Behind the Scenes of SunChips

Chapters

Chapter 1: Meet the Characters
Chapter 2: Cast Commentary
Chapter 3: Director’s Cut
Chapter 4: Bonus Features

Chapter 1: Meet the Characters

Memories swirled in Twilight Sparkle’s mind as she rematerialized from the dust.

“I can’t leave Shining and Twilight,” her mother, Captain Celestia Daybreak had said in the past.

“Mom, it’s okay, we can stay with Cadance and her family,” her brother Shining Armor had assured Celestia.

“Your mother is so lucky to have such a brave boy like your brother and a clever girl like you for kids,” Aunt Luna aka Captain Marvel had said to her before leaving with Celestia to help the Skrulls.

Twilight awoke with a gasp once she fully rematerialized on the chair inside the hospital room. To her surprise and confusion, the room was completely empty. Even the bed next to her was empty. Did her family just leave the hospital without her? That was ridiculous. She couldn’t have been asleep for that long.

Twilight got up and opened the door. On the other side was total and utter chaos. Everyone was shouting as people rematerialized in the hallway while doctors and nurses rushed to accommodate the sudden influx of people.

“Excuse me,” Twilight cried as she ran to the nurse’s station, weaving through the bedlam. “I’m looking for Mi Amore Cadenza. She’s my sister-in-law. She just had a baby.”

“I’m sorry, miss, but we can’t help you,” the nurse said to her.

“Twilight?” a woman in a white coat exclaimed, approaching the nurse’s station.

“Dr. Swaddle,” Twilight replied, recognizing the woman. “Have you seen Cadance and the rest of my family? I must have fallen asleep while we were waiting for the baby to come back from the nursery.”

“Twilight,” Dr. Swaddle tried to explain. “This is going to be a lot to take in, but your family went home with Flurry Heart five years ago.”

“F-five years ago?!” Twilight nearly screamed.

Dr. Swaddle nodded before continuing, “There’s more. Three years ago, your mom and brother were killed by a drunk driver, which was two years after…”

“After what?” Twilight pleaded, trying not to cry.

“Two years after you disappeared.”

Three weeks later, Twilight entered the building that housed the headquarters of the Sentient Weapon Observation and Response Division aka SWORD. She soon discovered, to her frustration, that not existing for five years meant that her key card didn’t work anymore.

“Three weeks, and you’re the first to report,” a severe-looking woman with dark fuchsia hair and bluish-gray skin wearing half-moon glasses greeted her. “Welcome back, Captain Sparkle.”

“Director Cinch,” Twilight greeted back.

“Acting Director,” Cinch corrected her. “I’m so sorry for your loss. It’s a shame not even your brother survived. Major Armor would have been the obvious choice for your mother’s replacement.”

“I know, but you were the next best choice.”

“Unfortunately, I was also the only choice. Come. Let’s get you up to speed.” With that, Cinch opened the door for the two of them and led Twilight down a starkly lit white hallway towards her office.

“The FBI is requesting the use of one of our imaging drones for a missing persons case,” Cinch explained as Twilight took a seat in one of the office chairs. “I need someone to chaperone the drone.”

“With all due respect, Cinch, the drones usually chaperone me,” Twilight remarked. “Aren’t I a little overqualified for this assignment?”

“Unfortunately, it’s the only assignment I’m able to give you,” Cinch explained. “Before her passing, your mother had set up a protocol in case any vanished personnel returned. I’m only allowed to assign you to terrestrial missions.”

“Seriously?” Twilight deadpanned.

“If it’s any comfort to you at all, the protocol shows that Celestia believed you would come back. If only she had lived to see it,” Cinch added, causing Twilight to smile wistfully. “I don’t have anyone else I can send at the moment, but if you need more time…”

“No,” Twilight cut Cinch off. “I can take the assignment. No problem.”

Immediately, Twilight packed the drone into the back of her car and drove to Westview, New Jersey. When she arrived just outside of the town, an FBI agent was standing next to his van waiting for her. Twilight parked her car and stepped out to greet him.

“Flash Sentry,” the agent greeted, making his ID badge seemingly appear out of thin air in his left hand, “FBI.”

“Twilight Sparkle, SWORD,” she greeted back. “Let’s save the small talk and get to business, shall we, agent?”

“Suit yourself,” Flash agreed before explaining, “We had someone on Witness Protection here in Westview. We lost contact with him this morning, so we started checking in with known associates and family members.”

“Let me guess. They don’t know what happened to him either,” Twilight speculated.

“They never even heard of him.” Flash noted the dumbfounded expression Twilight made and continued, “That’s exactly what we thought too, so I flew out here to check things out, and well, things just got even weirder.”

“How so?”

Flash led Twilight towards the police car that was parked near his van and addressed one of the two officers who were standing next to it, “Excuse me, sheriff. Do you mind telling Captain Sparkle your claim about Westview, New Jersey?”

“No such place,” the sheriff answered almost immediately.

Twilight turned to Flash with an utterly perplexed look on her face before pointing to a nearby billboard and saying to the sheriff, “Are you sure about that? That sign over there says otherwise.”

“What sign?” the sheriff replied, not even looking where Twilight was pointing.

“The huge sign right behind you that says ‘Westview’ in giant letters,” Twilight emphasized.

“There’s no sign, and there’s no Westview,” the sheriff insisted.

“Seriously?” Twilight questioned Flash.

“Yup,” Flash replied. “I tried calling up the residents using the phone directory, and so far, I’ve been getting nothing but a bunch of dial tones. Of course, after that, I attempted to go inside to investigate, but, well, come here.”

Flash motioned for Twilight to follow him, so she did. Then, he stopped a just a few yards away from the billboard. Twilight stopped right where he stopped, and that’s when she felt it, the strange, invasive sensation repelling her from coming any closer.

“You feel it too, don’t you?” Flash asked her.

“Yeah,” she affirmed. “It’s so weird and kinda creepy.”

With that, the two of them began walking back to Twilight’s car to take the drone out from her trunk.

“So, let’s review,” Twilight began as she unloaded the drone and set it on the ground. “We can’t reach anyone inside. Everyone outside doesn’t believe it exists and ignores all evidence to the contrary, and some unknown sensation is compelling us to stay away from it. I do have one question though.”

“What’s that?” Flash asked as Twilight began to fly the drone up and forward.

“How come we are still aware that Westview exists?”

Flash bit his lip in thought before replying, “Are you from the area?”

“No.”

“Do you know anyone who lives in the area?”

“No.”

“Think that might have something to do with it?”

Twilight opened her mouth to reply but instead, immediately shut it and shrugged her shoulders. She flew the drone past the billboard, and not even six feet past the billboard, the drone vanished.

“Where did it go?” Twilight cried, moving towards where the drone had disappeared. She felt the invasive, compelling sensation to stay back again, but this time, she pushed past it, motivated by the curiosity. She reached her hand out, sending ripples through an invisible surface.

“What is it?” Flash asked, keeping his distance.

“It’s some kind of energy,” Twilight replied as she kept running her hand through the barrier.

“Captain Sparkle, I really don’t think you should keep touching—,” Flash called out in warning before being interrupted by Twilight getting sucked in past the barrier and vanishing from sight. “Captain Sparkle! Captain Sparkle!”

Three days, it took three days for SWORD to set up a base outside of Westview after Twilight disappeared. Everyone working on the case believed that Twilight likely was sucked into the town behind the energy field. Unfortunately, no one had any ideas for how to get through the field safely, let alone get Twilight out.

Meanwhile, inside one of SWORD’s transport vans sat a young woman in a gray turtleneck. Her name is Moon Dancer, and she had red hair with two purple stripes and wore thick, black-rimmed glasses. She was in the company of other similarly bookish-looking people.

“So, what’s your field?” she asked the man sitting next to her.

“Uh, we were told not to speak to one another,” he replied, his eyes darting around the van nervously.

“Okay, sure thing, Colt Scout,” Moon Dancer snarked back. “Everyone else?”

She received one reply of “nuclear biology” and one of “artificial intelligence.”

“Mine’s astrophysics,” Moon Dancer noted. “Judging by the varied fields, SWORD likely has no idea what it’s dealing with either.”

The van came to a stop, and a SWORD agent opened the door and ordered everyone off. Moon Dancer looked around the base and saw several agents flying drones into the barrier around Westview. A short distance from the drones, an agent in a hazmat suit stood next to a manhole while two other agents removed the manhole cover.

“Miss Dancer,” a rather gruff SWORD agent with a bald head called her.

“It’s Doctor Dancer actually,” Moon Dancer corrected.

“Your tent is this way,” the agent replied, seeming to ignore her.

After the agent led her to her station, Moon Dancer wasted no time making herself comfortable.

“So,” she began as she unpacked her equipment, “are you getting any useful info from those drones you’ve been sending in?”

“That’s classified,” the agent replied.

“I’ll take that as a no,” Moon Dancer retorted sarcastically. “By the way, what’s a girl got to do to get some coffee around here?”

Moon Dancer turned on a small handheld device and studied the information being displayed on its screen.

“I’m picking up an insane amount of CMBR,” Moon Dancer noted. The agent could only stare back at her, clearly unable to understand what she had just said.

“It’s a type of radiation that dates all the way back to the Big Bang,” she clarified, before pointing to the screen on her device. “More importantly, I’m also picking up these longer wavelengths superimposed over everything else. If I could just translate the information in those wavelengths, we might have a better idea of what’s going on here.”

The agent just continued to stare blankly at her.

“You know, now that I’m looking at it, these wavelengths kinda look like a broadcast signal like the kind used by radios and old TVs,” Moon Dancer continued, before her eyes lit up. She turned to the agent and requested, “Hey, can you get me an analog TV? You know, one of those bulky, not digital ones? And while you’re at it, get me some coffee.”

Meanwhile, Flash was attempting to have a discussion with Director Cinch as the two of them entered the tent.

