Grrrrrr
Twilight sighed as she held a hand over her belly, a little ashamed for the loud grumble of her hungry stomach in public, even if nobody around seemed to care or notice. Hopefully the latter.
Normally she'd be eating with her friends at this time and this day, but all the girls had taken a very sudden step away to deal with emergencies of their own. Sunset had to visit the Princess - Twilight's regal doppelganger, something which she still found weird, intriguing and totally exciting at the same time - whilst the others dealt with a suddenly revealed birthday and consequent birthday party, a coaching request, helping out with harvest at cousins, helping out at the animal shelter due to sick-related understaffing for the week and then something Twilight's mind could only meekly untangle and describe as a 'fashion problem'.
Of course, she wasn't mad. She loved spending time with the girls whenever, and was all too glad she had them with her as often as she did, but she wasn't a control freak by any means. She respected that they had lives and interests and duties of their own. Why wouldn't she?
Grrrrrr
Ok, yes, this may be one small reason.
Though Twilight was far from indecisive - allegedly - she had come into a habit of allowing the other girls to choose where to eat. She liked to think it was due to her being nice and wanting to experience a change of taste everyday, but really, it was more so due to the group staring at her due to her very odd choices before then.
And for what it was worth? She liked it that way. Doing different things like that is what kept life interesting after all, and she actually much prefered it over the places she had originally gone to all the time in her life, like back in Crystal Prep.
The issue? Now she was on her own, without this wise array of food judges to make a choice for her, and had the tyranny of choice. And what a tyranny it was. Even now, as she scanned the big, propped up menu outside the fourth dinner she'd gone to, she couldn't really make anything of it. It wasn't that she didn't like it, it's more so that she didn't think it was special without any of the others explaining why.
Beaten but not defeated, the lavender-skinned high schooler turned around to go and visit the next establishment. This one was just near-
"Twilight!"
She stood and simply froze as the tip of her nose nearly touched the counterpart of Sour Sweet who smiled widely at her. And if Twilight had remembered one sole thing about Sour Sweet from all those years at Crystal Prep, it was that a smile from her was like bait for a fish.
"Umm... hey... there?" the bedazzled girl muttered, taking half a step backwards and making sure her glasses were on correctly.
"Fancy seeing you around here, friend!" the eccentric girl gave out, her rather unnatural smile unwavering.
"Uh, me?" Twilight wondered, raising an eyebrow at her supposed 'friend'. "I go here often, actually. Usually I'm not alone admittedly, but I've never seen you around even once when I was here."
Sour Sweet stared, her left eye twitching just barely.
"Riiight! Of course!" She gave out, clearly attempting to keep up her smile now. "Well, I suppose I kinda, y'know, drowned in the crowd and all that."
"All one-hundred and sixteen times?"
Sour blinked. "What?"
"That's how many times I've been around here after transfering. I don't want to do the math right now, but I can tell you that the likelihood of me not noticing you even once during that time is rather-"
"Ok, ok, I get it." Finally, Sour Sweet showed a face Twilight knew far better than the faked one prior. Which isn't to say she preferred it, considering she looked really rather annoyed and, knowing Sour, toxic. "A normal human being would have just-"
"What she means-" Twilight let out a slight eep as she felt a hand press down on her left shoulder, finding Indigo Zap standing right beside her all of a sudden, "-is that we're happy to see you." Indigo trained her eyes on Sour, glaring. "Right?"
The two-faced girl tried to smile again, but the result was a rather unsettling grin instead. "Riiight, of course."
"Told you she would mess it up," came a comment from Sugarcoat as she approached Indigo, standing beside her with her arms limp by her side. Sour frowned again, but was not outdone by Sunny Flare who jabbed Sugarcoat almost as if trying to reprimand her, shaking her head disapprovingly as she did so.
"Heya Twi!" came the final greeting from a girl that Twilight had to admit was perhaps the most 'normal' of the bunch, which was saying a lot. "What are you up to?"
"Heya Lemon Zest, and uh... all you others, girls." Twilight fiddled with her thumbs, unsure of what to really do or say now that she was so hopelessly outnumbered amidst a group of girls whom she vividly recalled had hated and bullied her many times at Crystal Prep. "I guess I should have expected all you others to be along when I saw Sour Sweet here."
