darling that is sweet. Sunset felt similarly when she heard that Princess Twilight had taken on a new pupil.”

Starlight looked at the rest of the girls warily. “...I take it she wasn't exactly comfortable with the idea of me at first, was she?”

The girls teettered uncomfortably.

“I don't think that's the case,” Fluttershy finally said after several strained seconds of silence.

“Ehhhh she was definitely at least a teeny weeny bit jealous, but I mean, who can blame her? She came from a distant pony world because she was mad at her teacher and came here where she was a big meany pants and then Princess Twilight followed her through the magical portal and was all like 'Sunset Shimmer, I can help you become better' and I think we all just assumed that the other Twilight was kinda like her mentor, I mean they would send each other Equestratexts all the time whenever Sunset needed some help or advice. Then, out of the blue, a few months ago, Sunset found out that Twilight had taken on her very first pupil and...”

Rainbow Dash put her hand over Pinkie's mouth, who, despite the barrier, kept trying to talk even though every word that came out of her mouth was muffled and incoherent.

“So Sunset Shimmer was a little jealous at first, that's not important,” Applejack said. “What's important is that she realized that she didn't have to be Princess Twilight's pupil to be happy and she has accepted Starlight Glimmer as a new friend.”

“Sometimes Sunset can be a little rough around the edges. She's really a sweet girl, but she's very... guarded,” Fluttershy explained.

“Probably because there's still a fair number of people here at Canterlot High School who still don't fully trust her after that whole 'trying to create a teenage zombie army to invade Equestria' thing. So, we're really happy she's making a new friend!” Pinkie exclaimed.

Starlight wanted to ask more questions, but the bell signifying the end of their lunch period rang and the other girls got up from the table without a second thought to head towards their next class. She stayed at the table though, pushing her peas around her lunch tray for a few extra moments wondering if Sunset was actually more annoyed with her than anything especially after she asked her all those personal questions about Equestria and if she missed it.

She had to admit though, now she was more curious about Sunset Shimmer than anything. Looking back on it, she could remember how shocked Sunset was when she found the book and how she had tried to get Starlight to turn around or stop so many times.

She was especially curious to know what happened to the other Sunset Shimmer since nobody around here seemed concerned that there were two Sunset's running around town just like they hadn't been concerned when they saw Starlight Glimmer.

What if she was trying to keep me from finding the book? What if Sunset Shimmer knew more about the other Starlight than she was letting on and just didn't want to tell any of us because she was already not exactly a model citizen in the eyes of the CHS population? And what happened to the other Sunset Shimmer? Did she have to replace her like I did? Or maybe the other Sunset is just somewhere else? Has Sunset ever wondered about the other version of her like I am? I was never especially curious about the other version of me when I lived in Equestria and I probably never would have wondered about it until I got that note. Maybe it's the same way for her?

Starlight finally got up, threw out her tray and started to slowly follow the crowd of people still trying to leave the cafeteria and to their next class, but one thing was for sure, now Starlight was curious about Sunset's time in this world.

Chapter Four

“I'm sure you are all wondering why I've called you here today,” Twilight announced. She stood up straight and tall in front of the portal as if she were speaking at a podium to a captive audience. Her friends were all sprawled out on the grass in front of her, just like they were every afternoon after the bell rang.

On this day, Twilight had sent out a group text to all of her friends during their last class of the day, telling them that they should meet up at the portal after school. She had claimed it was urgent, and Twilight rarely sent the group messages that claimed to be urgent, unlike Rainbow Dash for example, who would use that word at the drop of a hat; the girls felt it was important to rush to the statue as soon as they heard the bell ring signifying the end of the day.

Even Starlight Glimmer, who still didn't fully understand how her cell phone worked, was dragged along by Applejack from their shared History class to the portal where they sat, a captive audience, waiting for their friend to further explain.

“So it took the rest of the lunch period, my study hall, and all of my gym class to figure out what was going on in this notebook, but I did it! I cracked the code!”

The seven girls relaxing on the grass erupted into cheers.

“We knew you could do it!” Pinkie yelled out.

“So what was it? What does it say?” Starlight asked, jumping up towards Twilight and beaming with excitement.

“Okay, so Starlight Glimmer was smart, really smart. I mean she basically encoded her notebook through two different ciphers.” She paused for dramatic effect, letting her friends bask in the surprise that there was so much work that had to be done. The excited smiles on their faces gave Twilight a little bit of pride to continue on with her explanation. “We'll go through it backwards. Each of the numbers on this page corresponds to a letter; at first I couldn't figure it out. You see, I was expecting that it would be a numerical value between one and twenty six just like the alphabet, but while doing research in the library I realized that it was actually ASCII! So that's why the numbers seemed so strange to me. Anyway once I figured that out and got a ton of random letters it was quite simple, most codes are just a simple Caesarian shift and that's what it was. All it took was a little fiddling around with it until I was able to create actual words out of the letters that the numbers spell out. So now this...”

Twilight pulled out the notebook as it originally was, jut a mess of numbers on a page that had puzzled all of the girls all day and then pulled out a sheet of loose leaf paper and handed it to Starlight Glimmer who was instantly crowded around by the other girls who desperately wanted to catch a glimpse of the final copy.

“...becomes this,” she finished.

“That just looks like a ton of web links. How does that help?” Rainbow Dash asked.

“I was curious about that at first, but then I checked out the web site.” Twilight pulled out her phone and typed in the URL into her device's browser and the other girls looked at her phone quizzically.

“I still don't follow,” Starlight Glimmer admitted.

“Okay, so basically, I have a feeling that the other Starlight Glimmer is sort of tech savvy... I think, I'm going off of an educated guess here. Anyway, we saw a picture of this notebook and we assumed that it would hold all the answers and in a way it did, but it was really more like a key or more likely similar to a trail of breadcrumbs that led us to this website.”

“The website is just a moving picture of somebody running towards us and then falling over. That doesn't mean that Starlight Glimmer is stuck inside a phone, does it?” Starlight's eyes widened with worry. “Can that happen to somebody? I mean, you girls got stuck inside a mirror that one time, sure it was Equestrian magic that did that, but is it possible that Starlight Glimmer could she be stuck inside the phone?”

She tapped Twilight's phone tentatively to see if anything happened.

Nothing happened.

“No, no, and no. Also, by the way Starlight, it's called a GIF.” Starlight did not look any less confused by this revelation. “Basically, this website is more like Starlight's real diary. I was confused at first when I saw the GIF, but then I checked the source code.”

“Ya lost me,” Rainbow Dash spoke up.

“She never even had me,” Starlight mumbled.

“The source code is just a bunch of plain text used as computer instructions; basically it tells the computer and browser what the site looks like.”

“Oh... okay?” Starlight asked, sounding no less confused than she had been when Twilight started talking.

“However, the cool thing is that website creators can hide stuff in the source code. I mean, there are plenty of ways to sneak things in without any of the information showing up on the page, but it's still there under the surface. So, when somebody like me comes across this website, if I don't check the source code then the only thing that I will see is the GIF of somebody running, but when I do check it... she presses a button on her phone and then returns it to its previous position in front of the girls.

The phone now displayed a white screen with a ton of text, some of the words on the page didn't make sense until Twilight scrolled down slightly and then a whole block of text that seemed to read like a diary just appeared. The girls eyes all widened in surprise and Starlight took the phone in her hands and immediately started scrolling through it trying to make sense of all the information on the page.

“It's not in code,” she said with relief. “It's just in regular Equestrian... I mean, English.”

“Yup, and it basically reads like a diary, or I mean, it would read like your diary if your diary contained a detailed list of people who did you wrong and what they did to get on your bad side.”

“WHAT?!” came the surprised reply from all the girls as they all tried to grab at Twilight's phone to be the first to get a better view of the source code.

“Each link mentioned in her book, leads you to a hidden page on a website with all of the information. Each website is completely different, so it's not even like they are all in the same place or anything. She was very thorough and apparently had a vendetta against almost every person she had met. Seriously, there are a lot of names in this book.”

Twilight flipped through Starlight Glimmer's notebook quickly to further drive home her point, the girls looked on sadly as every page that passed them by was another page that was full of cyphers.

“Oh, it's going to take us forever to get through all these names!” Rarity cried out.

“She's got a point, Twi. I mean Starlight Glimmer is missing, we can't just count out anybody who is in that notebook. It could be anyone of these people,” Applejack pointed out.

“I realize that,” Twilight admitted. “However, I promise all of you right now that I am going to spend all of tonight working on decoding everything in this notebook. I will print out the information, and then I'll give everybody some of the papers. I bet if we split up every name in here, we can divide and conquer!”

The girls cheered.

“But, we do have a starting point,” Twilight pointed out with a relieved smile on her face. “This web page comes from the last page in the notebook. I decoded that one first because I figured it would give us the best insight into the last bits of information she left behind before she went missing and I was surprised to see that it was Abacus Cinch.”

She paused thoughtfully, “Well, I wasn't that surprised, actually; just a little surprised.”

Starlight raised her hand. “Who is Abacus Cinch? Yesterday, Miss Care mentioned that name to me while she was giving me some sort of strange pep talk. She said that I was lucky that Abacus Cinch didn't try to press charges against me, but she didn't elaborate as to why that was, how they even knew each other, or what had happened between Abacus Cinch and Starlight Glimmer. Do you girls know who that is?”

The girls nodded.

“She used to be my principal back when I went to school at Crystal Prep,” Twilight started.

Starlight's eyes widened. “Morning Dew said something about Crystal Prep this morning! I think that before she disappeared that was where Starlight Glimmer used to go to school.”

Twilight tilted her head and looked at Starlight Glimmer as if she were racking her brain for some kind of clue she had forgotten about. “I don't... I don't remember seeing you.”

“No offense, Twilight, but you also didn't realize that Crystal Prep had a dance studio. I don't quite think that you're the best judge of who did or didn't go to Crystal Prep,” Rarity said.

Twilight blushed. “Good point.”

“So what does that entry say about Abacus Cinch?” Starlight Glimmer asked trying to contain her excitement.

Abacus Cinch

Occupation: FORMER Principal of Crystal Prep

UPDATE: Ooops Former? I wonder what happened with that?! Ha

I get it. I don't think anybody I have ever met would ever say that I was the most easy-going person they've ever met or even the easiest person to get along with. I get it. I really do. I do my best to at least attempt not to hate people I come across. That being said, I don't think I have ever met somebody as rage inducing as Abacus Cinch or her crazy “important” reputation.

Freaking Morning Dew and Rondache thought that once they took me into their home that Crystal Prep would be the best place for me since Miss Care said that I was a “gifted student” that needed to be “kept busy.” I would have rather stayed at my old school, despite that schools' “colorful” reputation.

But no, I moved to a new town and tested into some preppy little school for wanna be Ivy League students. The only good part about this place is these people have been together their entire lives starting from whatever overpriced private elementary school they all started at to Crystal Prep and they have their “friend groups,” so they don't bother me about hanging out with them during lunch or after school.

The people here don't like “different.”

And from my past few weeks here, I've noticed that it is something that Principal Cinch really encourages. Like I said before, I don't mind that, I'd rather be a loner and spend my time in the Computer Lab instead of the dance studio or whatever else this school has, but Principal Cinch will just not let up. I'm never good enough in her eyes, not smart enough, not talented enough, and definitely not “normal” enough.

And then came her stupid little Equestria Games... Crystal Prep and their “friendly rivalry” with Canterlot High School. I wasn't even invited, but I watched anyway and it was quite the sight.

But you know what I thought was silly? While sitting in the stands waiting for that last game to start, I had the perfect view of Abacus Cinch and four of her “favorite students” practically attacking some other girl into cheating. I don't know who that girl is, but she basically ended up almost destroying the world. I got out of that situation in time, thankfully.

Seems very cut and dry, don't you think? School principal and her favorite students pick on an outcast, principal manipulated and pressures girl to do something, then girl freaks out and tries to destroy the world. Sounds like grounds for a disgraced departure to me.

And yet, when I returned to school on Monday there she was, standing in the doorway watching the students enter and looking pleased with herself.

It was absolutely disgusting. Apparently it is very difficult to dismiss a longstanding employee at a fancy private school no matter how much the school population and the rest of the faculty dislike you.

I couldn't let that stand.

And I didn't.

I let the world know what Principal Abacus Cinch did, especially what she did to that student.

I hacked the Crystal Prep website and plastered her face with the word “Bully” superimposed on her face. I found her personal information, printed out those images, and sent them to her home. Multiple at a time for days on end. I just stuffed them in her mailbox or taped them to her door or mailed them from dozens of phony addresses and it worked. Within the month, the board of directors voted to replace Principal Abacus Cinch with Dean Cadance.

It was all because of me. I did that. Justice didn't happen so I made it happen and I could have completely gotten away with it too if former Principal Cinch didn't have a camera at her house that caught me on tape in her yard.

That's okay though, I'll make sure she gets what else is coming to her.

“Oooo sounds sinister,” Pinkie Pie said once the girls got to the end of the entry.

“Okay, I know what she did was technically wrong, but that was totally awesome!” Rainbow Dash exclaimed. “I mean, she totally took down Abacus Cinch and after what she did to Twilight, it was totally justified!

“Well, I guess I found out what this world's equivalent of enslaving an entire village and getting so angry at one person for foiling your plans that you try to go back in time to make sure she had no friends to begin with, is supposed to be,” Starlight muttered. Her friends looked at her sadly. “I'm so sorry girls, I didn't mean to bring anybody down, I just... I just hoped that this Starlight Glimmer was better than I was, but she's just as angry and vengeful as I am, but without any of the good influences I had in you girls. I hope that when or if we find her she will be able to change like I did.”

“Hey, it's okay,” Sunset said as she laid a hand on Starlight's shoulder. “We will figure it out, we always do.”

“Starlight Glimmer, why don't you and I go to Crystal Prep?” Twilight suggested. “We can ask around and see if any of the students or faculty there know anything about Starlight Glimmer; maybe we could even get some intel on the whole Abacus Cinch situation and see if that leads us on a path that will help us find Starlight. What do you say?”

Starlight shrugged. “I guess.”

“Oh! I should ask my brother to bring us to Crystal Prep. He's on break from college right now, so he has already promised my mom and dad to drop me off and pick me up from school. I'm sure he wouldn't mind driving us over there. After all, he always loves any opportunity he gets to visit his old stomping grounds. He adored his time at Crystal Prep.”

“Oh that's much nicer than taking the smelly old bus,” Rarity agreed.

Starlight still didn't seem enthused though, much to the other girls chagrin. She just sat down on the ground and opened up the notebook as if she were able to read it like a regular book.

“Starlight, it's okay,” Fluttershy assured her. “Everyone makes mistakes and the Starlight Glimmer in this world may have done some bad things, but that doesn't mean she's a terrible person. I bet once you find her and talk things out, you'll realize it isn't as bad as you think it is.”

Starlight sat up a little straighter and a small smile formed on her face. “Yea, maybe you're right, Fluttershy.”

“I mean, she did do a good thing. She did it the wrong way, but Principal Cinch was not a good person and it was good for her to be outed from Canterlot High School before she did something to another student just like she did to me,” Twilight said and the other six girls nodded in agreement.

“I guess you girls are right.”

“And maybe when we find the other Starlight we can show her the magic of friendship and she'll be all hunky-dory with us because we're a super forgiving group,” Pinkie said.

Starlight giggled. “That's true, you are.”

“So you'll come with me to Crystal Prep? You and I can get some information and we might be one step closer to helping to redeem the other Starlight Glimmer. How does that sound?”

“It sounds amazing. Let's do it!”

The group of friends hung out for a while while Twilight and Starlight waited for Shining Armor to come pick them up. Rarity and Fluttershy were the first two to leave, both claiming that the places they worked and volunteered at needed them that afternoon for a few hours and that began the slow dissipation of their group for the evening. One by one though, they began to head to their after school activities, whether it be work or a school club, until it was just Starlight Glimmer and Twilight Sparkle sitting in front of the statue, picking at the grass and watching the rest of the students slowly make their way away from the school.

“Look, Starlight, there's something that I have to tell you and I didn't want to do it while the other girls were around,” Twilight finally spoke up after she noticed that most of the CHS students had moved on, leaving them the only ones left in the courtyard.

Starlight deflated. “What else did you learn? Is it bad?”

Twilight looked down at the ground and concentrated on shifting her feet around awkwardly.

“Twilight?”

“I did go through a few more of the codes aside from Abacus Cinch,” she said slowly.

Starlight Glimmer leaned forward in nervous anticipation.

“Yea?”

“And, well, there was one other name that stuck out to me.”

“What was the name?”

“I just want to point out that I haven't fully had a chance to read everything. I started with Abacus Cinch because I thought that she was the more likely suspect, but I just want to let you know that one of the names in Starlight's notebook is Sunset Shimmer."

“Oh.”

“Yea. You can see why I was hesitant to say that in front of the rest of the girls, right? I mean, I know she's had a rough time at CHS before and I don't want to make it worse in our friend group by making it seem like she could have done something to the other Starlight Glimmer.”

“No, I understand. They already mentioned to me that they were hesitant about Sunset and I hanging out alone, apparently she used to be a little bit jealous of me when she found out that I was Princess Twilight's new student. I hope that she wasn't really that jealous of me and that whatever Starlight Glimmer wrote about her in that strange revenge diary of hers is something incredibly minor, especially compared to that Abacus Cinch thing.”

