There was a knock at the door. Flash rubbed the sleep from his eyes as he glanced down at the clock on his nightstand. “Who the hell is banging this late at night?,” he said setting it back down. He’d let his parents take care of… damn. They were both working the graveyard shift tonight so it was just him. Guess it was his problem after all. *Knock* *Knock* *Knock*
“Yeah, I’m coming, just give me a damn minute would you?!” Flash slipped on his pants and shirt, they were clean enough. After the literal hell that the student body had experienced last night at the prom, he didn’t have the energy and wasn’t in the mood to try and find something clean to wear. Opening his door, he turned and quickly moved down the stairs being careful not to slip, though failing at that. “Agh!”
He pulled his butt off of the hardwood floor and made his way to the front door. It was chilly tonight, and the rain was still coming down fairly regularly. Flash strained to see the silhouette on the other side of the door more clearly but it was truly a stygian night out there. With no luck he gave up and finally turned the porch light on.
“Sunset? What are you doing here?” He was equal parts bewildered and annoyed at this unwelcome guest. After the ruckus she raised, Flash wasn’t really ready to talk to her even if Princess Twilight had asked the students to forgive here. It was still too early. “Look Sunset, it’s too damn early and I’m too damn tired to deal with you,” he said pushing the screen door ajar.
She didn’t look him in the eyes at all and simply stood there as the rain fell down around her. Nothing could be heard but the droplets striking the ground and the tick of the grandfather clock in the parlor. Flash shook his head and began to retract his arm and the screen door with it when without warning a sudden chill gripped his arm. Sunset had grabbed his lower arm with such speed he hadn’t noticed until it was already there.
“Let go!” he cried wrenching it from her grasp. Flash felt the water passing from her arm to his as their limbs parted, yet there was something…off…about this rain. It felt somewhat thicker than usual, and emitted a strange odor. His brain tried to decipher the familiar smell. Metal. Iron. Blood.
Looking down at horror, he saw a great deal of blood streaking down his arm where Sunset had gripped it. Flash’s gaze turned from the crimson stripes on his arm back to her. In the lowlight of the porch, he could now just barely make out massive dark splotches all over her clothes. Instinctively he opened the door again and grabbed her tightly yet gently by the shoulders and maneuvered her into the relative warmth of the house. “Hang in there, I’ll go grab something to staunch the bleeding.”
Flash raced down the hall into the kitchen and threw open all the drawers. He usually knew where the cloths and first aid kit were kept but in his panicked state he was drawing a blank. On the fifth try Flash found the box with a Red Cross on top and a few towels to try and staunch the bleeding. Supplies in hand, he raced back only to find Sunset standing in exactly the same spot, having not moved an inch.
Blood mixed with the rain still on her skin and gently dripped onto the floor beneath. Flash steered her into the living room and sat her down on the sofa. The towels he had brought cleared the blood off Sunset up quickly, but he could not a make out a trace of any major wound on her. Was this not her blood? The mystery subsided as he worried now about getting her cleaned up and comfortable.
When Flash was satisfied he had done everything to make her comfortable and had ensured what wounds she did have were none too severe. As far as he could tell, she was perfectly fine. Still, Sunset had not said a thing the entire time. She just stared down towards her feet while the minutes ticked by. He knew that at some point someone was going to have to break the silence, so he figured he might as well to be the one to do it.
“Sunset, what’s going on? Where did you come from. Whose blood is on you?” The barrage of questions from Flash finally elicited a response of some kind from the girl. Her eyes turned up towards him, wide-eyed as though she had faced an unfathomable terror. “It’s hers,” she whispered back to him. “I tried to stop her, but she overpowered me. I fought with every ounce of energy I still possessed to immobilize her, but it wasn’t near enough to prevent her from going through with it.”
She was just seemingly going around in circles, almost like she was in shock. Flash shook his head. There was no time to keep this up when someone could be out there with a life-threatening injury. He grabbed her shoulders and looked deep into her eyes. “Be straight with me Sunset Shimmer, who got hurt? Was it the new girl, Twilight Sparkle? Did something happen to her? Was it one of our classmates like Rainbow Dash or Fluttershy? I understand you’re reluctant to speak, but we need to move quickly if we’re going to stop someone from getting hurt even more than they already are, or wind up dead.”
“You’re already too late.” The being in front of him rose slowly until she was meeting his gaze dead-on. The air around her seemed to grow heavy, but at the same time it grew so much hotter. Was she becoming the beast she had at the dance? He thought she had been roundly defeated, but it seemed otherwise.