“Director Cinch,” Flash began, “I highly advise against sending Agent Zest in through the sewers. It’s possible that the anomaly could extend underground.”

“Well, we have no proof that it does, my best agent is inside with no way out, and more importantly, we have no answers about what’s on the other side,” Cinch listed.

“Director, if the anomaly does extend underground, Agent Zest could end up trapped in there with Captain Sparkle,” Flash pointed out.

“I don’t tell you how to do your job, so maybe you should stop telling me how to do mine,” Cinch retorted coldly before addressing everyone else in the tent. “Do we have any useful information on what’s on the other side at all?”

Her question was interrupted by the sound of canned laughter coming from Moon Dancer’s station. Cinch furrowed her eyebrows at this while Flash raised his in confusion. Cinch furiously marched over to Moon Dancer’s station while Flash and a group of SWORD agents followed.

“Dr. Dancer, what is the meaning of this?” Cinch demanded.

“My equipment picked up high levels of CMBR,” Moon Dancer explained, “which is—”

“I know what it is,” Cinch snapped. “Continue.”

“Anyway,” Moon Dancer continued, “there was a broadcast signal mixed up in all the noise, so I hooked my equipment up into this old TV, and this came out. It looks like an old 50s sitcom.”

“Hold on,” Flash butted in recognizing the woman playing the female lead. “Is that Sunset Shimmer of the Avengers?”

“Sure looks like her,” Moon Dancer affirmed before pointing to the male lead, “and look who she’s with.”

Flash took a closer look at who she was pointing to, a man wearing a suit and thick, black-rimmed glasses. Upon closer inspection, Flash noticed the man bore a striking resemblance to a certain lavender and yellow synthoid.

“Is that Micro Chips?” Flash exclaimed. “How is that possible? Tirek tore a hole into his skull.”

“I don’t think I have enough data to answer that last question,” Moon Dancer deadpanned.

“Are you recording this?” Cinch questioned.

“Never stopped.”

“Get me back to headquarters now,” Cinch ordered. “I want everyone here analyzing this immediately.”

Cinch stormed out of the tent followed by the rest of the SWORD agents, leaving Flash and Moon Dancer.

“She seems pleasant,” Moon Dancer noted dryly.

“Yeah,” Flash sarcastically agreed before sincerely complimenting Moon Dancer. “Nice work, by the way.”

“Oh, I try.”

For the next 24 hours or so, Flash, Moon Dancer, and the rest of the remaining SWORD agents got to work. Under Flash’s recommendation, everyone decided that the most effective course of action would be to see if any of the sitcom cast members corresponded with known Westview residents using facial recognition technology. So far, they were able to identify Timber Spruce as Micro Chips’s coworker Norm, Carrot and Cup Cake as Micro Chips’s employers the Hearts, Fluttershy as Evergreen, Sandalwood as Herb, and Jet Set and Upper Crust as Fill and Dottie Notes. The only cast member they couldn’t identify was Sunset’s new best friend Shutterbug. That information, however, ended up on the back burner after the latest episode introduced a new cast member who they had absolutely no trouble identifying.

“Sentry, look,” Moon Dancer called, dragging Flash away from his whiteboard. Flash’s eyes nearly popped out of his skull when he saw who was onscreen.

“Captain Sparkle?” Flash exclaimed, recognizing Twilight in the black-and-white footage. She was sitting on a bench in period-accurate clothing reading a newspaper.

“Does she seem okay to you?” Moon Dancer asked.

“She doesn’t seem hurt physically, but she’s not quite acting like herself, not that I know enough about her to know what that normally looks like,” Flash replied.

“It seems like she’s being compelled to play along.”

“But why though?”

“Not sure, but I might have a way for us to find out,” Moon Dancer declared before leading Flash outside the tent.

About 15 minutes later, Moon Dancer had set up an assortment of radio equipment with Flash wearing a pair of earphones and holding a microphone.

“Okay, so I noticed that Sunset and Micro Chips have a radio next to their sink,” Moon Dancer explained. “So, I was thinking that next time she’s washing dishes, which, by the way, happens maybe once an episode, we shoot her a message and see if she responds.”

“Agent Sentry,” a female SWORD agent with lavender and pink hair and light blue skin called for Flash before handing him a photograph. “We just got this a few minutes ago from the latest episode.”

Flash accepted the photo from Agent Flare and studied it. It was a photo of a red and silver toy helicopter emblazoned with the SWORD insignia.

“It kinda looks like it’s supposed to be a SWORD drone,” Flash remarked, “but it’s been changed somehow.”

“Why is it in color when everything else is in black and white?” Moon Dancer noticed.

“It just showed up like that,” replied Agent Flare.

“Is it just this one, or is this what’s happening to all the drones?” Flash wondered aloud.

“Let’s just put that on the white board for now. We need to focus on contacting Sunset,” said Moon Dancer.

After putting the photo on the white board along with the questions it raised, Flash positioned himself by the radio equipment and waited for Moon Dancer’s signal.

“Okay, I’m watching the episode right now,” Moon Dancer relayed to Flash. “Sunset’s at some sort of HOA meeting. Oh, she’s talking to Twilight.”

“What are they saying?” Flash asked.

“She said she likes Sunset’s pants, and she just introduced herself to Sunset as Midnight.”

“Okay, no useful info there,” Flash noted.

“Now, she’s talking to Upper Crust, and oh, I see a radio on one of the tables. Attempt to make contact now.”

“Sunset, Sunset,” Flash spoke into the microphone. “Sunset, come in. Who is doing this to you, Sunset?”

As Flash tried to contact Sunset, Moon Dance continued to watch the TV. As soon as Flash began to speak, the image on the television became staticky, and then the footage jumped forward a few seconds.

“Moon Dancer, is Sunset responding?” Flash called into the tent.

“No, something weird just happened with the broadcast,” Moon Dancer replied, utterly astonished.

“Should I keep trying to reach her?”

“No, you can stop now. I don’t think it worked,” Moon Dancer sighed exasperatedly.

As if the failed attempt with the radio wasn’t bad enough, SWORD also lost contact with Agent Zest. If Cinch had been on the base and Flash had been the gloating type, Flash most certainly would have been giving her an “I told you so.” The sitcom also once again changed decades, and Sunset Shimmer somehow suddenly and magically became pregnant.

“How are Sunset and Micro Chips having a baby together?” Moon Dancer remarked as she munched on a bag of Doritos. “He’s a synthoid. He doesn’t have anything to make a baby with.”

“Some people get all the luck,” Flash muttered to himself, reddening when he realized that Moon Dancer heard him. “I mean, I’ve wanted a family of my own someday, but I’ve just never had the time to—You know what? I’m just going to stop talking. That was really unprofessional of me.”

“No worries. I won’t judge.”

“Can you believe it? Twins!” Twilight as Midnight exclaimed through the television.

“I’m a twin,” Sunset replied. “I had a sister. Her name was Rainbow Dash.”

“She was killed by Sombra, wasn’t she?”

Flash and Moon Dancer looked at each other with eyes wide and mouths agape.

“Did Twilight just mention Sombra?” Flash questioned. “As in the guy who nearly dropped Sokovia from the sky? Has she or any other cast member shown any awareness of our reality before this?”

“No, this would be the first time,” Moon Dancer exclaimed as the TV screen went staticky before once again jumping forward with Twilight suddenly vanishing from the scene.

“Wait. Where did Twilight go?” Flash asked in a near panic.

“I don’t know. She was there a minute ago,” Moon Dancer replied also close to panicking. “I can’t believe this happened again.”

“Again?” Flash noted. Before Moon Dancer could answer him, however, alarms started sounding all over the base, and the PA system announced a breach in the anomaly.

A few minutes earlier inside the anomaly at the Chips residence, “Midnight” had just finished helping Sunset deliver her twin girls, Amber Glow and Suncatcher. Now, Sunset was glaring at Twilight darkly with her head tilted towards the right. Her turquoise eyes seemed to gleam with a very slight reddish tint.

“Who are you?” Sunset demanded slowly yet threateningly approaching Twilight.

“I, I’m just your neighbor,” “Midnight” answered innocently, backing away from Sunset.

“Then, how did you know about Sombra?” Sunset continued as she formed orbs of red energy in her hands. “I don’t know who you are, but you don’t belong here.” The energy surrounded Twilight and lifted her off the ground. “And I want you to leave!”

Sunset suddenly flung Twilight through the wall and two fences before ejecting her through the barrier of the anomaly. Twilight hit the ground a short distance away from the edge of the anomaly. Other than some soreness and confusion, she didn’t seem at all injured by her forcible ejection from Westview.

Flash and Moon Dancer rushed out of the tent towards Twilight along with several SWORD agents.

“Twilight, what happened?” Flash exclaimed as he ran to help her.

“Sunset,” Twilight muttered as her head slowly cleared. “It’s all Sunset.”

Author's Note

I've been wanting to write something like this ever since I saw WandaVision back in May, and I had a much easier time writing this than I did my last FlashLight Week submission, and I'm honestly A LOT happier with it.

I feel like I should clarify that even though I casted Twilight as Monica and Flash as Jimmy, I do not ship Monica with Jimmy. Flash and Twilight just seemed to best fit their roles and personalities. Granted, I did make their interactions shippier than Monica and Jimmy's just for the sake of FlashLight Week. :twilightblush:

I probably should warn you that I crackship Sunset with Micro Chips, and regarding this story, that turned out to be a good thing. I had a much easier time casting Wanda and Vision that way.

Chapter 2: Cast Commentary

When Director Cinch received word that Twilight had returned from inside Westview, she returned to the base almost immediately and began questioning Twilight about her experience all while Twilight was undergoing medical work. To everyone’s surprise, despite how forcefully she exited the barrier, the only injury Twilight sustained was a mild headache that was easily treated with a Tylenol.

“Twilight, I need you to tell me everything you were aware of while you were inside,” Cinch had demanded of her.