"Well, it was really mostly Sour's idea to come anyway," Indigo revealed.
"Wait," Twilight spoke up with renewed confusion, "but Sour Sweet told me you always hung out around here."
The silence that followed for the next couple seconds was all-saying, though Sour Sweet naturally tried to cover her bases as much as she could.
"Ahaha! No no, what she meant was that it was my idea to come here specifically today! You know, to..."
Twilight denoted Sour's very deliberate look past her and at the dinner sign. Even standing before her, it didn't need a detective to deduce that she was quickly identifying where they actually were.
"...to Fizzle's Fries! Duh!"
Twilight was unimpressed.
"You're really bad at lying." Clearly, so was Sugarcoat as she stoically opposed her supposed friend once more. "Also you're getting twitchy again."
In deep frustration - and indeed with a twitchy eye - Sour clawed at her eyelids and pulled at them in a moment of reckless frustration.
"Sugarcoat, you little-!"
"Sorry!" Twilight quickly made to speak up before you-know-what would have a chance of happening. Not like she hadn't experienced these same exchanges a dozen times over at CPA already. "Sorry. I'm still kind of confused what you are all doing here, and if it isn't a chance meeting then... what's the big deal?"
The Crystal Preppers turned and looked at one another, exchanging frowns, dumbfounded gawks and shrugs. Eventually, as her friend's fury was still judged to be too much to bear at the moment, Sunny Flare made to speak in place of Sour Sweet.
"See, I know that we've always had our... differences, way back in Crystal Prep..."
"You can say that again," Twilight mused, smiling to ensure her comment wasn't taking all too harshly.
"And, well, we've all kind of..."
"Treated me horribly? Bullied me? Insulted me? Tried to frame and ruin my reputation?"
Sunny blinked a few times in silent attempts of comprehension. "Uh. Yeah. That, pretty much. I was just gonna say we were mean to you but I think that works too."
"Yeah, and to be honest, everyone's been feeling pretty rough considering what happened." Lemon Zest, with her headset off her ears, almost seemed empathetic to Twilight. Perhaps she really was genuine, though whether the others were... it was hard to tell, sometimes.
"What do you mean?" The lone CHS student asked the group, half-certain she knew the answer already.
"Well, you know," Indigo began, only for Sugarcoat to overtake her.
"The time at the final leg of the Friendship Games where years of bullying and insults boiled over together with peer pressure to make you release uncontrollable magic powers which turned you into a demon entity of yourself that nearly destroyed the entire world just to get to another dimension and attain more magic."
Even Twilight was kind of surprised by that, let alone the other Crystal Preppers.
"What she said," Lemon Zest simply said with a brief shrug of her shoulders.
"Now look," Sour Sweet finally made herself heard again, her voice still audibly tense but at the very least controlled... for now," I know we have been terrible, Twilight Sparkle. Frankly, that's kind of our thing in a way, and it's what made Crystal Prep what it is - or was, anyway."
"Actually it's-"
"What I mean," she continued before Sugarcoat could meaningfully interrupt and continue, "is that it took a lot for us all to realise how terrible things were for you in the end. I mean, sure, we knew we treated you bad and we all hated that to a degree-"
"She found it funny, actually."
The others glared at Sugarcoat.
"Will you just shut up for one moment?" Sunny Flare begged of her friend.
"So did you, actually," Sugarcoat added without the slightest hint of a smile or grin at such a snarky remark.
"Ok, ok," Indigo Zap interrupted, pushing aside and between Sugar and Sunny. Twilight stood there half-dazzled, not sure if she was witnessing something weird or just... something oddly familiar considering the infighting between these girls. "I think what we wanna say is: we messed up hard. Like, really hard, ok?"
"Yeah," Lemon added on, "and honestly, the Friendship Games left a bad taste for all of us."
"For more than one reason," Indigo added.
"We did nearly help cause the end of the world, after all," Sugarcoat admitted.
Twilight, this time, was the one to be left dumbfounded. A few paralysed blinks later, she was still rather uncertain of what to say.
"So... you're... sorry?" She managed. "You are sorry?"
"It was her idea." Sugarcoat glanced at Sour Sweet, much to the added surprise of Twilight.
