“Twilight!” Spike edged against the border of the purple clouds covering the duel arena. They sparked at his approach and he scurried back.

“Apologies, students.” Celestia spoke over the loudspeaker as Luna examined the arena’s control panel on the other side of the field. “It appears that some, er, inclement weather, has disrupted the duel. We’ll do our best to restore a connection.”

“Inclement weather!?” Rainbow Dash thrust her hand at the clouds. “Are you seeing this?”

“No, she isn’t.” Rarity shook her head. “They haven’t been affected by Twilight’s magic like us, so they can’t see it. For all we can tell they must just see a dense mist or fog.”

Fluttershy whimpered and bit her lip. “I hope Twilight’s okay in there…”

Sunset looked at the cards in her hand and folded her arms. “You can take the first move. You’ll need every advantage you can get.”

“Fine.” Twilight drew her card and looked down at it. “I activate the Spell card ‘Harmony Gem’. I’ll use it to discard ‘Harmony Spirit Pietas’ and then draw two cards.” Twilight picked up her cards and added them to her hand. Nothing game-swinging yet. I can’t defend against her burn effects, but I can fortify my field to strike back on my next turn. “I summon ‘Harmony Spirit Gracia’ in defense mode, and set one card face-down. That ends my turn.” Twilight’s yellow fairy kneeled in front of her face-down card, wings withdrawn. (900/1800)

“Goodie. My turn.” Sunset drew and held out her card. “I activate the Spell card ‘Infernal Crystal’.” A pitch black crystal appeared over Sunset’s head and shattered in a spray of sparkles. “Now I can banish ‘Infernal Spirit Luxuria’ from my hand, then draw two cards.” She drew her new cards and grinned. “I think I’ll use one of them now. I activate the effect of ‘Infernal Spirit Ira’ and banish it from my hand to deal 800 damage to you!”

The phantasmal violet spirit clad in armor with a red cloak appeared in front of Sunset, and sent a barrage of violet fireballs at Twilight. She raised her arms and cried out as they exploded around her, the air around her singeing. She stumbled back and winced, the heat still on her forearms.

Before Twilight could react further, white light consumed her field of vision.

“What's wrong, Twilight?”

Staring into a mirror with the Element of Magic on her head, Twilight closed her eyes and sighed. “I don't know, Spike. I'm just worried, I guess.” She turned to face her assistant on the other side of the bedroom as he unpacked their bags. “Princess Cadance was given the Crystal Empire to rule over. What if, now that I'm a princess, Celestia expects me to lead a kingdom of my own?”

Spike’s face lit up as he came closer. “That would be awesome!”

“No. It. Would. NOT!” Twilight spat out. “Just because I have this crown and these wings, it doesn't mean I'll be a good leader!” She sat down on the bed as she spoke, removing the Element of Magic and setting it on her nightstand. She stared at it for several minutes, eyes heavy with disquiet.

The blue paneling of the duel arena came into focus. Twilight realized she had fallen on her hands and knees. She blinked and put a hand on her dueling field to slowly stand. “What… was that?”

“I have to agree. Those wings mean nothing. You’re not a Princess in anything but title.”

Twilight slowly looked up at Sunset as the other girl spoke. “You saw that?” She grimaced and held her head. “That was… before the portal… my memory. But how could you…”

Sunset gasped in faux surprise and pressed a hand to her cheek. “Oh, silly me, I forgot to explain the rules, didn’t I? This is a Shadow Game, Twilight. It’s a test of your mental strength as well as your dueling skill. Since I made the game I set the conditions. And they’re simple – every time you lose Life Points, we both see a troubling memory of yours from the recent past. The more damage I deal, the further back the memories will go.” Sunset giggled. “I can’t wait to see what more painful experiences you’ve gone through that I can make you relive.”

