Sunflowers at Noon

by I-A-M

Rating: everyone
Tags: Comedy, Equestria Girls, Wallflower Blush, Sunset Shimmer, Slice of Life, Alternate Universe, Romance
Length: 5407

A duel at high noon is significantly more dramatic when both parties actually show up.

Two months ago, the bandit Sunset Shimmer held up her first shipment wagon heading out from Rich Enterprises and made off with thousands in taxes and promissory notes taken from the western town of Ponyville. Since then she's hit three more wagons, and the CEO of Rich Enterprises wants the sheriff and her deputy to do something about it.

Unfortunately, the long arm of the law has a limp wrist.

Written off of an idea from Lord Camembert.

Published 2021-01-19 04:50:01 UTC
Last updated 2021-01-19 04:50:01 UTC

Stood Up

Sweat rolled down Sunset's back as she steadied her breathing and settled her palm on the ivory inset grip of her Colt forty-five. It was a beautiful weapon, and one she had taken scrupulous care of since she was given it by her mentor so many years ago.

Well, okay, 'given' was probably a generous description of that course of events.

In the most technical sense, Sunset had stolen it out of Bureau Chief Celestia's desk drawer before absconding with a horse, a case of ammunition, five days of food and water, and a money clip from the evidence lockup of a recent drug bust to fund her trip out west. But the point remained that it had been Sunset's mentor's gun, and now it was hers! That's a lot like inheriting a weapon, just involving a smidge more crime.

Besides, it's not like Celestia used it anymore.

The sun crept higher and higher in the sky, blazing down across the dry town of Ponyville and washing the streets in its unforgiving heat as Sunset forced her mind back to the present and readied herself to end the life of the law-woman who was deadset on getting in her way.

High noon. That was the rule. She issued the challenge to the sheriff's office yesterday to meet in the center of town for a duel, and the rules were clear on that point.

The clocktower at the center of town thundered its dolorous tone, marking the grim hour, and Sunset grit her teeth as she tightened her grip on her weapon.

And waited.

A~nd waited.

"OH COME ON!"

Sunset bellowed as her left eye developed an alarming twitch just as a square thirty minutes passed. She was uncomfortably hot, sweaty, and the dust was beginning to cling to places best not mentioned in polite company, as Celestia used to say, and that fugging deputy was nowhere to be found!

Over the next half hour, Sunset stomped around the street, kicking over boxes and shouting at passersby, interrogating them about the location of her quarry, but to no avail. No one had seen the deputy all day, or so they said, and Sunset couldn't find hide nor hair of the woman anywhere.

Finally, at her wit's end and at least satisfied that the target of her fury wasn't anywhere nearby, Sunset turned and left the long main drag of Ponyville in a furious temper, fuming all the way down the street.

Wallflower Blush waited a good five more minutes before finally peeking out of the barrel she'd been hiding in for the past twelve hours. Honestly, it was a perfectly comfortable barrel, and she'd brought a flask of water and some cheesy snacks to tide her over. Thank the stars Sunset hadn't thought to check the rain-barrels, though. She shivered as she imagined what Sunset would have done to her if she'd actually found her.

Nothing good.

Pulling herself out of the barrel, Wallflower stretched her legs, hissed quietly as the blood redistributed itself to her extremities... then made a dead sprint for the outhouse.

Ponyville's limited law enforcement had been in the pocket of the corrupt CEO of Rich Enterprises for years and Sunset had no qualms about ending that reign of terror. The problem she kept running into was that Sheriff Punch only ever occupied two states of being: righteously drunk or hellishly hungover.

In either case, shooting her seemed like bad form given that she couldn't really defend herself and, Sunset reasoned, also wasn't much of a threat to the continued operation of the town.

The sheriff wasn't evil, then. An incompetent alcoholic, sure, but not evil.

With the sheriff generally 'indisposed', most of the paperwork and the day-to-day operation of the sheriff's office was performed by the deputy, one 'Wallflower Blush', and given that the sheriff wasn't doing much for the town beyond keeping the local watering hole in business, Sunset landed on the notion that if she wanted to cripple the long arm of the law, that meant taking out the one member of its enforcement that actually accomplished anything on a daily basis.