“I hope so too, but I'm worried that at this point we can't take any chances.”

“I know,” Starlight replied sadly.

“We'll start with Abacus Cinch though and work backwards. For now, I don't want to tell the girls about Sunset Shimmer being in the notebook, but...”

“But I'll keep an eye on her. Ya know, just in case.”

Author's Note

This is written for National Pony Writing Month (I've been sick so I'm a tad bit behind. Whoops) so I've gone over it a little bit to fix the obvious things and extend some parts, but please tell me if there are any other glaring mistakes!

Chapter Five

Starlight and Twilight could hear Shining Armor's car before they could see it. It was a car that was handed down to him by one of their family members for a very low price and it was highly noticeable by everybody who had ever come in contact with the car. Shining Armor seemed to keep the music up loud to cover up the creaks that the car made.

Despite the fear that the car would not even make it to Crystal Prep, Starlight Glimmer had to admit she was so relieved to see the car finally pull up in front of Canterlot High School because sitting there and thinking about everything going on in with Starlight's notebook and Sunset Shimmer was making her crazy. This was something new to focus on and for that, she really appreciated it.

As soon as Shining Armor's car skidded to a screeching halt, Twilight jumped up and pulled Starlight along with her towards the car and the girls hopped into the backseat.

“Hey Twily! Who's your new friend?”

“Hey B.B.B.F.F! This is Starlight Glimmer, she's new to CHS.”

“Hi,” Starlight said with a shy wave. The human Shining Armor was tall with an athletic body and a friendly face and he seemed to be much younger than the Equestrian Shining Armor as well. Something that shouldn't have truly surprised her because age and time seemed to flow differently between the two worlds, there was seemingly no other explanation for the two year age gap between Sweetie Belle and Rarity in this world, while in Equestria it was closer to three times that long.

Of course, it surprised her every time she ran into somebody she recognized from Equestria.

“Do you mind bringing us over to Crystal Prep?”

“Um, sure Twily, but why? I mean, you hated it there. Did you even have any friends there that you would want to talk to?”

“Um, sorta. Starlight Glimmer just transferred from there and there's some paperwork that she needs to get from Principal Cadance to finish the transfer up.”

“Principal Cadance?” Shining Armor's face lit up. “I didn't realize she got a promotion! Did Principal Cinch finally retire or go to another school? She was a very rigorous person, it worked for me, but it definitely didn't work for Twilight. I think somebody like Cadance would be a much better fit for that position than Principal Cinch ever was.”

“Great, so you can take us to Crystal Prep? We can get what Starlight Glimmer needs and you can catch up with Cadance.” Twilight got in the backseat behind Shining Armor and Starlight followed suit and hopped in next to her.

“What? Oh, no, that's... that's okay. She probably doesn't want to see me it's been like … I don't know, like...”

“It's been a month and a half since the Friendship Games. I'm sure that Cadance would love to see you again.” Twilight turned to Starlight Glimmer. “Shining Armor and Principal Cadance actually met at Crystal Prep and dated all four years of high school.”

“Twily!” Shining Armor yelled, cheeks turning red with embarrassment.

“Why'd you break up?” Starlight asked.

“It's not a big deal...”

“They went to different schools for college and just didn't want to do the long distance thing. He still loves her though.”

“Twily, please! Look, I'd rather just sit in the car while you two go in.”

“No, come on! She's the one that got away! You have to go in and at least talk to her,” Starlight protested. “I bet she's gonna want to see you too.”

“Do you really think so?”

“Shining Armor, I know so.”

Starlight's phone buzzed. She looked at the newly lit up screen quizzically. Twilight's name popped up on the screen with the notification: 1 New Message from Twilight Sparkle.

She fiddled with her phone for a moment before she was able to finally get the message to show up.

Twilight Sparkle:
What are you doing? It's one thing for me to tease him about Cadance, but this is too far. Is it really important for him to come in? All we need is for him to bring us there, he can just sit in the car otherwise.

Starlight Glimmer:
dkfja;dflld kdaflj;d

Twilight Sparkle:
???

Starlight rolled her eyes and leaned towards Twilight and whispered into her ear, “we need a distraction.”

“Oh,” Twilight said quietly.

“Plus, we have no idea how long we're going to be in there,” Starlight added. “Do you really want your brother sitting outside Crystal Prep for who knows how long? He will start wondering what we're up to.”

“Crap, you're right,” Twilight responded. She looked up at Shining Armor who was blissfully ignoring the two girls in the backseat to focus on keeping his car running until they arrived at Crystal Prep.

“I agree with Starlight Glimmer,” Twilight added awkwardly.

Shining Armor glanced back at his sister. “I'm not sure what you mean, Twily.”

“I mean that I think you should come in with us and say hi to Principal Cadance. I bet she would really appreciate seeing a friendly face after her long day of working as a private school principal.”

Shining Armor seemed to consider this for a moment before nodding in agreement. “You've got a point, it would be nice to see Cadance again. I mean, it's been forever, right?”

“Right,” Starlight and Twilight agreed rapidly.

Shining Armor smiled the rest of the silent ride to Crystal Prep while the girls sat in the backseat texting each other their plans that would go straight into effect as soon as Twilight's brother parked his car.

As soon as the girls could see the towering and ivy covered school come in to view, Starlight could feel her heart pound. She had never been to Crystal Prep before, but she knew that behind those walls were more secrets about the other Starlight Glimmer and she was starting to wonder if those secrets were things that she actually wanted to know about her now that she had started to learn about the notebook and some of the things the other version of her did to get back at other people that have wronged her or just did things she didn't agree with.

What else would she find behind those ivy covered walls?

As soon as Shining Armor parked his car, which looked silly compared to all of the high end cars that surrounded it, all owned by the current students of the school, Twilight and Starlight jumped out of the car.

“What's the rush? We're just going in for a little paperwork, aren't we?” Shining Armor reminded them.

“Right. Paperwork,” Starlight mumbled.

“You aren't just a little excited to see Cadance again? I know I am!” Twilight added quickly to cover up Starlight's worried mumbling.

Shining Armor smiled shyly. “Yea, I suppose I'm a little excited as well, Twily.”

Crystal Prep was much bigger than Canterlot High School which baffled Starlight because it seemed like there were fewer students there than CHS had, so why did they need that much space? Every step she took into that large private school surprised her, she had thought the schools in Equestria were well decorated and comfortable, something CHS was not. Not that it wasn't a nice school, but compared to Crystal Prep it was much less fancy.

Starlight had to admit that handing out gift bags to visitors after they signed in was a nice touch. Even if those gift bags only had a visitors name tag and a map of the school to get around.

Still.

Starlight didn't get an opportunity to look at the map because Twilight pulled her and Shining Armor towards the principal's office. The hallway was gorgeous, portraits of successful students and sporting and academic teams lined the hallways along with well watered plants that really added a touch of formality to the area. Starlight liked it.

Principal Cadance's office was just down the hallway by the entrance center in its own little area. The room was spacious and bright with a lot more natural light than Starlight thought would come in this way. The main office had two doors, one that had Principal Cadance's name on the tempered glass, and one that remained empty.

There was one computer in the main area where Starlight guessed the secretary probably sat during the school day, but that had ended a while ago at this point. Luckily, Twilight assured her that Cadance was dedicated to her work and would probably be there for a while. When Twilight knocked on the tempered glass of Principal Cadance's door, Starlight had to admit she was a tiny bit relieved when she heard Cadance's sweet voice usher them inside.

She stayed behind, half hiding from the doorway as the siblings walked into Princpal Cadance's office.

Starlight had a different job to attend to.

* * *

“Twilight Sparkle, how lovely to see you again,” Cadance said with a sweet smile as she saw the former Crystal Prep student walk into her office. Her sweet and assured smile momentarily broke when she watched Shining Armor walk in behind her. “And I see you brought your brother. Shining Armor! How are you, it's been ages since the last time you and I saw each other.”

Shining Armor blushed. “It's great to see you, Cadance.”

She smiled wider. “It's great to see you as well, Shining Armor.”

Twilight Sparkle turned around towards the doorway to Principal Cadance's office and gave Starlight a thumbs up, her brother was the perfect distraction especially since Starlight could only peak into the room. Neither of the girls were sure how well known the other Starlight Glimmer's actions were and the last thing Starlight needed was to get in any more trouble than she was already in. The police officers the other day seemed annoyed with the fact that they had to deal with Starlight Glimmer and her antics.

Twilight backed up slightly and closed the door behind her and her brother. Neither of the adults in the room noticed, they were too busy catching up on lost time to notice Twilight acting stranger than normal.

The closing of Principal Cadance's door served as the sign Starlight needed to enter what she assumed was Abacus Cinch's former office. It was much larger than what she saw of Cadance's office, but felt much darker. She slipped into that office and locked the door behind her, the computer and desk were the only things in the room and the computer gave off the only light in the darkness. Since all of the blinds were tightly closed, keeping the afternoon light firmly out of the room.

Twilight had texted her specific instructions on how to search the office computer for personal student files so she was feeling confident that she might be able to figure it out without too much intervention from Twilight.

She slid into the leather chair and got comfortable before taking a deep breath and pushing the mouse slightly; the sleep screen sprung to life and the computer screen brightened even more and asked Starlight to fill in a user name and password. She held her breath and looked down at her phone and unlocked it the way Twilight showed her in the car where a line of text messages popped up.

She put the phone on the desk and leaned towards the computer and typed in what Twilight had texted her to write in exactly when Twilight told her to do it and then she waited until a new screen came up.

Every few moments as she searched the computer, she would hesitate because Principal Cadance's office on the other side of the wall would go silent and she would begin to worry that she would get caught and that would be a very difficult thing to explain; then the sounds would start up again, usually due to Twilight somehow keeping the conversation going and for that, Starlight was incredibly thankful.

She clicked through the computer a few times, trying to get a sense for what was important and what wasn't, before she found what Twilight had suggested they look for: Student files.

Giddy excitement ran through her as she clicked on the file. There were hundreds of names listed of all the current and former students that had ever graced the halls of Crystal Prep and each name had their status attached to it whether it be grade level, graduation, transfer, or expelled. The curiosity overcame her as she slowly went through the list and took in all of the different statuses, so it took a little longer than she expected to get down to the “S” names, but when she finally did find it, her name stuck out like a sore thumb.

STARLIGHT GLIMMER – EXPELLED

Expelled?

It was plain to see between several names that just said “Graduated” which made it all the more jarring to see something so vile, just tucked away between several other names with good statuses. Anyone else that had come across it would probably just keep scrolling and would think nothing of it, but to Starlight it was painfully obvious. With an emphasis on painful.

That didn't make any sense whatsoever. Morning Dew had said that she had transferred Starlight from Crystal Prep to Canterlot High School because Starlight just clicked better with the students and faculty at CHS, not because she had been expelled from her last school.

It must have been because she ran away. You can't teach what isn't there, Starlight. I bet it will all be explained just like that as soon as you read her private, personal file.

Or...

Or?

Or maybe being expelled from Crystal Prep was the reason she ran away to begin with. Maybe Abacus Cinch scared her somehow after she found out about the terrible things that Starlight Glimmer did to her. You have to read this file. You have to!

Starlight couldn't hold her curiosity back anymore. She clicked on her name and several paper icons popped up; her entrance exam, which Starlight knew she didn't even need to click on, obviously she passed with flying colors, everybody else had already told her that much, but what was more intriguing was a document labeled permanent record which she immediately opened and noticed that, much like Starlight's revenge notebook, this too read like a diary of the other Starlight's life. Only this diary focused more on the academic side of the other Starlight and less on the revenge side.

Either way, Starlight was conflicted about reading it. Finding out about the intricacies of the notebook hadn't exactly calmed Starlight's nerves. Despite this, she printed her permanent record out, just like Twilight had instructed her to do. She would have just stuck it in her bag and be done with it. She knew that's what she should do for her own sanity, but she also couldn't help and take a glimpse for herself and see what the faculty at Crystal Prep had said about her.

Starlight Glimmer
Entrance Year: Junior
Entrance Exam: 93%

Notes from Principal Cinch: Starlight Glimmer is an incredibly gifted student, one of the best I have seen, adding her to our elite roster would make a great addition for the upcoming Friendship Games against Canterlot High School. She might be a good alternate in case I am unable to convince Twilight Sparkle to sign up. My one concern is that, while gifted, she is incredibly lazy. Test proctors mentioned that she spent half the time in the exam fiddling with her pencil until the last twenty minutes of the scheduled hour session. They assumed she was just in over her head, but these test results are amazing, so the most likely conclusion is that she is just lazy. That will not bode well with me, this girl has got to get her act together.

Starlight Glimmer's Schedule

Note from Principal Abacus Cinch: Miss Glimmer came into the main office on her first day of school and updated her schedule. She was supposed to be attending classes for some of our most gifted students, but after speaking with Dean Cadance, the only advanced class she kept was for computers. I tried to argue with Dean Cadance about it, but she tried to assure me that starting Starlight Glimmer off slow would be good for her, her last school was probably very far behind academically and it's already mid-year. We will monitor her progress in a few months time.

Quarter 1 Review: Starlight Glimmer's grades are a delight, but she is frequently uninterested in lessons and spends much of her time looking at her phone instead of paying attention to the board.

Starlight skipped through most of the pages. She had only been a student at Crystal Prep for maybe six months, but there were a lot of pages dedicated to how disinterested of a student Starlight was that it started to get a little boring. So, she skipped to the bottom.

Expulsion note from Principal Abacus Cinch: This little delinquent has no place at this learning institution. She hacked the school's main page, she stalked my home, and she has done everything in her power to try to make me lose my position at this school for no reason. Nothing happened at the Friendship Games, there's no such thing as magic, and I would never do anything to harm a student. This expulsion is for slandering the school principal and using school property to hack several websites. I believe that Miss Starlight Glimmer would be a model student at a Juvenile Detention Facility and I will gladly make several recommendations to her foster parents, Morning Dew and Rondache should they ask for my opinion.

Starlight closed the file and ran over to the printer to grab the papers. In hindsight, she shouldn't have been that surprised based on the information that she had already gathered, but she was still very disappointed in the other Starlight for getting expelled from such a nice school; she would have killed to have gone to a school like this when she was a filly and it bothered her that the other Starlight Glimmer had so many advantages just handed to her and she just squandered every single one of them.

She slipped the papers in her messenger bag hurriedly and stepped back into the main office.

Starlight Glimmer:
Done. Whenever you guys are ready to go, so am I.

Twilight Sparkle:
Okay. Just gotta pull B.B.B.F.F away from Cadance. They really hit it off, they even scheduled a date!

Within seconds, Twilight pushed the principal's door back open.

“Thanks, Principal Cadance for penciling in time for Shining Armor and I! Have a great evening!”

“Of course, Twilight! And Shining Armor, I really look forward to seeing you on Friday night.”

Shining Armor blushed and mumbled some words that were either in another language or completely incoherent altogether, before turning away quickly and ushering the two teens down the hall of the school.

“Thanks for suggesting I come with you two instead of sitting in the car. I hope I didn't monopolize all your time with her. You both got the things you came for, right?”

“Yup,” Starlight nodded. “All squared away. Thanks for the ride, I really appreciate it.”

“Anything for my favorite little sister and her friends. Now, I know my parents would kill me if I didn't at least offer to bring you to our place for dinner; they always love to meet Twily's friends.”

“Yes, please come! Things have been so crazy lately, it would be nice to have an evening of normalcy, don't you think?”

“What does that mean, Twily?”

“It means that with my recent transfer to Canterlot High and all the tests and homework the teachers have been giving out, we just haven't had a chance to relax,” Starlight explained. “No biggie, and thanks for the offer, but I think Morning Dew and Rondache are waiting for me. Morning Dew makes some really great food, and I'd love to tell them all about my day at school.”

Shining Armor nodded. “Right, of course. Where should I drop you off?”

* * *

By the time Starlight Glimmer got home, the sun was just starting to set. She had stayed out later than she intended to, but this morning she also hadn't intended to take a ride to a completely different part of town just to steal her permanent record. As promised this morning though, she kept Morning Dew and Rondache at least somewhat in the loop, something she was thankful for when she walked in the door and they didn't hassle her about disappearing on them.

Instead, Sunset Shimmer was the first person she saw when she opened the door.

“Hey, Sunset. What's up? I didn't expect you to be here... at my house?”

“She came here about twenty minutes ago,” Morning Dew explained. “She said it was absolutely urgent and she really needed you, so we let her wait here. Is that okay?”

“Of course, it's okay. What's up, Sunset?”

“Hey, I didn't mean to bother you,” she responded in a voice hardly above a whisper. “I mean, I know how crazy you and Twilight have been, with running to Crystal Prep and all, but Rainbow Dash and I were looking at your... er... the other Starlight's facespace profile in the locker room after practice and I think there's something you should see.”

“Is it bad?”

Sunset hemmed and hawed before nodding.

“Sunset Shimmer and I are gonna hang out in my room for a little bit before dinner, we won't be long. Thanks guys!”

“But...”

Starlight didn't wait to hear the rest of the sentence, she pulled Sunset Shimmer up the stairs with her and slammed the door behind her.

