Doubleblindby MaxKodanChaptersChapter 1Chapter 2Chapter 3Chapter 4Chapter 5Chapter 1Chrysalis was tired. She was tired of the life she’d chosen. Of the school, and the students, and the staff. She was tired of working these angles, of fending off the people who were too willing to help her fit in. She wanted a challenge, not a red carpet. If she were honest she was starting to hate it all. But she wasn’t honest. She was Chrysalis. She’d keep changing, evolving, growing, getting better than everyone else, and certainly better than herself. She wouldn’t be done until the day she took her last, dying breath. And it was time for a change. She pulled herself up onto the statue in front of the school and set her backpack down between the stupid horse’s legs. It clinked, but she ignored it. She stared at the building, at its towering mass, its formidable doors...it was so pleasant during the day that no one noticed how ominous it was at night. Idiots. All of them. Too stupid to even let her play with them the way she wanted to. She couldn’t hurt them if they were all skipping along behind her. The backpack clinked again as it opened, and she set the first bottle down on the plinth beside her. The glass hit the concrete with such a satisfying clack that she put the next one down even harder. Bottles three and four were given a bit more care, lest she get overzealous and accidentally break one. It happened when she was halfway through the knot on her bandana. She felt a chill that started in her heel and rippled up through her spine. She looked down between her legs. The statue was wobbling. She yanked her legs up and wrapped her arms around them, holding herself tight just in time to stop the girl that was spat out into the world from getting an accidental boot to the head. That fact hadn’t quite settled in Chrysalis’s mind before the girl staggered and toppled over, catching herself hard on her hands. It looked pretty painful. That concrete was no joke. Since she hadn’t been spotted, she just watched the new girl get to her knees and pat herself down. Then she tried to stand up, but that ended with her on all fours and her backside so far in the air that Chrysalis almost looked away for propriety’s sake. Almost. While the girl ogled her own hands, which she had apparently only just noticed, the moonlight glinted off of something sitting at Chrysalis’s side. She hissed a curse and stuffed the bottles back into her bag. Then she leapt off the statue and strode over to the red-haired stranger, who was too distracted staring at her own fingers to notice her. “Uh,” she said, not exactly sure how to put her question into words. “Ah!” the girl replied, leaping to her feet and immediately losing her balance. Chrysalis lunged forward and managed to catch one of the flailing arms long enough to get her steady. “Geez, calm down. You almost knocked my teeth out.” Not true, but, well, she was Chrysalis. “I...woah.” She was clinging to Chrysalis’s arm and moving her jaw like she’d taken a right hook. As she focused on that, though, her body tilted backwards and Chrysalis had to tug to keep her upright. “Ah! Sorry.” She took a half step back, and the way she was bending her knees had to be uncomfortable. “Right,” Chrysalis said, tentatively letting the girl go. She was still in standby. “You party a bit too hard? You look like you’ve been having either the best or the worst night.” “No, no.” She was holding her arms wide apart and using them to keep her balance. “I just, uh…” The silence dragged on for a few seconds while she tried to think up a cover story. Chrysalis raised her eyebrows. “Okay, let’s start with something you do know. My name is Chrysalis. What’s yours?” “Sunset. Sunset Shimmer.” Chrysalis still hated this school. Hated it with a burning passion. But the game had changed. There was a new piece to move. Maybe Chrysalis couldn’t win because she was spending too much time on the board. After all, victory belonged to the player, not the queen. “Well, Sunset Shimmer, I have some questions for you.” Not the least of which being ‘how did you just walk out of a statue.’ “But you look like you’ve had a long day, so how about I just walk you home. Where do you live?” Sunset just stood there, looking nervous. She didn’t look much like a bum. But maybe she’d been thrown out on the streets. From her home. In the statue. Look, the activity of the day was apparently to go completely insane: Chrysalis was just playing along. “Alright,” she said. “Well, come back to my place. It isn’t much, but I’ve got a couch for you.” The look on Sunset’s face was somewhere between relief and acute nausea. She let Sunset go, carefully, holding her hands up like she were backing away from a hissing cat. Sunset shook for a moment, but gave a weak thumbs-up when she found herself steady. That gave Chrysalis enough time to grab her backpack and sling it over her shoulder. It clinked. Sunset, who had worked out how to take a step without kicking herself in the face, joined her as she headed for the street. “What’s in the bag?” she asked, tilting her head back and instantly regretting it. “Soda,” Chrysalis said without hesitation. “Huh. I don’t think I’ve ever tried any.” Chrysalis stopped and stared. “Oh god,” she said, her eyes going wider. “You poor, neglected thing.” It took a couple of weeks for Chrysalis to worm Sunset’s story out of her. She told a wild tale of another world of sentient magical ponies. Had it been anyone else, and had Chrysalis not seen her pass through solid stone, she wouldn’t have believed it. When the name “Princess Celestia” came up and Chrysalis mentioned the principal, they wondered if there were other parallels. That’s when they found the other Sunset Shimmer. She lived a quiet life, in a city a good distance away. Not the type of person who’d likely end up visiting Canterlot. But Chrysalis decreed that they would spend a day visiting, and they managed to track Sunset’s doppelganger down. Any doubts Chrysalis had about the story evaporated when they saw her through a bus window as it passed the cafe they were lunching at: one chosen because it was between that Sunset’s home address and her school. They went home without confronting her. No need to cause a scene. For two years, Sunset lived with Chrysalis. She gave her a key to her apartment. Got her set up in the school. Ridiculously lax paperwork in that place, she just repeated the same process she’d used to get herself in. The first year went perfectly. She didn’t need friends, she has Chrysalis. They formed their own little group. But Sunset was accepted with open arms by everyone around. Especially those ones. Chrysalis worked hard to always keep her on the fringes of the other friend circles. She never let her get too integrated—too personable. But of course, she had to be diffused across the school. Everyone knew her, and with some gentle nudges...well, threats; With some gentle threats she managed to get her new friend voted Princess of the Fall Formal. Sunset was ecstatic. Poor girl looked like she’d never been given any sort of real validation. By the end of that school year, they were basically dating. Not officially, they didn’t go around calling each other sweetie or whatever schlock people used to annoy others with their own happiness. They just existed together. That whole year was a gas. They were inseparable, though Sunset would always wander just a little to connect with everyone else. She never forgot wearing that crown, winning the day, winning the year. She wanted to make sure she kept that. The second year was different. Sunset flourished in a way Chrysalis could only have dreamed of. She’d gotten her taste of power through that title. Princess. Chrysalis knew about the real princess, back in that strange world. She knew how much Sunset wanted to be that, what it meant to her. She used the lust, steering Sunset with a little suggestion here, an offhand comment there. “Rainbow Dash and Applejack are so close! They work so well together that I’ve heard rumblings about maybe voting for one of them. Or both of them!” “Fluttershy is kinda saccharine, isn’t she? I mean, I know she’s sweet, and kinda cute and all, but who would even vote for her? It’s like she cares more about her animals than anyone else. Unreal.” “So like, parties are cool, but Pinkie Pie’s are so laaaaaaame. But people buy into it or whatever. I bet that’s why she’s doing so many recently: to get people to like her.” “Rarity’s making her own dress this year, and she’s going to go all out. I hear even on a budget, since she’s skipping the designers and retailers and just making her own it’s going to be shooting way outside her normal range, or the range of anyone at the school. We’re talking Crystal Prep levels here. What a tryhard.” Crown number two wasn’t a gift: it was an accomplishment. Sunset drove a wedge between all those too-nice lovey dovey hippies. Chrysalis watched friendships torn apart, dreams shattered, and wills broken with more pride than she thought she could possess. Sunset, the visitor from another world, had grown into someone that she could leave this school to. And she did leave, of course. She wasn’t the type to stay in one place too long, and while this extended distraction had been an amazing learning experience, it was about time to mosey along to ruin someone else’s life. There wasn’t much fanfare. A kiss, which was surprising but not unwelcome. She promised she’d come back, but both of them knew one incontestable fact. She was Chrysalis. Chapter 2Years later, Sunset sat on her couch, her nails digging into her arms. She could feel herself shaking. Her phone lay on the floor, some distance away, where she’d thrown it on reflex when she opened the email. “Shit,” she whispered to herself, then repeated it a few times for good measure. She could still see the screen—she preferred a long idle timer—spilling an artificial white light over the morning’s natural orange. She forced herself to stand, but that just got her pacing across her living room. She needed to think, but she couldn’t focus on figuring out what she needed to do. She was too busy mulling over the implications of needing to do it in the first place. The first pictures had been a surprise, to be sure. A strip of photo booth photos from one of the old clunkers in the mall. It had been moved and replaced since by something that didn’t audibly whir when you sat in it. The top one was of herself, fists on her waist and chin thrown out in that “Damn right I’m better than you” attitude she’d used to have. The next one had slapped her with a wet sack of emotions. Chrysalis had barged into the photo booth, and the picture had been taken before either of them were ready. Chrys had nearly slapped her in the effort, and Sunset, in flinching away, had gone halfway out the other side. The result was actually impressive, like they were dashing through on some kind of chase. In the third picture their arms were thrown around each other’s shoulders and were just starting to grin, but by the last one they’d gotten their act together. Of course, “getting their act together” meant Chrysalis flipping off the camera and Sunset pointing at the fingers in gleeful approval. She hadn’t forgotten Chrysalis, of course. Not really. But there was a mutual understanding between them. Chrysalis said something, and neither of them believed it. “I once armwrestled a whole football team into submission.” “My uncle left me a few hundred grand and I’ve been living off the interest. I’m not much on the rich life.” “That house? Actually haunted. Like, a real ghost.” “I’ll come back.” “I love you.” And then, the present day. Sunset woke up, got coffee, collapsed on the couch, checked her new email, and there it was. A single selfie. Chrysalis held the phone, grinning like an idiot. Sunset was midway through an uncontrolled laugh. The kind of real laugh she could never have pulled off before she made real friends. That was her first hint. Then she noticed a lot of things in quick succession. A way of parting her hair she’d never tried. A hoodie she’d never owned. A dress Chrysalis had definitely never worn around her. She realized that it was taken very, very recently. And she realized that she wasn’t in this picture at all. All Sunset could see after that was the eyes. Chrysalis’s emerald gaze—which anyone in the world would seem bright and happy, highlighting a joyful grin, maybe tinged with a bit of youthful mischief and resolute pride—pierced her heart like jagged icicles. She’d experienced a lot of looks in her life. Fear, disdain, disgust even. This was cold, calculated hatred. Her phone’s screen turned off and hid Chrysalis’s accusing glare. She stooped to pick it up, shoved it as deeply into her pocket as she could, and took in a deep breath. By the time she let it out, she was as ready to go as she would ever be. She climbed up to the mezzanine to fish her duffel bag out from under her bed. An hour later, she was sufficiently convinced that she’d only forgotten one or two things, and that none of them were important. She shoved the bag into the trunk of her Firebird, slammed it closed, and— “Road trip?” —And let out a little scream. “Oh! Wow! Rainbow Dash!” Sunset gasped and pressed a hand to her heart. Dash’s eyes were lit with what was supposed to look like excitement. Sunset might have bought it had Dash not been hastily turning her staggering backstep away from her outburst into a cool wall-lean. “You, ah, look like you’re getting ready to go somewhere,” Dash said, nodding at the car. “Were you going to say anything to us, or were you just gonna text us from the road?” Sunset felt a flush of embarrassment tint her cheeks. “It’s not a big deal.” “Uh huh.” “It’s just something I need to take care of myself.” “Sure.” “Just a day or two, out and back. Nobody would even