Few outside observers would call the five girls friends. But in the slowly detoxifying environment of Crystal Preparatory Academy, they were certainly allies. They trusted each other (mostly,) respected each other (intermittently,) and banded together to support each other against those who might try to claim their elite position in the student hierarchy (near constantly, despite Principal Cadence’s best efforts.)
Still, “friends” was a strong term for any relationship at Crystal Prep. All five bore that in mind as they exchanged appraising looks at their usual booth in the Shake & Skate Diner.
Sugarcoat broke the silence that had settled over the table. “We can be reasonable about this.”
“Can we?” Sunny Flare countered from next to her. “This isn’t exactly a situation where we can come to a healthy compromise.”
Sour Sweet snickered. “Not without a bonesaw.”
That got a sidelong glare from across the table, the sort of talent Crystal Prep helped hone. “Hence my use of ‘healthy.’ This is a zero-sum situation. There can be only one winner.”
Lemon Zest screwed up her face in thought, the headphones pulled off of one ear showing how seriously she was taking the conversation despite being squeezed in the corner of the booth. (She knew what she'd done.) “If there’s one winner and more than one loser, doesn’t that go into the negatives?”
The rest of the table groaned. Sugarcoat gave her a flat look. “We are not spending the afternoon trying to get you to understand game theory again.”
“Yeah, I have stuff I wanted to get done today,” said Indigo Zap, between Lemon and Sour. She stabbed at her salad and looked longingly at Lemon’s mozzarella sticks.
“They’re for the table, Indy.”
“Wrestling team, Lemon." Indigo shuddered. "I don’t even want to think about how much I’d have to run to stay in my weight class for next week.”
“Ladies?” Sour Sweet fluttered her lashes. “I like talking about Indigo putting some loser from Griffonstone High in an armbar as much as the next girl, but let’s get this squared away first.” Her expression didn't shift, but her grip on her sandwich tightened until ketchup oozed out between her knuckles. “Before I show her how it’s done.”
Sunny nodded. “Agreed. I’d hate for this to come between us long-term.”
Lemon snorted. “Kind of hard to avoid that if one of you ends up dating him.”
Sugarcoat quirked an eyebrow. “‘One of you’?”
“One, I already have a piece of snuggle candy from CHS. B, she’s a she. Gamma, if I went head over heels for every milquetoast so-and-so who could pluck out ‘Wonderwall,’ I’d get around by somersaulting." Having counted off her points on her fingers, Lemon shrugged. "But hey, feel free to go for trial by combat. I can sell tickets.”
Indigo shuddered. “I’m going to need you to never say the phrase ‘snuggle candy’ again.”
“Adding it to the list,” said Sunny, who already had her phone out.
Lemon rolled her eyes. “Come on, it’s not like I told you how we’re this close to getting her cellist friend to—“
Sugarcoat shoved an onion ring into her mouth. “This is why we like you better when you keep the headphones on.”
“I was going to say ‘collab for a song I wrote.’”
“Of course you were,” Sour said with a smirk.
Sunny cleared her throat. “Ladies, could we stop being idiots for a moment?"
"Big ask, Sunny."
"Lemon's words," added Indigo, "not mine."
It took a deep breath before Sunny could continue. "The matter at hand remains unresolved." She jerked her head to the counter.
Everyone turned to a barstool at the far end, where a teenage Adonis worked away at a bacon cheeseburger, any awareness of their scheming lost amid frizzled onions and barbecue sauce. Lesser wills might have given longing, girlish sighs as they looked at that noble countenance, but they were Shadowbolts, and they had their pride. (Moreover, they knew the others expected them to have their pride.)
"If we could avoid yet another Lemony digression before agreeing on who gets the first crack at Flash Sentry,” Sunny continued, "I would greatly appreciate it."
Lemon shook her head. “Still can’t believe he’s the one blowing your collective skirts up.”
“He’s a potent social asset in an up-and-coming school where I’d need a strong connection to make inroads." Sunny grimaced. "Especially with Twilight’s current circle.”
Awkward silence stretched across most of the table with that reminder. Sugarcoat was not so burdened. “Apparently he used to date Sunset Shimmer. I’m morbidly curious to see what other people see in him.”
“I heard the same thing," said Indigo. She flexed an arm in the classic Rosy Rivets pose. "Crystal Prep is full of insecure dweebs who can’t deal with a girl stronger than them. If he can handle Angel Girl, he can handle me.”
Sour shrugged. “He seems nice.”
The others waited for a few moments. “And?” prompted Sunny.
“That's it." Sour flushed under the others' incredulous stares. "What? I can have simple, genuine motives.”
“In theory, sure," said Sugarcoat. "This is the first time I’d be seeing it in practice.”
After a few moments, Sour slumped and grumbled, “And we’re all desperately lonely anyway. Might as well be me.”
