"One."
A fist, balled far too tightly, came rushing forwards, hitting its target with a heavy thump.
"Two."
It came again, this time the opposite. Harder. Faster. But also sloppier.
"Three."
The voice was feminine. A little husky, a little scratchy. More than anything, though, it sounded angry. Beyond angry. The woman it belonged to sounded furious.
"Four!"
It escalated to a shout. She was too angry, now. The swing missed the punching bag entirely, flying past it and sending the woman stumbling forwards with the unexpected momentum. She adapted quickly, though. One vital piece of information every person needed to know when it came to getting in fights was to know how to be quick on their feet, and if there was anything at all she knew well, it was fighting. She staggered backwards only once before sharply catching, then righting herself, leaving her panting and breathless.
A deep grimace was etched onto her lips, pressed so tightly to one another they formed a downwards curving line. That was, at least, with the exception of the right edge. Were one to look close enough, they might notice the barest hint of teeth poking free from a lip pulled slightly upwards, as if baring them in a small, easily glanced over snarl. Sweat dripped from her furrowed brow, and fists clenched, then unclenched with the rhythmic rise and fall of her chest and shoulders.
Sunset Shimmer had always had anger issues, even in her childhood. She would wonder sometimes where it all started, if it had to do with the fact that she was an orphan. She'd spent so many nights as a filly, and then as a loud and rebellious young teen, lying awake in her bed, staring at the ceiling, seething with resentment for the parents she never knew. Whether it was her bunk in the Royal Canterlot Orphanage or years later in her dorm at Celestia's School for Gifted Unicorns the question she'd ask herself was always the same.
Why? Why would they just abandon her like that?
"ONE TWO THREE FOUR FIVE SIX!"
Her words came as quick as her fists, and the brief reprieve was shattered as her hands became nearly a blur before her. Muscles tensed, flexed, then relaxed with each swift and practiced motion. It came practically as second nature to her. The skill and speed with which she demonstrated made it clear to any observer she was exceedingly experienced with the act.
She wondered if she was better with her fists now than she would be with her magic.
"SEVEN EIGHT NINE ELEVEN TWELVE!"
Her vision was as red as her hair and she could feel the blood rushing with such force that the heart beat thudding against her chest was palpable. She was beyond herself, far too caught up in her own emotions such that she didn't even realize she'd skipped a number. After a certain point it hardly mattered. She stopped counting, but she never stopped punching.
'That's how you always handle things isn't it?' She thought. 'Use your fists and not your fucking brain. Destroy everything around you just like you destroyed your life.'
Sunset screamed, a fearsome sound of primal, boiling rage. It was paired with a weak and almost pitiable shove of her open palms against a punching bag that had, in spite of it being used for the first time that afternoon, a noticeable dent. When it failed to fall off from where it hung as she'd hoped, she let it swing back into place before simply collapsing backwards of her own volition.
She lay there, motionless, for several moments, staring up towards the ceiling not unlike she'd done in her younger years. The only sound in the room was her steady breathing, face wearing a look that betrayed not a single emotion, not even apathy. Her eyes were wide open, but her brain was as completely and utterly blank of thought as her expression. She focused on nothing but what lay above her for what felt like hours, but was in reality only a few minutes. The ceiling seemed almost to gaze back upon her with an equal amount of emptiness.
Eventually, she mustered the will to get up, and brushed a few stray locks of hair which had, in her fury, dislodged themselves from the greater mass. Her entire body and face was covered in a slick, dew-dropped sheen of sweat, and the golden scarlet strands parted from her skin with a wet and peeling resistance.
Her skull still felt numb, and the world around her still seemed almost false and unreal, but she knew for a fact, much as she wished it not the case, that this was her reality. Not just this room, this tiny, rundown apartment, the punching bag in front of her, or the mattress below her, but all of it. Everything that she'd done thus far in her life. How it had all just kept escalating, climbing, stakes becoming higher and higher until she'd found herself in the circumstance she did today, with a group of students she'd abused and driven apart begrudgingly allowing her to be their 'friend' only because Twilight Sparkle had told them to.
