Footsteps echoed throughout the dark corridors of Canterlot High, with the only thing young Cozy Glow had to light her way was a flashlight. The school looked very different during the night. Almost ethereal, as if the magic from the various goings-on in the school still remained. It was enough to scare most little girls. But Cozy was not like the other girls, and she had dealt with things far more frightening than the dark. Really, the only thing that scared Cozy to the core was her dad. Even after she cut the brakes on his car, she worried he might come back to haunt her. But that was in the past and she needed to focus on the present. More specifically, she needed to find the principal’s office. Since she was called into her office on more than one occasion, Cozy thought she would have known the route to the office at the top of her head. She knew it was on the third floor somewhere but that was basically it. Luckily for her, the flashlight eventually shined on a familiar blue door. And since Cozy had stolen the office keys while Celestia was in the teachers’ lounge during lunch break today, it should not be hard to open the door. Sure, there was a good chance that Celestia had closed the door properly but that would have made getting in tomorrow harder than necessary.
With a simple push, the door creaked open and Cozy snuck in before casually skipping towards the desk. The middle and bottom drawers were conveniently labelled ‘A-F’ and ‘G-Z’ respectively. While she only came for the files on some twelfth graders like last time, she was curious to know what her own file said about her. Since the night sky was pitch-black, she assumed she had more time than her last attempt. Enough time to satisfy her own curiosity. She opened the bottom drawer and flicked through the files until she found one labelled ‘Glow, Cozy’. She carefully removed the file from the drawer and opened it. Unsurprisingly, she had straight As in all of her classes. What was surprising was that her medical record listed her as having conduct disorder, not that she knew what that was. She put her file back in the drawer and took out three files, ‘Fire, Wild’, ‘Fluff, Banana’, and ‘Heartstrings, Lyra’. While she wasn’t sure if anyone was interested in Banana Fluff and Wild Fire, she knew Lyra would be popular with some twelfth-grade boys, if them loudly talking about their feelings for Lyra while she was studying in the library is anything to go by. It used to annoy Cozy when people were distracting her from her studies but she learned to listen in on conversations in case she needed blackmail material. She could get more files but, between the files she already pulled out and her flashlight, there was only so much she could carry in her tiny little arms. As much as she enjoyed being young and cute as a button, there were times where Cozy wished she was a grown-up and this was one of them.
Cozy walked back to her home, which had been long abandoned ever since her parents died. While she never knew how her mother died, her father’s death had her name written all over it except in the police records. She pointed her flashlight at the front door and noticed it was partially open. Since the orphanage she was placed in had wised up to her running away habits after the third time, she would not be surprised if she saw one of the staff members waiting in the living room.
“Hello?” Cozy said as she approached the door.
She carefully walked into the house. A rat scurried past her and ran out of the house. She knew a rat couldn’t open the door even if it tried but it would have been hilarious and strangely adorable if it did.
“Anybody there?” Cozy asked as she entered the dark living room. Unless they were trying to scare her into not running away again, she knew that whatever intruder was in her house was not a staff member of the orphanage.
Suddenly, the light came on. Cozy quickly turned around and saw, not a member of staff from the orphanage, nor a police officer, but an old friend. She could tell from the red hair with the blonde stripe that it was none other than Sunset Shimmer, probably the only person who seemed to understand Cozy. She looked different from when Cozy last spoke to her. She wore an orange top and purple skirt, a complete reversal of the orange skirt and purple top she used to wear. Her leather jacket had been exchanged for a leather vest and her boots were shorter, showing off a lot more leg.
“Oh, it’s you!” Cozy said jovially as she turned off her flashlight, “Golly, it’s been forever! Love the new look, by the way.”
Her arms crossed, Sunset gave Cozy a stern look.
“So, how’ve you been?” Cozy asked, “I saw you hanging around your friends the other day. You seem to be doing good.”
Sunset just remained silent.
“Aw, are you giving me the silent treatment?” Cozy asked half-mockingly, “I just don’t know what I did wrong. Is it because I stole these?”