Indigo nodded. “There it is. And honestly? Same.”
Sour crossed her arms and scowled down at the linoleum. "Lousy so-called friends. No one asked you to empathize with me. Now I can't even properly hate you."
"Love you too, Sour," said Lemon. The answering raised middle finger got chuckles from everyone at the table, Sour included.
"If any of us weren't desperately lonely," noted Sugarcoat, "we wouldn't be having this conversation."
"As Indigo said, we're not exactly spoiled for choice. The boys at Crystal Prep..." Sunny trailed off. "How did you put it the other day, Lemon?"
"Trust fund dipshits, honor roll dweebs, varsity assholes, aaaand..." Lemon drummed her fingers on the table as she thought. "Right! Background characters."
Sour raised an eyebrow. "'Background characters'?"
"You know, peeps who survived this long by being unremarkable enough that Cinch didn’t notice them. It’s like those bugs that look like dead leaves. Nothing’s gonna eat you if you’re just part of the set dressing."
Sugarcoat nodded. "Truly scathing commentary on the state of Crystal Prep."
"And it makes a handsome guy who got through the Friendship Games without peer-pressuring someone into turning into a demon look that much better," added Indigo.
"Indeed," said Sunny, who hadn't looked away from Lemon. “So, since you’ve declared yourself a neutral party here, who do you think should ask out Flash first?”
Lemon flinched back, trying to burrow into the crease between the booth and the wall. “Oh no, this one’s a negative-two-sum game for me. Whoever I don’t pick’s gonna hate my guts.”
“Coward,” Sour snarled despite the smile on her face
“Absolutely. I know we’re all trying to be better people, but the operative word there is trying." Lemon's gaze swept the group. "We’re all still petty, vindictive bitches, myself included. I mostly mean that as a term of endearment, but still, the only winning move here is not to play.”
Indigo sneered. “Oh, that is such—”
“Hey, are you all talking about Flash?”
Everyone flinched away from the sudden Pinkie Pie. Lemon practically ended up splayed against the wall. The others avoided eye contact with their waitress as best they could, giving assorted vague noises that could charitably be construed as words of some kind.
Sugarcoat, for her part, had frozen up while staring off into the middle distance. “I can neither confirm nor deny that at this time.”
Lemon hesitantly settled back in her seat. After a quick glance to make sure Flash was still lost to his lunch, she waved a hand across the table. “Your school’s ladykiller got himself four more victims.”
“Oh wow! In one afternoon?”
Sunny cleared her throat. “We… may have been discussing this off and on since the Friendship Games.”
Sugarcoat still hadn't moved since Pinkie had appeared. “I can neither confirm nor deny that at this time.”
“Breathe, Sugar," said Indigo. "I don’t see anyone from the school paper.”
Sour narrowed her eyes as she looked around the diner. “It’s the ones you don’t see that you have to worry about.”
“I can neither confirm nor deny that at this time.”
Sunny sighed and poked Sugarcoat in the side of the head until she dodged a retaliatory swat. “You’ll have to excuse her; her father’s a publicist. Why do you ask?”
Pinkie beamed. “Oh, his girlfriend loves hearing about how many other girls fall for him.”
The whole table went quiet. Ambient sounds filled the gap: the clink of coffee cups, the scrape of knife on fork, the jukebox quietly playing a vinyl record at least three times older than anyone at the table. Pinkie's smile didn't shift an inch the whole time, even as the Shadowbolts exchanged horrified (or, Lemon's case, horribly amused) looks.
Eventually, Indigo managed to force out a few words. “His what?”
Bells tinkled. Pinkie turned to the door and somehow smiled even wider. “There she is now! Hi, Ditzy!”
The gray-skinned blonde who'd just entered the diner waved back at Pinkie, who wordlessly pointed her to Flash. The newcomer practically skipped there and, the moment she sat, tore Flash's attention away from the remains of his meal as nothing else had. The two proceeded to talk about next to nothing with more enthusiasm than any of the Shadowbolts had ever seen from their classmates without someone's suffering getting involved.
A content sigh escaped Pinkie's lips, her head resting on her clasping hands. “Aren’t they adorable?”
Lemon pounded the table as she gasped for breath. Tears streamed down a face gone from pink through red and purple, now edging on a worrying shade of blue, her whole body heaving with silent laughter.
The others weren't quite so amused. “The cutest,” Sour Sweet hissed.
Pinkie considered the girl, and what lay in her grasp. “Huh. I don’t remember you ordering a panini.”
“You, uh..." Lemon hiccuped her way through another breath, skin tone slowly returning to normal. "You may want to get us the check before someone does something she’ll regret, Pinks.”