have time to miss me.” “Probably not.” She stared, trying to figure out if she should say something else or if she should have stopped two pointless justifications ago. “Well, if anyone asks…?” “Oh you got it, personal journey and whatever. I’m not gonna spill any secrets.” Sunset hesitated. Something didn’t feel right. She gave an awkward wave as she rounded to the driver side door. She closed it behind her. Another car door slammed a few moments later. Sunset looked up to see Rainbow Dash trying to figure out how to lean the passenger seat back. She succeeded and dropped half a foot with a “Woah!” Sunset just left her hand on the key. “Absolutely not.” “What? Does leaning the seat back hurt the upholstery or something?” “You’re not coming with me.” “Yeah, see…” Dash scratched her head and pulled out her phone. “You’re outranked on this one.” Sunset let her hand drop to her lap, but her foot stayed on the brake anyway, as if it would stop them from moving the parked car. “What’s that supposed to mean?” Dash turned her phone towards her. On it was a text conversation. -Y’all up? -I am now can I change the ringtone yet? -No. Keep an eye on Sunset for me today. -shes a big girl -I saw her pacing in her room and grabbing her bag through her big ol’ window. -thats not creepy -Hush. I’m on my way to the bake sale so I need you for this. -ugh fine but im telling her its your idea There was, indeed, supposed to be a bake sale going on outside one or the other of the shops, and the walk would have brought Applejack right past her house. Sunset flicked her eyes up from the screen to Dash, who was staring out the window. “See? Out of my hands. And before you try to comfort me, I’m not gonna be the one to tell AJ I just let you drive off to who-knows-where with a suitcase and a pout.” A glower, no matter how long it lasted, wouldn’t suffice. Sunset sighed and rubbed her forehead. “Fine. Two conditions. First? No one, and I mean no one hears the specifics of this trip.” “Who am I going to tell?” “Applejack.” “Okay, well yeah, I can’t really help that.” That was probably true. “Fine, then no one else.” “Yeah, yeah. Cross my heart. What are we going to do?” Sunset started the car and pulled away. “Give me a minute to shake this off. We might be there overnight, do you want to stop at your house?” “Oh, uh, yeah, I guess we should do that.” Sunset sighed and hooked left instead of right. This was going to be an awkward trip. “CHRYSAMMPH!?” Sunset slapped a hand over Dash’s mouth and gave the gas station clerk an apologetic smile. “Yes. I...she got back in touch with me, and I’m worried.” Dash pulled herself away from Sunset’s hand. “So you’re just going to see her? Shouldn’t you be like...staying as far away as possible?” “It’s not me I’m worried about,” she said. She pulled out her phone and showed the picture of “herself” and Chrysalis. Dash grabbed a bag of chips and looked it over. “Yeah, not seeing how this makes you worried about anyone else.” “That’s not me.” “...Yes it is.” “No, listen, it’s me, but it’s not me.” She got a blank look in response. She lowered her voice. “Remember how Twilight came from the other world, and then later we met Twilight?” “Yeah?” “I came from the other world.” Dash looked a little too absorbed in reading the back of the bag. “So...Chrysalis went and found the other you?” Sunset just looked at her, grim as the grave. Dash put the chips down, taking another look at the phone. “Your ex is messed up, Red.” With a sigh, Sunset pocketed her phone. She snatched a random bag off the shelf. “If it helps, she’s not my ex: we never officially broke up.” “Why would that help?” Sunset headed for the counter. “I was hoping it would make one of us feel better.” And, to the cashier, “Ten on two.” Back in the car, Dash had already tucked into some cheese puffs. “Y’know, Chrysalis was pretty nice way back before you showed up. Always thought you were the bad influence on her, not the other way around.” “Can we not play the blame game?” She started the car and eased back onto the road. “No one comes out looking good.” “You came out lookin’ pretty good.” “Stop.” “Okay but seriously, are you sure you’re not making too big a deal out of this? So she’s hanging with someone who looks exactly like you. It’s weird, but what’s the problem?” The road was too straight for Sunset’s liking. These sorts of stretches always made her zone out, and she itched to yank the wheel to the side just for something different to do. “If they were just hanging out, it’d be fine. But she’s doing this to get at me, and that means the other Sunset is in a lot of danger.” She winced—Dash had rolled down her window and was now angling her face into the wind. “What’s she got against you? She’s the one that bailed.” “I’m not sure.” They passed a sign. Sixteen miles to go. “But I’m not taking chances.” Chapter 3The Dog and Pony Cafe had awful coffee. Sunset remembered it from her first time there, with Chrysalis. She ordered it anyway out of a sense of deja vu. It was somehow simultaneously too sweet and too bitter, like the sugar took a few seconds to remember it had work to do, and then overcompensated. Rainbow Dash, for her part, was drinking some special foreign-brand cola. The unique bottle bragged about how packed with vitamins it was. The sounds of a thousand engines blurred together, rose and fell in chaotic, random intervals like gusts of wind or constantly rolling waves. At least, until someone started the world’s most impromptu call-and-response with three short blasts on their horn. It was echoed further down the street, and the call was taken up by an endless chain of equally frustrated drivers in a circuit around the entire city. The other Sunset’s bus drove by. At least, she thought it was the same bus. The number was the same. She’d remembered it. 5480. Or she was lying to herself, that was always possible, too. Sunset wasn’t on it this time around, of course. It was a different time of day, a different year. A lot of things had changed for everyone involved. Sunset idly spun a quarter on the cafe table, not paying attention to how it landed. She’d gotten as far as Manehattan. That was about where her plans ran out. She wasn’t even sure where Chrysalis was, and if she had known she’d have had no idea how to confront her about all of this. “So what: are we going to like, hit her with a rolled up magazine or something?” Dash asked between long sips through a straw. “I mean you seem pretty sure she’s dangerous or whatever, but how do you know she’d even hurt her?” Sunset pinned the quarter down with her middle finger. She let out a sigh and scraped the face around on the table for a few moments. “The night I came through the portal,” she said, through a bit of hesitation. “I’m almost positive she was going to burn down the school.” A choking sound escaped from Dash’s throat, and she took a few moments to cough out the soda she’d inhaled. Sunset just rested her chin in her hand and tapped her cheek, waiting. She’d come to terms with this years ago. “What!?” Dash asked, before she’d fully regained her composure. “Are you serious? That’s like...that’s insane!” “Chrysalis had some glass bottles in her backpack when I met her. She told me they were soda. They weren’t.” There were a few long seconds of near-silence between them, interrupted by muffled, trailing coughs before she finally responded, “Wow.” “Yeah, wow.” Sunset picked up the quarter and flicked it to send it spinning again. She leaned back in her chair and stared up at the buildings as they rose over each other. Her eyes breezed past the tall point of a skyscraper, and she paused long enough to flick back to it. She yanked her phone out of her pocket and clicked it on. A few seconds of staring was all it took. She slapped some money on the table and stood up. “Let’s go.” “Go?” Dash had her straw between her teeth. “Go where?” “Hotel,” Sunset said, hopping the railing to the sidewalk. “We’re going to need some height.” The top floor of the hotel Sunset had booked stuck out over the surrounding buildings enough to give a pretty spectacular view of the skyline. There was even an outer hallway that seemed designed for the purpose. She made for the east side and held up her phone when Rainbow Dash finally caught up. “Okay, so eighteen stories up. What’s the deal?” Sunset pointed at the picture on her phone, the one of Chrysalis and her doppelganger. Or, the person she was a doppelganger of. She’d been so focused on the look Chrysalis was giving the camera she’d almost completely forgotten to look at the rest of it. “Look, here. Behind them.” Dash squinted. They were standing in front of a window. “Right,” Dash said, clearly not getting it. “That building,” Sunset said, “We can see it from most places in the city. It’s a landmark.” She pointed out their own window, and indeed the same building she’d noticed from the street was visible. “If I can get two buildings as a reference, I should be able to triangulate almost exactly where they took this picture.” “Remind me never to send you selfies. Ever.” Sunset slapped a folded map of the city that she’d gotten from the hotel lobby against Dash’s chest. “Help me with this thing.” “Geez, fine.” Dash opened the map and held it up against one of the windows. “This good?” “Perfect.” Sunset fished a marker out of her bag and started highlighting locations. The hotel they were in first, then the tall building. She looked at the picture again. She could just make out the roof of another building around Chrysalis’s head: a red terracotta color that stood out. After a minute of scanning the skyline—which Dash protested as she’d been forced to readjust her grip on the map several times—Sunset thought she spotted it. She plugged in a quick internet search which fed her a result almost instantly. Apparently, it was another landmark specifically because of that roof color. Go figure. She got the address, found it on the map, and navigated the forest of Dash’s head and arms to get that marked, too. She looked out the window again just to make sure she had it in her mind, then gave Dash’s shoulder a quick pat. “Alright, break time. Let’s head back to the room.” Rainbow Dash nearly collapsed as she let the map drop. “Finally. AJ’s gonna owe me for this one.” “You make a fantastic easel.” “Gee thanks, maybe I’ll consider a change in my career path.” Back in the room, Sunset was letting Dash rest on the bed while she hunched over the desk. The spine of a cheap, thin guidebook served as a straightedge, and she set about trying to find an approximate target. From the picture, the buildings looked nearly lined up with the red building in front. That narrowed down the area quite a bit. Then some more searching turned up the fact that there was another very tall building in that area that certainly wasn’t in the picture. That narrowed it down further. By the time she was done drawing on the map she’d gotten down to about four blocks. The last thing to do was to narrow down the possible buildings. Sunset drummed her fingers and looked over her shoulder. Rainbow Dash was snoring quietly on the bed, so she just grabbed the pad of paper provided by the hotel and scribbled down a quick note. ‘Checking out this area, call if you need me.’ A few more taps at the desk later, she set her brow, pushed herself to her feet, and headed out. There aren’t a lot of buildings in Manehattan with roof access. Some people think it’s a liability issue. Roofs aren’t safe, so building owners could be held responsible if someone tried out for a Darwin Award and wasn’t met with a half-dozen locked doors along the way. Actually, it’s a little less humanistic than that. It’s expensive to build a roof that’s meant to support people for long periods of time. Coding for it means extra support beams, different materials that aren’t likely to wear under foot traffic, permit charges out the wazoo, and more maintenance than is usually worth the note on the apartment listing. For Sunset, this meant over an hour of searching and asking around for a good viewpoint near her four-block search area from a high enough point and from the right-enough angle that she could point out which buildings could give the view from the window in the picture. Eventually someone just pointed her to a fire escape and shrugged off her ‘are you serious’ stare. Arms burning and legs heavy, Sunset finally trudged to the lip of a sufficient roof and stared at the not-quite-uniform quilt of concrete and brick. She checked her landmarks, and sure enough the angle between them was nearly a perfect match for her target. In front, she saw her backstop building and started counting out possibilities. Two, three, four...no, not that one. There was a taller building in the way. That one then. It was too disappointing, how quickly the count went. Sunset frowned and, just to justify the extra trip up the building and give her legs a chance to stop screaming at her, took a few notes on what the buildings looked like and prioritized them based on vague guesses at which ones would give the exact picture she was looking for. Then it was back to the street. The first was pretty easy to find. It was right down the street and taller than all the buildings on its block. It had single-handedly eliminated at least three other possibilities. When she arrived, though, she found it was a corporate office and definitely not residential. A security guard politely informed her to move on unless she had an appointment, and the small armory of pepper spray and a baton and a taser all backed up his suggestion. Around a corner and across the street was her second best guess. It was an ambitious tower, reaching up higher than its neighbors in a greedy effort to siphon more rent payments down to one landlord. She was a bit wary of the place, like if she breathed on it wrong the top half