Sunset opened her eyes, finding herself in an unfamiliar surrounding. She was in a room with a bunch of display cases and artifacts, but it didn’t look like a museum. There was dark brown carpeting and wood paneling, but as that met what should have been the room’s walls, it simply stretched into a seemingly infinite blackness. “Hello?”

“What did you do?”

“Gah!?” Despite being the one to call out, Sunset jumped when a voice suddenly answered. She spun around to see a woman in her thirties standing there, tan skin, curly brown hair that looked a lot like Misty’s and wearing a green top together with khaki pants. “Bright Hope? Is that you?” Sunset asked while looking into those brown eyes.

The woman looked down on herself, then grabbed a strand of her own hair, pulling it in front of her eyes, seemingly to confirm its color. “I’m … me? I can’t feel her right now.”

“Feel whom? Opaline?”

Bright Hope nodded, looking around in a seeming state of confusion. She wasn’t the only one.

“What did you do? What’s the last thing you remember?”

Bright Hope shook her head. “I … We were in that vortex … and you were there. I … It’s been so long since I was able to oppose her physically. I think I was trying to take the magic she stole and give it to you. I was kinda hoping you were gonna do the flamey-punchy thing you did at the dress rehearsal.”

So she was there, or rather they were there that night. “Magic doesn’t always work like that,” Sunset explained. “I … used to be able to see people’s memories with my magic. Maybe that’s what’s happening. Do you know where we are? Recognize anything?”

Bright began looking around and pointed at the infinite darkness. “I know that place. It’s where she and I have been struggling for control over my body for years now. As for this,” she said, moving around the room and reaching out for the exhibits a couple of times, though never touching any of them, “this is Professor Discerning Eye’s private gallery, at his house in Maretime Bay.”

Now that Sunset took a closer look, she realized that she recognized the place too, from the crime scene photos in the police file. The carpet had a distinct pattern, although this one wasn’t stained with blood, and the large display case in the center of the room wasn’t shattered. “Is this … the night he died?”

Bright Hope whipped her head around to look at Sunset, and her voice could be heard. But her lips didn’t move as Bright Hope’s voice appeared to come from somewhere outside the room.

“We can’t stop now, Professor! We have to convince them to get these findings published!”

“Enough,” a tired male voice responded from the same direction. “We don’t understand this thing. It’s stumped us at every turn, and I’m starting to get the feeling that it might be dangerous. It’s time to stop for now.”

Sunset went over to the door as a man with a balding hairline and wearing a cardigan walked in, followed by a slightly younger looking Bright Hope. Sunset inhaled sharply as both apparitions seemed to walk right through her without even taking notice, then turned around to continue watching the apparent argument play out.

“We can’t give up now. I’m so close! I just need a little more time with it, Professor. I can do it.” Young Bright Hope held up a field journal. “I’m sure these magic spells will explain its purpose, and I’ve almost translated them. I just need a little more time.”

“It’s done, Bright Hope. Leave it be.”

“No!” Sunset gulped and the older version of Bright Hope looked away in shame as her younger counterpart suddenly grabbed the Professor by the lapels and pushed him against the display case with the Horn of Sombra in it. Sunset could see the shadows coalesce around it. “Let me finish my work, old man!”

The Professor stared at her, some fear at the outburst evident in his eyes.

Young Bright Hope looked angry, but seeing that fear seemed to bring her back to her senses momentarily. “I … I’m sorry … I didn’t mean to …” She let go of him and took a step back.

After collecting himself, the Professor gently took her shoulders and spoke in a soft voice. “Bright Hope, my dear. What’s gotten into you? You’ve always been fierce and headstrong, but ever since we came back from that expedition you’ve been … agitated, more so than usual. You’ve been spending far too much time locked away in the study with 35-A. Argyle has noticed it, too. Why is this so important to you?”

Bright Hope shook her head. “I just thought … We’re so close. This could make my career, and I thought … If I could just get my PhD, get my tenure somewhere, maybe I’d finally feel enough like an adult to go and see her …”

“See who?”