“When I first got sucked into the barrier, it really hurt. Then, I heard this wailing in my head,” Twilight had described. “It was Sunset’s.”

“Did you try to resist?”

“I did, but then, I got overwhelmed by this heavy feeling. I didn’t know what it was at first, but I knew I had felt it before. Then, I realized what I was feeling was grief, her grief.”

Flash and Moon Dancer entered the medical tent just as Twilight finished getting what felt like her hundredth but was actually only her third X-ray.

“How are you feeling, Captain?” Flash asked.

“Like I’m in control of my own thoughts and actions again,” Twilight replied as she got up.

“Twilight, this is Dr. Moon Dancer,” Flash introduced. “She was the one who discovered the broadcast.”

“It’s so nice to finally meet you,” Moon Dancer gushed taking Twilight’s hand and shaking it vigorously. “I am such a huge fan of your work.”

Twilight gave Moon Dancer a friendly smile as she slowly sat up. Before she could get off the exam table though, the doctor returned wearing a concerned look on her face.

“Captain Sparkle,” the doctor declared, “I just got your latest X-ray back. Here’s what it looks like.”

The doctor turned her tablet over so that Twilight, Flash, and Moon Dancer could see, revealing an image of a blank X-ray film.

“Nothing showed up on her X-ray?” Flash questioned.

“It’s the same story for her first two X-rays also,” the doctor replied. “Maybe I should run another blood test.”

“No,” Twilight refused, getting off the exam table. “I’m fine. I don’t feel sick or weird, so I not too concerned about the X-rays.”

“Well, if your up for it,” Flash said to Twilight, “Cinch wants us over at the main tent for briefing.”

“I think I’ll be fine, Twilight replied before following Flash and Moon Dancer to the main tent.

“Thanks to Captain Sparkle, we now have first-person intel from inside the anomaly,” Cinch addressed everyone at the briefing. “We initially believed that Sunset Shimmer was one of the anomaly’s victims, but now, we have evidence that she may, in fact, its perpetrator. Agent Sentry, do you mind giving us some background information on Ms. Shimmer?”

“Sunset Shimmer,” Flash began, addressing all present. “Born in 1989 to Bow Hothoof and Windy Whistles in Sokovia, she and her twin sister Rainbow Dash were orphaned during an air raid when the two of them were ten.”

“After which, both were radicalized and subsequently volunteered for the known terrorist organization HYDRA,” Cinch interrupted.

“There’s a lot more to what actually happened than that, but yes,” Flash agreed before continuing, “She and her sister were subjected to experiments with Loki’s scepter, which we later learned housed the Mind Stone, granting her telepathic and telekinetic abilities.”

“Our records show that she first used these abilities against our greatest defenders, the Avengers, correct?” Cinch once again interrupted.

“Yes, but she and Rainbow Dash eventually turned against HYDRA and fought Sombra alongside the Avengers in Sokovia, costing Rainbow Dash her life,” Flash continued, trying to hide his annoyance with Cinch and her interruptions. “After defeating Sombra, she became an Avenger herself.”

“Leading to the incidents at Lagos and Germany. Thank you for you pointing that out, Agent Sentry. I’m sure we can all agree based on this information that Ms. Shimmer is a dangerous woman who must be dealt with immediately and severely.”

Flash looked like he wanted to object but instead returned to his place beside Twilight and Moon Dancer, seething silently.

“Nice job on the presentation,” Moon Dancer complimented, attempting to mollify Flash.

“Yeah, before Cinch messed it up,” Flash muttered.

“If I may speak, Director,” Twilight spoke up, “I don’t believe Sunset is an immediate danger to anyone. Whatever she’s doing in Westview, I don’t think it’s motivated by a desire to harm anybody. If we can just find a way to get back in there and reason with her, maybe she’ll stop willingly.”

“Twilight, she’s holding thousands of people hostage. Additionally, she put you under mind control and forcibly ejected you through four walls,” Cinch retorted dismissively.

“And somehow I survived all that completely uninjured,” Twilight pointed out. “The only way that would have been possible is if Sunset was using her powers to protect me, which means she never intended to hurt me in the first place. Furthermore, I don’t think she ever intended to hurt anyone.”

“Well, let’s see if this changes your mind then,” Cinch countered. “Bring up the visual. I just received authorization to share this.”

A video began to play on the big screen behind director Cinch, showing what looked like security footage of SWORD headquarters.

“Is that Micro Chips?” Moon Dancer noted, staring at the part of the footage that showed a room housing a dismembered lavender and yellow android.

“It is,” Cinch affirmed. “What you’re looking at is the top-secret location of Micro Chips’s remains.”

The footage continued to play, showing Sunset bursting through the headquarters’ main doors with her hands glowing with red energy and shattering the window separating her from the room housing Micro Chips.

“Nine days ago, Sunset Shimmer broke into SWORD headquarters, absconded with Micro Chips’s remains, and resurrected it before fleeing to Westview,” Cinch explained, “in violation of both the Sokovia Accords and Micro Chips’s living will. Still don’t think she’s dangerous, Captain?”

With that Cinch and the other agents left the main tent, leaving Twilight, Flash, and Moon Dancer.

“Something doesn’t add up,” Twilight said to the others. “If this happened nine days ago, some time before the anomaly started, why is Cinch just barely sharing this information now?”

“She did say it was top-secret,” Flash pointed out. “Maybe she wanted the whole thing resolved quietly.”

“Still, you have to admit the whole thing’s pretty suspicious,” Moon Dancer replied.

“I say we regroup and figure out how to make contact with Sunset again,” Twilight took charge. “Who’s with me?”

“I am,” affirmed Moon Dancer.

“So am I,” Flash replied before adding, “I think a saw a Starbucks about ten minutes from here. Why don’t I run get us something while you two get started? What would you like?”

“A grande caramel macchiato with extra caramel, 2 pumps of amaretto syrup, 3 shots of espresso, and extra foam,” Moon Dancer answered. Flash and Twilight stared at her in concern. “Do you two have any idea how little sleep I’ve been running on?”

Flash turned and looked to Twilight, wordlessly asking her his earlier question.

“Just a regular with cream and sugar, thanks,” Twilight replied.

“Okay,” Flash confirmed, “2 coffees with cream and sugar and one heavily loaded sugar and caffeine bomb. Gotcha.”

“So, what did I miss?” Flash asked, returning with the coffee order while Twilight began to text someone on her phone and Moon Dancer busied herself by the white board.

“Twilight’s planning on reentering the Hex and is contacting someone about making her a modified bomb shelter on wheels,” Moon Dancer explained.

“The what?” Flash uttered, his face twisting in confusion.

“It’s what I’ve been calling the anomaly because of its hexagonal shape. It totally fits it, right?” Moon Dancer explained as she took her coffee.

“Yeah, sure,” Flash uncertainly conceded. “Anything new happen inside the anomaly?”

“Sunset’s twins just aged themselves up again,” replied Moon Dancer. “They’re 10 now, and they just picked up a dog. Her name’s Smolder.”

“Have we been able to get an ID on them?”

“Just the kids or both the kids and the dog?”

“I don’t know about the dog, but Sunset’s kids are hers,” Twilight answered as she put her phone away. “Don’t ask me how I know. I just know that those children felt very real while I was pulling them out of her.”

“Okay, TMI,” Moon Dancer gagged.

“What about Sunset’s neighbor Shutterbug?” Flash added. “Out of all the known cast, she’s been the only one we haven’t been able to ID with facial recognition.”

“Really?” Twilight exclaimed, moving over to the white board to read Shutterbug’s info sheet. “Okay, that’s strange, but I’m afraid I have no useful info there.”

“Hold on. If those kids are actually hers,” Moon Dancer noted, “then where did they come from? Did she just make them out of nothing?”

“Last I checked, Sunset’s power set doesn’t include spontaneous creation,” Flash noted. “I mean, she’s just been making the people inside hallucinate everything, right?”

“Nope,” Twilight refuted. “Everything inside is real, and it gets rewritten every day to fit with changing decades.”

“Hold on. If she’s rewriting reality every single day, then she’s got to be wielding an insane amount of power,” Moon Dancer noted, “way more than she’s been capable of in the past.”

“She was already pretty powerful to begin with,” pointed out Twilight. “She was the only one who came close to taking down Tirek.”

“You could argue Captain Marvel came pretty close,” Flash countered. “Didn’t she also get her powers from an Infinity Stone?”

Twilight rolled her eyes as she redirected the conversation back to Sunset, “We are not talking about her. Let’s just keep our focus on Sunset, okay?”

Flash and Moon Dancer noted Twilight’s rather annoyed tone of voice but silently complied.

“So, if she’s rewriting reality to fit with the changing decades,” Moon Dancer wondered aloud, “what would happen if we sent in something that already fits the decade the show is currently set in?”

“That’s it!” Twilight exclaimed excitedly. “Moon Dancer, you’re a genius!”

Meanwhile inside the anomaly, Sunset Shimmer sat on her living room sofa with Suncatcher while the two of them watched Amber Glow train Smolder. Micro Chips should have been with them, but Sunset decided to send him to the office just to keep him from asking questions she didn’t want to answer. She was starting to wish she had kept him at home because now the twins were starting to ask hard questions.

Then, Smolder barked and bolted out the front door.

“Smolder, come back,” Amber called as she and Suncatcher ran after the dog. Sunset ran after her children. As soon as Sunset stepped past her front door, she found herself face to face with an outdated reconnaissance drone.

At the SWORD base, Twilight was piloting the drone while Cinch observed from over her shoulder and Flash and Moon Dancer watched the broadcast.

“I’ve got visual on Sunset,” Twilight reported.

“So, do we, but no visual on the drone though,” Flash noted.

“Sunset must be framing it out of the shot,” Moon Dancer added. “It’s like she’s cutting everything she doesn’t want to deal with out of the show.”

“Sunset,” Twilight spoke through the drone. “This is Captain Twilight Sparkle. I just want to talk.”

