- Prologue -

Thirty Moons Later

Her thumb slid across the lock screen in the darkness, prompting a click from her phone as it transformed into a portal to the surface of the sun. She held it away until it wouldn’t blind her. The text message she’d kept there since last evening contained enough capital letters and exclamation points to supply a developing nation with grammar texts for a year. Of course it had to come from her. She mashed the power button on the side of her phone and tossed it on the passenger seat.

Sunset Shimmer kept the top down, even if that meant letting the cold spring air chafe her nose and toss her red and yellow curls to and fro. She rolled along the two lane road, white stripes falling into the pool of illumination from her headlights before dropping into darkness again, while silent stores and open lots passed her on either side.

Knowing the turns and roads here made this final mile longer than the two hundred that had come before it. A left on Stirrup Street, a right onto Goldengait Avenue, a left on the embarrassingly misspelled Mane Street, its signs left uncorrected for years in the city budget shortfall. She broke free of downtown and its traffic lights—freakishly useless at this hour —downshifted into second, and hammered on the gas.

She put it in neutral a hundred yards out from her destination and slouched in her seat. Her car coasted beneath the star-dotted sky. The eastern horizon glowed red and orange as a crenellated brick building rose up to her left, its windows dull and golden in slumber. In a few hours, they would shine from within, welcoming its flock of bleary-eyed teenagers to another dance of tests, extracurricular pursuits, and hormones. For now, though, hers would be the only car in the parking lot.

Or so she thought. She pulled in and idled past others that she should have expected there. A mud-flecked pickup truck, a wood-paneled station wagon with a forest’s worth of bumper stickers, a luxury coupe, a streamlined sport bike.

A muscle car with a yellow bolt of lightning on a shield of blue across its hood.

Sunset pulled to a stop in front of that last one. She contemplated it for a moment, fingers drumming on her steering wheel. Of course he’d be here, too. She shifted into reverse, swiping her turn signal for no one, and backed into a space facing the other cars in the lot.

She creaked as she got out of her car. She didn’t know she’d kept this outfit until she found it in the corner of her closet the previous night. A leather jacket with a studded collar, worn over a purple V-neck with a stylized sun on its front, paired with a high orange skirt with a purple and yellow stripe. Her boots stamped solidly on the sidewalk.

It only felt right for this occasion, all things considered.

“She’s here!”

That voice—like two balloons rubbing on each other in that high-pitched way of theirs—called her attention away from the silent face of Canterlot High School to the statue of the rearing horse in front of it, along with the six people gathered around it in a semi-circle. One of them, with that cotton-candy industrial accident hair of hers bouncing up and down, had one hand waving in the air while the other stayed cupped on her cheek.

“You got my message!” yelled Pinkie Pie. The others there turned to look, four girls and one guy. Celestia—they hadn’t changed at all.

“Yeah, yeah.” Sunset waved the party pixie off and evaded every attempt to hug her. The air grew quiet.

“Well, don’t just stand there,” said Applejack, stepping aside with a grin. “You can join us, you know.”

“I dunno, AJ,” Rainbow hissed in her friend’s ear. She shot a glance at Sunset, but the only thing in her eyes was play. “Going to a big university changes people. Right, Smarty Pants?”

Sunset’s hands flew from her sides. “I’m here, aren’t I?”

“I was worried you’d forgotten about your old friends.” Fluttershy put her hands behind her back and rocked on her toes. “We haven’t heard from you in a while.”

“Over two years,” said Rarity, raising a hand to her forehead. “Oh, life in the capital must be exciting.”

“It’s…” Sunset grabbed one arm and shrugged. “It’s been busy.”

Her eyes wandered to the last member of their little group. He wore his blue hair the way he’d had it, back when. He’d kept his racing jacket with the red and white stripes, and he still held onto those garageband sneakers from the Hayless place.

“You’re just in time, then.” Flash Sentry smiled and extended his hand. Sunset took it. She didn’t protest when his fingers weaved through hers. His were warm and callused, like an old glove that kept its heat better than a new one costing five times as much. She remembered holding them at Panic at the Stable! concerts, park festivals, late spring afternoons at Sugarcube Corner.

Sunset blinked. “In time for what?” she asked.

As if to answer, the front face of the square pedestal holding up the horse statue rippled and shimmered, growing brighter. Power hummed in Sunset’s teeth, and in her heart. She let go of Flash’s hand as the wind picked up—it seemed to come from the statue itself.

Flash only smiled and put a hand on Sunset’s shoulder. He pointed at the pedestal with the other as the stone dissolved into a gate of white light.

“Her,” he said.

One purple argyle boot stepped out from the pedestal, then another. A girl with hot pink and purple streaks in her blue hair emerged beneath the gloaming sky, wearing a same purple pleated skirt and blue, short-sleeved top that screamed “dorky” before it had been made.

“Twilight Sparkle.” The name came to Sunset’s lips as if she’d only said it yesterday.

The girl who emerged from the portal started. Her eyes bolted open as she recognized who had spoken to her—and her frame hunched by the smallest of margins. “Oh. Hello,” she stammered, glancing between Sunset and her hands. “Nice to see you here.”’