Which led to Sunset's current problem.

"HEY!"

Wallflower spasmed in terror and hit the ground as the door to the Crazy Horse Saloon slammed open and Sunset barged in. The young woman made it mostly under her table with her sarsaparilla and had just enough time to hope Sunset hadn't seen her when an amber hand took hold of her ankle and gave a sharp tug.

"Eeeeeeeeeeee~"

A noise of terror not unlike air being slowly released from a balloon with chronic depression escaped Wallflower as she was dragged out from beneath the table by the irate bandit and into the open. Wallflower trembled as she stared up from the floor at Sunset's glowering face. As a criminal, Sunset Shimmer cut a terrifying figure in her black duster and dark silk shirt, sharp crimson bowtie, and wide-brimmed black stetson. It didn't help that the woman also looked mighty pissed off, of course. Her face was screwed up in a tight scowl, and her hair hung sweaty and lank around her face as Sunset jabbed a finger under Wallflower's nose.

"Where the hell were you today!?" Sunset snapped. "We had a date and time!"

"S-Sorry!" Wallflower squeaked. "I uhm... I had to wash my hair."

Sunset raised an eyebrow and looked over Wallflower's dirty, dusty tangle of green hair with pointed slowness before lowering her gaze back to Wallflower herself, who was awkwardly tugging at the collar of her sweat-stained linen shirt, and clicking her tongue.

"Yeah?" Sunset said dryly. "What'd you wash it in? Dirt?"

"Y-Yes."

There was that twitch again. The muscles around Sunset's left eye were getting a real—and involuntary—workout as she bared her teeth in a tight rictus of a grin and curled her outstretched finger into a fist that hovered menacingly at Wallflower's face.

"Are you making fun of me?"

"If I say no will you still hit me?"

Wallflower cringed back as Sunset's face took on an alarming shade of angry red neatly matched by her hair. The bandit's jaw creaked as she clenched her jaw, then, to Wallflower's surprise, blew out a breath, and stood up, before fixing Wallflower with a grim scowl.

"High noon," Sunset said through her teeth. "I said 'high noon' and you weren't there! You stood me up!"

"You were going to shoot me!" Wallflower mewled.

"Of course I was going to shoot you! I'm a bandit and you're the sheriff!"

"I'm a deputy!"

Sunset growled out an inchoate noise of frustrated rage as she threw her hands into the air and stomped over to the bar before slapping down a dollar note, and then her hat beside it.

"Water with ice," she said bitterly.

The bartender who had been placidly watching the scene with the same phlegmatic acceptance she watched everything else with nodded, turned to the icebox, chipped off some ice, and dropped it into a glass that at least looked like it'd seen the clean side of a rag at some point this year before filling it with water from the tap and sliding it over to the pissed-off bandit.

"One ice-water," Applejack drawled. "Still no duel?"

"No." Sunset grumbled as she sipped at the drink.

"Why dontcha just drag'er outside'n shoot'er now?"

Wallflower's jaw dropped as she stood on shaky legs as the bartender casually offered Sunset an alternative method of murdering her.

Okay, yes, Wallflower was aware that the sheriff's office in Ponyville wasn't exactly held in high esteem, but it was the only job she could get! It wasn't her fault the town was basically being robbed on a quarterly basis by the corporate office that ran it! And it certainly wasn't her fault that the sheriff was a drunkard who couldn't find the sharp end of a fire poker! This was a skill-less job that was eighty-percent paperwork and twenty-percent dragging Sheriff Punch back to bunk by her boots after a long night!

She'd never even fired her standard-issue pistol!

To Wallflower's surprise, though, Sunset scoffed, looking scandalized.

"What? In the middle of the night?" The bandit gestured out to the dark, lamplit street.

"Well... yeah," Applejack said with a shrug. "Why not?"