“Oh no…” Against her will Twilight’s mind flooded with embarrassing and traumatic experiences from her life. The wedding with the changelings. Her ill-fated attempts to travel back in time to stop an unknown crisis. Her panicking when Celestia called her to go to the Crystal Empire. Sunset could see them all. She’ll learn everything. Every fear, every embarrassment, every failure.

“Don’t worry, Twilight.” Sunset winked. “I’ll stay away from anything too personal… for now.” She held up two cards. “I set two cards face-down, and summon ‘Infernal Spirit Avarita’ in defense mode.” Sunset’s two cards materialized behind the grinning visage of an orange demon with feathered wings and taloned limbs. (500/500) “That ends my turn.”

“Mine again.” Twilight drew and looked at her cards. Will this Shadow Game let Sunset perceive my memories of how my deck works? But she probably already knows anyway. She frowned and shook her head. It doesn’t matter, I can’t hold back anymore regardless. “I summon ‘Harmony Spirit Magnanimity’, in attack mode!” The pale white spirit materialized next to Gracia in a shower of gem dust, her arms crossed. (1200/800) “Magnanimity, attack and destroy Avarita!” Magnanimity held out its arms and conjured a field of gems.

“I activate my Trap ‘Infernal Cloak’!” A cape of purple fabric appeared behind Avarita and wrapped around its neck. “This turn only, Avarita cannot be destroyed and any card effects that target it are negated.” Magnanimity fired its gems. The purple around Avarita ripped apart as the storm passed and the demon flung off the scraps with a laugh.

Twilight scowled. “I end my turn.”

“My move again.” Sunset drew and smiled. “I summon ‘Infernal Spirit Gula’ in defense mode.” The yellow demon with two heads and oversized mouths filled with too many teeth grinned at Twilight as it appeared from a rune on Sunset’s field. (500/500) “I then activate the effect of ‘Infernal Spirit Luxuria’ in my hand.” The insectoid green demon appeared in front of Sunset and conjured an orb of green light between its hands. “Luxuria now banishes another Infernal Spirit from my deck, like ‘Infernal Spirit Invidia’, and then I gain 800 Life Points.” Sunset smiled and tilted her head back as a like-colored green aura lit up around her.

“With an Infernal Spirit banished, the effects of Avarita, Gula, and the banished Ira activate. Ira returns to my hand, Avarita lets me draw a card, and Gula lets me revive a monster other than the banished Luxuria. I summon Infernal Spirit Invidia!” The black demon with a purple cloak rose from a ring of purple fire, sneering at Twilight from behind the high collar of its cape. (500/500) “With that I end my turn.”

Twilight put a hand on her deck and lifted her card. Sunset flipped over a card in her hand. “Now that it’s your turn, I’ll activate the effect of Infernal Spirit Ira in my hand.” Ira’s shadowed form appeared over the field. “I don’t think I need to tell you what happens now, do I?” Sunset grinned and swung her hand forward. “Here’s a reminder!” Ira lit up in violet fire and shot towards Twilight. She screamed and raised her hands to shield herself, the blast sending waves of heat washing over her.

Twilight lowered her arms to look across at Sunset but instead saw only light.

Twilight smiled as she sat down next to Rainbow Dash. She reached out to the table and pick up her duel disk and slid it back on her arm. “I admit, I felt kinda silly giving that big speech and standing over you. I’ve never really thought of myself as someone important like that. Well, maybe a teacher.”

“Nonsense.” Rarity reached across the table to pat the back of Twilight’s hand. “I think you’re proving yourself a marvelous role model. You’re taking part in this tournament and you want to win, but you’re not letting bitterness or competitiveness get the better of you.”

Twilight brightened. “Really?”

Fluttershy nodded. “Rarity’s right. You’re proof we can have fun playing the game even while we take it seriously sometimes.”

“Gag me with a spoon.” Sunset stuck a finger down her throat. “You’re supposed to be in this tournament to beat me and win back your crown, and you’re having fun?”

Twilight stood up straight again. “I was, yes. No matter the stakes, I’ve enjoyed this game and the opponents I’ve faced.”