"I... don't think I'm really getting this. What are you saying?" The confused CHS student continued, feeling as though the image of her CPA life and all those years of bullying are now being thrown for a spin.
Sour Sweet took a deep breath before starting. "When the Friendship Games ended, and you transferred away to CHS, everybody at Crystal Prep was either glad you were gone because they didn't like you, or glad you were gone because they thought you would kill us otherwise."
"Turning into a demon has that effect," Sunny chimed under her breath.
"But as time went on, and some students picked up on how much fun you were having at CHS in comparison to Crystal Prep, I suppose that started to change. They felt a little, how do I put this?"
"They felt happy for me?" Twilight considered.
Sour shrugged. "Sure, that works. Anyways, they felt happy for you in a sense, which obviously made us, as well, figure that we may not have been the kindest of people towards you back then."
"So we hoped we could try and do something that might, you know, do something cool and helps others, rather than just us," Lemon Zest recalled.
"Which is why we signed up for that 'Chance to Prance' competition months ago, if you recall," Sour continued. "We asked Principal Cadence whether we could help out with raising the money for our spring dance, so that every student could celebrate it on a luxury yacht rather than the lame auditorium."
"Granted, that was without us knowing beforehand that you would also be taking part." Sunny gritted her teeth.
Twilight cocked her head slightly. "I really don't get this. The Dance contest? But we won that one together. What is this all about?"
"We did, yes," Sour Sweet continued, "but only after we'd nearly gone ahead and stolen your idea for ourselves. If we were any good in terms of songwriting, we probably would have done it without any major fuss, too."
"Well yes, but... everything worked out in the end, didn't it?" Twilight suggested.
"Yeah but we still tried to do it, Twilight!" Indigo spoke up. "We wanted to raise the money to do good, and at the first sign of Rarity and you girls? We immediately went our normal way of trying to do shady tricks to get what we want."
"I still told you it wouldn't ever work," Sugarcoat dryly commented.
"And the worst part is that, even after we'd done the music video and won, we never really... well, you know." Sour Sweet gestured with her left hand in a circular motion, looking for words.
"We never made up," Sunny finished. "Not only did we never properly apologise for the Friendship Games, but we also didn't really apologise for our attempted steal at the contest."
"Let alone all the stuff we did to you before both of those things back at school," Indigo added on with a guilty frown.
The lavender-skinned girl now stood with her mouth half agape and her glasses nearly dropping off her nose, prevented only by a quick intervention of her left index finger, which simultaneously woke her from perceived stasis.
"You... you came here to-"
"To apologise," Sunny finished.
"I-I don't know what to say, really. I mean, this is great! Obviously! But..." she paused, twiddling her fingers guiltily. "Admittedly, I feel as though this is a bit sudden. Especially for you girls." She put up her hands right after defensively. "No offense, obviously!"
"None taken," Sugarcoat answered her.
"I don't disagree," Sour Sweet replied in kind, "but what can I say? Even we feel bad sometimes, and in the end we want to move on. Maybe if we do this we can."
"Yeah, this friendship stuff is kind of confusing, really," admitted Indigo with a scratch of the back of her head.
"And you couldn't have just asked me to meet you sometime?" Twilight wondered. "No offense, again, but you did sort of run me over during lunch time and-"
Grrrrrr
Twilight's face turned from lavender to a scarlet hue for a moment as the girl shrank seemingly, her hands covering her very audibly hungry stomach.
"Actually, we couldn't agree on a present to give you to make up for any of what we've done, so we decided a free meal on our tab would do," Indigo said with the slightest hint of a smirk, before pressing a hand down on Twilight's left shoulder.
"You want to-?"
"And, of course, since we heard how quick to forgive you are, you'll be glad to spend time with us and accept our apologies in kind, right?" Sunny Flare chimed, flanking Twilight to her right then.
"R-Right, but I-"
"Then what are we waiting for? You must be starving, and who wouldn't want to enjoy a free meal, especially with good, old friends of yours?" Sour grinned.
"That's not- wait, I-"
Twilight's struggles, meager as they were, ended up being rather helpless as she was hauled off back to the Dinner she'd considered just before, the combined might of both Sunny Flare and Indigo Zap far too much for the weak scientist to resist.
She sighed in defeat. At least somebody had called the shot on where she would be eating today.