Her hands reached out and grabbed his arms with sharp nails digging into his flesh. “You can’t undo the damage already done! Sunset Shimmer is dead!”
Chapter 2 [Rewritten and Extended]
[TW: Suicide / Self-harm]
Note: Quotation marks around normal words indicate that Sunset Shimmer is talking out loud. Italicized words inside of quotation marks indicates Demon Sunset is talking out loud. Italicized words without quotation marks indicates the thoughts of Demon Sunset and are not being vocalized.
A few hours earlier:
“Dear Celestia, what have I done?” Sunset paced back and forth through her apartment. It had only been a few hours since she had lost everything at the dance.
From the looks of it, not a whole lot. You’ve spent most of my energy so there isn’t a whole lot I can do for the time being.
Sunset glanced towards her mirror. In it, stood an image of herself, albeit acting entirely on its own. The demon stood staring at her with an annoyed look on her face and a scowl on her lips. All of the planning they had done for years since fleeing to the human realm had evaporated in a single evening and there was no way for them to put the cat back in the bag. It happened in front of the entire student body and staff, meaning her friendly facade no longer held any sway.
“I’m a failure. An utter failure”
—————————————————————
“Can’t disagree there, you certainly screwed the pooch, as the humans like to say.” Demon Shimmer pulled a nail file from thin air in the reflection and plopped on the bed in the mirror. “We’re just going to have to go back to square one and rethink the entire plan. Certainly going to be much harder now that Celestia is aware of what we’re doing and will more than likely keep a close eye on both the crown and the portal. But nothing worth doing is easy, is it?” she asked rhetorically.
She glanced up from her pointless filing to gauge Sunset’s reaction. The girl didn’t seem to be paying attention to her at all anymore and instead was focused on her phone. Tears welled up at the corners of her eyes. Demon Shimmer arched her eyebrow inquisitively. Sunset, you know that’s just how I am, don’t start losing it because I’m acting like a bitch. Still, she exhibited no reaction to her words
If you want to get pissy, be my guest. Don’t think that you can ignore me though. You and I are bound together “til death do us part,” we’re two sides of the same coin, yin and yang, etc.
“Perhaps that’s how it should be,” Sunset whispered quietly as she threw her phone down onto the bed and slowly made her way into the bathroom and closed the door behind her. Demon Sunset just stared after her, not bothering to relocate herself as she didn’t really have the desire to see the girl use the toilet. Soon enough, however, the sound of running bath water could be heard albeit muffled by the wooden door. The demon thought nothing of it at first, but the strangeness of the situation quickly crept its way into her mind as the minutes continued to tick by.
How often have I seen Sunset take a bath in all the time I’ve known her, she posed herself. The only time that comes to memory was that night years ago when Sunset had tried… She gasped. Sunset wouldn’t try that again. Everything has been on the upswing hadn’t it? Yes of course… until the calamity that had been their scheme had been undone tonight.
—————————
Demon Sunset willed herself into the bathroom mirror, and what she saw before her looked like it had be pulled right from the script of a horror movie. Sunsets clothes were strewn across the bathroom floor while she herself was laying motionless in the bathtub. The water was tinged red from blood. Next to her bleeding arms was a razor. The demon slammed on her side of the mirror in desperation to rouse Sunset from her near-death stupor.
“Damn it Sunset! Wake up! You are not dying here today! Get the fuck up and get out of that goddamn tub! Do you hear me? DO YOU HEAR ME?!” The girl seemed to move a little, stirring hope within the Demon. This was dashed when she realized it was just Sunset slipping into the water more until her head was almost completely submerged. “GOD FUCKING DAMN IT SUNSET! GET YOUR ASS OUT OF THERE RIGHT THIS SECOND OR I SWEAR TO CELESTIA HERSELF I WILL PULL YOU OUT MYSELF, AND I ASSURE YOU IT WONT BE PLEASANT!”
Her threats rang hollow without a corporeal form to back it up but the Demon was in a near frenzy now, out of an equal combination of self-preservation and concern (though she would never admit to the latter). Time was running out, pretty soon there wouldn’t be enough blood left in Sunset’s veins to sustain her body. The being in the mirror bit her lower lip so hard that small droplets of blood were slowly running down her chin. She shook her head, it couldn’t be left up to Sunset to save herself, so she was going to have to do it herself.
The demon closed her eyes as tightly as she could. Expending what energy she had managed to recover so far, her will was pushed to its absolute limit, and eventually beyond. Her sense of self faded into the magical Aether…
—————————
With a sudden gasp of air Sunset Shimmer stirred from her coma, splashing water out of the tub as she flailed around trying to concentrate. Her body felt weak and limp, but she pulled herself out of the crimson pool and stood groggily on her legs. To survive she was going to have to move fast. She burst out of the bathroom and into her bedroom with a stagger.