would topple over. It wasn’t actually dilapidated, but just looking at the entrance, with the unpainted chipped stone and mischievous scribbles suggesting a lack of close care, she was glad she didn’t live there. She marked down the address and continued down the street. On a whim, when she came to the corner she looked back over her shoulder. At the far end of the block, at a newspaper kiosk, a rough curtain of green-blue hair was chatting with the owner. Sunset’s blood ran cold. She found herself not breathing and took in a deep gasp. The figure started to turn, and Sunset caught a glimpse of a burst of color in her arms before she bolted around the corner and pressed her back against the wall. Panic welled in her throat. She forced herself to calm down—it didn’t work—long enough to poke the camera of her phone around the corner and get a look. It was Chrysalis. It was definitely Chrysalis. She had stopped, however, halfway down the block. At the building Sunset had just been observing. And she was holding a bouquet of flowers. Sunset had found her double’s building. Chapter 4 -Are you there? - -Rainbow Dash get up, I need you asap. - -Come on WAKE UP! I FOUND HER! - -Alright, sorry to do this to you. -I need you to text Dash. -Everything okay? -It’ll be fine, I just can’t get through to Dash. Please? -I thought somethin was up. Alright, but tell me later? -You’d either get it from me or RD, so I might as well. -Done. Take care of yourself, Sugarcube. -Thanks. -that was low -I found her and Sunset’s apartment and I need backup before I either do something stupid or have a heart attack. -woah ok where are you? It took Rainbow Dash less than twenty minutes to make it through the streets, and from the way she was breathing by the time she arrived, Sunset figured she either got very lucky with crossing signals or just vaulted over several cars. She’d given the address of the building, so Dash slowed down in front of it, but Sunset—back around the corner after a frantic sprint to that newsstand—stuck her head into view and gave a sharp whistle and waved her over with only about half as much urgency as she felt. When Dash turned the corner, Sunset whapped a novelty snapback hat over her head. “Hey, what?” She tore the hat off and crinkled her nose at it. “Uh, thanks, Red, but it’s not really my style.” “Chrysalis knows you, and out of everyone I know you’re the one I could spot from a hundred meters in a crowd.” Sunset held up her own, identical hat. “If we’re going to follow her, we’ll need to not be the two most obvious people in the city.” There was serious consideration on Dash’s face as she read over ‘I Heart Manehattan’ again. “You’re buying dinner on the way home.” “I’ll buy you dinner for a week.” If, she thought, she made it out of this intact. “You got yourself a deal,” Dash said, haphazardly stuffing the rainbow under the hat. “What’s the plan?” “I need you to follow them when they leave, see where they go. And you can’t let them see you.” “You sure they’re going to leave together?” Sunset nodded and peeked around the corner. “Chrys brought flowers. It’s a date night, and she always pushes to go out on dates. She doesn’t like feeling cooped up.” “You guys were really close, huh?” “Sh!” Sunset’s hand, more or less of its own accord, gripped onto Dash’s upper arm a bit too tight. She was too busy watching to notice. Chrysalis and Sunset stepped out of the building arm-in-arm and, thankfully, turned away from their would-be stalkers to take off down the street. Sunset reached into her bag and pushed some money into Dash’s pocket. “In case you need a cab or bus fare. You ready?” “I was born ready.” Seriously doubting this, Sunset nodded, waited until the two disappeared around the corner, and patted Dash’s shoulder. “Turn your phone to vibrate and let’s do this.” “Uh, I don’t know if I’m allowed to—” “I’ll take the heat. Just go.” They both rounded their own corner, walking a little too stiff to be casual. Sunset stopped at the door to the building and waved a reluctant Dash on ahead. Once she, too, was out of sight, Sunset took a deep breath and stepped into the building. The desk guard in the building was surprisingly on point. When she told him she’d locked herself out of her room, he noted that he thought she’d been wearing something different. She’d stammered out something about her jacket, and how she needed to hurry or she and Chrysalis would miss the bus, and after a few moments the guy finally relented and led her up to the apartment. It was a small studio: smaller than her own, certainly. One room and a bathroom. Fold-out futon, modest TV, little bookshelf, cramped closet. Twelfth floor. It felt cozy, though. Like home. Unsettlingly like home. Having spent a little too long just staring at the place, she hustled into the room and found something to write on. When she finished her note, she turned the paper over and, though she nearly decided against it, scrawled another one with her phone number. Her work done, she let herself have one more glance up at the room. There, indeed, was the window. Through it, the late afternoon sun was gleaming off of her two landmarks. The pointed tower and the red roof. She could almost see Chrysalis there. In front of that window, arm slung around Sunset’s twin, other arm holding out her phone to snap the fated picture. It was meant for this, she decided. It was meant to go to her. Chrysalis had poured emotions that Sunset could no longer understand into a single look, a single snapshot. A shiver ran down her spine and she turned and left the apartment. She took the stairs back down, thanked the doorman, and just about ran out into the street with her phone in her hand. Chrysalis and the other Sunset really had jumped into a bus, and Rainbow Dash said she’d managed to get into the back seats without them noticing. That put Sunset in an awkward position. She couldn’t very well start travelling if she didn’t know where they were going to end up. Chrysalis was a restaurant person, but that narrowed it down to just about every street in the city. It meant she couldn’t do anything but wait until they got off and Dash told her where. Being stuck with her own thoughts was rather distasteful to her at the moment, so she chose instead to wander in the general direction the bus had gone in hopes that the constant and slight changes in scenery would let her get away with turning on cruise control until she needed to do something. When she got the text with the name of the restaurant, she found to her surprise that it was only a few blocks away from where she’d wound up strolling. Rush hour traffic, she guessed. She found Rainbow Dash lounging on a bench across and down the street. She sat next to her and looked at Chrysalis’s chosen house du jour. Italian. Probably nicer decor than food. “Told ‘ya I could do it.” “Thank you,” Sunset said. She didn’t catch the trembling in her arm before Dash saw it. “Hey, Red? Stop me if I get annoying or whatever, but are you okay?” She thought about lying, but the concept left a rotten taste in her mouth. “No,” she said. “I don’t know what’s going on. I don’t know why she’s doing this. I don’t know what I did to make her so mad at me.” She ran her fingers through her hair, then used it as an excuse to bunch it into a loose knot and hide it under her hat. “Maybe she’s just trying to make you jealous? I mean none of this is cool, like at all, but it doesn’t have to be the end of the world. How like...together were you guys?” Sunset leaned her head back and stared up the darkening sky. “Pretty together. Did you know we were living together?” “You didn’t talk much about your personal life.” “She took me in when I didn’t have anywhere to go. I thought she was just friendly but misunderstood. I...empathized, I guess. Learned really quick that she was a pathological liar, but I kept believing her. At least, when it wasn’t too big of a deal, you know? Or, when it was convenient.” “So she kind of messed you up?” Sunset rubbed her knee, mulling that over. “No. I would have been the same, more or less. I left Equestria because I wanted power and I wasn’t getting it. She drew that out of me and pointed me in whatever direction she wanted.” She sighed. “When I told you the wrong day for the bake sale? That was my idea, but she let on that she thought you and Applejack were shooting for some kind of double-princess-ship that year.” Dash tilted her head and squinted. “And you bought that?” “I couldn’t risk it.” “So, I guess it doesn’t matter why she’s doing all this. She’s crazy, right? So whatever she’s doing, we gotta stop her.” “Yeah.” Sunset hugged herself, if only to stop her hands from fidgeting. Her knee started bouncing instead. “This might get dangerous.” “Danger is my middle name.” “No it isn’t.” “Look, if you don’t believe that I’m going to stick with you for this, then remember what happens if I don’t.” Sunset glanced at her phone and chuckled. “Guess I can’t shake you.” Dash perked up. “Too late anyway,” she said, nodding towards the restaurant. Two figures emerged from it. Sunset hunched her shoulders and caught her breath. A nudge from Dash kept her grounded. The couple stopped at the sidewalk and embraced. They even traded a lingering kiss. “...That’s just weird,” Dash whispered, trying not to be too obvious in staring. “You’re telling me,” Sunset said, pointedly ignoring them. They parted and waved, heading in opposite directions. Dash hissed something under her breath as Chrysalis headed their way, though she showed no sign of crossing the street. “We splitting up again?” “No, we’re following Chrys.” It was the one thing Sunset was sure of at the moment. They could find the other Sunset again, and talking to her wouldn’t do anything more than freak her out. She hunched down in the bench, not looking and nudging Dash to do the same. About a minute later, Dash elbowed her back. “She just turned the corner. Went right by the bus stop.” Sunset pushed herself to her feet and took off at a brisk walk. She picked an opportune time to bolt across the street, trusting that Dash was behind her. “She must live nearby,” Sunset whispered at the corner, using her camera again to peek around it. Chrysalis was already at the end of the block and was crossing the street. Sunset waited until she disappeared around the next corner and made for the next convenient cover. They repeated this process for the next half hour. The jig was nearly up more than once but for some quick dives into alleys and hasty backtracking around corners. Even Dash kept more or less quiet, and Sunset felt unexpectedly comforted for having the mostly disaffected presence around to share gritted teeth and relieved sighs with. When Chrysalis finally walked into a building, Sunset insisted—several times—that Dash needed to stay near the door in case something happened. It would have taken more, but Sunset whispered two words before closing the door to cut off further argument. Just inside the building was a wall of mailslots. It didn’t take very long to find Chrysalis’s name and match it to a room number. Only the third floor. She made for the stairs and focused more on how much her calves would be burning the next day than what she was about to do. The door to the third floor didn’t have a window, but it only took opening it a crack to see that the hallway was empty. She crept as silently as she could across the thin carpet and counted the room numbers until she found the one she was looking for. She raised her hand to knock, but found her hand shaking. Her vision tunneled. She remembered a trick Princess Twilight had mentioned at one point or another. She closed her eyes and took a deep breath, and as she let it out she swung her arm just a little. The finger flick she added was her own. She was ready. She could do this. She prepared to knock, her heart thumping so hard she thought it might give her away. She needn’t have worried. An arm wrapped gently around her waist. A chin rested itself on her shoulder, and a cheek pressed warm against her own. A hand slid a key into the lock. “Hello, my love. It’s wonderful to see you again.” Chapter 5Sunset staggered through the door, partly because she’d been pushed and partly because she needed to put distance between herself and Chrysalis. She spun and widened her stance before she could fall over and found herself face to face with someone that two days ago she’d have sworn she would never see again. The click of the door rang in her skull like a bell, but Chrysalis’s eyes held all of her attention. It was the same look. The exact emotion she’d sent through email. The hunger, the anger, the amusement, the implicit threat were all there. The lingering doubt that Sunset had held onto was whipped away like smoke in a tornado and she suddenly felt every drop of fear she’d hoped to hold back. “Now, now,” Chrysalis purred, “what is that face? You came here to see me, didn’t you? I’m touched.” She walked forward, swaying her hips in a way she definitely hadn’t been able to when Sunset met her. “You look like you’ve seen a ghost, or a monster. The big city is a scary place, isn’t it my little pony?” “Shut up!” Sunset said, shocking herself out of the reverie she’d fallen into. “I don’t—” Chrysalis was closer than Sunset had expected. A hand lashed out and before Sunset could process what was happening, a strong grip closed on her chin and nails dug uncomfortably into her cheeks. “That’s no way to treat your host. After I went through all this trouble, the least you could do is say thank you.” Sunset slapped the arm aside and stumbled backwards, reestablishing the distance. “What do you think you’re doing?” Chrysalis rolled her eyes. She checked her nails and clucked, wiggling a loose one until it came off. “I’m doing what I always do. I’m getting better. How often do you get the chance