Author's Note

Since this is written for National Pony Writing Month where the point is to get 50,000 words done in only 30 days. This chapter was just kind of briefly gone over once to make sure I was able to expand on parts that I might have rushed over before and to get rid of obvious mistakes. If something pops out to you that I missed, please let me know!

Chapter Six

“Okay, what did you and Rainbow Dash find out from Starlight's Facespace profile?” Starlight asked as soon as she was sure that Morning Dew and Rondache were nowhere near her bedroom to listen in on whatever it was that Sunset found out. She almost didn't want to know the answer to that either though, she had already been through a long day of finding out far more than she ever wanted to know about the alternate version of herself, she was almost hoping for a small reprieve from everything.

Unfortunately, that didn't seem likely at this point.

Sunset Shimmer hurriedly opened the app on her phone and went to Starlight's profile. The girls had really only seen it from the lens of Starlight's actual account when they went through her messages and notifications, but seeing it from the lens of another account was slightly different. The most noticeable thing were that all of the things on Starlight Glimmer's wall were not from anonymous accounts that had all been deleted for some reason or another, it was all recognizable people that Starlight seemed to know. There were actual conversations with people that Starlight took part in, pictures that she had been tagged in.

It was a relief, to be honest, Starlight was beginning to wonder if the other version of her was some kind of lame person that never talked to people.

Kind of like she used to be.

Only creepier, if that was possible since she had a whole notebook full of people she wanted to seek vengeance against.

That was much creepier than just trying to seek vengeance against one pony.

“Not that I am not relieved that you and Rainbow Dash were able to find good things about her and stuff, but couldn't this have waited until tomorrow? Seriously, after everything we've gone through today, I'm beat. I figured I could just go through the notebook and my permanent record and then just... ya know, call it a night.”

Sunset looked taken aback. “What? Didn't you notice the party album that she was tagged in?”

Starlight looked at Sunset's phone again, this time she did indeed notice that Starlight Glimmer had been tagged in six photos from somebody named Sasparilla's party a few weeks ago. She seemed to have enjoyed it and was in most of those pictures with three other girls that she didn't quite recognize, but seemed to actually enjoy her presence.

Although on a second glance that may have just been because they were all drinking, but it was hard to tell since she hadn't been at the party to see firsthand.

“Okay, what about it? Is it just because Starlight seems to have friends? I swear, we can go through their accounts tomorrow or something, I really just want to relax at home right now. I'm pretty sure the same amount of mortal danger towards the other Starlight Glimmer will still be here tomorrow.”

“What is your problem?” Sunset asked in frustration. “Earlier today you dragged me out of school just so we could come back here and find that stupid notebook, but suddenly I'm coming to you with clues that Rainbow Dash and I found on Starlight Glimmer's facespace account and suddenly you aren't interested because 'it can wait.'”

“I'm sorry, Sunset, I didn't mean to upset you, it's just... I have learned so many things about this other Starlight that are just awful and I know it's just going to get worse,” Starlight paused thoughtfully. “And I say that as somepony who took away an entire town's cutie marks and forced them into a cult.”

“I'm sure it's not that bad.”

“I got expelled from Crystal Prep for hacking the Crystal Prep website and harassing Abacus Cinch. I haven't completely gone through her permanent record yet, but I'm sure it's a doozy, so forgive me if I'm not super interested in looking at pictures of Starlight Glimmer having fun at a party.”

“Right, but the pictures from that party were posted the day of Starlight's disappearance.”

Starlight straightened up a bit and took a closer look at the date the photos were posted. Sunset was right, according to all of the information that she had gathered from Miss Care and her foster parents, those pictures seemed as if they had been posted in real-time the night Starlight Glimmer disappeared. They were the last thing posted on her wall before the mass of well wishing from people who had heard about her disappearance. This was a link to the other Starlight that she didn't think she would ever find.

“We need to find out who those girls in that picture are!”

“I know who they are,” Sunset groaned.

“Wait, you know them? You have to introduce me to them, I need to talk to them!”

“You misunderstood me,” Sunset started as she glared at the girls in the picture with Starlight. “I know who they are, but I don't know where they are. In fact, I'm surprised those three are still showing their faces around here.”

“Oof, that bad, huh?”

“They're sirens from Equestria.”

“Oh, great. More Equestrian transplants just like us.”

“I wouldn't be surprised if the three of them were behind everything that's gone on recently. They probably found out that Starlight knew too much about the portal to another world and planned on using her to bring themselves back to Equestria.”

“That would explain why the portal was closed, but I don't think they are in Starlight's notebook. I mean, Twilight hasn't decoded everything yet, but...”

“Who cares about the notebook?! Everything in there is just in Starlight Glimmer's point of view and she was such a petty person that we have no idea if she was just focusing on some small things and completely missing over something big, like Adagio Dazzle, Sonata Dusk, and Aria Blaze staring her in the face at a party!”

“I guess you're right,” Starlight admitted.

“Of course I'm right.”

Starlight looked at the picture of the three sirens and her alternate self for a moment before looking back up at Sunset. “Are these the sirens that Starswirl the Bearded and his crew of ponies defeated over a thousand years ago? If so, they look really good for their age.”

“Honestly, I have no idea. Sirens never seemed that common in Equestria when I lived there, but then again, it seems like there's a lot about Equestria that I didn't know about when I was there.”

“Okay, you're right that was a silly question to ask. It was just on my mind because we dealt with Starswirl recently and....”

Sunset looked at her as if she had three heads and Starlight just shook her head. “Never mind, it's a long story. What's more important is now we have multiple suspects in the missing Starlight Glimmer case: the sirens and Abacus Cinch.”

And Sunset Shimmer. She thought as she willed herself not to say that out loud. That would be terribly stupid to say right in front of her.

Sunset nodded. “That's a pretty good suspect list considering you only came to this world a few days ago.”

“Thanks for bringing it to my attention, I really appreciated it.”

“Of course and don't think for a second this means that the girls and I aren't still diligently trying to go through Starlight's messages to see if we can find anything important. I just wanted to show this to you now because I figured it would give us time to put in a plan tomorrow.”

“Like what?”

“Like what if we all go around town tomorrow and see if we can find them. They were expelled from CHS, but that doesn't mean they aren't still around here causing trouble, especially if they were seen around here just a few weeks ago at a party.”

Starlight opened her mouth to speak, but a knock on the door threw her and Sunset off topic quickly.

“Um... come in?” Starlight said, saying it as more of a question than as a statement.

Morning Dew creaked the door open and popped her head in. “I'm sorry to bother you girls, but I just figured I'd ask you, Sunset if you wanted to stay for dinner.”

“Oh, no, that's okay. Thanks for the offer though. I should be getting home soon.”

“Okay, would you like me to call your parents to pick you up?”

Sunset's face went pale as she quickly started sputtering out a nonsensical response that baffled both Starlight and Morning Dew.

“I mean, I've got a cell phone. I can just text...”

Morning Dew just nodded solemnly and left the two girls alone.

“Actually, I should go.” Sunset grabbed her backpack and swiftly put it on and started to head out of Starlight's room as quickly as she possibly could.

“Wait, Sunset! You don't have to go, you know. You could stay here and hang out for a bit.”

“No, it's fine, I really do have to go...”

“Go where?”

“Home.”

“To who? Did you find the other Sunset Shimmer's family or something? Do you have foster parents like I... like Starlight does?”

Sunset didn't respond; she just turned back around and bolted out the door faster than Starlight had ever seen her move before and all she could do was stand at the top of the stairway and watch as her friend disappeared from out of sight.

“Well, she sure left rather quickly,” Rondache stated. “Everything okay?”

“I have no idea,” Starlight admitted quietly.

* * *

The following day at school, Sunset seemed to go out of her way to avoid Starlight Glimmer, even when the two girls were supposed to have class that day. She even skipped out on the girls' usual morning hang out session, and by the time lunch rolled around and Sunset wasn't sitting in her usual spot at the table, Starlight let out a long and drawn out sigh.

“Hey girls, I don't want to alarm you, I mean you would know better than me, but there's something that's kind of been bothering me today.”

The five girls all leaned in expectantly.

“It's about Sunset Shimmer.”

“What about her?” Fluttershy asked.

Starlight looked over at Twilight who shook her head silently as if to tell her not to say anything, but after how their conversation just kind of fizzled out last night when Starlight asked her for more information on where she was staying and who she was staying with, she felt it was important to mention it to their friends.

“Twilight and I were kind of playing around with the cipher yesterday and ya know, assuming she figured out the shift correctly...”

“Of course she did,” Applejack interrupted. “There's no other way that they would be able to come up with the name Abacus Cinch or any other coherent name on that final page if they didn't do it right.”

Starlight Glimmer nodded. “No, I absolutely agree. It makes a ton of sense! Except, the page before it says Sunset Shimmer. Of course, unlike the Abacus Cinch page, we haven't fully gone through and read about what happened that Sunset got on Starlight's shit list, but I mean this feels like a big thing, right? The other Starlight knew about Sunset Shimmer.”

“That could mean anything,” Rarity said with a flick of her wrist as if she were swatting away the terrible thoughts that had begun to manifest in Starlight's mind.

“I dunno, Rarity, don't you think it's strange how guarded Sunset is about stuff?” Rainbow Dash asked.

“Rainbow Dash!” Rarity gasped. “Sunset Shimmer is our friend! She would never be in cahoots with bad people, much less somebody like Abacus Cinch. That woman was a monster, just think about the things she said and did to our poor Twilight. If it weren't for Sunset Shimmer and the rest of us, Twilight could have been stuck being bullied and manipulated all thanks to that woman. Sunset would never associate with her!”

“Nobody is saying that she is associated with her! All I'm saying is that it's weird that we've all had slumber parties at our homes, but not once has Sunset Shimmer ever offered to host one before,” Rainbow Dash offered.

“Right and yesterday when Morning Dew asked if she wanted to call her parents about staying for dinner or getting a ride, she got all weird about it and when I asked her point blank where she was living she just ran off.”

“Where does one live when they come through a magical portal?” Fluttershy asked.

“Maybe she lives in a box. A pretty box with lots of balloons and streamers to make it feel homey!” Pinkie suggested.

“Pinkie! Our friend doesn't live in a box! She would say something to us if she were ever in dire straits, I'm sure of it,” Rarity said matter-of-factly.

“I don't know about that, Sunset's always been awfully proud. I doubt she'd just tell us that there was a problem without us prompting the question,” Applejack said.

“But let's be honest,” Rainbow Dash started. “Now that Starlight Glimmer is here and we know that she has an alternate version of herself and Twilight has an alternate version of herself and we probably do too in the pony world... aren't we all wondering what happened to the Sunset Shimmer on this world?”

“It's not important,” Rarity replied. “All that's important is the Sunset Shimmer that we know and love is our friend.”

“But like... she's never talked about it.”

“I don't think the topic has ever come up,” Fluttershy said.

“I still think we are all getting ahead of ourselves,” Rarity said. “We are starting to question everything we know about Sunset Shimmer – our Sunset Shimmer. I'm not saying that it's a bad thing, but we don't even know for sure that there was some sort of problem between them, just because she's in the notebook suddenly she's our number one suspect. I think it's far more likely to be Abacus Cinch than it is to be our very own Sunset, and girls, we must be more respectful of Sunset's situation, she came to another world by herself and she is the very definition of a model citizen right now. I would stake my reputation on that.”

“Look, all I'm saying is that we all know that Sunset Shimmer was totally jealous when Princess Twilight sent her an Equestratext to tell her that she had taken on Starlight Glimmer as a student. I'm not saying that means that she went all psycho and did something to Starlight, I'm just saying that it's something to think about.”

“Plus it's super strange that she is not talking to any of us at all today, despite being at school today! Her conversation with you yesterday Starlight must have spooked her real good.”

“I didn't mean for that to happen. It started out so well, I mean she told me that she and Rainbow Dash found pictures of Starlight Glimmer with some sirens at a party that were posted on the evening she went missing.”

“Sirens?” Twilight asked, having stayed silent through the whole conversation until now. “What are those?”

“They were the Dazzlings. They were these three girls who transferred to CHS for a few weeks to create strife between the students,” Applejack explained.

“We defeated them with the magic of friendship! Now they can't sing!” Pinkie added.

Rainbow Dash raised an eyebrow. “Starlight, can I see your phone again? It's really important.”

“Sure Rainbow Dash.” Starlight reached into her bag, pulled out her phone and slid it across the table to the rainbow haired girl at the end of the table without a second thought. “Why?”

“I want to go through those messages you got again. They all came from deleted accounts and when Sunset and I were going through your Facespace profile and account yesterday, she and I came to the conclusion that whoever was sending the messages probably had something to do with Starlight's disappearance, but now I'm thinking that's not true.”

“Why do you say that?”

Rainbow showed the girls the pictures from the party. Starlight Glimmer was arm in arm with the Dazzlings and they all seemed to be smiling and enjoying the party well enough. The Equestrian Starlight stared at the photo intently, just as she had the night before, trying to see if there was any inkling of fear or regret in the Earth Starlight's eyes, but just like before she seemed happy and oblivious to the damage that she had caused as well as the damage that was about to happen to her.

“Okay, so I've only taken one high school Psychology class and sure, it's just one of the History teachers showing us movies and making us read books, but one of the things that always stood out to me in that class... or stood out to Twilight really, I just copied some of her answers.”

“Your point, Rainbow?” Applejack asked.

“My point is that one of the big topics in that class was body language, it's basically just a bunch of nonverbal cues to give us an idea of what's going on without anybody saying anything. “The girls in this photo are all standing straight up and smiling. Those are real smiles, Starlight was caught mid-laugh in one of the pictures and even the Dazzlings look less terrifying in these pictures.”

“So Starlight Glimmer and the Dazzlings got along well that just shows stuff we already know; this world's Starlight Glimmer was a massive jerk. What's your point?” Applejack asked.

Rainbow Dash didn't waste a second in turning the phone back towards her face and spending several moments fiddling with it. Her friends all looked on, enraptured in her explanation. Finally, she turned the phone back around where the messages the girls had all looked at the day before were back in full display.

“I present to you, Starlight Glimmer's strange messages.”

“Any other creepy pictures?”

“No, because those photos weren't meant to be creepy. I bet you guys free cupcakes at Sugarcube Corner that these messages from all those strange deleted accounts are actually from the Dazzlings.”

“Um, Rainbow... that doesn't make any sense?”

“Fluttershy, when it was cider season, who used the spare key your parents keep under the third potted plant to the left of the front door to sneak into your home and wake you up so we could get in line early?”

“Um... you?”

“That's right! And would an outsider find that creepy?”

“Um... I kind of found it creepy and I am your friend.”

“Exactly! Friends do weird things sometimes that seem creepy. The Dazzlings weren't blackmailing her or trying to see what was in her notebook, they were probably just pranking her. Considering this Starlight Glimmer has a bit of a revenge streak, I wouldn't be surprised if she had retaliated against them in some way.” Rainbow Dash said.

“Well what does that mean about our suspect list then? If we aren't supposed to look at the Dazzlings then are we supposed to be worrying about Abacus Cinch or Sunset Shimmer or something else? This whole thing feels just like a tangled web of misunderstandings.”

“Man, CHS has been through a lot lately,” Pinkie said. “First Sunset, then the Dazzlings, then Twilight...” Twilight Sparkle turned beet red and tried to hide under the table at the mere mention of her brief time as Midnight Sparkle. “Then there was that whole thing with Gaia Everfree and then Juniper Montage... and now Starlight Glimmer is missing! And it just kind of seems like all of these other things have a hand in Starlight Glimmer's disappearance... or more likely, Starlight Glimmer had a hand in all those other things!”

“Oh puh-lease, Pinkie, we need to be rational about this!” Rarity announced. “First of all, let's just cross Sunset off our list first, and honestly, it's laughable that you even brought her up as a suspect in the first place, Starlight.”

“But..” Starlight started.

Rarity held out her hand to keep Starlight from saying another word. “We know that she didn't do anything, she's our friend and she wouldn't hurt a fly. Just because she went crazy once and we don't know anything about her past doesn't mean that she's a bad person; it just means that she is a private person who is doing her best to change for the better. So, Starlight, somehow and someway, you are going to find out exactly why we can trust Sunset Shimmer. I don't want to hear you or anybody else at this table suggest that she is anything other than our amazing best friend unless you have concrete proof that Starlight Glimmer's disappearance was caused by Sunset. Capisce?”

Starlight went silent while the other girls conversations' moved on to topics that were easier to swallow like classes, tests, and weekend plans that didn't involve trying to save the world or using their powers. Starlight just couldn't stop thinking about Sunset Shimmer though; Starlight liked her, there was no reason for her not to after all, and she wanted to believe that Rarity was right and that Sunset was just a regular girl who was just mixed up in everything by accident.

But....

But there was something niggling away inside of her that didn't quite make her feel comfortable with that explanation.

* * *

When the bell rang to signify the end of the day, Starlight Glimmer was the last one out the door. She slowly put her books into her bag and waited until the other students at CHS walked out the door first, she wasn't exactly in the mood to socialize with anybody right now. She was a girl on a mission.

She opened up the group chat and let the girls know that she would not be attending their usual after school plans, she had spent the whole day deciding what her next step would be.

Starlight Glimmer:
Sorry girls, I'm not hanging out at the portal tonight! I think I'm gonna spend my afternoon shadowing somebody.