"Why—?!" Sunset spluttered, then shook her head. "You can't just drag someone out into the street by their hair and shoot them! There are rules to this!"

Not necessarily being one for knowing the rules, Wallflower was nonetheless relieved to hear that. At the same time, it was odd to hear a bandit like Sunset getting into a lather about rules, given that she was, well... a bandit.

"Ain't you robbin' folks 'round here?" Applejack asked, clearly on the same train of thought.

Sunset stood, crossed her arms, and gave her chin an imperious little tilt as she glared at Applejack. It was an expression that did funny things to Wallflower's heart as Sunset snorted derisively.

"I'm robbing an extortionist. That barely counts."

Rather than continue the argument, Applejack gave another of her trademark apathetic shrugs and went back to her business of tending the bar while Sunset nursed her water.

Several seats down, Sheriff Punch was passed out face down and snoring loud enough to rattle the windows and Sunset couldn't quite suppress an annoyed sigh. If the sheriff were openly complicit with Rich Enterprise's shady practices, that would be one thing, but this was more a case of 'dangerously incompetent' rather than 'deviously corrupt', and so it made her decision to try and do some real good outside of pushing pencils in the Bureau offices a little more galling.

It would be a lot more helpful and convenient if they would just be evil.

"Hey," Sunset barked.

Wallflower froze in place where she'd managed to scoot near the door of the saloon. She'd been hoping to make a break for it once she was close enough.

"Y-Yes?"

Sunset turned to glare at her over the rim of her glass. "Why did you stand me up? That's really rude, you know."

"Uhm, I... I didn't want to get shot?" Wallflower offered bleakly. "Because, uhm, I definitely would. I've n-never even used this thing before."

She gestured to the pistol on her hip. Sunset stared incredulously for several moments before chuckling and shaking her head, tipping back the rest of the water, and then standing up.

"Seriously?" She asked. "Never?"

Wallflower shook her head.

"Not even when you were training?"

"I didn't... I didn't really have any training," Wallflower grumbled sullenly as she kicked at the dirty floor. "I already knew how to do the paperwork and that's all I ever do."

Sunset dragged a hand down across her face and groaned as she leaned back against the bar. Then she started laughing. it was deep and rich and it flowed up from her chest, and just the sound of it seemed to carry into the atmosphere of the saloon. The patrons grinned despite themselves, and even the half-passed-out Berry Punch gave a wavering thumbs up before she returned to plumbing the depths of inebriation.

Settling her hat back on her head, Sunset strolled over to Wallflower who had gone rigid in marsupial terror, and clapped a hand on her shoulder.

"Fine," Sunset drawled. "Follow me."

"A-Am I gonna die?"

The pointed lack of answer from the red-haired bandit did nothing to ease Wallflower's worries.

Hammer Down

The whipcrack of a gunshot that split the quiet evening was followed by a sharp yelp of pain and alarm.

"Are you going to do that every time you fire that thing?" Sunset asked from where she was sitting cross-legged on top of a barrel several meters away from Wallflower.

Wallflower Blush shook out her hand and cringed as she looked down at the smoking gun lying a little ways away from her on the ground, its barrel still smoking from the shot which had managed to miss every single one of the bottles and cans that had been set up on the fence some ways away to serve as practice targets.

After almost a week of intermittent evening lessons, she'd only managed to shoot a single bottle of sarsaparilla, and as it happened that particular bottle had not only not been one of the targets, it had been full.

And in Sunset's hand.

Hence why Sunset had opted to sit much further away.

"It hurts."

Wallflower glowered at the gun, then at her hand, then hung her head.

"I'm sorry."

Sunset rolled her eyes and stood up. She moved with the languid grace of someone who was both familiar with violence and good at it, and Wallflower couldn't keep her eyes off of the bandit as she took up position beside the young deputy, drew her Colt forty-five, and leveled it at the fence.

"Keep your arms straight and your body relaxed," She said quietly. "Guns like these kick like a horse, so just let your body absorb it. Aim a little lower than you think you need to at first, and for the love of God, don't aim with one eye closed. You've got depth perception for a reason! Use it."