to try the same thing twice?” “What,” Sunset growled, feeling blood pulse in her ears. “You’re just using her for practice?” “Please,” Chrysalis scoffed. “I don’t need practice.” “Then I don’t get you.” “You never did, poor thing.” Chrysalis crossed her arms and cocked her head to the side with a sigh. Sunset felt like a puppy who had torn up the couch. “I just wanted to relive some old times. But after you turned out to be such a disappointment, I needed another option.” “Disappointment!?” Sunset took another step back and her leg bumped a coffee table. “You left, Chrys.” “I did say I would be back.” “We both know you were lying.” Chrysalis smiled, relaxing as if it were a fond memory. “Yeah, I was. But you know, after some time on the road, I thought I would actually keep that promise. For once, you see? I would try making an honest woman out of myself.” Sunset almost snorted, but there was a tinge of honesty in Chrysalis’s voice even as her face fell. “And when I come back, what do I find but that my love has replaced me with those…” Her face scrunched as she tried to find the right term. “People.” “There is nothing wrong with ‘those people’, Chrysalis. If we had just given them a chance earlier—” “Ugh!” Chrysalis threw her hands up towards the ceiling. “And there it is. Where did this saccharine sentimentality come from? I left you as the Princess of that school. You ran that place so well I heard people calling you a demon!” —Sunset blushed at this— “But I swing by to check in on my old friend and find she’s become so...so common.” She said the last word like it was the foulest curse she could imagine. Sunset edged her way around the coffee table, but there wasn’t anywhere to go from there. “Don’t act like you were royalty. You lied to me.” Chrysalis pushed her lip out and Sunset registered the pity in her eyes. “Don’t you remember any of our late night conversations? Royalty lies. That’s why you’re here in the first place, isn’t it?” She shrugged. “Besides, I never worked too hard to lie to you. We both knew exactly how our relationship worked. That’s why it worked so well.” Sunset took in another deep breath and let it out in a sigh. She relaxed her shoulders. “Yeah. I guess we did. Is that what you have here? Someone else who knows how your relationship works?” Chrysalis frowned closed her eyes with all the gravitas of a mourning lover at a wake. “I’m afraid not. This Sunset doesn’t understand me the way you did. She’s far too credulous, you see. But, she certainly has her own charms over you. She’s not a coward, for one.” Sunset tried to argue, but a tremor in her throat only proved her right. “I sent you two pictures and you’re here trembling like I murdered your family. And you even sent your blue friend to spy on me instead of coming yourself.” “And?” Sunset said, mastering her voice again. “What are you going to do next? Leave her with promises you think she’ll believe?” Chrysalis laughed and leaned against the corner of a wall, holding a finger up. “I’m really not sure. I could do that, let her sit waiting for a return that will never come. She really would believe me, you know. Or perhaps I could find something else to do. Something that will make you squirm just as much, if not more. It would be hard to watch you, but I’ve got a vivid imagination.” Another breath in, and out. “So do I. I can’t let you do this. You know that, right? And like you said, Chrysalis. I know you. Do you remember what your first gift to me was?” “There’s that sentimentality again. And wasn’t it that cream soda? Your face when you got that was so adorable I could have eaten you up right there.” Sunset pulled off her hat and shook out her hair. “No. It wasn’t the soda. It was the key to your apartment.” For the first time, Chrysalis looked a little taken aback, right up until the moment the door swung open and revealed Sunset Shimmer, looking understandably shocked. There was a note clutched in her hand, and through the creases it was just possible to make out the words “Come to Chrysalis’s”. “Chryssi? Who...who is that?” “Sunset!” Chrysalis whirled on her heel, jaw struggling to form a good enough lie. “This is...I mean, she’s…” She shot a look over her shoulder. First, she looked utterly shocked. Then, she looked utterly pissed. She cleared the distance to the door in a few long strides and gripped the other Sunset by the upper arm. “Let’s go talk.” Sunset lunged forward to try to stop her, but got caught up in the coffee table and hit the floor with a heavy thud. She scrambled to her feet and made it to the door just as it closed. She ripped it open and caught someone disappearing through the door to the stairway. She might have started descending, but she heard a voice—her own voice, that was awkward—accompanied by the frantic stomping of feet on stairs coming from above. “Hey! You’re holding too tight, where are we going?” Dash picked up her phone on the first ring. “Red! The other Sunset is—” “I know, they’re going up. Gonna need that backup again.” “You got it!” Sunset heard the sound of the front door opening echoed from the bottom of the stairs and through the phone. She’d already climbed several more stories, but Chrysalis was still out of sight. From above, the sound of a key turning in a lock bounced down to meet her. She redoubled her pace, and as she rounded the last flight she saw a door leading out to the fading evening light starting to close by itself. She told her legs to stop complaining and pulled herself up the last set just in time to burst onto the roof. Chrysalis was there at the edge, still holding the double by her arm. Sunset made it three steps before Chrysalis stopped her with a jerk that threatened to throw her burden over the lip. Sunset slowly held up her hands. “Alright, okay, Chrysalis, let’s talk this out.” “I think not,” Chrysalis said, her words coming out in a hiss. She jerked her head at the opposite side of the roof, and Sunset obeyed, taking slow steps to the spot that was indicated. They stood across from each other now, the door equidistant between them. Behind her a building rose into the night for another story or two, while Chrysalis was framed against the open street. There was a thump at the door seconds after it closed, followed by the jostling of the knob and the pounding of fists. Sunset barely inched her foot towards the door when Chrysalis let out a sharp reproach. No moving. She nodded and held her hands up again, and some muffled words accompanied retreating steps. “Good,” Chrysalis said, though her composure was constantly shaking by Sunset’s double’s struggle against the grip. “Let me go! Why are you doing this? What’s going on?” “Sorry,” Chrysalis said, sounding genuinely remorseful. But, it was Chrysalis. “It seems like our time is up. One last game. Now then…” She locked eyes with Sunset and smiled. “Why don’t you be a dear and jump for me?” The height grew all the more dizzying at the prospect of toppling off of it. She hesitated and met Chrysalis’s eye. Chrysalis jerked the other Sunset closer to the edge, and there was no doubt that she was willing to throw her over. “Okay, alright, let me just—” “I think we’ve both wasted enough time tonight, my love.” Chrysalis sneered. “I’m tired of playing games with you. So, jump, or watch her fall in your place. Either way suits me just fine.” Sunset gave herself a few, slow breaths and made her decision. She nodded slowly and took a half step back to the edge. Something caught the fading light of the sun as it spun up over the lip behind Chrysalis. It arced cleanly over the edge and clattered neatly into the gravel that lined the roof. A cell phone landed screen-down, and visible on the case was a lightning bolt made of rainbows. Chrysalis stared at it for just a moment, and as soon as she turned her eyes away from it a too-loud, artifacted mess of noise exploded from the speakers. “WHAT IN TARNATION DO YA THINK YER DOIN YA LAZY—” Both Chrys and the double started in surprise and winced as the sound echoed between the buildings. Before either could recover, Sunset had made it halfway across the roof. Chrysalis came to first and just let go of the double’s arm just as she tried to pull away. She lost her balance and headed for freefall. Sunset willed her legs into one last desperate sprint. She reached out a hand, and saw her double do the same. She closed the distance in no time at all and clasped her wrist, but even as she did she felt a shin connect with her own. Chrysalis, out of the corner of her eye, smirked as she lost balance and tumbled forward. Her momentum sent both Sunsets into open air. Sunset Shimmer was falling. Below her, a foreign street in a foreign world was rushing to meet her. Above, Applejack continued to rage into the city twilight and Chrysalis’s face, wreathed in triumph, was swallowed by the retreating building. Everything she had done since arriving in this strange place flooded through her mind, all of the experiences, the friends, the mistakes. She had never been so calm. Some parts of Chrysalis had changed, certainly. Many had stayed the same. But if there was one thing that Sunset knew beyond a shadow of a doubt, it was that she had changed as well, and in ways Chrysalis could never imagine. The last rays of the sun struck her body and swirled away, drifting in lazy wisps into the air above her. She tucked her legs and rolled as the glow intensified. She looked to the side and saw herself, terrified and confused and screaming. She reached out and grabbed her hand, and they both slowed in their descent. She met her own eyes. “We’ve got you.” Two nearly identical lights burst into the Manehattan street. One from Sunset herself, and one from the street below. The fall slowed to a stop, and Rainbow Dash rose beneath Sunset’s double’s other arm. They worked together to lift an awestruck and even more confused version of Sunset back into the sky. Chrysalis’s face appeared just in time to catch a faceful of feathers and flaming magic as they shot past her and back to the relative safety of the rooftop. Once they settled the only one among them who couldn’t fly onto the ground, Sunset turned and, without effort, floated several feet off the ground facing Chrysalis. “It’s over,” she said. And she meant it. Chrysalis was breathing heavily, staring with wide-eyed amazement at the great, glowing wings. She dragged herself away just long enough to look at Sunset’s face. She never knew quite what Chrysalis saw there. Sunset was running on the fumes of so many emotions that she couldn’t have answered a simple ‘how are you’, much less explain her own facial expression at that moment. Whatever she was doing, it made Chrysalis very, very angry. She ran for the door, but Rainbow Dash floated down with a “Nuh-uh, I don’t think so.” Chrysalis kicked up some of the tiny rocks from the floor and Dash had to cover her face to keep them out of her eyes. Since the way was still blocked, however, she changed direction and sprinted for the edge of the roof. Sunset saw it happening and, for the second time that night, made a beeline for someone about to fall off the edge of a building. This time she had wings. Right up until they disappeared. The roof shuddered as she landed hard. She tried to get to her feet, but her legs, beaten well past their limits, gave out a second time. She looked up in time to see the hateful flash of green eyes as Chrysalis plummeted out of sight. A shout worked its way out of her throat and she dragged herself to the edge of the roof. She propped herself on the low stone rise and looked over. Directly below her, instead of finding Chrysalis injured or worse, there was a fire escape. In the time it had taken her to cross the short distance, Chrysalis had disappeared. It took a while to get the new Sunset up to speed. They didn’t really manage it, in truth. Around the ‘world of magical ponies’ part, she had to hold up her hands and tell them that she was about done for that day, thank-you-very-much. They traded numbers, Sunset apologized profusely, and they invited her to stay at their hotel for the night. She seemed reticent, but she accepted the offer. Chrysalis was just gone. Her apartment hadn’t had much in the way of personal effects, and those few that had been there were missing. They’d likely been kept together for this sort of quick escape. No one had seen her leave, and no one knew where she was. Rainbow Dash was immensely proud of herself. She showed Sunset her phone. The screen was cracked, but it still worked pretty well. Well enough to show a text conversation. -text me -What? -text me in like 30 seconds. - - -Okay, now why am I textin you? Sunset bought her dinner and takeout. And they stopped at a lunch buffet on the way home the next day. She even offered to talk with Applejack about the whole ordeal, and Dash took that as an added bonus instead of the self-preservation measure it was. Sunset wasn’t going to complain. In fact, she figured it would be a good idea to sit down and talk with everyone. Even, despite a tiny voice in the back of her mind screaming disaster, Pinkie Pie. She’d recovered enough to drive, physically, by the time they pulled out of the hotel parking lot. She was just so tired. She wanted to get home, get in bed, and not move for at least twenty-four hours. Everything Chrysalis had said ran itself over and over in her mind. There were so many contradictions there that she was having trouble keeping track of it. One line stuck out in her mind. “I’m tired of playing games with you.” She gripped harder on the steering wheel as it echoed between her ears. Not because it hurt to be dismissed. Not because she felt abandoned, or alone. Even if Rainbow Dash was snoozing in the reclined seat next to her. No, a much more dreadful feeling clenched her heart all the way down the highway because of who exactly had said it. She was Chrysalis.