"Fuck you." Sunset spat, and thrust herself towards the punching bag again. Her knuckles impacted with enough force to make it audibly creak.
At first she thought she'd meant to say that to Twilight. She hated her. But the more she reflected on that the more she realized that wasn't correct. She wasn't angry at Twilight, although she certainly wanted to be. But even that didn't seem right, either. She only felt like she should be angry at her, but she wasn't.
No, Sunset realized. She wasn't angry at Twilight Sparkle. She was angry at herself.
Those cursing words came out like a roar the second time around rather than a spit poison, as the realization dawned on her who it was she truly had reason to hate — the singular person in her life to whom she could blame everything on.
It wasn't her parents, who had likely left her only in the fears of being unable to provide her a happy life. It wasn't Princess Celestia, who'd acted as the mother she'd never had and had done nothing but try and support and guide her in the right direction. It wasn't Twilight Sparkle either, who'd only tried to take back what was stolen from her in the first place, and then for whatever stars-forsaken reason, given her, of all things — rather than punishment — a second chance.
She had no one to be angry at but herself.
"One! Two! Three! Four!"
She'd done so many things wrong in her life, too many for her to count or even recollect. It had started simply enough when she was little. Harmless things, really. A prank here, a pinch there, every so often a stolen bit or candy bar. The typical sorts of things that foals might get up to. If that was where it had ended, perhaps she'd still be Celestia's student right then, but that wasn't what had happened. It had only continued into adolescence, growing in severity and scale, and of course it didn't help that the edgy, bad girl attitude she'd adopted had a tendency to attract the sorts of ponies who it could not be said were the best of influences.
Theft. Arson. Vandalism. She'd even mugged people once or twice, and it was made all the easier that she was a good fighter and an even better magic user. Were it not for the fact she was Celestia's prized pupil at the time, she'd likely be sitting behind bars with a magic nullifier around her horn at that very moment.
Maybe that would've been better, she thought. If nothing else, it was at least what she deserved.
With the heavy thud of rapping knuckles against durable surface, she mulled over the possibility of turning herself in to Celestia. Apologizing for her crimes and all the wrong she had done her, to beg neither for mercy nor forgiveness, but merely that justice be done. It was an idea briefly passing, though, like a star in the night. Not only was it impossible right then - the portal wouldn't be re-opening for another 30 moons - but more to the point, it was the coward's way out.
If she took that route, she'd be turning her back to and ignoring all the ill she'd wrought here as well. All the students she'd bullied, the relationships platonic and romantic she'd ruined, all the lies she'd told and whispered into others' ears. She'd been the master of deception. Being a high school girl without the protection of literal royalty meant she couldn't exactly afford the kinds of risks the sorts of things she did with as much reckless abandon as she had in Equestria would bring her. Even then, it wasn't as if she'd refrained from breaking a few noses or setting fire to a couple cars on Earth either.
"Fuck you." Again she repeated herself, as flat and featureless as the floor below her. In her thinking, she'd begun to slow down her blows, but with that she resumed a furious pace without blinking an eye.
Thud. Thud. Thud. THUD.
Every single hit she imagined being against herself. She closed her eyes, envisioning the punching bag as her own face rather than what it was in the hopes that maybe, somehow, unleashing that anger against herself would be enough to calm her. It was, thankfully, and before long she started to slow down again until she eventually came to a stop.
Finally it felt like she'd run out of steam, at least for that moment, but in that period of inaction there was not silence. Merely thinking wasn't getting her very far, at least not as far or as fast as she felt she needed to go. She had to speak her mind. Perhaps hearing her own voice, listening aloud to her own thoughts would help her come to the realization she knew she had to reach.
"You wasted everything." Sunset began.
She didn't think she had the energy left to keep wailing onwards, but evidently that was a false assumption. Before she even knew what she was doing her fist connected with the bag.
"And for what?"