Sunset’s mouth opened. Her flattened brow, her canted hips, her superior snarl—they were weary of disuse. She held a fist to her mouth and coughed, willing those horrible postures aside. She returned a moment later, hands wringing. “Same,” she said back.

“And heeeeere’s Spike!”

The portal flashed again, just as a green-and-purple dog with large green eyes leaped onto the sidewalk in front of it. His legs were longer, his belly leaner—but his eyes widened as he realized something was off. One look at his fur-covered body, and his brow dropped. “Twilight, I thought you said I wasn’t gonna end up like this again.”

“Spike!” Rarity and Fluttershy descended on him like flying birds of adoration while Twilight went around the group with embraces of her own. She held onto Flash a little longer than the others, long enough to stir something black inside of Sunset’s gut, but it vanished when it came to be her turn.

“What…” Sunset’s hands wrapped around Twilight’s back. “What are you doing here?”

“It’s been thirty moons,” said Twilight, winking. “I just wanted to check up on my friends over here and see how they’re getting along.”

“We’ve been great!” Pinkie Pie zipped in between the two of them and held them tete-a-tete as she launched into her signature style of rapid exposition. “All of us became friends again, and Sunset here got into the best university in the country!”

“As a student of Princess Celestia’s should.” Twilight’s laughter was easy, which was to say far out of reach from what Sunset could hope to muster in the moment.

“Yeah! You’ll spend tonight with Rarity, then the next one with AJ, and then you’ll be with me. That way you don’t have to stay in a gross high school library this time.” Pinkie began to shake Twilight by the shoulders. “These next three days are gonna be sooo much fun!”

“I dunno. They had some comfy atlases in there.” From the way Twilight’s eyes rolled around in her head, she was probably going to have to catch up with her balance first. When she did, however, she looked right at Sunset. “You know…”

Sunset’s gut clenched up. What did she know?

“The portal’s open,” said Twilight, gesturing. “You’ve been away from Equestria for a long time, haven’t you?”

“Don’t even ask.” She saw the way Twilight’s face fell. “I burned too many bridges getting here. I can’t go back.”

“But wouldn’t you want to let Princess Celestia know you’re all right?”

Sunset did her wincing on the inside. On the outside, she was cold reasoning and logic. “She kicked me out of her tutelage. Refused me her highest teachings. She wouldn’t care about what happened to someone as ambitious and self-centered as I was.”

“On the contrary!” Was she smiling? Ugh. She really was a princess. “When I brought you up with her, she expressed nothing but concern and compassion for you. If there’s one thing I’ve learned about her, it’s that she never, ever gives up on a pony.”

Sunset prepared to ward her off with the fatal technicality that, at present, she was anything but hooved in limb and horned of head. She stopped herself, however, the moment she felt a hand on her shoulder.

“Don’t you miss your home?” asked Applejack.

“Or the ponies you knew?” asked Rarity, adding hers, too.

“You can’t change where you’re from,” said Rainbow Dash.

“Or what you’ve done,” said Fluttershy.

Sunset looked down at her boots, bringing her toes together.

“But who knows?” Pinkie ran a hand through Sunset’s hair. “Maybe you can make things right again over there.”

If Pinkie were anyone else, she would be missing a hand. She turned to Flash, who gave her a little nod.

“You won’t be gone forever,” he told her. “Gimme your keys. I can take care of your car while you’re away.”

Sunset frowned. “You can drive stick now?”

Flash’s eyes darted to the side as he rubbed the back of his head. “Oh. Uh…”

“What’s ‘driving stick?’” asked Twilight, cocking her head.

“It’s the one true way to drive an automobile,” Applejack told her with a tip of her hat. “Lemme take care of yours, Sunset. I promise Twilight won’t lay a finger on it until she’s had enough wreckin’ my truck.”

Sunset’s brain raced with a million answers to Applejack’s offer. The wise course lay in repeating none of them out loud. “You all honestly think I’m going back there?” she asked, folding her arms across her chest. “Why don’t all of you go instead? Don’t think I don’t know about all those times in high school you wanted to be a pony, Fluttershy.”

“She still does,” said Rainbow Dash after she finished laughing.

Fluttershy reddened and poked her fingers together.

“Let’s not threaten the destabilization of the space-time fabric of both our dimensions by exchanging more than one pony at a time,” said Twilight. “Can you imagine what’d happen if we brought our two Pinkie Pies together?”

“Some sorta human-pony paradox?” Flash ventured.

“A ponidox!” said Pinkie, leaping into the air. She came down and slapped Flash in the back of the head—gently. “Geez, get it right.”

Rarity chuckled. “You should go,” she said, getting the discussion back on track. “This world will be right here waiting for you.”

“You could be a pony.” Fluttershy’s hands pressed together as her eyes grew large. No, that was just her hovering an inch in front of her nose.

Rainbow Dash and Applejack dragged her out of the way with frowns on their faces.

Sunset turned toward the portal. Someone grabbed her left hand. There was Twilight, smiling at her while she gestured Sunset on with her free hand.

This was stupid. This was hasty.

This wouldn’t get her anywhere at all.

“Hey! Girlwhogetsshovedthroughamagicalmysteryportalsayswhat!”

Sunset looked over her shoulder at Pinkie Pie. “What?”

A pink shoe lodged into the small of her back and sent her flying forward into the light.