Chapter 1Chrysalis was tired. She was tired of the life she’d chosen. Of the school, and the students, and the staff. She was tired of working these angles, of fending off the people who were too willing to help her fit in. She wanted a challenge, not a red carpet. If she were honest she was starting to hate it all. But she wasn’t honest. She was Chrysalis. She’d keep changing, evolving, growing, getting better than everyone else, and certainly better than herself. She wouldn’t be done until the day she took her last, dying breath. And it was time for a change. She pulled herself up onto the statue in front of the school and set her backpack down between the stupid horse’s legs. It clinked, but she ignored it. She stared at the building, at its towering mass, its formidable doors...it was so pleasant during the day that no one noticed how ominous it was at night. Idiots. All of them. Too stupid to even let her play with them the way she wanted to. She couldn’t hurt them if they were all skipping along behind her. The backpack clinked again as it opened, and she set the first bottle down on the plinth beside her. The glass hit the concrete with such a satisfying clack that she put the next one down even harder. Bottles three and four were given a bit more care, lest she get overzealous and accidentally break one. It happened when she was halfway through the knot on her bandana. She felt a chill that started in her heel and rippled up through her spine. She looked down between her legs. The statue was wobbling. She yanked her legs up and wrapped her arms around them, holding herself tight just in time to stop the girl that was spat out into the world from getting an accidental boot to the head. That fact hadn’t quite settled in Chrysalis’s mind before the girl staggered and toppled over, catching herself hard on her hands. It looked pretty painful. That concrete was no joke. Since she hadn’t been spotted, she just watched the new girl get to her knees and pat herself down. Then she tried to stand up, but that ended with her on all fours and her backside so far in the air that Chrysalis almost looked away for propriety’s sake. Almost. While the girl ogled her own hands, which she had apparently only just noticed, the moonlight glinted off of something sitting at Chrysalis’s side. She hissed a curse and stuffed the bottles back into her bag. Then she leapt off the statue and strode over to the red-haired stranger, who was too distracted staring at her own fingers to notice her. “Uh,” she said, not exactly sure how to put her question into words. “Ah!” the girl replied, leaping to her feet and immediately losing her balance. Chrysalis lunged forward and managed to catch one of the flailing arms long enough to get her steady. “Geez, calm down. You almost knocked my teeth out.” Not true, but, well, she was Chrysalis. “I...woah.” She was clinging to Chrysalis’s arm and moving her jaw like she’d taken a right hook. As she focused on that, though, her body tilted backwards and Chrysalis had to tug to keep her upright. “Ah! Sorry.” She took a half step back, and the way she was bending her knees had to be uncomfortable. “Right,” Chrysalis said, tentatively letting the girl go. She was still in standby. “You party a bit too hard? You look like you’ve been having either the best or the worst night.” “No, no.” She was holding her arms wide apart and using them to keep her balance. “I just, uh…” The silence dragged on for a few seconds while she tried to think up a cover story. Chrysalis raised her eyebrows. “Okay, let’s start with something you do know. My name is Chrysalis. What’s yours?” “Sunset. Sunset Shimmer.” Chrysalis still hated this school. Hated it with a burning passion. But the game had changed. There was a new piece to move. Maybe Chrysalis couldn’t win because she was spending too much time on the board. After all, victory belonged to the player, not the queen. “Well, Sunset Shimmer, I have some questions for you.” Not the least of which being ‘how did you just walk out of a statue.’ “But you look like you’ve had a long day, so how about I just walk you home. Where do you live?” Sunset just stood there, looking nervous. She didn’t look much like a bum. But maybe she’d been thrown out on the streets. From her home. In the statue. Look, the activity of the day was apparently to go completely insane: Chrysalis was just playing along. “Alright,” she said. “Well, come back to my place. It isn’t much, but I’ve got a couch for you.” The look on Sunset’s face was somewhere between relief and acute nausea. She let Sunset go, carefully, holding her hands up like she were backing away from a hissing cat. Sunset shook for a moment, but gave a weak thumbs-up when she found herself steady. That gave Chrysalis enough time to grab her backpack and sling it over her shoulder. It clinked. Sunset, who had worked out how to take a step without kicking herself in the face, joined her as she headed for the street. “What’s in the bag?” she asked, tilting her head back and instantly regretting it. “Soda,” Chrysalis said without hesitation. “Huh. I don’t think I’ve ever tried any.” Chrysalis stopped and stared. “Oh god,” she said, her eyes going wider. “You poor, neglected thing.” It took a couple of weeks for Chrysalis to worm Sunset’s story out of her. She told a wild tale of another world of sentient magical ponies. Had it been anyone else, and had Chrysalis not seen her pass through solid stone, she wouldn’t have believed it. When the name “Princess Celestia” came up and Chrysalis mentioned the principal, they wondered if there were other parallels. That’s when they found the other Sunset Shimmer. She lived a quiet life, in a city a good distance away. Not the type of person who’d likely end up visiting Canterlot. But Chrysalis decreed that they would spend a day visiting, and they managed to track Sunset’s doppelganger down. Any doubts Chrysalis had about the story evaporated when they saw her through a bus window as it passed the cafe they were lunching at: one chosen because it was between that Sunset’s home address and her school. They went home without confronting her. No need to cause a scene. For two years, Sunset lived with Chrysalis. She gave her a key to her apartment. Got her set up in the school. Ridiculously lax paperwork in that place, she just repeated the same process she’d used to get herself in. The first year went perfectly. She didn’t need friends, she has Chrysalis. They formed their own little group. But Sunset was accepted with open arms by everyone around. Especially those ones. Chrysalis worked hard to always keep her on the fringes of the other friend circles. She never let her get too integrated—too personable. But of course, she had to be diffused across the school. Everyone knew her, and with some gentle nudges...well, threats; With some gentle threats she managed to get her new friend voted Princess of the Fall Formal. Sunset was ecstatic. Poor girl looked like she’d never been given any sort of real validation. By the end of that school year, they were basically dating. Not officially, they didn’t go around calling each other sweetie or whatever schlock people used to annoy others with their own happiness. They just existed together. That whole year was a gas. They were inseparable, though Sunset would always wander just a little to connect with everyone else. She never forgot wearing that crown, winning the day, winning the year. She wanted to make sure she kept that. The second year was different. Sunset flourished in a way Chrysalis could only have dreamed of. She’d gotten her taste of power through that title. Princess. Chrysalis knew about the real princess, back in that strange world. She knew how much Sunset wanted to be that, what it meant to her. She used the lust, steering Sunset with a little suggestion here, an offhand comment there. “Rainbow Dash and Applejack are so close! They work so well together that I’ve heard rumblings about maybe voting for one of them. Or both of them!” “Fluttershy is kinda saccharine, isn’t she? I mean, I know she’s sweet, and kinda cute and all, but who would even vote for her? It’s like she cares more about her animals than anyone else. Unreal.” “So like, parties are cool, but Pinkie Pie’s are so laaaaaaame. But people buy into it or whatever. I bet that’s why she’s doing so many recently: to get people to like her.” “Rarity’s making her own dress this year, and she’s going to go all out. I hear even on a budget, since she’s skipping the designers and retailers and just making her own it’s going to be shooting way outside her normal range, or the range of anyone at the school. We’re talking Crystal Prep levels here. What a tryhard.” Crown number two wasn’t a gift: it was an accomplishment. Sunset drove a wedge between all those too-nice lovey dovey hippies. Chrysalis watched friendships torn apart, dreams shattered, and wills broken with more pride than she thought she could possess. Sunset, the visitor from another world, had grown into someone that she could leave this school to. And she did leave, of course. She wasn’t the type to stay in one place too long, and while this extended distraction had been an amazing learning experience, it was about time to mosey along to ruin someone else’s life. There wasn’t much fanfare. A kiss, which was surprising but not unwelcome. She promised she’d come back, but both of them knew one incontestable fact. She was Chrysalis.
Chapter 2Years later, Sunset sat on her couch, her nails digging into her arms. She could feel herself shaking. Her phone lay on the floor, some distance away, where she’d thrown it on reflex when she opened the email. “Shit,” she whispered to herself, then repeated it a few times for good measure. She could still see the screen—she preferred a long idle timer—spilling an artificial white light over the morning’s natural orange. She forced herself to stand, but that just got her pacing across her living room. She needed to think, but she couldn’t focus on figuring out what she needed to do. She was too busy mulling over the implications of needing to do it in the first place. The first pictures had been a surprise, to be sure. A strip of photo booth photos from one of the old clunkers in the mall. It had been moved and replaced since by something that didn’t audibly whir when you sat in it. The top one was of herself, fists on her waist and chin thrown out in that “Damn right I’m better than you” attitude she’d used to have. The next one had slapped her with a wet sack of emotions. Chrysalis had barged into the photo booth, and the picture had been taken before either of them were ready. Chrys had nearly slapped her in the effort, and Sunset, in flinching away, had gone halfway out the other side. The result was actually impressive, like they were dashing through on some kind of chase. In the third picture their arms were thrown around each other’s shoulders and were just starting to grin, but by the last one they’d gotten their act together. Of course, “getting their act together” meant Chrysalis flipping off the camera and Sunset pointing at the fingers in gleeful approval. She hadn’t forgotten Chrysalis, of course. Not really. But there was a mutual understanding between them. Chrysalis said something, and neither of them believed it. “I once armwrestled a whole football team into submission.” “My uncle left me a few hundred grand and I’ve been living off the interest. I’m not much on the rich life.” “That house? Actually haunted. Like, a real ghost.” “I’ll come back.” “I love you.” And then, the present day. Sunset woke up, got coffee, collapsed on the couch, checked her new email, and there it was. A single selfie. Chrysalis held the phone, grinning like an idiot. Sunset was midway through an uncontrolled laugh. The kind of real laugh she could never have pulled off before she made real friends. That was her first hint. Then she noticed a lot of things in quick succession. A way of parting her hair she’d never tried. A hoodie she’d never owned. A dress Chrysalis had definitely never worn around her. She realized that it was taken very, very recently. And she realized that she wasn’t in this picture at all. All Sunset could see after that was the eyes. Chrysalis’s emerald gaze—which anyone in the world would seem bright and happy, highlighting a joyful grin, maybe tinged with a bit of youthful mischief and resolute pride—pierced her heart like jagged icicles. She’d experienced a lot of looks in her life. Fear, disdain, disgust even. This was cold, calculated hatred. Her phone’s screen turned off and hid Chrysalis’s accusing glare. She stooped to pick it up, shoved it as deeply into her pocket as she could, and took in a deep breath. By the time she let it out, she was as ready to go as she would ever be. She climbed up to the mezzanine to fish her duffel bag out from under her bed. An hour later, she was sufficiently convinced that she’d only forgotten one or two things, and that none of them were important. She shoved the bag into the trunk of her Firebird, slammed it closed, and— “Road trip?” —And let out a little scream. “Oh! Wow! Rainbow Dash!” Sunset gasped and pressed a hand to her heart. Dash’s eyes were lit with what was supposed to look like excitement. Sunset might have bought it had Dash not been hastily turning her staggering backstep away from her outburst into a cool wall-lean. “You, ah, look like you’re getting ready to go somewhere,” Dash said, nodding at the car. “Were you going to say anything to us, or were you just gonna text us from the road?” Sunset felt a flush of embarrassment tint her cheeks. “It’s not a big deal.” “Uh huh.” “It’s just something I need to take care of myself.” “Sure.” “Just a day or two, out and back. Nobody would even have time to miss me.” “Probably