“Please.” Sunset sneered. “That’s so like you, winning comes easily with your magic, so you barely have to try to win and think it’s fun.”

“That’s not true!” Twilight counted off on her fingers. “Trixie, Rarity, Fluttershy, Rainbow Dash. Every duelist I’ve faced has made me a better, stronger duelist myself, and increased my understanding of the game.”

“Yeah, and using magic to change up your deck any time you’re about to lose helps too. Must be nice, having that sort of innate talent, hm?” Sunset leaned forward, her fingers clenching on the edges of her dueling booth. She grit her teeth and spat her words. “You mastered your magic in just three days. I took months to even be able to conjure mine!” She stood back up and breathed deep. “But now that I have it, I’m going to use it to finish you. Now that Ira has been banished, the effects of Avarita and Gula trigger. Avarita lets me draw a card, and Gula lets me summon Infernal Spirit Luxuria from my banished zone, in defense mode.” The green demon rose on the field next to Gula in a spray of bright green goo, wings flittering. (500/500)

“It’s still my turn.” Twilight looked at her hand. Right now, Ira is the key to her strategy. As long as she can keep banishing it, she’ll keep whittling down my Life Points every turn, and then Avarita and Gula replenish her hand and field. Do I have something that can stop it? She looked down at her deck and mentally ran through a checklist of her cards. Her shoulders slumped. No. But I can try and limit the ways in which she can capitalize on banishing it. And it starts with getting rid of those monsters.

“I summon ‘Harmony Spirit Honestas’!” Twilight set her card on the field. A shower of orange sparkles heralded the rise of the muscular orange-skinned fairy, blonde hair streaming down its back. (1800/300) “Then I discard ‘Harmony Spirit Malus’ in order to activate my Trap ‘Harmony Balloon’. I’ll use it to return one card on the field to the hand.” Twilight pointed. “I choose Infernal Spirit Avarita.” Avarita shrieked and transformed into an orb of orange light, feathers falling in its wake. Sunset held out her hand as the orb travelled towards her and transformed back into the card between her fingers.

“Discarding Malus activates the effects of Gracia and Magnanimity. I draw one card, and now for the rest of the turn my Harmony Spirits cannot be destroyed in battle.” Twilight thrust her hand out. “Honestas, destroy Infernal Spirit Invidia!” Honestas glowed with a yellow aura and ran forward, fist held back.

“Invidia copies your monster’s attack power.” Sunset snapped her fingers. A dark aura flared around Invidia and it pumped its fists in the air. (500 → 1800)

“Doesn’t matter, thanks to Gracia’s protection Honestas can’t be destroyed!” Honestas reached Invidia and punched. The demon flew back and struck Sunset’s booth, exploding. “Next, Magnanimity attacks Luxuria.” Magnanimity flung out a hand and sent a shower of gem shards across the field. Luxuria shrieked as the gems tore through it, kneeling into a plume of green fire that quickly burnt out. “I end my turn.” Twilight took a breath. Just Gula left. It’s a start.

“My turn to cause some pain again.” Sunset drew and held out a card. “I activate the effect of Avarita from my hand. I banish it to draw two cards, and then immediately banish another card in my hand.” Sunset flipped over a card and tossed it down. “I banish this, ‘Infernal Comet’. Then I activate the effect of Gula. Since I banished an Infernal Spirit, an Infernal Spirit with a different name is revived. Return to me, Invidia!” Invidia appeared in a shower of purple sparkles, cape fluttering. “Then I activate ‘Infernal Growth’. This lets me select two banished Infernal Spirits and return them to my hand.” Sunset held out her cards and grinned. “I choose Avarita and Ira. I’ll summon Avarita in defense mode and end my turn.”

Twilight bit her lip. She’s back to three monsters already. “My turn.”

“I think I’ll use an effect from my hand again.” Sunset held Ira’s card up in the air. “Guess what happens now, Twilight!” A violet fireball shot out of the card. Twilight grit her teeth and steadied her feet to take the blast.