Before Wallflower could respond, Sunset thumbed back the hammer of her gun and fired.

Once, twice, thrice; the Colt roared flame and sulfur and spat death at the line of targets, each shot punctuated by the click and slam of the hammer. Two glass bottles exploded one after another, and the third shot took a tin can that once held beans in its center of mass, blowing it off the fence and nearly turning it inside out.

Lowering the weapon, Sunset nodded back at the targets.

"See? Easy."

Wallflower swallowed, then nodded as she knelt to pick up her own weapon. Raising it in one shaky hand, she tried to take aim at the line of targets the way Sunset had but her grip wasn't quite up to it. The weapon felt too heavy in her hands, and the smell of gunpowder was sticking in her nose and burning her eyes.

"Okay, Tex, hold up," Sunset said, putting a hand on the top of the gun and forcing it down. "Stop trying to fire like me. You're a beginner and I should have started you like one. Here..."

Black-gloved hands slipped under Wallflower's arms, and her cheeks flushed red at the contact as Sunset moved Wallflower like a department store mannequin, nudging at the deputy's feet with her boot to adjust her stance while she maneuvered Wallflower's arms up into a classic shooter's pose with both hands holding the smooth grip of the gun.

"Okay, extend your arms—there you go—and look straight down the iron sights—"

"The what?"

Wallflower looked up at Sunset who sighed and pressed a palm to her face, grumbling unintelligibly for a moment before looking back up and pointing at the raised ridge at the end of the tip of the barrel.

"That's the front sight or iron sights," She said. "Use it as a point of reference when you're aiming... now grip with both hands and lean forward a little so your body absorbs the kick... bend at the hips... there you go."

The position felt funny and awkward to Wallflower, but Sunset finally looked something akin to satisfied as she nodded to Wallflower and then turned to look downrange at the line of targets. She pointed out a bottle of sarsaparilla, and took a few steps back.

"Breathe," Sunset said. "Then let out the breath and fire. Always fire between breaths."

Wallflower nodded, settled her feet, breathed in, and fired.

BAM!

The pistol kicked in her grip but for once Wallflower managed to keep hold of it, and a heartbeat later the sound of glass exploding downrange filled the evening air. Wallflower's face split into a broad grin and she whooped gleefully, pumped an arm, and—

BAM!

"AH!"

Sunset raised an eyebrow as the gun clattered out of Wallflower's hand for what was probably the fourth time that evening. The shot she had, accidentally, fired wildly into the sky probably wasn't going to hit anything on the way down. The prairie around Ponyville was massive so the odds were incredibly small. All the same, Sunset felt an irresistible urge to seek cover.

"How about we call it for the night?" Sunset said, pointedly inching away from their impromptu practice range. "I'm dying of thirst over here."

"Uhm, y-yeah, sure," Wallflower replied gratefully as she retrieved her gun.

She fell into step behind the black-clad woman as they began making their way back to town. The way that Sunset moved had, after she'd gotten over her terror of the woman, begun to fascinate her. There was a liquid quality to her movement... to the gentle sway of her shoulders and hips, as she moved down the road. Wallflower knew, without a shadow of a doubt, that the moment Sunset decided to draw her gun and put someone in her sights, they were as good as gone.

Which begged the question...

"Why are you helping me?" Wallflower asked.

"I—"

THUNK

"OH GOD, MY LEG! WHERE DID THAT BULLET EVEN COME FROM?!"

"Walk faster—" Sunset grabbed Wallflower by the arm and began hustling forward. "I'm teaching you because you have no idea what you're doing and even though I'll eventually have to duel you at high noon, it doesn't mean I want to just mow you down, okay? That's just bad form."

"Oh," Wallflower said, looking down. "So... you want a challenge?"

Sunset shook her head.

"It's not about challenge," she replied. "It's not about vainglory, it's about doing things the right way."