Sunset continued to stare at Cozy, her expression never changing. It was actually starting to get on Cozy’s nerves, not that it was hard to do.
“Say something, damn it!” Cozy shouted at Sunset, with Sunset uncrossing her arms and stretching out her right.
“Hand them over, Cozy,” Sunset said.
“Or what?” Cozy asked derisively, “You don’t scare me, you know. Not even when you were the queen of Canterlot High.”
“Would you like me to call up the orphanage?” Sunset asked.
Cozy growled, “Fine!”
Cozy threw the files onto the ground.
“I’m speaking from experience here that you really shouldn’t take what’s yours,” Sunset said as she picked up the files.
“God, you sound like every adult in my life,” Cozy snarled, “‘You shouldn’t do this’, ‘you shouldn’t do that’, blah, blah, blah. It’s not I’ve done anything you haven’t! Besides, how else am I gonna start this little friend-finding business of mine if I don’t know anything about them first?”
“Look, I have learnt a lot about friendship,” Sunset said, “I can teach you how to make more friends without stalking and spying on them.”
Cozy scoffed, “You already taught me enough, what else is there to know?”
“More than you think,” Sunset replied.
“Like what?” Cozy asked mockingly, “Loyalty? Honesty? Generosity? Bitch, I can make more friends than you could without using any of those. Look at how many friends that hack, Zuckerberg, made with Facebook. You think he made those by being loyal to them?”
“But they’re not real friends,” Sunset retorted.
“And what makes your friends real?” Cozy asked, “Because they have magical superpowers? You had those when you put on that crown. You bent the entire school to your will! I would have killed to have such power and you gave it up because your new ‘friends’ shot a fucking rainbow at you like they were Care Bears?!”
“They showed me there was another way,” Sunset replied, “And I’ve been happy ever since.”
Cozy gawked at her former mentor. How is it that the woman who wanted to rule the world as much as she did suddenly became content with just being friends with the people she used to bully and intimidate? Then again, Cozy had always known Sunset had a soft spot. Why else should she have comforted her when her mother died?
Sunset stretched her hand out to Cozy, “The choice is yours. You could actually try being friends with people instead of using them like I once did or you could be alone for the rest of your life.”
Cozy laughed, “I knew you were going soft but I never thought you’d be this soft! Next, you’ll be telling me ‘my past is not my today’ or ‘there’s always another way’ or some bullshit like that! Well, I have something to say to you, Sunset. You may have taught me how to be the snake under the flower but it was my dad that taught me friendship is power. He was friends with the police. He was friends with social services. Hell, he was even friends with the mayor! And do you know what they did when I was beaten half to death every night? Nothing! No-one ever visited or investigated the house while I had my daily dose of daddy’s fists and abominations! I couldn’t tell anyone he was hitting me because no-one would ever believe me. They just think it’s little old Cozy and her wild imagination. And why? Because he gave to charity. Because they think he’s great with kids. Got a problem? No worries because my daddy would fix it for you. Every day, I heard about how my father was awesome and a wonderful human being. He wasn’t! He was never honest to people nor was he ever kind to me and yet he made more friends than you and your pathetic clique ever could!”
Sunset stared in open-mouth horror at Cozy’s tirade. While she knew Cozy had issues with her dad, It was clear from her expression that she never imagined they were this bad. Left with nothing to say, she turned away and walked towards the door. Cozy just scowled at her. While she had always planned on betraying Sunset should she ever get into power, she never would have guessed Sunset would be the one to turn her back on her. She was the master of manipulation and Cozy was her pupil. Before they met, Cozy used to get into fistfights with the other students and even strangled one of them. But under Sunset’s tutelage, she learnt a better way to be bad. She learnt to wield the same power her dad had once used. Without her, Cozy would have been sent to juvie a long time ago. And when Sunset wore that crown and turned into a big red devil, Cozy could only stare in awe behind the rubble of what was left of the school doors as Sunset had power beyond her wildest dreams. She was everything Cozy always wanted to be. To see her give up all that power just to be friends with a bunch of nobodies made Cozy sick to her stomach. It was the closest thing Cozy ever felt to a personal betrayal. It was even worse during the Friendship Games when that purple-haired nerd was destroying the world with the same power Sunset once had and Sunset had the gall to talk her out of it.How the mighty had fallen? But she wasn’t going to let Sunset get in the way of her plans. Ever since she started running away from the orphanage and back here, Cozy had kept a small kitchen knife hidden under the middle pillow of the sofa. She gently lifted the pillow up and grabbed the knife underneath. And without a moment’s hesitation, she ran towards Sunset and rammed the knife into the back of her right leg. Sunset screamed in agony as she fell to the floor, the files spilling everywhere.