Sunset Shimmer:
Abacus Cinch? The Dazzlings? You found them?

Starlight's finger was poised to answer her question, it would have been so simple to just fudge the answer just a little bit, but she let it go and put her phone back in her pocket. She had positioned herself just outside the school grounds in a shrub where she had a perfect view of her friends all talking and laughing at the school statue. It stung a little bit to see them all enjoying themselves without her, but she would just continue to remind herself that she had been invited, she had just chosen not to join them.

Sometimes it's hard to get out of that mindset that people or ponies don't want to spend any time with you.

So she waited, silently alternating between watching her friends and checking her phone. Finally, after about half an hour the girls all started to go their separate ways, whether it be to work, after school activities, or just home in general.

Today, Starlight was thankful that Sunset Shimmer didn't have any extra-curricular activities that she was a part of. She really didn't want to have to spend time wandering around the halls of CHS until Sunset was finally done with her club. Not to mention, she really didn't want the other students questioning why the new girl was acting so weird.

She retreated further into the shrub once she saw Sunset walking in her direction and she waited silently until Starlight caught a glimpse of her friend's bright red and yellow hair go past. She paused for a few seconds until she was sure that Sunset had a fair enough distance ahead of her before she jumped out from behind the bush and followed behind as quietly as she possibly could.

Step.

Step.

Step.

Every step she took felt awkward in this body. Starlight hadn't really thought about it before, but walking on two legs and trying to do so quietly was probably among the most frustrating things she had ever dealt with on this world and she hadn't even fully mastered regular walking yet.

Walking quietly on a stakeout was even worse and Starlight spent most of her energy trying to focus on not falling over or tripping over her shoelaces until she noticed that Sunset had stopped short and then she began to panic even more.

Did she hear me walking? Are my footsteps that loud? I can't tell in this body! Did I just ruin this entire stakeout?

She jumped behind the nearest bush and watched her target from between the twigs and leaves. Sunset was looking around her, so she must have heard Starlight walking behind her. Perhaps she was not as careful and quiet as she always thought she was. She quickly turned away from Sunset and put her back against the bush as she closed her eyes and tried to make herself as small as possible, hoping that if she couldn't see Sunset, then Sunset wouldn't be able to see her.

She kept her eyes closed as tight as possible as she heard Sunset's footsteps start up again. She held in the sigh of relief she so desperately wanted to do, just in case it would be enough to make her target turn around once again. She opened her eyes slowly, the setting sun along the quiet cul-de-sac was all she could see. She glanced down at her watch, it was starting to get late – Morning Dew and Rondache had given Starlight enough trust and space - despite all the stunts the other Starlight pulled - that they didn't mind if she came home later, but she really didn't want to push it. So, perhaps she would have to pick this up again tomorrow instead or whatever other day Sunset Shimmer didn't have some sort of club to take part in.

She turned back towards the bush to see if Sunset was still nearby, she didn't want to give away her position at the last minute, not after all the trouble she had just gone through to keep Sunset from seeing her.

Through all the brush, twigs and leaves in her position she could see Sunset Shimmer, now staring straight at the bush, her hands on her hips and her boots tapping the ground impatiently.

“I know you're there, Starlight Glimmer. You aren't as sneaky as you think you are.”

Starlight closed her eyes in frustration. She thought she had been quiet enough to keep Sunset from realizing that she had been there all along. Starlight hoped that when she opened her eyes, this would all be just some bad day dream that she was having in the middle of History class. Unfortunately, when she opened her eyes again, Sunset Shimmer was standing right next to her, looking just as annoyed at her as she had when she could only sort of see her through her hiding place in the bush.

“You're not tailing Abacus Cinch right now, are you, Starlight? You're tailing me.”

Busted.

Chapter Seven

Starlight Glimmer looked up at Sunset Shimmer shyly and slowly moved from the bush that she had been hiding behind. The problem with her human body was that it was much bigger and more gangly than her pony body and her pony body would have had no problems fitting behind that bush without being seen. It was hard to take into account her new body, sometimes. Unfortunately, it happened to happen to her at the worst possible time.

“I promise that there's a good explanation for this,” Starlight said as she racked her brain for a possible excuse that she could use.

“Well? What is it then?” Sunset asked as she tapped her foot impatiently. Starlight stuttered for several seconds as she tried to come up with a valid reason why she would be hiding in a bush, but after several seconds of grasping at straws, she gave up. “I'm waiting! What is your 'good explanation' for following me around?”

Starlight took note that Sunset was balling her fists so tightly that you could see the indents of her fingernails in her skin. Knowing how angry she was just made Starlight more frantic as she desperately tried to cling to any possible excuse she could use.

Still, nothing came to mind. Nothing coherent at least.

“You don't trust me, do you?” Sunset asked.

“What?”

“For some reason you have gotten it into your head that I had something to do with the other Starlight's disappearance. You were questioning me yesterday about where I lived and the other Sunset Shimmer and now I am thinking that you believe I had something to do with all of this. I don't know if it was just something that somebody else said or if you are just like everybody else here.”

“Sunset Shimmer...”

“No, it's okay. It's just a reminder that nobody here actually trusts me. You probably didn't just get that idea into your head out of nowhere, I mean, we're friends or at least, I thought we were. Princess Twilight has really helped both of us change for the better and I thought... I guess I thought that meant we had some sort of kinship.”

“It does!” Starlight interrupted, but Sunset ignored her.

“It doesn't if I helped defeat the sirens or that I helped this world's Twilight when she was overpowered by magic or even that I helped save Camp Everfree! None of it matters because I can't stop people from seeing me as a demon.”

“I don't see you as a demon.”

“No, you don't physically see me as a demon because you weren't here when I was one, but that doesn't mean you don't see me as a terrible person. I mean, you are literally following me home and hiding behind a shrub! Nobody does that unless they think you did something. So what do you think I did?”

“I... I don't...”

“You think I have something to do with Starlight Glimmer's disappearance. Why else would you be following me?”

Starlight crossed her arms and lifted an eyebrow. “Why would you ask if you already knew?”

“I don't know,” Sunset admitted with a defeated sigh. “I guess a little part of me was hoping that you would prove me wrong.”

“It's nothing personal, Sunset. It's just that nobody knows anything about you.”

“What do you mean, 'nobody?' My friends know who I am. They know I love math, they know I grew up in Equestria, that I love the Tirek video games, my favorite colors, my favorite foods... what else is there to know?”

“There are so many other things, like where do you live? What happened to the other Sunset Shimmer? Do you know where she is?”

“That is irrelevant,” Sunset responded with a nonchalant wave of her hand.

“Your name was in the notebook!” Starlight blurted out.

Sunset's jaw dropped, which Starlight subtly noted seemed to have been genuine surprise. “What? Why would my name be in there? I told you, I have never seen this world's version of you before!”

“I don't know why, but Twilight told me that she decoded the names on some of the other pages of Starlight Glimmer's notebook after she figured out the cipher. It's just your name and Twilight hadn't figured out the URL yet, but it was one of the only leads that I had... and I'm sorry, but the clock is ticking. Starlight has been missing for weeks and I need to investigate every lead that I have. I need to find Starlight Glimmer because if I don't, then nobody else will!”

Sunset Shimmer looked at Starlight with a puzzled expression. “I still don't understand why is my name in the book? I've never met the version of you in this world. I didn't even know you existed in the pony world until Princess Twilight told me that she had taken on a student.”

“But you had to admit that when you heard about me, you had to be at least a little curious about the human me, right? The girls said that you were kind of upset when Twilight told you about me.”

Sunset crossed her arms over her chest and looked down at her feet which were now making tiny circles in the dirt.

“I was a little jealous,” she admitted. “It was selfish of me though, I just wanted Twilight all to myself. I guess I always thought of her as a kind of stand-in teacher for me after I abandoned my studies with Princess Celestia. Nothing was ever official though, which is what took me a while to realize. Even though Princess Twilight thought that you and I would get along well; I didn't go looking for you here though, I don't do that anymore.”

“What do you mean you don't 'do that anymore?'”

“I mean that when I came here and when I realized that the people here were practically mirrors of ponies that I had known back in Equestria, I spent so much of my time trying to figure out this world and all the people in it.”

“And what did you figure out?”

Sunset groaned. “Not enough.”

“The girls said that after finding out that there was another Twilight they asked you about the other version of you,” Starlight trailed off, but when Sunset opened her mouth to speak, Starlight cut her off. “You don't have to say anything if you don't want to. I know it's really strange to think about and maybe you don't know anything about her. That's okay! If I never got that message the other day, then I would have never given the Starlight Glimmer of this world a second thought, but I know that things don't work the same way on both worlds; some people and places are different or not around at all. But you and I; well I think I know why Princess Twilight wanted to be my teacher at all, I think I just remind her of you. We're just the other word's version of each other, we've both done something horrible because of greed and pride, but we've changed and we've done a complete turnaround. In our new lives, you and I are the heroes and when I look at you, I feel like I'm looking in a mirror, but in a good way. You know? Because you remind me of how far I've come and I hope, well, I hope that I do the same for you.”

Sunset hugged her and admittedly she teared up a little bit, but wiped away the lone tear before pulling apart from the other Equestrian transplant.

“I really appreciate that, Starlight.”

“I'm sorry that I followed you. I know it's probably a little creepy, I'm just trying to do my part in finding Starlight. If you were in my shoes, I'm sure you would do the same thing. I'll just head home now. You're right, those questions that I asked you were personal and you were under no obligation to answer them. I'll see you tomorrow. That is, if you still want to talk to me tomorrow.”

Sunset opened her mouth to speak, but Starlight turned around and started walking in the opposite direction before she was able to get a word in. She stood there wordlessly as she watched her friend walk down the street back towards Canterlot High School for several long drawn out seconds before she finally began to run after her.

“Wait, Starlight! There's something I need to say to you.”

She's going to tell you how much she hates you. I hope she doesn't take it out on your friends, they had nothing to do with this. You should have made it clearer that they had nothing to do with this.

“Before you say anything, I just want you to know that this had nothing to do with our friends. They had no idea that I was doing this and they didn't accuse you of anything. They probably thought I was a silly filly for even thinking that you were a suspect. I just wanted to make sure for myself, just to cross you off the list.”

“Oh, okay, well...”

“Please don't tell the girls that I tried to follow you home. I don't want them to think that I'm a weirdo or anything,” Starlight added before she started to walk away again.

Sunset reached out and grabbed Starlight's shoulder before she could get out of her reach again.

“Actually, I wanted to talk to you about something.”

“Oh?” Starlight raised an eyebrow. “What would you like to talk about?”

“I wanted to talk about... me. The pony me and the human me because I know that I have told the girls that I don't know anything about the other Sunset Shimmer, but that's not entirely true. I know about her.”

Starlight leaned in, clearly interested in what Sunset had to say.

“I don't want to talk about it here though, is that okay?”

Starlight looked around. The road that they were on wasn't busy, but there were enough people walking around the girls and hanging out in front of nearby stores that she understood her friends' hesitation to speak freely about her past, especially when that past included coming through the portal from a distant pony world.

“Sure, where would you like to go?”

Sunset took in a sharp inhale, held her breath, and tensed her whole body as if she were weighing her options before finally exhaling again. “We could go back to my place, if you don't mind.”

Starlight tried to hide her shocked expression. “That's perfectly fine with me. Just lead the way!”

Sunset started walking down the road and Starlight jogged to catch up with her, but neither girl said anything. Sunset led her friend through the streets which gradually became busier the closer they got to the downtown area. The town that the girls lived in was set up on a grid system, much like the city it bordered and just a few blocks from Canterlot High School was a bustling downtown area. The seniors at CHS appreciated it because they were allowed to leave campus for lunch and the downtown area had countless different places to get food from.

Most of the students at CHS didn't live near the downtown area. The brownstone apartments seemed to be dedicated more towards college students in the area and the people who were getting their first apartment after moving out of their family home. It was a nice area though, and Starlight couldn't help, but admire the old brownstones that surrounded the road on each side in between the bars and restaurants. So, she was a little bit jealous when Sunset stopped in front of one of them, right smack in the middle of a pizza place and a laundromat.

“It's a little bit of a mess, sorry about that. I wasn't expecting company. I don't usually invite people inside.”

“No, that's fine! I'm a pretty messy pony... er person as well so I probably won't even notice it.”

Sunset didn't acknowledge that Starlight had even replied to her, she just reached into her jacket pocket and pulled out her key, slowly opening the door as if she were waiting for Starlight to change her mind and decide to go home, but Starlight was too curious to let it go.

She finally opened the door into a small beige entryway where the paint on the walls was chipping and looked like the last time it had been painted, whoever did the job just sloppily threw paint on the walls with little regard to how it would look. The staircase that she led Starlight up was so narrow, she couldn't help, but wonder how she would have been able to bring furniture up the stairs since they could barely fit on the stairs as is. She stopped on the second floor right in front of a door with a gold plated “2” on the door. The door, which at least seemed to be newer looking than the rest of the building, sprung open fairly easily and Sunset quickly ushered her into the apartment and slammed the door shut behind her.

The inside of Sunset's apartment was a direct contrast to the entryway. It was a small, but open loft that seemed like it had recently been redone and repainted with much more attention to detail than the paint job in the hallway. The appliances were small and seemed older, but the rest of the apartment felt warm and welcome and Sunset seemed to have put a lot of effort into making it feel like home.

“This isn't a mess at all,” Starlight immediately said. “Just saying.”

“Well, it was a warning,” Sunset said with a shrug. “I know that Twilight or Rarity probably would have thought it was a mess if they saw it because something would have been out of place.”

She sat down on a computer chair and ushered Starlight in the direction of her sole dining room chair. Starlight grabbed it and pulled it towards Sunset so the girls could face each other.

“So what did you want to discuss that we couldn't talk about out there?”

Sunset blushed. “I didn't want the people here to overhear anything and see me any differently. I had a rocky start in this world and I did a lot of things that I am not necessarily proud of.”

Starlight nodded in a silent permission for her to continue.

“You see, when I first came here and I realized how many similarities to Equestria this world has, I realized that there had to be another version of me so I spent most of my time in this new world learning all about the different details of what it was like to be human while I was looking for her. It wasn't quite the same situation that you're having right now, I didn't spend that long looking for her and when I found her nothing about her life really surprised me. Honestly, the other version of me was just like I was back in Equestria when I came here.

The other Sunset Shimmer was a dedicated student at a small private school – it was a school that was smaller than Crystal Prep, maybe a hundred students in all, and she was the top student there. Back when I was new here and had no place to live and no idea what I would do in this new world, I would follow her around. At the time it was the only thing that made sense, I wanted to see what her life was like and I wanted to know that out of the two of us, I was the one who was better off. I thought it was like some sort of game where one of us would be a clear winner.”

“Were you the winner?”

“Ha. No. Not at all. She was literally just me back in Equestria, a dedicated student who put more effort into her studies and her goal of becoming President than she did anything else. The only difference between her and I was that on this world she had a great support system in her family that I could only dream of growing up. She had people who would keep her grounded when she needed it and people who were rooting for her to succeed. All I had, even though she's amazing, was Princess Celestia. I was so jealous of this other Sunset Shimmer.”

“So, what did you do?” Starlight asked curiously

“Nothing. There was nothing I could do. Sure, at times while I watched I wondered if it would just be easier to take her place here. I thought that I could just continue her studies and follow her life plan. One day I would become president just like she wanted, but that would be the point where my plan would finally come to fruition and I would be able to create a zombie army to take over the world and then use that zombie army to take over Equestria too. My anger and frustration with Princess Celestia had really clouded my judgment though and I realized that I didn't want to wait that long to enact my plan. I didn't want to risk there being two Sunset Shimmer's though, so I got her and her family sent away.”

“Sent away?” Starlight asked hesitantly as she took a step back from the other girl.“Sent away to where? How did you do it?”

“I stole some of her things, important things like her identification information and important documents while she and her family were out of the house. I rationed it in my mind that it was acceptable because I wasn't using them for myself, I was using them to send out applications to fancy schools on the other side of the country. I sent out a ton of applications and when she got accepted she and her family spent a few weeks discussing it, probably out of pure confusion, and then one day I came by here and saw that they were in the process of packing up their home. Within two weeks they had moved away so that Sunset Shimmer could continue her studies in an amazing new environment. For a while though, after they had gone, I would still stick around and watch their house as if they would come back. It was the only place I truly felt comfortable and safe at the time. So, even though I felt relief that they had decided to leave, leaving me as the only Sunset Shimmer in town, I also felt something else which I now recognize was clearly guilt.”

“I'm sure if you ever ran into the other Sunset Shimmer she would appreciate that you did that for her. I think that in the end it worked out.”

“I guess. Until the day that we are both out in the real world...”

“Nah, I bet that will work out just fine. Of course, if you were ever really worried, I bet you would be welcomed back to Equestria with open arms.”

Sunset Shimmer thought about it for a moment. “I used to make mini trips to Equestria all the time. Equestria has so many gems that are never even touched so I would sneak back through the mirror while ponies were asleep and I used to just take a few games so I could afford a place to live. I stopped doing that after I stole Princess Twilight's crown. I had enough gems saved up anyway, so now I work at a sushi place in the mall, it's a pretty good gig, people tend to tip well and I like it because it means I can sequester myself in this world instead of going back to Equestria. Aside from that last trip to pick up that new notebook which I never left Twilight's home to finish that errand, I haven't really been back to Equestria and I haven't really wanted to go back”

“What? Why not? Equestria is amazing! It's way better than this world, there's no magic here!”