That didn't exactly sit right with Wallflower, but she didn't know how to articulate that without getting shut down again. Sunset was easily one of the strangest people she had ever met, although admittedly her number of acquaintances was in the dismally low single digits, and she wasn't even sure that Sheriff Punch counted on account of the fact that she wasn't certain Berry remembered hiring her between benders, and because she was completely certain that slurred propositions echoed around copious vomiting near the outhouse didn't count as conversation.

Nobody else in town wanted anything to do with the office that seemingly gleefully gave in to the demands of Rich Enterprises when it came to extorting the town of what little wealth it was able to produce.

The worst part was that under normal circumstances, Sunset was someone whom Wallflower ought to have been arresting.

Sunset hip-checked the door to the Crazy Horse open and swaggered in with all the verve she was known for. It takes a certain kind of disrespect for the status quo to brazenly walk into the tavern where the sheriff was known to frequent while also being one of the most wanted women in forty kloms. Then again, Sunset was nothing if not brazen.

It was one of Wallflower's favorite things about Sunset, even allowing for the fact that she probably shouldn't have favorite things about Sunset, given their mutual professions.

Assuming what Sunset did could constitute a 'profession'.

Maybe it was more of a hobby.

Sunset Shimmer: Criminal Hobbyist.

"You still with me?"

"Always."

Wallflower clapped a hand over her mouth as Sunset looked at her with a raised eyebrow while color slowly started to flood over Wallflower's cheeks.

"Uh... huh."

Sunset shook her head, then held out a brown, dusty bottle of sarsaparilla to Wallflower before taking a seat at one of the tables and slugging back a long drink of water, and kicking her feet up on the table. Wallflower thought about admonishing her for it, but honestly, Sunset's boots might be one of the cleanest couple of things this table has had on it over the past fortnight.

"What'll you do after..." Wallflower trailed off. She couldn't exactly say 'after you kill me' because it would kind of ruin the mood. "After you move on?"

That seemed nicely noncommittal.

Shrugging, Sunset took another, smaller sip and smacked her lips.

"Dunno," She replied. "Find somewhere else being extorted or screwed over and help them out too, I guess?"

"You guess?" Wallflower asked as she popped the cap on her own drink and took a sip of the peppery beverage.

"Like I said, I dunno."

Lowering her legs and leaning forward, Sunset braced her elbows on the table as she fiddled with the half-empty glass of water. Over the past week that they'd been getting to know one another, Wallflower had gotten a good eye for Sunset's moods. It helped that she was the kind of woman who showed a lot of her mind on her face. Even if all she was doing was thinking, it showed up loud and clear.

"You're definitely improving, by the way," Sunset said, and for some reason she sounded almost sad. "Really, you are."

Wallflower smiled, and as she did her expression reflected neatly onto Sunset's face. The downtrodden deputy and the criminal sharpshooter grinned at each other until Sunset raised her glass to Wallflower and said:

"Cheers."

Two more weeks passed, and they were probably the most fun weeks Wallflower had ever had living in the dismal little town of Ponyville. There wasn't exactly a lot of recreational activities beyond cow-tipping, arson, and alcoholism, and since two of those things were crimes and the sheriff had a monopoly on the third, Wallflower was left to her own devices most days.

"So this is it, huh?" Sunset asked, looking over the small, cramped office and eying the back door that led to the three, significantly-more-cramped, cells.

"Pretty much," Wallflower said as she sidled over to her desk and slid behind it to start getting caught up on her paperwork.

"Not what I'd call glamorous."

Wallflower chuckled and shook her head before starting scratching away at the papers. Sunset had gotten back from wherever she laid her head early that morning and had a certain sullen air about her, but it was Sunday, the day the whole town had a tendency to let its hair down, and she'd loosened up a little as the day progressed.

Surprisingly, she hadn't asked to train Wallflower yet, so rather than wait, the young deputy had opted to go finish up some last-minute reports she needed to file.

Of course, she didn't really need to file them. It's not as though Sheriff Punch checked her work. But as Sunset always said, it's about doing it right.