“Misty,” Bright Hope’s older self whispered with a gulp from behind Sunset while her younger self shook her head in response to the Professor’s question. “It doesn’t matter. I just need this.”

“And you will get it,” Discerning Eye promised. “Haven’t I always taken care of you and Argyle? I’m not going to abandon you now. I know the pay isn’t great, but if you two tough it out one more semester as my teaching assistants, we can go back next season, gather more evidence, make our findings irrefutable. Patience, my dear. Take it from an old man, time is our ally, not our enemy.”

Bright Hope nodded weakly. “Can’t you at least let me continue to study it in the meantime? I’m so close to cracking the last few translations on the engravings.”

He shook his head resolutely. “No, I’m afraid not. We don’t know enough about the material composition of 35-A, so I’m sending it off to a friend of mine who does material sciences. Frankly, I think it might be good for you. This artifact, it’s become something of an obsession for you. Turn your incredible mind to something else for a while, come back to it with fresh eyes at a later date.”

“Noooo,” an eerie voice whispered, apparently emanating from the object in question itself, and Sunset turned to look at the older Bright Hope with a questioning glance.

“I never heard it whisper like that at the time,” she answered the unspoken question, “or saw that shadow gunk coming out of it. Don’t think the Professor did either, but he must have felt something was off.”

It makes sense, Sunset concluded after a moment’s thought, humans can’t see magic until they’ve experienced it first-hand. This was going on right under their noses, but they never realized it. Dammit! That friend the professor mentioned, that must be Twilight’s dad. We asked for his help to get a look at the Horn without arousing suspicion. I never realized how close we came to preventing this whole disaster at the time.

“Noooo,” the eerie voice spoke again, but neither of the two reacted to it.

“Please, Professor. Just give me a few more days,” Bright Hope was pleading. “Even just one day, and I know I can make a breakthrough.”

“It’s a done deal, Bright Hope,” he said, shaking his head. “Someone will be by to pick it up in the morning.”

“Noooo,” the voice came louder this time and from two different directions, and Sunset could see the Professor react this time as he stared at Bright Hope. The young woman was weirdly hunched over, her eyes emitting a strange glint as she looked at him and spoke in a discordant overlap of two voices. “I’ve worked too long on this one. The infestation is not complete, but I’ve come too far to have my efforts wasted by a pesky human like you.”

Suddenly, shadows began to swirl in a vortex throughout the room, centered on the display case with the Horn of Sombra in it, the magical wind evident even to the Professor. He turned as he heard glass breaking behind him and his eyes went wide.

“Bright Hope! Get back!” In a heroic act that would be the last of his life, he held out his arms and put himself between his student and danger.

Crack!

The case broke as a mass of shadow in the blurry shape of a woman with icy blue eyes rose amidst the chaos, glass shattering in every direction. Professor Eye stared in horror first at the creature, then down at his chest which had been impaled by a large glass shard. Blood soaked the white shirt underneath his cardigan as he sank to his knees with vacant eyes.

“Professor!” Bright Hope’s older self threw herself down next to the Professor and started to cry. “No! It wasn’t me. Please, forgive me.”

Meanwhile her younger self simply stood there, seemingly entranced and completely unaffected by the magical chaos around her, eyes fixed on the Horn of Sombra. Slowly, she moved forward, stepping over her teacher without even looking at him, broken glass crunching under her boots.

“Yesss, set me free, we must do it now,” the eerie voice emanating from the shade said, the voice Sunset now realized belonging to Opaline Arcana.

As Bright Hope stretched out her hand and her fingers touched the smooth surface of the artifact, she began to scream in unison with the other Bright Hope present who grabbed the sides of her head in pain. “Ahhhhhh!!!”

“Bright Hope!” Sunset reached out as that version of her vanished, only grabbing air, and suddenly Sunset felt herself floundering weightlessly in the void, the entire room gone and the sensation sending her head spinning until she hit the ground hard. “Oof.” Grunting, Sunset pushed herself up, finding herself on a rooftop overlooking Maretime Bay harbor.