“There's enough magic here thanks to me,” Sunset admitted. “I already brought magic that I can't control from Equestria to Earth, I would rather not make some other dumb mistake that leads to more problems here.”

“I think that you're overreacting.”

“No, between bringing magic to a world where there wasn't any and disobeying Princess Celestia the way that I did, I don't think that I could ever show my face in Equestria ever again.”

Starlight patted the other Equestrian transplant on the back. “Hey, I wouldn't say that. I mean, I created a town that was basically a cult and when Princess Twilight and her friends tried to destroy it, I created a spell so that I could go back in time and make sure their friendship never happened and all the princesses can look me in the eye when they talk to me. They didn't even know me in the same way that Princess Celestia knows you, Sunset Shimmer.”

Sunset Shimmer stared at her for a moment before breaking the silence and saying, “What did you do? To the people in your town, I mean?”

Starlight had been through the same conversation so many times in Equestria that at this point, explaining the situation had become old hat. She didn't like to discuss it, but she liked to think of herself as desensitized to the details of it all so she wouldn't get overly frustrated with herself every time she had to answer that question.

“I basically brainwashed them into being my friends and forced them to give up their special talents and live in the middle of nowhere and eat terrible food.”

“Were you nice to them?”

That question was a new question. Most of the time, at this point, everypony she mentioned it to most likely assumed the worst and sometimes she believed the worst in herself even though she knew that she wasn't a complete tyrant, it was easy to paint herself that way in her memories because of how guilty about it she felt.

“Most of the time,” she admitted after thinking about it for a few moments. “I mean, sometimes I would lose my temper for a moment over something inane, but never anything that lasted longer than a few minutes.”

“I don't think that's so bad. I mean, you might have gone a little bit overboard with the going back in time thing, but I feel like being an overall good leader should count for something.”

“That was my thought process at the time. Now, I don't fully feel the same way and after everything that I have learned about the Starlight Glimmer in this world; I worry that even if we find her, she will go down the same path that I did. Except, she might not have the same influences that I found in Princess Twilight and the other Elements of Harmony.”

“I don't think that will happen,” Sunset replied with a tiny smile. “First of all, going back in time and time spells in general, thankfully haven't popped up in this world so I don't think that is something that can happen in this world. Plus, we may not exactly be Elements of Harmony, but we do have really cool geode's that give us powers and if we have to use them to make sure this world's Starlight Glimmer doesn't go off the deep end, then that's what we will have to do.”

“So, you don't think this worlds Starlight Glimmer is doomed?”

“No, not at all.”

“And you aren't doomed either. I think you and I suffer from a lot of the same problems, we both are so guilty that we are so far into our own heads about whether or not we can be good ponies... or good people, either or, but we let that cloud our judgment. Don't let me worrying about your involvement serve as an end all thought process about you. Your friends love you and so do I. I just thought that I needed to search every option. Honestly, at some point, I wouldn't be surprised if I had just looked into all the girls here just in case.”

“Hey, it's okay. I shouldn't have gotten so frustrated with you. It wasn't your fault, you were just following every lead you could get your hands on. Of course, now that you've finally realized that I'm on your side... which I don't understand why it took you so long to figure that out. Why don't we go back to looking for the Dazzlings, what do you say?”

“I say that it sounds like a great plan.”

Sunset smiled. “Perfect, and I know just the place to start.”

Author's Note

This is a story I've been working on for National Pony Writing Month where the point is to write 50,000 words in 30 days. So, I've gone through this chapter only once to fix some of the wording/grammar errors that stuck out to me. If you find anything else, let me know.

Thanks to the new Equestria Girls mini-series and all their subsequent information. I was able to piece together an idea of what Sunset Shimmer's apartment was like. If you haven't seen it. Check them out here and here.

Chapter Eight

“Um, not that I don't appreciate hanging out with you after I accused you of somehow being part of the other Starlight's disappearance, but Morning Dew and Rondache haven't exactly given me money for whatever this place is,” Starlight Glimmer said as she dug herself further into the vinyl booth.

After their heart-to-heart at Sunset brought Starlight Glimmer to a diner that was close to her apartment. Diner Joe's was a large chrome covered building with laminated black and white floors and bright red vinyl booths that all had seen better days. It was jarring for Starlight, after coming from Sunset's gorgeous brownstone loft, she hadn't said a word when Sunset first brought her in here and just followed behind her silently while the hostess led them to a table near the windows that had a perfect view of the rest of the restaurant.

“It's just a diner. You'll like it and I've got you covered on whatever you want to eat. I have enough money after paying rent to at least get us food here. It's not like it costs all that much to eat here. Besides, we're on a stakeout mission right now.”

Starlight raised an eyebrow. “We are?”

“Yup. If you haven't already noticed, anybody who is anybody in this town comes here with their friends.” Sunset took the opportunity to extend her arm and wave it around slowly for Starlight to follow along. She was right, it was filled with other students from Canterlot High School and Crystal Prep, all hanging out in the booths enjoying their time with their friends. “Plus, I know for a fact that the Dazzlings turn up here every once in a while to wreak havoc for their own personal enjoyment.”

“How do you know?”

“Because every few days, it seems like there's a fight that breaks out here seemingly over nothing and within minutes of the altercation, once everybody is friends again once they leave Diner Joe's radius. It happens like clock work, so it has to be them. I try to come here every afternoon to see if I can spot them, but so far I haven't had any luck.”

“What was your plan if you did spot them?” Starlight asked. “The other girls are all otherwise occupied most afternoons, so it's not like you could really do anything about it, could you? I thought Princess Twilight said that it took all seven of you to defeat them last time.”

“We're stronger together,” Sunset admitted. “That doesn't mean that I wouldn't be able to take them on my own though. We already weakened them after last time, their gems barely work at this point so I don't think it would take much to get them to do exactly what we need them to do.”

Starlight nodded slowly. “Well what should I be looking out for? How do I know if they are here?”

Sunset stood up slightly and looked around the room, carefully examining each table and booth that she could see before sitting back down and announcing to Starlight, “they aren't here yet, but if you see anyone that looks like those girls in the picture, let me know immediately. They probably won't be dressed like that, they will probably be in sweatshirts or something, they probably aren't trying to draw any attention to themselves, especially around Canterlot High School students.”

Starlight opened her Facespace account and pulled up the pictures in question as she tried to commit the girls faces' to memory.

“What do you say, burgers for both of us? Diner Joe's makes a great black bean burger if you're still really upset about having bacon yesterday.”

“Um, sure. I trust you won't steer me wrong about the food.” She barely paid attention to her friend as she said that, instead she went back and forth between looking at the Facespace pictures and looking out the window to the diner's entrance to see who was around. She was secretly hoping that she would be able to spot the girls before they were even able to enter the diner, but she knew that if Sunset hadn't seen them yet and she had come here as often as she possibly could, the likelihood that she would be able to spot them was slim.

It was a little disheartening.

“Do you think that the other Starlight Glimmer was actually friends with these girls?” Starlight asked right after the burgers that they had ordered were placed on the table in front of them.

Sunset shrugged. “Personally, I don't see how anybody could ever be friends with girls like them, but nothing is impossible. Maybe there was something about her that the Dazzlings liked and maybe the Dazzlings were the friends she needed during a rough time. I really shouldn't be one to judge.”

“Unless they played some part in her disappearance, right?”

“Right,” Sunset agreed.

“I wish that there weren't so many people involved in this. I feel like every day there's another name on the list and another wild goose chase to go on.”

“Hey, chin up. At least you can cross my name off the list. Although when you or Twilight or whoever is going to decode that freaking notebook, actually decodes my page, let me know what it says. I would love to hear about the overly petty reason this world's version of Starlight Glimmer hates me and wants to destroy me for. I seriously do not remember ever meeting her.”

Starlight giggled. “I wish I could say that I'm surprised that she's like this, but I know that I have had previous issues with pettiness and anger management. Of course that was before Princess Twilight took me under her wings and taught me all about friendship. It sounds silly, right? That something so seemingly small and silly could have such a big impact on a pony?”

“Or a person,” Sunset offered. “And I know exactly what you mean and it isn't silly, the people who surround you become a part of you, in a way and they make up the way you see the world.”

“And that is why Starlight Glimmer saw the world correctly when she ran with our group,” a familiar voice sang out next to them.

Starlight and Sunset looked over at the end of the booth to see three teenage girls standing there looking at them expectantly. The girls standing there looked incredibly similar to the ones in the photo, which Starlight Glimmer had surmised must mean that these were the same girls and Starlight Glimmer and Sunset Shimmer must have been so distracted by their conversation that neither of the girls had noticed the Dazzlings enter the diner. Starlight immediately began to kick herself for not noticing especially after putting so much effort in committing their faces to memory.

The Dazzlings in the photo differed from the ones that stood in front of them, though. The photo Dazzlings seemed glamorous, they wore glittering stylish clothes, perfect hair and makeup, and smug faces that could make anybody envious of just how cool and above it all they seemed. The Dazzlings in real life were almost the opposite, their faces looked tired and gaunt as if they hadn't eaten or slept in weeks, they had traded their glamorous clothes for ill-fitting black sweatshirts and dark jeans. They still kept those smug faces they had in the picture, but without all the glamor that had surrounded them, they just looked tired and annoyed.

Based on her voracious Facepsace stalking that afternoon, she had quickly learned who these girls were, or at least what they looked like and what their profiles said they were like. It wasn't much, but it made her feel more up to speed with Sunset Shimmer who seemed to know the girls much better than she did considering Sunset Shimmer and the Dazzlings had actually met each other before.

“So, we finally see your faces around here,” Sunset replied without skipping a beat.

“Well we couldn't come around while you were here, could we? You would destroy us!” Sonata cried out.

Sunset shrugged. “Well, you aren't wrong.”

Aria and Adagio pushed Sunset and Starlight further into the booth and sat down next to them.

“We aren't interrupting a date, now are we?” Aria asked with mock sadness. “You two looked so close earlier, we wouldn't want to interrupt anything.”

“We do need to talk to Starlight though,” Sonata added. “It's important.”

“Anything you say to Starlight you can say in front of me.”

“Well, okay then,” Adagio turned towards Starlight and smiled wryly. “Starlight Glimmer, as I live and breathe!” She started as if she hadn't been sitting next to Starlight for a few minutes now.
“I thought that you had forgotten all about us! Of course, I see that you have met the little Rainboom wannabe, is that the reason you haven't contacted us in weeks? You're sleeping with the enemy?”

“I'm not a wannabe anymore,” Sunset muttered.

“I'm really confused...” Starlight said

“Did you bring her to the diner as part of your retaliation? Are we on to you this time? I feel like I'm always in the dark until the reveal, but not this time. Right?” Sonata asked gleefully.

“What do you mean by that? I don't understand”

“Oh, come off it Starlight,” Adagio said, half ignoring Starlight's confusion. “Just admit it. We figured it out before you were able to do anything. I know it hurts to admit, but it's okay. Not everything can go according to plan every single time.”

“Woah woah woah! What is going on here? I didn't bring Sunset here for anything, I don't have any plan that you three unveiled! And I'm not sleeping with her, I don't even know what you mean by that! She hasn't been to a sleepover at my house before, but she is my friend! Probably my closest friend right now, she's the only one who understands”

“Friend? Ha! That's laughable! Nobody likes her, she isn't even supposed to be here!”

“Neither are you three!” Sunset Shimmer shot back.

Adagio chuckled. “Tell that to Starswirl the Bearded and his lame band of heroes.”

“I'm not supposed to be here either,” Starlight said as she stood up defiantly in her place. “I'm not Starlight Glimmer!”

The Dazzlings looked up at her in shock, as if they were expecting a changeling to bust through and show that it had just been a facade all along. Even a few of the patrons at the surrounding tables looked over at Starlight with raised eyebrows as if they had been expecting something else to happen. Starlight blushed when she realized the ruckus she had caused and slowly slid back down into the vinyl booth and twiddled her thumbs as she waited for the other girls in the booth to say something or move on to a whole different conversation so she didn't have to explain her mini freak out that they had just witnessed.

“What do you mean you aren't Starlight Glimmer?” Adagio asked.

“You don't have to answer her,” Sunset assured Starlight. “She's a monster.”

“Monster is a relative term, I'm sure plenty of people around here think that you're a monster as well,” Adagio shot back.

Sunset looked at Adagio as if she wished she still had magic in this world so she would have a way to hurt her without a second thought. Starlight had a feeling that for the well-being of the other Diner Joe's patrons, she should start explaining things to the Dazzlings, even though Sunset probably wouldn't agree with that idea.

“I'm from Equestria. The Starlight Glimmer of this world went missing a few weeks ago and I'm trying to figure out what happened to her. Sunset found a picture of you three with her the night that she went missing; we were hoping that you knew something.”

“Starlight!” Sunset said between her teeth. “You didn't have to tell them anything!”

Starlight looked at the three sirens who looked just as confused as Starlight felt. “I understand that maybe you guys don't get along with Sunset Shimmer, but I've looked at Starlight's Facespace profile and you four are friends so please... help me find your friend.”

“We don't have to tell you anything,” Aria said as she crossed her arms over her chest defiantly.

“No, you don't have to, but a girl is missing and if we all put our heads together we can find her.” The Dazzlings still looked hesitant, and Starlight wasn't sure if it was just because they were literally soul sucking sirens or if it was because they didn't want to say anything incriminating with Sunset Shimmer around to police them. “Anything you say here is safe, I promise. I just really need to know what happened to Starlight Glimmer and I think you three were the last ones to talk to her. I mean, you had sent so many strange Facespace messages to her over deleted accounts and you were all at that party...”

The Dazzlings went pale as soon as Starlight mentioned the Facespace messages, something she immediately noticed and was thankful for. If they had said that they had no idea what she meant by that, she would have started freaking out again because if it wasn't a prank that was done by this world's Starlight Glimmer's friends, then that meant it was done maliciously by somebody who actually wanted to hurt her.

“So, you do know about the Facespace messages?” Sunset asked.

“Of course we do, it's part of our secret...” Aria and Adagio were quick to silence Sonata before she could say anything else.

“Secret what?” Sunset asked, this time her voice was louder as she stared down Sonata. “You have to tell me. Starlight Glimmer is your friend and she's been missing for weeks. Whatever secret thing you three did could have caused her grave danger.”

Aria rolled her eyes. “Oh please, it's just a game. It wasn't even a game we were playing the night of that party. You're overreacting.”

“Just tell me about your stupid fucking secret game,” Sunset hissed.

“It's just a game where we prank each other.” Adagio rolled her eyes. “The point of the game is to one up whoever got you last time. Starlight Glimmer is a master at this game.”

“She's really good with computers,” Sonata added. “And she is also really really really good at convincing people to do, say, or think certain things. When we first started playing, she had me convinced that drinks that came in red cans actually tasted like ketchup for the first few sips and then it would change flavors halfway through. It turned out that whenever she would give me a can of soda, she would stick a ketchup packet in there first and stick a straw into the ketchup packet.”

“She drank 12 cans before Starlight told her the truth,” Aria deadpanned.

“Ever since then it's always been about one-upping each other. Starlight has always been good at it and so for our last prank we focused on scaring her and trying to make her think that a government agency somehow found out about her revenge notebook and wanted to take it away from her because of illegal activity or something. Hence, the creepy messages, the strange letters, and the phone calls.”

“We didn't know anything about the phone calls or strange letters,” Starlight said.

“Well now you do and if by any chance, you come across them, they are fake. So very fake. It took forever to make it look realistic, but it worked. She was thoroughly freaked out and it was so refreshing to say that we got her,” Adagio said. “That was a few days before the party you're talking about, for the record. At the party, Banana Fluff's party by the way, in case you want to go harass her about Starlight Glimmer's disappearance, Starlight made it very clear that she was going to get back at us with something that we cared about.”

“Oh, you care about me, how adorable,” Sunset mocked.

“We care about getting rid of you,” Aria snorted. “If it weren't for you, the three of us wouldn't be scrounging for negativity to feed off of without the use of our powers. All because you had to go ahead and team up with those stupid Rainbooms. We would have been fine if you didn't join them, so yea, we totally care about getting rid of you, if that's what you mean.”

“It's the only thing we could think of that Starlight could use against us. So every time we saw you here at Diner Joes we would just go home. I hope you realize how rough that was for us, having no negativity to feed off for several days made it very difficult for us. Look at us, we're so starved for negativity that we're practically skeletons!” Adagio explained.

“Not even tacos are enough to satisfy us at this point!” Sonata cried.

“Of course as soon as we saw the two of you here together, we assumed that we had foiled the plot before you had a chance to really hurt us.”

“We may have been a little off,” Aria said with a shrug.

“So this secret game of yours is just the four of you playing pranks on each other?”

“Pretty much,” the Dazzlings all replied.

“Then why is it so secret?” Sunset asked. The three sirens all hesitated and looked among each other as if they were trying to figure out how best to avoid Sunset's question without incriminating themselves. “I mean if it's just pranks that the four of you are playing, what does it matter? It's not hurting anybody else, is it?”