“Aw, don’t be such a baby,” Cozy said faux-innocently, “In a couple of months, that leg will be as good as new.”
Cozy climbed on top of Sunset and held the knife to her throat.
“Now let's make a couple of things very clear,” Cozy coldly said, “Tell anyone about what I’m doing and I will kill all of your friends. Call the police? Your friends are dead. Call the orphanage? Your friends are dead. Get in my way again? Your friends are dead. Got it?”
Cozy jumped off of Sunset and picked up the files.
“I would kill you right here and now but it would be a real pain to get rid of the body,” Cozy said in her usual sugary-sweet tone, “And I don’t think Snips and Snails would help me out with it either, especially if it was someone they used to suck up to.”
Within her decaying bedroom, Cozy loaded up the Microsoft Word document she made for Lyra Heartstrings. The document contained her birthday, her email address, her actual address and her phone number, in addition to the likes and dislikes Cozy heard her talking about. She had been following her for a while and, while Lyra was currently in a relationship with Sweetie Drops, she could imagine a few of the boys that fancied her being content with just being very close friends with her. And with the information from Lyra’s file, especially how well she was doing in biology, there would be plenty of people that would appreciate her for her brains as well as her beauty. And since Lyra had made her Facebook account private, Cozy could only imagine the amount of people that were willing to pay good money to know more about Lyra in their attempts at befriending her. And since Cozy intended on charge five dollars per document, it was bound to be cheaper than hiring a private investigator. Quicker and easier too because, instead of waiting ages and ages to find out what they could about someone, they would have all the information they need in seconds. And if they couldn’t pay in cash, they would have to pay in whatever information they have on themselves by creating an account on the site. After all, if Cozy was going to make her own ‘friendship network’, she would need to implement some of the features other forms of social media had, such as a messaging system. She hoped Wix had a feature that allowed a messaging system to be implemented into her website. In fact, she hoped there would be a login and register feature that could be easily implemented in there too. If not, then she would need to hire someone that would be very good with computers, which was easier said than done if she was only going to make five bucks per document. But she would have to wait until morning before she could use the school WiFi.
As she typed in the information contained in Lyra’s file, she looked at the files for Sunset and her pathetic little friends. It made her think about what Sunset said. That stupid offer of friendship. As if she had the right to tell Cozy how to make friends. Her blood boiled thinking about it. And that’s when it hit her. She could make a document detailing all of Sunset’s personal and private information. With Sunset turning over a new leaf, it shouldn’t be hard to find people that wanted her dead as much as Cozy did. Or even better, make her suffer by picking off her friends one by one. A wicked smile formed on Cozy’s face. Since Sunset taught Cozy everything she knew, it was time Cozy taught her former mentor a lesson of her own.
“You think you’re better at making friends than me?” Cozy said venomously, “That you can turn a foe into a friend just like that? Friendship may be the most powerful thing in the world but you can’t make all those friends without making a few enemies.”
Cozy lifted her knife, still stained with Sunset’s blood, “Just you wait!”
Author's Note
I went with the "Cozy's got a secret" prompt. A bit more of a psychological drama than a mystery but I think it still works. Just hope I'm not uploading it too early. Since I saw the dates change on the original thread and yet the blog post by Wanderer D didn't contain the updated information, I didn't know what to think.
Might make another entry that will combine the "one-on-one leadership lesson with Twilight" and "They set her free. They’d told her she deserved another chance" prompts so stay tuned for that.
Anyway, hope you enjoyed. 