Panic-stricken screams filled the night air while flickering flames rose from burning buildings and lit up the night sky sporadically. Sunset’s breath grew short and a high-pitched noise started to play in her ears as she looked over towards the bay in spite of every fiber of her being desperately telling her to avert her eyes. Out at sea, an enormous shadow creature rose, making its way towards the unsuspecting city as Sunset saw the worst day of her life play out in front of her again.

“No! Stop it!” The sound of Bright Hope’s voice brought Sunset back to her senses. Next to her on the roof stood a figure, engulfed in roiling shadows, half her face Bright Hope’s, crying and screaming, the other half Opaline’s, cruel and merciless, looking intently out towards the sea with her hand outstretched. “Quiet, you,” she said from their combined form. “This is what you wanted. The power to shape the world that you deserve, rightfully yours but withheld from you.”

“Not like this! This is not what I wanted!” Bright Hope screamed in tears.

Whoosh!!!

Suddenly, the horizon lit up, brighter than a midday sun in the darkness. Even though she knew what that power was, Sunset still had to shield her eyes for a bit until she could look. In the distance, over the harbor rose a flame-winged warrior, her fire igniting the sky like the brightest day and carrying an unconscious man in her arms while the remnants of the Shadow Colossus sloughed down into the water below her.

“Argyle, you’re safe,” Bright Hope whispered, but immediately Opaline’s voice took over. “Tch, accursed meddlers. They’re the ones who convinced the Professor to give up the artifact. But we’re not ready to face them head on.” She picked up the Horn of Sombra and a notebook that Sunset recognized as Bright Hope’s from earlier.

Opaline began to speak an incantation in a language Sunset didn’t recognize. She was about to catch a glimpse of the book when a terrified scream caught her attention. Looking down onto the street below, there was a young family surrounded by three Shadow Puppets, the mother screaming while holding a little boy in her arms as the father did his best to protect them.

Poof! Poof! Poof!

Out of nowhere, a number of small, colorful explosions detonated, dissipating the shadows, just before a young woman with pink, poofy hair rounded the corner into the alley below. Sunset’s breath caught. “Pinkie Pie?”

“Hey, hey, no reason to cry, little man. Look!” With a bright smile, Pinkie Pie in her ponied up form plucked a lollipop from her hair and handed it to the small child. Then she turned to the parents. “Go that way,” she said, pointing, “find the girl with the purple hair who does the magic diamond thingies. She’ll keep you safe.”

If they said anything in response, Sunset never heard it as at that moment Opaline finished her incantation loudly, taking Sunset’s full attention. The Horn of Sombra began to glow an ominous red, then became inert as two motes of pure shadow lifted up and out of it, much like Opaline earlier. “Go,” Opaline said, “we must gather our strength separately. We shall meet again in due time.”

Sunset watched as one of the shadows lifted up even further and flew off somewhere, the other hovered for a bit before diving down off the rooftop, right towards … “PINKIE PIE! WATCH OUT!!!” Intellectually, Sunset knew that this was a memory, that she wasn’t really here and Pinkie Pie had no way of hearing her warning, but she screamed it anyway, even as the shadow embedded itself between Pinkie’s shoulder blades as her back was turned.

Pinkie Pie turned around with a confused look on her face, but gave no visible indication that she had noticed anything amiss, scanning the now empty alleyway. Not finding anything, she looked upwards right towards the edge of the roof where Sunset stood, and for a moment it seemed like she was looking right at Sunset, and Sunset was looking back at her, taking in the features of her friend as she hadn’t seem them in a long time; Skin full of life and color, eyes clear and alert, head held high, always ready to assist her friends with that boundless energy of hers.

“Pinkie Pie!” Applejack’s voice broke through the darkness from somewhere close by. “Can ya hear me? We got people trapped in that building! Ah need help!”

Pinkie took one last look around, then tore off in the direction of her friend’s voice. “Coming, AJ!”

Sunset kept watching until Pinkie had disappeared around a corner, and then she heard something clattering to the ground. It was the Horn of Sombra, spent and discarded on this very rooftop where she and her friends would later find it during the next day’s clean-up. And the world around her went dark again.