“Sometimes we play pranks on other people,” Sonata admitted quietly. “And sometimes they get out of hand.”

“You don't have to say anything, Sonata. Sunset Shimmer isn't anybody to be afraid of, she's a nobody.”

“This is important,” Starlight reiterated. “Anything you girls can tell us, helps us figure out what's going on. We need to find her. Please. You girls were her friends, weren't you?”

“Fine, we'll tell you everything you want to know, fake Starlight Glimmer. This isn't for you though, this is because our friend went missing and we want her back,” Adagio explained.

Author's Note

This story is being written for National Pony Writing Month so let me know if I have missed any glaring spelling or grammar errors. Especially at this point, I'm in a rush to get to 50,000 words in less than a week after being sick and busy for so long.

Thanks!

Chapter Nine

“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!

Chapter Ten

When Starlight Glimmer finally regained consciousness she had almost forgotten that she wasn't in Equestria anymore. She half expected to wake up in her own bed in Princess Twilight's castle in Ponyville. She would wake up when the sun started to overtake the room thanks to the large windows that adorned the castle. The first thing she would see would be one of her kites, she had specifically put them on the walls in a way that no matter how she slept that night, she would always wake up to one of her kites.

What a great way to wake up. It certainly was part of the reason why waking up in Morning Dew and Rondache's bedroom for her wasn't as thrilling, although it still was a nice place to sleep.

When she opened her eyes, she briefly couldn't remember where she was or what had happened to her before she had fallen asleep. Even after slowly going over the events in her mind, she was still incredibly confused.

How is it possible for both Sunset and I to pass out and get stolen away when there was nobody else was around?

Was that strange man from the diner the culprit behind all of this?

Where am I? And where's Sunset Shimmer?

None of those questions had any obvious answers, at least none that she could gather from a quick glance around the room.

The room was small, much closer to what she would deem a closet as opposed to an actual bedroom. There was only room for a small cot that seemed to be bolted to the floor. The uncomfortable cot was what she had woken up on, seemingly unharmed from where she fell outside on the ground after leaving Diner Joes. Her clothes were still on and seemed no worse for wear and her hat was still firmly planted on top of her head.

The only other thing that appeared to be in the room was a mirror. She tried to stand up to look in the mirror, but upon standing up she immediately realized that the pressure around her right wrist wasn't just part of her imagination, it came from a pair of handcuffs that kept her attached to the cot.

She used her other hand to rub her eyes. She hoped that as soon as she opened her eyes again, this would all just be some part of strange dream that happened after eating too much food at Diner Joe's.

No such luck.

She looked around the tiny room again, now with the creeping realization that not only did she not know where she was, but she had even less of an idea about where Sunset Shimmer was, and Sunset had been with her when she went down. She hoped that wherever she was, Sunset was safer than Starlight was right now.

Footsteps suddenly broke apart her thought process and she slowly eased back onto the cot, bringing herself further and further towards the wall and away from the door, even going so far as to wrap her arms around her legs as if they would act as some shield against whatever person or monster dared to walk through the door.

In this world Starlight had no magical powers and she still lacked a lot of the range and mobility that most humans who have been in this world longer than she had, but she liked to think that she had a lot of raw will and strength. After all, the last time she was in this world she was able to kick Juniper Montage hard enough that she dropped the magic mirror. Maybe she would be able to do something similar this time should the need arise.

She heard a hand turn the doorknob and dared herself not to close her eyes, the person entering the room was inevitable, but she was more likely to be endangered if she wasn't alert when the stranger opened the door.

The door opened slowly, and a black boot stepped in first, at first Starlight drew in a deep breath as she watched the door slowly enter into her room until she noticed that the black boot was attached to a familiar body.

Sunset Shimmer.

She let herself exhale that breath she had been holding for far too long.

Thank Goodness. I wasn't sure I would be able to get out of here to find her, but she found me!

“Starlight! I knew it! I was so worried this door would lead me to something far worse,” Sunset said with a sigh of relief.

“Where are we?”

“I'm not sure,” Sunset admitted. “I woke up in a room kind of like yours except I wasn't handcuffed to the bed. I've been wandering around trying to figure out what's going on, but so far I don't recognize everything. It's like we are in some kind of strange laboratory, but there aren't any of those within the Canterlot city limits and I don't feel like we've been out that long, ya know?”

Starlight nodded in agreement.

Sunset walked over and took a bobby pin out of her hair.

“Don't worry, I've got this. I've had plenty of alone time to learn random stuff like this,” she said with a wry smile as she used the bobby pin to pick away at the handcuff lock. After a few seconds of controlled wiggling, the handcuffs practically popped open and Starlight quickly took them off her wrist and massaged it for a few seconds to get rid of that feeling that there was something holding her wrist.

Sunset helped her up off the cot and they made a break for the doorway which was easily accessible in the closet sized bedroom. As soon as they both stepped outside, Sunset immediately shut and locked the door behind her, hoping that whoever came looking for Starlight next wouldn't be immediately thrown off to find an unlocked and wide open door that led to a Starlight Glimmer-less room.

“Where to?” Starlight whispered.

Sunset grabbed her friend's hand and led her down the hallway at a brisk pace.

Then down another hallway.

And another after that.

All of the hallways looked exactly the same though. The entire building looked like it was built as a gigantic metallic looking underground bunker with doors lining the hallway. Nothing about the walls or doors had any distinguishing features and there were no stairs or posters or even any indication that they had been going anywhere at all. The girls couldn't help, but feel like they had just been going around and around in circles this whole time.

It was a defeating feeling.

They rounded into another hallway, this one had a doorway at the end of it. That was a start. They looked at each other and gave a brief nod before running down the hallway as quickly as possible and opening the door with the hopes and prayers that this would lead to an exit.

Unfortunately, the door led to a much larger room much like the ones that both girls had woken up to except this one had more than just a cot and a mirror in it. It also held a large machine that had more buttons and switches than either Starlight or Sunset had ever seen in one place and next to that machine was a girl who looked like a direct copy of Starlight Glimmer except this version looked tired and angry and instead of ripped jeans, a t-shirt, a vest, and a hat, this Starlight Glimmer wore only a dingy hospital gown.

“Well, we found Starlight Glimmer,” Sunset said quietly.

The Equestrian Starlight wasted no time running towards her Earth counterpart and slid onto the ground next to her cot before taking the other version of hers hands. The other Starlight Glimmer struggled to process the situation at first, but as soon as she blinked a few times a small smile appeared on her face.

“So, he was right, you really did come here to rescue me.”

“Who was right?” Starlight asked.

The other version of her ignored her question and continued on, “I almost didn't believe him when he said that he got in contact with you and was going to bring you here. He's an idiot who thinks he is playing God so of course I wouldn't believe him, but here you are.” She reached out and touched the Equestrian Starlight's hair and then moved her hand to her face, as if in shock that she was right there in front of her in flesh and blood.

“You wouldn't believe what I've been through to find you,” Starlight said so relieved that she thought she could laugh. “I went through practically every record I could find of yours and I even talked to your friends the Dazzlings...”

The Earth Starlight frowned. “You talked to Adagio, Aria, and Sonata?”

Starlight nodded.

“And you went through my notebook and all my other files?”

Again, Starlight nodded.

“And you still wanted to rescue me? Ha! And Miss Care probably thought I was past the point of no return.”

“We don't think you're a saint,” Sunset piped up from the doorway. “Actually, you're kind of a dick. Those pranks that you and the Dazzlings pulled were uncalled for and the whole petty revenge diary is disgusting.”

“Sunset Shimmer,” Starlight said, looking at the red and yellow haired girl up and down with an evil smile. “I was going to come look for you before I was captured. Oh boy, do my friends have a grudge against you.”

Sunset raised an eyebrow, unimpressed.

“If it weren't for the fact that Abacus Cinch's payback required all of my time and attention, I would have done something to you far earlier. I had it all planned out too, I'd tell you about it, but I'm sure at some point I'm going to want to put it into motion and I wouldn't want to spoil the surprise.”

“Wow, thanks.” Sunset rolled her eyes.

“Abacus Cinch,” the Equestrian Starlight said slowly. “Adagio was telling us about your last prank to her. Did you stop the prank so suddenly because you were worried about people following you? I'm so sorry that you were followed and kept here for so long before Sunset and I were able to rescue you.”

“What? No. I stopped it because I added a 'No Index' code to the HTML of her education blog. She probably has no idea why it's not getting the amount of hits it used to and she never will.”

The human Starlight Glimmer looked so sure of herself as she said that, as if she were mentally patting herself on the back for coming up with something so sinister and she expected everyone else in the room to agree with her.

The Equestrian Starlight Glimmer did not seem impressed whatsoever, in fact, she seemed more confused than anything. She looked over at Sunset Shimmer for some help, but Sunset could only shrug in response.

“I have no idea what that means,” Starlight Glimmer admitted.

“Don't worry about it, sweetie, it just means Google can't find her website so nobody can read it anymore unless they were to specifically type in the whole URL. Just keep in mind that the other version of you is so bad ass she did things most people don't even know exist.”

“Honestly, I'm not sure that is bad ass.” The Equestrian Starlight admitted. “I mean, I found your notebook, you did a lot of things that weren't... well, ya know, nice.”

“Nice isn't a real word. People just say nice to be polite.”

“Fine. You were a raging jerk to people who ticked you off slightly or did something you didn't agree with and that got you in trouble. I mean you literally knew that you were being chased so you sent me a letter to come get you.”

“Wow, jerk alert! And you thought I was bad. You're the one being a judgey-mcjudgey pants.”

“That's... that's not even a word.” She turned back towards Sunset Shimmer. “Is it?”

“Wow, seriously? Could you be any more simple minded? You're supposed to be me! Don't tell me that they breed them stupid on whatever planet or universe or what-have-you that you came from.”

“Hey!” Sunset Shimmer interrupted. “Knock it off you two! We have no idea where we are or why any of us were taken and locked up in here. So instead of arguing about whatever comes to mind, how about we put our brains together and do something about our situation.”

“Ha! Trust me, kiddo. There's nothing you can do about this except ride it out.”

“Oh yea, and how would you know?”

“Because I lived with the guy who did this for years,” Starlight Glimmer said simply.

“What?!” Starlight and Sunset exclaimed.

“Yea, he was my foster father before he and his wife ditched me because I was a 'bad kid' or something,” Starlight said with a shrug. “Dude is crazy, like literally crazy. Smart guy though. Doesn't quite even out the crazy.”

“Thank you for that wonderful introduction, Starlight Glimmer, my dear.” A new voice rang out behind them. Starlight and Sunset whipped around to face the door to see a tall man with graying hair, the same man that had been staring at them through the mirror at the diner. He wore scrubs covered by a lab coat and a twisted smile that sent a shiver down both girls backs.

“There's just one thing you left out though,” he said as he walked into the room slowly, making every step echo around the room. “It was my wife's idea to send Starlight Glimmer back, honestly, I loved having her around because she was a bright girl and she seemed to have an uncanny understanding of what was going on around her, even my livelihood which as a rule had to be kept secret from everybody in my life, especially my family. She seemed to have a sort of knowledge about the portal and about my division studying the portal and the magic that was appearing in this world. She never outright said anything to myself or my wife about it, but she started using excuses to the cops about not actually being Starlight Glimmer and actually being the Starlight Glimmer from another world.”

“Why did you take her then?”

“I learned she was expelled from Crystal Prep from Abacus Cinch when she visited my home to speak with me about my former foster daughter. She told me that she had learned from another coworker of mine, who had blabbed to everybody about our secret undertaking while drunk at a party, what we do here and told me about the events of some friendly competition between schools called the Friendship Games where magic was running rampant.”

“I wouldn't say that it was running rampant,” Sunset interjected. “It was controlled except for Abacus Cinch going out of her way to destroy the world with the magic that one of her students had stored in a necklace. She bullied a girl into opening it and releasing the magic which almost destroyed our world and Equestria!”

“That's not how she tells it.”

“Of course it isn't!”

“I thought Starlight Glimmer might be the link between these two worlds and after setting up cameras and doing some evaluations of the proposed portal that Abacus Cinch mentioned, I saw both of you come through it. Seeing another version of Starlight Glimmer coming through the portal might be the key that our department had been missing for so long, so after you had gone back, I put a team on getting the Starlight Glimmer of this world and bringing her to my office for some tests.”

“She didn't even come in contact with either of us while I was through the portal last time, what would the tests return?”

The strange man ignored her. “Of course it would have been silly to just take a teenage girl and not have a backup plan. Sure, Starlight is a bit of a runner, but if she was missing for a really long period of time, people would start asking questions and poking around so I put that letter through the portal asking you to come through.”

“You're the one that did that? I thought that this world's Starlight...”

“Nope, but if I didn't say that, would you have come through the portal?”

“Um, no probably not.”

“So it worked and you took over for Starlight Glimmer while my team and I tested her and did our best to learn more about the magic of that portal.”

“You somehow closed the portal, didn't you? You made it so I wouldn't even be able to go back to Equestria so I would be stuck here performing the other Starlight Glimmer's role and I fell for it... I went right into the palm of your hand and did everything you hoped I would do.”

“Well, not everything. I hoped that you wouldn't find me before I found you. Starlight Glimmer's file from Crystal Prep was helpful seeing as it helped me learn more about my so-called acquaintance Abacus Cinch. However, the sirens were the real treat in all of this,” the strange man said as he pulled a little remote out of his pocket and pressed the big red button on it. The wall behind the large machine lit up and revealed that it wasn't actually a wall, but a two way mirror and on the other side of the mirror sat the three Dazzlings, chained to their cots just like Starlight Glimmer had been just a few minutes earlier. “I had no idea there were even other creatures that came over from Equestria so that's a nice catch. Two Equestrian ponies and three Equestrian sirens. I always just thought that the three of them were the worst teenagers I had ever had the misfortune of meeting. I never would have guessed that they were actually mystical beings that fed on the negativity they created. What a wonderful twist of fate for me and I owe it all to that wonderful conversation you five girls had at the diner yesterday.”

The Earth Starlight Glimmer turned around to see what the two interlopers and the stranger were looking at. Her eyes widened when she saw her friends sitting just a few feet away from her, chained to their beds. She couldn't hear what they were saying, but through the mirror she could see their terror and their anger as they cried out silently. She screamed at the top of her lungs, but none of the sirens could hear her.

“There are people that would be looking for us, you know!” Sunset called out.

“Who would be looking for you?” The man questioned. “There's another Sunset Shimmer living on the other side of the country, all it takes is a little form sent to your school, job, and landlord that say that you were just taking somebody else's identity and you had decided to flee after somebody found out. Then, there are those three over there.” He pointed to the sirens. “Nobody would ever miss those three; they had no friends, no family, jobs, and they never even had a real place to live.”

“But what about this world's Starlight Glimmer?” Starlight asked. “Are you really going to just keep her here? She had to have been more than just bait for me, right?”

“Starlight,” Sunset said quietly. “I think he was holding on to her to test the two of you together.”

“And then what are you going to do?” Starlight asked the stranger as she walked towards him, brimming with anger. “Now there are two missing Starlight Glimmer's and there is nobody else who can fill the void. I was doing well at Canterlot High School, you know. Do you really think people are just going to believe that after less than three days at a great school with great friends that I just up and ran off again with no indication to anybody? That's insane. People will come poking around and when they do, I hope that they find you and punish you for what you have done.”

“I'm not worried. You are Starlight Glimmer, after all. Nothing you ever have done or ever will do will actually make you happy and I think it's clear that everybody in your life knows that. Sure, they will search for you for a little while, but they'll give up. Even the beings in the other world of Equestria will give up after a while especially since my team and I have blocked off the portal. Nothing is getting through that statue now.”

Both Starlight Glimmer's glared at the strange man wordlessly, their jaws had practically opened so far that they hit the ground. Even Sunset Shimmer was too shocked to speak and just stood in place, eyes wide open.

“Now, with two girls from both sides of the portal, three mystical sirens, and one girl who has seemingly been here for years without aging much... I have a lot of experimenting to do.”

The strange man left the room, leaving both Starlight Glimmer's and Sunset Shimmer alone except this time it felt like there was no way out.

Chapter Twelve

“Well, this is another fine mess that we've gotten ourselves into,” Adagio said with a sigh. She, Aria, and Sonata had spent the last few minutes after waking up trying to knock on the door trying to get somebody to notice where they were.

So far, all they had managed to achieve was what seemed like several hours of screaming and banging on the doors and walls which didn't achieve much. Nobody seemed to be able to see them or hear them that they knew of. Which only added to the air of frustration that seemed to linger in the room.

“Well, I for one, think this is a such a great change of scenery!” Aria exclaimed, rolling her eyes.

“Aria,” Sonata whispered earnestly. “This is a prison cell.”

“I was being sarcastic! Damn it, Sonata! Get it together!”

“Okay, okay, you're right. So how did we get here?” Sonata asked.

“Well, that's what we're trying to figure out, now isn't it?”

“I remember getting up from the booth at Diner Joe's and then we were here? Have I been drinking your special 'off-limits' juice again, Adagio?”

“No,” Adagio shot back quickly and then paused. She tried to think back as well, but her memories were just as foggy as Sonata's. She couldn't remember anything beyond leaving Diner Joe's behind the guy that kept staring at them through the mirror.

