Sunset Shimmer finished making her cup of coffee and went to her breakfast table and sat down. It was still early, about 5:30 and the sun was just coming up. Although her name was Sunset, she loved watching the sun rise. And the large floor to ceiling window in the kitchen area of her apartment made watching even better. Her apartment was one of the best in the whole town. It should be for the price she was paying for it. Not that money was a big concern of hers' right now.

She remembered again how she first stumbled across the old book that talked about the portal back in Equestria and how it opened every thirty moons and stayed open for seven days. She covertly looked for the mirror night and day until she found it. For the first three days the portal was opened she explored this world, found out everything she could about it's dominate species, studied their history, customs, and cultures. She learned how the gem stones common in her dimension were highly valuable here. She remembered loading up satchel after satchel of rubies, sapphires, diamonds, and emeralds to name a few; and brought them over to sell.

It was a pretty good hall too. Once she was done, she had about $1.3 million in cash. Which was good because getting the fake documents she needed was extremely expensive. Over 200 grand; stupid Discord. The man was a rip off, but he was able to deliver on time and with some high quality forgeries. But even so, she still had about one million left. Since she had no intentions of staying here, she got this gorgeous apartment for $1,200 a month. If she was going to have to stay here for the next thirty moons, she might as well stay in luxury.

Another good thing was that she was older than she looked in this world. When she crossed over; she was twenty-five. Not old, but old enough to be wise with her finances. Although it's not like she came here to party anyways. She had one goal - to lay low until Celestia forgot about her, sneak back, steal the element of magic, come back, raise her zombie army, and march on Canterlot to seize the throne. Would have worked to, had it not been for that meddling Twilight , she thought in her best Scooby-Doo voice.

Oh Miss Twilight, you did throw a rainbow colored monkey wrench into the works; didn't you? Sunset smiled, shook her head and took a sip of coffee. It was all good though, she supposed. She wasn't consumed by hate anymore. In fact she was actually kind of happy. As happy as a marked woman could be. The girls had accepted her, but the rest of the school still treated her like crap. Hopefully saving them all would make a difference. Maybe, but she doubted it. At least not all of them.

But now they would have a new bad girl to hate, Sonata. So in some respects; her coming back was a good thing. She could take any of the left over heat from Sunset. The bad thing was if Sonata had any badness left in her, Sunset could be susceptible. In fact; if the Dazzelings hadn't been so dismissive of her in the hallway and had tried to woo her over to their side, she probably would have done it. She was tired of trying to be the good girl and have everyone talk about her and treat her like a pariah. As it was; when the microphone fell to her feet and she picked it up; she had to think about which side she would choose. And to honest; it was the Dazzeling's slight that tipped her over the edge to helping Twilight than any friendship they had shown to her. Right decision but for the wrong reason.

Sunset took another drink and sighed. New week, new challenges, new opportunities awaited her and she would just have to deal with things as they came. She would show Sonata all the kindness shown to her by the girls and hopefully nothing would go wrong. Hopefully.

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Rarity got up two hours early every morning to prepare for school. From showering, picking out her outfit, getting dressed, hair, and make-up; even that barely left her enough time to get to school on time. Most people got Rarity wrong. They thought of her a rich snob. She wasn't. Well she was, but wasn't.

Rarity's family had been dirt poor. Her dad drifted from one low paying job to the next. It wasn't his fault; he was a good worker, but even the meager wages he made was still too much for the corporate bosses and share holders to pay, so they would close down their plants here and move to China and other slave labor countries. There simply wasn't that many good and good paying jobs back in the area of the upper mid-west which they were from. And since they couldn't afford daycare, Rarity's dad was the only one who could work; her mom stayed home to look after her and eventually her sister.

Sweetie Belle was too young to remember those days; but Rarity wasn't. She remembered the constant teasing she got from the other students for being the "poor girl". They made fun of her clothes, hair, her family, everything. Their house should have been condemned decades ago. The roof leak, there were holes in the walls, the paint was peeling everywhere, the windows shook in a gentle breeze, there was no central heating, all they had was a wood burning stove. The floor was buckling and starting to pull up. The toilet didn't flush, you had to pump water from the well into a bucket and then pour it into the bowel to flush the waste away. Over all it was a damp, dirty, smelly, freezing in the winter/ roasting in the summer, crumbling mess.

Then it all changed. Her dad was on his way to another temp job when he stopped off for coffee. On a whim he bought a lottery ticket. Turned out to be the best decision he ever made. They won over $27 million dollars. After that her dad moved the family out to here because of the high standard of living. Rarity made up her mind then and there she would never be seen as anything other than the most fashionable, cutting edge girl. Or as she put it, "a person every person should know". And it wasn't just her looks she cared about. It took her almost a year to change her accent from the thick, what everyone called a "Fargo" accent, to that of an upper middle class one, but she did. She wanted no traces of her former self to be visible or audible.

The one side effect of this was that she did come off as a self obsessed snob. But she still had a good heart. She would help out in homeless shelters under an assumed name and disguise so no one would know it was her. At Christmas time, she would give most of her gifts away to charity. She knew what it was like to be poor and wanted to do whatever she could to help alleviate some of the struggles for other people. Within reason that is. She was a good girl, not a saint.