Sunset cracked the door open to the cells and peeked in, then immediately recoiled with her face screwed up as she waved a hand in front of her face.

"It smells like a brewery caught fire and fucked a vineyard in there!" Sunset groaned as she kicked the door shut before looking back at Wallflower. "And did I see who I think I saw in cell two?"

Wallflower laughed and noded as she pointed to one of the files she'd been filling out.

There wasn't that much to do in the sheriff's office. Just a few daily reports to file. The only regular crime to fill out in those reports were the occasional drunk and disorderly which was always one of three people; Berry Punch herself, living up to her surname, the mute gravedigger Tombstone Joe, who was a wiry beanpole with a tendency to bite, and Father Waddle.

The old priest had a tendency to chase communion wine with whiskey. The rickety little man of the cloth had a mean mouth and two raw-knuckled fists, neither of which was he afraid to use after Sunday Mass got out and Sunday Drinks got in, and he'd inevitably end up coming down to the Crazy Horse to rail on about 'sins of the flesh' before picking a fight with the sheriff before noon.

Wallflower once saw him get Sheriff Punch in a chokehold with his stole.

It rarely came out to more than a bloody nose, though, before they got themselves into enough of a dehydrated lather and passed out on top of one another. It was a common enough sight in the Crazy Horse that Applejack had a corner set aside for the patrons to roll the two drunkards into so they'd be out of the way.

"Father Waddle and Sheriff Punch usually end up sleeping off their hangovers across from each other," Wallflower replied.

"Ya don't say."

Sunset glanced at the door to cells again and chuckled before looking back at Wallflower.

"You've gotten really good, you know," Sunset said after a moment.

The scratching of Wallflower Blush's pen paused on a line, and she stared at it, barely seeing it as a cold stone took up somewhere in her stomach.

"It's all because of you."

"You've got talent, too," Sunset offered.

That made Wallflower smile. Of all the people to tell her, for the very first time in her life, that she was talented at something, it was the woman who was almost certainly about to kill her. Sunset really was one of a kind. She had something that no one else in this town really had. Not Sheriff Punch, or Father Waddle, or even Applejack.

Sunset had principles.

Setting down her pen, Wallflower looked up at the clock.

Half-past eleven.

"It's almost noon."

Sunset swallowed audibly, then nodded.

"Yeah, it is."

Wallflower looked back at Sunset and smiled. The bandit woman had eyes like the bluest skies and hair like fire and molten gold, she was beautiful in ways that Wallflower didn't know how to articulate. She lacked either the imagination, the education, or both, to describe how Sunset made her feel.

Maybe it was better this way.

"Noon," Wallflower said quietly.

"Hm?"

Sunset leaned in and tipped her head forward.

"What?"

"I said, noon," Wallflower repeated. "I uhm... I have some paperwork to finish, but I'll... I'll meet you outside in a half-hour, okay?"

Sunset was quiet for a long moment, and at the end of it, she settled her palm on the grip of her gun and nodded. There was a pallor to her complexion that hadn't been there a moment ago, Wallflower thought. It's as though the blood had drained away, but before she could say or see anything more, Sunset turned her back on Wallflower and stepped out of the cramped office.

The scratching of Wallflower's pen started up again. This time on a clean sheet of paper. She knew her letters well enough to read and write, which was better than a lot of the people in the town, and she addressed this letter to the woman who was going to kill her. It was simple and easy and just asked Sunset not to feel too bad.

After all. It had to be done this way.

The right way.

Sweat rolled down Sunset's back as she steadied her breathing and settled her palm on the ivory inset grip of her Colt forty-five, while the sun crept higher and higher in the sky, blazing down across the dry town of Ponyville and washing the streets in its unforgiving heat as Sunset braced herself to end the life of the law-woman who was deadset on getting in her way.

She had to think of Wallflower that way. She couldn't think of her as Wallflower Blush because if she did, she knew she would hesitate.

Hell, she might not be able to pull the trigger at all.

High noon. That was the rule.

The right way to do it.