not.” She stared, trying to figure out if she should say something else or if she should have stopped two pointless justifications ago. “Well, if anyone asks…?” “Oh you got it, personal journey and whatever. I’m not gonna spill any secrets.” Sunset hesitated. Something didn’t feel right. She gave an awkward wave as she rounded to the driver side door. She closed it behind her. Another car door slammed a few moments later. Sunset looked up to see Rainbow Dash trying to figure out how to lean the passenger seat back. She succeeded and dropped half a foot with a “Woah!” Sunset just left her hand on the key. “Absolutely not.” “What? Does leaning the seat back hurt the upholstery or something?” “You’re not coming with me.” “Yeah, see…” Dash scratched her head and pulled out her phone. “You’re outranked on this one.” Sunset let her hand drop to her lap, but her foot stayed on the brake anyway, as if it would stop them from moving the parked car. “What’s that supposed to mean?” Dash turned her phone towards her. On it was a text conversation. -Y’all up? -I am now can I change the ringtone yet? -No. Keep an eye on Sunset for me today. -shes a big girl -I saw her pacing in her room and grabbing her bag through her big ol’ window. -thats not creepy -Hush. I’m on my way to the bake sale so I need you for this. -ugh fine but im telling her its your idea There was, indeed, supposed to be a bake sale going on outside one or the other of the shops, and the walk would have brought Applejack right past her house. Sunset flicked her eyes up from the screen to Dash, who was staring out the window. “See? Out of my hands. And before you try to comfort me, I’m not gonna be the one to tell AJ I just let you drive off to who-knows-where with a suitcase and a pout.” A glower, no matter how long it lasted, wouldn’t suffice. Sunset sighed and rubbed her forehead. “Fine. Two conditions. First? No one, and I mean no one hears the specifics of this trip.” “Who am I going to tell?” “Applejack.” “Okay, well yeah, I can’t really help that.” That was probably true. “Fine, then no one else.” “Yeah, yeah. Cross my heart. What are we going to do?” Sunset started the car and pulled away. “Give me a minute to shake this off. We might be there overnight, do you want to stop at your house?” “Oh, uh, yeah, I guess we should do that.” Sunset sighed and hooked left instead of right. This was going to be an awkward trip. “CHRYSAMMPH!?” Sunset slapped a hand over Dash’s mouth and gave the gas station clerk an apologetic smile. “Yes. I...she got back in touch with me, and I’m worried.” Dash pulled herself away from Sunset’s hand. “So you’re just going to see her? Shouldn’t you be like...staying as far away as possible?” “It’s not me I’m worried about,” she said. She pulled out her phone and showed the picture of “herself” and Chrysalis. Dash grabbed a bag of chips and looked it over. “Yeah, not seeing how this makes you worried about anyone else.” “That’s not me.” “...Yes it is.” “No, listen, it’s me, but it’s not me.” She got a blank look in response. She lowered her voice. “Remember how Twilight came from the other world, and then later we met Twilight?” “Yeah?” “I came from the other world.” Dash looked a little too absorbed in reading the back of the bag. “So...Chrysalis went and found the other you?” Sunset just looked at her, grim as the grave. Dash put the chips down, taking another look at the phone. “Your ex is messed up, Red.” With a sigh, Sunset pocketed her phone. She snatched a random bag off the shelf. “If it helps, she’s not my ex: we never officially broke up.” “Why would that help?” Sunset headed for the counter. “I was hoping it would make one of us feel better.” And, to the cashier, “Ten on two.” Back in the car, Dash had already tucked into some cheese puffs. “Y’know, Chrysalis was pretty nice way back before you showed up. Always thought you were the bad influence on her, not the other way around.” “Can we not play the blame game?” She started the car and eased back onto the road. “No one comes out looking good.” “You came out lookin’ pretty good.” “Stop.” “Okay but seriously, are you sure you’re not making too big a deal out of this? So she’s hanging with someone who looks exactly like you. It’s weird, but what’s the problem?” The road was too straight for Sunset’s liking. These sorts of stretches always made her zone out, and she itched to yank the wheel to the side just for something different to do. “If they were just hanging out, it’d be fine. But she’s doing this to get at me, and that means the other Sunset is in a lot of danger.” She winced—Dash had rolled down her window and was now angling her face into the wind. “What’s she got against you? She’s the one that bailed.” “I’m not sure.” They passed a sign. Sixteen miles to go. “But I’m not taking chances.”
Chapter 3The Dog and Pony Cafe had awful coffee. Sunset remembered it from her first time there, with Chrysalis. She ordered it anyway out of a sense of deja vu. It was somehow simultaneously too sweet and too bitter, like the sugar took a few seconds to remember it had work to do, and then overcompensated. Rainbow Dash, for her part, was drinking some special foreign-brand cola. The unique bottle bragged about how packed with vitamins it was. The sounds of a thousand engines blurred together, rose and fell in chaotic, random intervals like gusts of wind or constantly rolling waves. At least, until someone started the world’s most impromptu call-and-response with three short blasts on their horn. It was echoed further down the street, and the call was taken up by an endless chain of equally frustrated drivers in a circuit around the entire city. The other Sunset’s bus drove by. At least, she thought it was the same bus. The number was the same. She’d remembered it. 5480. Or she was lying to herself, that was always possible, too. Sunset wasn’t on it this time around, of course. It was a different time of day, a different year. A lot of things had changed for everyone involved. Sunset idly spun a quarter on the cafe table, not paying attention to how it landed. She’d gotten as far as Manehattan. That was about where her plans ran out. She wasn’t even sure where Chrysalis was, and if she had known she’d have had no idea how to confront her about all of this. “So what: are we going to like, hit her with a rolled up magazine or something?” Dash asked between long sips through a straw. “I mean you seem pretty sure she’s dangerous or whatever, but how do you know she’d even hurt her?” Sunset pinned the quarter down with her middle finger. She let out a sigh and scraped the face around on the table for a few moments. “The night I came through the portal,” she said, through a bit of hesitation. “I’m almost positive she was going to burn down the school.” A choking sound escaped from Dash’s throat, and she took a few moments to cough out the soda she’d inhaled. Sunset just rested her chin in her hand and tapped her cheek, waiting. She’d come to terms with this years ago. “What!?” Dash asked, before she’d fully regained her composure. “Are you serious? That’s like...that’s insane!” “Chrysalis had some glass bottles in her backpack when I met her. She told me they were soda. They weren’t.” There were a few long seconds of near-silence between them, interrupted by muffled, trailing coughs before she finally responded, “Wow.” “Yeah, wow.” Sunset picked up the quarter and flicked it to send it spinning again. She leaned back in her chair and stared up at the buildings as they rose over each other. Her eyes breezed past the tall point of a skyscraper, and she paused long enough to flick back to it. She yanked her phone out of her pocket and clicked it on. A few seconds of staring was all it took. She slapped some money on the table and stood up. “Let’s go.” “Go?” Dash had her straw between her teeth. “Go where?” “Hotel,” Sunset said, hopping the railing to the sidewalk. “We’re going to need some height.” The top floor of the hotel Sunset had booked stuck out over the surrounding buildings enough to give a pretty spectacular view of the skyline. There was even an outer hallway that seemed designed for the purpose. She made for the east side and held up her phone when Rainbow Dash finally caught up. “Okay, so eighteen stories up. What’s the deal?” Sunset pointed at the picture on her phone, the one of Chrysalis and her doppelganger. Or, the person she was a doppelganger of. She’d been so focused on the look Chrysalis was giving the camera she’d almost completely forgotten to look at the rest of it. “Look, here. Behind them.” Dash squinted. They were standing in front of a window. “Right,” Dash said, clearly not getting it. “That building,” Sunset said, “We can see it from most places in the city. It’s a landmark.” She pointed out their own window, and indeed the same building she’d noticed from the street was visible. “If I can get two buildings as a reference, I should be able to triangulate almost exactly where they took this picture.” “Remind me never to send you selfies. Ever.” Sunset slapped a folded map of the city that she’d gotten from the hotel lobby against Dash’s chest. “Help me with this thing.” “Geez, fine.” Dash opened the map and held it up against one of the windows. “This good?” “Perfect.” Sunset fished a marker out of her bag and started highlighting locations. The hotel they were in first, then the tall building. She looked at the picture again. She could just make out the roof of another building around Chrysalis’s head: a red terracotta color that stood out. After a minute of scanning the skyline—which Dash protested as she’d been forced to readjust her grip on the map several times—Sunset thought she spotted it. She plugged in a quick internet search which fed her a result almost instantly. Apparently, it was another landmark specifically because of that roof color. Go figure. She got the address, found it on the map, and navigated the forest of Dash’s head and arms to get that marked, too. She looked out the window again just to make sure she had it in her mind, then gave Dash’s shoulder a quick pat. “Alright, break time. Let’s head back to the room.” Rainbow Dash nearly collapsed as she let the map drop. “Finally. AJ’s gonna owe me for this one.” “You make a fantastic easel.” “Gee thanks, maybe I’ll consider a change in my career path.” Back in the room, Sunset was letting Dash rest on the bed while she hunched over the desk. The spine of a cheap, thin guidebook served as a straightedge, and she set about trying to find an approximate target. From the picture, the buildings looked nearly lined up with the red building in front. That narrowed down the area quite a bit. Then some more searching turned up the fact that there was another very tall building in that area that certainly wasn’t in the picture. That narrowed it down further. By the time she was done drawing on the map she’d gotten down to about four blocks. The last thing to do was to narrow down the possible buildings. Sunset drummed her fingers and looked over her shoulder. Rainbow Dash was snoring quietly on the bed, so she just grabbed the pad of paper provided by the hotel and scribbled down a quick note. ‘Checking out this area, call if you need me.’ A few more taps at the desk later, she set her brow, pushed herself to her feet, and headed out. There aren’t a lot of buildings in Manehattan with roof access. Some people think it’s a liability issue. Roofs aren’t safe, so building owners could be held responsible if someone tried out for a Darwin Award and wasn’t met with a half-dozen locked doors along the way. Actually, it’s a little less humanistic than that. It’s expensive to build a roof that’s meant to support people for long periods of time. Coding for it means extra support beams, different materials that aren’t likely to wear under foot traffic, permit charges out the wazoo, and more maintenance than is usually worth the note on the apartment listing. For Sunset, this meant over an hour of searching and asking around for a good viewpoint near her four-block search area from a high enough point and from the right-enough angle that she could point out which buildings could give the view from the window in the picture. Eventually someone just pointed her to a fire escape and shrugged off her ‘are you serious’ stare. Arms burning and legs heavy, Sunset finally trudged to the lip of a sufficient roof and stared at the not-quite-uniform quilt of concrete and brick. She checked her landmarks, and sure enough the angle between them was nearly a perfect match for her target. In front, she saw her backstop building and started counting out possibilities. Two, three, four...no, not that one. There was a taller building in the way. That one then. It was too disappointing, how quickly the count went. Sunset frowned and, just to justify the extra trip up the building and give her legs a chance to stop screaming at her, took a few notes on what the buildings looked like and prioritized them based on vague guesses at which ones would give the exact picture she was looking for. Then it was back to the street. The first was pretty easy to find. It was right down the street and taller than all the buildings on its block. It had single-handedly eliminated at least three other possibilities. When she arrived, though, she found it was a corporate office and definitely not residential. A security guard politely informed her to move on unless she had an appointment, and the small armory of pepper spray and a baton and a taser all backed up his suggestion. Around a corner and across the street was her second best guess. It was an ambitious tower, reaching up higher than its neighbors in a greedy effort to siphon more rent payments down to one landlord. She was a bit wary of the place, like if she breathed on it wrong the top half would topple over. It wasn’t actually dilapidated, but just looking at the entrance, with the unpainted chipped stone and mischievous scribbles suggesting a lack of close care, she was glad she didn’t live there. She marked down the address and continued down the street. On a whim, when she came to the corner she looked back over her shoulder. At the far end of the block, at a newspaper kiosk, a rough curtain of green-blue hair was chatting with the owner. Sunset’s blood ran cold. She found herself not breathing and took in a deep gasp. The figure started to turn, and Sunset caught a glimpse of a burst of color in her arms before she bolted around the corner and pressed her back against the wall. Panic welled in her throat. She forced herself to calm down—it didn’t work—long enough to poke the camera of her phone around the corner and get a look. It was Chrysalis. It was definitely Chrysalis. She had stopped, however, halfway down the block. At the building Sunset had just been observing. And she was holding a bouquet of flowers. Sunset had found her double’s building.