Judging by the way Sunset tilted her head and the fact that her eyes were glowing red through a black-and-white camera, Sunset didn’t seem to believe Twilight.

“I just want to talk,” Twilight repeated.

“Do we still have visual on Sunset Shimmer?” Cinch asked.

“Yes,” Twilight answered.

“Good. Take the shot,” Cinch ordered Agent Flare.

“What? But the drone isn’t even armed,” Twilight protested.

“Taking the shot,” Agent Flare repeated in affirmation.

“What? No!”

Everyone in the base’s main tent heard a missile being fired followed by an explosion before they lost visual from the drone. The broadcast abruptly stopped and was replaced by a test pattern.

“What did you do?” Twilight demanded Cinch. Cinch coldly turned away from her, refusing to answer as the alarms and the PA system announced a breach in the anomaly. Cinch stormed out of the tent with a squadron of armed SWORD agents while Twilight followed them.

Sunset emerged from the barrier dragging a broken SWORD drone with her, the drone glowing red with energy.

“Is this yours?” Sunset angrily questioned, tossing the drone at Cinch’s feet while agents trained their guns on her. “You could have shot my children.”

“We weren’t aiming for your ‘children,’ Sunset,” Cinch replied coolly, “if you can even call them that. Furthermore, you know why we had to do it. You took an entire town hostage. If that isn’t a declaration of war, I don’t know what is.”

“I didn’t bring the guns to the party, Director Cinch,” Sunset retorted as she tilted her head and swirled red energy in her hands.

“Wait,” Twilight interrupted, stepping forward. Sunset un-tilted her head but kept the energy in her hands. “Sunset, I didn’t know the drone was armed, and I know that you know you can trust me. You wouldn’t have let me deliver your twins if you didn’t. I know you’re angry, but you have to calm down and let me help you.”

“Help me?” Sunset laughed mirthlessly. “What could you possibly do to help me?”

“Well, what do you want?” Twilight replied.

“I have what I want, and I am not letting anyone take it from me again.” With that, Sunset directed the energy towards the gun-wielding agents and had them turn their guns towards Cinch before storming back into the anomaly.

“Stand down! Stand down!” Cinch cried before Sunset’s exit broke her control over the agents, causing them to lower their guns.

After Cinch had her agents drag the broken yet still glowing drone back to base, she marched off into the main tent with Twilight running after her.

“Cinch, what you just did may have cost us whatever chance we had of resolving this peacefully,” Twilight exclaimed.

“And now, we know just how dangerous she is,” Cinch replied dismissively.

“Oh, look, if it isn’t the woman of the hour, the one who nearly got killed by her own kill team,” Moon Dancer dryly remarked as Cinch stormed past her and Flash.

“I didn’t ask for your opinion, Dr. Dancer,” Cinch retorted. “Now, shut up and go back to work.”

“Excuse me,” Flash interrupted, “but the only reason why we have any intel about the anomaly at all is because of her and Captain Sparkle. If I were you, I’d treat them with more respect.”

“And if I were you, I’d remember who is in charge here, agent,” Cinch snapped before addressing everyone else in the tent. “Our objective is to take down Sunset Shimmer. We do that, then we free Westview from her control.”

“You don’t know what will happen to the anomaly if Sunset dies,” Twilight objected. “Our only chance to take it down safely is to convince Sunset to do it herself.”

“I’m starting to believe that you and your family have a problem with advocating for enhanced individuals,” Cinch scoffed, addressing Twilight specifically. “I know about you and your family’s relationship with Luna Nightmoon. Where were you when Sunset Shimmer and her kind failed us all those years ago? That’s right, gone.”

“You may think you’re doing the right thing,” Twilight answered, keeping her voice even despite her rising anger, “but from where I’m standing, all you’re doing is being a coward.”

“Agents, please escort Captain Sparkle, Agent Sentry, and Dr. Dancer off my base,” Cinch ordered as armed agents complied.

“Well, now what?” Moon Dancer muttered as the three of them were led off by base. Unnoticed by the others, Flash glanced around counting how many agents were escorting them. He counted six.

Then, without warning, Flash grabbed one of the agents and threw him against another before quickly subduing them both and taking on two of the remaining agents. Twilight quickly caught on to what Flash was doing and knocked out the remaining two agents. Moon Dancer, on the other hand, just stood there in shocked surprise.

“When were you guys planning on telling me we were supposed to do that?” Moon Dancer exclaimed.

“Let’s just get back into the base,” Twilight ordered, stripping the agents and disguising herself in their clothes. “Cinch is hiding something from us, and we’re going to find out what it is.”

Flash and Moon Dancer also disguised themselves and followed Twilight into a tent where SWORD kept its hard drives and other extra computer equipment. The person in charge of overseeing the tent must have been a closet SunChips fan because an old analog TV was also set up showing the latest episode. Twilight couldn’t help but stare when a blue-skinned woman with rainbow hair came on screen.

“Who is that?” Twilight asked Flash and Moon Dancer.

“Sunset’s ‘sister’ came into town,” Flash explained with air quotes, “assuming that’s who she really is.”

Twilight could see why Flash was calling the woman’s claimed identity into question. She could see the orange and gold stripes showing through the rainbow, and “Rainbow Dash’s” eyes were completely the wrong color. Twilight couldn’t help but wonder who the woman really is and why she is pretending to be Rainbow Dash. Of course, there’s always the possibility that Sunset was making some unwilling cast member pretend to be Rainbow Dash, but despite everything that Sunset had done already, Twilight doubted that Sunset would go that far just to run from her grief.

While Twilight contemplated all this, Moon Dancer got to work hacking into Cinch’s network. How someone with a doctorate in astrophysics would find time to learn how to hack, Twilight and Flash will never know.

“I’m in,” Moon Dancer announced before pointing to her laptop screen. “Look, Cinch found a way to look inside the Hex.”

“And she didn’t share it with the rest of us?” Flash noted disbelievingly.

“Nope.”

“Who is she tracking?” Twilight asked, pointing at the blinking red dot on the screen surrounded several non-blinking dots.

“Well, the program seems to be tracking the decay signature of vibranium, so I’m assuming Cinch is interested in Micro Chips,” Moon Dancer explained. “All the other dots seem to be people in his immediate vicinity.”

“But why is Cinch interested in Micro Chips?” Twilight asked before being interrupted by a beep from her cell phone. “That’s my contact.”

“The one with the modified bomb shelter on wheels?” Flash remembered.

“Yup, and he wants to meet us over the ridge. Let’s go.”

“Wait,” Moon Dancer cried as she pulled up another one of Cinch’s files, “Twilight, you can’t go back into the Hex.”

“Why not?” Twilight asked quizzically.

Moon Dancer turned her laptop around and showed Twilight and Flash the file she was looking at.

“That’s your bloodwork,” she explained. “Passing through the Hex’s barrier caused your cells to be rewritten, and that’s happened twice already. There’s no telling what will happen to you if you go through a third time.”

Twilight looked at the image on the screen but didn’t seem at all fazed by it.

“I don’t know for sure why Sunset is doing this, but if how she feels now, after everything she’s lost, is anything at all like how I feel after losing my mom and my brother, then I think I can understand her, and I’m not giving up until I help her through this,” Twilight declared.

“Well, unless you know how to hotwire a car, I don’t think you’re going to get very far,” Flash noted, “so I’ll go with you. Moon Dancer, you coming?”

“I can’t,” Moon Dancer replied. “I still have one more firewall to get through, and I just know Cinch is hiding something big behind that one.”

“Well, stay safe,” answered Twilight as she and Flash began to depart, “and don’t let Cinch catch you.”

Moon Dancer nodded as the three of them waved their goodbyes.

“So,” Twilight commented as Flash got to work hotwiring the armored car that was to serve as their escape vehicle, “nice work on taking out the grunts.”

“I honestly can’t believe I did that,” Flash replied, working as quickly as he could. “Me five years ago would never even dream about going against a direct order from a superior.”

“Oh, and why is that?”

“Well, let’s just say up until recently, I was what you would call a by-the-book agent,” Flash answered as the engine rumbled to life. “Get in.”

The two of them boarded the car with Flash in the driver’s seat and drove away as stealthily as possible. As they drove, Twilight elected to continue their earlier conversation.

“So, what changed that made you less by-the-book?” she asked.

“Uh,” Flash stuttered, “Captain Sparkle, I know we’re starting to get friendly with each other, but isn’t talking about our personal lives on the job really unprofessional?”

“Oh, well, I see old habits die hard,” Twilight remarked dryly.

“Yeah, I guess they do,” Flash replied with a nervous chuckle. He bit his lip, contemplating whether he should disregard the rules of professionalism or not, but before he could decide on an answer, he saw something glowing red on the rearview mirror. “What the heck is that?”

Twilight looked at the mirrors and saw the red glow also.

“It looks like the anomaly,” Twilight answered, “and it’s getting bigger.”

“Oh no!” Flash exclaimed. “Moon Dancer!”

Flash was about to turn the car around when Twilight grabbed the steering wheel and stopped him.

“Floor it,” she ordered.

“But—,” Flash protested.

“If we go back for her, we’ll get stuck inside too, and we won’t be able to help her or anyone else inside,” Twilight explained. “She’ll be fine.”

Flash sighed as he reluctantly slammed down on the gas pedal, “I sure hope you’re right.”

Meanwhile, Moon Dancer had just broken through Cinch’s last firewall and was emailing Flash all of Cinch’s files. Judging by how large the files were, Flash likely won’t receive them until morning. Shortly after she had hit send, the alarms began blaring, announcing a breach in the anomaly.

Moon Dancer stepped out of the tent and quietly snuck over to where the armed agents were gathering. She could see Cinch standing at the front of the group wearing a satisfied sneer. Moon Dancer turned to where Cinch was watching and saw what looked like Micro Chips in his true form attempting to exit the barrier, except something was wrong. Pieces of metal of were coming off Micro Chips and flying back towards the Hex.