That guy. Adagio vaguely remembered the outline of the man who was staring at the five girls in the diner booth. She tried to remember his face, but it was like trying to look at a shadow; she could only remember the outline of his body, none of his features were coming back to her at the moment. Absolutely nothing of note stood out to her, and she had always been so good at remembering details for future reference. If sirens could have cutie marks, memorizing random details about strangers to use against them would have been hers.

Only if there was an image that described that specific skill, of course.

Otherwise it probably would have just been a music note.

“Were we attacked?” Aria asked, rubbing her head. “I haven't felt this crappy since the freaking Rainbooms attacked us at the Battle of the Bands.”

“No?” Adagio asked, unsure of the answer the answer herself.

Aria flopped down on one of the cots that have been bolted to the ground. The bed creaked and shuttered as she moved, which just served to frustrate her more.

“I'm sick of this place!” She yelled as she punched the cot in frustration. “I'm sick of being treated like we did something wrong. In here, out there, at any school we try to blend in with. It's bullshit! In Equestria all we did was try to survive! How is it our fault that Sirens feed off negativity? We were just born like this and now we're stuck on this stupid magic-less Earth where people keep fucking us over!”

“Calm down, Aria!” Adagio hissed. “Throwing a hissy fit like that isn't going to get us out of here, now is it? We need to put our heads together and try to figure out how to get out of here. Or even how we got here in the first place; maybe if we figure that out, we'll figure out how to leave.”

Adagio paced the room while her companions sat on the cot wallowing in their own frustration. This wasn't the first time the trio had found themselves in a sticky situation, they had never been quite that good, but this event had been the first time in a while that they were taken by surprise.

And first time ever that they weren't quite sure how they would get out of this situation.

Adagio tried to use her surroundings to figure out where they were, but she had spent years combing all of Canterlot. She was sure that she had seen everything, but this was nothing like any of the buildings she had ever seen. The walls were a slate gray and the floor was tile that was painted to match it. It looked like it had been designed specifically to be a prison, but Canterlot did not boast a single jail or prison in it's city limits and she couldn't believe that they had all been out cold long enough for them all to be transported over an hour away from the diner.

Sonata stared at the two girls unblinkingly, finally speaking up after a long stretch of uncomfortable silence while the girls contemplated their current situation. “Do you think that this has anything to do with Starlight Glimmer?”

“Sonata, how are we supposed to know that?” Aria groaned. “We can barely remember what happened before we got here!”

“But... don't you think it makes sense?” Sonata started slowly. “We haven't exactly been hunted down by anybody in this world before. Sure, we've gotten into trouble before, but always for things we could actively remember doing. This reminds me of how it felt when Starswirl the Bearded and his gang hunted us down and when the Rainbooms broke our spell during the Battle of the Bands... I mean, this really only seems to happen to us when there is Equestrian magic involved.”

Adagio perked up. “And after the Battle of the Bands, with our damaged gems, we weren't able to harness any Equestrian magic. That is... until we ran into the Equestrian Starlight Glimmer. You might be on to something, Sonata.”

Sonata grinned.

“Our Starlight Glimmer would never do anything like that to us. She was our friend,” Aria reminded them. “Or at least she was my friend, you two just kind of came along for the ride.”

“It might not be our Starlight Glimmer though,” Adagio reminded her. “Remember, we did just meet the Equestrian version of our Starlight.”

“So do you think this is some sort of prank or something that the other Starlight Glimmer did to us? Lure us into a false sense of security, knock us out, and lock us up? I can understand the Rainbooms not liking us, but we were exiled from Equestria, why would somepony from there come here just to hurt us. It doesn't make sense.” Aria pointed out.

And just like that, Adagio and Sonata's grins faded. Adagio plopped onto the cot next to Aria, looking just as frustrated and confused as before. Sonata instead shot off the cot like a rocket, as if Adagio sitting down forcibly made her stand up. Her friends thought nothing of it as she took that opportunity to explore the room a little more just as Adagio had done before. Except, instead of actively inspecting everything she came in contact with, Sonata wandered around aimlessly, brushing her fingers against every available surface as she walked.

While Sonata walked around, Aria and Adagio contemplated the large variety of possibilities as to why they were just taken without warning.

“Are we sure that it was Starlight Glimmer's doing and not somebody else? Like that one guy at the diner who seemed to be staring at all of us. Maybe Starlight was only tangentially related to this whole thing?” Adagio suggested.

“It doesn't make much sense, but it's probably the only guess we have right now.” Aria shrugged.

“Speaking of the diner, I'm hungry,” Sonata interrupted, practically yelling at the girls from across the room. Sonata and Adagio looked up at her with raised eyebrows.

“Is now really the time, Sonata?” Aria asked.

“I'm just really bored and none of us have come up with any ideas...”

“You... you came up with one idea and then you got bored and started walking around. How is that helping?”

Aria grasped hold of the bottom of the cot and squeezed it tighter and tighter to avoid losing her temper at Sonata. In the past, when Sonata had managed to get on Aria's nerves, they always had plenty of ways to get away from each other until Aria cooled off, but in a small cell like this, that just wasn't possible. So, the cot got the brunt of her anger instead.

“I just wish we could have had a slice of cake from the diner! Or one of those chocolate frosted donuts with the sprinkles on them! Donut Joe makes the best donuts! And the best hot chocolate. Why didn't we stay at the diner longer to try some? Why did we have to follow Tinker?”

“Oh dear Celestia, Sonata!” Aria yelled. She let go of the cot and stood up, fists balled as she stared at her long time friend. “I get that pony names are really annoying and they all sound like some variation of Cutesy Twinkling Lights or whatever, but we were friends with Starlight Glimmer for over a year! How hard is it for you to remember her name?! Why do you never take anything seriously?!”

Adagio's eyes widened and she stood up and placed her hands on Aria's shoulders.

“I think we should hear Sonata out.”

“Why? It's not like she's saying anything useful!”

“I know that you were the closest one to Starlight out of any of us,” Adagio said softly. “I understand why this is probably bothering you more than it's bothering Sonata, but I don't think she's saying what you think she's saying.”

“I don't understand.”

“We know a Tinker.”

“You are going to have to be more specific, Adagio.” Aria rolled her eyes. “We were exiled to this stupid planet over a thousand years ago. We've met more people in this world than I can remember so I'm sorry if I don't remember every single freaking person's name we ever come across.”

“Tinker was Starlight's foster father back in the last foster home she was in,” Adagio said quietly.

“I don't remember him,” Aria huffed.

“I do.”

“So what? This is a small town, it's not like we were never going to run into any of Starlight's former foster parents, she's had a lot of them you know. Personally, I think we met two or three of them, they all just seem to blend together at some point. Not that I can really say anything about that, after all, we had a lot of them too at one point when Social Services thought that we were poor and innocent teenagers who were 'living without adults.'”

“Tinker,” Adagio repeated. “We met him multiple times. Whenever we went to Starlight's house there he was and the way he looked at us...”

Aria shrugged. “So he was a creep? It's not like we have never met creeps before. You remember that we were exiled from Equestria 1053 years ago at this point, right? We weren't just spit up in a world that's the exact opposite of where we came from as well as in the future. No, we've been stuck here for over a thousand years and we've encountered more creeps than I can count. Why should I remember just one of them?”

“Because the way he looked at us always seemed like he knew the one thing about us that we always tried to keep hidden.”

“Ooo was it your 'off-limits' juice recipe?!” Sonata asked. “I wish I knew that recipe right now, maybe it would make me less hungry.”

“No!” Aria and Adagio shouted at once.

The three girls all went silent.

“I think he knew we were sirens,” Adagio muttered, breaking the silence.

“That's impossible,” Sonata replied quickly.

“Yea, it's not like we just tell anybody that, Adagio,” Aria agreed. “And we are always sure we're in a position where nobody can see what we're doing. I'm not sure if you remember this, but we've had a lot of practice over the last thousand years.”

“No, you don't understand,” Adagio said in a low voice. “I don't think he saw us, I think he just knew. I can't explain it. At the time, I had brushed it off, but now I think I understand all the bits and pieces that I couldn't put together before.”

“What are you talking about?” Sonata asked.

“Girls, I think we're in danger.”

“Well, I don't think the three of us being locked in this sketchy room would constitute as a vacation,” Aria responded rolling her eyes.

Adagio grabbed hold of her longtime companion's arms and pulled her close until they were staring each other in the eye.

“You aren't listening to me. We are in serious danger, here. Starlight is in serious danger out there! Anything that crossed through that portal is going to have some major issues if Tinker has anything to say about it. Trust me.”

Author's Note

So, I apologize for being away all of December. After NaPoWriMo I needed to step away from this story for a little bit because I wasn't sure where to go next. I know this isn't a long chapter, but I promise there will be more frequent updates with longer chapters.

Happy Holidays!
rosebug

Prologue

“I'm not so sure about this,” Twilight Sparkle said. Her focus and her magic were centered on an envelope that just about an hour ago, had flown through the portal that sat in the castle library. “It doesn't seem like a friendship problem.”

That was possibly the understatement of the century. Twilight Sparkle, her friends, and even her pupil had dealt with many friendship problems in the past. The kind of problems that ranged from small things like a little white lie to much larger things that could probably destroy Equestria.

This felt different though.

For starters, most friendship problems didn't usually come to them through a magic portal in an envelope.

And they usually didn't come with Starlight Glimmer's name scrawled in big black letters on an envelope.

“You and the girls deal with other kinds of problems all the time,” Starlight Glimmer volunteered as she tried to grab at the letter that Twilight kept referring to. So far, she had only seen the envelope, despite the letter obviously being opened. Twilight didn't seem interested in divulging any more information though. In fact, her former mentor was being incredibly secretive about the whole thing.

A small part of her told her to back off. Maybe her mentor knew better than her about this, it's not like Twilight doesn't take her best interests to heart, after all. The rest of her, however, was bursting at the seams for another opportunity to make Twilight proud.

Any moment that made Twilight proud, made Starlight proud. It was in those moments that she felt safe in awarding herself another tiny sliver of forgiveness for past transgressions. She figured she would be able to earn enough praise and forgiveness to wash away her guilt, so far she hadn't made that much headway, but that was mainly because she was such a harsh judge towards herself.

“Yes, but this feels different,” Twilight responded slowly as she pushed the letter further out of Starlight's grasp. “It's a call for help that came through the mirror, not through the Sunset's book or on the map or even from one of the Princesses. That's not... well it's not... it's just that it's highly unusual.”

“Right, I get that it's unusual, but the note was asking for me so I feel like I need to do something. I mean, it's nothing like being called on the map, but still... it has to count for something, right?”

Twilight looked between the letter and her friend. Starlight's grin subsided as she watched her friend bite her lip, as if she were too afraid to tell Starlight what was really on her mind.

“You don't think I should go.”

In her defense, Starlight had meant to phrase that as a question, but her attitude got the better of her and it came out more as a statement.

“I'm not sure, Starlight,” Twilight admitted with a long drawn out sigh. “The contents of this letter worry me. I'm all for you going on adventures, and I promise, I'm not trying to keep you from helping ponies... or people, for that matter”

“But?”

“And I know that Trixie is going to be performing in Manehattan this weekend, and of course, the girls and I are going to a Friendship Summit in Canterlot, so you are probably looking for something to keep you busy,” she continued, ignoring Starlight.

“But?” Starlight interrupted once again, waiting for that all important reason Twilight had that would keep her from going to the other world.

“But I really don't think this is a safe idea. You won't have magic...”

“I didn't have magic when I helped defeat Chrysalis,” Starlight interjected.

“You don't know your way around...”

“Come on, Twilight!” Starlight exclaimed as she threw her forehoof to her head dramatically. “I've gone to that world once before, I have a basic idea of what it's like and any missteps can be eased by the girls. They wouldn't let me down.”

“I never said they would,” Twilight responded, a hurt look crossed over her face for a brief second before she was able to compose herself. “I'm just worried about you. You have a tendency to act impulsively when things go wrong. I just think you should wait. When I get back from the summit, you and I can go together and figure things out together. We can reach out to Sunset Shimmer through the book and research whatever is going on there. Which will be so much easier now, by the way! Sunset has been sending me books from the human world recently! I bet we'll learn some super interesting stuff from those books. Unless, of course, the problem is rooted in Equestrian magic. In which case, it's a good thing the library is already stocked with our books!”

“What if Sunset Shimmer doesn't know what's going on? I mean, I've only caught a glimpse of the envelope, but that doesn't look like the hoofwriting I've seen in your enchanted book and I don't know about how things work in the other world, but it doesn't exactly look like the hoofwriting of any of our friends.”

The realization prompted Twilight to take another look at the letter. She hadn't considered that the note didn't come from one of her friends.

Equestrian magic was a bit of an open secret in the other world. The entirely of Canterlot High School seemed to know of its existence as well as a few of the students and faculty from Crystal Prep, and a few campers from Camp Everfree that didn't fall into either of those categories as well, but the circle didn't really seem to extend beyond that. Most other people who experienced magic seemed to ignore it or explain it away. Most things portal related came from Sunset Shimmer, who seemed to be the unofficial guardian of it, nobody else really came near it aside from her friends. Honestly, she didn't think anyone outside Canterlot High School actually knew that the base of the statue was a portal to Equestria.

Starlight picked up on this and smiled sweetly. “Wouldn't it be a good idea if, I don't know, somepony went through the portal first and let the other pony know what's really going on so we can build a better plan?”

Twilight sat in silent contemplation for a minute as she ruminated over all the possibilities before finally looking at Starlight and offering her an unsure, “maybe?”

Starlight wasted no time in running through the castle getting her stuff together and faster than Twilight could even process what was going on, Starlight stood in front of her once again with a large smile on her face and her saddlebags packed full of books and other knick knacks.

“I guess there's nothing I can say to change your mind?”

“Nope.”

Twilight frowned, but levitated the note over to her friend who took it eagerly and opened it, letting the envelope that Twilight had meticulously opened earlier, fall to the floor without a care in the world.

The handwriting in the note was messy, almost as messy as her own, Starlight briefly wondered if Twilight was worried about sending her to the human world because she literally couldn't read what the note sent.

Dear Starlight Glimmer,

Time is of the essence so I really hope you get this letter soon. I need you to come to this world as soon as you possibly can. I'm in trouble and you are the only person (or is it pony?) that can help me.

You're my only hope,

Starlight Glimmer

P.S.- Don't forget...

The last word of it was smudged, so neither girls could quite make out what it was supposed to say, but it was still enough to get Starlight to put down the note.

“Woah!”

Twilight picked the note back up and put it back in the envelope, slipping it into her former student's saddlebag.

“I know, it's a lot to take in.”

“There's an alternate version of me! I can't believe I didn't run into her last time I was there! What do you think she's like?”

“Whatever she is like... it's obvious that she's in trouble and there's no telling what will happen if you go there. I'm worried that you'll get drawn into her trouble. She may not have had the good influence that you've had.”

“Then maybe my good influence will help her. Spread the magic of friendship a little further over there and all that...”

“It's possible.”

“Twilight, I don't want to let you down, but I also can't let the other me down. If she is asking me for help...” she paused and pulled her friend into a hug. “I promise, I won't cause any trouble. I won't give you, me, or anypony else any reason to worry.”

For the first time since Twilight had received the letter, she smiled.

“I know, I believe you. I'm sure it will all be okay, you're smart and capable and I trust you,” she said as she pulled Starlight into a hug.

“Thanks, Twilight.”

“I'll see you when you get back... or when I get back. Whichever comes first.”

The girls pulled away from each other and Starlight marched over to the portal until she was standing dutifully in front of it. It seemed so much smaller when she had popped through it with Sunset not that long ago. A pit of fear and nerves formed in her stomach as she stared at the mirror and imagined just what kind of trouble laid just on the other side.

Her reflection stared back at her faithfully, completely disregarding that behind it was not glass or wood, but the pathway to another world.

Of course, reminding herself of that just made the pit grow bigger.

She took a deep breath and looked back at Twilight who shot her a winning, though equally as nervous, smile.

“Well, here goes nothing,” Starlight said, more to herself than to Twilight.

She put one hoof into the portal, almost waiting for Twilight to stop her and tell her to wait until they had figured everything out, but she never said anything. So, Starlight closed her eyes and completely stepped through, letting the cold atmosphere of the portal and the uncomfortable sensation of falling completely overtake her until she felt herself hit the ground.

She had made it.

Hopefully she made it in time to make a difference.

After all, she had no idea where in the world the other Starlight Glimmer could be.

Author's Note

Hi! I'm rosebug! I've been binging all those overly dramatic teen semi-mystery shows (Riverdale especially) and I thought it would be fun to write a pony fic (Equestria Girls fic technically) with some of the same elements.

I haven't written a fanfic in over a year so I might be a little rusty. If there are any errors I missed or if something that seems off, please let me know! Especially since this is written for NaPoWriMo, which means I'm trying to get as many words done in 30 days so I may have skimped a bit on editing! (but I am trying - promise!)

I'd love to hear any and all opinions you have! I made it public while I'm writing because I really need the motivation, so any possible opinion or thought you might have, I would really love to hear it!