“This is the gift given to me by Sunset Shimmer. The power of dark magic, to command monster spirits sleeping in shadows. Power to show the world how strong I really am!”

Twilight stood up, her eyes narrow. “Wake up, Rarity! Sunset Shimmer is just using you to get me out of the tournament!”

Across the field, Rarity tossed her hair. “And you weren’t? Remind me again what your plan for this tournament was all along. To win your way to the top no matter who you have to beat?” Rarity’s eyes flashed. “No, you’re the same as her. The same ambition and self-righteous entitlement, just in a different colored wrapper.”

“That’s not true! I’m here to try and help you all!”

“This is getting old…” Twilight groaned and raised her head.

“I agree.” Sunset yawned and fanned herself with her cards. “I need to start upping the damage I deal, so we can get to the good stuff. In the meantime, since I banished Ira, the effects of Avarita and Gula activate. I draw a card and then revive Luxuria.” The green insectoid demon flew back onto Sunset’s field from a haze of green smoke. Sunset spread her hands and laughed. “See? No matter how hard you fight, Twilight, I’ll keep coming back stronger than before!”

“That sounds like a challenge to me. I accept.” Twilight drew her new card and looked down at it. She smiled and slapped it on the field. “I’m turning this around, right here, right now. And it starts with this, ‘Harmony Fruit’. I’ll use it to return Harmony Spirits Pietas and Malus in my graveyard to my hand.” Twilight paused as she looked at her monsters and reached over to her touch screen, surprisingly still active. She tapped the icon for Invidia and read its effect. She gasped when she finished. That’s it!

“I activate the effect of Pietas, and discard it to allow a Harmony Spirit I control this turn to attack directly.” Twilight tapped her cards one by one as they lit up. “Honestas gains 500 attack points, Gracia prevents my monsters from being destroyed in battle, and Magnanimity lets me draw a card.” She drew and reached out her hand. “Honestas, attack Sunset directly!” Honestas (1800 → 2300) flexed its arms and leapt into the air.

“Please.” Sunset snorted and put a hand on her field. “Invidia, intercept the attack!” Before her the demon stood still, its cape fluttering. Sunset frowned. “Invidia?”

“You should pay more attention to your own cards, Sunset!” Twilight smiled in triumph. “Invidia can intercept attacks on other monsters, yes. But what it can’t do is block attacks aimed directly at you!”

“What!?” Sunset stepped back and looked up at Honestas. The fairy looked down at Sunset and dove, a fist held out. The demons on the field turned to watch as Honestas shot past them and slammed its hand into Sunset’s chest. A shockwave burst out from the impact point. Sunset was flung back with a strangled cry, hitting the railing at the back of her dueling booth and slumping against it.

“Gotcha!” Twilight grinned and looked at the Life Point total on her display.

“Next, I’ll—” Twilight paused as light flared in her eyes. “Wait, I didn’t take—”

The students crowded around the test postings in the hallway, pushing to get closer and see their marks. Cries of variable joy or disappointment soon rang out after they reached the board. “Let me through!” The speaker in the memory pushed past a blue unicorn to reach the board. She scanned the listings and grinned. “Ninety-three!” She giggled. “I knew all that studying was worth it.”

“That’s impossible!”

The speaker rolled her eyes. “Not really, I just had to study hard.” She turned to address the pony that had shouted but saw they weren’t looking at her. Instead they were looking at another test posting further down the line.

“Twilight got a 100 on her alchemical theory exam!”

The crowd gasped and crowded closer, the speaker being pushed back through the crowd. She lifted her head and looked down at the center of attention, a lavender unicorn with a deep purple mane.

“No one’s ever gotten more than a ninety on that exam!”

“Professor Inkwell says she tries to make it impossible to get perfect!”

As Twilight began to respond to the students, the speaker shrank down into the crowd again. “Big deal. She’s the prophesied Element of Magic, of course she’ll ace all these stupid tests.”