“What are you doing?!” Moon Dancer cried as she ran to the front, blowing her cover. “He’s coming apart! Help him! Push him back in!”

She had almost reached Micro Chips when the bald agent from her first day grabbed her and overpowered her. He dragged her to one of the jeeps and handcuffed her to it.

“Let me go!” Moon Dancer protested. The bald agent looked up at something behind her, his face morphing from annoyance to simple, unadulterated fear. He ran away as fast as he could while Cinch and a handful of other agents boarded the rest of the jeeps and made their getaway.

Moon Dancer turned around to see what was causing the agents to flee and saw a rapidly advancing wall of red energy moving towards her. She struggled against her bonds in a futile attempt to escape, but ultimately, she could do nothing more than curse her fate as the Hex swallowed her.

“Oh fudge!” she cursed.

Author's Note

I'm so sorry about Smolder, but I needed to cast SOMEONE as the dog. :raritycry:

Chapter 3: Director’s Cut

Flash sighed in relief when he saw that the anomaly had stopped expanding. He felt terrible that Moon Dancer was likely trapped inside along with anyone else who was at the SWORD base, but he had to trust that he and Twilight made the right call.

“You want to know what happened that made me less by-the-book?” Flash began, addressing Twilight. “The Blip happened. I lost my brother and my aunt to the Blip, leaving me to take care of my grandmother. My brother’s best friend also lost his wife. She blipped out right in his arms on their wedding day, and he just had a hard time recovering. With my brother also gone, someone else needed to step in and give the guy emotional support.”

“I’m guessing you were the emotional support,” Twilight speculated.

Flash nodded. “I guess on some level, I also understand how Sunset feels, and I want to help too.”

“But unlike me and Sunset, you got who you lost back,” Twilight pointed out sadly. “What happened to our loved ones, there’s no coming back from that.”

“I may not be able to completely understand how the two of you feel, but that doesn’t mean that I don’t care,” Flash comforted. “You don’t have to carry all that pain on your own. I’m right here if you need the emotional support.”

Twilight couldn’t help but smile at that. “Thank you.”

“What happened with the Blip’s got me thinking that maybe we’ve been too hard on people like Sunset and the Avengers,” Flash continued. “Cinch sees the last five years as proof that they’re ineffective at best and straight up dangerous at worst, but that same evidence has led me to a different conclusion. When I look at Sunset and the Avengers and think of the last five years, I see people who willingly put their lives on the line twice to save us from Tirek, and they did all that despite the fact we tried to put them on a leash.”

“Spoken like a man who once held the leash,” Twilight joked.

“Well, my last assignment before the Blip involved putting Ant-Man on house arrest, so you’re not wrong,” Flash replied with a shrug, causing Twilight to giggle inadvertently. Flash smiled back before suddenly yawning.

“Wow, long day, huh?” Flash remarked.

“You know what? Pull over and switch seats with me,” Twilight ordered. “You’ve been driving for a while. Get some rest.”

Despite Flash’s initial protests about how not tired he was, Twilight finally convinced Flash to let her drive. They were just about to pass over the ridge when the sun began to rise and Flash’s phone began to vibrate. Flash pulled his phone from his pocket and read the notification.

“Moon Dancer got past Cinch’s last firewall,” Flash announced. “This email’s got a ton of attachments though, and they’re all huge. I might need access to a laptop to look at some of these.”

“Anything you can look at from just your phone?” Twilight asked.

“Yeah,” Flash affirmed opening one of the files. “Apparently, Cinch is working on something called Project Hacker using Micro Chips’s body. She wasn’t just holding him for safekeeping; she was trying to bring him back online.”

“And nothing worked until Sunset took Micro Chips’s body and ran off with it,” Twilight concluded. “I’ve got to warn Sunset about this.”

The two of them pulled up past the ridge to a row of tents where people in military camouflage were running around. A large semitruck was parked by the tents, carrying what Flash and Twilight assumed was the modified bomb shelter on wheels. After the two of them parked and got out of the car, a man in camo with pale orange skin and wavy, lime green hair greeted them.

“Captain Sparkle,” the man greeted.

“Major Gaffer,” Twilight greeted back before introducing Flash. “This is Agent Sentry with the FBI. Thank you for your help. My mother and brother would have appreciated it.”

“And they’d both be proud,” Major Gaffer replied.

The three of them moved to the semitruck where Gaffer had several airmen unload what was in it. To Twilight’s excitement and Flash’s awe, out rolled a heavily armored space rover.

“I hope this matches your specs,” Gaffer stated.

“She’s perfect,” Twilight praised.

“Let’s get you suited up, Captain.”

Meanwhile, inside the Hex, Moon Dancer had run into Micro Chips, who subsequently woke her from Sunset’s mind control. The two of them had stolen an armored jeep turned funnel cake truck and were now driving away from the SWORD base turned circus.

“Let me get this straight,” Micro Chips said to Moon Dancer. “A villain named Tirek was trying to steal this stone on my head, so I asked Sunset to kill me, and she did?”

“Yup,” Moon Dancer affirmed, “but then the bad guy used the Time Stone to reverse time and took the stone anyway, which also killed you.”

“In other words, I came back only for Sunset to watch me die again.”

“That more or less sums it up. What I can’t figure out is why you can’t leave the Hex without falling apart.”

Flash nodded in admiration as Twilight walked out in her space suit. Then, to her surprise, he pulled out his phone and took a candid picture of her.

“Moon Dancer’s going to want to see pictures once we get her out of there,” Flash explained. “You look amazing by the way.”

“Thank you, Flash, and thanks for the support,” Twilight replied, smiling appreciatively at him.

“Godspeed.” Flash joined Major Gaffer and the rest of the Air Force over by mission control while Twilight boarded the rover.

“Alright, on your order, Captain,” Gaffer spoke into the comms.

“Ready to go,” Twilight replied.

“Making contact in five, four, three,” Gaffer counted off as Twilight drove the rover into the anomaly, “two, one.”

Twilight slammed the rover into the barrier, but instead of passing smoothly through, the barrier seemed to push her back. Twilight pressed harder on the gas pedal, but the rover didn’t seem to get any closer to passing through. In fact, the barrier seemed to push back even harder. Unbeknownst to her, the red energy from barrier was spreading over the front of the rover.

“What’s happening?” Gaffer cried as the red energy began to change the front of the rover.

“It’s the anomaly. It’s rewriting the rover,” Flash realized before grabbing the microphone and speaking into the comms. “Twilight, get out of there now!”

Twilight unbuckled her seatbelt and bolted for the hatch when the red energy began spreading into the cockpit. Twilight leapt from the hatch onto the grassy ground just as the barrier flung the rover off. The rover landed in front of the mission control tent allowing Flash, Gaffer, and everyone else to see that the entire front half of the rover had been rewritten into a pickup truck.

Twilight picked herself up, looking from the partially transformed rover to the anomaly. Flash and Gaffer ran to her from the mission control tent to see if she was alright. Before either of them could reach her, however, she looked up and locked eyes with Flash, causing him to stop in his tracks.

“Twilight, no,” Flash exclaimed, realizing Twilight’s intentions.

“I can get through,” Twilight bluntly noted.

“Don’t.”

“I can get through.”

Before anyone could stop her, Twilight ran to the barrier and pushed herself through. She ended up inside the barrier, stuck between true reality and Sunset’s false reality. She cried out in pain as she felt her mind being taken apart by anomaly.

“I can’t leave Shining and Twilight,” a old memory of her mother said.

“Maybe I could fly up and meet you halfway,” her younger self had said to her mother.

“Only if you learn to glow like your Aunt Luna,” Aunt Luna’s friend Neighsay had told her. Somehow, those memories were giving Twilight the strength to hold herself together and resist the anomaly’s attempts to dissect and rewrite her mind.

“I’m never going to be like Aunt Luna,” a college-aged Twilight had said to her brother. “I’m not tough or brave like the two of you are.”

“Twily, just because you’re best at being clever doesn’t mean that you’re not brave or tough,” Shining Armor had said to her. “If you ask me, I think you’re braver and tougher than you give yourself credit for.”

Twilight cried out as she willed herself forward. Just a few more steps, and she’d reach the other side.

“You don’t have to carry all that pain on your own,” a more recent memory replayed in her mind. That last memory gave her the final push she needed to get to the other side.

When Twilight emerged from the barrier, she noticed that everything looked different. She could somehow see the electricity moving through the telephone wires and the heat from the sun being absorbed by her surroundings among other forms of energy transfer. Twilight had no way of being aware of it, but her eyes were also glowing blue. She blinked twice, returning her eyes and her vision back to normal. Then, she removed her space suit and ran as fast as she could towards Sunset Shimmer’s house.

Meanwhile outside of Westview, Flash stopped staring at where Twilight had disappeared into the anomaly and asked Major Gaffer for a laptop. He checked into his email and began to look through the other files Moon Dancer had sent him. One particular file caught is eye, a video file dated the same day Cinch had said Sunset stole Micro Chips’s body. His investigator’s hunch was telling him to click it, so he did. The video opened with Sunset Shimmer walking up to the SWORD headquarters’ front desk.

“I know he’s here, and I want him back,” Sunset said to the receptionist.

“I’m sorry, but I can’t help you. Director Cinch has ordered that no one gets access to Micro Chips without her clearance first,” the receptionist replied.

“Please,” Sunset begged. “He’s the closest thing I have left to a family, and I just want to give him a proper goodbye and a funeral. After the way he died, that’s the least he deserves.”

Flash raised his eyebrows when he heard what Sunset had said. Cinch had said Sunset resurrected Micro Chips. Why would she do that if all she wanted was to bury him?

Flash continued to watch the video; the receptionist received a phone call and picked up the phone.

“Yes, ma’am,” he said into the phone. “She’s still here. You want me to let her through? Well, alright then.”

The receptionist hung up and led Sunset to a pair of double doors.