Chapter Eleven

The Equestrian Starlight Glimmer circled the room over and over again, desperately trying to keep herself from hyperventilating. She thought that coming through the portal would be a good thing. She thought that everything that she had been doing once she came into this world was to benefit the other Starlight Glimmer and to keep the status quo of both worlds. She thought she had been making real progress to change things, but she had no idea that she had worked so hard to do just benefited a mad man.

“Jeez, you look stressed,” the other Starlight said as she laid on her cot staring up at the ceiling. “Why don't you have some water or something? There's a fridge full of water bottles under the cot.”

“What? Why?” Sunset asked. Starlight Glimmer just shrugged.

“Are you seriously asking me if I want water?! We're trapped in some freaking bunker or something and that crazy guy is going to experiment on us. We could die! And I can't even get back home to Equestria! Princess Twilight is probably worried sick about me and our last words involved me coercing her into letting me come here by guilt tripping her. Oh dear Celestia I hate myself.” She buried her face in her hands and leaned her back up against a corner as if that would keep Starlight and Sunset from being able to see her and the guilt that she felt like she was carrying around on her back right now.

“Wow,” the other Starlight Glimmer noted, more sarcastic than serious. “You're really letting some being from another dimension get to you. Is Princess Twilight your girlfriend or something? Are you sleeping with her?”

The other Starlight slowly moved her hands away from her face and stared at her human counterpart blankly. “Why do people keep asking me that? Sure Princess Twilight and I have had sleepovers so yea we've slept next to each other. Her sleeping bag is so pretty it looks like it really has stars on it! Mine is kind of lame compared to it, but it's nice to have sleepovers with your best friends, don't you think? And because we have sleepovers together I guess that would make us girl friends since she's a girl and she's my friend and friends care about each other.”

The human Starlight sat up quickly and stared at her quietly as if she wasn't sure if the comment was meant to be serious or not. She turned to Sunset with the same questioning expression.

“Is she serious? She can't be for real... can she? Because she's supposed to be me, but she sounds like a naive idiot!”

“Equestrian terminology is far different from Earth terminology,” Sunset explained quickly. “A lot of the dirty expressions here are completely innocent there. It's a more... quaint place than it is here.”

“Sounds awful.” Starlight determined before falling back onto the cot which made loud groaning sounds upon her descent.

“Instead of arguing about this,” Starlight piped up. “Maybe we should figure out how we get out of here. I mean Sunset Shimmer, you were the original prized student of Princess Celestia and Starlight Glimmer... you and I are smart, you're a hacker apparently and I was able to create and rule an entire village; between the three of us if we put our heads together then we should be able to think of something.”

“Pfftttt”

“What now?” Starlight groaned.

“I've been down here for weeks now, I've been locked in this room and I've been allowed to roam and honestly, even when I'm allowed to roam around it's no better than being locked in here. There's no visible way out of this place. I've given up. He's right anyway, nobody cares about me and I bet nobody cares about you two either. He wouldn't do this if he didn't think he could get away with it, he's too smart for that.”

The Equestrian Starlight Glimmer's eyes widened. She wanted to argue with her and tell her that there were people who cared about her and friends that wanted to spend time with her, but she recalled a time not too long ago that she had felt the same way.

When Sunburst was sent away to Princess Celestia's School for Gifted Unicorns all the way in Canterlot, it was an event that came only a few weeks after Starlight's own parents had run off in the middle of the night. She had felt the same exact way that this Starlight felt right now. She thought that there was nobody in the world that cared about her or would ever notice if she was gone, but when she was young she had been too afraid to try to prove that theory one way or another.

She was able to test it thoroughly after Princess Twilight and her friends exposed her as a fraud and then ran her out of her own town. There was something tragically disappointing about running away from home because it's usually done out of anger and frustration, but once those feelings start to dissipate, one is just left feeling silly and alone.

Starlight had a pretty good understanding of the mountain and pass near her town, she had traveled the area enough while scouting the location for her little village, something she knew that nopony else from the village or any of the interlopers knew nothing about. Still, she thought that they would have at least attempted to come after her. She knew that she hadn't exactly been a hundred percent honest with those ponies, but she still thought that they were her friends. Not being followed even to be checked on or spoken to felt like a cut by a sharp knife in the back.

And yet, at the time she was completely used to it. She was used to ponies letting her down and disappearing from her life and not trying to contact her again. She was used to feeling alone and abandoned. It wasn't fun, but it was Starlight's normal and it was a normal she expected to understand for the rest of her life.

Princess Twilight and the rest of the Elements of Harmony and even Trixie, Sunburst, Maud, and Sunset Shimmer had taught her that was not how life had to be lived. They taught her that there are people who will come into your life and truly care about your well-being.

Her other life, the life of constantly being let down oftentimes felt like was much further in the past than it really was and she liked it that way. Even though she felt guilty about leaving Twilight in Equestria with a guilt trip in order to allow her to come through the portal for this, she still knew that her Twilight was on the other side of that portal waiting for her and doing everything she possibly could to open the portal so they could see each other again.

Because that's what real best friends do for each other.

Even on this world, she was sure that her and Sunset Shimmer's friends would always care about where they went as soon as they realized that they were missing. Maybe there would be plenty of people in the world that didn't care, maybe the police officers and Miss Care were exhausted with Starlight Glimmer and the constant frustrations that she caused so maybe they would give up on looking after a couple weeks, but that didn't mean that their friends would give up.

She only felt bad that the alternate Starlight Glimmer didn't understand that and that she honestly felt like this was the best possible situation she could be in because all of the people that cared about her were in this room.

But Starlight Glimmer realized that to vocalize that to this bitter teenage girl who had been pushed around by so many people in this world would be almost impossible.

So she did the only thing she knew how to do thanks to her friends.

She walked over to her human counterpart and pulled her into a tight hug. The other Starlight sat perfectly still and perfectly in shock all throughout the hug. Starlight slowly pulled away from the hug, but didn't get off the cot.

“I know how you feel, I used to feel that way too, but you're wrong. There are people outside of this room who care about you and are going to be worried sick when they find out that you've gone missing again. Trust me. I know you feel like there's nobody outside these walls who cares about your existence, but you have friends and you have amazing foster parents. Morning Dew and Rondache were really excited when I turned up in front of the portal the other day.”

“Puh-lease, don't try to use that against me.” Starlight Glimmer rolled her eyes. “They don't really care about me, they'll wait a few weeks and when you or I don't turn up and they'll probably find some other kid to smother with affection that is more in line with their cutesy family. They probably want a kid that will actually like the room that they have set up as opposed to me. I probably cramped their perfect style.”

“I think they cared about you... or us. They never seemed to mind when I didn't talk to them about things that were bothering me right away, they were nice about me... or... well, you disappearing for a few weeks and they never mentioned the fact that your black backpacks were out of place in their perfect room. And you have friends now! Morning Dew and Rondache switched you over to Canterlot High School since you were unceremoniously expelled from Crystal Prep and I think you'll learn that the students at CHS are unmatched and amazing people and they care about us and I know that they will come find us.”

“You are annoyingly optimistic,” Starlight groaned.

“No, she's right,” Sunset Shimmer said. “You didn't fit in at Crystal Prep and that's okay. That school, both it's curriculum and it's people, aren't for everybody, but you got a second chance at Canterlot High School and I'm not sure about you, but the other Starlight Glimmer made a splash there! You have plenty of friends at least pretty good for only three days in and you're bright so you are probably kicking ass in school. Our friends though, they are unparallelled. The absolute best people in the world and they care greatly about you, they can find the good in anyone and they have certainly found the good in you and I.”

“You are also annoyingly optimistic.”

“You don't have to be so negative about it,” the Equestrian Starlight Glimmer said softly. “You made mistakes, I mean, we have definitely read that notebook of yours. You care a lot about petty revenge, you played really mean pranks on people who didn't deserve to be hurt like that just because they did something petty to you. I made mistakes too. Back in Equestria I built a village and slowly convinced lonely travelers to give up their special talents so that they could live in my town and stay friends with myself and everybody else in the town forever.”

“Wow. That's hardcore.”

“And it's not just you,” Sunset Shimmer spoke up. “I stole a magical artifact from Equestria and brought it to Earth in hopes that I could use it to create a zombie army out of the students at CHS and use that zombie army to overtake Equestria. Our friends forgave me and they forgave Starlight and they would literally do anything for each other and we would do anything for them. So, there are people out there who care about you. I promise.”

“Wow. I'm surprised that the two of you are both able to spout that bullshit.”

Sunset and Starlight looked at each other and smiled.

“It's okay,” Sunset said. “You don't have to believe it. You'll see it soon enough.”

Starlight Glimmer rolled her yes and turned away from the two Equestrians so that she could face the wall. On the other side of that wall were her friends, the only people who ever showed her anywhere near the kind of friendship that the other two girls in the room kept going on and on about.

The door opened again and this time the strange man came into the room wordlessly with a twisted smile that sent chills down Starlight's back. She looked at Sunset as if inwardly begging her to do something even though she knew that Sunset Shimmer was just as powerless as she was. Sunset just looked down at the ground, tears bristling in her eyes as she clutched the stone of the necklace she wore around her neck. Starlight tried to reach out to her, but she was grabbed by her arm before she had a chance.

Sunset took that opportunity to try to grab hold of the man with her dominant hand while her other hand still kept a firm grasp on her necklace, but he was too quick for her and her one handed maneuver to find out the thoughts and feelings of the man holding her and her friends (and even her enemies) captive ended with her being pushed aside and tumbling to the ground.

“Sunset Shimmer!” Starlight called out with more concern in her voice than fear despite being her and the other Starlight Glimmer being held by the arms and led towards the large and intimidating machine that stood in the center of the large room.

The Equestrian Starlight Glimmer tried to break free from his grasp, she tried to stall her feet to keep from moving in hopes that sooner or later he would have to let go, but he just tightened his grasp on her and when that didn't work she decided that the best defense at this point was to twist her arm out of his hand.

It worked.

Something that surprised all four people in the room and she wasted no time in attempting to make a break for it. She ran as fast as her long, gangly, and uncoordinated legs would take her, but she had failed to take into account that he had locked the door after entering the room so it didn't matter how quickly she made it to the door, she still had no way of leaving the room. Sunset Shimmer ran to the door to join Starlight.

With the two of us trying to figure this out, I'm sure we can do this. Friendship is magic, afterall. Right? Starlight tried to reassure herself as she and Sunset practically clawed at the door and fiddled with the lock mechanism with whatever they could find near the door.

He didn't look angry though, he had practically ignored her unplanned escape and while Starlight Glimmer and Sunset Shimmer scavenged the whole area around the door, he slowly and methodically placed the Earth Starlight Glimmer into a chair next to the machine and made sure that he was able to lock in her arms and legs so that she wouldn't be able to magically escape from the chair.

Starlight Glimmer never made a sound, after being stuck in this strange place for several weeks, she just resigned herself to feeling broken and giving up. She didn't try to argue with him or push him around or even attempt to escape just like her Equestrian counterpart had just attempted to do.

Both Starlight's locked eyes from across the room. The Equestrian Starlight had tears in her eyes as she tried to motion for her to try and escape the chair, but the Earth Starlight just ignored her and tried to look in any direction that wasn't facing her twin from another world.

“Starlight! You deserve better than this! I can show you how much more you deserve!” Starlight called out. “I know you think it's too late for you, but it's not too late! It wasn't too late for me or Starlight or hundreds of other people and ponies. You just have to help us get out of here before it is too late!”

“I am literally attached to a chair right now, you purple moron! It's too late to even attempt to leave this. I am locked to the chair and the chair is bolted to the ground. Tell me, Starlight. How exactly does one get out of this and even if I did get out of this, you two haven't found a way out of here and even if you had found a way out of here, this guy is literally standing right next to me and can hear every word that we are saying. Stealth is not exactly your priority, is it?”

The Equestrian Starlight Glimmer was taken aback, but couldn't exactly say that the frustration the other Starlight had with her wasn't completely unwarranted. It was just over a year ago that she likely would have reacted the same way, in fact, she had practically bit Princess Twilight's head off just for trying to teach her a friendship lesson for the first time in her village and that was a much lower stress moment than this current situation.

Still... Starlight felt her heart drop and a large lump started to grow in her throat as she watched this girl who was literally just like her in almost every way except she was raised as a human instead of a pony, get locked to a chair that was hooked up to a machine and the girl had already given up hope on ever leaving or even wanting to leave at this point.

Sunset Shimmer grabbed took hold of Starlight by the shoulders and shook her slightly as she made direct eye contact with her in order to keep Starlight's focus on her and not her human counterpart's pain.

“Forget her, you and I need to get out of here,” Sunset Shimmer whispered harshly. “Once we get out of here we can get her the proper help that she needs. We can't do this alone. We at least need the girls, or somebody else like the police or something. Maybe if I go instead of you, they will believe me since you apparently don't exactly have a lot of clout around here.”

“I... I can't,” Starlight admitted in a quiet and wistful voice. “I came all this way for her, I would never forgive myself if something happened to her while we were able to escape. You go on ahead. Find a way out of here. Starlight Glimmer and I are the only ones here who are direct counterparts to one another. We're the perfect specimens to start experimenting with, it should be enough to give you some leeway to find some help for the Dazzlings, Starlight, and I.”

“But...”

“No, trust me. I believe in you, Sunset. Just find a way out of here,” she whispered.

Sunset Shimmer opened her mouth to respond, but Starlight Glimmer had already begun to turn away from her and instead of working with Sunset to find a way to open the door and leave the room entirely, Starlight opted to follow her counterparts footsteps. She took several slow and quiet steps towards the machine. Her captor said nothing, but smiled a large toothy grin that seemed to expand with every step she took.

“I knew you would come to your senses. You're a smart girl, Starlight Glimmer. Just like the Starlight Glimmer here on Earth.”

She didn't respond, even though she had numerous thoughts that sat at the tip of her tongue just waiting to be unleashed; without the magic or the powers to back it up, she was useless here. Honestly, she barely knew how she was walking upright without falling over. She sat down in the empty seat on the other side of the machine and tried to turn and face her counterpart as she was locked into the seat, it wasn't necessary, but she desperately craved the attention of the other Starlight. She needed the reassurance that she would always be there with her right now as she struggled against herself to be allowed to just sit in place without being able to move her arms or legs. No matter how much she tried to move her head though, the machine was just too big for her to see around. She sat back in her seat bitterly, as she tried to hold her breath to keep the heaving sobs at bay.

“So what does this machine actually do?” The other Starlight piped up.

“It just analyzes your memories and puts together what matches up. It will be important information for my department to have when we reopen the portal.”

“What are you going to do when you reopen the portal? What is going to happen to Equestria?” Starlight asked, no longer able to hold back the fears in her voice.

It is one thing to harass me and ruin my life. I probably deserve it after everything that I have done, but I at least would never truly do anything that would harm anybody or anypony. When Princess Twilight Sparkle showed me the repercussions of my actions... I had no problems going back in time to make sure that Equestria and all the living beings in Equestria were doomed to living or dying in that awful wateland. She reassured herself as she sat and attempted to pay attention to her captor who had declined to answer her questions and instead made his way to an area of the room she hadn't paid attention to earlier, a small corner of the room that seemed to have all the equipment needed to control the machine that she now sat next to.

She threw a defeated glance towards Sunset Shimmer who hadn't stopped her attempts to leave the room, but still didn't seem to be having any luck.

“Are you still focusing all your attention on her?” He spat out. “It's useless. This whole bunker was designed specifically for this project. Nobody... or, Miss Glimmer, should I say nopony is getting out of here unless I allow it.”

The way that he said “pony” physically disgusted Starlight, she winced at the sound of his harsh tone, almost as if he was mocking her and Equestria. If it had been any other person on this world, she would have just assumed that it was said that way because they didn't know any better, like Morning Dew, Rondache, Miss Care or the police officers.

But him? He specifically knew about Equestria. He knew so much about it, that he went out of his way to make sure Starlight Glimmer would leave her home in the castle and traverse through the realms just so he had the opportunity to close up the portal and use her and the other Starlight Glimmer for some sort of set of twisted experiments that she didn't quite understand.

Sunset Shimmer seemed to take his comment as a personal challenge. Her panicked face changed to one of determination as she searched more methodically in the area around the door. He didn't seem to notice, or he didn't seem to care, but Starlight noticed and she watched her friend pat the floor around the door for several more minutes as he worked on the controls in order to work on the machine.

Then, somehow she stood up quick as a whip with a tiny smile on her face and Starlight felt like that had to be a good sign. Sunset caught sight of Starlight's gaze and excitedly held up her bobby pin for her to see. She held it up for a split second and then turned her back to Starlight and the machine as she fiddled with the bobby pin in the locking mechanism. It was something that worked for Sunset in the past, so Starlight held out hope that maybe it would work this time, if only so Sunset Shimmer would be able to attempt to make her escape.

She didn't hear a click or any indication that it had worked, but she saw Sunset do a little jump of excitement and then she slowly and swiftly opened the door and slipped out of the room faster than anybody was able to process it.

Somehow she did it. In a feat that surprised both versions of Starlight Glimmer as well as their captor, and likely Sunset as well. Sunset Shimmer was able to find the bobby pin that had fallen and slip out of the room as if it hadn't even been a problem they had been worrying about for the past several hours or so. Starlight's jaw dropped and he wasted no time in stopping what he was doing and running after her, leaving both Starlight Glimmer's alone and tethered to the large machine.