Punch.
"Your ego? Your fucking powertrip?"
Punch.
Because you thought you were the hottest shit in the fucking universe so you decided to run away like a sniveling little brat when you didn't get what you wanted?!"
Punch.
"Look at you! You're fucking pathetic! Where did all of it get you, huh? What was all of it for? How many bridges have you burnt, connections ruined, lives made miserable because of you? The answer is nothing and too fucking many."
Punch. Pumch. Punch. Punch!
"So what the fuck are you gonna do about it?"
She went to punch.
But she didn't.
Her fist fell short of impact. She faltered, and stopped.
What was she going to do about it? What even could she do about it? She'd hurt too many people. Nobody could ever possibly forgive her nor, in her mind, should they.
"Don't be a fucking coward. Stop running. That's all you've been doing for years. Running, running, running, and it's gotten you nothing. So fucking stop it."
Her heart still pounded in her ears, her blood still boiled in her veins with all the heat of molten rubies, and her face still fixed on that punching bag with a look that could sear, but for the first time that day, when she struck out against it, it made her feel something she hadn't felt in weeks.
Control.
But it wasn't the sort of control one obtained through ill-gotten gains. Not from manipulation nor the abuse and torment of those around her which for so long she'd thought necessary to feel any sort of agency in her life. Nor, even, was it the lust for power she'd come to believe was necessary to be respected and admired, even if it was gained through fear. Instead, she found herself invigorated with something entirely new. A sense of power — true power — which one could obtain only through self-revelation.
Since even her youngest years she'd always had a fire inside her, full of drive and ambition, always pushing her to further and further heights until eventually she'd found herself at the lowest of lows. She remembered, in that moment of humiliating defeat, crawling bruised and beaten from the wreckage of her own creation, how that fire had, for just a moment, snuffed out entirely. Now it raged within her brighter than it ever had before, fueled not by ambition, nor by what it could bring her. For the first time in her life, the only thing that drove her forward was herself.
She punched again.
And again.
And again.
Her throws were as fast as they had been before, but they were no longer so loose. With every thrust, she felt more and more in command of herself. Not just of her movements, but her emotions and her mind. Each time the sound of a thumping impact of her fist against the bag reached her ears, and the force of it carried through her body, her mind seemed to clear. Slowly, the smoldering fog that had settled over her ever since the Fall Formal began to lift.
She inhaled deeply, then let it flow free of her lungs. The breath that came out felt like the painful lick of flames against her flesh, but it made the tightness in her chest and the ache in her skull begin to fade.
"One."
She breathed in, then out.
"Two."
In. And out.
"Three."
She'd done so many terrible things.
To so very many people.
To those who she loved, deep down, as much as to those whom she didn't know at all.
And she had spent so, so very long trying to run and hide from that terrible truth. She'd thought that, perhaps, with each stolen wad of cash, with each bloodied nose or knocked out tooth or burnt out storefront that she'd find, if not some sense of satisfaction, a monotony in the violence. A routine. Something into which she could fall into, to numb herself with until she could just turn her brain off entirely and not think of it all.
All it had done for her was make the pain, the guilt, the burden of that knowledge so much worse when the past had finally caught up to her.
She couldn't change any of that, she knew. She couldn't erase her mistakes much less undo them. And she was no longer so arrogant to think that she shouldn't owe that apology, and even though it was an apology which likely would and in her honest opinion should be rejected, she would offer it nonetheless, because it was what they deserved. But as her great mentor had told her once so long ago, actions always spoke louder than words.
She wouldn't just apologize and move on to continue it all elsewhere, n`or would she be a coward and turn herself in. She was going to be better. She had to be better. Not only for her own sake, but so much more for the sake of those whom she'd so carelessly hurt in her supposed path to greatness.
Sunset Shimmer breathed in, readied her fist, and swung forth with renewed purpose. Her strikes came steady, paced, and controlled. Almost graceful.
"One. Two. Three. Four."
She wasn't running anymore.