When Sunset opened her eyes again, she found herself back at CHS, clinging to Opaline/Bright Hope in the magical vortex.

Opaline was still raging. “What is this? New magic? Where did it come from? Where do you always come up with this last minute strength in a world so low on magic?”

With an odd calm about her, Sunset realized that there was some pressure on her leg, and she found that Misty was there, apparently having grabbed a hold and pulling with all her might with her eyes closed.

But for some reason Sunset felt as if the danger had already passed as a ghostly, pinkish outline appeared at her shoulder. Even though she could only see it from the corner of her eye, she knew it was there. And it began to snort-chuckle. “Oh, boy. The more things change, the more they stay the same, huh? Why is it that the villains always ask that question when the answer is so simple?”

Sunset turned her head with tears in her eyes and a lump in her throat. It looked like a pink ghost with white outlines, marshmallow hair fluffy and vibrant and a huge smile on its face. “Pinkie Pie? Is that really you?”

“Eh, maybe-sorta?” the apparition answered with a wobble of her head. “I think I might be some kind of echo from the memory you just saw. It looked like you could use a hand, so I followed you out. Does that make sense?”

“No, it doesn’t,” Sunset answered with a shake of her head and a smile in spite of herself, “but that’s never stopped you before. So why start now?”

The pink ghost in the faint outline of her friend seemed to turn and smile at her before facing Opaline again, giving her a look of pure pity. “To answer your question, it’s love, silly,” she said. “That’s why the three of them all jumped in here without a second thought to save each other. But you wouldn’t understand that, would you? Because you have none.”

“Love,” Opaline growled with a spat, more and more desperate to hold on. “A weakness both ponies and humans share. Spare me your silly sentiments. In every reality, it’s always power that wins the day, and those who take that power for themselves.”

“Oh, so you’re one of those ones, ain’tcha? One of the big growlies who don’t have a good reason and will never understand. Gotcha!” Pinkie Pie’s form floated up and poked her index finger right between Opaline’s eyes. “Let me put this in terms a big meanie-head like you can understand: We reject your reality and substitute our own.”

Opaline gasped as Pinkie Pie, with the lightest of pushes, pushed her spectral form right out of Bright Hope’s body, leaving her screaming in the void as Sunset could feel herself starting to fall backwards, Bright Hope still held in one arm, catching Misty with the other as she fell and landing with her back on the ground.

Mother and daughter passed out with a sigh of exhaustion upon hitting the ground, and only half a lifetime of being Princess Celestia’s student kept Sunset conscious as she held them both safely in her arms and looked up.

The ghost of Pinkie Pie looked back at her with a smile. “Bye, Sunset. It was nice to see you again,” she said, voice brimming with emotion, before she vanished into thin air, leaving only the screaming spectral form of Opaline Arcana in the vortex.

With tears in her eyes, Sunset caught Sunny’s eyes which were glowing with the intensity of a thousand of Celestia’s dawns, and she said in a tired voice: “Finish up for me, Sunny, won’t you?”

Sunny Starscout returned an ethereal smile as she lifted up off the ground, shimmering horn and wings aglow as her remaining friends, Hitch, Izzy, Zipp, Pipp and Sprout floated to her side and they all joined hands in a circle.

“No!” Opaline screamed in now impotent rage. “NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!!!!!”

Sunset smiled as she watched the rainbow of Harmony arc high up into the sky, pause and come back down right on top of the screaming Opaline with full force. When it hit, every shadow in the vicinity, natural or unnatural, seemed to recede as the spectral force of Opaline Arcana was pushed the rest of the way into the MCD.

The contraption snapped shut with a dull thud that seemed to reverberate through the ether, leaving a moment of profound silence in its wake before the sound from the concert playing from no further than the length of a football field away reasserted itself. It was almost loud enough to drown out Sunset Shimmer’s massive sigh of relief. Almost!

Author's Note

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Gold Tier:
-Daedalus Aegle

Silver Tier:
-Brandon Caldwell