“Cinch wants me to let you through,” he explained to her. “Let me get these doors for you.”

“Don’t worry about it. I got it,” Sunset refused before blowing the doors open with her energy.

The next scene in the footage showed Sunset entering Cinch’s office.

“Sunset Shimmer,” Cinch addressed Sunset, “I’m so pleased to make your acquaintance. I’m Director Abacus Cinch.”

“The man at the front says I need your clearance to see Micro Chips,” Sunset replied. “Do I have it?”

“You do. Come with me.” Cinch led Sunset to a window showing another room. The video changed to a split screen format showing Flash the same scene from a different angle. One screen showed Sunset and Cinch looking into the room housing Micro Chips’s remains while the other showed Sunset’s shocked and horrified reaction while Cinch stood indifferently next to her.

“What are you doing to him?” Sunset cried, tears beginning to form in her eyes.

“Attempting to reassemble the most amazingly sophisticated, sentient weapon ever made,” Cinch answered her coolly.

“‘Attempting to…?’” Sunset repeated before trailing off. “You mean, you’re trying to bring him back?”

“Precisely.”

“No!” Sunset screamed. “You can’t do that! He said not to bring him back. You can’t bring him back!”

“You’re right,” Cinch conceded. “We can’t, but you might be able to.”

“Me?”

“You and Micro Chips both received your abilities from the same source, correct?” Cinch explained, her face remaining totally frozen throughout the whole conversation. “If anyone can bring Micro Chips back online, it’s you.”

“No, I can’t!” Sunset continued to protest. “That’s not what he wanted, and that’s not why I’m here! I only wanted to give him a funeral.”

With ice in her eyes, Cinch stared long and hard at Sunset.

“Did you actually come here expecting me to allow you to just put billions of dollars’ worth of vibranium into the ground?” Cinch replied condescendingly. “I was under the assumption that my request would give us something that we both wanted, but that does not seem to be the case. I’ll give you five minutes to say your goodbyes. Then, I want you out of my facility once those five minutes are over. Do you understand?”

Sunset pressed her hands and her face against the glass with tears streaming from her eyes. Then, with a pained scream, red energy surged from her hands, breaking the window. She jumped through the broken window into the other room and lightly floated downwards. The video changed formats again, exclusively showing the security footage from the room housing Micro Chips’s remains.

Sunset walked up to the table where Micro Chips’s head lay and held her hand over the indentation where the Mind Stone used to be.

“I can’t feel you,” Sunset uttered, her voice breaking. “I can’t feel you.”

The last image Flash saw before the video ended was of Sunset running out of the room crying her eyes out.

“Holy Christmas!” Flash exclaimed as the truth crashed into him like an armored car. He turned to Major Gaffer and ordered, “I need you to get me a radio NOW!”

Meanwhile, inside the Hex, Moon Dancer was stuck at a traffic light waiting from an absurdly large group of kids to finish crossing the street. Micro Chips had phased through the roof and flown off to his house just moments before, leaving her there. In her boredom, she decided to turn on the radio.

“Hello, Moon Dancer? Twilight?” Flash’s voice shouted through the radio. “This is Flash. Come in. Come in. Oh, right, you guys can’t answer back. Listen, I don’t know if you guys can hear me, but there’s something you guys need to know. Sunset never took Micro Chips's body. Cinch lied to us.”

Moon Dancer’s eyes widened, and her jaw dropped.

“I don’t know what happened to the Micro Chips in SWORD’s possession or where the one inside of Westview came from,” Flash continued, “but they’re not the same Micro Chips.”

Moon Dancer waited for Flash to say more, but all that followed Flash’s message was static.

“Good gosh! I’ve got to find Twilight, Sunset, and Micro Chips FAST,” Moon Dancer exclaimed. Thankfully, the group of kids had just finished crossing, so she zoomed ahead before anything else could interrupt her and sped towards Sunset and Micro Chips’s house.

Earlier, while Flash was watching Cinch’s unedited security footage, Twilight had arrived at Sunset’s house and ran inside just as Sunset had finished taking two Tylenols.

“Sunset,” Twilight cried, bursting through the front door.

“You again?” Sunset exclaimed, eyes wide. “What are you doing here?”

“Listen, Cinch is after Micro Chips. She’s trying to bring him back online,” Twilight tried to explain but could get no further before Sunset angrily lifted her off the ground in a flurry of red energy.

“No!” Sunset screamed, marching out of the house with Twilight in her hold. “I don’t want to talk about Cinch or whatever the fudge she wants! And I’ve had it up to here with the drones and the missiles and Rainbow Dash!”

“Sunset, stop!” Twilight cried. “We had nothing to do with Rainbow Dash.”

“Stop lying to me!” Sunset yelled before slamming Twilight on the ground. Or at least, that’s what she had intended to do. What ended up happening was Twilight absorbing the energy from the slam while making a three-point landing. When Twilight looked up at Sunset, her eyes were glowing blue.

“I never once lied to you, and the horseapples you made me say as Midnight don’t count,” Twilight refuted as she stood up and her eyes stopped glowing.

“Don’t you dare come any closer,” Sunset threatened, looking as if she was getting ready to summon more red energy.

“Are you sure you really want to do that?” Twilight challenged. “If that’s what you really want, then what’s stopping you from doing it right here, right now.”

Sunset’s eyes softened as an unsure look crossed her face. She didn’t move or say anything for one second, two seconds, three seconds. Then, she slowly lowered her hands.

“You know what I learned about Cinch these past few days?” Twilight continued. “That woman will hurt and destroy anyone to get what she wants, but you’re not like that, aren’t you? Sunset, listen. I’ve lost the people closest to me, too, and I know how much it hurts and how much I don’t want to face it, but I have to face it because I can’t make it go away. You’re starting to realize that too, aren’t you?”

As Sunset listened to Twilight, tears began to well up in her eyes.

Twilight slowly took a few steps towards her and continued, “It’s okay. You know, before I came back in here, a friend told me that I didn’t have to carry my pain alone. You don’t have to carry yours alone either, but you can’t keep running from it. Sunset, you have to—”

“Just what do you think you’re doing, young lady?” Shutterbug said to Twilight. She had appeared from seemingly nowhere beside Sunset and put an arm around her. “Hasn’t poor Sunset suffered enough?”

Shutterbug then turned to Sunset and said, “Come on, dear. Let’s get you over to my place. Then, maybe you can finally have some peace.”

As Shutterbug led Sunset away, Twilight called after them, “Sunset, please, you have to take down the anomaly.”

“No, I don’t!” Sunset refused. “No, I don’t!”

Twilight could only stare incredulously as the two of them continued to walk away from her. However, while Sunset wasn’t looking, Shutterbug turned back towards Twilight and smirked ominously. Twilight’s mouth fell open when Shutterbug’s eyes glowed green. Twilight was about to cry out in warning to Sunset but stopped herself. With how Shutterbug was ingratiating herself towards Sunset, Twilight likely wasn’t going to get a lot of headway in convincing Sunset that her incredibly intrusive neighbor was untrustworthy, so Twilight took the only other option available to her. She waited for them to enter Shutterbug’s house and then snooped around for another way inside.

Twilight walked around to the back of the house and found a pair of cellar doors. They didn’t seem locked, so she simply pulled them open. Inside, she found eerie, black tree roots tangled up all over the walls of a stone corridor. Besides the color and the location of their growth, the roots didn’t seem out of the ordinary, but appearances can be deceiving. Twilight blinked her eyes, causing them to glow blue again, and took another look at the roots. Upon closer inspection, she could see some kind of energy flowing through them towards the center of the cellar. If the glowing green eyes from earlier hadn’t already raised Twilight’s suspicions, what she just saw definitely would have convinced her Shutterbug was not to be trusted, which meant Sunset was in danger but didn’t know it.

Why Twilight would care about someone who blatantly rejected her help, she will never know. All Twilight knew was that Sunset was in trouble and that she still wanted to help the broken, grieving woman. However, before Twilight could step into the cellar to do just that, a blue and rainbow blur blocked her from entering.

“Snoopers gonna snoop,” “Rainbow Dash” quipped before grabbing Twilight and forcibly dragging her into the house through the back door. The next thing Twilight knew, she was being held captive in some upstairs room.

“Who are you? And what does Shutterbug want with Sunset?” Twilight demanded.

“Yeah, I’m not really supposed to talk to you,” fake Rainbow Dash replied. “I’m just supposed to keep you here until missus gets what she wants.”

Twilight growled in frustration before taking a breath and observing her surroundings. The first thing she noticed was the framed pictures on the walls and shelves. The common denominator in all of them was a short, red man with blond hair and green eyes. Some of the pictures had him posing with a girl who looked suspiciously like fake Rainbow Dash but without the rainbow hair dye. A pile of bills addressed to a Short Fuse sat on an end table. On top of the pile of bills was a handwritten note addressed to a Lightning Dust. Twilight quickly skimmed through the note and realized it was a list of housesitting instructions.

Twilight turned to Lightning Dust, intending to further question her, but before she could, she heard screams coming from outside.

“Mom! Mom! Help us!” the voices of two 10-year-old girls cried out.

Twilight looked out the window and saw Shutterbug hovering midair and holding Sunset’s daughters by two energy leashes. Sunset stood across from them with a look of both horror and anger on her face. Then, to Twilight’s utter disbelief, Shutterbug’s eyes glowed green again, and her entire person was consumed in green flames. When the flames dissipated, Shutterbug’s appearance changed. Her skin became an ashy grey, and her hair became green and stringy.

“Let go of my daughters, Chrysalis,” Sunset demanded.

“Ah, yes, your daughters,” “Shutterbug” laughed before continuing, “and Micro Chips. They’re all you ever wanted, aren’t they? This is Chaos Magic, Sunset. It can only be wielded by a being of spontaneous creation, making you the Scarlet Witch.”

Author's Note

I know my casting choice for Nick Fury isn't a perfect fit, but I had already casted the princesses as other characters, and the other choices I had in mind were Starswirl and Discord, and neither felt right.