“Hey.” The speaker looked next to them to see a pale blue unicorn glaring at her. “We were all happy for you when you always got the best score in the class.”

“Yeah, because I work for my scores,” The student hissed.

The blue unicorn rolled her eyes. “You can’t always be the best at everything, Sunset. There’ll always be somepony better than you. Just be happy you did great in your own right.”

“Give me a break.” The speaker tossed her mane, red and yellow strands flowing through the air. “That kind of attitude is why I’m the royal student and you’re a nobody.”

Twilight blinked as the memory faded, the hair of the pony in the memory still on the edges of her eyes. That vision… She looked at the Life Point totals again. When I lose Life Points, Sunset can see my memories. But, since I damaged her…

Across the field Sunset groaned and put an arm around the railing to pull herself up. Her head was low, her other hand on her chest.

Honestas lowered to the field in front of Twilight. She looked past it at Sunset as the other girl slowly stood. “That was you?” Sunset raised her head and glared, but said nothing. Twilight’s eyes widened. “It was, wasn’t it? Years ago.” Sunset just growled, her glare intensifying. “The School for Gifted Unicorns…” Twilight shook her head. “I never noticed you… you were there, though.”

“Shut up!” Sunset gnashed her teeth. “That’s in the past. It’s ancient history!”

“Is it?” Twilight set her mouth in a line. “You said this Shadow Game will let us see the other’s painful memories. The more damage we take the worse the memory. So how bad was that one?”

“I said shut up!” Sunset stood up fully and stepped back up to her booth. “I’m better than you. Always have been, always will be. There or here, tests or dueling. Now finish your turn so I can keep on proving it!”

“Fine. Magnanimity, attack Invidia and destroy it.” Magnanimity fired a large shower of gems at Invidia.

“Invidia, copy its attack power!” Invidia wrapped itself in its cape as the gems shredded it and it shattered. Sunset snorted. “Gracia prevents your monster from dying, and with the same attack power, neither of us takes damage.”

“You almost sound relieved.” Twilight tilted her head. “You weren’t counting on that memory rule going both ways, were you?”

“It doesn’t matter. That’s the last hit you’ll be getting on me!” Sunset snarled.

No. It’s the first of many. Twilight took a breath. I have to know more. In that vision she mentioned the Element of Magic. How could she know about that when it was years before Nightmare Moon? How does she know me when I never knew her?

Sunset… who are you?

Author's Notes:

Sooo... let’s address the elephant in the room: Sunset attending the School for Gifted Unicorns during the same time Twilight did.

First, there’s the Sunset Shimmer comic. It is simply not canon, and I don’t mean I don’t consider the comics canon or ignore them, I mean that specific comic cannot be canon:
- Celestia says in the film that Sunset began her studies “not long” before Twilight, yet Twilight hasn’t gotten her cutie mark yet and so is not yet a royal student, while Sunset has been with Celestia for a while.
- The comic depicts Moondancer who looks nothing like she does in the show.
- Twilight’s Canterlot friends are significantly older than her, yet Amending Fences makes it clear they’re approximately all the same age.

Second, there’s the matter of “if Twilight was going to the same school as Sunset, wouldn’t she know her?” You’d think, but consider the following:
- Twilight does not seem to know Trixie despite her also attending the school. She also doesn’t seem to recognize Lyra or Amethyst despite the same.
- Twilight was oblivious to the fact that her childhood foalsitter was an alicorn princess. In fact, she was not even aware of Cadance’s full name until the Canterlot Wedding.
- Twilight was pointedly asocial, even anti-social, in her youth.

All things considered, I don’t think it implausible at all that the two could indeed have gone to the same school, and Twilight had no idea who Sunset was; she was just one face in a crowd of hundreds that Twilight passed every day without really getting to know them. After all, I’m sure we’ve all met people from school that years later we don’t know who they are, but they know us, yes?