Blood continued to run down her arm, but at a slower pace. Ignoring her garment-less body, she made it to her desk and flung open the drawers and pulling out anything and everything. Darkness began to creep into her vision, but she luckily found what she needed. The sowing materials fell onto the desk as she desperately tried to thread the needle with her pervasive tunnel vision.
At last the task was accomplished, but now came the painful part. She grabbed the wooden ruler from the main drawer and shoved it quickly into her mouth. “Aggghhhh!”, she cried. Every dip of the needle into her torn flesh was pain on a level she had never before none. With each weave her teeth bit down harder into the ruler until it was on the verge of splintering. Pulling the string taut caused another rush of seething agony, but everything was sufficient for the moment.
“Damn it Sunset, I wasn’t ready to take control of your body again, but you gave me no other choice! What explanation do you have for this? Huh? Huh?” The demon paused awaiting some kind of response in the back of her head where Sunset’s mind would be resting.
No response came.
“Sunset?” Her tone fell from a fit of rage to an annoyed tone.
Still no response.
Rather than wait she probed for the alternate consciousness within herself. But she found nothing. There was no soul or mind other than her own, other than the demon’s. Sunset Shimmer was gone. Her body had been in the horrific state for too long and the mind had offered no resistance to the beckoning call of what lay beyond.
As the realisation hit her, Demon Sunset was overcome with a million different emotions, but all receded as the adrenaline in her vessel wore off and she collapsed limply onto the floor, naked.
Author's Note
I wasn’t happy with how weak and brief my initial 2nd chapter had been and I found myself somewhat inspired to write a better version. There are likely tons of errors and misspellings, but please remember I wrote this on my phone’s notepad and am finishing it up at 4 a.m. I’ll come back and edit it later when I can see my screen correctly. Anyways, I hope you find it better than before.
“What do you mean Sunset Shimmer is dead?” Flash’s confusion could be seen all over his face. “You’re right here in front of me, right now.” He sat down on the bed next to her, lifting up the towel slipping from her shoulders while simultaneously doing his best to avoid her front we she was making no effort to conceal.
Sunset shook her head. “I am not Sunset Shimmer, at least not as a whole. The girl you knew as Sunset has departed from the mortal plane and gone on to face whatever judgement awaits her in the afterlife. All that remains of her is this physical vessel you see in front of you.” She gestured with her hands from her chest downward. Again, the towel began to slip and Flash quickly worked to keep it on her as best as he possibly could.
This did little to clarify the situation for Flash. “Um alright…” he said. “Let’s say for a moment that I believe that-“ Sunset looked up at him and interjected, “Why would you not believe that? What reason do you have to doubt it?” Flash glanced at her eyes before quickly pulling them away again. “Well, there’s the fact that you hardly have a track record for being the most honest or straightforward person and are more prone to tactics of manipulation and lying. Also you have likely lost quite a bit of blood and are likely barely thoughts together.”
Sunset chewed the tip of her thumb as she contemplated his words, the dried blood leaving a distinctive metallic flavour in her mouth. “I guess that is a fair point to make,” she said emotionlessly. Flash nodded and continued his train of thought. “IF,” he stressed, “I were to believe what you say, then who are you?”
She glanced up towards him and said “I guess I am what humans would refer to as a demon. Or you could say I am Sunset Shimmer’s dark desires manifested. Ever since her break with Princess Celestia’s teachings I have existed as a part of her conscious. All her hate, all her greed, all her rage… they are born of me.”
“Wait,” Flash interposed, “if you are a part of her conscious then shouldn’t you have gone on with her?” The girl nodded. “Indeed. Had she done what she did 24 hours earlier there would be nothing but a corpse sitting in a tub of water. However, the moment that crown touched our head and its immense power flowed into us, Sunset Shimmer was no longer a single being, but two separate entities within the same physical shell. Though the crown was removed, a fissure had been torn between us and we remained. To Sunset, though, it didn’t even seem like anything had really changed.”
She looked away from Flash, doing her best to conceal the small tears growing beneath her eyes. “When the blade met her flesh and allowed her blood to flow out, she went into shock which severed the ties between us. Sunset was already drained from the prom and was quick to fade out and pass on. I remained and managed to take control of the vessel and stop the loss of blood. But it was not soon enough to save her.”
Author's Note
A short update. As I said these will be slow, but thought I’d share what I have.