Chapter 4: Bonus Features

Unfortunately, Cinch’s agents had discovered the Air Force base and apprehended everyone there, including Flash. The agents brought Flash before Cinch, who greeted Flash with a satisfied smirk.

“Wonderful to see you again, Agent Sentry,” she said to him.

“Oh, can it, Cinch! We both know that I know you lied about Sunset stealing Micro Chips’s body,” Flash snapped. “Where is he?”

“On his way to neutralize Sunset Shimmer, her Micro Chips, and the rest of Westview,” Cinch revealed, her smirk growing wider.

“You found a way to bring him online?” Flash exclaimed. “How?!”

“Thanks to our little mishap with the drone, Sunset Shimmer had inadvertently given us some of her energy. At the end of the day, only one synthoid will be left standing, Sunset Shimmer will go down as a terrorist, I’ll be seen as a hero, and absolutely no one will be able to prove otherwise.”

“I still have copies of the original security footage in my email inbox,” Flash noted.

“Yes, yes, of course,” Cinch conceded before continuing, “Although, it is a shame that Micro Chips went on a rampage before we could recover him, killing you before you could reveal that footage to anyone. Of course, you could just delete that footage all on your own, and no one else will have to die.”

As Cinch delivered her monologue, Flash managed to swipe a phone someone had left lying around near him and hid it in his back pocket.

“So, my options are either death or cooperation,” Flash noted. “Gee, that’s real tempting, but there’s one small snag in that little threat of yours. How are you going to have Project Hacker destroy Westview and everything in it and kill me within the hour before my friends from the bureau get here?”

“You’re bluffing,” Cinch scoffed.

“Am I?”

Cinch paused staring intently at Flash as if trying to decide whether to believe him or not. In the end, she simply rolled her eyes and had her agents take Flash to a makeshift holding area. As soon as the agents left him alone, Flash slipped a paper clip from out of his sleeve and went to work picking the lock on his handcuffs. Those online magic classes he took five years ago taught quite a few surprisingly useful skills. Flash smiled to himself as his handcuffs came undone before reaching for the phone he had swiped and discreetly dialing his boss’s number.

“Magnus, it’s Sentry,” Flash whispered into the phone. “I’m right outside of Westview, New Jersey, being held captive by Abacus Cinch and her underlings. Do you have anyone you can send within the hour?”

Meanwhile, Twilight was still trapped in “Shutterbug’s” house watching Sunset and Chrysalis fight each other. Sunset had managed to get her daughters away from old witch and sent them to their room for their safety. Suddenly, a white humanoid figure flew in from the sky and attacked Sunset.

“M-Micro?” Sunset exclaimed in shock. The figure did indeed look exactly like Micro Chips except this Micro Chips was completely white. The white Micro Chips turned to attack her again, but, to Twilight’s utter incredulity, another Micro Chips intercepted him, the one she and her friends have been watching through a television screen this whole time.

“There’s two of them?!” Twilight exclaimed. The two synthoids flew off into the sky trading blows with each other while Chrysalis took off towards the center of town with Sunset following her.

“I’ve got to help her,” Twilight declared before running for the door. Unfortunately, Lightning Dust used her enhanced speed to block her and throw her against a recliner.

“Yeah, I don’t think so, little miss,” Lightning taunted.

Twilight gritted her teeth and rushed forward, tackling Lightning onto the floor and pinning her to the ground.

“How is Shutterbug or whatever her real name is controlling you?” Twilight demanded. Then, Twilight noticed something glowing around Lightning’s neck just peeking out from under her shirt. Twilight grabbed onto the glowing object and yanked it off, revealing it to be a string of crystal beads.

As soon as the beads broke off, Lightning Dust’s eyes widened with surprise as she stared at Twilight.

“Good gosh! What happened?!” she cried out. “And why are you on top of me?”

“What are you able to remember, Lightning?” Twilight replied.

“I came into town to housesit for my cousin while he went out of town on vacation,” Lightning recounted. “Next thing I knew, I had a massive headache, and this chick was screaming and crying inside my head. I don’t know when it stopped, but when it did, some other woman’s voice started telling me what to do.”

“Sit tight and don’t go anywhere,” Twilight ordered as she got up and ran out the house. Just as she reached the sidewalk, a funnel cake truck drove up and parked in front of her.

“Moon Dancer!” Twilight cried in relief, recognizing the driver. “Oh, thank goodness! Wait. You do know you’re Moon Dancer, right?”

“Yeah, I ran into Micro Chips earlier, and he woke me up from the mind control,” Moon Dancer explained.

“Which Micro Chips?” Twilight asked.

“There’s another Micro Chips? Here?” Moon Dancer exclaimed in surprise.

“Yeah, a white one. I saw him attack Sunset earlier. Speaking of which, we need to get to the center of town and help her. We can trade info on the way there,” Twilight stated as she boarded the truck. Moon Dancer nodded before driving the truck to the town’s center.

One info swap session later…

“So, Sunset Shimmer never stole Micro Chips’s body?” Twilight repeated to Moon Dancer.

“Yeah, and I have a hypothesis about the Micro Chips we’ve been watching all this time, and another one about what happened to the one at SWORD headquarters,” Moon Dancer began before explaining, “I think that Sunset somehow created Micro along with the Hex and that the Micro Chips Cinch said was stolen actually never left her possession.”

“If you’re right, that means the Micro Chips I saw attack Sunset earlier is working for Cinch,” Twilight deduced.

“If Sunset did create SunChips Micro, then she could have inadvertently linked his existence to the Hex, which would explain why he couldn’t leave it,” Moon Dancer continued.

“So, if Sunset takes down the anomaly,” Twilight inferred.

“Micro will go with it,” Moon Dancer finished.

Moon Dancer slammed her foot on the brakes when a pillar of red energy emerged from the center of town and the anomaly’s barriers began to dissolve. Simultaneously, a crowd of people stampeded past them towards the receding barriers.

“Sunset’s taking down the anomaly and letting the citizens go,” Twilight realized.

“Does she know Micro can’t survive without the Hex?” Moon Dancer noted fearfully.

“She might not,” Twilight replied. “We’re not going to be able to drive through this mad scramble. I better try to get there on foot. I’ll meet you there.” Twilight got off the truck and ran towards the center of town, dodging panicking civilians along the way.

“Yeah, sure,” Moon Dancer uttered in resignation. “I’ll meet you there, too.”

“That’s our cue, people. Let’s move,” Cinch ordered when she saw the walls of the anomaly begin to disintegrate. She and her agents loaded up in their armored vehicles and zoomed into the town ready to take down anyone who stood in their way, especially Sunset and her family.

As soon as the last of the SWORD agents left the base, FBI agents flooded the place and released Flash from the holding area. Flash was about to direct some of them to follow Cinch and her agents when the anomaly’s barriers suddenly rematerialized.

“Okay, we’re locked out again,” Flash noted exasperatedly before ordering, “All right, everyone, let’s just get everything here packed up as evidence. Once the dust clears, we need to be ready to put Cinch away for a long time.”

Twilight managed to get past the crowd but was still a short distance away from the center of town. From where she stood, Twilight could see Sunset Shimmer shooting red energy into the anomaly; she could also see Micro Chips and the twins collapsed on the ground about six feet away from Sunset. Micro was falling to pieces while the twins were, for the lack of a better term, glitching. All three of them were crying out in pain while Sunset stared in horror.

Chrysalis laughed cruelly, explaining, “You tied your family to the false reality you created, and now, one can’t exist without the other. Life is full of tough choices, isn’t it?”

Sunset looked from her family to the now empty town square she was standing in before cutting off the energy she had been sending into the anomaly, causing the barriers to reform. Then, she ran to Micro and their daughters, helping the three of them up and pulling them into a hug. Shortly after, Cinch and her agents pulled into the square while Project Hacker flew down and hovered a short distance away from them, glaring at Sunset and her family darkly. The four of them were surrounded.

“Looks like the torches and pitchforks have arrived,” Chrysalis observed dryly from the top of the tallest building in the vicinity.

“Girls, I know your mother and I never prepared you for this, but,” Micro began, addressing his daughters.

“You were born for it,” Sunset finished.

Project Hacker dive bombed at the family, only to be intercepted by Micro Chips, sending the two of them tumbling into town hall.

Sunset looked from Cinch and her agents to Chrysalis before turning to Amber and Suncatcher, saying, “Girls, take care of the clowns. Mommy will be right back.”

Sunset flew up and met Chrysalis in the sky, the two of them trading energy blasts at each other. Meanwhile, Suncatcher used her speed to disarm Cinch’s agents, and Amber used her telekinesis to crush their guns into a ball of scrap metal. Cinch scowled stepping forward and raising her pistol at the girls. Twilight realized what Cinch was about to do to Sunset and Micro’s daughters and put herself between them.

“No!” she cried as Cinch opened fire. Twilight’s eyes once again glowed blue as the bullets phased through her before dropping harmlessly to the ground. To Twilight’s horror, one of the bullets zipped past her head towards the girls. Thankfully, Amber was able to use her powers to slow it down and catch it in her hand.

“Nice trick,” Twilight complimented.

“Thanks,” Amber replied. “I liked yours, too.”

With her agents disarmed and her entire clip unloaded, Cinch realized how badly she was losing this fight. Her only chance of winning was if Project Hacker managed to destroy Sunset’s Micro Chips. That chance blew away in the wind when a white Micro Chips-shaped blur burst from the town hall’s roof and flew off to who-knows-where. Cinch growled in frustration before returning to her vehicle and ordering the driver to make a getaway, but before the driver could even turn on the ignition, a funnel cake truck slammed into Cinch’s car and pinned it to a nearby building.

“Whooo!” Moon Dancer cheered from the truck’s driver’s seat. “I hope you like prison, you old witch!”