Once she was all ready, she came down stairs. The rest of the family were sitting at the kitchen table eating pancakes. Even though they could afford help, her mother continued to make all their meals from scratch. Rarity smiled to herself and sat down.

"Oh hi there sugar blossom," Rarity's father greeted. "Sleep well last night?"

"As good as any other night Pa-pa."

"Oh, I'll never get over that fancy talk of yours' there sweetie. Here's some pancakes. Eggs and bacon are coming up," her mother said.

"So, your birthday is coming up fast don'tcha know. Any idea what you want?" Her father ask.

"Oh pa-pa, you've given me so much already; I really couldn't ask for anything more." Of course that was a lie. A white lie; she really did appreciate all her parents had given her, but a little more never hurt anyone.

"So I guess you wouldn't want the car I was thinking about buying you for your sixteenth birthday then?"

Rarity jumped up and squealed. "A CAR! Oh daddy, thank you, thank you, thank you!" She gave him a giant hug around the neck and kissed him.

"A car? Way to go sis! You could drive me to school then," Sweetie Belle chimed in. Sweetie both idolized her sister and was extremely jealous of her as well. But even she was genuinely glad for Rarity.

"Provided you pass your test there missy," Rarity's mother said somewhat sternly.

"And you keep your grades up; deal?" her father asked.

"Oh yes pa-pa! I promise. This will be the best birthday ever! I can't wait to tell the girls."

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"Hey Fluttershy! What's happening?" Rainbow Dash asked as Fluttershy came walking up to the school statue (which also served as the portal to the other world).

Fluttershy kept her head down. "Not much. Same as usual I suppose."

"You ok? I mean, you sound even more down today than usual." Rainbow could feel there was something off about her oldest friend. She also had an idea why as well. "Your mother . . ."

"No!" Fluttershy cut Rainbow off immediately with a force she rarely exhibited. "Sorry, I mean, not this time. She's been good. I, I don't like to talk about it. You know that Rainbow."

"I know. I'm sorry too. Just, I'm here ok?"

"I know. And thank you. It's not mom. I'm worried about Sonata. I don't know what it'll be like having another former baddie around. And honestly; I just don't know how I feel about having another person around period. I like our small group. The more people, the shier I get. Does that make me a bad person?"

Rainbow put her arm around Fluttershy. "No, that makes you, you. And honest. We reformed Sunset, we can reform Sonata."

Fluttershy smiled at Rainbow and new she was right.

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Big Mac pulled up to the front of the school and let his sisters out. The two waved to him as he pulled off to find a parking place. This was his final year. Applejack still had two years left. Apple Bloom, as they liked to tease; still had six more years to go. Not only did she have the longest to go, for at least two years she would have to take the bus until she got her license after A.J. graduated.

"Apple Bloom!" Scoot-a-loo called out.

"Mind if go over Applejack?" Apple Bloom asked.

"Naw. You go on little filly; I got my own friends to catch up with," Applejack said with a smile.

Apple Bloom gave her a hug and ran off. Applejack then looked around for her own friends. She saw Rainbow and Fluttershy by the statue and walked over. "Mornin' girls. Y'all ready for this week?"

Rainbow and Fluttershy exchanged glances. "Fluttershy is a bit nervous, but I told her we could all handle it," Rainbow said.

"Of course we can darlin'. Don't you worry none about it now," Applejack told Fluttershy with a smile.

"Girls! Girls!" Applejack, Rainbow, and Fluttershy turned at the sound of the voice. It was Rarity. She was running as fast as she could. She had a look of pure joy and excitement on her face.

"Now what's got you all crazy there Rarity?" Applejack asked, slightly annoyed.

"You're, hah, hah, hah, hold on. I got to, hah, hah, catch my breath." Rarity took a deep breath. "My wonderful father told me he's buying me a car for my birthday! Isn't that wonderful?"

The other three all started to congratulate Rarity. Rarity's birthday was one week before the end of school and it was always a blow out. Now with her having wheels, the summer could be just as awesome.

"Hey everyone. What's going on?" Sunset Shimmer had walked up to the group. She saw they had all been celebrating something and was wondering what it was about.

"Rarity's getting a car for her birthday. Isn't that awesome!" Rainbow Dash said.

"Nice. Congrats Rarity." Sunset was genuinely pleased for her friend.

"Thanks Sunset." Rarity then stopped. The bell was ringing for everyone to come inside. "Where's Pinkie Pie? I haven't seen her yet."

The others shrugged. None of them had seen Pinkie that morning.

"She's probably just with Sonata, helping her out. We'll see her at lunch," Sunset said. "Come on, it's time to get inside."

Author's Notes:

In this I wanted to do a time compressed chapter. I felt that I had laid enough ground work to move the story forward a bit and leave the almost real time narration behind. Unfortunately, or fortunately, depending on how you see it, I still had some more character development and exposition I wanted to do first.

There's even more actually I want to do for Applejack, Rainbow Dash, and Fluttershy, but that'll be coming later. Don't want to give everything away up front. So I decided to make this chapter the second part of the last chapter. Or, basically, one chapter split in two. So hopefully you like this one and my explanations of and spin on the characters. Next chapter will be shorter (hopefully) and cover the whole week so I can get Flash and Twilight back together.

Peace.