Chapter 4 -Are you there? - -Rainbow Dash get up, I need you asap. - -Come on WAKE UP! I FOUND HER! - -Alright, sorry to do this to you. -I need you to text Dash. -Everything okay? -It’ll be fine, I just can’t get through to Dash. Please? -I thought somethin was up. Alright, but tell me later? -You’d either get it from me or RD, so I might as well. -Done. Take care of yourself, Sugarcube. -Thanks. -that was low -I found her and Sunset’s apartment and I need backup before I either do something stupid or have a heart attack. -woah ok where are you? It took Rainbow Dash less than twenty minutes to make it through the streets, and from the way she was breathing by the time she arrived, Sunset figured she either got very lucky with crossing signals or just vaulted over several cars. She’d given the address of the building, so Dash slowed down in front of it, but Sunset—back around the corner after a frantic sprint to that newsstand—stuck her head into view and gave a sharp whistle and waved her over with only about half as much urgency as she felt. When Dash turned the corner, Sunset whapped a novelty snapback hat over her head. “Hey, what?” She tore the hat off and crinkled her nose at it. “Uh, thanks, Red, but it’s not really my style.” “Chrysalis knows you, and out of everyone I know you’re the one I could spot from a hundred meters in a crowd.” Sunset held up her own, identical hat. “If we’re going to follow her, we’ll need to not be the two most obvious people in the city.” There was serious consideration on Dash’s face as she read over ‘I Heart Manehattan’ again. “You’re buying dinner on the way home.” “I’ll buy you dinner for a week.” If, she thought, she made it out of this intact. “You got yourself a deal,” Dash said, haphazardly stuffing the rainbow under the hat. “What’s the plan?” “I need you to follow them when they leave, see where they go. And you can’t let them see you.” “You sure they’re going to leave together?” Sunset nodded and peeked around the corner. “Chrys brought flowers. It’s a date night, and she always pushes to go out on dates. She doesn’t like feeling cooped up.” “You guys were really close, huh?” “Sh!” Sunset’s hand, more or less of its own accord, gripped onto Dash’s upper arm a bit too tight. She was too busy watching to notice. Chrysalis and Sunset stepped out of the building arm-in-arm and, thankfully, turned away from their would-be stalkers to take off down the street. Sunset reached into her bag and pushed some money into Dash’s pocket. “In case you need a cab or bus fare. You ready?” “I was born ready.” Seriously doubting this, Sunset nodded, waited until the two disappeared around the corner, and patted Dash’s shoulder. “Turn your phone to vibrate and let’s do this.” “Uh, I don’t know if I’m allowed to—” “I’ll take the heat. Just go.” They both rounded their own corner, walking a little too stiff to be casual. Sunset stopped at the door to the building and waved a reluctant Dash on ahead. Once she, too, was out of sight, Sunset took a deep breath and stepped into the building. The desk guard in the building was surprisingly on point. When she told him she’d locked herself out of her room, he noted that he thought she’d been wearing something different. She’d stammered out something about her jacket, and how she needed to hurry or she and Chrysalis would miss the bus, and after a few moments the guy finally relented and led her up to the apartment. It was a small studio: smaller than her own, certainly. One room and a bathroom. Fold-out futon, modest TV, little bookshelf, cramped closet. Twelfth floor. It felt cozy, though. Like home. Unsettlingly like home. Having spent a little too long just staring at the place, she hustled into the room and found something to write on. When she finished her note, she turned the paper over and, though she nearly decided against it, scrawled another one with her phone number. Her work done, she let herself have one more glance up at the room. There, indeed, was the window. Through it, the late afternoon sun was gleaming off of her two landmarks. The pointed tower and the red roof. She could almost see Chrysalis there. In front of that window, arm slung around Sunset’s twin, other arm holding out her phone to snap the fated picture. It was meant for this, she decided. It was meant to go to her. Chrysalis had poured emotions that Sunset could no longer understand into a single look, a single snapshot. A shiver ran down her spine and she turned and left the apartment. She took the stairs back down, thanked the doorman, and just about ran out into the street with her phone in her hand. Chrysalis and the other Sunset really had jumped into a bus, and Rainbow Dash said she’d managed to get into the back seats without them noticing. That put Sunset in an awkward position. She couldn’t very well start travelling if she didn’t know where they were going to end up. Chrysalis was a restaurant person, but that narrowed it down to just about every street in the city. It meant she couldn’t do anything but wait until they got off and Dash told her where. Being stuck with her own thoughts was rather distasteful to her at the moment, so she chose instead to wander in the general direction the bus had gone in hopes that the constant and slight changes in scenery would let her get away with turning on cruise control until she needed to do something. When she got the text with the name of the restaurant, she found to her surprise that it was only a few blocks away from where she’d wound up strolling. Rush hour traffic, she guessed. She found Rainbow Dash lounging on a bench across and down the street. She sat next to her and looked at Chrysalis’s chosen house du jour. Italian. Probably nicer decor than food. “Told ‘ya I could do it.” “Thank you,” Sunset said. She didn’t catch the trembling in her arm before Dash saw it. “Hey, Red? Stop me if I get annoying or whatever, but are you okay?” She thought about lying, but the concept left a rotten taste in her mouth. “No,” she said. “I don’t know what’s going on. I don’t know why she’s doing this. I don’t know what I did to make her so mad at me.” She ran her fingers through her hair, then used it as an excuse to bunch it into a loose knot and hide it under her hat. “Maybe she’s just trying to make you jealous? I mean none of this is cool, like at all, but it doesn’t have to be the end of the world. How like...together were you guys?” Sunset leaned her head back and stared up the darkening sky. “Pretty together. Did you know we were living together?” “You didn’t talk much about your personal life.” “She took me in when I didn’t have anywhere to go. I thought she was just friendly but misunderstood. I...empathized, I guess. Learned really quick that she was a pathological liar, but I kept believing her. At least, when it wasn’t too big of a deal, you know? Or, when it was convenient.” “So she kind of messed you up?” Sunset rubbed her knee, mulling that over. “No. I would have been the same, more or less. I left Equestria because I wanted power and I wasn’t getting it. She drew that out of me and pointed me in whatever direction she wanted.” She sighed. “When I told you the wrong day for the bake sale? That was my idea, but she let on that she thought you and Applejack were shooting for some kind of double-princess-ship that year.” Dash tilted her head and squinted. “And you bought that?” “I couldn’t risk it.” “So, I guess it doesn’t matter why she’s doing all this. She’s crazy, right? So whatever she’s doing, we gotta stop her.” “Yeah.” Sunset hugged herself, if only to stop her hands from fidgeting. Her knee started bouncing instead. “This might get dangerous.” “Danger is my middle name.” “No it isn’t.” “Look, if you don’t believe that I’m going to stick with you for this, then remember what happens if I don’t.” Sunset glanced at her phone and chuckled. “Guess I can’t shake you.” Dash perked up. “Too late anyway,” she said, nodding towards the restaurant. Two figures emerged from it. Sunset hunched her shoulders and caught her breath. A nudge from Dash kept her grounded. The couple stopped at the sidewalk and embraced. They even traded a lingering kiss. “...That’s just weird,” Dash whispered, trying not to be too obvious in staring. “You’re telling me,” Sunset said, pointedly ignoring them. They parted and waved, heading in opposite directions. Dash hissed something under her breath as Chrysalis headed their way, though she showed no sign of crossing the street. “We splitting up again?” “No, we’re following Chrys.” It was the one thing Sunset was sure of at the moment. They could find the other Sunset again, and talking to her wouldn’t do anything more than freak her out. She hunched down in the bench, not looking and nudging Dash to do the same. About a minute later, Dash elbowed her back. “She just turned the corner. Went right by the bus stop.” Sunset pushed herself to her feet and took off at a brisk walk. She picked an opportune time to bolt across the street, trusting that Dash was behind her. “She must live nearby,” Sunset whispered at the corner, using her camera again to peek around it. Chrysalis was already at the end of the block and was crossing the street. Sunset waited until she disappeared around the next corner and made for the next convenient cover. They repeated this process for the next half hour. The jig was nearly up more than once but for some quick dives into alleys and hasty backtracking around corners. Even Dash kept more or less quiet, and Sunset felt unexpectedly comforted for having the mostly disaffected presence around to share gritted teeth and relieved sighs with. When Chrysalis finally walked into a building, Sunset insisted—several times—that Dash needed to stay near the door in case something happened. It would have taken more, but Sunset whispered two words before closing the door to cut off further argument. Just inside the building was a wall of mailslots. It didn’t take very long to find Chrysalis’s name and match it to a room number. Only the third floor. She made for the stairs and focused more on how much her calves would be burning the next day than what she was about to do. The door to the third floor didn’t have a window, but it only took opening it a crack to see that the hallway was empty. She crept as silently as she could across the thin carpet and counted the room numbers until she found the one she was looking for. She raised her hand to knock, but found her hand shaking. Her vision tunneled. She remembered a trick Princess Twilight had mentioned at one point or another. She closed her eyes and took a deep breath, and as she let it out she swung her arm just a little. The finger flick she added was her own. She was ready. She could do this. She prepared to knock, her heart thumping so hard she thought it might give her away. She needn’t have worried. An arm wrapped gently around her waist. A chin rested itself on her shoulder, and a cheek pressed warm against her own. A hand slid a key into the lock. “Hello, my love. It’s wonderful to see you again.”