The clocktower in the middle of town thundered, and Sunset clenched her jaw as she tightened her grip on her weapon.

Don't come out. The thought shocked Sunset as much as anything could, but it came on all the same. Don't come out. Just hide like you always do, Wallie. Just hide and I won't have to hurt you. I won't have to pull that trigger.

Wallflower Blush stepped out onto the dusty main drag of Ponyville, stopped barely a meter away, and Sunset's heart plummeted.

She looked amazing.

Unlike how she had left her, the Wallflower before her looked every bit the part of the stoic law-woman. A Sheriff. She was wearing a long brown mantled duster with her bronze deputy star gleaming in the bright sunlight pinned to her chest, and perched on her head was a black derby. Her linen shirt was clean and white—the color of white that would show bloodstains far too well—and her hand lingered near her hip where Sunset knew Wallflower wore her holster.

"Why?" Sunset asked thinly. "Why didn't you hide again?"

"Because that's not the right way to do this," Wallflower replied.

The townsfolk looked on in mute astonishment as the tension thickened between the two women. There was no rancor sparking between them, only a deep, choking grief from the one in black, and a sort of resolute sorrow from the one in brown whose hair fell across her mantle like leaves over old tree bark.

"You could still run."

"I know."

"You should."

"Probably," Wallflower agreed.

She smiled as she straightened out, and looked Sunset in the eye.

"But I don't want to run from you."

Sunset grimaced, and closed her eyes, pushing down the welling guilt and the choking sensation in the back of her throat as she opened and closed her fingers, loosening the muscles before wrapping them around the grip of her Colt forty-five. She loved this gun, but she wasn't sure she'd ever be able to look at it the same way after this.

"Fine."

Sunset turned her back on Wallflower, and she heard the young deputy do the same. They took steps, one after the other, counting twelve paces. Each one felt harder and colder than the last until they reached the twelfth step which Sunset almost couldn't take at all. It took every ounce of her willpower to push past the wall in her mind and take that step, and the moment her heel hit the ground, she dug in and twisted, pivoting on her axis as she roared.

"DRAW!"

Her gun snapped from its holster like a viper, and as it did Sunset watched Wallflower execute the exact same move with perfect accuracy. Time seemed to slow in that brief lull of heartbeats. How often had she practiced that, Sunset wondered? How often had Wallflower practiced for the day she would die? And why? Why had she bothered if she knew it was hopeless?

Because it's about doing it right.

Because Wallflower wanted to do it right.

For the first time in her career, Sunset Shimmer froze up. Her jaw clenched, her heart pounded, and her finger wouldn't move.

She couldn't pull the trigger.

And neither could Wallflower because she had no trigger to pull.

Sunset blinked as she lowered her gun. Wallflower's hands were empty, and as her duster settled from the spin, she could see that the holster was empty too. Wallflower had come unarmed.

"Why?" Sunset asked for the second time and gestured at Wallflower with the tip of her Colt. "Your gun, Wallie... why?"

Wallflower stared at Sunset in confusion for a moment, maybe trying to come to grips with the fact that she wasn't on the ground with a hole in her gut. After a few breaths, she shrugged and wrapped her arms around herself.

"Because if I'd brought it, I probably would have just missed," she said, and Sunset started to speak, but in another first, Wallflower spoke over her. "But... I also might not have..."

Sunset lowered her gun, and thin tracks were cut down the filth and dust on her cheeks that she wiped away as quickly as she could before thumbing the safety on her Colt and sticking it back in its holster.

"Maybe," Sunset began as she closed the distance between herself and Wallflower, "this isn't the right way to do it."

Wallflower shifted awkwardly from foot to foot as she ran her fingers through her tangle of green hair before looking up at Sunset with a faint ember of hope dancing in her eyes.

"Then what is?"

Shrugging, Sunset reached out and flicked at the brim of Wallflowers derby, knocking it rakishly askew, and smiled.

"I don't know, but maybe I can start by buying you a drink?"

Author's Note

This story came from a one-off idea from the one and only Lord Camembert linked in the description.