With Cinch and white Micro Chips taken care of, the only enemy left undefeated was Chrysalis, and so far, she and Sunset seemed evenly matched. As she watched the fight between them continue, Twilight began to finagle with the radio from one of the armored cars.

“Flash, this is Twilight! Come in! Come in!” Twilight shouted into the radio.

Back at Cinch’s base, Flash and his colleagues had finished packing away anything that could be used as evidence against Cinch and were now simply staring at the anomaly’s walls in anticipation.

“Come on, you two. Please, be okay,” Flash muttered under his breath, praying that Cinch and her weaponized Micro Chips hadn’t done anything fatal to Twilight and Moon Dancer. His prayers seemed to be answered when he heard Twilight’s voice coming from the base’s radio.

Flash raced towards the radio, grabbed the microphone, and responded, “Twilight! It’s Flash. I hear you loud and clear, over.”

“Loud and clear on my end,” Twilight replied, “over.”

“Did you find Moon Dancer? Are both of you okay? What’s going on in there? Over.”

“Well, Cinch and her goons have been taken care of. Something happened to white Micro Chips that made him quit the fight between him and Westview Micro Chips. It turns out Shutterbug is actually a witch, a literal witch, and Sunset might be one also, over,” Twilight rapidly explained.

Flash blinked a few times as he processed Twilight’s explanation.

“Okay, I guess Shutterbug being a witch explains why facial recognition wasn’t able to get an ID on her,” Flash noted hesitantly. “Anything else I need to know about? Over.”

“Right now, Sunset and the witch are in the middle of some kind of aerial fight, but Sunset keeps missing her for some reason,” Twilight relayed, “and now the witch seems to be draining Sunset of her energy. Oh gosh, Flash. This fight’s not looking good for Sunset, over.”

“What’s going to happen to you guys and the people still inside if she loses?” Flash questioned worriedly. “Over.”

For a while, Twilight didn’t say anything, worrying Flash even further.

“I don’t know,” she finally answered, “but if worse comes to worse, I just want to say that I’m really glad I met you, and thank you so much for being my friend. Moon Dancer will probably want to say something to you too, but she’s stuck guarding Cinch, and I don’t think this mic chord is long enough to reach her, over.”

Flash sighed. Somehow, he had a feeling Twilight was going to say that.

“Twilight, just in case I don’t get another chance to tell you,” Flash replied, “I just want to say you showed some Avengers level bravery and selflessness today. I mean, you risked your life and safety to help someone who treated you like an enemy. If that isn’t the stuff heroes are made of, then I don’t know what is, over.”

Twilight didn’t answer for a whole thirty seconds, enough time for Flash to start thinking something horribly permanent happened to her. To his relief, he heard her voice coming through the radio again.

“You’re not going to believe what I just saw!” Twilight exclaimed.

Earlier…

Sunset hovered limply in the air after Chrysalis drained her of most of her power.

Chrysalis laughed malevolently as she built up her magic to blast Sunset into kingdom come, but as she moved to cast her spell, absolutely nothing happened. She tried again only to be met with the same result. Shocked and frustrated, Chrysalis looked around her. At first, she saw nothing, but then, she saw them, protection runes. Each rune was as big as a house, and each of the anomaly’s six walls were etched with one rune each.

All the bystanders on the ground, including Twilight, could see them too. They didn’t know what they were for, but they did notice that their presence seemed to have an affect on Chrysalis. After giving the runes a cursory glance while replaying Sunset and Chrysalis’s battle in her mind, Twilight realized that Sunset had been discreetly carving them into the anomaly the whole time. She looked back up at the two and could see Sunset and Chrysalis’s lips moving but couldn’t hear what they were saying to each other. Then, a brilliant flash of red light engulfed Sunset, and when she emerged from it, her eyes were glowing red, and she was dressed in a new outfit. Her new clothes included a cape, heeled boots, and a pointed headpiece, and every single component was red.

Chrysalis stared in horror at Sunset’s new form while Sunset concentrated a massive amount of red energy in her hands. Then, Sunset unleashed all that energy in a single, powerful blast. The blast struck Chrysalis, draining her of her power and forcing her to the ground. Once all Chrysalis’s power was drained, Sunset floated down, landing softly next to her downed foe.

“Foolish girl!” Chrysalis spat. “Do you have any idea what you just did?!”

“I’ll deal with that when I find out,” Sunset replied nonchalantly. “For now, I need to figure out what to do with you.”

“What are you going to do? Turn me over to the authorities and have them lock me up?” Chrysalis scoffed.

“Yeah, right!” Sunset retorted. “As if there is a single government agency in the whole world that is equipped to deal with witches, especially one like you. Oh, no. I’m going to turn you into Shutterbug and make you live here where I can always find you.”

“My, my, you really are a witch,” Chrysalis mocked. “Only a witch would impose a punishment that cruel on someone else.”

“Don’t worry,” Sunset falsely reassured. “You’re not going to be Shutterbug forever, just until I need you again.”

With that, Sunset raised her glowing left index finger and touched Chrysalis’s forehead with it. The energy spread over Chrysalis’s body, changing her back into Shutterbug.

“Hey, neighbor,” Shutterbug cheerily greeted Sunset before looking her over up and down. “That is some getup you’re wearing. You and the husband have a hot date tonight or something?”

“Or something,” Sunset replied with just a twinge of sadness in her voice despite the smile on her face.

Sunset’s daughters rushed to hug her, and she received them with abundant hugs and kisses. Then, Micro Chips approached her and took her by the hand.

“I know you’ll make things right again,” he said to her, looking intently into her eyes. “Just not for us.”

“I guess not,” Sunset conceded before leading her family back to their home.

Twilight watched Sunset and her family go before noticing that the anomaly was receding. The retreating wall of energy passed over the town as it made its way towards Sunset’s house, undoing all the rewrites the town had undergone as part of Sunset’s sitcom world.

Outside, Flash and his colleagues also saw the anomaly receding and rushed into the town to assess the damage. When Flash got to the center of town, he searched frantically for Twilight. When he found her, she was still standing by the armored car, staring in the direction Sunset and her family had left.

“Twilight!” Flash called before rushing to hug her. Twilight instinctively hugged him back before the two of them suddenly and awkwardly pulled away from each other. “Uh, that was, uh, really unprofessional.”

“It was,” Twilight agreed, “but I didn’t mind.”

She smiled at him before the two of them shared another hug.

“Hey, no hug for me?” Moon Dancer interrupted, having left her post to allow an FBI agent to arrest Cinch. Flash and Twilight then traded hugs with her before Flash asked the obvious question.

“So, what happened to Sunset?” he asked.

“She and Micro Chips took their kids back to the house to spend their last moments as a family together,” Twilight explained. “It turns out that Micro and the twins can’t exist without the anomaly.”

“And now that she’s taking it down, they’re going to go with it,” Flash sadly realized.

“Speaking of which,” Moon Dancer added, turning Flash and Twilight’s attention towards the edge of the town square. Standing there was Sunset Shimmer wearing a maroon hoodie with the hood concealing her face. She needn’t have bothered; everyone already knew who she was.

Sunset made her way across the town square towards Twilight, Flash, and Moon Dancer, passing her former neighbors as she did so. Every single one of them looked at her with disdain as she passed them.

“They’ll never know what you had to give up in order to do the right thing,” Twilight said to her sympathetically.

“It wouldn’t have mattered to them even if they did,” Sunset refuted. “Besides, it wasn’t like the four of us ever were a real family.”

“They were real to you,” Moon Dancer noted, “and for what it’s worth, they were real to us too. I’m Moon Dancer by the way.”

“Sunset,” Sunset introduced herself before noticing Flash.

“Flash Sentry. I’m sorry for your loss,” Flash said to her.

“So, none of you hate me? After what I did to you?”

“If I had your powers, I’d probably try to bring my mom and my brother back,” Twilight admitted.

“And you?” Sunset asked Flash. “You’re not going to try to lock me up?”

“Well,” Flash answered, “I’m afraid the bureau’s a little underqualified regarding magic and the supernatural. I’m not sure I have the grounds to arrest you even if I wanted to.”

“I’m so sorry,” Sunset apologized, “for all of this. I never meant to hurt anyone, and maybe at some point, I thought I was giving everyone what they wanted, but I was wrong.”

“So, what’s next for you?” Moon Dancer asked.

“I’m going somewhere to try to understand this power I have,” Sunset declared. “The more I do, maybe the less I’ll end up accidentally hurting people.”

“Well, Godspeed, Ms. Shimmer. We’ll be here for you if you need us for anything,” Flash assured.

“Thank you.”

Twilight moved forward and pulled Sunset into a hug. Although surprised at first, Sunset uncertainly returned it. Twilight motioned for Flash and Moon Dancer to join them, so they did. After the four of them pulled away from each other, Sunset waved goodbye before taking to the skies.

“Well, I guess my work here is done,” Moon Dancer quipped before walking away.

“Hey, where are you going?” Flash called. “The higher ups will be here any minute, and they’ll want a debriefing.”

“Not my problem!” Moon Dancer retorted as she continued to leave. Twilight and Flash could only roll their eyes and shake their heads as they watched her go.

“Well, it’s been nice catching up, but I’ve got to help my fellow agents with damage control,” Flash said to Twilight.

“You do that,” Twilight replied before asking, “By the way, how does getting a cup of coffee together sound?”

“Now?”

“Well, not now this minute, but maybe after damage control and debriefing, yes.”

“Are you going to want a regular with cream and sugar?”

“Actually, I was thinking we mix things up a bit. How does a caramel macchiato sound, a plain, unmodified caramel macchiato?”

Flash chuckled in response. “As long as it’s plain and unmodified, sure. I might even get one for myself.”

The two of them shared a laugh.

“Well, I guess I’ll see you around then, Captain,” Flash said as he and Twilight began to part ways.

“I’m looking forward to it, Agent.”

Author's Note

And done! I'm honestly so happy with how this story turned out. I hope you all like it too.