Chapter 5Sunset staggered through the door, partly because she’d been pushed and partly because she needed to put distance between herself and Chrysalis. She spun and widened her stance before she could fall over and found herself face to face with someone that two days ago she’d have sworn she would never see again. The click of the door rang in her skull like a bell, but Chrysalis’s eyes held all of her attention. It was the same look. The exact emotion she’d sent through email. The hunger, the anger, the amusement, the implicit threat were all there. The lingering doubt that Sunset had held onto was whipped away like smoke in a tornado and she suddenly felt every drop of fear she’d hoped to hold back. “Now, now,” Chrysalis purred, “what is that face? You came here to see me, didn’t you? I’m touched.” She walked forward, swaying her hips in a way she definitely hadn’t been able to when Sunset met her. “You look like you’ve seen a ghost, or a monster. The big city is a scary place, isn’t it my little pony?” “Shut up!” Sunset said, shocking herself out of the reverie she’d fallen into. “I don’t—” Chrysalis was closer than Sunset had expected. A hand lashed out and before Sunset could process what was happening, a strong grip closed on her chin and nails dug uncomfortably into her cheeks. “That’s no way to treat your host. After I went through all this trouble, the least you could do is say thank you.” Sunset slapped the arm aside and stumbled backwards, reestablishing the distance. “What do you think you’re doing?” Chrysalis rolled her eyes. She checked her nails and clucked, wiggling a loose one until it came off. “I’m doing what I always do. I’m getting better. How often do you get the chance to try the same thing twice?” “What,” Sunset growled, feeling blood pulse in her ears. “You’re just using her for practice?” “Please,” Chrysalis scoffed. “I don’t need practice.” “Then I don’t get you.” “You never did, poor thing.” Chrysalis crossed her arms and cocked her head to the side with a sigh. Sunset felt like a puppy who had torn up the couch. “I just wanted to relive some old times. But after you turned out to be such a disappointment, I needed another option.” “Disappointment!?” Sunset took another step back and her leg bumped a coffee table. “You left, Chrys.” “I did say I would be back.” “We both know you were lying.” Chrysalis smiled, relaxing as if it were a fond memory. “Yeah, I was. But you know, after some time on the road, I thought I would actually keep that promise. For once, you see? I would try making an honest woman out of myself.” Sunset almost snorted, but there was a tinge of honesty in Chrysalis’s voice even as her face fell. “And when I come back, what do I find but that my love has replaced me with those…” Her face scrunched as she tried to find the right term. “People.” “There is nothing wrong with ‘those people’, Chrysalis. If we had just given them a chance earlier—” “Ugh!” Chrysalis threw her hands up towards the ceiling. “And there it is. Where did this saccharine sentimentality come from? I left you as the Princess of that school. You ran that place so well I heard people calling you a demon!” —Sunset blushed at this— “But I swing by to check in on my old friend and find she’s become so...so common.” She said the last word like it was the foulest curse she could imagine. Sunset edged her way around the coffee table, but there wasn’t anywhere to go from there. “Don’t act like you were royalty. You lied to me.” Chrysalis pushed her lip out and Sunset registered the pity in her eyes. “Don’t you remember any of our late night conversations? Royalty lies. That’s why you’re here in the first place, isn’t it?” She shrugged. “Besides, I never worked too hard to lie to you. We both knew exactly how our relationship worked. That’s why it worked so well.” Sunset took in another deep breath and let it out in a sigh. She relaxed her shoulders. “Yeah. I guess we did. Is that what you have here? Someone else who knows how your relationship works?” Chrysalis frowned closed her eyes with all the gravitas of a mourning lover at a wake. “I’m afraid not. This Sunset doesn’t understand me the way you did. She’s far too credulous, you see. But, she certainly has her own charms over you. She’s not a coward, for one.” Sunset tried to argue, but a tremor in her throat only proved her right. “I sent you two pictures and you’re here trembling like I murdered your family. And you even sent your blue friend to spy on me instead of coming yourself.” “And?” Sunset said, mastering her voice again. “What are you going to do next? Leave her with promises you think she’ll believe?” Chrysalis laughed and leaned against the corner of a wall, holding a finger up. “I’m really not sure. I could do that, let her sit waiting for a return that will never come. She really would believe me, you know. Or perhaps I could find something else to do. Something that will make you squirm just as much, if not more. It would be hard to watch you, but I’ve got a vivid imagination.” Another breath in, and out. “So do I. I can’t let you do this. You know that, right? And like you said, Chrysalis. I know you. Do you remember what your first gift to me was?” “There’s that sentimentality again. And wasn’t it that cream soda? Your face when you got that was so adorable I could have eaten you up right there.” Sunset pulled off her hat and shook out her hair. “No. It wasn’t the soda. It was the key to your apartment.” For the first time, Chrysalis looked a little taken aback, right up until the moment the door swung open and revealed Sunset Shimmer, looking understandably shocked. There was a note clutched in her hand, and through the creases it was just possible to make out the words “Come to Chrysalis’s”. “Chryssi? Who...who is that?” “Sunset!” Chrysalis whirled on her heel, jaw struggling to form a good enough lie. “This is...I mean, she’s…” She shot a look over her shoulder. First, she looked utterly shocked. Then, she looked utterly pissed. She cleared the distance to the door in a few long strides and gripped the other Sunset by the upper arm. “Let’s go talk.” Sunset lunged forward to try to stop her, but got caught up in the coffee table and hit the floor with a heavy thud. She scrambled to her feet and made it to the door just as it closed. She ripped it open and caught someone disappearing through the door to the stairway. She might have started descending, but she heard a voice—her own voice, that was awkward—accompanied by the frantic stomping of feet on stairs coming from above. “Hey! You’re holding too tight, where are we going?” Dash picked up her phone on the first ring. “Red! The other Sunset is—” “I know, they’re going up. Gonna need that backup again.” “You got it!” Sunset heard the sound of the front door opening echoed from the bottom of the stairs and through the phone. She’d already climbed several more stories, but Chrysalis was still out of sight. From above, the sound of a key turning in a lock bounced down to meet her. She redoubled her pace, and as she rounded the last flight she saw a door leading out to the fading evening light starting to close by itself. She told her legs to stop complaining and pulled herself up the last set just in time to burst onto the roof. Chrysalis was there at the edge, still holding the double by her arm. Sunset made it three steps before Chrysalis stopped her with a jerk that threatened to throw her burden over the lip. Sunset slowly held up her hands. “Alright, okay, Chrysalis, let’s talk this out.” “I think not,” Chrysalis said, her words coming out in a hiss. She jerked her head at the opposite side of the roof, and Sunset obeyed, taking slow steps to the spot that was indicated. They stood across from each other now, the door equidistant between them. Behind her a building rose into the night for another story or two, while Chrysalis was framed against the open street. There was a thump at the door seconds after it closed, followed by the jostling of the knob and the pounding of fists. Sunset barely inched her foot towards the door when Chrysalis let out a sharp reproach. No moving. She nodded and held her hands up again, and some muffled words accompanied retreating steps. “Good,” Chrysalis said, though her composure was constantly shaking by Sunset’s double’s struggle against the grip. “Let me go! Why are you doing this? What’s going on?” “Sorry,” Chrysalis said, sounding genuinely remorseful. But, it was Chrysalis. “It seems like our time is up. One last game. Now then…” She locked eyes with Sunset and smiled. “Why don’t you be a dear and jump for me?” The height grew all the more dizzying at the prospect of toppling off of it. She hesitated and met Chrysalis’s eye. Chrysalis jerked the other Sunset closer to the edge, and there was no doubt that she was willing to throw her over. “Okay, alright, let me just—” “I think we’ve both wasted enough time tonight, my love.” Chrysalis sneered. “I’m tired of playing games with you. So, jump, or watch her fall in your place. Either way suits me just fine.” Sunset gave herself a few, slow breaths and made her decision. She nodded slowly and took a half step back to the edge. Something caught the fading light of the sun as it spun up over the lip behind Chrysalis. It arced cleanly over the edge and clattered neatly into the gravel that lined the roof. A cell phone landed screen-down, and visible on the case was a lightning bolt made of rainbows. Chrysalis stared at it for just a moment, and as soon as she turned her eyes away from it a too-loud, artifacted mess of noise exploded from the speakers. “WHAT IN TARNATION DO YA THINK YER DOIN YA LAZY—” Both Chrys and the double started in surprise and winced as the sound echoed between the buildings. Before either could recover, Sunset had made it halfway across the roof. Chrysalis came to first and just let go of the double’s arm just as she tried to pull away. She lost her balance and headed for freefall. Sunset willed her legs into one last desperate sprint. She reached out a hand, and saw her double do the same. She closed the distance in no time at all and clasped her wrist, but even as she did she felt a shin connect with her own. Chrysalis, out of the corner of her eye, smirked as she lost balance and tumbled forward. Her momentum sent both Sunsets into open air. Sunset Shimmer was falling. Below her, a foreign street in a foreign world was rushing to meet her. Above, Applejack continued to rage into the city twilight and Chrysalis’s face, wreathed in triumph, was swallowed by the retreating building. Everything she had done since arriving in this strange place flooded through her mind, all of the experiences, the friends, the mistakes. She had never been so calm. Some parts of Chrysalis had changed, certainly. Many had stayed the same. But if there was one thing that Sunset knew beyond a shadow of a doubt, it was that she had changed as well, and in ways Chrysalis could never imagine. The last rays of the sun struck her body and swirled away, drifting in lazy wisps into the air above her. She tucked her legs and rolled as the glow intensified. She looked to the side and saw herself, terrified and confused and screaming. She reached out and grabbed her hand, and they both slowed in their descent. She met her own eyes. “We’ve got you.” Two nearly identical lights burst into the Manehattan street. One from Sunset herself, and one from the street below. The fall slowed to a stop, and Rainbow Dash rose beneath Sunset’s double’s other arm. They worked together to lift an awestruck and even more confused version of Sunset back into the sky. Chrysalis’s face appeared just in time to catch a faceful of feathers and flaming magic as they shot past her and back to the relative safety of the rooftop. Once they settled the only one among them who couldn’t fly onto the ground, Sunset turned and, without effort, floated several feet off the ground facing Chrysalis. “It’s over,” she said. And she meant it. Chrysalis was breathing heavily, staring with wide-eyed amazement at the great, glowing wings. She dragged herself away just long enough to look at Sunset’s face. She never knew quite what Chrysalis saw there. Sunset was running on the fumes of so many emotions that she couldn’t have answered a simple ‘how are you’, much less explain her own facial expression at that moment. Whatever she was doing, it made Chrysalis very, very angry. She ran for the door, but Rainbow Dash floated down with a “Nuh-uh, I don’t think so.” Chrysalis kicked up some of the tiny rocks from the floor and Dash had to cover her face to keep them out of her eyes. Since the way was still blocked, however, she changed direction and sprinted for the edge of the roof. Sunset saw it happening and, for the second time that night, made a beeline for someone about to fall off the edge of a building. This time she had wings. Right up until they disappeared. The roof shuddered as she landed hard. She tried to get to her feet, but her legs, beaten well past their limits, gave out a second time. She looked up in time to see the hateful flash of green eyes as Chrysalis plummeted out of sight. A shout worked its way out of her throat and she dragged herself to the edge of the roof. She propped herself on the low stone rise and looked over. Directly below her, instead of finding Chrysalis injured or worse, there was a fire escape. In the time it had taken her to cross the short distance, Chrysalis had disappeared. It took a while to get the new Sunset up to speed. They didn’t really manage it, in truth. Around the ‘world of magical ponies’ part, she had to hold up her hands and tell them that she was about done for that day, thank-you-very-much. They traded numbers, Sunset apologized profusely, and they invited her to stay at their hotel for the night. She seemed reticent, but she accepted the offer. Chrysalis was just gone. Her apartment hadn’t had much in the way of personal effects, and those few that had been there were missing. They’d likely been kept together for this sort of quick escape. No one had seen her leave, and no one knew where she was. Rainbow Dash was immensely proud of herself. She showed Sunset her phone. The screen was cracked, but it still worked pretty well. Well enough to show a text conversation. -text me -What? -text me in like 30 seconds. - - -Okay, now why am I textin you? Sunset bought her dinner and takeout. And they stopped at a lunch buffet on the way home the next day. She even offered to talk with Applejack about the whole ordeal, and Dash took that as an added bonus instead of the self-preservation measure it was. Sunset wasn’t going to complain. In fact, she figured it would be a good idea to sit down and talk with everyone. Even, despite a tiny voice in the back of her mind screaming disaster, Pinkie Pie. She’d recovered enough to drive, physically, by the time they pulled out of the hotel parking lot. She was just so tired. She wanted to get home, get in bed, and not move for at least twenty-four hours. Everything Chrysalis had said ran itself over and over in her mind. There were so many contradictions there that she was having trouble keeping track of it. One line stuck out in her mind. “I’m tired of playing games with you.” She gripped harder on the steering wheel as it echoed between her ears. Not because it hurt to be dismissed. Not because she felt abandoned, or alone. Even if Rainbow Dash was snoozing in the reclined seat next to her. No, a much more dreadful feeling clenched her heart all the way down the highway because of who exactly had said it. She was Chrysalis.
