“Faust?”

Pinkie Pie nodded dejectedly at her friend's unisonal cries of bewilderment, her open letter held up before them. Most of them held looks of surprise. Eventually, those expressions developed into sad eyes and sympathetic smiles.

But some of them hadn’t necessarily caught on yet.

“You applied to Faust?” Rainbow Dash gawked, her voice thick with disbelief. “Like...Ivy League Faust? There’s no way your GPA is-”

Rarity elbowed Rainbow Dash forcefully in the arm without bothering to glance in her direction.

“Pinkie,” she said with emphasis, drowning out the protests of her recently elbowed friend. “Is that what I think it is?” She knew the answer, but wished for it to be untrue.

“Y-Yeah…” Pinkie said nervously; the other girls had never heard her sound so timid. It was unsettling for such a constant source of boundless energy to be brought down to this level. Her hair hung down straight, acting as curtains to the window of her sad visage.

They all stood in Pinkie Pie’s living room, gathered around the coffee table. When Pinkie PIe had called them over, they had expected for her to have prepared a surprise of a merry nature. Once she pulled out the letter, all of them practically jumped out of their seats and gathered before her.

Sunset seemed to understand Pinkie Pie’s look of sadness once she connected the dots; an opened letter from a school she most certainly got rejected from. Despite her having no idea  as to why someone like Pinkie Pie would even think about applying to such a reach school, she had no idea, but that was irrelevant in the face of a severely disappointed friend. She strode forwards from the group and put a hand on Pinkie's shoulder, giving it a reassuring squeeze.

“Pinkie, it’s okay,” she said with a compassionate smile. “You have nothing to worry about. Don’t let anything this letter says get to you.”

Tears began to gather in Pinkie Pie’s eyes.

“B-But…” she stammered through her sadness. “None of you guys are going to Faust! I’m…I’m...I’m gonna be s-so l-lo-lonely!”

With that, she fully burst into tears, and her hand released the letter as she gave Sunset a hug of universal proportions. Her face burrowed into Sunset’s shoulder, where her sobs were muffled by a stylish jacket.

Sunset blinked.

She then blinked again.

She went on to blink several more times, perpetuating her silence while simultaneously giving her mind time to catch up with whatever nonsense just lept from Pinkie Pie’s mouth.  

By the time she caught up, Pinkie Pie had lowered the value of her jacket immensely by the sheer level of physical despair that was forcibly rubbed into it, and Applejack had picked up the forgotten letter.

“Dear Pinkamena…” she read slowly, her eyes widening with every passing word.  “Congratulations….your Fall 2016 application has been accepted…”

Fluttershy, who before was the perfect picture of friendly sympathy, was now looking between Pinkie Pie and the letter with conflicting looks of confusion and worry. Rarity and Rainbow Dash attempted to form words, but for once in their lives, they simply couldn’t speak their minds. Their minds simply experienced the moment.

“...What?” Sunset finally uttered in a lethal whisper. Every other girl in the room, sans Pinkie, took a step backwards.

“Easy now, Sunset…” Applejack cautioned in a conciliatory voice, her hands held out warningly.

“What?!” Sunset practically screamed. Pinkie Pie shuddered in her grasp, but held on to her breakfast-meat-haired compadre. She knew her friends were going to take the news badly, but she hadn’t thought the screaming would have started already.

“I-I know…” Pinkie moaned morosely, the terrible event being laid out to her by her obviously distraught friend who was obviously distraught for completely obvious reasons.

“You got into Faust!?” screamed the girl with a 4.0 GPA.

“I know!” sadly agreed the girl who doodled kitty-pirates in every page of her final exam blue books.

“How could this have happened!?!” screamed the girl with perfect 800’s on her SAT.

“It’s the worst thing ever!” sadly agreed the girl who fell asleep during the second critical reading question and remained unconscious for nine hours.

“...Congratulations,” Fluttershy commended in a whisper. Sunset gave her a look out of the corner of her eye, the visual organ resembling a burning piece of coal. Fluttershy decided to shut up for the rest of that day.  

“I didn’t even get accepted into Faust!” Sunset shouted, throwing her arms heavenwards, as if asking the ceiling for an answer that she couldn’t supply. Pinkie Pie just hugged tighter, thinking that Sunset needed just as much support as she did.

“Don’t r-remind me! I-It’s just so terrible! What if I don’t see any of you again after graduation? I can’t even think ab-ab-abou-”

It was around this moment when Pinkie Pie returned to the whole intense sobbing thing. Sunset bit down on her tongue and balled her hands into fists until her knuckles turned white with fury. Her eyes glowed white with pure magic, and her mouth opened as if to expel a stream of fire into the air out of pure rage.

But instead, she let out a sigh of begrudging acceptance. This whole friends thing may have been a tad new to her, but she still understood basic courtesy...even if she felt that she was completely in the right for being on the verge of blathering insanity through the impossibility of the moment coupled with her valid anger at the unfairness of it all.

And so she just settled into her friend’s embrace and gave the wall across from her a flat stare. Patting Pinkie Pie on the back, she supplied her with unconvincing words of support and encouragement.

Because despite how impossible it might be for someone like Pinkie Pie to get into an Ivy League school, it wouldn’t have been the first time that the girl had defied logic.  

‘It’s Pinkie Pie, don’t question it,’ Sunset mentally repeated the mantra with seething intensity as she tightened her embrace. ‘It’s Pinkie Pie, don’t question it…’