“Sure thing! But remember.” Without shifting her expression, Pinkie effortlessly plucked the remains of Sour's lunch out of the girl's white-knuckle grip, pried off the compressed top slice, added a glowing hard candy, and slapped the bread back on. In defiance of all laws of God and man, the resulting explosion reinflated the sandwich, which Pinkie returned to its plate. “No fighting in the diner,” she concluded.
None of the Shadowbolts were sure if she meant that as a threat. None of them were sure if she even recognized it as one. “Yes, Pinkie,” they chorused, for none of them were willing to take that chance.
“Good!” She skated off, humming something to herself.
The Shadowbolts watched Flash and Ditzy for a bit. It wasn't the kind of saccharine romance that they could have spent hours merrily mocking, or the obviously unhealthy relationship whose demise they could have fantasized about to keep them warm at night. It was, unsurprisingly for CHS, a genuine friendship that had happened to escalate to love. The two had inside jokes and fond memories and all the other little things that permeated the halls of Canterlot High whenever one of the girls "just happened" to go there to visit Twilight and incidentally observe their target. The couple just held hands for most of it.
At one point, Ditzy turned to them, Pinkie-wide smile on her face, and said something that made Flash straighten up on his barstool and blush bright red. The Crystal Prep girls immediately looked away and pretended they hadn't been looking, had no intention of looking, and frankly had much better things to do than look, thank you very much.
"So," Sunny said to Lemon. “You know how you said we were still petty, vindictive bitches?”
That got a flat look. “I also said we were trying to be better.”
“True, true. We definitely are." Sunny paused mid-nod. "That said—”
“I, for one," said Sugarcoat, "am fine with skipping the part where we act on our vindictive pettiness, then regret it and hastily make amends for what we knew was wrong the whole time.”
“It is the right thing to do.” Sour blinked, pouted, and crossed her arms. "Ugh, having a moral compass sucks.”
Indigo looked around the table. “I feel like I missed something.”
“The music video collab we did with Twilight and her friends,” said Lemon.
“After stealing Rarity’s idea,” Sugarcoat added with a pointed look at Sour.
“Which we could have made work with a better song." After a beat, Sour registered the others adding their own flat stares at her. She cleared her throat. "But that would have been wrong.”
Indigo scratched her head. “Was that when I was out of town for the softball championship?”
"Yup."
"Yes."
"At least one of us did something right on the first try that week."
"Sit on a cactus and spin, dearie," Sunny said to Sour, sweet as sugar.
“Yeah, let’s not do something shitty." Indigo leaned back and smirked. "Besides, Flash probably has some hot single friends.”
“In our area!” cheered Lemon.
Sugarcoat gave her a flat look. "You have a girlfriend."
"The day I resist a meme reference is the day I die."
“Aww, I’m so proud of you girls!”
They all turned to see Pinkie again, dabbing at her eyes with her apron with one hand and holding their check with the other.
Sunny cleared her throat. “How much of that did you hear?”
“It’s a pretty small restaurant." Pinkie leaned in and stage whispered, "Also, between you and me, Ditzy would probably crush every bone in your bodies if you tried something.”
“Wait…” Indigo narrowed her eyes as she considered the couple at the counter before flinching back. “Holy shit, it’s the Iron Maiden. I didn’t recognize her without the eyepatch.”
Sour blinked. “Who?”
“The girl who crushed me during last week’s wrestling match." Indigo shuddered. "We’re definitely not trying anything with Flash.”
Flash and Ditzy—who had just ordered a muffin—got up and left the diner. Ditzy waved at everyone as they went by, a carefree smile on her face. Pinkie and Lemon waved back. Indigo sunk in her seat until her goggles barely peeked over the edge of the table.
“Truly a force to be reckoned with,” Sugarcoat said, audibly dripping with sarcasm.
Indigo popped back up, fear in her eyes like the others had never seen. “That girl is a savage.”
“I was being sincere,” Sugarcoat said in the exact same tone.
Sunny jabbed her with an elbow. “All in favor of setting our sights elsewhere?”
“Aye,” chorused the others. And Pinkie, who giggled and skated off to another table.
“Motion passed," said Sunny. She held up the check. "Next item on the agenda: Who’s paying what?”
That sparked a new round of friendly not-quite-bickering. And behind the counter, Pinkie happily sent a photo of the five of them to a particular group chat. It was always nice to see people making progress.
Author's Note
Bet you thought that "5x" in the short description was referring exclusively to the Crystal Prep girls, huh? 
Yes, this timeline had a World War II. And a World War I. A goofy little tale like this doesn't need an entire alternate history plotted out for it.
This probably doesn't qualify for the Spring Fling, but my muse apparently liked the brainstorming in Estee's Discord server enough to get a dialogue skeleton out of it. And frankly, I'll take whatever executive function my brain provides. Hope you enjoyed it; it's always fun working with the Shadow Five.
