“Hey, Sunset, what’s your type?”
Sunset looked up from her peanut butter and jelly sandwich at Rainbow Dash, with her mouth still partially open to take a bite. The question drew the eyes of both Rarity, who froze in the midst of daintily eating a salad, and Fluttershy, who was quietly grooming Angel Bunny.
“What?” Sunset asked, lowering her lunch. “My type?”
“Yeah.” Rainbow leaned back against the steps of Canterlot High, propping herself up on her elbows. “Like, I know you swing for the ladies team, but everyone’s got a type, right?”
Sunset frowned into her sandwich before setting it down beside her on the paper plate she’d brought out from the cafeteria.
“I… guess I never thought about it,” Sunset admitted.
Her brow was furrowed as she mused on Rainbow’s question.
Her type?
"I confess to being curious about that myself," Rarity chimed in, flourishing her plastic fork before going back to prodding her salad, rolling an artichoke heart out of the way so she could get at the greens beneath.
Back in Equestria that would’ve been much easier to answer: thestral mares, hooves down, preferably athletic ones, although Sunset chalked that up largely to the fact that she realised her preferences in the midst of the first Wonderbolts show that Princess Celestia ever took her to, which she spent with her eyes glued to the supple flanks of Dusk Dancer, the first-ever thestral Wonderbolt, while wearing a tremendous blush.
One that would prove to be the first of many.
That said, she’d always had a certain… admiration for women who reminded her of the Princess and that was what led her to keep the tiny, shameful secret that she harbored a small crush on Principal Celestia.
“And I’m not talking like, wham-bam-thank-you-ma’am, standards either,” Rainbow clarified, earning a scandalised ‘Rainbow!’ from Rarity. “I mean like, long term, like Rares and AJ.”
“W-What?!” Rarity sputtered, turning beet-red. “Who— I… I mean, we aren’t a—”
Sunset and Rainbow shared a laugh as Rarity stammered her way through a bevy of excuses, each as flimsy as the last.
“We all know, Rarity,” Sunset said through her chuckles. “You know how bad your girlfriend is at keeping secrets.”
"They're uhm, they're right," Fluttershy said sheepishly. "I think Applejack told Rainbow and I during one of Rainbow's soccer games? She just blurted it out. No one even asked her."
Rarity pursed her lips, then said something significantly less ladylike before going back to her salad.
“But seriously, Shimmer, dish,” Rainbow said, leaning in and smirking.
“I guess I’ve got pretty high standards,” Sunset said finally. “I think if it’s long term they’d have to be calm, neat, graceful—”
At that point, three things happened in rapid succession.
“—sorry, e-excuse me, sorry I just—”
The first ‘thing’ was not a thing, precisely.
It was a girl with a tangled mop of hair the color of morning glory vines that hadn’t quite managed to wake up right coming out backward through the main doors of Canterlot High from a hallway that was crammed with people, to the point that she was practically curled over on herself trying to avoid them. Rainbow Dash couldn’t recall the girl’s name but had a vague recollection of seeing her somewhere before at least once. She would later recall privately, and tell no one, that she had four out of her six daily classes with them.
“HEY! Watch where you’re—!” Rainbow called out, but the issue was already in motion.
The issue, and the second ‘thing’, involved the sandwich.
Peanut butter and jelly sandwiches are excellent things for a variety of reasons and have many positive qualities that could be expounded upon at length. Among these qualities, however, a couple of things are noticeably and importantly absent.
Firstly, a peanut butter and jelly sandwich makes for poor footwear. This is mostly due to the fact that it is a sandwich, and not at all a shoe. Due to the un-shoe-like nature of the sandwich, it lacked traction in any meaningful sense of the word, and so when the girl, one Wallflower Blush, who did not see the sandwich, stepped backward and directly onto it, she slipped.
“AH!”
Wallflower flailed as her right foot diverged dramatically from her left, and her wheeling arms nearly struck Rarity across the head who, in an effort to get away from the stumbling girl, rocked backward, which put her, and her salad, squarely in Fluttershy’s lap. That crucial event is what led to the third 'thing'.
A bunny.
The salad was too delicious a treat to pass up and Angel Bunny, who had been placidly resting up til then, bolted from Fluttershy’s grip. Fluttershy lurched forward to grab him out of the air, but only managed to headbutt Rarity as Angel dove between them toward the tumbling salad only to miss it thoroughly before rebounding off of Rarity’s lap and sending the bowl’s contents scattering all over himself as he landed on the concrete steps... which happened to be right where the stumbling Wallflower was about to plant her foot to regain her balance.
With her footing stolen by a hungry bunny wearing an artichoke heart at a jaunty angle on his head, Wallflower let out another squawk of alarm, kicked her foot out and sent the peanut butter and jelly sandwich flying, before following it down the steps, losing her balance completely and pitching forward.
Fortunately, at that point, fate intervened, and so rather than suffer abrasions and a bloody nose from impacting the concrete walk, the peanut butter and jelly sandwich landed first, followed by Wallflower herself.
The result of face meeting sandwich produced a sound that was not unlike a fart of air exiting a wet balloon.
Wallflower sighed quietly into the peanut butter and jelly sandwich.
“Ah, beans.”
Sunset Shimmer, who had witnessed the entire debacle with a grim, sick fascination, stood up, carded her fingers through her hair as she processed everything, then shook her head and turned back to Rainbow Dash, pointed at Wallflower, and calmly revised herself.
“Forget what I said, I want that one.”